issue no 130

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Issue No : 130 21th APRIL 2015

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


Palestinian Cultural Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

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Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

Read in This Issue

Lieberman conditions ‹eliminating Hamas› to join govt

Malaysia & Palestinian cause

Israeli Insider

Read in This Issue

Who wins if Washington loses in the Middle East?

Activities in Malaysia to commemorate Palestinian prisoner’s day

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Palestinian wedding in jail

Yarmouk shows up the treatment of Palestinians across the Arab world

Israeli courts convict hundreds of Palestinian children

UN asks Israel to unlock Palestine tax funds

P 17

P 9

P 12

P 5 P 25

Articles & analyses P 23

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FEATURED STORY P 4

‹Empty words›: Donors fail to deliver pledged Gaza aid

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CONTENTS


Articles & Analyses

REPORTS

Isreal Insider

News of Palestine

FEATURED STORY‹Empty words›: Donors fail to deliver pledged Gaza aid 4

Christian graveyard vandalized in Israel 6Palestinian wedding in jail 7Israel razes Palestinians houses near Ramla 8UN asks Israel to unlock Palestine tax funds 9South African companies boycott G4S over links to Israeli prisons 10Youngest Palestinian prisoner describes devastating detention experience 11Israeli courts convict hundreds of Palestinian children 12Israeli army detains 32 Palestinians in W. Bank 14

Lieberman conditions ‹eliminating Hamas› to join govt 1513th Aqsa Child festival as colourfully as butterfly 16Yarmouk shows up the treatment of Palestinians across the Arab world 17‹Jerusalem needs UNESCO›s intervention› 18Palestinian prisoners Facts & Numbers “Info graphic” 19

Remembering the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails 21

Who wins if Washington loses in the Middle East? 23

Activities in Malaysia to commemorate Palestinian prisoner’s day 25

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Featured Story

‹Empty words›: Donors fail to deliver pledged Gaza aid

Countries have given just 26.8 percent of $3.5bn promised for rebuilding Gaza after the 2014 war, report finds.

Just a quarter of the $3.5bn in aid pledged to rebuild Gaza in the wake of last summer’s devastating war has been de-livered, according to a new re-port.

The report from the Associa-tion of International Develop-ment Agencies, released on Monday, found that only 26.8 percent ($945m) of the money pledged by donors at the Cairo

conference six months ago has been released, and recon-struction and recovery have barely started in the besieged coastal enclave.

“The promising speeches at the donor conference have turned into empty words,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam, which was among the report’s signatories.

“There has been little rebuilding, no permanent ceasefire agreement and no plan to end the blockade. The interna-tional community is walking with eyes wide open into the next avoidable conflict, by upholding the status quo they them-selves said must change.”

Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza that spanned nearly two months, resulted in the deaths of 2,132 Palestinians and 71 Israelis, according to data from aid agencies.

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More than 10,000 homes were de-stroyed in the war, and thousands more were severely damaged. An es-timated 17,500 families remain home-less.

After Israel and armed Palestinian groups agreed on a ceasefire, interna-tional donors met in Cairo in October 2014, where more than $5bn in aid was pledged. Of this, $3.5bn was ear-marked for Gaza, while the rest was intended to provide support for the Palestinian government in general, in-cluding programmes in the West Bank.

The report notes that while some dam-aged buildings in Gaza have been re-paired, almost no large-scale recon-struction projects have started, and no permanent housing has been rebuilt.

Some international donors have been hesitant to disburse their reconstruc-tion pledges due to the tense relation-ship between Hamas and the Palestin-ian Authority, who have bickered over control of Gaza’s border crossings. The plethora of other crises in the re-gion, which also require donor atten-tion, has further stalled the delivery of aid, the report noted.

“The paradox is that the lack of recon-struction is exacerbating the poten-tial for conflict,” the report stated. “By refraining from releasing funds due to fear of political instability in Gaza, donors are entrenching divides that heighten instability.”

The report contains a number of rec-ommendations, including for all parties to immediately resume negotiations for a long-term ceasefire, for donors to make good on their Cairo conference pledges, and for Israel to lift its ongo-

ing blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Fikr Shalltoot - the Gaza director of Medical Aid for Palestinians, which was among the 46 signatories to the report - noted that the situa-tion on the ground in Gaza has become dire.

“The people who lost their houses are los-ing their privacy, their dignity and their pa-tience... The fear of the future has become a dominant feeling for the majority of people in Gaza,” she told Al Jazeera.

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Mouin Rabbani, a Middle East analyst who specialises in the Israel-Palestine conflict, said that absent international aid, the Gaza Strip will remain unable to provide for the ba-sic needs of its residents.

“Israel, the West, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority have transformed the Gaza Strip into an isolated, blockaded and entirely aid-dependent territory,” Rabbani told Al Jazeera, noting the ongoing siege of Gaza is of graver concern than the failure of donors to deliver promised aid.

“The Gaza Strip is in urgent need of both hu-manitarian and reconstruction assistance, but it is important to recall that this remains a fundamentally political rather than develop-mental challenge,” he said.

“As such, the most urgent Palestinian priority has been, and remains, national reconcilia-tion and the reconstruction of a coherent, dy-namic, credible and effective national move-ment.”

4 April 2015, Reuters

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Christian graveyard vandalized in Israel

The police did not say who was behind the attack but in recent years there have been a spate of hate crimes targeting Christian churches and cemeteries, according to timeslive news.

A Catholic Church official in Israel says a Christian cemetery has been desecrated, with graves damaged and crosses smashed, Some people have smashed gravestones at a Maronite Christian cemetery in a village near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, Israeli police said on Wednesday.Police opened an investigation after receiving a report about damage to a number of graves at the Christian cemetery in Kufr Birim, spokeswoman Luba Samri said, indicating that the tomb-stones were “broken and displaced.”There are some 11,400 Maronite Catholics living in Israel.The police did not say who was behind the attack, but recent years have shown a spate of hate crimes targeting Christian churches and cemeteries, with the perpetrators believed to be Jewish extremists.

World Bulletin

News of Palestine

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Palestinian wedding in jailGazan Reem prepares to marry her fiance who was slapped with three life sentences and an addi-tional 30 years of imprisonment.

Reem Abu Wahdan, a Palestin-ian woman, will wear her white wedding dress on July 27 – even though her husband-to-be will not be there to share the joy of the mo-ment.Reem, 18, will visit her mother-in-law in the occupied West Bank on that day to marry a man who is be-hind bars inside an Israeli jail.While the husband-to-be will not be there – on that day or for many more days to come – but Reem never-theless feels extremely proud.“This is the least I can do for a man who sacrificed his entire life behind bars for the Palestinian cause,” Reem told The Anadolu Agency.The last time Reem saw her hus-band-to-be, Mahmoud, in person, was in 2002, when she was only five years old.A short time later, he was locked up by Israel for allegedly planning to carry out attacks on Israeli targets.He was slapped with three life sen-tences and an additional 30 years of imprisonment.-Ray of hope-When Mahmoud’s mother ap-proached Reem to make a mar-riage proposal on behalf of her jailed son, the 18-year-old Gaza Strip resident was overjoyed.For her, being engaged to a sym-bol of the Palestinian resistance against Israel’s decades-long oc-

cupation is a source of pride.“I just want to give him the message that imprisonment will not last forever,” Reem said. “Hope and determina-tion can do anything.”On July 27, after officially documenting her marriage to Mahmoud, Reem will attend a wedding ceremony, even though the groom will not be present.The following day, Mahmoud’s mother will visit him in jail to give him the engagement ring, upon which Reem’s name is engraved.-On tenterhooks-Reem says she cannot wait for the marriage to be of-ficially documented so she can visit Mahmoud in prison after obtaining permission from the Israeli authorities.She says she is ready to wait for him until he serves out his sentence.“I will wait for him until he is free and victorious,” she declared.She voices hope that Mahmoud will be included in a fu-ture prisoner swap between Palestinian resistance fac-tions and Israel.Reem’s father voices similar sentiments, stressing that imprisonment does not last forever.“My daughter and I are happy because we managed to make my nephew [Mahmoud] happy in prison,” the fa-ther said.

03 April 2015 World Bulletin

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Israel razes Palestinians houses near Ramla

“The Israelis think that by demolishing our homes and displacing our families they can force us to leave. They are wrong.”Israeli bulldozers on Wednesday demolished three Arab-owned houses in the central city of Ramla on the pretext that they had been built illegally, local officials have said.“Bulldozers backed by Israeli security forces stormed Dahmash village and surrounded the houses before leveling them,” Arafat Ismail, head of the Dahmash village council, told.“The village has remained tense since the withdrawal of Israeli police,” he added.Salem Assaf, the owner of one of the demolished houses, told that the structures had pro-vided shelter for dozens of people who were now homeless.“At least 30 people, including 15 children, are now without homes,” he said.“The Israelis think that by demolishing our homes and displacing our families they can force us to leave,” said Assaf. “They are wrong.”He added: “We will stay no matter what happens.”Dahmash is home to at least 700 Palestinians who were displaced from their ancestral homes in historical Palestine after the creation of Israel in 1948. They now carry Israeli citi-zenship.

15 April 2015 World Bulletin

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UN asks Israel to unlock Palestine tax funds

The United Nations has called on Israel to unlock millions of dollars in taxes owed to the Pal-estinian Authority that were withheld after it decided to join the International Criminal Court.A senior UN official told the UN Security Council on Thursday that the freeze of about $127m, imposed on January 3, was in violation of the Oslo peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.“We call on Israel to immediately resume the transfer of tax revenues,” said UN Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen.Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, asked Arab foreign ministers gathered in Cairo to provide a “safety net” of $100m a month to cover tax revenues withheld by Israel.During the Cairo meeting, Abbas also called for the formation of a committee to launch a new bid seeking a UN Security Council resolution on ending the Israeli occupation, a month after the council rejected a similar initiative.The failed Arab-backed resolution set the end of 2017 as the deadline for a full Israeli with-drawal that would pave the way for Palestinian statehood.The United States and Australia voted against the resolution, but China, France and Russia were among eight countries that backed it, leaving it just one vote short of the nine required for adoption.The outcome spared the US from resorting to its veto, a move that could have undermined its standing in the Arab world at a time when Washington is leading a campaign against rebels in Iraq and Syria.

Source: Agencies

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As many as 20 South African companies, including manufacturers and chain stores, have end-ed their security contracts with G4S in protest at the company’s links to Israeli prisons and detention centres. The news was announced by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanc-tions movement.Speaking at a meeting at the Embassy of Palestine in Pretoria on Thursday, a spokesperson for the BDS movement said that the move comes as the Palestinians are commemorating Prisoner Day and Israel escalates its crimes against prisoners and detainees in its jails. The spokesperson pointed out that G4S has ignored repeated calls to stop providing Israeli prisons with security technology and services.The movement applauded South African solidarity committees and their peaceful efforts which led to this achievement and has caused the British security company to lose nearly 7 million Rands a year. The Bill Gates Foundation ended a $200 million contract with G4S in June last year following pressure from South African solidarity committees.Renowned former political prisoner Ahmad Kathrada welcomed the South African companies’ decision and called for the expansion of the international solidarity campaign to help release Palestinian prisoners, including women and children.The Embassy of Palestine in Pretoria described the move as an “important message” which the Israeli occupation must consider very carefully and learn from South Africans’ experience and history. A joint appeal between the embassy, the Ahmad Kathrada Foundation and the BDS movement will be launched to commemorate Palestinian Prisoner Day.

South African companies boycott G4S over links to Israeli prisons

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Youngest Palestinian prisoner describes devastating detention experience

The Israeli authorities released their youngest Palestinian prisoner on Tuesday. Khalid Sheikh, aged just 15, had been detained for nearly four months, Anadolu Agency has re-ported.Describing the experience of his detention, the youngster accused Israel of not respecting children. “The [Israelis] attacked me with rifle butts on the head and insulted me during the investigation,” he said. “Although I suffer from anaemia, they did not give me any medi-cal help, apart from some painkillers.” He added that it was a “tough” investigation. “I was insulted and beaten and held in shackles for hours in a small cell.” This did not scare him. “This is the [Israeli] occupation. It will not scare us.”Khalid’s father Hussam said that his son’s release from prison was “the most beautiful mo-ment of my life”, but expressed his sadness that the 15 year-old had to go through what was clearly a terrible ordeal. “This will have left negative effects on him and our family,” he pointed out. “This is the real face of Israel, it violates rights and freedoms.” He called for greater solidarity with the prisoners until they are released.The Israeli army arrested Khalid on 24 December, and sentenced him to four months in prison with a fine equivalent to $500. He was found guilty of throwing stones at military ve-hicles enforcing Israel’s brutal occupation near his home.

MEMO

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Israeli courts convict hundreds of Palestinian children

Courts have come under heavy criticism for harsh judicial mea-sures against Palestinian minors accused of stone-throwing.When Israeli soldiers detained Hussam al-Sheikh’s 15-year-old son Khaled on Christmas Day last year, he expected to pay a fine and bring the boy home within a few hours.“A few weeks earlier, some young boys from our village were arrest-ed for allegedly throwing stones,” Sheikh told Al Jazeera. “They all came home the next morning af-ter their parents paid a small fine.”Accused of throwing stones, Khaled was arrested near the Is-raeli separation wall in Beit Anan, a village near Sheikh in the occu-pied West Bank. Yet, upon arriv-ing at the police station at the Bin-yamina settlement where the boy was being held, Hussam learned

that his son would not be allowed to go home with him anytime soon.“When we got to the police station, he had been beat-en up and there was blood on his face,” Sheikh told Al Jazeera. “After five court hearings, he was sentenced to four months in prison. How does a 50-year-old man sit on a bench and decide the fate of little children?”The Israeli military court that sentenced Khaled also fined his parents 2,000 Israeli shekels ($510) - a costly amount on top of the lawyer and court fees the Sheikh family already had to pay.Palestinians tried in Israeli military courts are convicted at a rate of more than 99 percent, according to a 2011 military document leaked to the Israeli daily Haaretz.“Why is this necessary?” Sheikh asked. “Can you seri-ously tell me that these kids throwing stones at a con-crete wall pose a threat to their state? Or to their sol-diers in armoured jeeps?”Israeli, Palestinian and international rights groups have decried Israel’s practise of arresting Palestinian children. According to a recent reportby Military Court Watch, a group that monitors Israel’s detention of chil-dren, 182 of the more than 5,600 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails were children as of the end of February.

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The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) announced in a December re-port that in 2014, Israel detained 1,266 Palestinian children below the age of 15 in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Since 2000, the report added, more than 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli forces.Israel recently prompted widespread criticism for its 45-day imprisonment of Malak al-Khatib, a 14-year-old girl who returned home in the central West Bank village of Beitin on February 13. Like Khaled al-Sheikh, she had been accused of throwing stones, and was prosecuted in an Israeli military court.Brad Parker, an attorney and interna-tional advocacy officer for Defence for Children International - Palestine Sec-tion (DCI-Palestine), said that Khatib and Sheikh were among the more than 700 Palestinian children sentenced in Israeli military courts every year.“Ill treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system is widespread and systematic, as nearly three out of four kids experience some form of physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation,” Parker told Al Jazeera, citing DCI-Palestine’s statis-tics.In most cases, Parker added, parents are not notified of their children’s arrest for 24 to 48 hours, and the children do not see their parents or a lawyer until they stand before a judge in an Israeli military court. “Despite the fact that in-ternational law and international juvenile justice standards include a prohibition on compelling a person from testifying against themselves or confessing guilt, this is commonplace in the Israeli mili-tary detention system,” he continued.Yet, in more than one-quarter of juvenile arrests of Palestinians in 2014, children were coerced into signing confessions

in Hebrew, despite the fact that most do not speak the language, a recent DCI-Palestine report noted.An Israeli military spokesperson did not reply to Al Jazeera’s multiple requests for comment on these allegations.According to a study published last month by UNI-CEF, the United Nations programme focusing on children, Palestinian children are regularly subject-ed to verbal abuse and intimidation, strip-searched and not “adequately notified of their legal rights, in particular the right to counsel and the right to remain silent”. In November 2014, ministers in Israeli Prime Minis-ter Benjamin Netanyahu’s government threw their weight behind a bill that could impose sentences of up to 20 years in prison for Palestinians in East Jerusalem who throw rocks at Israeli vehicles. “Is-rael is acting firmly against terrorists, rock-throwers, against firebomb throwers and against those who use fireworks,” Netanyahu said at the time.“A terrorist is a terrorist,” then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, considered a centre-left politician, declared. “It makes no difference what weapon he uses.”Though the bill has yet to pass in the Knesset, Is-rael’s parliament, human rights groups say it will dis-proportionately affect Palestinian children, who are involved in the majority of stone-throwing cases.“We know that most children are arrested for par-ticipation in demonstrations or throwing stones, so this new legislation can be seen as directly targeting children and youth,” said Randa Kamal, an advo-cacy officer for Addameer, a Ramallah-based group that monitors Israel’s arrests of Palestinians.Meanwhile, back in their West Bank home, the Sheikh family is worried for Khaled’s health. He suf-fers from anaemia, a blood condition that requires him to take medicine three times a day - but Sheikh said he has not been able to speak to his son since his arrest.“He looked very ill when we saw him in court,” he recalled. “We have no way of knowing whether he has been given the medicine and treatment that he needs. We are very worried about his health.”

Source: Al Jazeera

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Israeli army detains 32 Palestinians in W. Bank

The military, on Twitter, said the de-tained Palestinians are suspected of involvement in “rioting and acts of terror against [Israeli] civilians and security forces in the West Bank.”

Israeli army troops detained 32 Palestinians in overnight raids in the West Bank, the army said on Wednesday.“The detainees have been referred to questioning,” the army added.The Israeli army has not speci-fied the area where the arrests took place, nor has it revealed the names of the suspects.

However, the Israeli radio said that at least 29 Palestinians were detained in the West Bank province of Nablus, de-scribing them as “Hamas fighters.”Yet, eyewitnesses told The Anadolu Agency that among the detainees in Nablus were a journalist, a woman, and two university professors.“The woman is the wife of a former Palestinian prisoner who had been released from Israeli jail and the journalist is Amin Abu Warda, head of the independent Asdaa news service,” one eyewitness told The Anadolu Agency.Israeli forces sporadically raid Palestinian homes in the oc-cupied West Bank and detains local Palestinians, claiming the latter are “wanted” by Israeli security agencies.Over 6.500 Palestinians are currently languishing in prisons throughout Israel, according to official Palestinian figures.

Source: World Bulletin

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Lieberman conditions ‹eliminating Hamas› to join govt

Speaking to the Israeli radio, Lieberman who served as the Foreign Minister in the past government of Benjamin Netanyahu, said that “broad lines” of the next government would be the main factor for his party to decide whether it would join the party.Leader of right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party Avigdor Lieberman has set the condition that the upcoming Israeli government would work towards the elimination of Hamas so that his party would join the government.Speaking to the Israeli radio, Lieberman, who served as the Foreign Minister in the past government of Benjamin Netanyahu, said that “broad lines” of the next government would be the main factor for his party to decide whether it would join the party.Among those desired broad lines, he said, are the elimination of Hamas and abolishment of taxes on consumer products.He went on to assert that he would not join the government if Netanyahu sought a coalition

Israeli insider

government with the center-left Zionist Union, made up of Isaac Herzog’s Labor party and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah party.Israeli President Reuven Rivlin late last month of-ficially assigned Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, with forming Israel’s next gov-ernment.Netanyahu’s Likud Party won 30 seats in last week’s Knesset (parliament) election, while its closest rival, the Zionist Union Party, won 24 seats only.Hamas, for its part, said it was unfazed by Lieber-man’s remarks. “The remarks are an evidence of the failure of Israeli leaders,” senior Hamas mem-ber Ismail Radwan told. “Hamas cannot be bro-ken,” he added.“Lieberman should examine the losses Hamas inflicted upon the Israeli army in last year’s Gaza war. Hamas would never be eliminated due to the popular support it enjoys,” he added.


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13th Aqsa Child festival as colourfully as butterfly

Hundreds of Palestinian children from different Pal-estinian areas participated in the activities of the 13th Aqsa Child festival that started Saturday morning in the courtyards of the Aqsa Mosque Hundreds of Palestinian children participated in the event and its activities, es-pecially the drawing contest. The festival started with a drawing contest, where chil-dren embarked on drawing the landmarks of the Aqsa Mosque compound. Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, head of the Supreme Islamic Coun-cil in Jerusalem, said in a statement that they have to keep their future genera-tions attached to the Aqsa Mosque.According to Palestinian artist Yousuf al-Rajbi, who participated in the festival, pointed out that the Israeli police prevented the entry of many drawing tools to the Aqsa Mosque.The festival, for organizers part, is intended to strength-en the Palestinian children’s bond with the Aqsa Mosque and to send a strong mes-sage to the Israeli occupa-tion that its measures and violations will never succeed in detaching the Palestinians from their Aqsa Mosque.


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Yarmouk shows up the treatment of Palestinians across the Arab world

I wish to stress the sheer despair experienced by Pal-estinians trapped in the hell-hole of Yarmouk, in Syria, abandoned by the world at large (Report, 13 April). That the neighbouring countries around them do not react is hardly surprising: the treat-ment of Palestinians across the Arab world has been and continues to be appalling. In Lebanon, they have no ac-cess to health or education, are barred from at least 25 professions, have no rights to buy property or even cir-culate freely within the coun-try. This is true apartheid. A milder version of this is prac-tised in Jordan.With yet another disaster befalling the world’s most blighted population, where are the vocal, chest-thump-ing supporters of Palestine? Can they only march, pro-test, boycott when it comes to Israel and keep quiet when the Arab world threat-ens them?However humiliating and despicable, the level of ex-istence even in the occupied territories is vastly superior to that of Palestinians any-where in the Arab world, with the exception, until recently, of Syria, and Iraq before the United Nations sanctions in 1990.

This callous indifference to Yarmouk (and to every horrific camp in Lebanon, Jordan or Syria where Palestinians continue to suffer) can only serve to bolster and encourage Islamic State in its bloody war of expansion in the Middle East.Carol MannDirector of Women in War, Paris

• The plight of Palestinian civilians in Yarmouk is shameful. But to lay the blame at the door of “an Arab regime” elides other responsibili-ties. The Yarmouk refugee camp has existed since 1957 and been hosted by the Ba’ath regime since 1963. It has become a war zone only since Gulf sheikdoms, supported by the west, sought to overthrow the regime by sponsoring armed militias – some of which have used Yarmouk as a base.Yes, the Assad regime shows a flagrant disregard for civilian lives and infrastructure in its conduct of the war, but the west and its allies also need to step down from their role, drop their preposterous precondition for “negotiations” (basically, Bashar al-Assad’s surrender), and end this disastrous war.Peter McKennaLiverpool

Source: The Guardian

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‹Jerusalem needs UNESCO›s intervention›

The Palestinian governor of Jerusalem has warned against the repercussions of what Israel is doing at Al-Aqsa Mosque, pointing to Israeli attempts to turn the Tankaziya School, located inside the mosque, into a synagogue.In an interview with Radio Mawteni yesterday, Adnan Al-Husayni said: “The Israeli occupation’s government is attacking monuments and history. Therefore, the Unit-ed Nations Organisation for Education, Science and Cul-ture (UNESCO) must inter-vene to stop the destruction of this historic building that dates back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.”

“For two years, the occupation government has been preparing for a programme and various projects in the vicinity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, including an additional building on the surface of the Tankaziya School. There is also a possibility that they intend to demolish some parts so as to build one of the largest synagogues that have been recently built in the Old City,” he added.Al-Husayni noted that the Tankaziya School is located on the right side when one is heading towards the Al-Aqsa Mosque’s entrance from the Al-Selsela Gate. It had been renowned for Sharia studies since the Mamluk Era. After 1967, Israel seized it. The school directly overlooks the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque.“Al-Aqsa Mosque is an Islamic Waqf [endowment],” Al-Husayni said, “and as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is responsible for the Islamic Waqf, it will surely have a stance regarding the dangerous work carried out by the Israeli government.”He stressed that the heritage and the people of Jerusalem need international protection.

Source: MEMO

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Palestinian prisoners Facts & Numbers “Info graphic”

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Remembering the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails

In 1974, the Palestinian National Council decided that 17 April every year as the national day of Pal-estinian prisoners. This day honours their sacri-fices, and is an occasion to express solidarity with their families and support them in their suffering and the torture they have endured in Israeli deten-tion centres and prisons.Every year since then Prisoners Day is commemo-rated in several forms, including national rallies and various other activities over several days.The choice of 17 April for this national day is not tied to any specific historical event that is related to the [prisoners] movement, according to the director of the statistics department of the official Prisoners & Ex- Prisoners Affairs Authority Abdul Nasser Far-waneh.

Israel’s gulag archapelago“Around 6,500 Palestinian detainees are still lan-guishing in 22 prisons and detention centres un-der the Israeli occupation, including 480 prisoners convicted to life sentences, 25 female prisoners of whom two are minors, 200 minor children under 18, 480 in administrative detention, 14 members of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Legislative Council (PLC) and one PNA cabinet minister,” Far-waneh told al-Araby.Around 1,500 Palestinian prisoners suffer from vari-ous diseases, including 85 who are in a very critical condition.About 30 of the prisoners were detained before the PLO and the Israeli occupation signed the Oslo ac-cord in 1993, according to Farwaneh.Farwaneh, himself an ex-prisoner, who founded Palestine behind bars online, noted that 206 pris-oners have died as martyrs in the prisons of the occupation since 1967, including 71 martyrs who died under direct torture, 54 as the result of medi-cal negligence, seven who were shot dead inside prisons and 74 who were extra-judicially killed and

REPORT

liquidated immediately after their arrest.Moreover, scores of ex-prisoners died shortly after their release because of diseases they caught while in pris-on.There are 16 Palestinian prisoners still in detention ar-rested more than a quarter of a century ago. The oc-cupation authorities rearrested 85 ex-prisoners who were freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal in 2011, Farwaneh said, noting that the arrest and tar-geting of Palestinian children has escalated during the past four years as some 3800 children were arrested during this period.The PLO Prisoners’ Affairs Authority said that since the beginning of al-Aqsa Intifada (uprising) on 28 Septem-ber 2000, 85,000 arrests have been recorded, including more than 10,000 children under 18, 1,200 Palestinian women and more than 65 Palestine Legislative Council members and former cabinet ministers. The occupation authorities issued approximately 24 thousand orders for administrative detention including both new arrests and renewals of old arrests.Palestinian prisoners live an extremely severe and dif-ficult living and life conditions while being exposed to a long list of violations, including arrest, torture and wors-ening health conditions, in addition to medical negli-gence, deprivation from family visits, blackmail, poor nutrition and punitive financial fines imposed on the prisoners, according to the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority.

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The director of the Palestinian Centre for Prisoners Studies, ex-prisoner Ra’fat Hamdouneh, said the Israeli treatment of the prisoners’ issue is moving toward more extremism and a desire for revenge. He cited the state-ments of the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who is preparing to present a bill to the new Knesset that would sentence prisoners to capital punishment.Speaking to al-Araby al-Jadeed, Hamdouneh added: “The member of Knesset Danny Danon has called re-cently for the application of the Shalit law to Palestinian detainees in the prisons and to tighten the screws on them in prison cells by all methods and means, which indicates the extent of extremism the treatment of prison-ers has reached.”Hamdouneh noted that what is going on currently in Is-raeli officialdom was an official case of incitement to take revenge on the prisoners inside prisons. He confirmed that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) takes onboard the incitement broadcast by the political leadership against the prisoners and punishes them accordingly. He noted that the IPS has recently reinforced widely the measures of naked inspection and solitary confinement against Palestinian prisoners. Prisoners in Israeli prisons are suffering from bad nutrition, let alone subjecting them to medical experiments by the prison doctors, Hamdouneh indicated.The director of the Palestinian Centre for Prisoners Stud-ies indicated that 200 Palestinian children inside Israeli prisons are suffering from the Israeli measures against the prisoners, in addition to the difficult conditions in which the Palestinian female prisoners live and more than 1,500 prisoners who suffer from chronic diseases.

No holds barredSeparately, the head of the Ex-Prisoners Association in Gaza, Tawfiq Abu Naeem, told al-Araby al-Jadeed that the IPS for many years has practiced and continues to practice all methods, forms and tools of torture and mal-treatment of prisoners. The details of the suffering and difficulties of the daily life of the prisoners are beyond description, he added.Abu Naeem, himself a freed prisoner, referred to what Palestinian prisoners are exposed to inside Israeli prison cells. He mentioned the surprise inspections, the denial of visits and confiscation of food and personal posses-sions, in addition to being deprived of news. Now the

broadcasts are confined to Hebrew channels, he said.The days of Palestinian prisoners are measured by the size of the popular participation and the official and factional attention paid to their cause. The prison-ers take care to follow up on this day [ie. Palestinian Prisoners’ Day] via whatever is available on television or radio to measure the size of support for their cause.Abu Naeem said the national prisoners’ movement was targeted by an ugly Israeli campaign carried out by the IPS, which aims at liquidating them with a green light from the top of the political pyramid and the Israeli government. He condemned the Arab si-lence and the international default vis-a-vis the daily crimes to which the prisoners are exposed to in their prisons.Similarly, the spokesman of the Waed Captive and Liberators Society Abdullah Qandil told al-Araby that there are more than 480 Palestinian prisoners in ad-ministrative detention who have been inside Israeli prisons for years now, without being charged or tried in court.Qandil confirmed the policy of administrative deten-tion to which the occupation has resorted extensively in the West Bank aims at pressuring Palestinian pris-oners, despite the fact that this type of arrest contra-venes the rights stipulated by the Geneva conven-tions. He explained that many times the occupation released several detainees for days or for a number of hours after the expiry of their administrative detention only to re-arrest them abruptly.There was also no international monitoring of Israeli prisons, he added.Qandil noted the rate of administrative detention has had risen noticably between 2013 and 2015. In 2013 there were only 200 male and female prisoners in Is-raeli prisons. This number increased hugely in 2014 and 2015, he said.The Waed spokesman said there should be serious stances by international institutions as represented by the United Nations and the European Union against the policy that Israel is implementing against the pris-oners. He called for action by the Arab League to raise the level of awareness for the issues of the prisoners in Israeli prisons and their suffering.

Source: al-Araby

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Who wins if Washington loses in the Middle East?

While the United States re-mains the lead western player in several major Middle East conflicts, a change is quietly taking place in the internation-al arena.Diplomats observing the P5+1 negotiations with Iran in Lau-sanne noticed a much more independent role for France than in previous rounds, as it demanded a tougher posi-tion on the monitoring of the Iranian nuclear programme. France is also set to take a lead role in pushing for a comprehensive UN Security Council resolution.France’s increased visibility is part of a much wider Euro-pean push for a more active foreign policy, especially re-garding its southern Mediter-ranean neighbours.The destabilisation of the Middle East has a direct ef-fect on Europe, with a huge increase in migrants reach-ing the northern shores of the Mediterranean.

Erosion of US influenceBut the increase in Europe-an involvement in the Middle East is largely the result of the erosion of Washington’s influence, due in large part to Obama’s foreign policy doc-trine.US President Barack Obama

Articles & Analyses

campaigned on a non-in-terventionist policy and has largely ended the US military presence in Iraq, while also downsizing the military foot-print in Afghanistan.While the US is trying to re-gain some of its influence lost due to the rise of ISIL and oth-er radical groups, the contrac-tion of US power is evident.It is too early to estimate how the expanding European role in the Middle East will be translated on the ground. Europe is home to the big-gest trade partners for most countries in the region, but for years it has been unable to translate this financial role into political influence.Unlike the US executive branch, which is able to ex-

ercise a unified foreign policy (despite the loud voices in Congress), Europe at times speaks in contradictions when it comes to its foreign policy. Although a lot of effort has been made in Brussels to unify these voices, the fact remains that as sovereign member states of the European Union, each nation has an indepen-dent voice. This difference is most evident when it comes to Palestine. Diplomatic re-lations between European member states and Palestine vary from full recognition and exchange of ambassadors to non-recognition and low-level diplomatic missions.When the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels is unable to whip all the coun-tries into a single stance, it of-

Daoud Kuttab

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ten allows for some member states - especially among the larger and founding members - to take a lead role.

Emerging French roleFrance’s attempts to pass a Security Council resolution on Palestine will be the greatest test yet of this new French-led European role. If France is able to get the tacit agree-ment of the Palestinians and Israelis, as well as avoid a US veto, it would indicate that this new role is beginning to work out.It is difficult to imagine the US forfeiting its role in attempt-ing to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, due to the in-fluence of the Israel lobby in Washington and throughout the US.But the high-stakes Obama-Netanyahu disagreement could very well produce the moment in which Washington could symbolically wash its hands of being Israel’s politi-cal shield, while continuing to be its military and strategic ally. Obama made this position clear in his lengthy interview with New York Times colum-nist Tom Friedman, reiterating the unwavering US position in defending Israel’s security. Leading Israeli columnist Na-hum Barnea has also noted that the White House is willing to seriously upgrade a mutual defence agreement and guar-antee the military advantage of Israel over its neighbours.While Obama supports Isra-

el’s military, he notably didn’t demonstrate political support of its continued occupation and refusal to implement the two-state solution.

Change in the future?A stepped-up European role in the Middle East, with France taking the lead in attempting to revitalise the Palestinian-Israeli peace process on the basis of recognising the Pal-estinian state, will be wel-comed in many capitals - not just in the region, but around the world. The success of this new move will depend in large part on Washington and Tel Aviv. Many fear that the US will continue to play politics in this region and might try to link its role - especially regarding its Security Council veto - to how Netanyahu and company behave in the crucial coming months before the signing of the Iran agreement, let alone how Congress will react. Palestinians watching this nail-biting international game feel again that they are the weakest link. They might, pos-sibly, benefit from the various disagreements between the parties, but it is clear that they are not able to have much of an influence on how the game is being played out - especial-ly with the US continuing to play the key role in the region.A pivot of geopolitical leader-ship from the US to Europe may prove to be much more appealing to the Palestinians - and their cause.

Source: Al Jazeera

Palestinians watching this nail-biting

international game feel again that they

are the weakest link.

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Activities in Malaysia to commemorate Palestinian

prisoner’s day

Tens of Malaysians and international resi-dents have gathered in Kuala lumpor to ex-press solidarity with Palestinians in Israeli prisons in conjunction with prisoner day.Awfi Rasmi who led one of the gatherings at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) called concerned authorities to liberate prisoners. Rasmi stressed the deep-rooted relationship between Malaysia and Palestine.It is noteworthy to mention that Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM) along with local NGOs announced a launch of week of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners.


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issue no 130

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