Palestinian kids given electric shock torture

You have to hand it to US secretary of state John Kerry. In his dream of entering the history books, he has taken on mission impossible. He is fighting tooth and nail for his version of the two-state peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians.

So much so that his relentless diplomacy has lead to an outburst by the Israeli minister of defence, Moshe Yaalon, who reportedly described Kerry as “obsessive and messianic in his quest for Mideast peace”. Kerry has also suggested that failure by the Israelis to compromise could lead to growing support for a boycott of the country, a campaign which has now established roots in the United States as well as Europe.

This led to some members of the governing coalition to accuse Kerry of anti-Semitism, which then compelled ultra-Zionist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to defend Obama’s foreign policy chief, describing him as a “true friend of Israel”.

Negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators have now been going on for over six months, including at the Munich Security Conference a couple of weeks ago. There Henry Kissinger quipped that “nobody ever lost money betting against a Middle East peace.”

But Obama’s administration is desperate for a “legacy”. With Kerry leading the charge, it is hoping to pressurise Israel into conceding some territory in exchange for the Palestinians recognising Israel as a Jewish state.

According to prominent US writer, Thomas Friedman, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that Israeli troops could remain in the West Bank for a transitional five-year-period. And then they should be replaced by NATO forces. This is something Israel is hardly likely to agree to. Indeed, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu wants Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley for up to 40 years.

But however much the Palestinian Authority may compromise, and however much the US may hope that it can get concessions out of the Zionist state, any agreement is likely to be blown out of the water by the sheer brutality of continued Israeli occupation.

The PA has lost considerable authority amongst its constituents. While it engages in meaningless negotiations, Israeli forces have resumed assassinations of key figures in the resistance, known officially as “targeted killings”.

Leading defence correspondent Amos Harel admitted today in Haaretz, that Israel had “quietly revived” its previous policy of murdering resistance leaders. Only yesterday a targeted killing in Gaza was aimed at Abdallah Kharti, a senior member of the Popular Resistance Committees.

Today, Australian television’s ABC Four Corners programme will broadcast the findings of lawyers who say that Palestinian children are being used to gather intelligence, thus destroying their childhood innocence forever.

One 14-year-old boy was taken from his bed “during a night raid on his family home in a Palestinian village”, according to the report. Qsai Zamara said he “was whipped and threatened” into falsely confessing that he threw stones at the army. "There was this big machine with all the electric wires in it, connected to the electricity. He wanted to give me electric shock with it," he said.

Fathi Mahfouz, 15, was given electric shocks and when he didn't confess: “I was sent to a room that has a cross in it, and hung me on it. I was hung and he kept hitting me," he said. Barrister Gerard Horton has documented rape threats against young children after interviewing hundreds of them through his organisation Military Court.

Lawyer Gaby Lasky, who represents Palestinian children before Israel’s military courts, said on the BBC’s World Service this morning, that the army aimed to use children as informants. Horton backed her up account, saying children were offered a combination of money and threats to give information.

While the United Nations children’s organisation UNICEF has deliberately played down Israel’s abuse of children, it is so bad that a group of 850 serving and former Israeli soldiers, speaking through Breaking the Silence, have also been highlighting the issue.

This is a policy of terror by a state that has no intention of giving up any territory or removing any of the 250,000 settlers from the West Bank. For the Zionists, the demonisation of Palestinians is crucial to their own raison d’être and rule. Whatever deal Kerry brokers, it won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary 

Angry Israelis ask Palestinians who they should vote for

As Israeli right-wing nationalist/religious parties try to outdo each other in their reactionary appeal in the run up to this month’s general election, a remarkable online action is offering Palestinians in the Occupied Territories a proxy “vote”.

On a Facebook community called Real Democracy, disillusioned Israeli citizens are offering their votes to Palestinians on the West Bank who live under military law and have no say in their future. They have agreed to take instructions from Palestinians who respond as to how they should vote on February 22.

Earlier today, Shahaf Weisbein wrote: “I am an Israeli citizen and have the right to vote. Acknowledging the fact that millions of Palestinians are affected directly the decisions and acts of the government I am given the ‘opportunity’ to choose, I hereby give my vote to any Palestinian who wishes to use it. This is not a democracy, it is an apartheid regime.”

Mousa Maria replied to her: “Just this month, 25 people were arrested in my village by the Israeli army for participating in non-violent demonstrations… We are not anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish. We only oppose the policies of the Israeli government. Our goal is to free our land, from settlers and soldiers. Our goal is freedom.”

There’s an anonymous message from a serving Israeli soldier, who came to Israel from Texas three years ago as a committed Zionist. The soldier says her views have “changed dramatically and is supporting the campaign.                        

Bassam Aramin, who lives in East Jerusalem, tells Ofer Neiman that he is a bereaved father, his 10-year-old daughter having been killed by an Israeli soldier in 2007. He says Neiman should use his vote in favour of the left-wing Hadash Party.

East Jerusalem and the West Bank now have an estimated 500,000 Israeli settlers, as a result of the illegal construction programme pursued by successive governments. Their very existence has made it impossible to continue with the so-called peace negotiations, which have been stalled since 2010.

Politically, it looks likely to get a whole lot worse inside Israel itself. Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has accelerated settlement building and launched repeated attacks on Gaza, is now facing an even more right-wing opponent in the shape of Naftali Bennett. This millionaire, ex-commando favours outright annexation of large parts of the West Bank.

Polls show that Bennett's far-right, Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) will finish third in the parliamentary election and have to be included in any future coalition. He has dismissed as a “dead end” efforts to achieve a two-state solution.

His party is cashing in on the widely-held view that there is no apparent solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. This is actually the case as far as the Zionist political elite is concenred. It is determined to give nothing at all when it comes to an independent Palestinian state.

However, there is also deep uncertainty about the direction Israel is heading in, with over half the electorate saying the country’s path is wrong. And, just as dramatically, an astounding 31% of voters remain undecided with two weeks to go to the election.  

               

The Israeli-Palestinian electoral rebellion launched last month being conducted through social media has over a 1,000 supporters and finds a growing response among the Palestinians. It neatly exposes the hollow claim that Israel is the “only democracy” in the Middle East simply by showing that oppressed and occupied Palestinians have no say in an election in which the main candidates have them in the firing line.

With the settlements in West Bank making it impossible to conceive of two states living side by side from a geographical yet alone political point of view, a bi-partisan single country where Israelis and all Palestinians have the vote must force itself on to the agenda sooner rather than later.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Demand the release of Khader Adnan!

“I am defending my dignity and my people’s dignity and not doing this in vain.” The words of 34-year-old Palestinian detainee Khader Adnan, who is close to death, tied to his bed in an Israeli hospital after more than 60 days on hunger strike.

Despite his physical weakness, Adnan is surrounded by prison warders, handcuffed and with a foot strapped to the bed. This brutal, inhuman treatment is meted out to Adnan by the Israeli state because he dares to challenge the arbitrary policy of administrative detention.

Over the years, thousands of Palestinians have been seized from their homes in the occupied territories and held without charge on the grounds that they could commit an offence in the future! Some of the regulations are inherited from the period of British mandate rule of Palestine.

In his letter, delivered by Jalal Abu Wasil, a lawyer from the Palestinian ministry of prisoners affairs who visited him in hospital, Adnan said: “The Israeli occupation has gone to extremes against our people, especially prisoners. I have been humiliated, beaten, and harassed by interrogators for no reason, and thus I swore to God I would fight the policy of administrative detention to which I and hundreds of my fellow prisoners fell prey,”

He called on the major powers and the United Nations to compel Israel to respect the human rights of prisoners. The predictable response to Adnan’s appeal has been silence. Silence from the White House. Silence from the Foreign Office in London. A few weasel words from the European Union.

Adnan, a mathematics graduate who runs a small bakery, was seized from his family home in a village outside the West Bank of Jenin in a 3a.m raid last December. It was not the first time the Israelis had detained him. Never charged with any offence, Adnan decided enough was enough and began his hunger strike soon after.

Inside Israel itself, the information centre B'Tselem, which campaigns against administrative detention, called on the government to either charge Adnan or release him. There was a sharp rise in administrative detention last year, from 219 in January to 307 in December. Seventeen Palestinians have been held continuously for two to four and a half years, and one man for over five years. B'Tselem says:

“The manner in which Israel uses administrative detention is patently illegal. Administrative detainees are not told the reason for their detention or the specific allegations against them. Although detainees are brought before a judge to approve the detention order, most of the material submitted by the prosecution is classified and not shown to the detainee or his attorney. Since the detainees do not know the evidence against them, they are unable to refute it. The detainees also do not know when they will be released: although the maximum period of administrative detention is six months, it can be renewed indefinitely.”

Such is the Kafka-style fate that awaits militant Palestinians who want nothing more than self-determination for their people. But that is denied them by a state suffused with Zionist, nationalist ideology that promotes ethnic exclusiveness to the detriment of “outsiders”. Such a state has no long-term viable, sustainable future because it is an historical anachronism.

Physicians for Human Rights in Israel issued a medical report supporting a petition to the Supreme Court for his release. A doctor said that even though Adnan had agreed to be treated with an infusion of liquids and salts, augmented by glucose and vitamins, he had refused to end his hunger strike and was in "immediate danger of death". Meanwhile, Randa Jihad Adnan, the pregnant mother of two young daughters aged four and one and half, says: "I know my husband. He will not change his mind. I expect him to die."

If that happens, the Israeli state will have yet more blood on its hands.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Obama's warning to Israel falls on deaf ears

President Obama’s latest speeches on Palestine, like his visit to Ireland and to London, are arousing a whole range of emotions and reactions.

Anti-war protesters will gather tomorrow outside Buckingham Palace against the three wars currently being fought by the United States under Obama’s leadership – Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

As the Stop the War Campaign points out, Israel continues to enjoy unflinching support from its US Big Brother – large scale arms sales, aid and political support.

But simply to note this would be to miss out on new realities unleashed by the revolutions of the Arab Spring and its effects on the struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination.

Thousands took part in the May marches throughout the Occupied Territories to mark the Nabka, "catastrophe" in Arabic, that refers to the destruction of Palestinian villages and expulsion of their residents that accompanied Israel's declaration of independence.

Israeli border police troops fired on protesters in an attack which drew international condemnation. Despite 11 fatalities and scores of injuries, Palestinians are continuing to prepare a large-scale march for June 5.

This, combined with the demand for statehood which the Palestinians are taking to the United Nations in September, is the tumultuous background to Obama’s call on Israel to “make the hard choices”.

After meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama refused to back down from his insistence that peace negotiations must focus on Israel’s pre-1967 war borders.

While this is not a new position for US presidents, with Obama proposing “mutually agreed land swaps” in support of a two-state solution, it has nonetheless aroused fury in the Zionist camp.

A US official described Netanyahu’s arrogant, hostile response to Obama as “over the top” while in the United States itself, Zionists and the Republican right have launched a ferocious tirade. Some, suggested one website, consider Obama a “pro-Palestinian Marxist, Islamophile, anti-white bigot, anti-American Marxist and a tyrant in the making”.

While Obama is desperately trying to adapt to the Arab Spring, at the same time fearing its consequence in countries like Syria where he wants Assad to lead changes rather than go, his reference to pre-1967 borders is already looking decidedly shaky.

Palestinian leaders from Hamas and Fatah do not themselves agree on the proposal to return to the 1967 borders. And they currently face a boycott against their monopoly of politics by eight Palestinian groups affiliated to the PLO who have withdrawn from the negotiations to form the unity government recently agreed in Cairo.

The head of Fatah’s press office, Issam al-Halabi has rightly noted: “Politicians are following the people. They don’t have much say, the people are doing everything and this is a turning point in the Palestinian struggle to return, which has recently surprised everyone.” Palestinian negotiators should take advantage of these popular movements to “back up their stance during negotiations”, he believes.

Two things need to be said. One is that Netanyahu’s immediate rejection of Obama’s reference to pre-1967 borders killed off negotiations before they began. Secondly, exploiting the sacrifices of Palestinian youth in Gaza, the Golan Heights and throughout the Occupied Territories as a negotiating ploy is quite treacherous and cynical.

When Obama told the AIPAC that “we cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades to achieve peace” because the world “is moving too fast”, he was actually keenly aware of the truth.

He was, in effect, warning the Israeli ruling class that its days – similar to the position that the apartheid regime in South Africa found itself in - are numbered. The renewed Palestinian uprisings, like the incredibly courageous movements in Syria and Yemen, are part of a global movement against the status quo. It is mobilising countless youth from Tunis to Tahrir and now in the Spanish May 15 occupation movement. It is impossible to imagine this process succeeding without an independent Palestinian state.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

The Palestinian street has spoken

Perhaps the most serious evidence that the reconciliation agreement signed last week in Cairo by Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian organisations, upsets the global status quo is the chorus of denunciation by Israeli leaders.

The Arab spring – from Tunisia to Egypt – has inspired and driven on young Palestinians themselves and the speed of events has surprised everyone. And since Fatah and Hamas signed the deal, which was endorsed by 11 smaller Palestinian groups and brokered by Egypt’s new government, Israeli leaders from Prime Minister Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and opposition leader Tzipi Livni have all expressed their hostility.

The outbursts from Israel politicians and intelligence agencies, who have worked might and main to divide and rule, are backed up by the withholding of $89 million worth of tax revenues which the Palestine Authority needs to pay 170,000 civil servants and their dependents. This is an illegal act to undermine unity and economically starve the Palestinians, which even the ever-so-tame United Nations general secretary Ban ki-Moon has criticised.

Israeli leaders are terrified that the reconciliation deal that follows years of bitter conflict between Fatah and Hamas – one controlling the West Bank and Hamas the Gaza Strip – will gather momentum for a sense of real Palestinian unity and strength.

Their anger is in sharp contrast to the jubilant feeling in Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied territories and in places like the Ain al-Hilweh camp, the largest in Lebanon, where Fatah and Hamas flags fluttered together and people celebrated over the weekend.

The cessation of hostilities between Fatah and Hamas goes some way towards realising – at least on paper - the demands raised by thousands of Palestinian youth in the March 15 Movement. Two months ago, Palestinian youth under occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank - who make up over 65% of the population there –as well as those living as second class citizens in Israel, took to the streets with 20 of them going on hunger strike. Via Facebook and other means, they issued a call to the governments of the West Bank and Gaza, demanding:

• the release of all political prisoners in the prisons of the Palestine Authority and Hamas
• an end to attacks by one organisation on the other
• the resignation of the governments of Haniyeh and Fayyad to re-build a government of national unity agreed by all Palestinian factions representing the Palestinian people
• the restructuring of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to contain all Palestinian factions and get back to its initial aim: Palestine’s freedom from illegal occupation
• the end of all forms of security co-ordination with Israeli occupation forces.

This new generation seeks national unity independently of political factions. Students and school children on the protest, said they were inspired by movements in other parts of the Arab world to initiate a political movement that would go on until unity was reached.

But as night fell, armed groups in civilian clothes were backed up by the Hamas authorities who then sent in the police. The peaceful youth and many women, journalists and photographers were beaten with sticks and clubs, facts backed up by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

Nevertheless, their discredited leaders have been forced to respond to their “street”. And the Palestinian street, is, as rights campaigner Noura Erakat Erakat has noted, a global one. Perhaps the most significant factor, however, is the ongoing Egyptian revolution. The overthrown Mubarak dictatorship worked with the Israeli regime to turn Gaza into the world’s biggest prison camp. Now Egypt is preparing to open the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, which the Israelis have said they won’t allow.

Many Palestinians interviewed on the streets of Gaza after the deal was signed, are keenly aware that the reconciliation has been made out of a position of weakness by both Hamas and Fatah. Neither the pursuance of a two-state “solution” by Fatah, nor the militant Islam demonization of all Jews by Hamas, has paid dividends. A secular, one-state approach is required. For that to succeed, new leaders will have to come forward.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary