Gaza – Page 4

How Israel is turning Gaza into a Super-max prison

October 29, 2014 by Nasheman

A Palestinian boy climbs through the rubble of a house after it was hit in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, Aug. 25, 2014. (Photo: Wissam Nassar / The New York Times)

by Jonathan Cook

It is astonishing that the reconstruction of Gaza, bombed into the Stone Age according to the explicit goals of an Israeli military doctrine known as “Dahiya”, has tentatively only just begun two months after the end of the fighting.

According to the United Nations, 100,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged, leaving 600,000 Palestinians – nearly one in three of Gaza’s population – homeless or in urgent need of humanitarian help.

Roads, schools and the electricity plant to power water and sewerage systems are in ruins. The cold and wet of winter are approaching. Aid agency Oxfam warns that at the current rate of progress it may take 50 years to rebuild Gaza.

Where else in the world apart from the Palestinian territories would the international community stand by idly as so many people suffer – and not from a random act of God but willed by fellow humans?

The reason for the hold-up is, as ever, Israel’s “security needs”. Gaza can be rebuilt but only to the precise specifications laid down by Israeli officials.

We have been here before. Twelve years ago, Israeli bulldozers rolled into Jenin camp in the West Bank in the midst of the second intifada. Israel had just lost its largest number of soldiers in a single battle as the army struggled through a warren of narrow alleys. In scenes that shocked the world, Israel turned hundreds of homes to rubble.

With residents living in tents, Israel insisted on the terms of Jenin camp’s rehabilitation. The alleys that assisted the Palestinian resistance in its ambushes had to go. In their place, streets were built wide enough for Israeli tanks to patrol.

In short, both the Palestinians’ humanitarian needs and their right in international law to resist their oppressor were sacrificed to satisfy Israel’s desire to make the enforcement of its occupation more efficient.

It is hard not to view the agreement reached in Cairo this month for Gaza’s reconstruction in similar terms.

Donors pledged $5.4 billion – though, based on past experience, much of it won’t materialise. In addition, half will be immediately redirected to the distant West Bank to pay off the Palestinian Authority’s mounting debts. No one in the international community appears to have suggested that Israel, which has asset-stripped both the West Bank and Gaza in different ways, foot the bill.

The Cairo agreement has been widely welcomed, though the terms on which Gaza will be rebuilt have been only vaguely publicised. Leaks from worried insiders, however, have fleshed out the details.

One Israeli analyst has compared the proposed solution to transforming a third-world prison into a modern US super-max incarceration facility. The more civilised exterior will simply obscure its real purpose: not to make life better for the Palestinian inmates, but to offer greater security to the Israeli guards.

Humanitarian concern is being harnessed to allow Israel to streamline an eight-year blockade that has barred many essential items, including those needed to rebuild Gaza after previous assaults.

The agreement passes nominal control over Gaza’s borders and the transfer of reconstruction materials to the PA and UN in order to bypass and weaken Hamas. But the overseers – and true decision-makers – will be Israel. For example, it will get a veto over who supplies the massive quantities of cement needed. That means much of the donors’ money will end up in the pockets of Israeli cement-makers and middlemen.

But the problem runs deeper than that. The system must satisfy Israel’s desire to know where every bag of cement or steel rod ends up, to prevent Hamas rebuilding its home-made rockets and network of tunnels.

The tunnels, and element of surprise they offered, were the reason Israel lost so many soldiers. Without them, Israel will have a freer hand next time it wants to “mow the grass”, as its commanders call Gaza’s repeated destruction.

Last week Israel’s defence minister Moshe Yaalon warned that rebuilding Gaza would be conditioned on Hamas’s good behaviour. Israel wanted to be sure “the funds and equipment are not used for terrorism, therefore we are closely monitoring all of the developments”.

The PA and UN will have to submit to a database reviewed by Israel the details of every home that needs rebuilding. Indications are that Israeli drones will watch every move on the ground.

Israel will be able to veto anyone it considers a militant – which means anyone with a connection to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Presumably, Israel hopes this will dissuade most Palestinians from associating with the resistance movements.

Further, it is hard not to assume that the supervision system will provide Israel with the GPS co-ordinates of every home in Gaza, and the details of every family, consolidating its control when it next decides to attack. And Israel can hold the whole process to ransom, pulling the plug at any moment.

Sadly, the UN – desperate to see relief for Gaza’s families – has agreed to conspire in this new version of the blockade, despite its violating international law and Palestinians’ rights.

Washington and its allies, it seems, are only too happy to see Hamas and Islamic Jihad deprived of the materials needed to resist Israel’s next onslaught.

The New York Times summed up its concern: “What is the point of raising and spending many millions of dollars … to rebuild the Gaza Strip just so it can be destroyed in the next war?”

For some donors exasperated by years of sinking money into a bottomless hole, upgrading Gaza to a super-max prison looks like a better return on their investment.

Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

With $550M in agricultural losses, Gazans going hungry

October 21, 2014 by Nasheman

Palestinians wait to receive food supplies from a United Nations food distribution center in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Aug. 19, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa).

by Rasha Abou Jalal, Al Monitor

Gaza City: Souad Motlaq joins a long queue in Gaza City to get aid from one of the charities that provides food to thousands of Gazan families suffering from food insecurity as a result of the recent Israeli war.

Motlaq was covering her head with a piece of cardboard to try escape the hot sun, sighing as she saw the queue was moving at a snail’s pace. She told Al-Monitor indignantly, “This is the first time I have stood in a queue to get food aid. War alone forced me to do this.”

Her seven-member family can no longer obtain food due to its scarcity and skyrocketing prices, which have forced her to resort to relief organizations for food.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s undersecretary, Abdullah Lahlouh, warned in an interview with the Palestinian news agency Wafa about the increase in the number of households experiencing food insecurity in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli aggression. Lahlouh said the rate of food insecurity was 58% before the Israeli aggression and was likely to rise.

The Israeli war on Gaza, which lasted 51 days, inflicted extremely significant losses on the production, agricultural and livestock sectors, affecting the food supply to the markets.

The agricultural sector losses reached an estimated $550 million, including $350 million in direct losses, according to the Ministry of Agriculture’s Policy and Planning Director Nabil Abu Shamala.

Abu Shamala said during a news conference attended by Al-Monitor on Sept. 6, “Israel directly targeted more than half of the agricultural areas in the sector, which are estimated at 140,000 dunums, while the remaining areas were more or less damaged as a result of the inability of the farmers to reach their crops, which caused the lands to suffer from drought.”

He said that the losses in livestock production amounted to $70.8 million, while the loss in the water and soil sector totaled $68.2 million. The losses inflicted on the fishing sector reached $10 million, while the losses in stored agricultural crops amounted to $1.16 million.

According to economy expert Moeen Rajab, Israel targeted agricultural land out of fear of the presence of underground tunnels or rocket launchers underneath without taking into account the economic effects of such devastating acts.

Rajab told Al-Monitor, “Targeting agricultural production has led to food insecurity in the Gaza Strip and has pushed up the unemployment rate after workers in this sector lost their jobs.”

After the cease-fire deal was reached, farmer Abdul Hamid Audi went to inspect his agricultural land located in the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City. All he found were ruins.

“The Israeli tanks have completely ruined my 8-acre [0.01-mile] land that was planted with cucumbers and tomatoes and equipped with an irrigation system, water pumps and modern agricultural tents,” Audi told Al-Monitor, saying his losses amounted to $12,000.

The terms of the agreement, which was reached during negotiations in Cairo, provided for the termination of the Israeli buffer zone along the border security fence, but Audi believes that these areas are in dire need of enormous amounts of work to restore water lines and electricity pylons and clean the soil of shrapnel from Israeli missiles.

Abu Shamala believes the agriculture sector will face great difficulty in recovering due to the destruction of more than 70 water wells and the bulldozing of about 34,500 acres [54 square miles] of agricultural land on the eastern border of the Gaza Strip.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned in a statement on Aug. 14 that the end of local food production strongly affects livelihoods, noting that the agriculture sector recovery will require concrete foreign and long-term support.

According to the FAO, “Gaza has lost half of its total poultry [chicken for food as well as those kept for eggs]. … The locally produced food represents an important source of food,” noting that 28,600 people depend on agriculture for their livelihood.

Moataz Thabet, a vegetable seller in the Sheikh Radwan market in Gaza City, explained that the high prices made people resort to buying vegetables that were going bad to get cheaper prices.

Thabet told Al-Monitor, “There is seldom fresh produce in the market and it is only the rich that buy this produce. Meanwhile, the old frozen goods are for the middle and poor classes — if they are lucky enough to be able to afford such goods.”

The director-general of the Ministry of Agriculture’s General Directorate of Marketing and Crossings, Tahsin Sakka, told Al-Monitor that the lack of supply in the markets and the growing demand for significant agricultural crops has doubled prices.

Sakka gave examples of rising food prices and said, “The price of a kilo [2.2 pounds] of tomatoes rose from 2 shekels [$0.55] per kilo to 6 shekels [$1.64] and the same applies to cucumbers. The price of peppers rose from 1 shekel [$0.27] an ounce to 4 shekels [$1.10], while the price of a kilo of chicken increased from 10 shekels [$2.70] to 22 shekels [$6.03].”

He emphasized that the acute shortage in crops, poultry and livestock made people primarily depend on canned food provided by international institutions providing aid relief for Gazans.

The FAO reported in its statement that most of Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants are now dependent on food aid, noting that the World Food Program is helping about 1.1 million people on a regular basis together with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

“In addition, about 700,000 people are now dependent on special food distribution through the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs, UNRWA and the World Food Programme,” the statement read.

The ancient mosques of Gaza in ruins: How Israel's war endangered Palestine's cultural heritage

October 11, 2014 by Nasheman

The damage done to these sites has undermined the territory’s social infrastructure. For the residents of Gaza, many of the targeted mosques provided social, educational and health facilities. Photo: Mohammad Asad

– by Ahmad Nafi, Middle East Monitor

In the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 51 day military assault, the Palestinians in Gaza are faced with the huge task of reconstruction. Most of the shattered civilian infrastructure can be replaced, but Palestine’s cultural heritage in Gaza, built over a thousand years and more, has been damaged irrevocably. Many of Gaza’s most ancient sites have been left in ruins by Israel’s attack on the territory. Houses of worship, tombs, charity offices and cemeteries have all been damaged by the shelling, but Gaza’s historic mosques have been the worst affected. Many of these sites date back to the time of the first Islamic caliphs, the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate.

Protective Edge damaged 203 mosques, of which 73 were destroyed completely. Two churches were also damaged, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs. The targeting of mosques by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in the latest offensive was three times more than in the 2008-2009 attack, the ministry’s report said.

The destruction of Gaza’s ancient mosques has brought the total losses incurred by the religious affairs ministry to an estimated $50 million, said Dr Hassan Al-Saifi, its undersecretary in the Gaza Strip.

“There are a number of ancient mosques that hold memories of the Islamic and Arab history in Gaza,” said Al-Saifi, “and of course, the people are incredibly saddened over the loss of this heritage.” The losses are likely to deny future generations their history as well as the material and economic benefits that might be acquired from these sites.

The most significant of those mosques which were destroyed was the 7th century Al-Omari Mosque in Jabaliya, Gaza’s oldest and largest. Named after the second caliph Umar bin Al-Khattab, it dates back to 649 AD, making it 1,365 years old. It accommodated 2,000 worshippers for the congregational prayers. The portico and minaret were built 500 years ago during the Mamluk period; it was destroyed by Israel on 2 August 2014 and its hallmark minaret and courtyard stands in ruins.

The Great Omari Mosque tells the story of Gaza’s civilisation and cultural history as it is believed to stand on the site of a former Philistine temple and a later 5th Century Byzantine church. It has acted as an important landmark ever since it was built.

Close by, Gaza’s second oldest mosque was also reduced to ruins. Al-Sham’ah Mosque was destroyed on 23 July in Hayy Al-Najjarin in Al-Zaytun Quarter in Gaza’s Old City. It was built 700 years ago, in 1315, by the Mamluk Governor.

Another historic site was razed to the ground on the following day. The Mahkamah Mosque was a fine example of Mamluk architecture located off the main Baghdad Street in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood. It featured a Mamluk minaret and florally-decorated arch at its entrance and was built in 1455 on the orders of Sayf Al-Din Birdibak Al-Ashrafi, a member of the sultan’s staff. Shuja’iyya neighbourhood experienced some of the most intense shelling of the war in July that resulted in thousands of residents being forced to flee their homes.

The large Omar Ibn Abd al-Aziz Mosque in the Strip’s northern city of Beit Hanoun is a modern building but is a central mosque that serves a large segment of the town. It was destroyed by shelling on 25 August. Other destroyed mosques of cultural significance include the centuries-old Al-Montar Mosque and tomb, hit on 11 July.

Gaza’s only 3 churches also fell victim to the conflict. The Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius is the oldest church in Gaza, dating to the 1150s, in Al-Zaytun Quarter of the Old City. The church’s cemetery was damaged when the area was shelled in July in another attack on Gaza’s rich religious heritage. Gaza Baptist Church received major damage from the shelling of a police station nearby and Gaza’s Latin Church had damage to peripheral buildings owned by the parish.

These sites have historical importance and provided irreplaceable material evidence of Palestinian culture and history. Al-Saifi believes that by destroying mosques, “the occupation was erasing the historical proof and evidence of our presence in Palestine.”

The devastation of hundreds of years of Gaza’s Islamic history would be expected to have done harm to Gaza’s identity, but Al-Saifi insists that Israel could not erase the Palestinian memory and the peoples’ right to exist. “I believe that the Israelis will not succeed in this because to us, mosques are not merely stones, but hold great and holy value to all of the Muslim generations.”

The damage to these irreplaceable landmarks has led Israel to claim that it targeted mosques and civilian buildings used for military purposes, such as the stockpiling of weapons and as meeting points for the fighters of the Qassam Brigades. The IDF alleged that Hamas “cruelly abused mosques by using them for terror activities” in a statement to the Associated Press.

Hamas has denied the accusation and many in Gaza feel that the allegation is an attack on their way of life. “Every citizen in Gaza is proud of these fighters,” Dr Al-Saifi said, “and mosques are completely open places; they do not contain any shelters or secret rooms, they are open houses of worship.” He went on to say that Israel knowingly targets civilian sites. “There is no doubt that the Israeli intelligence agencies have their eyes and ears in Gaza, and they are certain that these are fabrications.”

The damage done to these sites has undermined the territory’s social infrastructure. For the residents of Gaza, many of the targeted mosques provided social, educational and health facilities.

The Palestinians are of the opinion that Israel does not distinguish between military and civilian targets in their aggression against Gaza. Their suspicions appear to be validated by UN OCHA figures released in a recent report. They suggest that at least 80 per cent of those killed were civilians. These figures indicate that Israel has found little difficulty in treating civilian infrastructure as legitimate military targets considering that it has targeted churches and other buildings not accused of being used by Qassam fighters.

Many have noted Israel’s disproportionate use of force in areas that it associates with enemy fighters. It is an army that is used to inflicting widespread devastation on the civilian population, which is supposed to serve as a deterrent.

For Al-Saifi, this strategy is abhorrent: “Honestly, the targeting of mosques on such an unprecedented large-scale reflects the barbaric and brutal nature of the Israeli occupation, and the army’s frustration and sense of failure, as it reached an impasse. It resorted to targeting civilians and places of worship, which have been guaranteed protection and immunity under all international conventions.”

The pursuit of collective punishment is an international war crime and it appears that these violations by Israel have been observed clearly by international institutions. The retiring UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, condemned the operations in Gaza. In a statement to Britain’s Guardian newspaper she said, “There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated.”

In a similar incident, despite being given the coordinates of UNRWA schools they were bombed under the pretext of the presence of missiles. “Even though the Arab and foreign UNRWA spokesperson stressed and confirmed that the occupation’s claims were fabricated,” complained Al-Saifi. The UN has condemned the bombing of these schools and notified the IDF of their locations repeatedly. It was alleged by Israel that mosques and UNRWA schools all facilitated the activities of the Palestinian resistance groups.

Because of this, Al-Saifi has questioned Israel over its accusations of “terror” activities in historic mosques; he believes that the world has seen through Israel’s empty justifications of war crimes. “All of the international community organisations and international observers know that these are lies.”

Indeed, the targeting of religious and cultural sites as civilian sites constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law; it is covered by Article 4 of the Hague Convention of 1954 for the Protection of Cultural Property. Under this convention, all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid damage of cultural property in cases of war. It is also designated a criminal act under Article 8 of the ICC Statute which stipulates that “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion…[and] historic monuments… constitutes a war crime.”

In recent months, the destruction of historic monuments and houses of worship has usually been associated with radical groups like Islamic State (ISIS) rather than state actors like Israel. In July, ISIS destroyed the mosque of Prophet Younis (Jonah) in Mosul and several Shiite Mosques in Iraq. ISIS’s presence has warranted considerable responses from the international community. Yet Israel’s attack on Gaza’s heritage of the same nature has created little response.

The international community and Israel itself will be reluctant to label the assault on Gaza an act of terror. Domestically, it is believed that Israel’s agenda of eliminating the people of the Gaza Strip in the name of “security” stands above criticism from anyone and everyone. “Israel wanted to give itself an excuse” to commit acts of brutality, claims Al-Saifi.

In Palestine, there has been considerable pressure to get the international community to hold Israel to account for its actions. “The Palestinian Authority,” insists Al-Saifi, “must go to the ICC in The Hague… in order for us to witness the occupation being prosecuted, just as the criminals in Yugoslavia and Bosnia were prosecuted.”

Israel’s occupation is more complex than a Genocide

October 9, 2014 by Nasheman

– by Jonathan Cook

Israeli officials were caught in a revealing lie late last month as the country celebrated the Jewish New Year. Shortly after declaring the most popular boy’s name in Israel to be “Yosef”, the interior ministry was forced to concede that the top slot was actually filled by “Mohammed”.

That small deceit coincided with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the United Nations. He outraged Israelis by referring to Israel’s slaughter of more than 2,100 Palestinians – most of them civilians – in Gaza over the summer as “genocide”.

Both incidents served as a reminder of the tremendous power of a single word.

Most Israelis are barely able to contemplate the possibility that their Jewish state could be producing more Mohammeds than Moshes. At the same time, and paradoxically, Israel can point to the sheer number of “Mohammeds” to demonstrate that at worst it is eradicating the visibility of a Muslim name, certainly not its bearers.

As distressing as it is, hundreds of dead in Gaza is far from the industrial-scale murder of the Nazi Holocaust.

But the idea that Israel is committing genocide may not be quite as hyperbolic as is assumed. Last month a “jury” featuring international law experts at a people’s court, known as the Russell Tribunal, into Israel’s recent attack on Gaza concluded that Israel was guilty of “incitement to genocide”. The panel argued that Israel’s long-term collective punishment of Palestinians was designed to “inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group”.

The tribunal’s language intentionally echoed that of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew and lawyer who after fleeing Nazi Europe succeeded in introducing the term “genocide” into international law.

Lemkin and the UN convention’s drafters understood that genocide did not require death camps; it could also be achieved gradually through intentional and systematic abuse and neglect. Their definition raises troubling questions about Israel’s treatment of Gaza, aside from military attacks. Does, for example, forcing the enclave’s two million inhabitants to depend on acquifers polluted with seawater constitute genocide?

The real problem with Mr Abbas’s use of the term – given that it conflicts with popular notions of genocide – is that it made him an easy target for critics. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the Palestinian leader of “incitement”. The Israeli left, meanwhile, decried his wild and unhelpful exaggeration.

But the critics themselves have contributed more heat than light.

Not only do experts like Richard Falk and John Dugard view Israel’s actions in genocide-like terms, but notable Israeli scholars have done so too. The late Baruch Kimmerling invented a word, “politicide”, to convey more safely the idea of an Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

Israel has nonetheless successfully ring-fenced itself from the critical lexicon applied to comparable situations around the globe.

In conflicts where a mass expulsion of an ethnic or national group occurs, it is rightly identified as ethnic cleansing. In Israel’s case, however, respectable historians still equivocate over the events of 1948, even though more than 80 per cent of Palestinians were forced out by Israel as it established a Jewish state on their homeland.

Similarly with “apartheid”. For decades anyone who used the word about Israel was dismissed as an extremist or anti-Semite. Only in the last few years – and chiefly because of former US president Jimmy Carter – has the word gained a tentative foothold.

Even then, its main use is as a warning rather than a description of Israel’s behaviour: diehard adherents of two states aver that Israel is in danger of becoming an apartheid state at some indefinable moment if it does not separate from the Palestinians.

Instead, we are told to suffice with the label “occupation”. But that implies a temporary state of affairs, a transition before normality is restored – precisely the opposite of what is happening in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, where the occupation is entrenching, morphing and metastasising.

Those guarding the critical lexicon strip us of a terminology to convey the appalling reality faced by Palestinians, not just as individuals but as a national group. In truth, Israel’s strategy incorporates variants of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.

Observers, including the European Union, concede that Israel continues with incremental ethnic cleansing – though they prefer the more obscure “forcible transfer” – of Palestinians from so-called Area C, nearly two-thirds of the West Bank.

Israel has mastered, too, a sophisticated apartheid – partly veiled by its avoidance of the more visual aspects of segregation associated with South Africa – that grabs resources, just like its famous cousin, for one ethnic-national group, Jews, at the expense of another, Palestinians.

But unlike South African apartheid, whose fixed legal and institutional systems of separation gradually became torpid and unwieldy, Israel’s remains dynamic and responsive. Few observers know, for example, that almost all residential land in Israel is off-limits to Palestinian citizens, enforced through vetting committees recently given sanction by the Israeli courts.

And what to make of a plan just disclosed by the Israeli media indicating that Mr Netanyahu and his allies have been secretly plotting to force many Palestinians into Sinai, with the US arm-twisting the Egyptians into agreement? If true, the bombing campaigns of the past six years may be better understood as softening-up operations before a mass expulsion from Gaza.

Such a policy would certainly satisfy Lemkin’s definition of genocide.

One day doubtless, a historian will coin a word to describe Israel’s unique strategy of incrementally destroying the Palestinian people. Sadly, by then it may be too late to help the Palestinians.

Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

The Voice of Women In Gaza

October 8, 2014 by Nasheman

A radio broadcaster sits in the sound booth at NISAA FM radio station, which focuses on women's issues, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, July 9, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman)

A radio broadcaster sits in the sound booth at NISAA FM radio station. (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman)

A Gaza based women’s radio station was destroyed in the last days of the Israeli war, when the 14 story building housing the studio was brought down as an act of terrorizing the population.

Gaza’s Nisaa FM was located in Basha towers inside an office building in the north of Gaza. The tower was a target for Israeli assault on August 26th, and the whole building, including Nisaa Gaza radio office, collapsed.

The office contained all the equipment, radio studio, computer training lab, the archive and furniture within. They took it upon themselves to not stop running the radio, and started working from a volunteer’s home.

Nisaa FM wants to rebuild its offices, so the channel can return its full potential, be productive and regain its hub for women in the Gaza strip.

We are producing Nisaa FM’s appeal to its well wishers and supporters to come forward to its assistance.

The Voice of Women In Gaza

A group of us, women from across Gaza, have come together in 2013 to form the first online community radio for women in the Gaza Strip. Not only we were proudly taking part in democratizing communications in our country, but we created a platform to share first hand our challenges, our findings and our voice on all fronts. It is a challenge for Arab women to be outspoken, let alone creating a community radio managed by women in Gaza. We helped pass this opportunity forward to the women of our community through a training center dedicated to training women on the use of multi-media. This will give them the chance to participate in the forms of communication, accessing information and the production of high quality material.

We help women of Gaza fully understand their rights; provide them the knowledge and the tools to apply their freedoms on ground depending on themselves, fighting their own injustices, involving their community and reflecting positively on the generations to come.

Our goals are:

Recognizing women’s role in communication and media, elevating the media scene for women journalists in Gaza
Bringing awareness to public on women’s issues and opinion, especially those living in marginalized areas in Gaza.
Women documenting stories of the oppressed within the Gaza community
Recruiting men and women to fight for gender equality in Gaza

Appeal

Since our office building has been destroyed, we will need to locate to a different location. At the new location, we will need to rebuild a modest radio studio, purchase equipment and furniture for the radio, training labs, and general office furniture. This includes studio equipment, recording equipment, 10 computers, a generator, and office furniture. We have estimated the amount needed to operate at our original capacity at $18,000.

What you get

For any funding we receive, we are ready to send you special handcrafts made by women of Gaza, which reflects on our culture and heritage.

Other ways you can help

Spread the word about our campaign through your social media networks and any other way you feel that could help us reach our maximum potential!!

To contribute: http://igg.me/p/939422/x

You can reach Nisaa FM at:

qaryamedia@gmail.com

www.nisaagaza.com

https://www.facebook.com/nisaagaza1

Revealed: Europe’s "discreet" cooperation with Israel’s nuclear industry

October 2, 2014 by Nasheman

José Manuel Barroso (left), the European Commission president, has a “discreet” chat with Benjamin Netanyahu. (European External Action Service)

– by David Cronin, Electronic Intifada

The European Union has been cooperating furtively with Israel’s nuclear industry for at least six years.

An internal document that I recently obtained states that an accord on “joint and cooperative initiatives relevant for the peaceful use of nuclear energy” was signed between the EU and Israel in 2008. “This is a discreet agreement that has not been given publicity,” the paper adds.

The document (published below) was drawn up ahead of an October 2013 visit to Israel by Antonio Tajani, then Italy’s member of the European Commission.

It is not hard to understand why the Union wishes to keep this cooperation “discreet.” The agreement was reached with Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission — the body that runs the Dimona reactor, where Israel’s nuclear weapons were developed.

Israel introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East and has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has refused to permit international inspection of all its nuclear activities.

In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then Israel’s prime minister, acknowledged that Israel possessed nuclear weapons. The US Defense Intelligence Agency estimated in 1999 that Israel had between 60 and 80 nuclear warheads.

Hypocrisy

These facts put Israel in a very different category to Iran, supposedly a major threat to world peace.

Unlike Israel, Iran has no nuclear weapons. The National Intelligence Council — a group advising the US president — expressed “high confidence” in 2007 that Iran had halted its weapons development program a few years earlier.

Despite that explicit statement, both the EU and the US have slapped punitive sanctions on Iran (after some sanctions had been relaxed, America imposed new restrictions on business with Iran last week). The official narrative behind these sanctions is that everything must be done to stop Iran acquiring the bomb.

Yet the European Union is happy to cooperate with Israel, a nation that actually has the bomb. Is it any wonder that Brussels officials don’t want attention drawn to this hypocrisy?

Military links

I asked the EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) — which is tasked with implementing the “discreet” agreement — why it is cooperating with Israel, a known threat to world peace. A JRC spokesperson tried to present the “scientific collaboration” involved here as benign.

The research with Israel concerns the “medical application of radionuclides, radiation protection, as well as nuclear security related to the detection and identification of nuclear and radioactive materials,” according to the spokesperson. “It does not cover any activities related to reprocessing and enrichment.”

I asked the spokesperson if any guarantees have been provided that Israel will not use the fruits of its research with the Union for military purposes. Not surprisingly, I didn’t receive a reply to that question.

When I asked how much had been spent on nuclear cooperation with Israel, the JRC would only say that the research in question is “not jointly funded as each institution covers its related activities.”

As well as overseeing the development of nuclear weapons, Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission has strong links to the conventional arms industry.

Apart from Dimona, the commission also runs the Soreq research center. Soreq’s own website says that it develops equipment with “homeland security” applications — a euphemism for surveillance technology and weaponry. When journalists have been given guided tours of that center, its scientists have bragged of inventing lasers to assist snipers.

The JRC — the European Commission’s in-house science service — has been cooperating more directly with Israel’s weapons industry, too.

In December 2010, it teamed up with Elbit, the Israeli arms company, for what it called a “small boat detection campaign” in Haifa. The purpose of this exercise was to see how drones can be used for maritime surveillance, principally to stop asylum-seekers from entering Europe.

Elbit is one of the leading suppliers of warplanes to the Israeli military. This means that it is providing some of the key tools that Israel used to inflict death and destruction on Gaza this summer (and in previous attacks). By hosting the “boat detection” exercise, the EU indicated its eagerness to deploy Israel’s tools of mass murder against refugees.

Greenwashing

Although the EU has tried to keep the nuclear research “discreet,” it has openly celebrated more palatable forms of engagement with Israel.

José Manuel Barroso, the outgoing European Commission chief, posed for photos with Benjamin Netanyahu, when the two men approved an energy and water cooperation agreement in 2012. The JRC tried to sell that accord as ecologically sound by stressing that it concerned renewable energy and resource conservation.

Environmental campaigners have a name for tactics designed to rebrand a villain as a tree-hugger: “greenwashing.”

Cooperation on “clean” energy provides scant comfort to Gaza’s people, whose only power plant was bombed by Israel this summer. Nor should it be forgotten that Israel attacked a center for autistic children that had solar panels on its roof. So much for Israel’s commitment to renewable energy.

Israel is a nuclear-armed rogue state. I’m sure that many decent people would be horrified to learn that the EU is liaising with the very agencies that developed Israel’s nuclear weapons — even if this cooperation is “discreet.”

How to boycott Israel: updated guidelines for academics

September 28, 2014 by Nasheman

A Palestinian man inspects a classroom damaged by an Israeli air strike at a school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, 24 August. (Abed Rahim Khatib / APA images)

– by Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) recently updated its guidelines on how to apply the international academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

This comes at a crucial moment – in the wake of Israel’s latest spasm of horrifying destruction and mass killing in Gaza, and after a period of unprecedented growth in support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

Calls for academic boycott will resonate more than ever particularly in light of Israel’s recent bomb attacks on university facilities in Gaza, its violent raids on universities in the West Bank and the financial and political support Israeli universities have themselves given to the carnage.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza are not going back to school on time as a direct consequence of the Israeli devastation, while in the West Bank young children face such violence as tear gas fired at them on their way to class.

The school year in Gaza was scheduled to begin on 23 August but has been postponed; Israeli attacks since 7 July killed more than 500 children and injured thousands. In total220 schools were damaged, 22 of which were completely destroyed.

Children will not be able to go back to class until “war-damaged schools” are repaired and “unexploded ordnance” removed, the UN says.

When children do go back to class, learning will certainly be an even bigger challenge due to the fact that virtually the entire child population in Gaza is in need of psychosocial support due to the trauma of Israel’s 51-day bombardment.

Practical guidance

The updated PACBI guidelines are important for two reasons: they provide a practical reference that can be used to decide if a specific activity is boycottable and they can be used to debunk false claims made by opponents of the boycott, for example that the boycott stifles “academic freedom.”

A common false claim is that PACBI has called for a blanket boycott of Israeli individuals or even of Jewish individuals.

But, PACBI states: “Anchored in precepts of international law and universal human rights, the BDS movement, including PACBI, rejects on principle boycotts of individuals based on their identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion) or opinion.”

A person’s activities are boycottable, however, when “an individual is representing the state of Israel or a complicit Israeli institution (such as a dean, rector, or president), or is commissioned/recruited to participate in Israel’s efforts to ‘rebrand’ itself.”

There are other circumstances as well, as the guidelines detail.

The PACBI guidelines “are mainly intended to assist conscientious academics and academic bodies around the world to be in harmony with the Palestinian call for boycott, as a contribution towards upholding international law and furthering the struggle for freedom, justice and equality.”

PACBI urges:

academics, academic associations/unions, and academic – as well as other – institutions around the world, where possible and as relevant, to boycott and/or work towards the cancellation or annulment of events, activities, agreements, or projects involving Israeli academic institutions or that otherwise promote the normalization of Israel in the global academy, whitewash Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights, or violate the BDS guidelines.

Normalization and “fig-leafing”

Many Palestinians reject initiatives that they say constitute “normalization.” But what does this mean? Here is the definition provided by PACBI:

Academic activities and projects involving Palestinians and/or other Arabs on one side and Israelis on the other (whether bi- or multilateral) that are based on the false premise of symmetry/parity between the oppressors and the oppressed or that claim that both colonizers and colonized are equally responsible for the “conflict” are intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible forms of normalization that ought to be boycotted.

Far from challenging the unjust status quo, such projects contribute to its endurance. Examples include events, projects, or publications that are designed explicitly to bring together Palestinians/Arabs and Israelis so they can present their respective narratives or perspectives, or to work toward reconciliation without addressing the root causes of injustice and the requirements of justice.

The guidelines gives examples of forms of joint activity that are and are not normalization and also warn against “fig-leafing”:

International academics who insist on crossing the BDS “picket line” by pursuing activities with boycottable Israeli institutions and then visiting Palestinian institutions or groups for “balance,” violate the boycott guidelines and contribute to the false perception of symmetry between the colonial oppressor and the colonized. The BNC (including PACBI) rejects this attempt at “fig-leafing” and does not welcome such visits to Palestinian institutions.

PACBI’s updated guidelines for cultural boycott are here.

The full academic boycott guidelines are here.

Egypt evicts Rafah residents to create buffer zone

September 23, 2014 by Nasheman

Egyptian soldiers stand guard on a mosque’s minaret in the Egyptian city of Rafah, Sept. 8, 2013. (Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

– by Al-Monitor

Rafah, Egypt: Concern has spread among residents of the border areas in the northern Sinai Peninsula following the Egyptian army’s planned establishment of a buffer zone on the Egyptian side of Rafah along the border with the Gaza Strip.

The undeclared move prompted local concern that a new reality is being secretly shaped, and that the government has adopted a policy of strategic patience to draw the map of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the people in Sinai.

The Egyptian army has stated its military operations in Sinai are part of the war on terrorism, yet residents believe the operations are designed to forcibly displace them.

Informed authority sources told Al-Monitor that the army’s plan to establish a buffer zone will take two years to implement and will necessitate the razing of homes located about a kilometer (0.6 miles) inside the Rafah border. The plan also necessitates building a large barrier equipped with surveillance cameras and lights, and deploying ground sensors to abort any Palestinian attempts to dig tunnels or smuggle arms.

An official source explained that several countries seek to achieve stability in the area and will help the Egyptian authorities fund the project. The source refused to name these countries.

On the reasons behind the establishment of the buffer zone, the source said, “Every country has the right to preserve its borders as it deems fit. No country in the world accepts that its rights be violated the way they are violated on the border with the Gaza Strip.”

The source said that homes will be razed to empty the area in preparation for the so-called protection of the national security project. He said the government, not the army, is the authority designated to compensate residents and talk about whether their rights are legitimate.

The source added, “The establishment of a buffer zone on the border is of absolute necessity to preserve Egyptian national security, particularly with the growing plans to export the Palestinian cause to Egyptian territory, away from its natural context. Thus, we cannot be emotional while thinking of the [population] displacement issue.”

A source who is a member of the Sawarka tribe and close to Sinai authorities told Al-Monitor that the border operations — namely, the demolition of houses — are designed to control the area where Hamas is promoting its influence through the tunnels.

Rafah resident Um Ibrahim told Al-Monitor how her family’s house on the Gaza border was blown up. “The army blew up our house, claiming there were tunnels. This is totally untrue. We told them, ‘If there are indeed tunnels, blow us up with the house.’ The officer replied, ‘Relax, all of the houses in [the Egyptian side of] Rafah will be destroyed and razed. Forget about this area and find yourself another place to live in. This is about Egypt’s national security,’” she said.

Um Ibrahim added, “If the area will be used to preserve the security of Egypt, we demand the government provide us a place to live.”

According to residents of the border area, the attempts to displace them began when Hamas came to power in the Gaza Strip. In 2009, ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attempted to build a separation barrier made of steel in the highly populated border area. Other attempts were made to dig a 10-kilometer (6-mile) stream of water along the Gaza border.

At the time, Egyptian authorities said the steel barrier was designed to preserve national security and halt smuggling operations through the tunnels. Mubarak’s buffer zone was never completed following local objections broadcast in the Egyptian media, the escalation in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian portrayal of the issue as an Egyptian attempt to tighten the siege on Gaza.

Residents of the Egyptian side of Rafah said that drilling equipment shakes the ground and further cracks the foundations of their houses. Beneath the houses are tunnels, which further weaken the ground, according to Mohammed al-Barahimeh, who lives just a few meters from the border.

He told Al-Monitor, “Since 2009, the successive Egyptian authorities have tried to create a buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza at our expense and without compensation and without even providing us another place to live.”

Barahimeh said, “Mubarak failed to displace us, as we managed to express our real suffering to the public. But today, harsh plans are being implemented to displace us, while the Egyptian public opinion is being deluded with the pretext of the war on terrorism. The Egyptian people believe that the army’s actions are part of the war on terrorism.”

Authorities under Mubarak were not the only ones working to displace border residents. The Sinai residents were shocked when the Ministry of Defense under the rule of ousted President Mohammed Morsi passed a December 2012 decision, Decree No. 203, prohibiting the right to own, rent or build property located within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the border. Sinai residents largely rejected the decision, viewing it as an attempt to halt life in the area, according to local resident Mohammed al-Manei.

Manei told Al-Monitor that it has become more difficult to stand against the army’s decisions. The army has chosen the right time to build the buffer zone. Public opinion has been mobilized against Rafah, the tunnels and Gaza, with the army linking them to the war on terrorism.

Sinai novelist Massaad Abu-Fajr told Al-Monitor, “The Egyptian government is fighting to preserve its violated border in a different way. Yet, we need to exert pressure on it to develop its means. As for the reason why the people of Sinai are paying the price, some of them did not declare their clear rejection of Hamas.”

He added, “Everything that is taking place in Sinai is the consequence of Hamas keeping its grip over the Gaza Strip, turning Sinai into a corridor for smuggling and a reservoir to store missiles and weapons. The movement is working to expel the state from Sinai by turning our children into smugglers and terrorists, and using Sinai as a place to keep criminal groups out of Gaza.”

If Hamas is ousted, said Abu-Fajr, half of Sinai’s problems will be solved.

With the aggravation of the political situation between the Egyptian and Palestinian sides, the people of Sinai remain victims until further notice.

Source

How UN’s Ban Ki-moon and Oxfam undermine Palestinian right to resist

September 20, 2014 by Nasheman

– by Ali Abunimah

Earlier this month, as Israeli massacres claimed dozens of lives every day and night in Gaza, 129 Palestinian and international organizations sent an open letter condemning UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s role as a partner in Israel’s crimes.

They criticized his “biased statements,” his “failure to act, and the inappropriate justification of Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law, which amount to war crimes.”

They called on him to “stand for law and justice or resign.”

Sadly, the message did not get through. Yesterday, following the ceasefire deal between the Palestinian resistance and Israel, Ban issued a new statement welcoming the ceasefire.

“After this latest round of killing and the further widespread destruction of Palestinian homes, civilians on both sides need a reprieve in order to resume their daily lives, and to allow for humanitarian and early recovery efforts to address the desperate needs of the people in Gaza,” Ban said.

But Ban continued (emphasis added):

Any peace effort that does not tackle the root causes of the crisis will do little more than set the stage for the next cycle of violence. Gaza must be brought back under one legitimate Palestinian Government adhering to the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] commitments; the blockade of Gaza must end; Israel’slegitimate security concerns must be addressed. The United Nations stands ready to support efforts to address the structural factors of conflict between Israel and Gaza.

The Secretary-General remains hopeful that the extended ceasefire will act as a prelude to a political process as the only way of achieving durable peace. The two-state solution is the only viable option. The Secretary-General urgently calls on both parties to return to meaningful negotiations towards a final status agreement that addresses all core issues and ends the 47-year occupation.

It is not up to Ban to dictate internal political arrangements to Palestinians, but what concerns me is his insistence that any Palestinian “government” must adhere to “PLO commitments.”

What he means is that it must adhere to the so-called “Quartet principles” dictated by the United States in 2006 after Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections.

These require Palestinians to “be committed to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Road Map.”

What this meant at the time and means in the present context is that Palestinians must unilaterally accept Israel’s political demands and renounce resistance and self-defense.

It is simply obscene for Ban to demand this, especially after the latest Israeli war crimes and atrocities that some international experts say rise to the level of genocide.

It would be one thing if Ban were even-handed and demand that Israel also renounce violence, but he does not do so. Instead he makes a nod to Israel’s “legitimate security concerns” as if it were not the Palestinians who have actually faced apocalyptic destruction – the equivalent of an atomic bomb dropped on Gaza – at the hands of Israel.

It is also notable that Ban utters not a single word about Palestinian rights. Instead he uses the vague and deceptive formula of a “final status agreement that addresses all core issues and ends the 47-year occupation.”

This may be news to Ban, but eighty percent of Gaza’s residents are refugees. Yes, they are resisting to end Israel’s 47-year occupation. But they are also demanding an end to their 66-year exile from their homes in present-day Israel. Their right of return cannot be trumped by Israel’s racist demand to be recognized as a “Jewish state.”

Oxfam backs Israel’s right to kill Palestinians

Sadly, this unbalanced thinking, in which the aggressor and occupier’s right to use violence against its victims is sacred, and in which the victims must be disarmed, is not unique to the UN.

I was also disturbed to read a paper from the international development agency Oxfam which effectively endorses Israel’s right to kill Palestinians under certain circumstances, while denying Palestinians any right to resist (“Cease Failure: Rethinking seven years of failing policies in Gaza”).

The paper contains some useful suggestions to be sure, but apparently offers Israel advice on when it can kill its Palestinian victims in its self-declared buffer zones in the Gaza Strip and off Gaza’s coast (emphasis added):

Israeli activity is currently conducted under the laws of armed conflict, which allow for the legal use of deadly force under an extensive range of circumstances. A more appropriate approach is the law enforcement model, which would limit the legal use of deadly force to extreme circumstances, and only when all other non-lethal measures have proven insufficient.

While offering the Israeli occupation tips on when and how to kill Palestinians whose land it is occupying, Oxfam advises that Palestinians should be denied any means to self-defense and resistance.

It calls for “adequate inspection of the border between Egypt and Gaza to eliminate the smuggling of illegal weapons” but without describing any means by which Palestinians could legally obtain weapons to defend themselves.

Oxfam reaffirms its opposition to any Palestinian right to self-defense and resistance by demanding that a future “Palestinian government” be held “accountable to the current Quartet principles (renunciation of violence, acceptance of previous agreements signed by the PLO, and recognition of the State of Israel).”

This is simply astonishing. Oxfam should not give the occupier advice on how to occupy and how to refine its apparatus of siege, oppression and murder.

Instead, Oxfam should restrict itself to demanding that Palestinian rights, all Palestinian rights, be enforced and that Israeli individuals and the Israeli entity be held accountable for their atrocities in Gaza.

Let’s remember that Palestinian resistance would be unnecessary in the first place if the so-called “international community” – the US, EU and their client regimes – had not been arming, financing and supporting Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing and colonization for all these decades.

Palestinians should no longer accept such language or demands from those who purport to support their struggle.

Source

No change to Gaza blockade since ceasefire

September 19, 2014 by Nasheman

The Kerem Shalom cargo terminal.

Gaza: There have been no changes to restrictions on Gaza’s crossings since a ceasefire agreement went into effect at the end of August, a Palestinian official said Wednesday.

Maher al-Tabba, director of public and media relations at Gaza’s chamber of commerce, said the Kerem Shalom operates with the same restrictions as before Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

Around 3,700 trucks have entered the besieged enclave between Aug. 28 and Sept. 15, almost a third of which were aid trucks.

Over 1,400 tons of cement entered Gaza between Sept. 2 – 15 to be used in internationally funded projects initiated before the conflict.

Unemployment rates are expected to surpass 55 percent in the near future, al-Tabba added.

In early September, Maria Jose Torres, deputy head of office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said no changes had been made at the Erez or Kerem Shalom crossings.

“We were expecting that the agreement of the ceasefire would have some kind of timeline for easing and lifting the blockade but so far we have nothing publicly. There might be something we are not aware of,” she added.

Following weeks of Egyptian-brokered negotiations, Israel and Hamas agreed to halt their fire in Gaza on Aug. 26 after 50 days, their deadliest confrontation in years.

The indirect talks are set to resume mid-September to discuss longer-term issues.

Ma’an