Palestine is the barometer of Western integrity

HJFP MONTHLY PALESTINE REVIEW – JULY 2014

Don’t call me a Palestinian of the Palestinian Territories because it is called Palestine.Don’t give me a fraction of my homeland and call it a solution.

Don’t give me oppression and call it peace. Don’t give me a Bantustan and call it a home.

Don’t give me a prison and call it freedom. Don’t draw the borders of my existence according to your whims and interests and call it a state.

My Palestine is the home that is mine since the dawn of history till the end of history.

GAZA SPECIAL

Background reports

01.07.2014 Where is the condemnation for the killing of Palestinian teenagers?The discovery of the bodies of three Israeli teenage settlers is deeply saddening and our thoughts and prayers are with their families. These deaths have been rightly condemned by the world. FOA calls on the global community and governments in particular to also condemn the killing of Palestinian teenagers by the Israeli army, many of whom have been killed with impunity. In the last month alone, these include:

18 year old Yusuf Abu Zagher, killed today (Tuesday 1 July) in the Jenin Refugee Camp14 year old Mahmoud Dudeen, killed by Israeli forces during clashes in the southern West Bank city of Dura.15 year old Muhammad Abu Thahr who was targeted by an Israeli sniper (caught on camera)17 year old Nadim Nuwara who was also shot by Israeli snipers (Caught on camera)

Shamiul Joarder, Head of Public Affairs at Friends of Al-aqsa said 'from the time of the disappearance of the Israeli settlers teens, to this morning, 7 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers but we haven't heard a word from our government. Yet this morning, we have had emergency questions raised in parliament after the bodies of the Israeli boys were found. This reflects an apathy towards Palestinian deaths, which is highly deplorable. Between 2000 and 2013, almost 1400 Palestinian children have been killed by Is-rael but at no point has this been highlighted by our politicians or media.'

Relentless Israeli ViolenceIsraeli spokespeople have gone to great lengths to say there is no cycle of violence, but this is far from the truth. There is a clear cycle of violence and Palestinians are the biggest victims of relentless Israeli violence. Israel must take responsibility for its actions, for ex-ample, when Israel builds illegal settlements and steals land from Palestinian families, we have to ask what the foreseeable con-sequences of that might be? Does Israel and the international community not foresee that illegal settlers (who commit violent acts which go unreported) might face violence themselves? This is a cycle of violence. Israel has said that it faces a terrorist threat, yet the Israeli army relentlessly targets Palestinian civilians on a daily basis. The real problem here is that they expect to continue this relentless viol-ence with impunity.

Targeting HamasIsrael has accused Hamas, the government of Gaza of the kidnappings and murder even though they have denied this and there is no independent evidence to support Israeli claims. Despite another group claiming responsibility, Israel continues to use this tragedy as a pretext to attack Hamas and will no doubt do as much military damage as possible in the coming days. Israel has already attacked civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip leaving innocent civilians in total blackout. Israel cannot be allowed to pursue its enemies and kill recklessly and disproportionately with the world accepting that it has a special case. The emotions of the Is -raeli public is being used to justify the Israeli response to the kidnapping and killing of the settlers. Even before their bodies were dis -covered, 7 Palestinians had been killed in the search for them, this is indicative of the level of brutality Palestinians can expect now that that the deaths have been confirmed.For further comments and interviews, please email: Shamiul Joarder, Head of Public Affairs - shamiul@foa.org.uk

02.07.2014 At the heart of the crisisThe wrenching events unfolding in Israel and Palestine aren't random or isolated. They're part of the system of occupation itself. And we need your help to get that urgent message out.

1

"To hate Arabs isn't racism, it's having values. #IsraelDemandsRevenge." Posted to an Israeli Facebook page in the last 24 hours.

16 year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair was found dead in East Jerusalem, the victim of what appears to be a price tag attack following the killing of three Israeli teenagers on the West Bank. He was the 10th Palestinian killed by the IDF or right-wing extremists in the last two weeks.  We mourn his death as we do all lost lives. And we also know we must speak the truth, so that we may change the condi -tions that make such unthinkable violence possible in the first place.

The ongoing Israeli occupation is at the heart of this crisis.In addition to these deaths, across the West Bank the army has sealed off entire towns, arrested more than 400 people, and raided over 100 homes. Gazans have been subjected to more than 34 bombing raids in the same period.  These are not isolated or even rare in-stances of human rights violations, but the intensification of the daily enforcement of the Israeli occupation. Palestinians are subjected to home demolitions, checkpoints, arrests, and indefinite detention not randomly and occasionally, but daily and systematically.The shedding of just one child’s blood is too much and cause for deep mourning. While we mourn the 3 Israeli teenagers who were killed in the West Bank, we also mourn families of the 1,384 Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military since 2000, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. That’s 1 Palestinian child killed by the Israeli military every 3 to 4 days.The Israeli government is endangering lives and both fomenting and feeding off an atmosphere of vengeance and racism.

The Israeli government has continued to show little regard for either Israeli or Palestinian life.  The pronouncements of Cabinet ministers, IDF officials, and the Prime Minister Netanyahu make it clear that revenge, not justice, is the main agenda. Emerging reports suggest that the government knew the fate of the teens long before that information was released, but withheld that information - indicating that the government's primary aim has been to exploit the kidnapping to attack the infrastructure of Palestinian society. Meanwhile, hundreds rioted in the streets of Jerusalem, chanting “death to the Arabs” and “we want war” while attacking Palestinians on the street, or in shops. Settlers burned down a Palestinian sheep farm in a price tag attack.

All lives are precious.We refuse to mourn only the deaths of Palestinians, or only the deaths of Israelis. But that does not mean we can ignore the enormous power difference between Israelis and Palestinians, or pretend it is just a “cycle of violence” with no root cause or context. Each of these horrific incidents that harms both peoples happen in the context of an ongoing occupation, itself inherently a system of daily violence. And it is a system that by its very nature puts the lives, dignity, and human rights of all in jeopardy.

It is our responsibility to speak the truthThe media in both Israel and the United States have thus far failed to offer critical reporting that can help readers understand the con-tent of occupation or the degree of violence inflicted by the Israeli government’s escalation. But we can change that narrative - and we have to, if we want to end the occupation and injustice.  Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director, Jewish Voices for Peace

02.07.2014  Israeli mass arrest campaign since 12th June 2014

2

o 639 Palestinians including 11 MPs and dozens of ex-detainees were detained so far since Israel started its arbitrary mass arrest campaign throughout occupied West Bank on Thursday evening 12th June 2014. 

o 44 arrests were carried out last night in different parts of occupied West Bank including the activist in prisoners' issues Bushra Al-Tawil. 

o 230 arrests were carried out in Hebron, while 102 arrests were reported in Nablus. 61 Palestinians were detained in Ramallah, 62 detainees were documented in Jenin and 25 others in Tulkarm, while 14 Palestinian citizens were arrested in Qalqilya.

o 85 Palestinians were also detained in Bethlehem, while 39 from Jerusalem were detained. Including 10 arrests were reported in Tubas town near Nablus, and 10 others in Salfit city near Nablus, while one Palestinian was detained in Jericho.

UFree Network | An independent European-wide human rights network, set up to defend the rights of Palestinian political prisoners and detainees.

04.07.2014 Palestinian women now targeted in Israel’s mass-arrest campaignPalestinian women now targeted in Israel’s mass-arrest campaign, warns UFree Network and Yousef Al-Sedeeq Institute:

 A 20-year-old Palestinian woman, Bushra Al-Tawil, was abducted in the middle of the night on 1st of July from her home in the West Bank village of Al-Bireh -- signalling an expansion of the Israeli campaign of mass arrests beyond males. Al-Tawil is one of more than 50 Palestinians who had been previously jailed by Israel as political prisoners to be re-arrested without charge in Israel’s current campaign of mass detentions. Israeli occupation authorities say the more than 600 arrests since 12th June, which have led to 12 Palestinian being killed so far, were consequences of its investigation of the kidnapping and murder of three Israelis living in an illegal, Jewish-only settlement. However, the lack of evidence and the increasingly indiscriminate nature of the arrests suggest that the Israeli government is using the tragedy to pursue a broader agenda of retaliation and incitement. Al-Tawil was first seized when she was just 17, in a dawn raid on her home in July 2011. A journalist and advocate for prisoners’ rights, she was held for five months in “administrative detention,” a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold individuals indefinitely based on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Al-Tawil was finally released in December 2011, and had continued her journalism studies – until now. Al-Tawil joins at least 17 other Palestinian women currently held in Israeli jails, primarily the Hasharon and Damon prisons -- both of which are located outside occupied territory and thus violate article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Numerous reports have documented that the majority of Palestinian women prisoners are subjected to psychological torture and ill treatment, including beatings, insults, threats, invasive body searches and sexually explicit harassment. “Israel is exploiting the pre-occupation of the international community with other regional events to worsen the conditions of its occupation of Palestinian territories,” said Mahmoud Lweesi, spokesman for the Yousef Al-Sedeeq Institute for Prisoners' Protection in “Palestine 48”. “This includes an expansion of the practice of administrative detention, in clear violation of the strict parameters established by international law, for collective and criminal punishment.” In May, 192 Palestinians were being held in administrative detention, with most participating in a hunger strike for 64 days to protest the practice. However, with the launch of Israel’s campaign of mass arrests, it’s estimated that at least a 200 more Palestinians held as part of the sweep are being placed under the “administrative detention” policy, forcing the hunger strikers to delay their protest until international attention can be re-focused. “We call upon international human rights and humanitarian institutions to bring pressure to bear on Israel to halt its illegal and racist practices against the Palestinian people, including women like Bushra Al-Tawil,” said Khaled Waleed of UFree Network. “Continued silence on the part of the international community is tantamount to direct involvement in Israel’s crimes against humanity.” He continues. UFree Network | An independent European-wide human rights network, set up to defend the rights of Palestinian political prisoners and detainees.

04.07.2014 Israel must be held accountable for its collective punishment of Palestinianshttp://www.bdsmovement.net/2014/israel-must-be-held-accountable-for-its-collective-punishment-of-palestinians-12181

Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists are urging governments and international civil society to take action to hold Israel to account for its continued collective punishment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza following the disappearance

3

and death of three Israeli settlers.

Zaid Shuaibi, a spokesperson for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the civil society coalition that leads and supports the BDS movement, said:

“Israel’s on-going actions are designed to terrorise Palestinians and constitute collective punishment. Military violence, collective punishment and the deliberate targeting of civilians are endemic to Israel’s of decades old system of occupation, colonisation and apartheid.”

“Israel is able to act with utter impunity because of the military, economic and political support it receives from governments around the world. We call on international governments to impose a two-way arms embargo immediately and to suspend bilateral agreements until Israel fully complies with international law”.

“At a time when mainstream bodies such as the Bill Gates Foundation, the Presbyterian Church USA and the US United Methodist Church are divesting from companies profiting from Israel’s occupation, including G4S and Hewlett Packard, we call on people of conscience to intensify BDS pressure.” Shuabi also called on people of conscience and supporters of BDS to consider joining the Month Against the Apartheid Wall that is marking the 10th anniversary of the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s apartheid Wall is illegal.

Hundreds of military raids have been launched across the occupied West Bank since June 12, with more than 1000 private homes and refugee camps and the offices of civil society organisations ransacked. At least 10 Palestinians have been killed and many more have been injured. More than 500 Palestinians have been detained and initial reports suggest that many of those arrested are held under administrative detention, a form of detention without charge or trial on secret evidence. The number of children held in Israeli jails has risen to 250. Israel has also imposed severe restrictions of movement. On Wednesday, Israeli settlers kidnapped and killed a 16 year old from the Shuafat area of Palestinian East Jerusalem and Israeli soldiers attacked Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Palestinian organisations have detailed how Israel’s recent actions constitute collective punishment, a crime prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as customary international humanitarian law. Israeli occupation forces have also targeted the campuses of Birzeit University near Ramallah and the Arab American University in Jenin, resulting in the detention and arrest of students and staff and greatly infringing the Palestinian right to education.

Samia Botmeh, a professor at Birzeit University and a steering committee member with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said:

“Israel’s latest violations against Palestinian universities are part of its long history of oppression aimed at Palestinian education. Closure of universities for periods stretching to years, murder and detention of students and professors, destruction of universities’ properties and labs as well as the banning of lists of books have been Israel’s systematic policies targeting Palestinian education.”

“It must be emphasized that throughout the decades of oppression, no Israeli university or association of Israeli academics has ever protested the sustained assaults on Palestinian universities.  It is essential to intensify all forms of BDS, including the academic and cultural boycott, until Israel ends its violations of Palestinian rights.”

Israel has conducted at least 100 airstrikes and shellings of Gaza in recent days, including an intense bombing of dozens of locations in the early hours of Tuesday, further worsening the situation for Palestinians in Gaza, which has been under a brutal military siege for more than 7 years.

Haidar Eid, associate professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza and a PACBI steering committee member, said:

“We, residents of Gaza, have been unable to fathom how it is that official bodies of the international community tolerate blatant war crimes committed against the people of Gaza, in spite of thousands of reports by mainstream human rights organizations!” “Is it farfetched to expect people of conscience to heed our call to boycott this intransigent, racist and militarized Israeli regime and the institutions that keep it thriving, the same way apartheid South Africa was boycotted until it crumbled?”

Ayah Abubasheer, a youth and BDS activist in Gaza, added:

“During the past few weeks, Israel has been violently and intensely launching a series of air strikes against the Gaza Strip. The population of the Gaza Strip continues to pay the price and bear the blaze of Israel’s polices.”

“Because collective punishment is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, we urge the international community to pressure Israel to end its all-out military assault aimed against the total population of Gaza, open Rafah crossing permanently and heed our call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions.”

http://www.bdsmovement.net/2014/israel-must-be-held-accountable-for-its-collective-punishment-of-palestinians-12181

07.07.2014 Interview with Tareq Abu Khiedar and his motherPalestinians in Hebron face violent revenge for filming Israeli soldier's violence

           

Palestinians in Hebron face violent revenge for filming ...Palestinian activists face death threats, raids and beatings by Israeli soldiers as “revenge” for filming their misconduct in Hebron, says Issa Amro, director of Yo...

4

View on   electronicintifada.ne t

Preview by Yahoo

  Beaten Palestinian-American teen and mother speak out on Israeli police  

    

 

   

Beaten Palestinian-American teen and mother speak out on...15-year-old American citizen, Tareq Abu Khieder, said he was beaten and detained by Israeli border police in an interview Sunday with his sister and mother, Suha Ab...

View on   www.washingtonpost.. .

Preview by Yahoo

 

07.07.2014 BBC elevates killing of Israelis above others in the Middle EastPlease see this article, BBC: killing of 3 Israelis worse than ‘waves of violence’ in the Middle East: http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/amena-saleem/bbc-killing-3-israelis-worse-waves-violence-middle-eastThis details Kevin Connolly’s statement on Tuesday’s Today programme that there was something particularly awful about the killings of three Israelis last month that sets them aside from the ‘other waves of violence’ in the Middle East.Please complain to the BBC via the website at www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

09.07.2014 Gaza Under Attack

GAZA HEALTH SECTOR AT SERIOUS RISK FROM FURTHER ATTACKS

CONCERNS RAISED OVER FUEL AND MEDICINE SHORTAGESIsraeli airstrikes have intensified in recent days with no sign of a ceasefire. Latest figures indicate that 43 people have been killed, including at least five children, and over 320 people injured. Any further increase in Israel’s attack will have disastrous effects for a healthcare system that has been under significant pressure for years.

Read more

GAZA: OPERATION MEDICAL RESUPPLYAS ATTACKS CONTINUE, MEDICINE SHORTAGES INCREASEEven before the current attack, we warned that the list of zero-stock medicines in Gaza (essential medicines with less than a month’s supply) stood at almost a third. With the current attacks ongoing, and numbers of injuries rising, we have released essential medicines to aid the emergency response. Using your donations we can continue to procure essential medicines and supplies and get them to where they are most needed.Read more

Medical Aid for Palestinians | 33a Islington Park Street | London | N1 1QB

5

10.07.2014 Please sign open letter to BBC over Gaza coveragePSC has written an open letter to the BBC regarding its coverage of the bombings in Gaza. The letter will be delivered to the Director General, Tony Hall. The letter is on our website at http://www.palestinecampaign.org/sign-open-letter-bbc/ Please sign the letter and ask others to do the same. Signatures will be displayed on the website. Because of the volume of traffic to our website at the moment, you may see a message when you attempt to go the letter which says ‘Resource limit reached’. Please try again later. You will be able to get through if you keep trying, and we really appreciate your efforts.The letter is cut and pasted here:

Dear BBCOnce again Gaza is under massive aerial bombardment from Israeli warplanes and drones, and, once again, the BBC’s reporting of these assaults is entirely devoid of context or background. We would like to remind the BBC that Gaza is under Israeli occupation and siege. We would like to remind you that Israel is bombing a refugee population – Palestinians who were made refugees when they were forced from their land in1948 in order to create Israel.

We would like to remind you that Gaza has no army, air force, or navy, while Israel possess one of the strongest militaries in the world. When you portray Israel’s shelling of a civilian population as a ‘response’ or ‘retaliation’ to rocket strikes from Gaza, we would like to re -mind you that these events flow from the displacement of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people from their homes and communities, with millions now corralled as refugees in the Gaza Strip. That initial injustice was compounded and continues with the on-going occupation and siege.

When you portray the occupier as the victim, and the occupied as the aggressor, we would like to remind you that resistance to occupa-tion is a right under international law. And we would like you to remember that Israel’s occupation, siege and collective punishment of Gaza is not.

And, finally, we would like to remind BBC journalists, when interviewing Israel’s spokespeople over the coming days, to ask the one question they have all failed to ask: “If Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land, and allows the people of Palestine to live in free -dom from Israeli domination, would that bring peace?”

A couple of links which may be of interest:

International law and reporting: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/understanding-militant-international.html

Israel’s dominant media narrative: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/israel-dominant-media-narrative-20147675736829395.htmlPSC

10.07.2014 Robert Fisk - The true Gaza back-story that the Israelis aren’t telling this weekOK, so by this afternoon, the exchange rate of death in two days was 40-0 in favour of Israel. But now for the Gaza story you won’t be hearing from anyone else in the next few hours.

It’s about land. The Israelis of Sederot are coming under rocket fire from the Palestinians of Gaza and now the Palestinians are getting their comeuppance. Sure. But wait, how come all those Palestinians – all 1.8 million – are crammed into Gaza in the first place? Well, their families once lived, didn’t they, in what is now called Israel? And got chucked out – or fled for their lives – when the Israeli state was created. And – a drawing in of breath is now perhaps required – the people who lived in Sederot in early 1948 were not Is-raelis, but Palestinian Arabs. Their village was called Huj. Nor were they enemies of Israel. Two years earlier, these same Arabs had ac-tually hidden Jewish Haganah fighters from the British Army. But when the Israeli army turned up at Huj on 31 May 1948, they expelled all the Arab villagers – to the Gaza Strip! Refugees, they became. David Ben Gurion (Israel’s first Prime Minister) called it an “unjust and unjustified action”. Too bad. The  Palestinians of Huj were never allowed back. And today, well over 6,000 descendants of the Palestini-ans from Huj – now Sederot – live in the squalor of Gaza, among the “terrorists” Israel is claiming to destroy and who are shooting at what was Huj. Interesting story.

And same again for Israel’s right to self-defence. We heard it again today. What if the people of London were being rocketed like the people of Israel? Wouldn’t they strike back? Well yes, but we Brits don’t have more than a million former inhabitants of the UK cooped up in refugee camps over a few square miles around Hastings. The last time this specious argument was used was in 2008-9, when Is-rael invaded Gaza and killed at least 1,400 Palestinians (exchange rate: 1,100 to 13). What if Dublin was under rocket attack, the Israeli ambassador asked then? But the UK town of Crossmaglen in Northern Ireland was under rocket attack from the Irish Republic in the 1970s – yet the RAF didn’t bomb Dublin in retaliation, killing Irish women and children. In Canada in 2008, Israel’s supporters were mak-ing the same fraudulent point. What if the people of Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal were being rocket-attacked from the suburbs of their own cities? How would they feel? But the Canadians haven’t pushed the original inhabitants of Canadian territory into refugee camps.

And now let’s cross to the West Bank. First of all, Benjamin Netanyahu said he couldn’t talk to Palestinian “President” Mahmoud Ab-bas because he didn’t also represent Hamas. Then when Abbas formed a unity government, Netanyahu said he couldn’t talk to Abbas because he had unified himself with the “terrorist” Hamas. Now he says he can only talk to him if he breaks with Hamas – even though he won’t then represent Hamas. Meanwhile, that great leftist Israeli philosopher Uri Avnery – 90 years old and still, thankfully, going strong – has picked up on his country’s latest obsession: the danger that Isis will storm west from its Iraqi/Syrian “caliphate” and arrive on the east bank of the Jordan river. “And Netanyahu said,” according to Avnery, “if they are not stopped by the permanent Israeli gar-rison there (on the Jordan river), they will appear at the gates of Tel Aviv.” The truth, of course, is that the Israeli air force would have crushed Isis the moment it dared to cross the Jordanian border from Iraq or Syria.

The importance of this, however, is that if Israel keeps its army on the Jordan (to protect Israel from Isis), a future “Palestine” state will have no borders and will be an enclave within Israel, surrounded on all sides by Israeli-held territory.  “Much like the South African Bantustans,” says Avnery. In other words, no “viable” state of Palestine will ever exist. After all, aren’t Isis just the same as Hamas?  Of course not. But that’s not what we heard from Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman. No, what he told Al Jazeera was that Hamas was “an extremist terrorist organisation not very different from Isis in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Boko Haram…” Tosh.  Hezbollah is a Shia

6

militia now fighting to the death inside Syria against the Sunni Muslims of Isis. And Boko Haram – thousands of kilometres from Israel – is not a threat to Tel Aviv.

But you get the point. The Palestinians of Gaza – and please forget, forever, the 6,000 Palestinians whose families come from the land of Sederot – are allied to the tens of thousands of Islamists threatening Maliki of Baghdad, Assad of Damascus or President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja. Even more to the point, if Isis is heading towards the edge of the West Bank, why is the Israeli government still build -ing colonies there – illegally, and on Arab land – for Israeli civilians? This is not just about the foul murder of three Israelis in the occu -pied West Bank or the foul murder of a Palestinian in occupied East Jerusalem. Nor about the arrest of many Hamas militants and politi-cians in the West Bank.  Nor about rockets. As usual, it’s about land. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-letrsquos-see-the-criticism-of-israel-for-what-it-really-is-1624827.html 

ROBERT FISK  -  The Independent - Wednesday 9 July 2014

11.07.2014 US - Never before in my life have I seenI'm asking you as an Israeli--we need you to tell Israeli leaders you won't accept racism, you won't accept human rights violations, you won't accept occupation and the killing of civilians.My name is Eran Efrati, I am Jewish, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, and a 7th generation Jerusalemite. What I've seen in Israel over the last few weeks is beyond anything I have witnessed in my life. I've seen terrified Palestinian children in Hebron and Halhul, sitting on the ruins of their homes. I've seen mobs in the street chanting "death to Arabs" and pulling out Palestinian men from their stores to beat them as other Israelis stood idly by. I've seen soldiers lined up at the Gaza border, ready at a moment's notice to invade. And now, like you, I’ve seen the climbing death toll in Gaza, over 100 dead and some 500 injured –all by Israeli missiles, with no end in sight.

As much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think I can do a lot about it. But I believe you can. American voices - and especially Jewish American ones - are probably the most critical voices in the world right now. We need you to tell us - Israeli politicians, the Israeli media, Israeli society - that you can't support this. That you can't support human rights violations. That you can't support racism. That you won't support the idea that Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian lives. 

Join me and sign this Open Letter now—if they get another 10,000 signatures, Jewish Voice for Peace will take out ads in Haaretz and the Jewish Forward with our message.

We know the roots of this are long and deep. But the truth behind this latest assault has finally coming: as J.J. Goldberg wrote in  The Forward, the Israeli government lied, and created this situation. For weeks, the government knew that the three kidnapped teenagers were dead. But they instituted a gag order on the media, lied to Israelis and the world, and falsely claimed the mass arrests and collective punishment of Palestinians was all in the hopes of finding the teenagers alive. In other words, their chosen response was to kidnap the mind of an entire country. From the very beginning, this has been about punishing Palestinians. From the beginning, the government has been willing to manipulate and use its own people for that goal.

Overhead, I hear airplanes headed to Gaza all day long, and I know there's nothing I can do to stop them. And now we all know the lengths they've gone to justify this attack, and how fully Israeli society has bought into it. And I don't think we can stop it from within.US Jewish Voices for Peace14.07.2014 Zochrot's statementBelow is a statement by ZOCHROT the Israeli Organisation that ”advances understanding of the Nakba especially among Israelis and  promotes the return of the refugees.” All the editorials and government statements  I've seen here are appalling. Bang Bang. Hamas fires rockets, Israel protects itself. End of story. The Zochrot statement  condemns Israeli violence and collective punishment of Palestinian families again and puts the  latest violence  into its context and historical background. The BBC was condemned by an enquiry for omitting these and so misleading the public but has never changed

Hopefully our campaigning on 'British responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of 1948' will promote similar perspective as Zochrot's here.

Zochrot statement – Ongoing catastrophe since 1948For more than 66 years, the Israeli Regime had been violating, systematically and harshly, the human rights of millions of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the refugee's camps located in the Middle East. The violent reality we are witnessing these days, that takes a heavy toll from many, especially the Palestinian Refugees, is a direct outcome of a racist regime which established itself based on an ongoing destruction, dispossession, expulsion and occupation, while turning 70% of the Palestinian population into refugees.

Since 1948, the Israeli regime had been denying the Palestinian disaster, its daily harsh implications, and the political and moral rights of the Palestinians to return to their homeland. Therefore, a back and forth Ad hoc ceasfire solutions will not be enough. Only a fundamental change in the regime, which will be based on taking responsibility on the ongoing crimes of the Nakba and the implementation of the right of return of the Palestinian Refugees will bring about the ending of the violence

16.07.2014 Ceasefire for whom?This morning, we had hoped to wake up to news of a ceasefire.  Instead, the unrelenting attack on Gaza continues. Over 187 Palestini-ans and one Israeli have been killed. 1,300 Palestinians and 15 Israelis injured. Israel announced this morning that it would accept a unilateral ceasefire, but the terms were actually a continuation of Israel’s ongoing war on civilians—a continued blockade of Gaza, continued extrajudicial assassinations, continued imprisonment of Palestinians without charge, and continued occupation. And with no guarantee Israel wouldn't violate the agreement as they have on numerous occasions in the past.

Three times in the last six years, Israel has conducted extraordinarily lopsided operations against the people of Gaza, and each time the civilian population has paid a major price.  Even with some of the most sophisticated protection in the world, the fearful experience of rockets falling on Israel means that Israelis and the world pay attention during these escalations.

But they largely ignore the fact that the people of Gaza, who have no protection whatsoever, have been living under an unacceptable

7

state of siege for the last 7 years. And that the Palestinian people as a whole remain stateless, and have been living under a brutal milit-ary occupation for 47 years. We will continue our efforts to respond to the current situation (please keep up to date here) while keeping in mind that when the bombs stop falling, Israel's decades-long assault on Palestinian human rights will continue.

We will redouble our efforts to address the long-term causes and solutions.While we monitor the situation, below are a few pieces, mostly from the last 24 hours, that we have found useful. We hope you will read them and share them with friends, family, and community.

from IMEU: FAQ on Failed Effort to Arrange Ceasefire Between Israel and Hamas. from 972mag: What Does Israeli Acceptance of "Ceasefire" Really Mean? from Leftern Wall: Facing the Massacre With Eyes Shut  from Electronic Intifada: Urgent Call from Gaza Civil Society: Act Now   and the Occupy Judaism statement on the possible ceasefire

Cecilie Surasky, Deputy Director, Jewish Voices for Peace

17.07.2014  Jon Snow - with Regev interview'The Israeli military does not target civilians' - video 

    

 

   

'The Israeli military does not target civilians' - videoAs four boys die in a shell attack in Gaza, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev says :"The story with these four boys is a tragedy - let's be clear the Israeli ...View on   www.channel4.com Preview by Yahoo

 

I watched it live and couldn't believe that it ran for about 9 minutes.  BBC1 would never do this, and the BBC News Channel (which only similcasts BBC1's "flagship"news at 6pm and 10pm) probably wouldn't do this either, even though they're 24 hours.  So how come the commercial Channel 4, with a nightly limit of 45 minutes that's also got to fit in other stories and adverts, how come they managed it? Must be down to Jon Snow himself.  I noted a few weeks ago that Mark Regev now speaks through slightly clenched teeth - a good sign that he's slightly unsettled.

18.07.2014 Gaza Ground Invasion: Casualties RisingATTACKS INTENSIFY WITH ISRAELI GROUND INVASION

GAZA: WORKING UNDER THE BOMBSOver the last 10 days Israel has launched a sustained and intense series of military operations against Gaza culminating with the news of a ground invasion last night. 

Read on to hear the latest dispatch from the Director of Programmes in our Gaza office, Fikr Shaltoot.

Read more

Abunima BBC News Channel 2014 07 18 02 19 26 

    

 

   

Abunima BBC News Channel 2014 07 18 02 19 26View on   www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo

 

8

http://uprisingradio.org/home/2014/07/16/why-an-israeli-academic-views-the-assault-on-gaza-as-incremental-genocide/

 

19.07.2014  Israeli Academics condemn Israeli attacks on Gazahttp://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-academics-condemn-the-slaughter-and-endless-oppression-of-the-palestinian-people/5391812

Gaza's crisis, Israeli ambition, and US decline 

    

 

   

Gaza's crisis, Israeli ambition, and US declineThe US should stop enabling Israel's unfettered freedom of military initiative.View on   www.aljazeera.com Preview by Yahoo

 

Why Hamas fires those rockets 

     

 

   

Why Hamas fires those rocketsMANY Gazans, not just their leaders in Hamas, think they have little to lose by fighting on. For one thing, the spotlight has been switched back onto them since the...View on   www.economist.com Preview by Yahoo

 

20.07.2014 Conditions for a ceasefire - Why Hamas fires those rocketsMANY Gazans, not just their leaders in Hamas, think they have little to lose by fighting on. For one thing, the spotlight has been switched back onto them since the Israeli campaign began earlier this month. In Gazan eyes, Hamas gains from the violence because the outside world may, as a result of the grim publicity generated by the bloodshed, feel obliged to consider its grievances afresh. This week Hamas issued a ten-point plan. A ceasefire, it suggested, could be followed by a ten-year truce. Among its key demands were a lifting of the siege of Gaza and the release of prisoners. Gaza’s seaport and airport would be reopened and monitored by the UN.

After the last big Israeli effort to stop the rockets, in November 2012, it was agreed that, along with a ceasefire, the blockade of Gaza would gradually be lifted and the crossings into Egypt and Israel would be opened. The ceasefire generally held, but the siege contin-ued. As Gazans see it, they have remained cruelly shut up in an open-air prison. Firing rockets, many of them argue, is the only way they can protest, even though they know the Israelis are bound, from time to time, to punish them.

More recently, say Gazans, the Israelis under Binyamin Netanyahu showed they were determined to destroy a peace-minded Palestinian unity government endorsed by Hamas and the more moderate Fatah party under Mahmoud Abbas, after the failure of American-brokered talks between Mr Abbas and Mr Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister made it clear he would never talk to a Palestinian government backed by Hamas, even though America cautiously welcomed it. So he has done everything, say the Palestini -ans, to thwart it.

Among other things, Mr Netanyahu’s government has prevented Mr Abbas from reasserting his authority, as part of the unity deal, over Gaza—and from paying off Hamas civil servants there. Indeed, Mr Abbas at first looked even more feeble than usual during Operation

 

    

 

   

uprisingradio.org » Why An Israeli Academic Views the As...Listen to this segment with Ilan Pappe Listen to the entire program with Sonali Kolhatkar Hamas has rejected an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire plan that was brokered...

View on   uprisingradio.or g

Preview by Yahoo

 

9

Protective Edge: he could not, as a leader committed to peace, cheer on the Hamas rockets. Yet his pleas for restraint on both sides have so far had little effect.

The Gazan grievance over prisoners stirs great passion among Palestinians everywhere. After three Israeli students were kidnapped on the West Bank on June 12th and later found murdered, the Israeli security forces rounded up more than 500 Hamas people, even though the movement did not claim responsibility for the crime. The increase in rocket fire was partly intended as a protest against the round-up of prisoners. Any ceasefire, says Hamas, must include the release at least of those detained in the past month.From the print edition: Middle East and Africa

20.07.2014As Israel's military kills and injures hundreds of civilians in Gaza - whose population Israel is legally obligated to protect as an occupying power - people around the world, including in the United States, wonder why official Washington appears so indifferent to even the most graphic instances of "collateral damage". The primary reason is that most American policy elites still believe the United States needs to dominate the Middle East, and that Israeli military assertiveness is instrumentally useful to this end - a mindset the Israel lobby artfully reinforces.

Since World War II - and especially since the Cold War's end - the US political class has seen Middle Eastern hegemony as key to their country's global primacy. For two decades following Israel's creation, it contributed little to this; thus, the United States extended it virtu -ally no military or economic assistance, beyond negligible amounts of food aid. Washington started providing substantial assistance to Israel only after it demonstrated a unilateral capacity, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, to capture and hold territory from Arab states allied, for the most part, with the Soviet Union. Support for Israel grew through the rest of the Cold War; after the Cold War, US policymakers doubled down on the US-Israeli "special relationship", calculating that facilitating Israel's military superiority vis-a-vis its neighbours would help solidify US post-Cold War dominance over the strategically vital Middle East.

The instrumental nature of the "special relationship" also shaped what seems, from outside, Washington's chronically ineffectual stew-ardship of the so-called Middle East peace process - especially in seeking a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not-withstanding rhetorical professions, neither Israel nor the US has ever wanted a two-state outcome.

Palestinian self-determination precludedIsrael's national security strategy has long rested on a military doctrine - which Israeli officials misleadingly label "deterrence" - requiring that Israel's military be capable of using force first, disproportionately, and whenever and wherever in its neighbourhood Israeli politi -cians want. Pursuing a two-state solution seriously would ultimately curb this freedom of unilateral military initiative.

Moreover, for a Zionist project with inherently religious roots, a two-state outcome would mean surrendering too much of the Jewish Biblical homeland to sustain the Jewish immigration on which Israel's long-term future depends.

INTERACTIVE: Gaza Under Attack

Likewise, the US never intended the peace process to help Palestinians achieve real self-determination - for that would inevitably con-strain Israel's exercise of military supremacy over its neighbourhood, attenuating America's own drive for Middle Eastern dominance. The process has instead been conducted to empower Israel, to subordinate Palestinians and other Arabs into an increasingly militar -ised US sphere of influence, and to leverage Arab states' buy-in to this scenario. These dynamics are vividly displayed in Israeli and US approaches to Gaza. The roots of Gazans' current trials go back to 2005, when Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza. Widely credited with having pushed Israel to take these steps, Hamas won internationally supervised Palestinian elections the following year.

But Gaza's occupation was far from over. While Israel had withdrawn soldiers and settlers, it hardly let Gazans exercise anything ap -proaching sovereignty: Israel's military continued exerting strict control over their access to the world - whether by land, sea, or air - and over flows of food, medicine, and other essential goods into their territory. For nearly a decade, this siege has eroded living conditions for 1.7 million people. After becoming the elected governors of Gaza's population, Hamas offered Israel a long-term truce, if Israel with-drew to pre-1967 borders. Instead of negotiating with Hamas, to consolidate a sustainable and truly self-governing entity in Gaza that could ground broader conflict resolution, Israel and the US rejected Palestinians' electoral choice and worked in multiple ways to isolate Hamas and undermine its popularity by increasing civilian suffering in Gaza - including, in 2006, 2008-2009, and 2012, through military assaults inflicting thousands of Palestinian casualties. In some respects, this approach "succeeded", for a while. By this spring, Hamas was at what even ardent supporters described as its weakest point, in terms of financial resources and regional backing, since its founding. (To be sure, Hamas contributed to this by abandoning its base in Syria and counting on Egypt's short-lived Muslim Brother -hood government to become its biggest regional backer.)  

US failureBut Israel's insistence on perpetuating occupation - even without settlements - is renewing Hamas' resistance agenda. Earlier this week, after Israel accepted an Egyptian ceasefire proposal that would have done nothing to address the ongoing siege, Hamas made its own proposal: a ten-year truce, including a comprehensive ceasefire - if Israel met a set of ten demands.

10

Among them: opening all land crossings into Gaza, lifting the naval blockade, establishing an international airport and a seaport, freeing all prisoners arrested in the Israeli military's current campaign, and committing not to re-enter Gaza for a decade. Israel, of course, is not about to accede to any of this. And so the world waits to see if a ceasefire can be brokered, or whether Israel's military, after bomb-ing at least 1,800 sites in Gaza since July 8, is mounting a "boots on the ground" operation there - which, Israeli officials warn, could last "many months".  

Among this situation's many tragic aspects, one is particularly galling: After strategically failed interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and (by proxy) Syria, it is abundantly evident that Washington's quest to dominate the Middle East has not just failed. This quest has sapped US capacity to shape positive strategic outcomes in the region and, at least in relative terms, weakened the United States as a global player. Looking ahead, the experience of the Arab Awakening casts further doubt on the long-term plausibility of co-opting unrep-resentative Arab governments into a US-led regional order that, among other things, enshrines Israel's perpetual military ascendancy. Yet, US policy elites stick with their hegemonic script.

The alternatives to Washington's failed quest for hegemony are twofold: to shift US strategy towards cultivating a stable balance of power in the Middle East and to promote greater reliance on international law and institutions as contributors to regional and global sta-bility. Either or both would compel fundamental revision of US posture towards Israel. Cultivating a stable regional balance will take seri-ous engagement with all relevant actors, including those (Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran) that seek to constrain Israel through both hard and soft power. It will also require the United States to stop enabling Israel's unfettered freedom of military initiative, which contributes to re -gional instability. Similarly, promoting international legal frameworks as strategic stabilisers is meaningless unless Washington stops shielding Israel from the political consequences of thwarting them - whether by regularly violating international humanitarian law or by opting out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developing the region's only indigenous nuclear arsenal.  

Unfortunately for Gaza's people and US interests, the US' political class remains deeply resistant to these imperatives. Flynt Leverett is professor of international affairs and law at Penn State; Hillary Mann Leverett is senior professorial lecturer at American University's School of International Service. Their book,  Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran, is now in paperback.The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Israel Drops Cancer-inducing Bombs on Gazans - International Middle East Media Center 

    

 

   

Israel Drops Cancer-inducing Bombs on Gazans - Internati...A Norwegian doctor working in Gaza has strongly criticized Israel for using cancer-inducing bombs against Palestinian civilians. The IMEMC is a media collective. We...

View on   www.imemc.org

Preview by Yahoo

  2.  Israel firing experimental weapons at Gaza's civilians, say doctors 

    

 

   

Israel firing experimental weapons at Gaza's civilians, ...Physicians at al-Shifa hospital accuse Israel of using Gaza as a testing site for experimental weapons that cause horrifying injuries.

View on   electronicintifada.ne t

Preview by Yahoo

  

20.07.2014 Take action to stop IsraelIJAN and Jews Against Genocide call on Jews of Conscience to “lay siege” on Israeli consulates with protests, creative ac-tions, pickets and demonstrations and to protest events that attempt to justify Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian people. Please email reports of your actions to ijan@ijsn.net & jewsagainstgenocide1948@gmail.com

Like so many times before, the state of Israel is again unleashing its staggering capacity of lethal violence against the refugees and vic-tims of its historical crimes. Palestinians in the Gaza strip, most of them refugees, already living under siege in what is effectively an open prison, are now being bombed and massacred. From South Africa to Turkey, London to France, Toronto to New York City, all across the world, people have taken to the streets and massively demonstrated their anger and their solidarity with the Palestinian people. But political leaders, from Obama in the US to Putin in Russia, from Hollande in France to Sisi in Egypt, are almost unanim-ously backing Israel’s violence, an expression of their commitment to continue buying the very weapons that are “battle-tested” on

11

Palestinian civilians and in protection of their economic and political interests in the Middle East. They have once against extended to Israel the diplomatic shield that enables its ability to act with impunity and its exemption from international law.

The inhumanity of Israel’s murder and repression machine is continuously justified by the needs of so-called “Jewish safety” after the Nazi Holocaust. Since 2000, this machine has killed a Palestinian child every three days on average. If we, as descendants of multiple histories of genocide and persecution against Jewish peoples, accept that this is the “price of our safety,” we become complicit in what can only be described as a practice of human sacrifice. Less than two weeks ago, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager, was horrifically set on fire and burned alive by a band of Israeli vigilantes. The perpetrator, however marginal themselves, were acting on the continuous drip of racist incitement against Arabs by the political and moral leaders of Israel. As Israeli fighter jet pilots set out once again on missions that will incinerate Palestinian children with the highest and most sophisticated technology of death, we have an ob -ligation to make every effort, not just to say “not in our name”, but to help put an end to this.

Many of us have learned our family’s endurance of political violence, have heard from our parents and grandparents of being aban-doned to their fates. Let that history resonate within us and move us to act. At this moment, when Israeli lawmaker  Ayelet Shaked calls publicly to kill Palestinian mothers,and Israeli general Oren Shachor justifies killing whole families “to frighten them,” let us remember that genocide begins with the indifference of the world. The time to act is now. We call on our fellow Jewish people of conscience to bring support and solidarity to the Palestinian resistance and liberation struggle in earnest. We stand in our own histories of resistance to genocide – some of us the children and grandchildren of Warsaw and Vilna ghetto resistance fighters – when we stand with the Palestinian right to resist the latest brutal assault in 66 plus years of ethnic cleansing and colonization.

We call in particular for Jewish people, in whose name this violence occurs, to support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and to participate in BDS campaigns, which have proven to be among the most effective civic tools to put pressure on those who enable Israel’s repression of Palestinians. We call on Jewish people to support efforts to end the complicity of our govern-ments in Israel’s repression of Palestinians and our own governments’ attacks on Palestinian activists. We especially call for Jewish support of efforts to end US support for Israel, end Israel’s legal impunity, impose a military embargo against it, and to bring the perpet-rator of Israel’s crimes to justice. We share with you the following statement by Jews Against Genocide, a group of Jews in Israel who have taken action against the shameless exploitation of Jewish history and suffering to justifygenocidal action against the Palestinian people. We join their call for others to engage in similar actions of civil disobedience and to support and broadcast their action. Let us help build a world where everyone is safe because we take care of each other, not a world in which some are safe when others burn to death.IJAN and Jews Against Genocide call on Jews of Conscience to “lay siege” on Israeli consulates with protests, creative ac-tions, pickets and demonstrations and to protest events that attempt to justify Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian people.Please email reports of your actions to ijan@ijsn.net &jewsagainstgenocide1948@gmail.com

Jews Against Genocide Statement and ActionWe, Jews Against Genocide, came to Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial of the genocide committed against Jews, to honor the Palestinian children who are dying in a genocide committed by Jews.

We brought dolls to symbolise the children of Gaza, and tried to bring a glimpse of the horror that Gazan’s face, to Israel’s doorstep. We hope to show Israel, and the world, the absurd reality of using the memory of one genocide to justify another.

We invite compassionate people from across the globe to join the outcry by staging similar protests in front of Israeli embassies and consulates around the world.

Just as we honor the people who were murdered seven decades ago in Europe because they were Jews, we are here to honor the people who are being murdered at this very moment because they are the indigenous people of this land who are not Jews.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines Genocide as, “any of the following acts com-mitted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

The children of Gaza, who are being systematically murdered as we write this article, constitute 52% percent of the population under siege in the strip. The vast majority of these children are descendants of refugees from historical Palestine. In the current round of atro-cities committed by the Israel occupation army, so far dozens of children have been murdered in their homes, with Israel’s war-making leadership vowing “much higher costs” on the Palestinian side as the bombing and shelling continues.The war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza today are the latest stage of an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the in-digenous people of this land.

The Jewish State was founded on the Zionist principle of “maximum Jews on maximum land, and minimum Arabs on minimum land”, which was made reality through sixty-six years of continued assault against Palestinians, denying them the right to live freely and peacefully in their historical homeland.

The Israeli regime has turned the beautiful Gaza strip into a densely populated ghetto, with unsafe water, untreated sewage, and insuffi -cient resources and electricity. This ghetto has become a concentration camp, through repeated Israeli massacres in what the Gold-stone Report described as an effort to, “humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish[ing] its local economic capacity.” We express our support and solidarity for the Palestinian civil society’s call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, until it complies with the three basic demands of:1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Never Again for Anyone - End Israel's Genocide of Palestinians Jews Against Genocide (JAG)

IJAN and Jews Against Genocide call on Jews of Conscience to “lay siege” on Israeli consulates with protests, creative ac-tions, pickets and demonstrations and to protest events that attempt to justify Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian people.

12

Please email reports of your actions to ijan@ijsn.net & jewsagainstgenocide1948@gmail.comInternational Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Argentina :: Canada :: England :: Europe :: India :: Israel :: United Statesijan@ijsn.net :: www.ijsn.net© International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Tariq Abu Khdeir joins for exclusive interview 

    

 

   

Tariq Abu Khdeir joins for exclusive interviewPalestinian-American teen Tariq Abu Khdeir tells Chris Hayes about the moment his cousin disappeared in East Jerusalem before being burned alive in a revenge killin...

View on   www.msnbc.com

Preview by Yahoo

 

Calls for genocide enter Israeli mainstream | Jonathan Cook's Blog 

    

 

   

Calls for genocide enter Israeli mainstream | Jonathan C...As we watch the horrifying slaughter unfold in Gaza, bear in mind the Israeli psychosis that fuels and justifies it. Here are comments from three rightwing Israelis...

View on   www.jonathan- cook.net

Preview by Yahoo

  A Beginner's Guide to the Israeli Palestinian Conflict (Preview) 

 

(Preview)

  

 

  

A Beginner's Guide to the Israeli Palestinian Conflict(Preview)

View on   www.youtube.com (Preview)

Preview by

Yahoo

  

22.07.2014 Dr. Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian surgeon in GazaTERRIFYING TESTIMONY FROM Dr. Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian surgeon in GazaThe last night was extreme. The "ground invasion" of Gaza resulted in scores and carloads with maimed, torn apart, bleeding, shivering, dying - all sorts of injured Palestinians, all ages, all civilians, all innocent. The heroes in the ambulances and in all of Gaza's hospitals are working 12-24hrs shifts, grey from fatigue and inhuman workloads (without payment all in Shifa for the last 4 months), they care, triage, try to understand the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. HUMANS!

Now, once more treated like animals by "the most moral army in the world" (sic!). My respect for the wounded is endless, in their contained determination in the midst of pain, agony and shock; my admiration for the staff and volunteers is endless, my closeness to the Palestinian "sumud" gives me strength, although in glimpses I just want to scream, hold someone tight, cry, smell the skin and hair of the warm child, covered in blood, protect ourselves in an endless embrace - but we cannot afford that, nor can they.

Ashy grey faces - Oh NO! not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding, we still have lakes of blood on the floor in the ER, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out - oh - the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair,

13

clothes,cannulas - the leftovers from death - all taken away...to be prepared again, to be repeated all over. More then 100 cases came to Shifa last 24 hrs. enough for a large well trained hospital with everything, but here - almost nothing: electricity, water, disposables, drugs, OR-tables, instruments, monitors - all rusted and  as if taken from museums of yesterdays hospitals.But they do not complain, these heroes. They get on with it, like warriors, head on, enormous resolute.And as I write these words to you, alone, on a bed, my tears flows, the warm but useless tears of pain and grief, of anger and fear. This is not happening! An then, just now, the orchestra of the Israeli war-machine starts its gruesome symphony again, just now: salvos of artillery from the navy boats just down on the shores, the roaring F16, the sickening drones (Arabic 'Zennanis', the hummers), and the cluttering Apaches. So much made and paid in and by US.Mr. Obama - do you have a heart?

I invite you - spend one night - just one night - with us in Shifa. Disguised as a cleaner, maybe. I am convinced, 100%, it would change history. Nobody with a heart AND power could ever walk away from a night in Shifa without being determined to end the slaughter of the Palestinian people. But the heartless and merciless have done their calculations and planned another "dahyia" onslaught on Gaza. The rivers of blood will keep running the coming night. I can hear they have tuned their instruments of death. Please. Do what you can. This, THIS cannot continue.MadsGaza, Occupied Palestine

Mads Gilbert MD PhDProfessor and Clinical HeadClinic of Emergency MedicineUniversity Hospital of North NorwayN-9038 Tromsø, NorwayMobile: +4790878740

23.07.2014 For the Reviewhttp://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_23_07_2014.pdf

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/12923-palestine-the-occupation-and-the-resistance-for-beginners

23.07.2014 Israel’s plan to evict people from GazaThe final solution for the Gazans may be well underway: while no "Western international" institution is paying that much attention...http://nationalreport.net/israel-begins-construction-concentration-camps-outside-gaza/#sthash.ojbsFdEC.4wqFydVx.gbpl

23.07.2014 Take action: Add your name to the call for a military embargo on Israel #StopArmingIsrael

Take action: Add your name to the call for a military embargo on Israel

Israel has once again unleashed the full force of its military against the captive Palestinian population, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip, in an inhumane and illegal act of military aggression. Israel’s ability to launch such devastating attacks with impunity largely stems from the vast international military cooperation and arms trade that it maintains with complicit governments across the world.

Nobel laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Peres Esquivel, Jody Williams, Mairead Maguire, Rigoberta Menchú and Betty Williams have published an open letter calling on the UN and governments around the world to impose a military embargo on Israel. Take action: Add your name to the call for a military embargo on Israel now!

29.07.2014 Joint Declaration by International Law Experts on Israel’s Gaza OffensiveRichard Falk posted: "(Prefatory Note: Posted here is a Joint Declaration of international law experts from around the world who are listed below as endorsers. I am among the endorsers, and the text was initially drafted by Chantal Meloni who has served as rapporteur. We welco"Respond to this post by replying above this line

New post on Global Justice in the 21st Century

Joint Declaration by International Law Experts on Israel’s Gaza Offensiveby Richard Falk(Prefatory Note: Posted here is a Joint Declaration of international law experts from around the world who are listed below as endorsers. I am among the endorsers, and the text was initially drafted by Chantal Meloni who has served as rapporteur. We welcome additional signatures that can be sent to me in the comments section, with affiliation noted for identification, and names will be periodically added to the text. I view this as an important expression of professional judgment and individual

14

conscience relating to Israeli behavior in Gaza commencing on 8 July that has already taken so many innocent lives and caused such widespread devastation. Please join us and spread the word!)  The International Community Must End Israel’s Collective Punishment of the Civilian Population in the Gaza StripAs international and criminal law scholars, human rights defenders, legal experts and individuals who firmly believe in the rule of law and in the necessity for its respect in times of peace and more so in times of war, we feel the intellectual and moral duty to denounce the grave violations, mystification and disrespect of the most basic principles of the laws of armed conflict and of the fundamental hu-man rights of the entire Palestinian population committed during the ongoing Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip. We also condemn the launch of rockets from the Gaza Strip, as every indiscriminate attack against civilians, regardless of the identity of the perpetrators, is not only illegal under international law but also morally intolerable. However, as also implicitly noted by the UN Human Rights Council in its Resolution of the 23th July 2014, the two parties to the conflict cannot be considered equal, and their actions – once again – appear to be of incomparable magnitude.

Once again it is the unarmed civilian population, the ‘protected persons’ under International humanitarian law (IHL), who is in the eye of the storm. Gaza’s civilian population has been victimized in the name of a falsely construed right to self-defence, in the midst of an es -calation of violence provoked in the face of the entire international community. The so-called Operation Protective Edge erupted during an ongoing armed conflict, in the context of a prolonged belligerent occupation that commenced in 1967. In the course of this ongoing conflict thousands of Palestinians have been killed and injured in the Gaza Strip during recurrent and ostensible ‘ceasefire’ periods since 2005, after Israel’s unilateral ‘disengagement’ from the Gaza Strip. The deaths caused by Israel’s provocative actions in the Gaza Strip prior to the latest escalation of hostilities must not be ignored as well.

According to UN sources, over the last two weeks, nearly 800 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and more than 4,000 injured, of whom the vast majority were civilians. Several independent sources indicate that only 15 per cent of the casualties were combatants. Entire families have been murdered. Hospitals, clinics, as well as a rehabilitation centre for disabled persons have been targeted and severely damaged. During one single day, on Sunday 20 th July, more than 100 Palestinian civilians were killed in Shuga’iya, a residen-tial neighbourhood of Gaza City. This was one of the bloodiest and most aggressive operations ever conducted by Israel in the Gaza Strip, a form of urban violence constituting a total disrespect of civilian innocence. Sadly, this was followed only a couple of days later by an equally destructive attack on Khuza’a, East of Khan Younis.

Additionally, the offensive has already caused widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure: according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 3,300 houses have been targeted resulting in their destruction or severe damage.As denounced by the UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on the Gaza conflict in the aftermath of Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008-2009: “While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: The people of Gaza as a whole” (A/HRC/12/48, par. 1680). The same can be said for the current Israeli offensive.

The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is under direct attack and many are forced to leave their homes. What was already a refugee and humanitarian crisis has worsened with a new wave of mass displacement of civilians: the number of IDPs has reached nearly 150,000, many of whom have obtained shelter in overcrowded UNRWA schools, which unfortunately are no safe areas as demon-strated by the repeated attacks on the UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun. Everyone in Gaza is traumatized and living in a state of constant terror. This result is intentional, as Israel is again relying on the ‘Dahiya doctrine’, which deliberately has recourse to disproportionate force to inflict suffering on the civilian population in order to achieve political (to exert pressure on the Hamas Government) rather than military goals.

In so doing, Israel is repeatedly and flagrantly violating the law of armed conflict, which establishes that combatants and military object -ives may be targeted, i.e. ‘those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advant -age.’ Most of the recent heavy bombings in Gaza lack an acceptable military justification and, instead, appear to be designed to terror -ize the civilian population. As the ICRC clarifies, deliberately causing terror is unequivocally illegal under customary international law. In its Advisory Opinion in the Nuclear Weapons case, the ICJ stated that the principle of distinction, which requires belligerent States to distinguish between civilian and combatants, is one of the “cardinal principles” of international humanitarian law and one of the “intrans -gressible principles of international customary law”. The principle of distinction is codified in Articles 48, 51(2) and 52(2) of the Addi-tional Protocol I of 1977 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to which no reservations have been made. According to Additional Protocol I, “attacks” refer to “acts of violence against the adversary, whether in offence or in defence” (Article 49). Under both customary interna-tional law and treaty law, the prohibition on directing attacks against the civilian population or civilian objects is absolute. There is no discretion available to invoke military necessity as a justification. Contrary to Israel’s claims, mistakes resulting in civilian casualties cannot be justified: in case of doubt as to the nature of the target, the law clearly establishes that an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes (such as schools, houses, places of worship and medical facilities), are presumed as not being used for military purposes. During these past weeks, UN officials and representatives have repeatedly called on Israel to strictly abide by the principle of precaution in carrying out attacks in the Gaza Strip, where risks are greatly aggravated by the very high population density, and maximum restraint must be exercised to avoid civilian casualties. HRW has noted that these rules exist to minimize mistakes “when such mistakes are repeated, it raises the concern of whether the rules are be -ing disregarded.” Moreover, even when targeting clear military objectives, Israel consistently violates the principle of proportionality: this is particularly evident with regard to the hundreds of civilian houses destroyed by the Israeli army during the current military operation in Gaza. With the declared intention to target a single member of Hamas, Israeli forces have bombed and destroyed houses although occupied as residencies by dozens of civilians, including women, children, and entire families. It is inherently illegal under customary international law to intentionally target civilian objects, and the violation of such a fundamental tenet of law can amount to a war crime. Issuing a ‘warning’ – such as Israel’s so-called roof knocking technique, or sending an SMS five minutes before the attack - does not mitigate this: it remains illegal to wilfully attack a civilian home without a demonstration of military necessity as it amounts to a violation of the principle of proportionality. Moreover, not only are these ‘warnings’ generally ineffective, and can even result in further fatalities, they appear to be a pre-fabricated excuse by Israel to portray people who remain in their homes as ‘human shields’. The indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the targeting of objectives providing no effective military advantage, and the intentional

15

targeting of civilians and civilian houses have been persistent features of Israel’s long-standing policy of punishing the entire population of the Gaza Strip, which, for over seven years, has been virtually imprisoned by Israeli imposed closure. Such a regime amounts to a form of collective punishment, which violates the unconditional prohibition set forth in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and has been internationally condemned for its illegality. However, far from being effectively opposed international actors, Israel’s illegal policy of absolute closure imposed on the Gaza Strip has relentlessly continued, under the complicit gaze of the international com-munity of States. ***As affirmed in 2009 by the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict: “Justice and respect for the rule of law are the indispensable basis for peace. The prolonged situation has created a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action” (A/HRC/12/48, para. 1958) Indeed: “long-standing impunity has been a key factor in the perpetuation of violence in the region and in the reoccurrence of violations, as well as in the erosion of confidence among Palestinians and many Israelis concerning prospects for justice and a peaceful solution to the conflict”. (A/HRC/12/48, para. 1964)Therefore, 

We welcome the Resolution adopted on 23 July 2014 by the UN Human Rights Council, in which an independent, interna-tional commission of inquiry was established to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

 We call upon the United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union, individual States, in particular the United States of

America, and the international community in its entirety and with its collective power to take action in the spirit of the utmost urgency to put an end to the escalation of violence against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and to activate procedures to hold accountable all those responsible for violations of international law, including political leaders and military commanders. In particular:

All regional and international actors should support the immediate conclusion of a durable, comprehensive, and mutually agreed ceasefire agreement, which must secure the rapid facilitation and access of humanitarian aid and the opening of borders to and from Gaza;

All High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must be urgently and unconditionally called upon to comply with their fundamental obligations, binding at all times, and to act under common Article 1, to take all measures necessary for the suppression of grave breaches, as clearly imposed by Article 146 and Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention; these rules are applicable by all in-terested parties as well;

Moreover, we denounce the shameful political pressures exerted by several UN Member States and the UN on President Mahmoud Abbas, to discourage recourse to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and we urge the Governmental leaders of Palestine to invoke the jurisdiction of the ICC, by ratifying the ICC treaty and in the interim by resubmitting the declaration under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, in order to investigate and prosecute the serious international crimes committed on the Palestinian territory by all parties to the conflict; and

The UN Security Council must finally exercise its responsibilities in relation to peace and justice by referring the situation in Palestine to the Prosecutor of the ICC.

    ***   Please note that institutional affiliations are for identification purposes only.    

John Dugard, Former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian TerritoryRichard Falk, Former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian TerritoryAlain Pellet, Professor of Public International Law, University Paris Ouest, former Member of the United Nations International Law Commission, FranceGeorges Abi-Saab, Emeritus Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Former Judge on the ICTYVera Gowlland-Debbas, Emeritus Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, SwitzerlandChantal Meloni, Adjunct Professor of International Criminal Law, University of Milan, Italy (Rapporteur, Joint Declaration)

10. Roy Abbott, Consultant in International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law, AustraliaLama Abu-Odeh, Law Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, USASusan M. Akram, Clinical Professor and supervising attorney, International Human rights Program, Boston University School of Law, USATaris Ahmad, Solicitor at Jones Day, London, UKMaria Anagnostaki, PhD candidate, Law School University of Athens, GreeceAntony Anghie, Professor of Law, University of Utah, USANizar Ayoub, Director, Al-Marsad, Arab Human Rights Centre in Golan HeightsValentina Azarov, Lecturer in Human Rights and International Law, Al Quds Bard College, PalestineAmmar Bajboj, Lecturer in Law, University of Damascus, SyriaSamia Bano, SOAS School of Law, London, UKAsli Ü Bali, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, USAJakub Michał Baranowski, Phd Candidate, Universita' degli Studi Roma Tre, ItalyFrank Barat, Russell Tribunal on PalestineEmma Bell, Coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, Université de Savoie, FranceBarbara Giovanna Bello, Post-doc Fellow, University of Milan, ItalyBrenna Bhandar, Senior lecturer in Law, SOAS School of Law, London, UKGeorge Bisharat, Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of Law, USABarbara Blok, LLM Candidate, University of Essex, UKJohn Braithwaite, Professor of Criminology, Australian National University, AustraliaMichelle Burgis-Kasthala, lecturer in international law, University of Edinburgh, UKEddie Bruce-Jones, Lecturer in Law, University of London, Birkbeck College, UKSandy Camlann, LLM Candidate, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, FranceGrazia Careccia, Human Rights Advocate, London, UKBaris Cayli, Impact Fellow, University of Stirling, UK

16

Antonio Cavaliere, Professor of Criminal Law, University Federico II, Naples, ItalyKathleen Cavanaugh, Senior Lecturer, Irish Center for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, IrelandElizabeth Chadwick, Reader in International Law, Nottingham, UKDonna R. Cline, Attorney at Law, USAKaren Corteen, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Chester, UKAndrew Dahdal, Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University, Sydney, AustraliaTeresa Dagenhardt, Reader in Criminology, Queen's University Belfast, Northern IrelandLuigi Daniele, PhD candidate in Law, ItalyAlessandro De Giorgi, Professor of Justice Studies, San Josè State University, USAPaul de Waart, Professor Emeritus of International Law, VU University, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsGabriele della Morte, Senior Lecturer in International Law, University Cattolica, Milan, ItalyMax du Plessis, Professor of Law, University of Kwazulu-Natal, and Barrister, South Africa and London, UKNoura Erakat, Georgetown University, USAMohammad Fadel, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, CanadaMireille Fanon-Mendés France, Independent Expert UNO, Frantz Fanon Foundation, FranceMichelle Farrell, lecturer in law, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool, UKDaniel Feierstein, Professor and President International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), ArgentinaEleonor Fernández Muñoz, Costa RicaTenny Fernando, Attorney at Law, Sri LankaAmelia Festa, LLM Candidate, University of Naples Federico II, ItalyKatherine Franke, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, USAJacques Gaillot, Bishop in partibus of PateniaKatherine Gallagher, Vice President FIDH, senior attorney, Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), New York, USAAvo Sevag Garabet, LLM, University of Groningen, the NetherlandsJose Garcia Anon, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Valencia, SpainIrene Gasparini, PhD candidate, Universitá Cattolica, Milan, ItalyStratos Georgoulas, Assistant Professor, University of the Aegean, GreeceHaluk Gerger, Professor, TurkeyHedda Giersten, Professor, Universitet I Oslo, NorwayJavier Giraldo, Director Banco de Datos CINEP, ColombiaCarmen G. Gonzales, Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law, USAPenny Green, Professor of Law and Criminology, Director of the State Crime Initiative, King's College London, UKKaty Hayward, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Queen's University Belfast, Northern IrelandAndrew Henley, PhD candidate, Keele University, UKChristiane Hessel, Paris, FrancePaddy Hillyard, Professor Emeritus, Queen's University Belfast, Northern IrelandAta Hindi, Institute of Law, Birzeit University, PalestineFrancois Houtart, Professor, National Institute of Higher Studies, Quito, EcuadorDeena R. Hurwitz, Professor, General Faculty, Director International Human Rights Law Clinic, University of Virginia School of Law, USAPerfecto Andrés Ibánes, Magistrado Tribunal Supremo de Espagna, SpainFranco Ippolito, President of the Permanent People’s Tribunal, ItalyRuth Jamieson, Honorary Lecturer, School of Law, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern IrelandHelen Jarvis, former member Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), member of IAGS, CambodiaIoannis Kalpouzos, Lecturer in Law, City Law School, London, UKVictor Kattan, post-doctoral fellow, Law Faculty, National University of SingaporeMichael Kearney, PhD, Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex, UKYousuf Syed Khan, USATarik Kochi, Senior Lecturer in Law, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, UKAnna Koppel, MSt Candidate in International Human Rights Law, University of Oxford, UKKarim Lahidji, President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and lawyerGiulia Lanza, PhD Candidate, Università degli Studi di Verona, ItalyDaniel Machover, solicitor, Hickman & Rose, London, UKTayyab Mahmud, Professor of Law, Director of the Centre for Global Justice, Seattle University School of Law, USAMaria C. LaHood, Senior Staff Attorney, CCR, New York, USALouise Mallinder, Reader in Human Rights and International Law, University of Ulster, UKTriestino Mariniello, Lecturer in International Criminal Law, Edge Hill University, UKMazen Masri, Lecturer in Law, The City Law School, City University, London, UKSiobhan McAlister, School of Sociology, Queen's University Belfast, Northern IrelandLiam McCann, Principal Lecturer in Criminology, University of Lincoln, UKJude McCulloch, Professor of Criminology, Monash University, Melbourne, AustraliaYvonne McDermott Rees, Lecturer in Law, University of Bangor, UKCahal McLaughlin, Professor, School of Creative Arts, Queen's University Belfast, Northern IrelandAraks Melkonyan, LLM Candidate, University of Essex, UKAntonio Menna, PhD Candidate, Second University of Naples, Caserta, ItalyNaomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, USAMichele Miravalle, PhD candidate, University of Torino, ItalySergio Moccia, Professor of Criminal Law, University Federico II, Naples, ItalyKerry Moore, Lecturer, Cardiff University

100. Giuseppe Mosconi, Professor of Sociology, University of Padova, Italy101. Usha Natarajan, Assistant Professor, Department of Law & Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies, The American 102. University in Cairo, Egypt103. Miren Odriozola Gurrutxaga, PhD Candidate, University of the Basque Country, Donostia - San Sebastián, Spain104. Georgios Papanicolaou, Reader in Criminology, Teesside University, UK105. Marco Pertile, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Trento, Italy106. Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law and Theory, LLM, The Westminster Law and Theory Centre, UK107. Antoni Pigrau Solé, Universitat Rovira i Virgili de Tarragona, Spain108. Joseph Powderly, Assistant Professor of Public International Law, Leiden University, The Netherlands109. Tony Platt, Visiting Professor of Justice Studies, San Jose State University, USA

17

110. Scott Poynting, Professor in Criminology, University of Auckland, New Zeeland111. Chris Powell, Professor of Criminology, University S.Maine, USA112. Bill Quigley, Professor, Loyola University, New Orleans College of Law, USA113. John Quigley, Professor of Law, Ohio State University114. Zouhair Racheha, PhD Candidate, University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France115. Laura Raymond, International Human Rights Advocacy Program Manager, CCR, New York, USA116. Véronique Rocheleau-Brosseau, LLM candidate, Laval University, Canada117. David Rodríguez Goyes, Lecturer, Antonio Nariño and Santo Tomás Universities, Colombia118. Alessandro Rosanò, PhD Candidate, Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy119. Jamil Salem, Director Institute of Law, Birzeit University, Palestine120. Mahmood Salimi, LLM Candidate, Moofid University, Iran121. Nahed Samour, doctoral fellow, Humboldt University, Faculty of Law, Berlin, Germany122. Iain GM Scobbie, Professor of Public International Law, University of Manchester, UK123. David Scott, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Liverpool John Moores University, UK124. Phil Scraton, Professor of Criminology, Belfast, Ireland125. Rachel Seoighe, PhD Candidate, Legal Consultant, King's College London, UK126. Tanya Serisier, School of Sociology, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland127. Mohammad Shahabuddin, PdD, Visiting researcher, Graduate School of International Social Sciences, Yokohama National 128. University, Japan129. Dean Spade, Seattle University School of Law, USA130. Per Stadig, lawyer, Sweden131. Chantal Thomas, Professor of Law, Cornell University, USA132. Kendall Thomas, Nash Professor of Law, Columbia University, USA133. Gianni Tognoni, Lelio Basso Foundation, Rome, Italy134. Steve Tombs, Professor of Criminology, The Open University, UK135. Paul Troop, Barrister, Garden Court Chambers, UK136. Valeria Verdolini, Reader in Sociology, University of Milan, Italy137. Francesca Vianello, University of Padova, Italy138. Aimilia Voulvouli, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Fatih University, Turkey139. Namita Wahi, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, India140. Sharon Weill, PhD, Science Po, Paris/ CERAH, Geneva, Switzerland141. Peter Weiss, Vice President of Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), New York, USA142. David Whyte, Reader in Sociology, University of Liverpool, UK143. Jeanne M. Woods, Henry F. Bonura, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola University College of Law, New Orleans, USA144. William Thomas Worster, Lecturer, International Law, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands145. Maung Zarni, Judge, PPT on Sri Lanka and Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science

146.147. http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/joint-declaration-by-international-law-experts-on-israels-gaza-offensive/  148. Richard Falk | July 28, 2014 at 4:10 am | Categories: Commentary, Gaza, International & Global Law, international

lawyers, Israel, Joint Declaration on International Law | URL: http://wp.me/p19Wt7-qH149.

Summary – Israeli long-term strategy

18.07.2014 Israel mows the lawn - Mouin RabbaniIn 2004, a year before Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Dov Weissglass, éminence grise to Ariel Sharon, explained the initiative’s purpose to an interviewer from Haaretz:

The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process … And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with … a [US] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress … The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.

In 2006 Weissglass was just as frank about Israel’s policy towards Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.’ He was not speaking metaphorically: it later emerged that the Israeli defence ministry had conducted detailed research on how to translate his vision into reality, and arrived at a figure of 2279 calories per person per day – some 8 per cent less than a previous calculation because the research team had originally neglected to account for ‘culture and experi -ence’ in determining nutritional ‘red lines’.

This wasn’t an academic exercise. After pursuing a policy of enforced integration between 1967 and the late 1980s, Israeli policy shifted towards separation during the 1987-93 uprising, and then fragmentation during the Oslo years. For the Gaza Strip, an area about the size of Greater Glasgow, these changes entailed a gradual severance from the outside world, with the movement of persons and goods into and out of the territory increasingly restricted. The screws were turned tighter during the 2000-5 uprising, and in 2007 the Gaza Strip was effectively sealed shut. All exports were banned, and just 131 truckloads of foodstuffs and other essential products were per -mitted entry per day. Israel also strictly controlled which products could and could not be imported. Prohibited items have included A4 paper, chocolate, coriander, crayons, jam, pasta, shampoo, shoes and wheelchairs.

In 2010, commenting on this premeditated and systematic degradation of the humanity of an entire population, David Cameron charac-terised the Gaza Strip as a ‘prison camp’ and – for once – did not neuter this assessment by subordinating his criticism to proclamations about the jailers’ right of self-defence against their inmates. It’s often claimed that Israel’s reason for escalating this punitive regime to a new level of severity was to cause the overthrow of Hamas after its 2007 seizure of power in Gaza. The claim doesn’t stand up to seri-ous scrutiny. Removing Hamas from power has indeed been a policy objective for the US and the EU ever since the Islamist movement won the 2006 parliamentary elections, and their combined efforts to undermine it helped set the stage for the ensuing Palestinian schism.

Israel’s agenda has been different. Had it been determined to end Hamas rule it could easily have done so, particularly while Hamas was still consolidating its control over Gaza in 2007, and without necessarily reversing the 2005 disengagement. Instead, it saw the

18

schism between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as an opportunity to further its policies of separation and fragmentation, and to deflect growing international pressure for an end to an occupation that has lasted nearly half a century. Its massive assaults on the Gaza Strip in 2008-9 (Operation Cast Lead) and 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defence), as well as countless individual attacks between and since, were in this context exercises in what the Israeli military called ‘mowing the lawn’: weakening Hamas and enhancing Israel’s powers of deterrence. As the 2009 Goldstone Report and other investigations have demonstrated, often in excruciating detail, the grass consists overwhelmingly of non-combatant Palestinian civilians, indiscriminately targeted by Israel’s precision weaponry.Israel’s current assault on the Gaza Strip, which began on 6 July with ground forces moving in some ten days later, is intended to serve the same agenda. The conditions for it were set in late April. Negotiations that had been going on for nine months stalled after the Is -raeli government reneged on its commitment to release a number of Palestinian prisoners incarcerated since before the 1993 Oslo Ac-cords, and ended when Netanyahu announced he would no longer deal with Mahmoud Abbas because Abbas had just signed a further reconciliation agreement with Hamas. On this occasion, in a sharp departure from precedent, US Secretary of State John Kerry expli -citly blamed Israel for the breakdown in talks. His special envoy, Martin Indyk, a career Israel lobbyist, blamed Israel’s insatiable appet-ite for Palestinian land and continued expansion of the settlements, and handed in his resignation.

The challenge this poses to Netanyahu is clear. If even the Americans are telling the world that Israel is not interested in peace, those more directly invested in a two-state settlement – such as the EU, which has started to exclude any Israeli entities active in occupied Palestinian territory from participation in bilateral agreements – may start considering other ways to nudge Israel towards the 1967 boundaries. Negotiations about nothing are designed to provide political cover for Israel’s policy of creeping annexation. Now that they’ve collapsed yet again, the strategic asset that is American public opinion may start asking why Congress is more loyal to Netan-yahu than the Israeli Knesset is. Kerry had been serious about reaching a comprehensive agreement: he adopted almost all of Israel’s core positions and successfully rammed most of them down Abbas’s throat – yet Netanyahu still balked. Refusing even to specify future Israeli-Palestinian borders during nine months of negotiations, Israeli leaders instead levelled a series of accusations at Washington so outlandish – encouraging extremism, giving succour to terrorists – that one could be forgiven for concluding Congress was funding Hamas, rather than Israel, to the tune of $3 billion a year.

Israel received another blow on 2 June, when a new Palestinian Authority government was inaugurated, following the April reconcili -ation agreement between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas endorsed the new government even though it was given no cabinet posts and the government’s composition and political programme were virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor’s. With barely a protest from the Islamists, Abbas repeatedly and loudly proclaimed that the government accepted the Middle East Quartet’s demands: that it recog-nise Israel, renounce violence and adhere to past agreements. He also announced that Palestinian security forces in the West Bank would continue their security collaboration with Israel. When both Washington and Brussels signalled their intention to co-operate with the new government, alarm bells went off in Israel. Its usual assertions that Palestinian negotiators spoke only for themselves – and would therefore prove incapable of implementing any agreement – had begun to look shaky: the Palestinian leadership could now claim not only to represent both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but also to have co-opted Hamas into supporting a negotiated two-state settlement, if not the Oslo framework as a whole. There might soon be increased international pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously with Abbas. The formaldehyde was beginning to evaporate.

At this point Netanyahu seized on the 12 June disappearance of three young Israelis in the West Bank like a drowning man thrown a lifebelt. Despite clear evidence presented to him by the Israeli security forces that the three teenagers were already dead, and no evid -ence to date that Hamas was involved, he held Hamas directly responsible and launched a ‘hostage rescue operation’ throughout the West Bank. It was really an organised military rampage. It included the killing of at least six Palestinians, none of whom was accused of involvement in the disappearances; mass arrests, including the arrest of Hamas parliamentarians and the re-arrest of detainees re-leased in 2011; the demolition of a number of houses and the looting of others; and a variety of other depredations of the kind Israel’s finest have honed to perfection during decades of occupation. Netanyahu whipped up a demagogic firestorm against the Palestinians, and the subsequent abduction and burning alive of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem cannot and should not be separated from this incitement.

For his part, Abbas failed to stand up to the Israeli operation and ordered his security forces to continue to co-operate with Israel against Hamas. The reconciliation agreement was being put under serious pressure. On the night of 6 July, an Israeli air raid resulted in the death of seven Hamas militants. Hamas responded with sustained missile attacks deep into Israel, escalating further as Israel launched its full-scale onslaught. For the past year Hamas had been in a precarious position: it had lost its headquarters in Damascus and preferential status in Iran as a result of its refusal to give open support to the Syrian regime, and faced unprecedented levels of hostility from Egypt’s new military ruler. The underground tunnel economy between Egypt and Gaza had been systematically dis-mantled by the Egyptians, and for the first time since seizing control of the territory in 2007 it was no longer able regularly to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of government employees. The reconciliation agreement with Fatah was its way of bartering its political programme in exchange for its own survival: in return for conceding the political arena to Abbas, Hamas would retain control of the Gaza Strip indefinitely, have its public sector placed on the PA payroll and see the border crossing with Egypt reopened.

In the event, the quid pro quo Hamas hoped for was not permitted to materialise and, according to Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group, ‘life in Gaza became worse’: ‘The current escalation,’ he wrote, ‘is a direct result of the choice by Israel and the West to obstruct the implementation of the April 2014 Palestinian reconciliation agreement.’ To put it differently, those within Hamas who saw the crisis as an opportunity to put an end toWeissglass’s regime gained the upper hand. So far, they appear to have the majority of the population with them, because they seem to prefer death by F-16 to death by formaldehyde.

Among all the sanctimonious howls – this time including a lily-livered Cameron’s – about Israel’s right to self-defence, and in the face of the categorical rejection of the Palestinians’ equivalent right, the fundamental point that this is an illegitimate attack is often lost. As the lawyer Noura Erakat has cogently argued, ‘Israel does not have the right to self-defence in international law against occupied Palestinian territory.’ Its argument that it no longer occupies the Gaza Strip has been dismissed by Lisa Hajjar of the University of Cali -fornia as a self-generated ‘licence to kill’.

Once again, Israel is ‘mowing the lawn’ with impunity, targeting civilian non-combatants and civilian infrastructure. Given its continual in -sistence that it uses the most precise weapons available and chooses its targets carefully, it is impossible to conclude that the targeting is not deliberate. According to UN agencies, more than three-quarters of the more than 260 Palestinians killed so far have been civil -ians, and more than a quarter of them children. Most were targeted in their own homes: they cannot be described as collateral damage under any definition of the term. Of course Palestinian militants have also been recklessly targeting Israeli population centres, though their attacks have resulted in just a single death: a man handing out sweets to the soldiers pulverising the Gaza Strip. Human Rights Watch has criticised both sides but, true to form, has accused only the Palestinians of war crimes.Mouin Rabbani is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut and co-editor of Jadaliyya18 July London Review of Books Vol 36 No15 31 July 2014

19

20