issue no 8

Issue No: 8 31st Dec, 2011

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Issue No: 8

Article of the Week:

� Hamas and the Arab Spring................................

Views & Opinions:

� Hamas between the Foundation Anniversary and the Entitlements of the Current Stage…………....…………

News Tour:

� Palestinian factions agree to re

� Haneyya: Reconciliation understandings should be implemented on the ground

� “Israel” isolates 125,000 Palestinian from Jerusalem

� Occupation arrested 3200 Palestinians, including 383 children in 2011

Caricature

� In light of the Palestini

Palestinian Weekly Report is a periodical insight into the latest developments of the

Palestinian Issue. It’s issued by The Palestinian Cultural

focuses on the most important news and analysis about the happenings of the

Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation in the Holy Lands of Palestine. The

views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect PCOM's

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Contents

Hamas and the Arab Spring................................…………....……………

Hamas between the Foundation Anniversary and the Entitlements of the Current …………....………………………………………………………

Palestinian factions agree to re-establish the PLO...............................

Reconciliation understandings should be implemented on the ground

“Israel” isolates 125,000 Palestinian from Jerusalem……………………..

Occupation arrested 3200 Palestinians, including 383 children in 2011

ian reconciliation progress.....…………………


It’s issued by The Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia and i



views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect PCOM's editorial policy.

31st Dec, 2011

…………....…………….……...... 3

Hamas between the Foundation Anniversary and the Entitlements of the Current ……………………………………………….…….......6

.......................... 10

Reconciliation understandings should be implemented on the ground... 10

…………………..……….. 11

Occupation arrested 3200 Palestinians, including 383 children in 2011.....……….. 12

……………….12


Organization Malaysia and it



editorial policy.


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Article of the Week

Hamas & the Arab Spring

By: Larbi Sadiki

On a "win-loss" scale, Hamas features more as amongst the "winners" not "losers" of the Arab Spring. Ismail Haniyeh's current diplomacy "shuttle" around several Arab capitals is designed, amongst other things, as a declaratory policy embracing the Arab Spring.

However, the embrace remains a little ill-defined around the edge, and faces many challenges.

The Arab Spring, like that "sudden" light, creating a desperately needed opening in a tunnelled Palestinian cause, illuminating the path for Haniyeh, amongst other chiefs of the Palestinian polity, including Fatah.

Haniyeh lands in Cairo around the same time in December three years ago when a buoyant Tzipi Livni more or less declared the war on Gaza with total indifference from Mubarak's ousted Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Ghait in December 2008. Maybe not by design, but the timing of Haniyeh's visit is not without political symbolism.

No one can predict when Livni will get back to Cairo. But what is certain: Haniyeh's visit will not be his last to Egypt's capital.

Back to centre stage

So far, the Arab Spring in its Egyptian version has more or less rendered the Israeli siege on

Gaza useless. Even the Israelis have joined in this and supplies from Israel enter Gaza. There is more mobility with the Rafah crossing enabling a freer flow of people and goods. What does not enter above the crossing, goes underground through the network of tunnels, the lifeline of Gaza during more than four years of embargo.

Hamas is no longer sandwiched between two equally hostile systems of barriers, security apparatuses and political schemes working in tandem to starve it of life. Here lies the significance of the Arab Spring for Hamas - to explore the new geography of freed Arab peoples endorsing justice for the Palestinian cause and lasting peace for all.

The Arab Spring geography will be largely populated by Islamist power brokers whose value-systems place the Palestinian cause amongst their political concerns, if not priorities. Just as some Western religious doctrines and establishments have grounded their support for Israel in the Bible, it is equally easier today for the rising forces of Islamism to justify their support for Palestine on Quranic grounds.

Whether the two groups will ever use the same grounds for finding just peace remains to be seen.

Egypt's role

Tunisia may be the proud home of the Arab Spring, but Egypt - with political weight, historical pedigree and potential for geostrategic clout - will re-emerge in 2012 as the pivot of the Arab world. All routes to Palestinian statehood and peace-talks lead to Egypt.

The whole multi-levelled and complex diplomatic machine of a post-Mubarak Egypt will be put to work and to the test of the travails of the new horizons open up by the Arab Spring. If a Palestinian state sees the


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light of day over the next decade, Cairo will have a hand in it.

If Haniyeh makes it to Tunis, he will be received as a hero, and the facilities and the reception once offered to Arafat during his years of exile in the 1980s could be founded as a gesture of unfettered support by all Tunisians to the Palestinian cause, in general, and Hamas, in particular. But it is in Cairo where the Palestinian cause will, from here on, be treated to more than the cordiality of like-minded society of Muslim brethren.

Egypt is already reclaiming its leading role as a hub of Arab diplomacy and soon it will be the house of a new Pan-Arabism founded by people and Arab voters. This bodes well for the Palestinians who, in varying degrees in different contexts, have reaped little in terms of benefits from the national-secular Arab autocratic establishments whose narrow and short-term interests excluded positive-sum diplomacy in favour of two-state solution, protection of Palestinian refugees, or the dilution of the Palestinians' fundamental rights as stipulated in various UN resolutions.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Specifically, Egypt's newly empowered Muslim Brotherhood (EMB), through free and fair elections, will stamp its diplomacy with more than the rhetorical championing of the Palestinian cause. Primarily, and this is the first significance of Haniyeh's visist to Cairo, the Palestinian cause from here onwards will cease to be treated as a security file. It is a political file. This is the single most important pillar of Mubarak's legacy that is being smashed to smithereens.

Hamas' Brotherhood origins make the Islamist movement's bond with the EMB uniquely inseparable. The two along with Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood represent links in a common chain more than other branches of MB organisation, with the qualified exception of Sudan.

Hassan al-Banna's legacy, including his famous epistles or rasa'il, amongst other writings, accords Palestine a special status. Al-

Banna deployed a great deal of his skill, resources, including correspondence with British diplomats and Egyptian politicians, to the Palestinian cause. This culminated in the EMB's own war preparation effort begun in the early 1940s, and the commitment to battle between Arabs and Israelis of hundreds of fighters during 1947-48. To this end, he even formed the special apparatus (al-Jihaz al-Khass), which secretly trained EMB fighters independent of the government of the day.

Al-Banna's view of Palestine, given the importance of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the second-oldest and third holiest shrine in Islam, with its location on the southern side of the Temple Mount, is that of a Muslim noble or blessed sanctuary. Thus, he deterritorialised the conflict from the 1940s, making the conflict over Palestine a Pan-Islamic responsibility. This view still prevails amongst the various brethren organisations all over the Arab Middle East.

Today, the EMB has progressed and revised many of its premises, but Al-Banna's teachings persist, including his stance on Palestine. This does not at all mean that the region is about to rush to war and bloodshed. What it means - like in other spheres of combating corruption, addressing social justice and power-sharing - is that the EMB will deploy all the resources of post-Mubarak Egypt to lend a hand to regional and international efforts to find a solution to the dispossession and desperation of the Palestinians let down by national-secular rulers.

The Palestinian cause

The Arab Spring's most evident outcome for the Palestinian cause is seeing it holistically as a political file and a question of justice crying for urgent attention. This is the moral and strategic depth the Arab Spring gives to the Palestinian cause, especially in an emerging geography where Hamas can mend its fortunes by finding political will in corridors of power dominated by Islamists.

Treating the Palestinian cause as a political, not security file, would mean three-pronged approaches. Firstly, to deploy soft power in the


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championing of the Palestinian cause, inclusively allowing for greater role by Arab civil societies to help the Palestinians - culture, education, infrastructure, law, governance, economic and development-capacity building.

Secondly, to enable Palestinians to reconcile - urgently and democratically - so that they acquire the means with which to push back against the spectre of tutelage to form a united polity that the Israelis and the quartet takes more seriously. Here, opening up Arab and Islamic space for the Palestinians to move freely, organise, raise funds, deliberate, lobby and build their case and a diplomatic machine to match, is what the Palestinians need. The only people who will deliver Palestine from occupation are the Palestinians themselves.

Lastly, through the Arab Spring openings and opportunities, the Palestinians have now to engage in a collective revision of past mistakes, reconciliation, stock-taking, and crystallisation and articulation of an emancipatory agenda to be taken to the world, including Israel, as their own vision for statehood and peace.

Palestinian 'Arab Spring'

The Arab Spring geography favours Hamas. However, Hamas must now favour the rise of a new context in which Palestinians favour the emergence of their own "Arab Spring". After all, it was the Palestinians' intifada and uprisings that for so long inspired the oppressed Arab youth.

Integral to this must be rising above the current divides and engaging with Fatah in a spirit of genuine reconciliation. Fatah has over the years committed many mistakes, allowing outside patronage to derail the quest for statehood and compromise the value of Palestinian self-determination. No need to rehearse here the record of human riots violations - they are known to all, and Hamas is not without its own guilt on this front.

This is where the EMB and other Islamists can play a mediatory role to ensure the Palestinian house is in order before it faces the international community in full unison, shared

values and common goals that transcend narrow ideological and partisan interests.

Favoured by the Arab Spring geography more than Fatah, Hamas must do two things: practice power-sharing with Fatah and work to this end. In the footsteps of other Islamists from Morocco to Egypt, power-sharing and pluralism are the name of the political game. Islamists need the liberals and the secularists to construct democratic order. It applies to the EMB, which has elevated it to an art in a short time span, and equally to Hamas.

Hamas knows its affairs better, and there are all kinds of hidden matters along the spectrum of political calculus, but now that it is almost entirely out of Syria, it should condemn the Syrian regime. Even if it may hang out in power for longer than expected, it is a doomed regime. Haniyeh, amongst other Palestinian leaders, has been clear about their support for the Arab Spring. Syria remains a difficult test, but one that requires a moral stand.

The Palestinians have for so long been left to a dire state of dehumanised existence at the mercy of local, regional and international political vicissitudes and whims.

The Arab Spring is both an opportunity for mending fortunes, and a test to rise to, by rebranding Palestinian politics for the tasks of statehood and good governance.

Larbi Sadiki is a Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, and author of Arab Democratisation: Elections without Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2009) and The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (Columbia University Press, 2004), forthcoming Hamas and the Political Process (2011).

Source: Aljazeera English


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Views & Opinions

Hamas between the Foundation Anniversary and the Entitlements of the Current Stage

By: Dr. Mohsen Saleh

As Hamas celebrates the twenty-fourth foundation anniversary, the movement, which has become part of the Palestinian equation, faces many entitlements as it stands at the crossroads having to adapt to the developments of the current stage.

Over years, Hamas has become more experienced and better organized. Further, it has succeeded in enforcing its position in the Palestinian society while at the same time it established political relations on the Arab, Islamic and international levels. However, it is today burdened with more responsibilities, has more enemies and is also faced with more criticism. Besides, people might expect it to present what is beyond its capacity or pose questions which it cannot easily answer. Eight Features of Hamas

Hamas is characterized by eight features which hardly meet in a Palestinian organization or movement. The first feature is its moderate Islamic discourse which is in harmony with people’s convictions and their cultural affiliations. The second is its high dynamism which has enabled it to work even under difficult circumstances and regain its strength and vitality after harsh strikes. The third characteristic is its Shura-based

[democratic] institutional construction which has allowed it to maintain its cohesion and strength and to renew its leadership and elect its Shura institutions every four years regardless of the circumstances. The fourth feature is its comprehensive nature which encompasses political, social, charitable, jihadi and educational aspects of life. In this respect, Hamas has succeeded in maintaining continuous communication with the Palestinians on different levels. Fifth, Hamas is characterized in the eyes of Palestinians and Arabs by its outstanding military struggle as it has spearheaded resistance work, especially since 1993. The sixth feature is its wide popularity at home and abroad, which it was able to uphold under different conditions. Seventh, Hamas is generally and comparatively characterized by cleanliness from corruption; thus, its leaders enjoy wide popularity and respect. The last characteristic is Hamas' presence in Arab and Islamic countries where it enjoys popularity among the masses, which provide Hamas with significant moral and financial support, especially as it is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood which, in its turn, enjoys wide support in the Arab world.

Entitlements and Challenges Facing Hamas

On the 24th anniversary of its foundation, Hamas seems to face a number of entitlements which need more critical reading to promote Hamas’ vision and plans to meet the current challenges. This article will shed light on four of these entitlements.

Reform and Change

The first entitlement is related to the problematic implementation of Hamas’ programme of change and reform especially under occupation in the West Bank. Hamas has so far succeeded in imposing its conditions


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in the conciliation agreement which was signed in Egypt on 3/5/2011. This would ultimately lead to the formation of a national unity government which paves the way for general elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But what is Hamas’ perception of change and reform?

The slogan in itself is quite attractive; however, the reform process has been proved to be almost impossible under the Israeli occupation, particularly through a resistance movement like Hamas. As long as the occupation exists, it will be able to close borders, prevent import and export, restrict the movement of persons and goods and confiscate funds in addition to destroying economic, agricultural and educational infrastructure. Consequently, if the side administering the West Bank would not make concessions, it would be easy for the occupation authorities to thwart its efforts, close down the institutions it runs and imprison its figures. This is what happened during 2006 and 2007.

Hamas will thus be competing with Fatah to pursue an authority, which is likely to collapse at any time, while assuming power might herald its political decline. Additionally, Hamas' participation in the next elections might have negative implications for the movement, regardless of the outcome. Thus, in case it won, the movement will be besieged and its efforts would be foiled; if it lost the elections it would not be able to maintain the popular support and “legitimacy” it achieved in 2006. Consequently, Hamas would be targeted by the new authority which enjoys popular and constitutional legitimacy. Apparently, Israel and the U.S are not likely, this time, to agree that Hamas participate in the elections unless they are almost sure it would lose. Besides, many Palestinians —even those who are sympathetic with Hamas— might be reluctant about voting in favor of its candidates as they know it would not be able to implement its programme.

The Resistance Programme

The second challenge has to do with the problematic combination between resistance

and authority. Assuming power, running the daily life of people and implementing development projects need pacification in addition to an uninterrupted flow of money and free movement of transportation.

ractically, this requires a kind of coexistence with the occupation and delaying any plans for confrontation. Thus, having declared the end of Hudna (truce) at the end of 2005, Hamas extended the truce again after it won the legislative elections in 2006 although this did not spare it the Israeli siege and attacks. Moreover, when Hamas decided to avenge the Shati’ massacre and the killing of Huda Ghalia’s family, it carried out Operation “Dispelled Illusion” and abducted the Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit. Consequently, Israel arrested a number of Hamas deputies thus disrupting the work of the Legislative Council. It also arrested a number of the ministers in Hamas government and launched Operations Summer Rains and Autumn Clouds against Gaza, leading to the killing of 505 Palestinians and the wounding of 2,205 others.

When Hamas government insisted on its position not to recognize Israel, to abandon the resistance track and commit to the Oslo Accord, it had to face Israeli, Arab and international siege. Further, Israel cut all forms of financial support and prevented any financial transfer into the Gaza Strip, including the tax proceeds it collects for the PA.

Notwithstanding Hamas’ steadfastness in the Gaza Strip under the siege and the Israeli attacks, the movement was gradually losing the ability to initiate attacks against Israelis in the vicinity surrounding Gaza and had instead to defend itself against the Israeli aggression. Before Operation Cast Lead (27/12/2008–18/1/2009), Hamas used to reject any truce and launch tens of missiles on daily basis requiring Israel to lift the Gaza siege. This is what happened upon the end of the truce on 19/12/2008 and the seven following days. However, despite its persistence and defiance of the Israeli aggression, Hamas had to undergo an undeclared shift in its policy and show readiness for a truce if the Israeli side stops the attacks. Thus, even when Gaza


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remained the stronghold of the resistance, self-preservation was an urgent need regardless of the justifications.

Accordingly, should Hamas insist on the commitment to the resistance track, it would have to seek changing the basis upon which the PA was founded and urge the Israelis to respect the choices of the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, this alternative does not seem realistic in the time being. The other alternative is for Hamas to change the role of the PA thus transform it from an authority which provides services to Israeli occupation to an authority which adopts the resistance choice. This, consequently, means the collapse of the current government and leaving it for the Israelis to manage people’s daily life. In the meantime, the Palestinian factions will be occupied with political work, resisting the occupation and supporting the steadfastness of the Palestinian people. This is an alternative worth of attention but it is difficult to implement without Palestinian national consensus and without the belief in the futility of proceeding with the current course of peace settlement. The Palestinian Conciliation

The third entitlement is related to the Palestinian conciliation. Despite the signing of the agreement, the relation between Hamas and Fatah is still based on shaky grounds and there is much fear and mistrust between the two sides. In addition, there are genuine differences on the ideological level and a competition between an Islamic vision refusing to recognize Israel and another secular pragmatic vision which would accept to establish a Palestinian State on 23% of the Palestinian land and to recognize Israel. Besides, there is a side which considers resistance a priority and still rejects the conditions of the Quartet to lift the siege and another side which does not mind the Quartet conditions and seeks the solution in the peace settlement and negotiations track.

Accordingly, there is still disagreement regarding the national project and determining its priorities. Moreover, Abu Mazen still controls the pace of the conciliation process where he could freeze it for more than 7

months (from May 2011) through his insistence on nominating Salam Fayyad for premiership. Further, he could politically employ the conciliation to proceed with the state bid before the United Nations. Ultimately, ‘Abbas did not show seriousness concerning the conciliation, except after the failure of the Palestinian request to declare the Palestinian State.

Still, Abu Mazen stresses the commitment to the peace settlement process and he knows that the American-Israeli conditions would hinder the formation of a national unity government, oppose expanding the scope of freedoms in the West Bank, prevent the restructuring of the security apparatuses on national basis accepted by Hamas and the other resistance factions and finally reject any cooperation with a government which Hamas heads or participates in.

The Palestinian conciliation is in its essence a national priority. However, its tactical employment and the lack of momentum and a mechanism for its implementation, besides Abu Mazen’s monopoly of controlling the procedure of the conciliation, make Abu Mazen abler to maneuver and present initiatives. Presiding over the PA and the PLO and enjoying Arab and international support would give Abu Mazen the upper hand while putting Hamas under the pressure of the changing conditions. Unless Hamas figures out an effective mechanism for implementing the agreement, it will be facing an empty conciliation, while the other side selects what it finds suitable for implementation.

The Arab Uprisings

The fourth entitlement has to do with the Arab uprisings and their implications on the Palestinian issue and on Hamas. This entitlement has several repercussions and it requires Hamas to give more attention to popular will demanding overcoming the division and accommodating other trends while finding common ground for Palestinian national work.

On another level, this entitlement provides Hamas with new strategic spaces, which are


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closer to its ideology and more supportive of its resistance programme. Thus, the development of the Arab uprisings (especially in Egypt) may curb the peace settlement track, whereas normalization with Israel will almost decline. In addition, the Gaza siege will be lifted and Hamas will gain strategic Arab allies that would support the conciliation and the reorganization of the Palestinian internal house on new basis, where Hamas and the resistance factions will be effectively involved in the PLO and in determining national priorities. Nonetheless, the possibility that the Arab regimes get busy with internal concerns might have negative implications on the Palestinian issue. Hence, Hamas is required to stress the importance of the Arab and Islamic dimension of the change movements, especially those led by the Islamic trend which enjoys popularity in the Arab street and a strong relationship with Hamas.

Further, the Arab uprisings will cast their shadow on the relation between Hamas and Syria and the so-called axis of opposition. In fact, Hamas has lost some of its effectiveness abroad due to the events taking place in Syria. Hamas does not deny the importance of the relationship with Syria and the services the ruling regime has provided for Hamas and other resistance forces.

In fact, this relation has benefitted both sides on the strategic and political levels. However, Hamas is a popular movement and enjoys

prominent position among the Syrian people which has embraced Hamas and supported it. Besides, its ideology is inherently based on achieving freedom and dignity and respecting the will of the people. Therefore, Hamas has stressed that it would not forget the regime’s support, emphasizing that it is against any conspiracy targeting Syria and its stances which support the resistance. Yet, Hamas is also in favor of the just demands of the Syrian people. Thus, it has wished from the outset that the regime would walk the walk of serious reformist and allow the Syrians to express their true will and the peaceful transfer of power, without bloodshed and without creating conditions that might lead to foreign intervention. Nonetheless, Hamas now is under the pressure to determine its position in a decisive manner. This entitlement could be the basis for other entitlements such as the relation with Iran and Hezbollah should they proceed with their current stance towards Syria. In any case, Hamas is but expected to support the free will of the people and a transparent democratic regime far from foreign intervention, supportive of the resistance and eventually reflecting the authenticity of the Syrian people.

Source: Alzaytouna Center


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News Tour

Palestinian factions agree to re-establish the PLO

23/12/2011

Palestinian factions have agreed to re-establish the Palestina Liberation Organisation and have set up a committee, headed by Saleem Zanoun, to carry this through. The President of the Palestinian National Council met with other leaders in Cairo on Thursday and agreed this move. A first meeting of the committee will be held in Amman in January.

A spokesman for Hamas told the media that the representatives at the meeting understand the need to implement what has been agreed

within the specified time-frame. Fawzi Barhoum added that a proposal on the election rules of the PLO has been proposed for the factions to study and respond accordingly by 15 January, the proposed date of the first committee meeting.

Mr Barhoum said a sub-committee of four has been established to address the problems raised by some factions as well as the matter of those who are nonaligned and did not attend the Cairo meeting.

Everyone present in Cairo, said Mr Barhoum, also pointed to the intransigence of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the escalation of settlement building, the Judaisation of Jerusalem and the siege of Gaza. "These are all major issues to be tackled," he said, "for which a common vision is essential."

Source: MEMO

Haneyya: Reconciliation understandings should be implemented on the ground

24/12/2011

Ismael Haneyya, the Palestinian prime minister has stressed Thursday that the

understandings between Palestinian factions pertaining to national recompilations must be implemented on the ground to be significant.

"Things are going in the right direction but the real test for all of us is to translate those understandings on the ground starting with releasing all political prisoners and halt of political arrests and summons in the West Bank," Haneyya said in brief press conference with journalists after the Friday prayer in reaction to the Palestinian factions' meeting in Cairo. He also regarded the participation of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement in the interim leadership framework of the PLO as


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"step in the right direction," stressing, however, that the elections of the Palestinian national council is the entry gate to the PLO.

He also highlighted the importance of holding the presidential and parliamentary elections simultaneously with the PNC elections, pointing out that such synchronism is the right entry for democratic participation in the PLO.

Moreover, Haneyya made it clear that Hamas enters the PLO sticking to its own vision, policy, and strategy without disregarding national goals and objectives that bind it with the rest of the Palestinian factions.

Haneyya also explained that Hamas's possible entry to the PLO wouldn’t, in any case, mean that it recognizes the agreements signed between the PLO and the Zionist entity in the past, saying, "Hamas's participation in the new PLO's interim leadership framework doesn’t mean it becomes a member of the PLO. "Entry to the PLO has its own mechanisms that start with the PNC elections," he asserted.

The prime minister encouraged all Palestinian factions to free themselves of any external pressures, especially those exerted by the USA and the "Israel" in order for the Palestinian people to focus on more crucial issues on top of them the issue of occupied Jerusalem that faces "the biggest Israeli attack since it was occupied".

Haneyya also disclosed that he would start a tour to a number of Arab states to meet with political leaders and other influential parties and players in the regions, saying that the Arab Spring has opened wide horizons for the Palestinian leadership to secure the needed support for the Palestinian people. The tour would be the first for Haneyya since five years.

Source: PIC

“Israel” isolates 125,000 Palestinian from Jerusalem

30/12/2011

The Jerusalem-based Human Rights Centre has warned that Israel's municipality has already started to apply its policy of isolating Palestinian districts from the rest of the city. In fact, claims the Centre, the process began two years ago. "The plans of Israeli Mayor Nir Barkat, suggest that the isolation of some Palestinian neighbourhoods are in fact old

plans which were raised for the first time two years ago," the HRC told Quds Press.

In a statement, the HRC pointed out that this includes the exclusion of Jerusalem residents through the withdrawal of their residence permits; since the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem started in 1967, 14,266 Palestinians have had their permits withdrawn.

The Centre noted that over the past two years it has received complaints from citizens of Jerusalem who live in the neighbourhoods in question that the occupation authorities have not been issuing local tax demands, claiming that they "live outside the wall" and "are, therefore, no longer in Jerusalem".

Source: MEMO


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Occupation arrested 3200 Palestinians, including 383 children in 2011

29/12/2011

A human rights organization said that occupation authorities intensified arrest campaigns against Palestinian activists in 2011, especially after the release of prisoners in a prisoner exchange deal about three months ago.

Ansar organization for prisoners said in a statement on Friday: “The Israeli occupation arrested 3232 Palestinians during the year 2011, 383 of them children. There are 250 children who remain in occupation jails.”

The organization noted that there was “a tangible increase in arrests of minors,

campaigns of repression and collective punishment of prisoners and denying their rights and privileges they gained through years of struggle inside occupation jails.”

Amongst those arrested in 2011 there were 11 lawmakers making the number of lawmakers detained in occupation jails 23, most of them affiliated with Hamas.

The organization also said that the last quarter of the year has witnessed an increase in arrests in the districts of Nablus, al-Khalil, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Tulkarem, Salfit and Ramallah.

The organization noted that 845 arrests were made in the first quarter of the year, 707 arrests in the second quarter, 810 in the third and 870 in the last quarter of the year, 91 one of them minors. Most of the minors were arrested from Sha’fat in Jerusalem and Deheisha refugee camp in Bethlehem.

The arrests also included two a girl and a middle aged woman from al-Khalil; 17-year-old Ala’ al-Je’ba who was arrested on 7 December 2011 and 53-year-old Salwa Hassan who was arrested on 19 October 2011.

Source: PIC

Caricature

In light of the Palestinian Reconciliation progress

issue no 8

Documents

palestinian issue

palestinian struggle

palestinian factions

palestinian polity

arab spring

palestinian cultural

tunnelled palestinian

israeli occupation