issue no 128

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Issue No : 127 30th March 2015

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


Palestinian Cultural Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

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Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

Read in This Issue

Israel army forces fear new intifada

UNRWA calls for lifting Gaza blockade

FEATURED STORY

Articles & analyses

Read in This Issue

The mockery that is ‹security for peace›

P 5

P 4Israel killed more Palestinians in 2014

than in any other year since 1967

“Israeli” court sentences Sheikh Salah to 11 months in jail

Palestine marathon draws Attention to the right to freedom of movement

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P 16

P 7

School students use sewage channels to reach school

Israel Insider P 10

P 17

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CONTENTS

Articles & Analyses

Isreal Insider

News of Palestine

FEATURED STORY

UNRWA calls for lifting Gaza blockade 4

Israel killed more Palestinians in 2014 than in any other year since 1967 5

Palestinian dead after falling from Israeli separation wall 6

School students use sewage channels to reach school 7

Israeli court sentences Sheikh Salah to 11 months in jail 8

Hamas seizes spying Israeli electronic insects in Gaza 9

srael army forces fear new intifada 10

UN envoy proposed Gaza-Israel truce, Source 11

Swiss delegation discusses solutions for Gaza employees 12

Israel prevents ex-prisoner from entering West Bank 13

Unity govt meets in Gaza amid public employee protests 14

Israel absent from UN rights agency›s session on Gaza 15

Palestine marathon draws Attention to the right to freedom of movement 16

The mockery that is ‹security for peace› 17

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Featured Story

UNRWA calls for lifting Gaza blockade

During the inauguration of a school in the eastern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, Krahenbuhl said that the blockade on the Gaza Strip was no longer acceptable.The school is the first to be reconstructed in the Gaza Strip following a 51-day Israeli offensive on it in July and August of 2014.Krahenbuhl said the Israeli blockade and delaying the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following the Israeli offensive were causes for concern.The UN official also called on the interna-tional community to work together to bring an end to Israel’s siege on Gaza, describ-ing it as both “illegal” and “illegitimate.”He said when he meets official from donor countries, he always tells them that aid of-fered to the Gaza Strip cannot be suspend-ed.

He went on to say that exacerbating unemployment in the Gaza Strip could engender desperation and anger.Krahenbuhl said UNRWA had repeatedly addressed donor countries to honor financial pledges they made for the Gaza Strip during a reconstruction conference in Egyptian capital Cairo.In October of 2014, donor countries pledged to offer $5.4 billion for the Palestinians in general, including $2.6 billion for the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.Israel’s latest offensive on the Gaza Strip left thou-sands of Palestinian homes and public facilities either in total or partial ruin.The blockade has deprived the territory’s 1.9-million population of most basic needs.

22 March 2015 World Bulletin

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More than 2,300 Palestinians killed and more than 17,000 in-jured, according to annual report by UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian AffairsIsrael killed more Palestinian ci-vilians in 2014 than in any other year since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in 1967, a UN report has said.Israel’s activities in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem resulted in the deaths of 2,314 Palestinians and 17,125 injuries, compared with 39 deaths and 3,964 injuries in 2013, according to the annual report (pdf) by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).The conflict in Gaza in July and August was largely responsible for the dramatic increase in fatali-ties. It claimed the lives of 2,220 Gazans, of whom 1,492 were ci-vilians, 605 militants and 123 un-verified.More than 11,000 people were injured and about 500,000 Pales-tinians were internally displaced at the height of the conflict. About 100,000 remain so. There was also a sharp rise in fa-talities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where 58 Palestinians were killed and 6,028 injured – the highest number of fatalities in incidents involving Israeli forces since 2007 and the highest num-ber of injuries since 2005.

Israel killed more Palestinians in 2014 than in any other year since 1967

News of Palestine

Most of the incidents took place in the second half of the year, following the abduction and murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, which led to daily riots and protests in East Je-rusalem.Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian, was kidnapped and killed in July, following the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers the previous month.The report, entitled Fragmented Lives, documents an in-crease in the number of Palestinians injured, incarcerated and displaced, compared with the two previous years.It notes an increase in the Israeli armed forces’ use of live ammunition, which accounted for almost all fatalities and 18% of injuries. Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians – mostly settlers – and security forces also rose in 2014, with Israeli fatalities increasing from four to 12. Incidents of settler violence re-sulting in Palestinian casualties and injuries increased, but the number of incidents leading to Palestinian property and land being damaged decreased. The number of Palestinians held in administrative deten-tion by Israeli authorities increased by 24% in 2014, but de-creased when it came to children. A monthly average of 185 were held last year compared with 197 in 2013, a decrease of 6%. No children under 14 years old were held in military detention in 2014.

27 Mar 2015 Source: The guardian

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Palestinian dead after falling from Israeli separation wall

A Palestinian who was injured after falling while trying to climb over the Israeli separation wall last week died of his wounds on Wednesday.Akram Mahmoud Mohammad Abd al-Hamid Al-Hroub, from Deir Samit village southwest of Hebron, fell off the wall while he was trying to scale it in order to cross into Israel for work.The incident occurred near al-Ram village east of Jerusalem. Following the fall, he was taken to al-Makased hospital in Jerusalem with serious injuries. He subsequently underwent several operations before succumbing to his wounds on Wednesday. His body was taken back to his village, where he was laid to rest on Wednesday afternoon. Around 60,000 Palestinians are employed inside Israel, but only about half of those have proper documenta-tion.An estimated 30,000 Palestinians cross into Israel without any work permits, largely traveling through wilder-ness areas to avoid the strict Israeli permit regime.Some of these undocumented workers cross in populated areas, however, where they have to scale sec-tions of the wall that reach up to eight meters.Additionally, in many places the wall has large no-go zones on either sides, in addition to Israeli military sniper towers.

Source: Ma’an 27 Mar 2015

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School students use sewage channels to reach school

- Palestinian students are being forced to cross through sewage channels to reach a high school in western Ramallah district af-ter a settlement road cut off the only other means of access, residents told Ma’an.Up to 200 students from the villages of al-Ti-ra and Beit Ur al-Fuqa now reach the school using a four kilometer route that runs along the separation wall, where armed settlers, as well as Israeli soldiers, almost daily inter-rupt their commute.The route passes through sewage channels and regularly takes students up to 40 min-utes to reach their school, as the channels are filled with rainwater in the winter and snakes in the summer.Students told Ma’an that Israeli soldiers reg-ularly fire tear-gas canisters at them on their way back.The al-Tira Beit Ur al-Fuqa high school is now enveloped by the Israeli separation wall on three sides at a point where the wall ex-tends more than five kilometers inside the 1949 Armistice Line. The wall separates the villages from the il-legal Israeli settlement of Beit Horon as well as an Israeli military training camp. On the school’s fourth side, a road was opened ex-clusively for settlers going from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.The school principle, Samer Bader, said that when the sewage channels are filled with wastewater in the winter it is particularly dif-ficult for children to reach the school and sometimes they are not able to make the passage at all.Bader also said that security conditions surrounding the school had prevented the administration from developing and main-taining the school properly, meaning that in the winter the students study in classrooms covered in mold.The school has been repeatedly raided by Israeli soldiers during the school year, Bader said, and he believes that Israeli forces are

purposefully obstructing any attempts to develop or improve the school by launching raids whenever such attempts are made.One student, Mumen Faraj, said he now has to leave his home at 6:45 am in order to reach his school by 8:00 am. He said the dif-ficulties faced en route make it difficult for his classmates to focus during class.Another student, Ayman Abd al-Fattah, said that he and his class-mates have been repeatedly harassed by Israeli settlers on their way to school.He added that the students are always frightened whenever they see Israeli soldiers while walking to school.The Beit Horon settlement was created in 1977, and in 2006, the separation wall was built to separate the settlement from the school.More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.Israel began building the separation wall in 2002, and the route has been the target of regular demonstrations by border towns whose lad is cut off by its path. Israel has regularly confiscated large plots of Palestinian land in or-der to build the wall, and when the 435-mile barrier is complete, 85 percent of it will have been built inside the occupied West Bank.

In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that the separation wall was illegal and “tantamount to annexation.” 24 Mar 2015 Source: Ma’an

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Israeli court sentences Sheikh Salah to 11 months in jailAn Israeli court sentenced Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic movement in Israel to 11 months in prison for “inciting violence” during a mosque sermon he gave in 2007.Salah was also handed a suspended three-month jail sentence. The court de-cided to postpone the implementation of the resolution against Sheikh Salah for 45 days, to provide an opportunity for his lawyers to appeal the decision.Dozens of Salah’s supporters gathered outside the court as the sentence was read out. A number of Israeli right-wing activists were also outside, chanting against Salah but Israeli authorities did not let the right-wingers get near the Palestinians.Tawfiq Mohammed, the media coordi-nator for the Islamic movement, told the Middle East Eye that the Israeli courts pursued Salah as political prosecution for his activism and the influence he wields.“There is no doubt that the Israeli au-thorities persecute Sheikh Raed based on political motivations,” Mohammed said. “But this is the price we Palestin-ians have to pay for challenging Israel.”Mohammed pointed to how outgo-ing Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the ultra-na-tionalist Yisrael Beteinu, called for the beheading of Palestinian citizens who were not loyal to the state of Israel.“What he said did not differ from what Daesh does,” he said, referring to the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “But of course he did not get indicted for violence or racism.”Salah had arrived to Jerusalem on Fri-day 16 February with hundreds of his supporters from his hometown of Umm

al-Fahem. Due to a restraining order that barred him from coming within 150 meters of the Old City, Salah delivered his sermon in Wadi Joz, a neighbourhood just north of the walled city.His visit came against the backdrop of Israel demolishing historical sites around the al-Aqsa Compound, which Muslims consider as the third holiest site. A week earlier on 6 February, Israel had demol-ished the Magharba Gate Road, which led to the compound.In 2013, he was acquitted of charges inciting to racism but was convicted of incitement of violence, for which he was sentenced 8 months in prison by the Magistrate Court. His lawyers appealed the verdict and the court today upheld the ruling.Salah’s fiery speech was directed at the threat he said Israel posed to the al-Aqsa Mosque.“The Israeli establishment wants to build a temple that will be used to pray to God. It is so impudent and such a liar,” Salah said in the sermon, according to the indictment. “Someone who wants to build a house of God cannot when our blood is still on his clothing, our blood is still on his doors, our blood is in his food and in his drink. And our blood goes from one terrorist general to another.”Based on those words, he was charged with incitement to violence.Mohammed said that Salah’s lawyers are intending to appeal the ruling within the prescribed 45 days.“They will appeal to the district court based on the current verdict,” he said, “and later, they will ask permission to appeal to the Su-preme Court against the convictions against Sheikh Raed.”Zahi Nujidat, a lawyer and spokesman for the Islamic movement, told media that “Every month, every week, every day Sheikh Raed spends in prison is injustice. The real crime is the occupation.” Source: MEE 26 March 2015

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Hamas seizes spying Israeli electronic insects in Gaza

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas have seized electronic in-sects that were flying the skies of the Gaza Strip, according to Al-Majd, a security website close to Hamas.Al-Majd reports that the devices are used by the Israeli authorities for spying and monitoring the positions and bases of the Palestinian resis-tance in Gaza.It is also believed they are being used to search for Israeli soldiers re-portedly kidnapped during the latest Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. An informed source told Al-Majd that Hamas electronic security units disassembled these insects and found pictures of the soldiers kid-napped during the war stored in their memories. They also revealed that they are being run and monitored via satellites.“The electronic insects are the size of small birds and look as birds from far distances,” the informed source said. “They can easily fly and enter into buildings and other facilities through very small holes and fly easily inside them.”The Israeli military launched a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip last summer which resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 Palestin-ians. Around 73 Israelis were also killed, including six non-combatants. Two Israeli soldiers are reported to have been kidnapped by Hamas fighters in Gaza during the ground operation. However, the Israeli mili-tary have said that they were killed.

24 March 2015 Source: MEMO

Over the past two decades, the num-ber of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has climbed steadily.

Over the past two decades, the num-ber of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has climbed steadily.

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Israeli army forces are preparing for a possible violent Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media has reported.“The Israeli army is preparing for a possible escalation in the West Bank, both spontaneous and organized,” Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said Tuesday.The report, which cited senior Israeli army officials, said that a recent Israeli freeze on taxes collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA) could trigger a violent reaction in the West Bank since the PA had imposed budget constraints to shore up the deficit caused by the withheld funds.“According to army officials, growing economic tensions in the Palestinian market in the West Bank has served as a catalyst for riots and even terrorist attacks,” the newspaper reported.Israeli authorities have been withholding tax revenues collected on behalf of the PA for the last three months.The move was taken in retaliation for a recent decision by the PA to apply for membership in several interna-tional organizations, including the International Criminal Court.Israel collects, on the PA’s behalf, around $175 million each month in taxes on Palestinian imports and ex-ports. The PA uses this money to pay the salaries of its civil servants.For the past three months, the Palestinian government has only been able to pay 60 percent of public-sector salaries after borrowing from local banks.

24 March 2015 Source: World Bulletin

Israel army forces fear new intifadaIsraeli insider

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UN envoy proposed Gaza-Israel truce, Source

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry has been among figures who proposed a truce between three and five years between the Gaza Strip and Israel, a senior member of Palestinian faction Hamas said Sunday.Hossam Badran added that the pro-posed truce would be in return for lift-ing a blockade imposed by Israelon the Gaza Strip since 2007, establishing a seaport for the Palestinian territory and putting an end to pressures on it.“Hamas has not responded to the pro-posed truce yet,” Badran told The Anadolu Agency. “This is an issue of all the Palestinian people and Hamas cannot solely decide on it,” he added.He noted that Gaza could not accept to solve its problems away from the rest of Palestine.Another senior Hamas member, meanwhile, said some European countries also proposed the truce.“Hamas is still considering this proposal,” Bassim Naim said, noting that none of the main par-ties to the proposed truce had accepted it yet.Earlier on Sunday, Hamas deputy chief Ismail Haniyeh said that his movement did not mind hammering out a five-year truce with Israel.Haniyeh added that Hamas did not mind this truce, provided that it did not give Israel the chance to control the West Bank, which is already occupied by Israel.“Some international parties have proposed a five-year truce between the resistance in the Gaza Strip and Israel,” Haniyeh said during a meeting with some members of Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian faction, at his home on Sunday.He added that the truce ought also to be approved at a national Palestinian level.Earlier this month, Israel’s “Walla” news website cited documents from western diplomatic sources, which, it said, showed that Hamas had proposed a five-year truce with Israel in return for lifting the ongoing blockade on the Gaza Strip.In August of 2014, Israel signed a cease-fire deal with Palestinian factions following a devastat-ing 51-day military onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.The offensive left some 2,160 Palestinians – mostly civilians - dead and more than 11,000 in-jured, while thousands of homes across the coastal enclave were reduced to rubble.

Sorce: AA

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Swiss delegation discusses solutions for Gaza employees

A Swiss delegation arrived in the Gaza Strip on Monday and discussed a proposal for solving the issue of the Palestinian employees recruited by the Hamas government in Gaza,Anadolu Agency reported.Senior leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Jamil Mizher said that the Swiss delegation discussed the proposal with five Palestinian factions, including Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front and Democratic Front. The factions’ representatives accepted it as a base for the solution of the problem “if there is a real will”, he said.Mizher said that the Swiss delegation gave “satisfying” answers for several questions posed by the fac-tions. He added that there would be further meetings.Meanwhile, Hamas Spokesman Ismail Ridwan said that although the Swiss delegation provided positive input, there are still many questions that require “detailed answers”.“The Swiss Proposal needs detailed and specialised study,” he told Anadolu Agency. “We hope that this problem is sorted out soon in order to turn the page of suffering of these employees.”Switzerland proposed the solution for the employees in October 2014. The ‘Swiss Proposal’ included a UN-monitored solution. On 11 March, Palestine’s Ambassador to the United Nations Ibrahim Khreisheh said that the PA President Mahmoud Abbas had accepted the proposal.

MEMO

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Israel prevents ex-prisoner from entering West Bank

Israeli authorities delivered a military order on Friday denying a former Palestinian prisoner from Jerusa-lem entry to the West Bank for six months.The former prisoner, Salah Hammouri, 29, told Ma’an that Israeli intelligence had summoned him to the Russian Compound police station in Jerusalem and given him a military order preventing him from enter-ing the West Bank so as to maintain “the security and safety of citizens.”The order, which had been signed by the Israeli Major-General Nitzan Alon in the West Bank, took effect on March 24, 2015 and will continue until September 24, 2015.Al-Hammouri was convicted for being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and planning to assassinate Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.He was released on December 18, 2011 as part of the the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal after hav-ing spent six years in Israeli jails, and was prevented from travelling and entering the West Bank for three months at that time as well.Around 1,000 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons in 2011 in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured by Hamas in 2006.Israeli forces maintain severe restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the occupied Palestin-ian Territories through a complex combination of checkpoints, roads forbidden to Palestinians but open exclusively to Jewish settlers, and various other physical obstructions.Dissidents against the Israeli occupation are often specifically denied freedom of movement, to the extent that Israeli authorities sometimes forcibly exile political opponents from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

MEMO

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Unity govt meets in Gaza amid public employee protests

Dozens of Palestinian civil servants pro-tested Thursday in front of the government’s headquarters in the Gaza Strip demanding paychecks they have not received for several months, as Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah finished a rare visit to the coastal enclave.Prime Minister Hamdallah pledged that Pal-estinian factions would “work fast” to find so-lutions to issues facing Gaza on Thursday, on the second day of what is only his second visit to Gaza since the formation of a national unity government between Fatah and Hamas in June.As Hamdallah and his accompanying delegation left Gaza Strip on Thursday evening, spokesman Ehab Bseiso emphasized that future solutions discussed during the short trip will be comprehen-sive, including electricity, employment, and reconstruction.Hamdallah vowed yesterday in Gaza that civilian workers of Hamas’ de facto administration in Gaza would be enlisted to the payroll of the Palestinian Authority.Head of the employees’ union, Muhammad Siyam, said that the union will continue to demand the employees’ rights, adding that a meeting between the employees’ representatives and Hamdallah will be held on Thursday to discuss solutions for the crisis.He pointed out that protests will continue, and called upon Hamdallah not to leave the Gaza Strip without finding a solution to crisis.Employees of the former Hamas-run government in Gaza went on strike in late December 2014 in protest of an announcement that the Palestinian Authority would not guarantee their positions under the new unity government. At the time, the unity government pledged to re-hire tens of thousands of workers laid off seven years ago, potentially threatening the livelihood of some 50,000 people Hamas hired to replace them following the Fatah-Hamas split in 2007.Hamdallah arrived in Gaza Wednesday, when he said that his visit to Gaza was out of devotion to national reconciliation and saying that the Palestinian government “will not accept separating or isolating Gaza.”In a meeting Thursday, several representatives of Palestinian factions met with Hamdallah, each stressing the necessity for unity.Fatah’s spokesperson, Fayiz Abu Aita, said that factions agreed today that Gaza is a part of the geographical and political unity of Palestine.Futhermore, Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas’ spokesperson, said that it has been confirmed to form a committee to discuss certain issues, especially crossings and the employees’ crisis.

28 Mar 2015 Ma’an

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Israel absent from UN rights agency›s session on Gaza

UN Human Rights Council has launched a special session on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the 2014 Gaza conflict, with Israel’s repre-sentative for the UN agency not attend-ing.“I note the representative of Israel is not present,” said council president Joachim Ruecher.Israel provided no immediate explana-tion for not being at the session dedi-cated overwhelmingly to discussion of its policies and alleged abuses.“We will not comment on that,” a spokeswoman with the Israeli mission in Geneva told the AFP news agency.The US was also absent from Monday’s discussions.Asked to explain why the US was not taking part, a spokesman said only that the US ambassador to the council Keith Harper was in Washington.Monday’s session had originally been scheduled to discuss a probe on the 50-day war in Gaza last year, but the investigators obtained a delay after the head of the team quit.“The process cannot be rushed,” former

New York judge Mary McGowan Davis, who has tak-en over as head of the team, told the council.Schabas denies claimsCanadian international law expert William Schabas resigned as chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict last month after Israel complained he could not be impartial because he had prepared a legal opinion for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in October 2012.Schabas strongly denied that he was beholden to the PLO but said he was reluctantly stepping down to avoid the inquiry into the July-August conflict being compromised in any way. Israel’s absence on Monday does not mark the first time it has failed to attend the council.It cut all ties with the council in March 2012 over its plans to probe how Jewish settlements were harming Palestinian rights, and did not resume relations until late 2013.Monday’s session came after Prime Minister Benja-min Netanyahu’s Likud party scored an election vic-tory last week.Israel’s war on Gaza ended with a truce between Is-rael and the occupied territory’s rulers Hamas on Au-gust 26 after the deaths of more than 2,140 Pales-tinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.

Source: AFP

11 March 2015 Source: World Bulletin

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Palestine marathon draws Attention to the right to freedom of movement

Running a marathon in Beth-lehem highlights how freedom of movement of Palestinian women, men, girls and boys continues to be severely re-stricted under Israel’s pro-longed military occupation. Marathon runners often “hit a wall” under the physical and emotional strain of the 42-kilo-metre course. But in the occu-pied Palestinian territory (oPt) you literally hit the Wall well before that distance.In the biblical city of Beth-lehem, Sana Jamaani is warmed up and ready to run. This isn’t her first race, but she says it is her most important.“I’m running in the holy land,” Jamaani smiles. “I’m running in Palestine.”More than 3,000 runners came to the West Bank for the Palestine Marathon on Friday. For Jamaani, this isn’t just a race for time. It is a run for recognition.“It means that you run for peace,” Jamaani says.Two weeks before this mara-thon, more than 25,000 run-ners took part in the Jerusa-lem Marathon. The race was a celebration of sport in a city-wide event that drew interna-tional attention and competi-tion. The course took runners through old and new Jerusa-lem. They were free to run. But in Bethlehem, runners say they run to be free.

“We are trying to inspire people to take their own rights,” says organizer Signe Fischer, “and the right of movement is the only right that you can physically just claim. You can put on your running shoes and just take it.”The Palestine Marathon is put on by the Palestine Olympic Committee and the Right to Movement, a nonprofit organization that uses running as a means of activism. They focus their efforts on what they see as one of the most basic rights: movement.Many of the runners are Palestinian, and their movement is limited, Israel says, for security reasons. The marathon course took runners along the West Bank separation barrier, into the Aida refugee camp, and under guard towers.Nader al-Masri won the marathon. He is from Gaza, and he says he had to wait five hours at the Erez border crossing to compete. He arrived in Man-ger Square at the finish line to a hero’s welcome.“I saw parts of the wall all over. It’s very hard, but I’m still proud of myself as a Palestinian,” says al-Masri.In its third year, the marathon drew runners from all over the world, pilgrims of a sort making a journey to the holy land, not for religion, but for sport.“It’s an achievement,” said Jamaani after finishing. “Everyone looks for an achievement in life, and one of them was crossing this line, especially in the Palestine Marathon.”For runners like Jamaani, the marathon is a statement made one step at a time. Source: Agencies

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The mockery that is ‹security for peace›

Despite their importance, the Palestinian Authority’s threats to end security coordination with Israel will not mean anything if they are not part of a larger and broader strategy that includes building Palestinian unity and preparing to face the inevitable Israeli and American punish-ment. However, we cannot be liberated from the grips of this security coordination without being liberated intellectually from the illusion of the “peace process”.

Such cooperation with the Is-raelis includes creating a situ-ation in which the Palestinian people are submissive in order to force them to accept Israel’s control and end all resistance to the occupation. Meanwhile, Israel continues its expansion-ist policies of seizing more land and displacing the Palestinian people. The goal behind the se-curity coordination is not coordi-nation per se, but ensuring that Israeli security conditions are met. This basically means that the PA is to prevent all resis-tance operations against Israel and keep protesters away from the military checkpoints and barriers. In other, words, Israel’s

Articles & Analyses

security is prioritised over any human, legal or political consid-erations that might benefit the Palestinian people.

This blackmail began with the Oslo Accords, as they include clauses that protect the Pales-tinian people and their land from the brutality of the Israeli occu-pation, but do not include any reference to international law and the Fourth Geneva Conven-tion, which prohibits the confis-cation of land, the displacement of the population, and the trans-fer of settlers to the occupied territories. In addition to this, Israel refused to commit to any charters or covenants that pro-hibit torture, murder and perse-

cution.

Since the beginning of the “peace process”, the purpose was to impose Israel’s condi-tions by means of military su-periority and American support instead of international law and UN resolutions. Hence, the agreements, especially their se-curity aspects, have become the main reference for the phased and final status agreements be-cause Israel does not recognise the historical, political or legal rights of the Palestinians.

Israel regards the recognition of Palestinian rights to be a threat to its legitimacy. Indeed, Zionism does not recognise the presence of an Arab Palestin-

Lamis Andoni Lamis Andoni Lamis Andoni

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ian nation on the land it consid-ers to be the homeland of Jews born in and citizens of countries all over the world. Zionists view the Palestinians merely as an obstacle to the realisation of their state and its expansion.

Israel’s demands are based on the basis of “the need to contain the Palestinians” by turning the PLO into an authority with no power or sovereignty but which relieves Israel of the burden of direct contact with the Palestin-ian population. However, since there are no hindrances to the Israeli army’s regular offensives against local civilians, the Pal-estinians are sitting ducks and an easy target with no legal or physical protection.

The “security coordination” was imposed on the Palestinians as a part of the American-Israeli conditions, which linked the withdrawal of the Israeli army to the condition that the Pal-estinians commit to the secu-rity guarantees. The US Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, bro-kered a memorandum empha-sising this association with the “fight on terrorism” as part of the Protocol Concerning the Rede-ployment in Hebron in 1997.

The concept of “security for peace”, within which the Pales-tinians must preserve Israel’s security in order for them to de-serve the trust of the occupation forces, also became a condi-tion for implementing the “Road

Map” in 2002. This means that Israel will not withdraw, nor will a Palestinian state be estab-lished, without the Palestinians’ commitment to Israel’s security demands.

However, the security coordina-tion seems to be a Palestinian need because Israel controls the movement of both people and goods in domestic and for-eign travel. This has given Israel the dubious right to prevent Pal-estinians – including the presi-dent - from moving at any time, under the pretext of breaching security guarantees. No coor-dination; no relative freedom of movement.

There are Palestinian concerns that stopping the security coor-dination would result in collec-tive punishment by Israel that may extend to military raids and assassinations. However, con-tinuing the coordination does nothing more than legitimise the occupation and turn a sec-tion of the Palestinian people - the PA and its security forces - into tools enabling the occupa-tion forces by doing their job for them.

It is necessary to put an end to the mockery of “security for peace” because under this slo-gan, the occupation will contin-ue and the Palestinian dream of freedom and independence will slip further and further away.

26 March 2015

The “security coordination” was

imposed on the Palestinians as a

part of the American-Israeli conditions, which linked the withdrawal of the Israeli army to the condition that the

Palestinians commit to the security

guarantees.

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issue no 128

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