Students for Palestine

A very interesting and informative article by Uri Avnery, 29.03.08

“Death to the Arabs!”

TOMORROW WILL BE the 32nd anniversary of the first “Day of the Land” - one of the defining events in the history of Israel.

I remember the day well. I was at Ben Gurion airport, on the way to a secret meeting in London with Said Hamami, Yasser Arafat’s emissary, when someone told me: “They have killed a lot of Arab protestors!”

That was not entirely unexpected. A few days before, we - members of the newly formed Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace - had handed the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, an urgent memorandum warning him that the government’s intention of expropriating huge chunks of land from Arab villages would cause an explosion. We included a proposal for an alternative solution, worked out by Lova Eliav, a veteran expert on settlements.

When I returned from abroad, the poet Yevi suggested that we make a symbolic gesture of sorrow and regret for the killings. Three of us - Yevi himself, the painter Dan Kedar and I - laid wreaths on the graves of the victims. This aroused a wave of hatred against us. I felt that something profoundly significant had happened, that the relationship between Jews and Arabs within the state had changed fundamentally.

And indeed, the impact of the Day of the Land - as the event was called - was stronger than even the Kafr Kassem massacre of 1956 or the October Events killings of 2000.

THE REASONS for this go back to the early days of the state.

After the 1948 war, only a small, weak and frightened Arab community was left in the state. Not only had about 750 thousand Arabs been uprooted from the territory that had become the State of Israel, but those who remained were leaderless. The political, intellectual and economic elites had vanished, most of them right at the beginning of the war. The vacuum was somehow filled by the Communist Party, whose leaders had been allowed to return from abroad - mainly in order to please Stalin, who at the time supported Israel.

After an internal debate, the leaders of the new state decided to accord the Arabs in the “Jewish State” citizenship and the right to vote. That was not self-evident. But the government wanted to appear before the world as a democratic state. In my opinion, the main reason was party political: David Ben-Gurion believed that he could coerce the Arabs to vote for his own party.

And indeed: the great majority of the Arab citizens voted for the Labor Party (then called Mapai) and its two Arab satellite parties which had been set up for that very purpose. They had no choice: they were living in a state of fear, under the watchful eyes of the Security Service (then called Shin Bet). Every Arab Hamulah (extended family) was told exactly how to vote, either for Mapai or one of the two subsidiaries. Since every election list has two different ballot papers, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic, there were six possibilities for faithful Arabs in every polling station, and it was easy for the Shin Bet to make sure that each Hamula voted exactly as instructed. More than once did Ben Gurion achieve a majority in the Knesset only with the help of these captive votes.

For the sake of “security” (in both senses) the Arabs were subjected to a “military government”. Every detail of their lives depended on it. They needed a permit to leave their village and go to town or the next village. Without the permission of the military government they could not buy a tractor, send a daughter to the teachers’ college, get a job for a son, obtain an import license. Under the authority of the military government and a whole series of laws, huge chunks of land were expropriated for Jewish towns and kibbutzim.

A story engraved in my memory: my late friend, the poet Rashed Hussein from Musmus village, was summoned to the military governor in Netanya, who told him: Independence Day is approaching and I want you to write a nice poem for the occasion. Rashed, a proud youngster, refused. When he came home, he found his whole family sitting on the floor and weeping. At first he thought that somebody had died, but then his mother cried out: “You have destroyed us! We are finished!” So the poem was written.

Every independent Arab political initiative was choked at birth. The first such group - the nationalist al-Ard (”the land”) group - was rigorously suppressed. It was outlawed, its leaders exiled, its paper proscribed - all with the blessing of the Supreme Court. Only the Communist Party was left intact, but its leaders were also persecuted from time to time.

The military government was dismantled only in 1966, after Ben Gurion’s exit from power and a short time after my election to the Knesset. After demonstrating against it so many times, I had the pleasure of voting for its abolition. But in practice very little changed - instead of the official military government an unofficial one remained, as did most of the discrimination.

“THE DAY OF THE LAND” changed the situation. A second generation of Arabs had grown up in Israel, no longer timidly submissive, a generation that had not experienced the mass expulsions and whose economic position had improved. The order given to the soldiers and policemen to open fire on them caused a shock. Thus a new chapter started.

The percentage of Arab citizens in the state has not changed: from the first days of the state to now, it had hovered around 20%. The much higher natural rate of increase of the Muslim community was balanced by Jewish immigration. But the numbers have grown significantly: from 200 thousand at the beginning of the state to almost 1.3 million - twice the size of the Jewish community that founded the state.

The Day of the Land also dramatically changed the attitude of the Arab world and the Palestinian people towards the Arabs in Israel. Until then, they were considered traitors, collaborators of the “Zionist entity”. I remember a scene from the 1965 meeting convened in Firenze by the legendary mayor, Giorgio la Pira, who tried to bring together personalities from Israel and the Arab world. At the time, that was considered a very bold undertaking.

During one of the intermissions, I was chatting with a senior Egyptian diplomat in a sunny piazza outside the conference site, when two young Arabs from Israel, who had heard about the conference, approached us. After embracing, I introduced them to the Egyptian, but he turned his back and exclaimed: “I am ready to talk with you, but not with these traitors!”

The bloody events of the Day of the Land brought the “Israeli Arabs” back into the fold of the Arab nation and the Palestinian people, who now call them “the 1948 Arabs”.

In October 2000, policemen again shot and killed Arab citizens, when they tried to express their solidarity with Arabs killed at the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem. But in the meantime, a third generation of Arabs had grown up in Israel, many of whom, in spite of all the obstacles, had attended universities and become business people, politicians, professors, lawyers and physicians. It is impossible to ignore this community - even if the state tries very hard to do just that.

From time to time, complaints about discrimination are voiced, but everybody shrinks back from the fundamental question: What is the status of the Arab minority growing up in a state that defines itself officially as “Jewish and democratic”?

ONE LEADER of the Arab community, the late Knesset member Abd-al-Aziz Zuabi, defined his dilemma this way: “My state is at war with my people”. The Arab citizens belong both to the State of Israel and to the Palestinian people.

Their belonging to the Palestinian people is self-evident. The Arab citizens of Israel, who lately tend to call themselves “Palestinians in Israel”, are only one part of the stricken Palestinian people, which consists of many branches: the inhabitants of the occupied territories (now themselves split between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), the Arabs in East Jerusalem (officially “residents” but not “citizens” of Israel), and the refugees living in many different countries, each with its own particular regime. All these branches have a strong feeling of belonging together, but the consciousness of each is shaped by its own particular situation.

How strong is the Palestinian component in the consciousness of the Arab citizens of Israel? How can it be measured? Palestinians in the occupied territories often complain that it expresses itself mainly in words, not deeds. The support given by the Arab citizens in Israel to the Palestinian struggle for liberation is mainly symbolic. Here and there a citizen is arrested for helping a suicide bomber, but these are rare exceptions.

When the extreme Arab-hater Avigdor Liberman proposed that a string of Arab villages in Israel adjoining the Green Line (called “the Triangle”) be turned over to the future Palestinian state in return for the Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank, not a single Arab voice was raised in support. That is a very significant fact.

The Arab community is much more rooted in Israel than appears at first sight. The Arabs play an important part in the Israeli economy, they work in the state, pay taxes to the state. They enjoy the benefits of social security - by right, since they pay for it. Their standard of living is much higher than that of their Palestinian brethren in the occupied territories and beyond. They participate in Israeli democracy and have no desire at all to live under regimes like those of Egypt and Jordan. They have serious and justified complaints - but they live in Israel und will continue to do so.

IN RECENT YEARS, intellectuals of the third Arab generation in Israel have published several proposals for the normalization of the relations between the majority and the minority.

There exist, in principle, two main alternatives:

The first way says: Israel is a Jewish state, but a second people also live here. If Jewish Israelis have defined national rights, Arab Israelis must also have defined national rights. For example, educational, cultural and religious autonomy (as the young Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky demanded a hundred years ago for the Jews in Czarist Russia). They must be allowed to have free and open connections with the Arab world and the Palestinian people, like the connections Jewish citizens have with the Jewish Diaspora. All this must be spelled out in the future constitution of the state.

The second way says: Israel belongs to all its citizens, and only to them. Every citizen is an Israeli, much as every US citizen is an American. As far as the state is concerned, there is no difference between one citizen and another, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, Arab or Russian, much as, from the point of view of the American state, there is no difference between white, brown or black citizens, whether of European, African or Asian descent, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. In Israeli parlance, this is called “a state of all its citizens”.

It goes without saying that I favor the second alternative, but I am ready to accept the first. Either of them is preferable to the existing situation, where the state pretends that there is no problem except some traces of discrimination that have to be overcome (without doing anything about it).

If the courage is lacking to treat a wound, it will fester. At football matches, the riffraff shout: “Death-to-the-Arabs!” and in the Knesset far right deputies threaten to expel Arab members from the House, and from the state altogether.

On the 32nd anniversary of the Day of the Land, with the 60th Independence Day approaching, it is time to take this bull by the horns.

from Yesh Din’s website

Following a lengthy study of the implementation of Due Process rights in the IDF Military Courts in the West Bank, Yesh Din published its comprehensive report entitled “Backyard Proceedings.”
The military justice system in the Occupied Territories tries thousands of Palestinian civilians prosecuted by the Israel Defense Forces every year. The Military Courts, which have existed for four decades, operate virtually under complete darkness. The report, “Backyard Proceedings,” provides the Israeli and international public, for the first time in more than 15 years, with information about a system that serves as a cornerstone of Israeli rule in the West Bank. The report examines the degree to which this system upholds and implements the due process rights of Palestinian detainees and defendants brought before the Military Courts. The report evaluates, among other things, the realization of a defendant’s right to know the charges against him, to prepare an effective defense, and to enjoy the presumption of innocence. The report further assesses how the principle of a public trial is applied in the Military Courts, how minors are adjudicated in the system and other related subjects. Additionally, the report examines whether the Security Legislation applying to the Occupied Territories meets the requirements of international law regarding due process rights. Through hundreds of observations, the report provides findings about the proceedings in the courtrooms.

The findings of the research described in the report reveal a series of grave defects and lapses in the implementation of due process rights in the Military Courts. On the basis of those findings Yesh Din offers recommendations for reforming legislation and policies.

Download the report’s summary (PDF) Download the full report (PDF)

Established in March 2005, Yesh Din is comprised of volunteers who have organized to oppose the continuing violation of Palestinian human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel Gaza Update 11.3.08

Access-related deaths of patients referred to medical care outside Gaza are hard to estimate statistically. Since several factors are involved, it is very difficult to define how far the delay or denial of a permit has influenced the final outcome in each case. However, there is no doubt that every delay lessens the patient’s chances of recovery, and denies her or him the right to the best available medical care. The fact that, in Gaza, the delay has nothing to do with medical constraints of any kind, but with external reasons, makes the violation all the more serious and raises questions regarding the definition of the term “security” in the Israeli GSS lexicon. For the individual patient, the difference between receiving a permit and receiving a rejection, or no answer at all, may be the difference between life and death.

An additional constraint is the fact that many patients in Gaza, knowing the current situation at the crossings, prefer to forego the hopeless process, and die at home, their stories untold and their voices unheard.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has therefore chosen to tell the stories of the deaths of three women and one baby girl, as told by their families. The stories give a small glimpse of the Kafkaesque process, in which the suffering of sickness and the cruelty of a hostile bureaucracy combine to embitter the last days of these people’s lives.

Khadija Al-Aqed, 65 years old, suffered from heart disease, and had a pacemaker implanted in her body in the 1990’s at Beilinson hospital in Israel. In December 2007 the pacemaker stopped working and she was referred urgently to Al Urdun Hospital in Amman, Jordan for surgery. On the 21st of January the family submitted a request for an exit permit to Jordan, via Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing. The Palestinian medical referrals department relayed the request to the Israeli authorities at Erez. Despite the urgency, a response was only received on the 30th of January: Mrs. Al Aqed was denied an exit permit for “security reasons”. On the 10th of February, Mrs. Al Aqed died of cardiac arrest.

Fatmeh Mahdi, 77 years old, was diagnosed with a cancer in her neck in June 2007 at Shifaa’ Hospital in Gaza. In early July she exited Gaza and underwent a series of tests at Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel, after which she was told she must return for surgery and commence chemotherapy and radiotherapy in August 2007. From August she repeatedly tried to re-enter Israel for medical care without success. Despite five consecutive requests submitted to the Erez Crossing, no response was received. Mrs. Mahdi’s condition deteriorated. All that her doctors could do was administer painkillers. On the 11th of February 2008, Mrs. Mahdi died due to the spreading of the cancer throughout her body.

Bayyan Abu Hilu, one year old, was born in Al Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. Her parents had previously lost two other children due to a genetic liver disease at an early age. Two months after she was born, Bayyan was diagnosed with a similar genetic condition. In November 2007 she entered Israel with her parents for treatment in the hematology department in Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem (west), and started lifesaving care. After the first stage of treatment, the doctors asked that she return as soon as possible for continuation of care. However, when the family applied a second time for exit permits, the Palestinian medical referrals department told them that the request of the parents had been rejected by the GSS for “security reasons”, and that an alternative companion for the child must be found. Since they had missed their appointment, the family applied to PHR-Israel in January to ask for help with renewal of an appointment at the Israeli hospital. The new appointment was set for 5.3.08 and Bayyan’s father applied again to the Palestinian medical referrals department to relay the request for the permit to Erez Crossing. However, before a response was received, Bayyan died in Gaza, on the 2nd of March 2008.

Fatmeh Al-Ladawi, 45 years old, was a mother of ten children. In September 2007 she was diagnosed at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, as suffering from injury to her spleen, with internal bleeding and infection, following trauma. Fatmeh was referred by the Palestinian Ministry of Health to Al Takhassusi hospital in Nablus, West Bank, for surgery.

In late September 2007 Fatmeh was permitted by the Israeli authorities at Erez Crossing to enter Nablus. However, the necessary care was not available there, and she was sent back home for re-referral. Fatmeh’s condition deteriorated while she waited for a correct referral to a medical center, which was delayed for two and half months. In late 2007 Fatmeh finally received a referral to Maqassed hospital in East Jerusalem, but she was not permitted to exit Gaza due to the closing of the Crossing on the scheduled day of her exit. When the Crossing re-opened, Fatmeh submitted a new request for a permit to go to East Jerusalem. However, this time, the GSS (Israeli secret police) refused to allow her husband to accompany her. She was asked to submit a new request, with a different companion. Only after five days was she allowed to exit Gaza to East Jerusalem with another companion. However, in Maqassed hospital she was told again that the necessary treatment was lacking, and Fatmeh was returned to Gaza after two days. Upon her return, she was led to an interrogation chamber in a basement beneath Erez Crossing, where she was interrogated by the GSS for five hours. Fatmeh was next referred to Ma’hed Nasser hospital in Cairo, but once again encountered obstacles, when the GSS refused to allow her brother-in-law to accompany her to her medical care. Her condition continued to deteriorate. In January 2008 Fatmeh was finally referred to Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv. However, this time the visit of US President George Bush to the region stopped her from leaving, since Erez Crossing was closed throughout the visit, from the 9th to the 12th of January 2008. Only on the 20th of January was she informed that a permit had been issued her, and she arrived at Erez Crossing on a wheelchair, suffering from difficulties in breathing. She was once again led to a GSS interrogation, which lasted several hours. Her interrogators asked her to prove that the purpose of her exit was medical and not other. At the end of the interrogation, and after a total delay of 10 hours, she was allowed to go to the hospital. She was admitted to the hospital in the evening, but it was too late: On the next day, 21st of January, Fatmeh died in Ichilov hospital, Tel Aviv.

Security - personal security - is a universal right, and may not be used as a slogan to justify human rights violations. Universal security for all the people living in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory can only be achieved through political means, by ending occupation and all other forms of oppression in our region.

For further details, please contact Ran Yaron ranyaron@phr.org.il Tel: +972 547577696 or Miri Weingarten, miri@phr.org.il , or +972 546 995199

*END*

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is a non-party-affiliated, non-profit foundation, whose goal is the advancement and defense of health-related human rights for all the residents of Israel and the occupied territories. This includes residents who are undocumented or who are not recognized by the state.

On Thursday 5th March, The University College London Students’ Union (UCLU) voted overwhelmingly to twin UCL Union with the Unions of Al-Quds and Al-Azhar Secular Universities in the West Bank and Gaza respectively with immediate effect. Furthermore, the Union voted to establish an educational exchange programme between UCL students and students from the Palestinian universities, and finally “To reiterate the UCLU Friends of Palestine society’s right to raise issues that concern the student body, criticise the GOI [Government of Israel] and its policies, as well as highlight atrocities that contravene International Humanitarian law and not be treated unlike other societies for doing such.”

In a maximum capacity lecture theatre of 325, people packed in, spilling over into the stairs, to hear the debate of various topical and constructive motions at the best attended UCLU Annual General Meeting since 2003.

Before the meeting the chances of passing the motion seemed very slim. Not only does UCL have one of the largest and most active pro-Zionist Jewish societies in the country, but also just before the meeting, a hostile amendment was received asking the Union’s students to twin with the Israeli Hebrew University in Jerusalem (and remove twinning with Al-Azhar Secular University in Gaza) also. The speaker for the hostile amendment appealed to the objectivity of sources such as ‘The Harvard Israel Review’ and ‘The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ over ‘United Nations’ organs including ‘The International Court of Justice’ in the original motion submitted and suggested the former reflected “the reality as it is today” better.

This is not to mention recent attacks on the UCLU Friends of Palestine society (FPS). The Union Media and Communications Officer as well as members of The UCLU Jewish Society had slandered the FPS for “inciting racial hatred” following a recent exhibition entitled “Jerusalem Dispossessed”. The exhibition documented “the dispossession of indigenous Palestinians from their native city, Jerusalem, amid rapid expansion of Israeli settlements, the separation wall and home demolitions”. It was provided by ICAHD: The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ (ICAHD) Action Advocacy Project and funded by Irish Aid, The Austrian Development Agency and The Netherlands Representative Office; of course a typical basis for breeding of “terrorism” if there ever was one.

The attack was constructed in the form of a sudden article in the Jerusalem Post entitled ‘London students slam anti-Israel exhibition’. In the article Johnny Paul, who incidentally manages to balance his position as objective “London correspondent” with being President of SOAS Israel Society, made false accusations against the UCLU FPS. Neither the UCLU JSoc, UCLU Media and Communications Officer nor J.Paul bothered to consult the society for their side of the story before publishing the piece. If they had they would have discovered that contrary to claims otherwise, the UCLU FPS had got permission for the exhibition (even though it was not required since the exhibition was not on UCL Union property), as confirmed by the Services and Events Officer of UCL Union. This has led to the Jerusalem Post being forced to accept publication of a response from ICAHD’s Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, herself a Jewish Israeli, who comments that “Any negotiation taking place while borders are aggressively being determined according to one side’s interests is an illusion. Without real freedom and respect of the other’s right to live in dignity, there is no basis for political negotiation.”

Although the meeting opened late, once it was the motion was passed swiftly. Thanks to a superb turnout from various sympathetic societies, those that have so often successfully disrupted such meetings on technicalities such as quorum counts were forced to retort to the farcical in order to desperately claw back votes. This was manifested clearly in the absurd claim that the motion aimed to present conscripted members of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) as “evil” for some anti-semitic end- the claim presumably a desperate attempt to vote-grab from potential soldiers-to-be there to oppose another motion to ban recruitment of the Officer Training Corp (part of ‘The Territorial Army’).

The President of the UCLU Friends of Palestine said that the passing of the motion “was an important and constructive step which allows UCL students to get first hand experience and knowledge of the reality on the ground in Palestine in a climate marred by fictitious propaganda” and encouraged “other universities to follow suit”. He also commented that it is important to note that this motion is not out to demonise Israelis or Jews but rather to place emphasis on the impact of Israeli occupation upon ordinary Palestinians and bring that to the attention of UCL students, and the motion should not be taken as part of a package, related to the other motions such as on banning OTC from campus- which is completely unrelated.

- To contact the UCLU Friends of Palestine email uczxfpc@ucl.ac.uk

- The motions and amendments can be viewed at:

http://www.uclunion.org/student-union/noticeboard/index.php
see ‘second ammendment to motion on palestine’, ‘Amendment to the “Emergency Motion on Occupied Palestinian Territories”’ and ‘Emergency motion to AGM On Occupied Palestine’