Israel to relocate illegal settlers to private Palestinian land

Mariam Abdul Kareem won a lawsuit against an illegal settlement built on Silwad land, only to find out that the Israeli government plans to move the evacuated settlers to another plot of hers. (Photo credit: Malak Hasan)

Silwad – As the deadline set by the Israeli High Court of Justice to dismantle the largest illegal Jewish outpost in the central West Bank draws closer, the Pales­tinian landowners’ victory was in­terrupted when Israel announced a proposal to move the evacuated settlers into adjacent private Pales­tinian land.

On August 11th, months before the long-awaited evacuation of about 40 Israeli families who il­legally set up caravans on land that belongs to Palestinians from Silwad, Ein Yabrud and Taybeh in 1996, the Israeli Civil Administra­tion in the West Bank published a map in Al-Quds newspaper high­lighting in red 35 plots of what it said were “abandoned” lands.

The ad signed by Yusi Sigal, the Israeli custodian of state land and abandoned property in the West Bank, declared the land shown in the map as “abandoned” and de­manded those who claimed owner­ship to come forward with a writ­ten objection within 30 days.

The ad came a few days after a special Israeli committee recom­mended moving Amona’s settlers to nearby Palestinian land. Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandel­blit has yet to rule on the legality of the plan but he stated that work could move forward on the matter until he issues a ruling.

Israeli Minister of Defence Av­igdor Lieberman argued that the abandoned property law could be used to move settlers of Amona into land owned by Palestinians who left the West Bank decades ago.

While some of the landown­ers live in Jordan and the United States, dozens still reside in the West Bank but have been banned from their land for years, said Sil­wad Mayor Abdul Rahman Saleh.

The Israeli court gave the settlers of Amona until December 25th to evacuate the outpost and compen­sated each Palestinian landowner with about $16,000.

In 2008, the human rights or­ganisation Yesh Din petitioned the Israeli court on behalf of Palestin­ian landowners demanding the re­moval of the entire outpost.

Khairallah and Attallah Abdul Hafez are two of the eight Palestini­an landowners who won back their land. They said they are relieved to have retrieved their family’s 3.5 hectares.

Khairallah, who is unemployed but had worked in farming before his land was seized, said he was thrilled at having the chance to re­plant his land with grapes again. “We used to sell our entire harvest to the neighbouring and predomi­nantly Christian village, Taybeh,” he said. “They used the crop to make wine.”

Despite the ruling, Palestinian landowners said they are worried that the settlers might refuse to leave the land. Amona received demolition orders in 2000 and 2005 but the outpost was never evacuated, said Yesh Din.

Following the latest petition in 2008, Israel pledged to evacuate the outpost but failed to do so until the court instructed the removal of the outpost by the end of this year.

While Khairallah said he was op­timistic, new landowners, includ­ing Mariam Abdul Kareem, said they were living a nightmare. She was anxiously waiting to get back her land only to find out that the new proposal includes another plot that belongs to her husband.

“I have exhausted all words to describe how I feel Israel has no right to call our land abandoned. We’re too afraid to approach it be­cause armed Jewish settlers attack us when we do,”Abdul Kareem said.

Amona was erected in 1995 on private land next to the illegal settlement of Ofra. Since then, Pales­tinian landowners have dealt with settler violence targeting anyone who tried to access the surround­ing land.

Harbi Abdulqader, 68, said it has been 25 years since he last cultivat­ed his land, which is adjacent to a road that was paved specifically to connect Amona to Ofra.

“I have 8 dunums (0.8 hectares) of land that I tried to cultivate to no avail. I risked my life on several oc­casions and I am not ready to risk my children’s life,” he said.

He and other landowners remem­ber 50-year-old woman named Aziza who refused to leave her land when confronted by armed settlers and was killed.

Although the settlers were given the option to move to other settle­ments near Nablus, they rejected the offer and only agreed to move onto land near Amona.

Abu Saleh said the new plan was a scheme to override the court rul­ing and expand Amona.

The 35 plots are scattered across a vast area and Saleh said Israel will eventually take over all the land between the plots. “Although the plots in question are 35, Israel might eventually seize more than 150 plots,” he said.

The Palestine Liberation Organi­sation’s National Bureau to Defend Land warned against the “danger­ous” consequences of legalising il­legal outposts in the occupied West Bank, describing the actions taking place in Amona as an unprecedent­ed move aimed at swallowing more Palestinian land.

Peace Now, an Israeli non-gov­ernmental organisation, described the plan as a “crossing of a red line and a reversal of previous policies, including Likud government poli­cies, according to which private lands cannot be used for the pur­pose of settlement”.

The US State Department criti­cised the move, saying: “This is a continuation of a process that has seen some 32 outposts that are ille­gal under Israeli law being legalised in recent years.”

Published Article.

Israel lures East Jerusalem schools to abandon Palestinian syllabus

Palestinian school children walk to school in the Ras Khamis neighbourhood of east Jerusalem. TAW

Jerusalem – The Israeli Ministry of Edu­cation is offering millions of dollars to underfunded East Jerusalem schools to abandon the Palestinian Authority’s approved curriculum and switch to an Israeli syllabus.

The ministry in January said it would give more than $5 million to schools that teach the Is­raeli curriculum instead of the Pal­estinian Authority (PA) teaching plan. The extra funding will not be extended to schools using the PA curriculum, although the money is from a general budget meant to serve all East Jerusalem students regardless of what they study.

The Palestinian Authority de­scribed the plan, first reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz, as an outrage. Palestinian parents said it was a violation of students’ human rights and an attempt to create a future Palestinian generation with a “Zionist mind”.

“Israel wants to teach our chil­dren that there is no al-Aqsa mosque and that [former Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon is a hero. They want our children to recite verses from the Torah and memorise the Israeli national an­them,” said Ziad Shamali, chair­man of Jerusalem schools parents’ committee.

Palestinian critics said the plan was part of a long series of illegal and unjust measures that jeopard­ise the Palestinian presence in Je­rusalem.

Traditionally, Israel has been op­posed to references in Palestinian textbooks identifying Jews as ene­mies, with clerics teaching religion classes that the last showdown on Earth would pit Muslims against Jews who would hide or run for their lives but not be spared.

Since Israel seized East Jerusa­lem in the 1967 war on grounds the city was part of the indivisible and eternal capital of the Jewish state, attempts to rub out the identity and culture of its indigenous Arab population have increased.

Israel tried at the time to force Palestinian schools to teach the Is­raeli curriculum, which omits Pal­estinian history, but gave up after families staged months of strikes and protests.

Shamali said that “even now, the curriculum approved by the PA is censored by Israel. We are not al­lowed to print our books and by the time our children receive them, they are full with blacked out text” by Israeli censors.

Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have expressed concern about the amount of mon­ey and effort invested by Israel to complete what has been labelled an “Israelisation process”.

Rasim Ebidat, a Jerusalem-based journalist and political analyst, said: “It is evident that the Israeli Ministry of Education led by the extremist Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home far-right party, has put a comprehensive plan to control the educational system in Jerusalem.”

There are about 100,000 Pales­tinian students studying the Pales­tinian curriculum in Jerusalem and 1,500 studying the Israeli version, Shamali said.

According to Israeli statistics, eight out of 180 schools teach the Israeli syllabus and several schools have opened some classrooms to teach the Israeli curriculum.

Bennett said the main goal of the plan was to “bolster schools that already offer this curriculum and encourage additional schools to do so”. He said it aimed to “aid the process of Israelisation”.

Israeli commentators said the move allowed students to take the Israeli matriculation exam, easing acceptance into Israeli col­leges and universities. Shamali said those are groundless claims, because Israeli universities do not require students to study the Is­raeli curriculum to enroll at Israeli universities.

Palestinians said the plan was political and ideological rather than to benefit East Jerusalem’s students.

A mother of two children at a school run by the Jerusalem Mu­nicipality said the plan took advan­tage of Jerusalem’s need for extra classrooms because the funding is only for physical improvements, such as computer rooms and sports facilities.

“Israel doesn’t allow us to build new schools and renovate old ones. We need another 2,300 class­rooms to accommodate the grow­ing number of students. That is 100 schools,” Shamali said.

Israel gives permits to open pri­vate schools willing to teach the Israeli curriculum in exchange for financial support. Many Palestin­ians send their children to those schools because there is no other option.

Palestinian Education Minister Sabri Saidam said the plan was unfair and, along with several Arab Israeli Knesset members, in­structed East Jerusalem schools to be supplied with Palestinian text­books free of charge.

Hanna Issa, head of the Islamic- Christian committee, said Article 50 in the fourth Geneva Conven­tion says that the occupying power shall make arrangements for the maintenance and education, if possible by persons of the chil­dren’s own nationality, language group and religion, which means that Israel must not interfere in the curriculum.

Published Article.

Israel hinders world athletes’ entry to West Bank

Taekwondo fighters spar at the opening of an international com­petition in Ramallah, West Bank.

Ramallah – Palestinians celebrated hosting and doing ex­tremely well at the first Open International Taek­wondo G1 Tournament in spite of an Israeli attempt to foil the sports event by barring athletes from entering the West Bank.

The tournament, which took place in mid-July at Birzeit Univer­sity north of Ramallah, was the first international taekwondo competi­tion on Palestinian soil. Participat­ing athletes came from about two dozen countries, including South Korea, the United States, Spain, Sweden, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Bah­rain, Kuwait, Qatar, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

Palestinian participants claimed 60 medals — the most of any partic­ipating countries. Jordan was next with 58 medals while Morocco won seven, Turkey four and the United States one medal.

Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, said the tournament was a perfect opportunity for the Palestinian people to connect with the world through sport, which has become a common language that defies bor­ders.

Although this was not the first in­ternational competition that Pales­tine hosted, it was the first tourna­ment involving an individual sport.

More than 350 participants from 23 countries were expected to com­pete in the tournament but Israel barred dozens of athletes as well as entire teams from entering the West Bank. The Israeli action was viewed as an attempt to undermine an international event many Pales­tinians considered a symbol of in­dependence and sovereignty.

Head of the Palestinian Taek­wondo Union Omar Kabha said Is­rael undermined the event as well as the athletes’ right to practice sports freely.

“Israel is a member of the [In­ternational] Olympic Committee and yet it failed to comply with the Olympic fundamental principles, which state that ‘every individual must have the possibility of prac­ticing sport, without discrimina­tion of any kind and in the Olympic spirit’,” he said.

Kabha said Israel did not issue entry permits for Nigerian and Kyr­gyzstani team members in addition to a number of Jordanians.

“A Turkish and a Jordanian coach arrived at the borders but were forced to turn around and miss the championship,” he noted.

Moroccan athletes spent many hours at the Israeli crossing, which Kabha argued was an attempt to isolate Palestinians from the inter­national sports community.

Israel also prevented 35 team members and staff from the Gaza Strip from coming to the West Bank to participate.

Mohammad Hajaj, media coor­dinator at the Olympic committee, said: “Gaza’s athletes have prac­ticed day and night to compete at the tournament, with the young­est girl being only 9. She and many other kids dream about competing and winning.”

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank cannot travel freely and have to apply for special Israeli travel and entry permits, a process that proves extremely difficult when criteria and procedures are not clear.

Gisha, the Legal Centre for Free­dom of Movement, said most Israe­li protocols and procedures are not made public, which is in violation of Israeli Freedom of Information Act 5758-1998.”

Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not aware of the criteria according to which their applications are approved or denied. The same applies to for­eigners trying to enter the West Bank.

Kabha said that, while several athletes were able to apply for en­try visas through embassies abroad and others received a visa upon ar­rival at the borders, “we tried to get visas for 250 participants but only 170 were issued. No reason for the rejection was given to the Palestin­ian side.”

Mohammad Yousef, 30, who at­tended the tournament, said Israel partially succeeded in undermin­ing the tournament by barring Pal­estinian and international athletes from entering the West Bank, put­ting several obstacles in the way of those who were allowed entry and delaying teams for hours at bor­ders.

Published article.

 

68 years later, Palestinians bitterly remember

Abu Hafez holding the keys to his house, which he was forced to leave in 1948 when the the Jewish Haganah paramilitary annexed British-mandate Palestine, invading, depopulating and destroying hundreds of villages and towns. Credit: Baha Nasser

Ramallah – Mohammed Mansour, 93, fled his home in the village of Sal­bit when the Jewish Haganah paramili­tary annexed British-mandate Pal­estine and proclaimed an inde­pendent Israeli state in its place on May 14th, 1948.

Mansour’s memory is failing him as he tried to recognise faces and recall names but he is never wrong on details of the 50 hectares his family owned near what is now Ben Gurion International Airport. He was married and saw his grand­children get married but never al­lowed time to erase Salbit from his memory.

Mohammed’s eldest son Abdul­qader, 58, said his father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dis­ease, “forgot the names of most of my brothers and sisters due to ill­ness and age but he certainly did not forget Salbit”.

One day recently, Mohammed surprised the family when he col­lected his personal effects he said he wanted to “take home to Salbit”.

Sixty-eight years ago, about 750,000 Palestinians fled for their lives or were forced out of their homes in cities, villages and towns in areas now known as Israel.

To Palestinians, May 14th — the declaration of Israel’s independ­ence — is known as Nakba, Arabic for “the catastrophe”. It is one of the most jarring events in Palestin­ian history, which led to Israel cap­turing more Palestinian lands in the West Bank, including traditionally Arab East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, sending millions more Palestinians into exile.

When Zionism advocated the creation of a Jewish state, Jews, facing growing discrimination and oppression in Europe, dreamed of having their own state. They even­tually inflicted the oppression on the Palestinians.

In 1917, Britain conquered Pales­tine from the Ottomans and British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour pledged British support for the cre­ation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Under British control, the num­ber of Jews migrating to Palestine increased significantly. In 25 years, the number of Jews in Palestine went from 11% to 31% of the popu­lation.

In the 1940s, the British decided to end their mandate of Palestine and exit the country, leaving the fate of the territory to be decided by the United Nations. It devised the UN Partition Plan for Palestine and advocated the creation of two states in what has historically been known as Palestine: one for Jews, known as Israel; and one for Pales­tinians, Palestine.

Palestinians rejected the plan be­cause it seized land that had been owned by their families for genera­tions. As tension grew, the British declared an end to their mandate and the Zionist movement, assisted by the Haganah, which became the core of the Israeli Defence Forces, declared the establishment of the state of Israel.

Driven by fear over purported Israeli massacres in Palestinian areas, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to neighbouring countries, including Egypt, leaving their belongings, homes, planta­tions and livestock behind, think­ing they would soon return home.

Today, one-in-three refugees worldwide is Palestinian. UN re­cords indicate there are about 6.5 million Palestinian refugees world­wide, with the biggest concentra­tions in the West Bank, Gaza, Jor­dan, Syria and Lebanon. More than 3.8 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants are registered for humanitarian assistance with the United Nations.

Nakba is commemorated on May 15th in Palestinian areas with dem­onstrations, vigils and statements of condemnation in the face of Arab and international silence.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland is a lin­gering point in stalled Palestinian- Israeli negotiations.

“Any peace deal that excludes a solution for Palestinian refugees to return to their homes is incomplete and unjust,” said Alaa Hamamra, a 25-year-old university graduate from the West Bank town of Jenin.

As years go by, many Palestinians say that the longer the conflict re­mains unsolved, the harder it will be to realise a Palestinian state and celebrate the return of those who were forced out decades ago. Des­peration and hopelessness seem to be the prevalent reaction.

Sari Hammouri, a 29-year-old from Jerusalem, said: “Sadly speak­ing, our families won’t be able to come back, because Israel has no respect for any law.”

Ramallah housewife Lubna Dar­wish said she feels hopeless. “The refugees who fled don’t seem to have a place to be allowed back to,” she said.

Young Palestinians share similar frustration and disappointment.

“The number 68 frightens me a lot,” said 26-year-old Ahmad Sabah from Nablus. “As the years pass, I feel more scared and desperate. When will the count end?”

In Gaza, Palestinians say they do not have the luxury to lament the past or think about those who dream about returning to Palestine. For many of Gaza’s youth, getting through the day is their priority.

Abeer A., 28, said she no longer commemorates Nakba because she is too busy worrying about elec­tricity schedules, closed border crossings and making a living. She argued that if crossings open on Nakba, Gaza will be preoccupied with the borders instead of mark­ing the anniversary of the event.

For Abdulqader, Mohammed’s son, hope for returning home re­mains alive.

“I may not live to see Palestinians return to their lands and homes but other generations will definitely see it,” he said.

Israel builds yet another wall

A new section of Israel’s separation concrete barrier in the Cremisan valley, adjacent to the Christian Palestinian town of Beit Jala, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (credit: Malak Hasan). 

Bethlehem – Descending into the pre­dominantly Christian town of Beit Jala, the serenity and beauty of olive groves and vine­yards used to produce one of the Holy Land’s best Cremisan wines is suddenly broken by the bitter re­ality: simmering Palestinian-Israeli ten­sions about to burst.

The sight is striking: olive trees sawn in half; a yellow metallic gate under a towering Israeli bridge blocking the quiet valley; a tractor weeding out trees to pave the way for a white cement wall to emerge along a concave route that carves out the heart of Beit Jala, west of Bethlehem.

Once completed, the wall will isolate 450 hectares of Beit Jala’s agricultural and privately owned land and place them in Israel, separating them from their origi­nal and lawful owners in the West Bank, said Beit Jala Mayor Nicola Khamis.

Landowners — primarily farm­ers who used to take a short stroll down the road opposite their homes to reach their farms — will not be able to commute to Israel. They would have to drive for sev­eral hours to cross borders and reach the plantations. Israel care­fully selects the Palestinians al­lowed to cross the borders.

Like elsewhere across the Pal­estinian territories, the result is higher unemployment and despair in Beit Jala, a situation that could force one of the West Bank’s larg­est Christian communities to emi­grate to the West.

“Israel is stripping us of our land, forcing Palestinian Christians out and erasing any possible future for us here,” Khamis said.

The village began its battle over land in 2006 when the Israeli mili­tary said it would extend its sepa­ration wall, confiscating privately and church-owned land and isolat­ing the Cremisan valley. The wall, ostensibly for security reasons, separates Israel from the West Bank.

Aside from the thousands of age-old olive trees and orchards, the valley is home to the Salesian sisters’ convent and school, the Salesian monastery and Cremisan Cellars, the winery established in the 19th century.

The plan is meant to isolate the monastery on the Israeli side of the wall and the convent and school on the Palestinian side, turning the area into a large military zone with Israeli schoolchildren living with an 8-metre-high cement wall as a barrier to their games.

“Israel must understand that neither concrete walls nor guns will bring it safety, and that the only way for Israel to enjoy secu­rity is to make peace with Pales­tinians and end its humiliating military occupation of Palestin­ian lands”, said Beit Jala merchant Yousef Khoury, 55.

“Enough is enough! Get the hell out.”

The Special Appeals Committee of the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court approved the construction of the separation wall in 2013 with a sug­gested route that would annex nearly 70 hectares belonging to the monasteries.

Two years later, Israel’s supreme court ruled in favour of a petition submitted by Beit Jala’s families, municipality and the monasteries against the wall’s route, ending a nearly 10-year legal battle.

The victory did not last, howev­er. The town’s families were taken aback when Israeli bulldozers re­sumed work on the separation wall on April 7th, ignoring the court rul­ing. Cranes and bulldozers razed land and placed cement blocks at the far sides of the entrance to the valley, the last and the largest green area in Bethlehem with vast stretches of agricultural lands and recreational grounds.

The Israeli human rights organi­sation B’Tselem said the valley would become a free public space for Israelis in the illegal settle­ments of Gilo and Har Gilo. Both are part of the Gush Etzion Region­al Council, which many Palestin­ians say will facilitate the creation of “Greater Jerusalem” and break up the contiguity of a future Pales­tinian state.

Pointing to the wall’s c-shape, which dips between Palestinians’ homes and takes over more olive trees and green land, Khamis said: “The wall’s path is not straight be­cause they want to take every cen­timetre they can lay their hands on.”

For a decade, Beit Jala tried all means to terminate the Israeli plan. Its residents prayed at the site, invited clerics, internation­al personalities and delegations and protested armed with olive branches.

Israel sawed in half dozens of age-old olive trees to make way for the separation wall. (Credit: Malak Hasan).

One of the affected landowners, Samia Zeid Khalilia, spoke of her misery to see her “ancestors’ land being snatched away and I cannot stop it”.

“For Palestinians, land is eve­rything. If they take our land, we have nothing to hold on to,” she said.

Beit Jala relies on farming, olive and oil production and woodcarv­ing. To many Christians in Beit Jala, the wall’s completion would endanger their lives because their main source of income would be gone.

According to Khamis, Beit Jala spread over 1,400 hectares before the occupation of the West Bank in 1967 but now Palestinians only control 350 hectares. Israel seized the rest to construct settlements, tunnels and roads.

“Beit Jala is gone,” Khamis said. “Our children have no place to build and live.”

Published article.

Palestinian ‘homestays’ enrich visits to West Bank

Credit: Abraham Path Initiative

Jenin – For backpackers ventur­ing on biblical trails or exchange and foreign students learning Arabic, “homestays” dotting the West Bank offer a good temporary housing option.

Homestays offer comfortable and clean single or shared rooms with a private toilet. The stay is full board, with home-made Palestinian cook­ing and snacks between hot meals. The rate is about one-third what West Bank hotels charge.

More important, for an exchange or a foreign student learning Arabic, homestays offer a good place to be: Living with a Palestinian family to become steeped in the culture, lan­guage, history, customs and tradi­tions and handicrafts first-hand.

Homestays began in the 1990s to lure foreign tourists to the West Bank in the wake of an uprising against the Israeli occupation. It was adopted by the Palestinian non-governmental organisation Rozana Association, based in the West Bank town of Birzeit.

Homestays provide Palestinian families an opportunity to earn ex­tra money to shore up their finances.

Since homestays are scattered across at least seven cities and towns in the West Bank — from Hebron in the south to Jenin and Nablus in the north — they attract pilgrims, histo­rians and hikers on Masar Ibrahim al-Khalil — Abraham’s Path.

The trail stretches over several hundred kilometres from Egypt’s Sinai in the south, through Israel to the West Bank. Another route crosses Jordan. Plans include devel­opment of a trail from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, linking it with Jordan, and from Jordan across Syria to southern and south-eastern Turkey.

The trek across the Middle East “retraces the journey of Abraham, the legendary ancestor of over half of humanity, who is known for his hospitality and kindness towards strangers,” according to the Abra­ham Path website.

Rozana Chairman Raed Saadeh said for many families, homestays “created a source of income and cul­tural exchange. It also attracts visi­tors to become more involved in the issues of local communities.”

Swedish school girls wearing the traditional Palestinian dress during a stay at one of the Palestinian homestays in the village of Araba, near Jenin. (Credit: Remah Abbas)

Homestays charge a fixed rate of $30 per night, a competitive price compared to local hotels that charge up to $100 per night for a shared room and two meals or only a bed in a hostel for $20. Homestay hosts, mostly women, produce handicrafts and food products.

Ayat al-Mardawi became a home­stay host in Jenin in 2009, hoping to generate additional income and achieve personal independence.

A housewife and a mother of six, Mardawi lives in Arraba, 12km south-west of Jenin. The town and its surroundings are speckled with a variety of archaeological sites, in­cluding Roman wells and springs, castles that protected the area from intruders, Byzantine churches and Sufi shrines on hills overlooking agricultural fields, forests and ter­races.

The Mardawi family posing in front of their house turned homestay in Jenin. Credit: Ayat Mardawi. 

Mardawi was not capable of gen­erating a second income to help her husband provide for a relatively large family until the Abraham Path Initiative. With a smile that doesn’t leave her face and a friendly atti­tude, she said, “Running my own business was a dream that has come true.”

“I have been praised for my culi­nary skills since I first started cook­ing and I decided it was my opportu­nity to transform my passion into a profitable business,” she said.

Initially, Mardawi only cooked for backpackers walking Abraham’s Path but soon the second floor of her house was furnished for the use of guests and buzzed with life.

Samah Abu Nima, from the village of Battir, 6.4km west of Bethlehem, used the promotional platform for homestays to promote her home­made pickled vegetables and fruit.

While it is too early to evaluate the economic effects of homestays on the overall economy, Saadeh said they add value and diversity to the area’s tourism sector by providing a great opportunity for visitors to meet and learn about Palestinian heritage and civilisation.

Already experiencing the ben­efits of direct interaction between local communities and foreigners, Mardawi said: “Many of my guests are hungry to know about the politi­cal situation and about us as the oc­cupied people. This is a huge chance for us to show the world that we are not terrorists.”

Rozana staff tour north of the West Bank with a German tourist promoting cultural exchange and understanding. Credit: Sari Hamouri. 

Stefan Szepesi, travel blogger and author of Walking Palestine; 25 Journeys into the West Bank, said the Mardawi family is the finest exam­ple of the importance of homestays.

Frequently writing about his ex­periences trekking through Sinai to Turkey, he said: “The blossoms are there, too, if you look past the news headlines, if you experience the re­gion through travel, if you take on the humble act of walking through its communities.”

The Mardawi family has been running its business for almost two years and describes the experience as phenomenal. With the help of her husband Mustafa and her children, Ayat Mardawi hosts at least three visitors a month, with some staying for one night, others for weeks.

“Although an average of three people per month is not enough to generate a sufficient second income, we are confident our business will grow especially when many choose to return to our house or recom­mend us to friends and family,” she said.

Mardawi and more than a dozen other homestays hosts share more than a house or a dining table but also their time, affection and friend­ship that runs beyond each stay with the help of social media.

“Our visitors look for several things in the place where they are going to stay, most importantly safe­ty, delicious food and originality,” she said. “And by originality I mean the opportunity to live as a Palestin­ian for a little bit.”

Published Article.

Palestinian children embroiled in the violence

The son of Palestinian Sami Madi, whom medics said was killed by Israeli troops, reacts during his father’s funeral in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, last December.

Ramallah – An increasing number of young Palestinians are joining the fight against Israelis, continuing the latest spate of violence that erupted in October over a Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.

Experts argue that youth participation underscores their frustration with the lack of progress towards a settlement that would end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians complain of humiliation at crossing points, constant closure of cities, random shootings by Israeli police, and beatings and killings by Israeli settlers.

While the majority of Palestinians generally do not condone violence, they see acts such as throwing stones at Israeli police or stabbing with scissors and knives as legitimate forms of resistance against the occupation. Israel terms such actions part of a “wave of terror”.

Ramallah University student Rahaf Jaradat, a Palestinian, said: “For a human being to live under constant oppression is enough reason to give up peace and resist.”

Ramallah pollster Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) said a recent study indicated that 37% of young Palestinians asked said the main reason behind the surge in violence was “frustration due to a failed peace process and an enduring occupation”.

The pollster also said that 57% of respondents stated they believed Palestinians should not stop acts of resistance against the occupation.

One of the respondents, a 22-year-old woman who asked not to be named, said she supported stabbing Israeli soldiers and that she saw the young people behind these operations as “heroes and martyrs who should be honoured”.

Most of the scores of Palestinians killed in the months of unrelenting Palestinian-Israeli violence were under the age of 25. Photojournalist Fadi Arouri was among Palestinians who questioned the involvement of children in such acts.

Some Palestinians support attacks against Israelis because they believe every Israeli has or will serve in the Israeli armed forces, making that person complicit in the military occupation, which has stifled the population of the West Bank and Gaza.

Arouri said that in the previous two uprisings against Israel “it was adult fighters who we saw on TV or in the field, but now it’s mostly children”.

“I oppose this because children are paying the price,” he said.

Some observers accuse the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership of turning a blind eye to young Palestinians taking part in the violence since it draws worldwide attention and often sympathy for the Palestinians and condemnation against Israel through images of Israeli troops using force to quell violence.

Pointing fingers at the leadership or asking why more youngsters are taking part in the violence enrages many Palestinians, who accuse those who publicly address such issues of collaborating with Israel.

Israeli columnist Gideon Levy questioned the Israeli surprise at violence by Palestinian youth, saying Israel’s occupation, excessive force used by Israeli Defence Forces against Palestinians and settlers’ attacks, including the torching of West Bank homes, were to blame.

”When the lives of Palestinians are officially the army’s for the taking, their blood cheap in the eyes of Israeli society, then settler militias are also permitted to kill them,” Levy wrote in the daily English-language Haaretz, which has been increasingly critical of the Palestinian casualties.

The newspaper has also been publishing more articles about excessive force used by Israeli security and settlers against Palestinian demonstrators.

Levy said Israel killed hundreds of Palestinian children in the July 2014 war on Gaza and considered it “legitimate, and doesn’t even compel a debate, a moral reckoning, then what’s so terrible about setting a (Palestinian) house on fire, together with its inhabitants”.

Jamal Jumaa, coordinator of a national group called Stop the Wall, said he believed the PA’s unwillingness to pay the price of a new intifada is the reason children are caught up alone in the violence.

“This is an indication of a socio-political crisis in the Palestinian society rather than a pointer that liberation is near,” he said. “But no one has the courage to say, ‘Do not fight’ because there is no alternative.”

Published article here.

Israel shuts down Palestinian radio stations

Israeli soldier pepper spraying a Palestinian video journalist. Credit: Fadi Arouri

RAMALLAH – Since the onset of renewed Palestinian violence in September, Israel has been increasingly targeting Pal­estinian media offices, journalists and social media activ­ists to thwart what it calls Pales­tinian “incitement” against Israeli occupation.

A patriotic song by Lebanese singer Fairuz called Sanarjiu Yaw­man (We’ll Return One Day) played on a West Bank radio station was considered a provocation. The song is dedicated to Palestin­ian refugees and their descendants who fled or were driven out of their homes in wars with Israel since its creation on May 14, 1948.

Social media were not spared. Tamara Abu Laban, 14, posted on Facebook an apology to friends and family if she had upset them. She was questioned, placed under house arrest and fined by Israeli authorities who suspected she was voicing remorse ahead of a suicidal attack, as jihadists do.

National flags or slogans are as much a violation as graphic images posted on social media of Pales­tinians stabbing Israelis in the lat­est violence fuelled by Palestin­ian suspicion that Israel seeks to change the status quo at a revered Jerusalem shrine.

Israel’s moves underline its anx­iousness about a Palestinian popu­lation irked by the Israeli occupa­tion of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. With peace talks unlikely to resume, Israel is opting for muz­zling public freedom.

In November, radio stations in Jenin and Hebron — north and south of the West Bank — drew un­wanted Israeli attention. Israeli au­thorities warned the Jenin station that it faced closure and property confiscation and police raided the Hebron broadcaster under the pre­text it was “encouraging the public to commit acts of violence against the state of Israel”.

Israeli journalist Yoray Liberman said he was against the closure of any media outlet, or choking freedom of the press, opinion and expression. “That would only in­flame the situation,” he said.

Liberman insisted there has been “incitement by both sides, Israeli and Palestinian. Everyone is scared and fear is running high on both sides.”

He said Israel was responsible for preventing provocations but noted that he does not “think it is doing enough to stop the incitement on the Israeli side”.

Israeli Civil Administration cau­tioned that Nas FM in Jenin was “regularly broadcasting phrases of incitement, which encourage com­mitting acts of violence against [Israeli] citizens and soldiers”, ac­cording to the warning sent by fax on November 27th and made avail­able to The Arab Weekly by station officials.

Palestinian journalists at stations that received similar threats claim they have never used phrases that would encourage acts of violence or even fuel the current unrest.

Tariq Switat, Nas FM manager, said he demanded explanations from Israel but only “received vague answers”.

“Israel might consider verses from the Quran or even the nation­al anthem or the term ‘occupation’ as a form of incitement,” he said.

Nas FM has stopped broadcast­ing patriotic songs to protect the station from being raided and shut down, Switat said.

He explained that he was archiv­ing all shows in case such a claim was used to close the station or harass its journalists.

While Nas FM’s broadcast con­tinues to be monitored, Hebron’s al-Hurriya radio station was closed following incitement allegations.

Station Manager Ayman al- Qawasmi said the station was or­dered closed on November 3rd for six months for alleged incitement against Israel.

“Fourteen Israeli Army patrols raided our neighbourhood. Israeli soldiers then broke into the station, vandalised the interior and con­fiscated all transmission devices, computers, cameras, microphones and printers,” Qawasmi said.

He said the station was target­ed because it documented and exposed Israel’s attacks against Palestinians. “We are heard by 3 million Palestinians and we have continuously managed to expose Israel’s deception and violations. They want the Israeli story to be heard only and muzzle the Pales­tinian voice,” he said.

The closure will cost al-Hurriya $350,000, Qawasmi added.

Deputy Information Minister Mahmoud Khalifa said Israel was liable for encroaching on areas un­der Palestinian command and that “Israel has no jurisdiction there”.

Israel’s main goal, Khalifa said, was to drive the Palestinian media “into submission”.

“To Israel, a Palestinian has only two options: either fully submit and accept the occupation or be labelled anti-peace, murderer and terrorist,” he said.

Published Article

 

When It Is More than Just a Job or a Tree

My grandfather’s name is Mohammad Mansour. In our small village, Biddu, northwest of Jerusalem, he is known as “The Old Man.” He got this nickname back when he was a teenager, because he was so strong, ambitious, and devoted to the land. Seedu ⁱ  Mohammad was a young man who understood the meaning of land and was especially attached to olive trees. Nowadays, he owns large tracts of land and continues to spend every waking moment tending to his olive trees and preparing them for the big harvest in early October. Typical of most Palestinian families, ours includes 11 aunts and uncles. We are a big family. Every year, we gather and head to Seedu’s land to help him pick olives. Our mothers force us into old jeans and not-so-flattering shirts. We put on our oldest caps that my mom hid in the attic after last year’s harvest, and we bring along water bottles, zeit o’za’atar, tea, and yogurt to cool us down. We always start off energetically but soon begin our childish attempts to escape and annoy the poor donkey.

For some of us it was a 20-day period of hard labor; for others it was an extended outing; but for Seedu it was his life. If Seedu had had the chance to write a CV, his profession would be listed as: Olive Tree Caregiver.

There are thousands like Seedu, though I doubt anyone has his strong storytelling skills. Now at close to 90, his job continues to be growing his trees, cultivating them, and finally pressing the olives to get the precious olive oil, more precious than gold itself. He gives each of his children two or three yellow cans filled with the oil and sells the rest to live off the money with Situ.ⁱⁱ This may not seem to fall under the definition of profession as we know it, but harvesting olives is a main source of income for around 80,000 Palestinian families. In fact, according to the United Nation’s 2012 report,ⁱⁱⁱaround 48 percent of the agricultural land in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is planted with olive trees. This profession not only serves the family that grows the trees, but it also supports other professions.

♦ They are not just like any other trees; they are symbolic of Palestinians’ attachment to their land. Because they are drought-resistant and grow even under poor soil conditions, they represent Palestinian resistance and resilience. Some families have olive trees that have been passed down for generations. The harvest season bears a socio-cultural meaning: families come together to harvest olive trees and realize that their forefathers and mothers had tended the same trees for generations before them.

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, MIFTAH, claims that “Olive trees account for 70 percent of fruit production in Palestine and contribute around 14 percent to the Palestinian economy.” Although 93 percent of the olive harvest is used for olive oil production, Palestinians use the rest to produce olive soap, known asSaboun Nabulsi,^iv black and green olive pickles, and olive-wood carvings. One could say that the olive business is the economic godfather for the Palestinian economy, so my grandfather can rightfully claim that his profession is olive-tree caregiver, except that he can’t because for him to take care of his olive trees he actually has to have access to his land, a privilege rarely granted. Seedu’s beautiful olive trees and large tracts of land, where we grew up picking olives or at least pretending to as children, now stand behind a towering wall; it is becoming harder for my grandfather to access his land. The separation wall stretches over 700 kilometers (430 miles) across the West Bank and separates thousands of Palestinians, like Seedu, from their olive trees. To add insult to injury, 60 percent of the West Bank is considered Area C, which is under full Israeli control. Thousands of farmers are caged into Area A or, if they live in Area C like my grandfather, are separated from their land by a wall, which means that they must obtain special permits to access their land and take care of it. Before Israel constructed the wall on false security claims, I used to see Seedu on the back of his donkey passing in front of our house near his land every day at 7 in the morning. It took him less than 10 minutes to get there, but now he needs to wait behind a metal gate for Israeli soldiers in their twenties or even teens to give him permission to do what he had done uninterruptedly for the past 80 years of his life: tend to his precious olives.

During the last olive harvest, my aunts and mother were denied entry to the land after having to take a long detour through Beit Iksa, a village three kilometers from Biddu. Last year, my younger uncle decided to rent a machine to cultivate the trees because we couldn’t help Seedu. With that, our olive harvesting days as a family ended.

When Israel built the wall, it not only restricted access and movement, it also took over land and destroyed trees to build the wall and pave roads for settlers to use as they commute within Palestinian land. I remember when Seedu was informed that the wall would separate his house from his land. He couldn’t grasp the idea that he would not be able to go there again. He had no words to express his sorrow; we were immensely worried about him. He tried to protest his land confiscation by going to an Israeli court, but that did not bring any results. We consider ourselves lucky that no trees were uprooted, and Seedu’s land wasn’t razed.

When professions die, it is usually because humans advance and with them their lives change and become more developed. In Palestine, however, olive harvesting is experiencing a dramatic change, but for all the wrong reasons. Mona Chalabi of The Guardian reported that Israel’s reach in the Palestinian Territories allows it to exert enormous power over Palestinian livelihoods. Oxfam estimates that Israeli authorities have uprooted 800,000 olive trees since 1967, resulting in a $12.3 million loss per year. To make the image clearer, Visualizing Palestine chose to express this number through a brilliant infographic, which accurately describes the severity of the situation. The 800,000 uprooted olive trees since 1967 are equal to razing all the 24,000 trees in New York’s Central Park 33 times. I have been to Central Park, and it took me more than half a day on foot to cross half of it.

Palestinian families face growing economic hardship due to Israeli land confiscations, access restrictions, settler attacks, and the widespread uprooting, destruction, and theft of olive trees themselves. In the last week of March alone, the Palestinian owners of a plot of land in A-Shuyukh Village, in Hebron, on which 1,200 olive saplings were planted, discovered that 1,100 saplings had been stolen, and the other 100 uprooted and broken. The owners said that Jewish settlers, from the illegal settlement of Asfar and the outpost of Pnei Kedem, north of Hebron, were behind the assault. As minor as it would seem to the uninformed individual, this incident instantly affects the livelihood of 20 Palestinian families. On New Year’s Eve, settlers uprooted more than 5,000 olive-tree saplings in agricultural lands east of the town of Turmusayya, north of Ramallah. OCHA reported that since the beginning of 2015, 8,202 trees and saplings were destroyed; this is 87 percent of the total number of trees uprooted across the West Bank during 2014.

The present looks grim, but the future is simply frightening. Seedu’s profession and passion might be in no danger for now, but one cannot just ignore the dormant illegal settlements of Giv’at Ze’ev and Giv’at Hadasha across the hill. Seedu might not live to see Israel take over his land, but he still fears that moment. We all know that we are in for a big battle one day. Should Israel persist with its systematic and grave violations against Palestinians, their land, and trees, my grandfather’s workplace, sanctuary, and passion will probably become the forgotten infrastructure of yet another highway or shopping mall, and olive harvesting will be just a blurry memory for Palestine’s future generations.

» Malak Hasan is a Palestinian journalist and amateur photographer who lives minutes away from Jerusalem. She holds a master’s degree in communication and public relations from the United Kingdom and is currently in charge of the English page of the Palestine News Agency WAFA. You can follow her on Twitter: @MalakHsn.

Article photos courtesy of Malak Hasan.

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ⁱ “Grandfather” in some Arabic city dialects is also pronounced “Seedi” in the villages.
ⁱⁱ  “Grandmother” in some Arabic city dialects is also pronounced “Siti” in the villages.
ⁱⁱⁱhttp://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ocha_opt_olive_harvest_factsheet_october_2012_english_0.pdf.
^iv A type of castile soap produced in Nablus in the West Bank, Palestine. It is made of virgin olive oil (the main agricultural product of the region), water, and an alkaline sodium compound.

Published in This Week in Palestine May issue.

Rainbow Flag Flies at Half-Mast in UK

Research reveals that some children of gay parents suffer from many issues at school, such as use of homophobic language, homophobic bullying and the exclusion of their families. Credit: Mallak Mansour.

A blog discussing LGBT issues in Swansea highlighted the story of Bola Olagunju, a Nigerian student, who despite of finally tasting an unprecedented freedom, still feels alienated and uncomfortable being open about his sexuality.

Olagunju came to the UK to pursue higher education at Swansea University, and said that he doesn’t wish to return to Nigeria, because it’s a place where a “homophobic attitude” is the norm.

However, it seems that even in the UK, the LGBT community continues to be under constant pressures and discriminatory actions by those who either don’t understand or choose not to accept sexual differences.

Despite having an LGBT society at Swansea University and LGBT Youth Group Swansea; an indicator to a growing awareness of LGBT issues, some gay students still fear sharing their true sexual identities.

Even though official and national efforts are being made to end discrimination against the LGBT, many continue to be victims of numerous atrocious human rights’ violations .

The daily Mail reported on a UK Supreme Court, which rejected a claim by a married couple from Cornwall, that they didn’t break any law when refused to let a room to Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall, because they were not a heterosexual married couple.

Discriminatory attacks against the gay community range from personal attitudes to physical assaults. The BBC reported on a brutal homophobic attack against a man in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the “unprovoked” attackers, kicked the victim in the face and verbally abused him, the police said.

“The first rainbow flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, in response to calls by activists for a symbol for the community.” Credit: Wikimedia.

According to the Gay British Crime Survey 2013, “one in six lesbian, gay and bisexual people have experienced a homophobic hate crime or incident over the last three years.”

It reported on several stories of gays, who suffer emotionally and physically due to their sexual orientation.

A 33-year-old man from Wales, said that he is “sick of feeling bullied and intimidated” in his own neighborhood, while a 69-year old man reported that he has been physically and verbally abused by his own brother.

The ongoing misapprehension and opposition of homosexuality resulted in an inaccuracy estimating how many gays are in the UK. However, Stonewall Charity said that 6% of the population (approx.3.6 million) are lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Many believe that reasons behind discrimination against gays can be attributed to a lengthy intolerant legacy and lack of a scientific explanation of what determines an individuals’ sexual orientation.

A Swansea resident, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic, said that he doesn’t view his opposition to homosexuality as a form of discrimination, but simply a belief in right or wrong.

He said, “Personally, I don’t know any gay people and have never interacted with any. I don’t know what their principles or values are. I am against discrimination, but I believe homosexuality is wrong.”

Several attempts to reach out to gay individuals and organizations to share stories and experiences were unsuccessful. Many gays approached refused to speak and the Swansea LGBT community met several correspondences with silence.

Though the real reasons behind this reticence remain unknown, there are probably few main assumptions which include fear of being faced with yet another homophobic reaction.

The Gay British Crime Survey noted that ” two thirds of lesbian, gay and bisexual people experiencing a hate crime or incident did not report it to anyone.”

Many gays’ decision to ignore discrimination crimes and incidents are attributed to the lack of trust in local authorities.

Statistics revealed that just “one in five lesbian, gay and bisexual people are confident that their Police and Crime Commissioner will address homophobic hate crime in their area.”

Such numbers raise serious questions regarding the government’s efforts made to alleviate the increasing abuse of the gay community’s rights in the UK and British Prime Minister’s David Cameron’s call to “work day-in, day-out, to challenge homophobic behavior.”

LGBT Pride. Credits: Youthvoices.net