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ISRAEL
IMPERIAL NEWS
Michelin Guides have recently filed suite against Israeli expat satirist Shimon Tzabar, publisher of a pamphlet titled 'MUCH BETTER THAN THE OFFICIAL Michelin Guide to Israeli Prisons, Jails, Concentration Camps, and Torture Chambers'. Below is an excerpt from the guide, followed by Tzabar's defense submitted to the British Hight Court on 19th July 2004 Excerpt: The Guide
(pp. 6-11): Usually, it is through newspapers
that history unfolds before our eyes. In the case of Israel however,
we cannot trust newspapers. They mix everything up and make us confused.
We cannot distinguish any more between anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism,
and anti-Israeli government policy. The only way to know the truth
is to go there in person and see with our own eyes and watch history,
true history, in the making. Of course, it is easy to commit a crime and be arrested, but we can't recommend such an ungraceful solution, especially since being arrested as a criminal may land you in the wrong jail. So, you have to do something political. You can demonstrate against the mistreating of Palestinians or try to stop bulldozers demolishing their homes or even try to save children from being shot. But this carries with it another danger. Instead of being arrested you may be shot yourself, or buried alive by the bulldozer. This is not a hypothetical suggestion because it has already happened to a few English and American people. We must admit that there is no 100% safe way to be arrested. Watching history in the making, especially in Israel, carries some risk with it, but we will try to help make that risk as small as possible. The safest way to be arrested, although this also carries a risk with it, is to look like a Palestinian Arab. This can easily be achieved by putting on some Arab garb, such as, for example, an Arab head dress or a kafiyeh, as it is commonly known. Once you look like a Palestinian you have a good chance of being arrested. Your chance is actually so good, that you don't have to do anything in particular. You can be arrested for anything, even for smiling (in the wrong place or at the wrong person!) Once you have been arrested, don't talk or answer questions. Don't open your mouth even if you do understand what is being said. We would especially stress that whatever happens, never protest because if you do it in any other language apart from Arabic (in the correct accent), you might be released at once or worse still, you could be expelled from the country. There is also another and much more important reason not to open your mouth. This is especially important if you want to observe what Israelis are capable of and are actually inflicting on the Palestinians. If you don't talk, they will assume that you know and have something to hide, so they will employ physical and psychological means to make you talk. They will start by beating you up. There are different methods of beating. One of them for example is known as the 'bending method'. After they have handcuffed your hands with plastic wire behind your back, and seated you on a small chair without a back support, two people will hit you: one, sitting in front of you, will push your chest with his left hand and, at the same time,will slap your chin with the palm of his right hand, while the other person, just standing behind you, will hold your head with his left hand, and box your left arm with his right fist. We go into these details so that you will know what to expect. Other methods of first stage torture include the 'tripping game'. While your eyes are covered and you can't see, you will be given the command to go forward. The moment you move, a soldier will trip you with his boot. These are mere examples but there are a lot more surprises once you are in the hands of the Shabak, the Israeli army police. You may rightly ask how we know all this. Is it from personal experience? The answer is no. We copied this information from a booklet by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel which was published in Jerusalem, in April 2003. You can order this booklet yourself, by writing to: Public Committee Against Torture in Israel / PO Box 4634 / Jerusalem 91046 / ISRAEL. Here is one concrete example of a torture case, as published on December 12th 2003 by the Organisation Mondiale Contre la Torture (Case ISR101203.CC): "According to the information received, at around 2 pm on April 24th 2003, a 16-year-old Mejad Abdalatif Fatah Sabach was arrested by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers near Kfar Geva/Jenin (see Map 1, pp. 12/13 of the Guide). He was in a taxi on the way to school. The soldiers handcuffed him, stripped him of his clothes down to his underpants and hit him all over his body, including the head. They reportedly subsequently tightened his handcuffs so much that the marks were still visible, two and a half months later, when he submitted his complaint. "While they were transporting him blindfolded to the prison facility at Araba, the soldiers beat him again. When they arrived, they threw him into the camp with his hands and feet tightly handcuffed. [Editors Note: It turns out that Araba is not a prison as such, but in fact a small Palestinian village south-west of Jenin which is occupied by a whole brigade of Israeli soldiers, called Hativat Menashe]. He was left that way until 10 pm, without receiving any food or drink. He was then transferred to the Salem detention facility (see Map 9, pp. 28/29 of the Guide). On arrival, four soldiers, using the butts of their rifles and sticks, beat him on the head, face, in the stomach and on the legs until he bled. This lasted until 2 am. "Mejad was subsequently taken to the Kishon detention center (see Map 2, pp. 14/15 of the Guide), where he was questioned for three hours while seated on a small chair, with his hands and feet handcuffed and his body bent backwards. After this, he was put in solitary confinement for a week. During this time he was interrogated twice, once for 6 hours and once for 3 hours. "He was then taken to Megido Prison (see Map 9, pp. 28/29 of the Guide). After having been held there for 15 days in a tent with 20 other prisoners, he was sent back to the Kishon Detention center for another week in solitary confinement. On the 7th day of detention there, he was taken for interrogation which lasted from 10 am to 5 pm. "During this interrogation, Mejad was placed in a painful position, his back stretched backwards, with his interrogator kicking him in the legs. The following day, he was again interrogated for three hours, seated in the same position. The many kicks that he received made it difficult for for him to stand. After this interrogation, he was taken back to his cell, where he remained until June 20th 2003, when he was taken to the Hasharon Prison. There could be some confusion here because there are 2 prisons called Hasharon. One is situated on Road 553, near Tel-Mond, (see Map 4, pp. 18/19 of the Guide) which belongs to the Prison Service, and the other belongs to the Police and is near Petach-Tikwa (see Map 5, pp. 20/21 of the Guide), where he is still being held". On top of physical torture one can also expect
psychological torture. Since psychological torture involves vocals,
and is executed in Hebrew or in Arabic, those who don't know these
languages will not understand a word and, therefore, have nothing
to fear. Defense submitted to the British Hight Court on 19th July 2004 Letter submitted to the British High Court, Chancery
Division, in London, in response to a suite by famed international
publishing house Michelin, against the 'MUCH BETTER THAN
THE OFFICIAL Michelin Guide to Israeli Prisons, Jails, Concentration
Camps, and Torture Chambers': I assume that what the claimants are objecting to, is not the pamphlet itself but the cover of that pamphlet. That cover, which was printed separately and added to the pamphlet later on, is in the same spirit of satire as the text is. I chose the subject of the satire on the front page to be that of the famous Michelin guide. However, I made it clear that it is not a real Michelin guide. I made this clear by printing, on the cover, in bold letters, the title which is: "MUCH BETTER THAN THE OFFICIAL Michelin guide" if it is better, it cannot be a Michelin guide. This must be clear to everyone. In addition, I printed on the spine: "THE TOURIST GUIDE THAT NEVER WAS. These additions are clear evidence that it is not a genuine Michelin guide but a spoof. The idea came to me from the Campbell Soup silk-screen print, by the artist Andy Warhol. He took a commercial logo and made an art object out of it. Since I am also an artist I thought that I can create something in the same spirit. 3. The accusation that I have caused damages to Michelin is not true I have already explained in paragraph (1), why my publication could not have caused financial damage to the claimant. As for damage to reputation, I must say that the way I used the name of Michelin in the cover of the spoof, could only add to their reputation, not to damage it. I used their name to make the international public aware that Israel is trying to eliminate the Palestinians. I tried to prevent a holocaust. I am sure that Michelin, as a company that employs many people, supports humanitarian causes but as a commercial company they cannot express it. 4. Michelin has given me a tacit permission to distribute it In spite of all that, I still wanted to make sure that Michelin did not object to the spoof. Being a French company, I was sure that they would know what satire is and would have enough sense of humor to tolerate a spoof based on one of their products, especially for such an humanitarian cause. To make sure that they did not object, I made one copy of this cover, enveloped a pamphlet with it and sent it to Michelin with a note of my address stacked among the pages. Since I did not receive any response from them for over three weeks, objecting to what I had done, I was sure that they did not mind. So, I enveloped all the pamphlets with this cover and started to distribute them among my friends. Allow me to end my defense by quoting a short poem written by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: You will ask: where are the lilacs oznik.comment: A note found among the pages says: "We asked for permission to translate Checkpoint Syndrome from Hebrew into English but it was denied. Since we think the book is of great importance, we have decided to translate and publish it without permission. The Editors."]
How many of us can imagine the night of horror that the Salah family endured? To lie on the floor of the living room for what seemed an eternity, embracing as one being, trembling with fear as the house was blasted with bullets and missiles; to watch the sniper's laser ray doing its dance of death across the apartment, searching out its victims; to see the missiles slamming into the walls of the house, missile after missile, as though an earthquake had struck; to get to their feet in the dark following the order to evacuate the building before it was demolished; to try to open the front door and discover that it had been twisted out of shape by the gunfire and couldn't be opened; to open a window and try to shout to the snipers, in the dark of the night, that the door was jammed; to see the father of the family collapse from a bullet fired into his neck by a sniper; to see the son collapse a few minutes later from a bullet in his cheek fired by a sniper; to watch, helpless, as your son lies on the floor, the life ebbing out of him, next to his dead father, and to cry for help, but to find that the soldiers will not allow anyone to enter; then to undergo an interrogation and humiliation; and to discover that the entire contents of the house had been destroyed. That was the night of horror of the Salah family: the father, Prof. Khaled Salah, 51 at his death, founder of the Department of Electrical Engineering at An-Najah University in Nablus; his wife, Salam, and their three children, Diana, 23, Mohammed, 16, and Ali, 11, all of whom were at home that night. Fortunately for the firstborn, Amer, he was in Boston, where he is an engineering student. It was a night of horror on which the father, possessor of a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, and a member of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Committee at An-Najah, was killed, along with his son, Mohammed, a boy who loved soccer and dreamed of becoming a pharmacist, who lay dying on the floor for lack of medical treatment, which the soldiers denied him. Maybe you saw them. Two years ago, during the Mondial (the World Cup of soccer), Channel 2 News correspondent Itai Engel broadcast a report of his impressions from a house in Nablus where he had watched the game between Brazil and Turkey as a guest of the Salah family. Engel was flabbergasted this week when told what had happened to the family that hosted him. The boy too? The boy, too. He said he had been charmed by them, by the father and his son, both of them avid soccer fans. When asked about the possibility of a game between Israel and Palestine, Khaled consulted with Mohammed and then replied, "We're better, but it'll be best if you win, because we'll be in for it if we beat you." They talked about peace and about soccer. Salam, the widow and bereaved mother, a survivor of that night, found it difficult this week to remember the television piece and her loved ones' remarks about peace. It's important for her that the Israelis know that Khaled was a man of peace. Between fits of crying, still in shock, it's important for her to tell the Israelis in detail what happened in the pre-dawn hours of July 6 in her home on Saka Street, in Nablus. Salam Salah got home from a wedding in the city a little before midnight. Only she and Diana had attended the family wedding. Mohammed stayed home with his father, watching television and waiting for the candies his mother would bring from the party. Mohammed was very fond of the white and pink wedding sweets stuffed with walnuts. No one could have imagined that those would be the last candies he would ever eat. Diana, who, like her brother Amer, was born in California - both are American citizens - holds a degree in business administration from An-Najah. She, too, was getting ready for her own wedding, a large-scale affair that was set for next month. They soon went to sleep. Mohammed was an anxiety-ridden boy. Born into the first intifada in the tough city of Nablus, reaching adolescence as the second intifada erupted, he was a habitual nail-biter. He sometimes got nosebleeds, when the tension in Nablus rose. Salam says it might have been because they overprotected the boy. At a quarter to two they woke up in a fright to the sound of a powerful blast. Salam and Khaled leaped out of bed and looked out the window of their bedroom. They saw nothing. From the window of Diana's room they spotted dark forms of soldiers surrounding the building. It was only from the kitchen window that the full picture became clear. "It's like hell," Khaled whispered to his wife. The whole area was swarming with snipers, tanks, helicopters and other army forces that had come to apprehend or liquidate wanted individuals who were probably hiding in the ground-floor apartment. Their building is situated high on Saka Street, wedged on the hillside, with Nablus spread out below. The residences in the building are spacious. Two neighbors are physicians, and Sami Aaker, the owner of a sewing factory that produces garments for Israeli fashion houses is another neighbor. Aaker's home now lies in ruins, like that of the Salah family. Khaled herded the children into the living room and they lay on the floor, folded into one another, five members of a family like one body. From time to time, another missile or shell hit the apartment and exploded, casting a lurid light, like fireworks. Occasionally searchlights or the snipers' red laser rays lit up the darkened living room. The electricity came and went. The door of the refrigerator, damaged along with everything else in the house, opened wide and the yellow light supplied a bit of illumination. Salam and Khaled called everyone they could think of on Mohammed's mobile phone, trying to find out what was happening. The shooting didn't stop for a second, and their home was being gradually destroyed. They called relatives, asking them to do something, fast. One relative called the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, but even the long arm of all-powerful America, whose nationals were in the besieged apartment, was of no avail. One missile had already slashed into the bedroom, another into the kitchen. Khaled's mobile phone rang in the bedroom, but no one could get to it. They cried, prayed, shouted, fell silent. And embraced one another. They had a Koran and they read verses from it in loud voices, so people would hear. "It was a nightmare. I will never recover from it. No horror movie I have seen can compare to it," says Salam, who wears black mourning clothes. Five missiles had already struck the house. Khaled tried to calm them: "It's only property damage, no one has been hurt." Salam says he was strong and knew no fear. They just didn't want him to move and risk being hurt. They heard the windows shattering, the water streaming from pipes that had burst and the perfumes flowing out of bottles that broke one after the other, their scents wafting through the apartment. From above they heard the sound of a helicopter. The battle for the house was at its height. "We phoned and phoned but everyone was helpless. It was war, and my feeling was that none of us would survive it." It went on that way for an hour and a quarter, until 3 A.M. When quiet fell, Salam shouted, "Please, please, we are a family of peace. My name is Salam, shalom." The quiet continued for a bit, and then the shooting resumed. Immediately afterward, the Israeli force ordered everyone to leave the building, because it was going to be blown up. The order was given through a loudspeaker, in Arabic. "Anyone who doesn't come out will have the building blown up with him inside," the soldiers threatened. Khaled got up first. "We're all right, everyone is all right," he whispered. He walked toward the corridor and turned on a light. Salam told the children to wait until he could see what was happening. But the shooting started again and Khaled hurried back to the living room. When the shooting died down he again made his way toward the front door and tried to open it. However, the door had been bent out of shape by the gunfire and the key didn't work. Unable to open the door, and taking seriously the soldiers' threat to blow up the house with them inside, Khaled went to the bedroom, opened the window, raised his hands and shouted to the soldiers, in English, "Sir, sir, we need help. Please come and open the door. I am a professor, we are people of peace. We have American passports." There was no response. Khaled tried again, this time in Arabic: "Help, help, we need help." A split second later, Salam heard three shots. Khaled fell silent. She would never hear his voice again. Inside the room, the terrifying red laser ray pranced across the walls. Salam crawled over to her husband and found him lying on the floor, between the bed and the window. At first she saw no blood, but he was no longer breathing. Then she saw the hole in his neck. "Diana, Diana," she screamed, "they have killed your father." Then she noticed Mohammed lying on the carpet next to Diana. "What happened, Diana?" she cried. Diana said nothing. Salam quickly moved her son, revealing his mouth. Blood was flowing from his mouth and his cheek was split open. She tried to stanch the blood coming out of his cheek using paper towels. At first, she says, she thought it was a superficial wound. The boy groaned. His eyes were wide open and he emitted strange noises. His eyes pleaded for help, but his mother had only the paper towels. She opened the screen window in the room and shouted hysterically to the soldiers, "You killed my husband and my son." She says she heard a soldier laugh. "Shut up, woman," the soldier commanded her, in Arabic. And again a red laser beam skitted around the room. "I will never understand how Mohammed was killed. Maybe one day I will know. Khaled raised his hands, so he was a convenient target for them. Him they killed in cold blood. They let him finish speaking and then they killed him. But how Mohammed was killed I don't understand. I shouted like a madwoman: `Help, my son is alive, we have to save him.' They laughed and told me to shut up. The soldier who was laughing was standing below, on the street. I sat on the floor and kept on shouting like a crazy person. I pounded on the door until my hands were injured. I don't know how those curses came out of me. I called for help, Diana and Ali were crying hysterically, and the soldiers threatened to blow up the building with us inside." Mohammed was still alive. Diana also shouted to the soldiers that they had two neighbors who are physicians, let them at least send over one of them or let an ambulance get through. Salam says that every time their shouting rose in pitch the soldiers threatened to shoot them unless they shut up. Finally the soldiers said they would send someone. They sent a human shield, using the outlawed "neighbor procedure," in this case the neighbors' 15-year-old son. The lean boy pushed the door from outside, Salam pulled from inside, and at last the door opened. "We went out in our pajamas with our hands raised," said Salam. "The soldiers spoke to us humiliatingly. I shouted that my son and my husband are killed and they laughed at us, imitating my shouts. They took us to the neighbors' apartment. Diana asked where she should sit and a soldier said, sit on your bottom. When I asked to see the commanding officer, they laughed at me. When I said I wanted to be with Mohammed they imitated me. This is the most criminal and most cruel army in the world. It was murder in the first degree." At 6:15 A.M., four and a half hours after the attack began, the soldiers allowed a Palestinian ambulance to drive up to the building. The father and the son were dead. Salam was taken for interrogation by "Captain Razel" from the Shin Bet security service, who questioned her about the wanted men who had hidden in the apartment below. She had no idea, she says, what was going on outside. And that wasn't the end of it. "After all that they went into the house and shot at everything they found. Everything. There isn't a dress, there isn't a towel they didn't shoot at. At the computer, the refrigerator, all our belongings, they destroyed everything. They didn't leave us so much as a pair of socks. They destroyed everything. A home of 20 years, all our memories, all our dreams, our whole history. Imagine to yourself what's in a home of 20 years. They destroyed it all. My husband's books. I don't understand why. They just wanted to show us how strong they are and how cruel." What do the soldiers who were involved think now? The sniper who shot a father and his son to death, and those who denied the dying boy medical assistance? The army issued a statement the next day: "Dr. Salah and his son Mohammed were apparently killed by IDF gunfire, but there was no intention to do them harm. Because of the shooting of the wanted man from the building, the soldiers were compelled to shoot in different stages at every floor and at the roof of the building, and it's possible that in one of the instances the soldiers didn't identify the sources of fire correctly or were forced to open fire at suspicious movements. Because of the continuation of the event and the lack of information about whether there were additional wanted individuals in the building, it was not possible to send medical teams into the building." Sirens wail in the main streets of Nablus. Another funeral procession - Yasser Tantawi, 21. His brother, Khaled, 19, was killed two months ago. Both are from the city's Balata refugee camp. A Swedish volunteer, Henryk Larsen, a medical student from Uppsala University, who joined an ambulance of the Medical Relief Organization, was an eyewitness to Yasser's killing last Saturday night. Youngsters threw stones at Jeeps, the soldiers opened fire, Yasser was wounded in the leg and fell to the ground. The event took place in the camp's cemetery. Larsen tried to treat the wounded man, but came under fire and had to retreat. He saw Yasser's body jolted back and forth as the soldiers kept shooting at him. They shot him, he says, after he had already been wounded in the leg. Dr. Rasan Hamadan, from the Medical Relief Organization, says that about 10 bullets were found lodged in Yasser's body and that the medical team reported that he was unarmed. Larsen, too, says he saw no weapon. The response of the IDF Spokesperson's Office: "During operational activity by an IDF force in Balata refugee camp the force came under fire and a number of explosive devices were thrown at it. The soldiers opened fire at a terrorist armed with a Kalashnikov rifle who was advancing toward them, and killed him. In the complex reality in which the IDF operates, maximum efforts are made to avoid injury to the innocent. At the same time, in the case of armed individuals who are endangering IDF soldiers and those around them, it is the soldiers' obligation to prevent them from acting." Two days later, on Monday of this week, soldiers killed another stone-thrower in the Balata camp cemetery. His name was Husam Abu Zeitouna. He was 14.
A four year old girl, two 16 year olds, a 19 and a 21 year old boy were among the Palestinian dead of the last ten days. Wednesday, July 21, 2004: Two die at Balata camp's "death entrance" On Monday Hussam Sameer Abu Zeitoun, 16 years old, was shot dead as he hurled stones at Israeli jeeps invading the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. Hassam was shot in the eye as he threw stones
at Israeli army jeeps invading the Balata Refugee camp through the
southern entrance. Residents of the camp refer to the entrance as
the "death entrance" as 55 Palestinians from the Balata camp have been killed since the beginning intifada. On July 17th Yasser Khallil Tantawi, 21 years
old, was executed by Israelis in a similar situation and in precisely
the same place. Yasser was also throwing stones at Israeli jeeps
when he was shot. Jarer Prevention of Medical Treatment On the evening of Tuesday 20, 60 year old Abed El Latif Emlitat, died in his son's car after waiting an hour and a half to be allowed to pass through a checkpoint to reach a waiting ambulance. According to Majed Abed El Latif, his father died
at a military gate that barricades the entrance to Beit Fourik village.
His father had experienced chest pains in the evening and the family
was directed by On Sunday afternoon in Rafah, 19 year old Jamille Ismail al-Faramawi was shot as he tried to reach his home, damaged in previous Israeli raids on the Egyptian border, on the edge of the Rafah refugee camp. Israeli forces shot him in the abdomen as he approached and then continued their firing preventing any attempts to give medical assistance. The Abu Youssef Najar hospital made every effort to coordinate their assistance with the Israeli authorities at the DCO however their ambulance waited for four hours unable to reach Jamille. The boy was left to bleed to death over 18 hours. His body not retrieved until the early hours of Monday morning. Witnesses confirmed that he was civilian, unarmed and simply trying to reach his house, one of dozens being demolished every day at the border. Israeli Random shooting kills two Gaza girls Also on Sunday, 4 year old Samar Fojo, died in the European Hospital in Khan Younis, after being shot in the head by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on the 7th of the month. Only last week 16-year-old Hanine Awda Abu Simhdana was killed as she walked with her brother to the mosque near to her house. On both occasions the girls were killed by random firing from the Philidelphi border area between Gaza and Egypt. For more information contact The Palestine Monitor:
Along the route of the separation barrier in the
West Bank, a new culture is springing up: on one side, soldiers
and bulldozers; on the other, Israelis and Palestinians embracing
the land and the trees, trying to save them both. Last week, Sharon
decided he was secure enough in the role of man of peace The breathtaking scenery of the Ariel district
has been sliced up by the new roads that the rulers have built for
their own exclusive use. Beneath them lie the old roads of the vanquished.
There, on the lower level, is where the other Israel-Palestine treads.
Israeli youths arrive in settlement buses and The Israelis who go into the villages are not afraid of Hamas. If they fear anyone, it is the Israeli army, which can decide at any time, on a commander's whim, to douse the demonstrators with inordinate quantities of tear-gas or to declare the area a closed military zone (i.e., closed to Israelis) and arrest any Israeli who tries to remain in the area. What brings young Israelis to stand with the Palestinians in front of the army is the conviction that there is a basic line of justice that must not be crossed. It was not security considerations that determined the present route of the fence. If the goal were to prevent terrorist infiltration, the fence could have been built differently. The route planned by Col. (res.) Shaul Arieli, head of the Barak government's "Peace Administration", also deviated from the 1967 border and enclosed the large settlement blocs, placing them on the Israeli side. But the 300 square kilometres of West Bank territory which that route would have devoured is less than a third of what the present route will grab. Arieli's plan would have cut off 56,000 Palestinians from contiguous connection with the West Bank; the current route will strand 400,000 (Eldar, Ha'aretz, 16.2.04). Sharon and the army have designed the barrier with a view to taking over as much West Bank land along the border with Israel as possible, and to gradually empty it of its inhabitants. Qalqiliyah, which has been isolated from its lands and the rest of the West Bank, is already a dead city. Many of its inhabitants have fled to seek subsistence at the edges of other West Bank towns; those who remain have succumbed to the despair and decline that characterizes prisoners. This is what lies in store for Biddu, Beit Sureik and the other villages between the settlement Giv'at Zeev and the Israeli town Mevasseret Zion. Now it is the turn of Zawiya and Deir Balout, which lie between the settlement Ariel and the Israeli Rosh Ha'ayin. In the army's language, Ariel and Kedumim are the "claws" of the fence, claws that are now sunk into the West Bank, grabbing a giant chunk of Palestinian land that will be transferred to Israel. As part of the process, it will be necessary to "cleanse" the land of its inhabitants by slow strangulation, as in Qalqiliyah. The Israelis who face the army went to the West
Bank because they know there is a law that is higher than the army's
laws of closed military zones: there is international law, which
forbids ethnic cleansing, and there is the law of conscience. But
what brings them back, day after day, is the new covenant
A current show mounted by reserve soldiers documents what they saw during their service. More accurately, it documents what they themselves did, without thinking too much, during reserve duty in Hebron. Only when they returned from that inferno did they understand how horrible their acts were. The absurd thing is that fortunately for them they did not think about it while they were there because, if they had, they might not have returned. "She doesn't live in Savyon but in Rafah", Colonel Pinchas (Pinki) Zoaretz, Commander of the Gaza Strip southern brigade, reproached a Yediot Aharonot reporter who interviewed him about five-year old Rawan Zayed, who was killed by three shots in her head during the Israel Defense Force's operation in Rafah. Then he added, "What is compassion? Yes, I have compassion for my child who needs to go to school in safety. That is my compassion". Overall, Pinki Zoaretz is not the type of officer
who has doubts. He scorns the folks at home who ask Colonel Zoaretz is not inherently immoral. To
the contrary, he is a good man who fell into a bad Israeli society, to my great sorrow, is an example of a society that has adopted bad values because of a bad situation. These are immoral values that have become an inseparable part of society. They do not disappear when the situation changes. The State of Israel is paying and will continue to pay a very high price for the ease with which we accept blotting out homes, killing children and abuse. We are all are becoming Colonel Pinki Zoaretz who has no compassion for a five year old girl. God forbid. June 11 - "What the army used here yesterday was not tear gas. We know what tear gas is, what it feels like. That was something totally different." We are being briefed by A., a middle-aged villager
speaking Hebrew in a calm and unemotional way, while standing under
the scorching sun in the fields of Zawiya Village, on Friday morning.
"When "Black smoke came out. Anyone who breathed
it lost consciousness immediately, more than a hundred people. They
remained unconscious for nearly 24 hours. One is still unconscious,
at Rapidiya Hospital in Nablus. They had high fever and their muscles
became rigid. Some needed urgent blood transfusion. Now, is this
a way of dispersing a demonstration, or is it chemical warfare?".
"But if they think this
The pictures of American soldiers torturing prisoners
at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have shocked the world. To the
Palestinian people however, these photographs of hooded or naked
figures come as no In many cases, the treatment of the Iraqis in
Abu Ghraib bear striking similarities to Israeli methods of torture.
Accusations are now circling in the world's press that Israeli security
officers have actually Regardless of whether there is any truth to these allegations, the world must recognize that torture is commonplace in Israel. It is not enough to condemn the actions of these American soldiers while ignoring the systematic human rights abuses imposed on the Palestinian people. Like the United States, Israel lays claim to the
highest moral standards, yet it is apparent that there are elements
within the Israeli armed forces and indeed government for whom torture
is a necessary and An Israeli High Court ruling on 6 September 1999 prohibited a number of torture techniques. However, these methods were not completely outlawed. Instead the Court's ruling still allows the Knesset to enact laws that would give intelligence officers the authority to use such methods. The Court deemed the security difficulties faced by Israel to be grave enough to merit granting intelligence services the power to torture. This "ticking bomb" excuse now gives
the Israeli security forces carte blanche to abuse any prisoners
in their care, including children. Human rights groups maintain
that the use of torture in Israeli prisons has The Israeli army and police also receive the unconditional backing of the country's legal system, perpetuating the culture of impunity in Israeli prisons. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel [PCATI] has found that the Israeli Attorney General has approved every case of torture as a necessary security measure. The High Court has rejected every single one of 124 petitions submitted by PCATI, against prisoners being denied access to legal support. The thousands of statements given by former Palestinian
prisoners bear witness to the relish with which their Israeli tormentors
went about their task. Just as in Iraq, any humiliation or abuse
is permissible if Despite all the evidence to the contrary, including the death or maiming of numerous Palestinian prisoners, Israel continues to deny that torture is used in its prisons. Over 7,000 Palestinian prisoners currently remain in Israeli prisons, many of them held without charge or trial. Most will have suffered some degree of torture before their release. It is shocking to recognize that around 650,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli custody since 1967, most of them adult males. This means that almost every second Palestinian adult male has been imprisoned. The torture in Abu Ghraib prison, has shaken the
Bush administration to its very core. Photographic evidence is all
that is lacking to finally expose and condemn Israel's barbaric
treatment of its Palestinian
[The material for this piece was collected
by MachsomWatch women at military checkpoints in the
Israel has drawn up a secret plan for a giant desalination plant to supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory on the West Bank. It hopes the project will diminish pressure for it to grant any future Palestinian state greater access to the region's scarce supplies of fresh water. Under an agreement signed a decade ago as part of the Oslo accord, four-fifths of the West Bank's water is allocated to Israel, though the aquifers that supply it are largely replenished by water falling onto Palestinian territory. The new plans call for seawater to be desalinated at Caesaria on the Mediterranean coast, and then pumped into the West Bank, where a network of pipes will deliver it to large towns and many of the 250 villages that currently rely on local springs and small wells for their water.
"The question is whether an average Palestinian family can afford it," says Arie Issar, a water expert at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Sde Boker, Israel, who helped green the Israeli desert a generation ago by finding new water sources in the region. "It would be foolish to desalinate water on the coast and push it up the mountains when there are underground water resources up there, which cost only a third as much." Tony Allan of King's College London, a leading authority on Middle East water, agrees: "Pumping desalinated water to the West Bank is not the best technical or economic option." But the project is being supported by Alvin Newman, head of water resources at the Tel Aviv office of USAID, the US international development agency, which would fund the desalination project. "Ultimately it's the only solution," he said in an interview with New Scientist. Unusual cooperation Water supply is one of the few areas where cooperation between Israel and Palestine has survived the current intifada. Every day on the West Bank, Palestinian engineers help repair and maintain Israeli water pipes, and vice versa. [really???] But Palestinian water negotiators are deeply uneasy about the plans being drawn up on their behalf, especially if they involve abandoning claims to the water beneath their feet. "We cannot do that. We don't have the money or the expertise for desalination," Ihab Barghothi, head of water projects for the Palestinian Water Authority, told New Scientist. Palestinians badly need more water. Under the Oslo agreement they have access to 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all sources. Israel gets 246 cubic metres per head per year. And in the nearly 40 years that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or rehabilitating old ones. The region's sources of water are the West Bank aquifers; the river Jordan, which rises in the Golan Heights and flows into the Sea of Galilee, where it is largely tapped by Israel; and the coastal aquifer, an increasingly polluted reserve of underground water that extends south to the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip. Sewage effluent Over the years, Israel has developed a good reputation for using water efficiently, and in the 1980s it began recycling sewage effluent for irrigation. In 2004, Israel signed a deal to buy water shipped by tanker from Turkey. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip depend almost exclusively on small wells tapping the coastal aquifer. As the water table falls, the aquifer is becoming increasingly polluted by salt water from the sea. UN scientists say Gaza will have no drinkable water within 15 years. Despite earlier efforts to develop desalination, the Israel government only decided to invest heavily in the technology in the past four years. Some, including Israeli liberals and Palestinian optimists such as Barghothi, believed that once Israel began desalinating seawater for its own use it would be prepared to relax its grip on the West Bank aquifers. But now it appears that Israeli water planners see desalination as a means of retaining control of those aquifers. The desalination plant to supply the West Bank would parallel a similar US-funded reverse osmosis plant to fill taps on the hard-pressed Gaza Strip. The scheme has already been approved and funded, but is currently on hold because of continuing conflict in Gaza. Taken together, the two schemes would leave an independent Palestine more dependent on desalination than almost any other nation in the world. |
