Category: Israel

South Tel Aviv land grab

by adminin Israel, Writing

Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2, 2012

It was a winter morning in 1982. Shimon Yehoshua, 21, had finished three years’ mandatory military service a week before. He’d arrived at his home—two rooms shared with his parents and nine brothers and sisters—in time to catch the last flames of Hanukkah.

Shimon lived in the Kfar Shalem neighborhood in the poor south of Tel Aviv. Before the 1948 war, Kfar Shalem was a Palestinian village, Salame. After the fighting was over the new state of Israel confiscated it and put mizrachim (Jews from Arab countries) in the homes, effectively turning them into public housing. By the 1970s, however, it was kicking those same families out to make way for more profitable projects like high rises.

When the police arrived to evict the Yehoshua family in December 1981, Shimon and a younger brother took to the roof in protest. Shimon was a handsome young man with dark, wavy hair, high cheekbones and a square chin. He wore jeans and a plaid jacket too thin to protect him from the cold. He was unarmed, save for some empty beer bottles.

Word of the standoff quickly spread through the neighborhood. Locals rushed to the scene. Zacharia Terem, now 81, was among them. In Hebrew thick with a Yemeni accent, Terem recounted the incident: “The police came. Shimon got on the roof. And they killed him.” Terem raised his arm, his hand jerked as though he was firing a gun.  “The officer was close—five, six meters away. He shot him twice. Once in the head and once in the shoulder. If you want to disable someone, you shoot them in leg. You don’t kill them.”

Thirty years on, Terem is still rattled by the incident. He paused, shook his head and rested his hand on his heart. He told me that in 1982 he was a technician at the phone company; he was also a founding member of the neighborhood committee formed to address the community’s needs. The state neglected mizrachi in south Tel Aviv and the area was plagued with crime, violence and drugs.

He recalled how Shimon lay still on the roof, his younger brother standing behind his body, gripping an empty bottle, as Terem confronted the police officer. “‘You’re a real hero!’“ he shouted, wagging his finger in the air. “‘A hero!’” The man who killed Shimon was never prosecuted.

***

Terem and his wife have lived in the same home in Kfar Shalem since they came to Israel from Yemen in 1949. They raised six kids in this house, which had no electricity and no running water when they arrived. Terem took to working the land: jasmine, mango, orange, palm and gat trees blanket the dunamand a half he calls his own.

Today, several generations of his family live in the small homes scattered along the edges of the lot. As Terem and I chatted, a grandson dropped by. He kissed the mezuzah on the doorpost as he entered and welcomed me in Arabic,ahlan wa sahlan. A great granddaughter—a tiny, smiling girl with curly hair—scooted by on a tricycle. It’s quiet here. The skyline is low and the wind sweeps in from the sea. Kfar Shalem is far enough out of the city to feel like an escape, close enough to feel like part of Tel Aviv. There are wide, green spaces. Property taxes are relatively low.

It’s prime real estate. And the state now wants to expel the Terem family—without compensation—so it can turn the property over to developers. Yudit Ilany is a legal coordinator at Darna, the Popular Committee for Housing Rights in Jaffa. According to Ilany, 800-900 families face eviction from public housing throughout Israel. Many live in Kfar Shalem and Jaffa (historically Arab, now a part of the Tel Aviv municipality); most are mizrachi or Palestinian—two of society’s weakest socioeconomic groups.

While a few do have the means to buy their homes from the government, Ilany says, the state refuses to sell to them. Darna is fighting two such cases in court. Both houses are in Jaffa, which is undergoing gentrification; the state intends to auction the properties to the highest bidder.

With the municipality’s blessing, developers have plans for other south Tel Aviv neighborhoods, Shapira and Neve Shaanan. But this is nothing new. Savvy investors first swooped in to the area during the British mandate.

***

Architect and historian Sharon Rotbard explains that the Shapira neighborhood was founded by a speculator of the same name. In 1881, at the age of 14, Shapira left his native Lithuania for Detroit, Michigan. There, he made a small fortune in real estate. In his 40s, he brought this money to Palestine and started buying and developing land.

It wasn’t just Shapira. According to Rotbard, what is now called south Tel Aviv was the “wild south from the real estate point of view. It was absolutely capitalist.” Shapira, Neve Shaanan and the surrounding areas were the “Hebrew neighborhoods of Jaffa,” Rotbard says. “Yes, they were Jews… but they were also part of Jaffa… [and they] also had connections with the [Palestinian] locals.”

While some of the early residents were Zionists who had come for ideological reasons, more had fled the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Others were economic refugees. Here, they put a foot on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. When they wrenched themselves up, they headed north to Tel Aviv. “Since the 1920s, [these neighborhoods] have had waves of immigration,” Rotbard says. The first was Eastern European; the next brought Jews from Salonika [Greece], Bulgaria, and Turkey. The 1930s saw an influx ofBukhari from Central Asia.

But these groups moved on and today’s veteran residents of Shapira and Neve Shaanan are mostly Bukhari and Russians who arrived in the 1990s. In recent years, Jewish settlers from the West Bank have migrated to south Tel Aviv and Jaffa. The phenomenon is an attempt to push Israeli society further to the right.

“There is a lot of power here that wants [the neighborhood] to be just for the Jews,” Rotbard said: “When I [moved to Shapira] in 2000, there were many [undocumented] Palestinian workers here from the West Bank [and Gaza]. They were here just like the Sudanese and Eritrean live here today.”

***

Since 2005, Shapira, Neve Shanan and HaTikva have become home to a large population of African refugees. They enter Israel via the porous southern border with Egypt. After they are arrested and held in prison, Israeli authorities dump the refugees in south Tel Aviv’s poor neighborhoods. Today, tens of thousands live in the area between the Central Bus Station and Kfar Shalem. Countrywide, they number 60,000.

For the most part, Israel does not process their requests for asylum: as Kfar Shalem residents are quick to point out, recognizing African refugees could open the door to Palestinian refugees. And while the state issues the asylum seekers visas, it calls them “illegal infiltrators” and does not allow them to work. So they scrape by on odd jobs and crowd into inexpensive apartments, sleeping as many as 20 to one room. Some refugees live in south Tel Aviv’s parks.

Rather than addressing the issue, state officials began campaigning against the asylum seekers. In October 2009, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Africans bring “a profusion of diseases” to the country. In July 2010, 25 south Tel Aviv rabbis issued a letter forbidding Jews from renting to “infiltrators” and undocumented migrant workers. That same month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Africans a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country.”

Soon thereafter, south Tel Aviv residents—mizrachim, Russians and settlers alike—started protesting against the refugees, calling on the state to deport them. Knesset members have joined these demonstrations, suddenly remembering the long-neglected locals.

In May, one such protest turned into a race riot after Member of Knesset Miri Regev, from Netanyahu’s Likud party, likened asylum seekers to “cancer in our body.” Some Jewish Israelis broke the windows of African-owned businesses, looted, and attacked refugees on the street. Incidents of violence are ongoing.

***

Although the protests are xenophobic and dangerous, the demonstrators accurately point out that they are a weak group that can’t handle the influx of another needy population. They are also correct when they say that the government doesn’t do anything to help.

Some critics say that the state is going beyond neglect. According to Ilany and City Councilman Aharon Maduel, the government is using this latest wave of immigrants to push the older ones out, intentionally fanning the flames in south Tel Aviv to serve developers’ interests—the same interests that pushed Yehoshua onto the roof.

Maduel is a member of the opposition party, Ir LeKulanu (A city for all of us). The son of Yemeni immigrants, he was born and raised in Kfar Shalem. Today, he lives there under the threat of eviction. Maduel says that it’s no accident that the refugees ended up in Shapira, Neve Shanan, and other south Tel Aviv neighborhoods. There is very little public housing in these neighborhoods, so the state cannot evict residents outright. Instead, the government must find creative ways to deliver the land to developers.

“How do you turn [south Tel Aviv] into an area for the rich?” Maduel says. “First of all, you weaken the area… forcing the people who have enough money to run… Only the weakest stay; the value of their houses goes down drastically; and the [investors] come and purchase, purchase, purchase….”

Ilany points out that in the same period that the refugees arrived, the government issued over 75,000 new work visas to non-Jewish migrant laborers. Though their numbers are greater than the refugees, politicians don’t call them a threat to the character of the state. Critics also say that the government points a finger at the refugees to divert attention from its treatment of the neighborhoods. It’s not just evictions. South Tel Aviv’s schools are weak and services are few. In Kiryat Shalom, for example, the municipality refuses locals’ requests for a library. And while wealthy north Tel Aviv has numerous sports and swimming facilities, Kfar Shalem’s 45,000 residents have just one small gym and a pool that is only open in the summer.

Maduel says it all boils down to discrimination against mizrachim. If the population was a different color, he says, they wouldn’t be struggling to hang on to their homes. And, maybe, Shimon Yehoshua wouldn’t have died defending his.

Hiding in fear, nowhere to run for Israel’s South Sudanese

by adminin Israel, Writing

Agence France-Presse (AFP), June 13, 2012

Abraham Alu, a 35-year-old asylum seeker from South Sudan, hasn’t left his apartment in south Tel Aviv for five days. He has run out of money and food. But he is too scared of the immigration police to venture further than the courtyard.

Alu used to sell plastic work boots on a busy pedestrian thoroughfare in south Tel Aviv but he stopped last Thursday, immediately after an Israeli court effectively ruled to deport South Sudanese nationals.

Although the state promised to give the South Sudanese community a week to leave of their own free will, police started rounding them up just three days after the ruling.

Rights groups put the number of those affected at around 700 men, women and children, while Israeli officials claim there are more than twice that number.

In the past, Alu shared his small, one-room apartment with 12 other men. But, as many South Sudanese have stopped working for fear of being caught by the police, the number has swelled to 20.

There aren’t enough mats to go around. Skinny men rest on the dirty, threadbare carpets.

“Sometimes we’re sitting two days without food. We drink water and tea. That’s enough,” says Alu, his hands shaking as he takes a sip from a paper cup. Some refugees have taken to eating pigeons.

Alu was seven when he saw his parents killed by militiamen. He fled his village alone, eventually making his way to Cairo. There, Alu joined a 2005 sit-in outside of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, protesting conditions refugees faced in Egypt.

When police raided the camp, 27 Africans were killed, including a toddler.

Alu ran again, arriving in Israel in early 2006. Now he has “lost all hope.”

A friend of his who returned to South Sudan after the country gained independence last summer was killed in the fighting that has broken out on the border.

“North Sudan is bombing civilian areas,” Alu says. “We (South Sudanese) are just looking for help.”

Alu does not know if anyone from his family is alive or where they are. He says he has nothing to return to in South Sudan and fears for his life.

William Chol, a 32-year-old father of four, fled South Sudan alone when he was 13. In north Sudan, he worked as a domestic helper. His employer did not let him out of the house and did not pay him. Chol says it was like “slavery.”

Chol escaped to Egypt in 2002. In 2009, he came to Israel with his wife and their young children.

Although the immigration police are out in full force, Chol stands on the now-quiet walkway where Alu used to sell shoes. Chol says that he won’t hide.

“Hide for what? I’m not a criminal.”

He points out that, like other South Sudanese, he has a visa. This visa, however, does not include permission to work.

In the wake of anti-African violence in south Tel Aviv and the imminent threat of deportation, Chol’s children are no longer attending school. He says they faced harassment from Israeli kids, some of whom, he claims, threw stones at them.

He says it feels like the community is “having a war with Israel.”

He’s tired of fighting and is outside, he says, because he wants to be arrested.

Like Alu, Emanuel Kel Bol Yok, 52, stopped working when he heard about the court’s decision. His family is running out of food, he says. He couldn’t make rent this month. “In two days, three days, we will be in the street.”

While he is scared of being deported, Bol Yok went to the police on Tuesday to beg them to allow his children to finish the school year. He has five children, ranging in age from two to 18; three attend public schools.

Sigal Rozen of the Hotline for Migrant Workers says the sweeping round-ups had further frightened a community which was already struggling with the rising tide of public hostility towards them.

“There is a lot of fear in the community. Two sisters — one in the first grade, the other in sixth grade — were arrested yesterday.” Along with their parents, the girls were taken to prison.

In schools in south Tel Aviv, many of the children are asylum seekers from Eritrea and north Sudan, she explains.

“It’s very difficult to explain to these kids that they are safe (while South Sudanese children) are being arrested.”

The deportation is impacting other African migrant workers, as well.

Justina Cobbina is a 41-year-old migrant worker from Ghana. Her husband, who is also from Ghana, was picked up by immigration police on Sunday; she hasn’t heard from him since.

Empress, their nine-year-old daughter, was born in Israel. In fluent Hebrew, she admits she is scared: “This morning, I cried.”

A number of asylum seekers’ families have also been split up as police arrest the South Sudanese partner but allow their spouses from elsewhere to stay.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has expressed his intention to deport all Africans, however, warning that the 60,000 who reside in Israel will bring an “end to the Zionist dream.”

Growing tensions between locals and migrants

by adminin Israel, Writing

IRIN, May 17, 2012

Blessing Akachukneu was already looking for a new place to live when her south Tel Aviv apartment, which doubles as a day-care centre, was firebombed in April. Her Israeli neighbours, she explained, had complained to the landlord about the noise from the day-care centre and she had been asked to leave. Otherwise, she had not had any problems in Shapira neighbourhood.

So Akachukneu was shocked when Molotov cocktails were thrown at her flat. Four other apartments – all home to African asylum-seekers – were targeted in the attack. Haim Mula, a 20-year-old Israeli man Shapira residents call “quiet” and “religious”, was arrested in connection with the incident. Police believe the attacks were racially motivated; Mula had been detained recently for throwing eggs at a Sudanese refugee.

A week later, two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the south Tel Aviv apartment of Nigerian workers.

But this was not the first time the African community was singled out for violence. In January 2011, a burning tyre was thrown into the Ashdod apartment of five Sudanese refugees. Two of the men were hospitalized. On the same night, three teenagers – Israeli-born daughters of African migrants – were beaten up by a group of Jewish youth. One of the attackers was armed with a knife; another allegedly shouted racial slurs at the girls.

“I’m afraid that something like this will happen again,” Akachukneu told IRIN.

The incidents point to escalating tensions between Jewish Israelis and the country’s roughly 45,000 African asylum-seekers. Human rights groups say 85 percent of these men, women, and children are refugees from Eritrea and Sudan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called African asylum-seekers “infiltrators” who are a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country”. Speaking to IRIN, Ministry of Interior spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said most of the country’s “infiltrators” are work migrants who do not meet the definition of a refugee.

The country’s laws define an “infiltrator” as anyone who enters Israel other than through an official border crossing, but according to Amnesty International, the term “infiltrators” is inappropriate because it carries connotations of threats and criminality, and fuels xenophobia and discrimination against asylum-seekers and migrants.

Human rights groups also point out that the government does not process requests for asylum. But in what seems to be a nod to the dangerous circumstances they face in their home countries, Israel is not currently deporting Eritrean or Sudanese citizens.

While they are allowed to stay, Israel does not give these asylum-seekers work visas. Most take odd jobs. In historically poor south Tel Aviv, they can find relatively cheap housing. They tend to live in cramped conditions, sometimes as many as eight to a room. Those that cannot find enough work to pay rent, end up sleeping in parks.

Locals say crime has risen as the African community has grown. They also say the increased demand for housing has driven prices up in the area. Some accuse the asylum-seekers of stealing much-needed jobs.

In the past two years, Jewish Israelis have held a number of protests against the presence of Africans in south Tel Aviv and have called on the state to deport the “infiltrators”. While the demonstrations have a decidedly xenophobic feel, the protesters accurately point out that the government is doing nothing about the social problems that come with the Africans’ unemployment and homelessness – a concern shared by human rights groups.

But while recent incidents suggest more violence could be on the horizon, south Tel Aviv’s refugees say they are most concerned with making a living.

Tekne Micaele, 38, fled Eritrea after doing 10 years’ national service without pay. Like most of the asylum-seekers in Israel, he walked here, crossing the southern border with Egypt on foot. The journey is hazardous with many of the asylum-seekers often held by gangs until their relatives pay a ransom.

For the past year and a half, Micaele has lived in a south Tel Aviv park. He gets food from an Israeli grassroots organization which offers refugees a meal a day. While no one has threatened him physically or verbally, Micaele’s biggest problem is the fact that he does not have a work visa.

In early 2010, Israeli authorities announced they would crack down on employers who hired undocumented workers, hitting them with steep fines. The state also conducted a media blitz warning of the consequences of hiring illegal labourers. Two years later, it seems that the campaign has had some effect – Micaele and other asylum-seekers report that potential employers usually ask to see a visa and are reluctant to hire them without one.

Micaele sums up his situation: “No work, no house, nothing.”

Another asylum-seeker, Mimi Hylameshesh, 28, has a job cleaning houses, but struggles to make ends meet. On a good month, she makes just over 2,000 NIS (US$523). Rent costs her 1,500 NIS and she pays 600 NIS to send her three-and-a-half-year old daughter to an unlicensed day-care centre.

Hylameshesh and her husband escaped national service and fled Eritrea four years ago. Her husband went on to Libya and then to Europe. Arriving in Israel alone with an eight-month-old daughter, Hylameshesh, spent a year in prison, where she was held without charge, before coming to south Tel Aviv.

Under a new law passed in January, anyone who enters Israel illegally – including Sudanese and Eritreans – can be detained for up to three years, even if there is no intention of deporting them. In some cases, this time period can be extended, even indefinitely. Amnesty International criticized the law arguing that automatic and prolonged detention violates international law and standards.

Hylameshesh’s husband currently lives in Switzerland but does not send Hylameshesh money. “It is hard for me,” she says, adding that there is always enough food for her child, but not always enough for her.

African refugees join Palestinians as a “threat” to Israel

by adminin Israel, Writing

The National, May 10, 2012

On Tuesday Israelis woke up to the surprising news that the early elections Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced on Sunday had been cancelled.

In a deal made while the country was asleep, Netanyahu forged a new coalition with Kadima. Now the Knesset will march in lockstep behind the PM, meaning little will change. Not that elections would have made much of a difference, however – the popular Mr Netanyahu had been expected to win by a landslide.

Public support for him is somewhat surprising. Last summer’s protests against the cost of living suggested that many Israelis are less than satisfied with the state of the state. And almost a year later, life in Israel is only getting more expensive. Housing is as unaffordable as ever and wages are still relatively low. The gap between Israel’s rich and poor remains one of the highest in the western world. This winter saw a steep increase in electricity and gas prices. And, despite last year’s “cottage cheese protests”, food prices continue to rise.

“Social justice” – a term Israelis use not about ending the occupation of Palestinian land, but about building a more egalitarian economy – remains elusive. Meanwhile Mr Netanyahu’s government uses policy and rhetoric not only against Palestinians but also against Israel’s other “others” – migrant workers and African refugees.

Palestinians have been squeezed by the Netanyahu administration: increased settlement growth; a dramatic rise in demolition of Palestinian and Bedouin homes in East Jerusalem and Israeli-controlled Area C in the West Bank; and the approval of the Prawer Plan, which will see tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel forcibly removed from their villages in the Negev (Naqab) to make way for Judaisation of the area.

But Africans and refugees are under pressure, too. The list of examples includes a government campaign in which paid actors claimed that they are unemployed because foreigners took their jobs. It includes the deportation of Israel-born children of migrant workers, even though the Supreme Court overturned the policy that made their parents illegal. It includes the construction of what will be the world’s largest detention centre, a prison to house African refugees, including women and children. There, asylum-seekers will be held without trial, most for up to three years, some indefinitely.

Their only crime will be that they violated Israel’s 1954 Infiltration Prevention law, intended to criminalise the actions of Palestinian “infiltrators” – refugees who attempted to enter the newly created state of Israel to return to the homes and lands from which they had been expelled in 1948, during the nakba. Last year, this law was modified to include undocumented migrants who enter Israel via Egypt. A large majority of those coming in through the southern border are African asylum-seekers, a group the government, including Mr Netanyahu, calls “infiltrators.”

And then there’s the legislation that Israeli human rights groups call the “slavery law.” It’s a modification of the 1952 Entry to Israel law, conferring privileges on Jews while preventing Palestinians from returning. It places severe restrictions on the freedom of foreign caregivers, going as far as to limit them to a set region of the country.

It’s no coincidence that Israel is using laws intended to discriminate against Palestinians to tread on the human rights of another non-Jewish group.

In 2003 Mr Netanyahu, then finance minister, called Arab citizens of the state a “demographic problem” adding that the separation barrier would stop a “demographic spillover” of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. Fast forward to 2010: Prime Minister Netanyahu calls African asylum seekers a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and promises another separation barrier, this one to run the length of the border between Egypt and Israel.

When considered through the lens of the government’s goal of maintaining a “Jewish and democratic” country, every non-Jew – Arab or African, Christian or Muslim – becomes a “threat” to or enemy of the state. It’s not about Palestinians or Arabs per se. It’s about maintaining Jewish privilege.

The state’s policies have implications for citizens’ behaviour. As the state steps up its persecution of and incitement against foreigners – whipping the public into a nationalistic frenzy – Jewish Israelis are emboldened to ratchet up violence and discrimination against migrants. In Eilat, for example, African refugees have been banned from municipal schools. Several schools in Tel Aviv have also barred foreign children.

In South Tel Aviv, Jewish Israelis have held protests against the mere presence of Africans, calling on the state to deport them. Right-wing Knesset members have taken part in these demonstrations, lending an air of governmental approval.

South Tel Aviv is becoming a flashpoint for rising tensions. As Independence Day drew to a close a week ago, a 20-year-old Israeli threw Molotov cocktails at a kindergarten and four apartments that serve African refugees. A week later, two firebombs were hurled at the home of Nigerian immigrants.

In 2011, three teenage girls – the Israeli-born, Hebrew-speaking daughters of African migrant workers – were beaten by a group of Jewish teenagers. The attackers, one of whom was armed with a knife, allegedly called them “dirty niggers.” One of the girls needed medical treatment for her injuries.

There have also been a number of other violent incidents.

The new coalition just means more of the same, discrimination and violence against non-Jews on both sides of the Green Line. Whether that violence comes from the state or its citizens, whether it takes the form of bulldozers or firebombs, the goal is one – the preservation of Jewish privilege in a “Jewish and democratic” state.

New threat looms over South Sudan refugees

by adminin Israel, Writing

Inter Press Service, March 19, 2012

Hundreds of African refugees and Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday night under the banner ‘It’s dangerous in South Sudan’ to protest the imminent expulsion of 700 Sudanese asylum seekers, including children.

A small group of counter-protesters attended to show their support for the government’s decision to deport the refugees. One held a sign calling for an end to the asylum seekers’ “occupation” of South Tel Aviv, where many of the estimated 35,000 African refugees in Israel live.

Ethnic clashes between the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes continue in the Jonglei region of South Sudan, where fighting has claimed thousands of lives since the country gained independence from Sudan in July 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 300,000 South Sudanese were displaced due to internal violence last year.

Despite the volatile situation in South Sudan, the Israeli government announced in January that it would no longer give group protection to South Sudanese refugees. They have until Mar. 31 to leave voluntarily. After that, they have been warned they will be deported by force.

A number of families will be affected. About 400 of those facing expulsion are children; many were born in Israel. Some of the kids held signs that read “Help Me”.

Speaking to IPS at Saturday night’s protest, Winni Govita, a 24-year-old mother of two boys, aged six and four, said she is simply unable to imagine returning to South Sudan with her children.

“I watch television and I see (what’s happening) and I think ‘How can we go there?’” she asked. “How, how, how?”

Govita added that she has no family left in South Sudan. She was 12 when she fled to Egypt with her mother. After spending six years in Egypt, she came to Israel. Her youngest child was born here.

While open racism is becoming increasingly common in Israel – and much of it is directed towards African refugees and their children, who have been banned from some municipal schools in Eilat and South Tel Aviv – Govita said she has not had trouble in Arad, where she works at a hotel.

“The kids go to school. Everything is fine.” But, in South Sudan, she said, “There’s no healthcare, no school.”

Due to the country’s extreme poverty, and lack of education and opportunities, the UN estimates that some 2,000 minors are currently serving in South Sudan’s army.

In South Sudan, one of every three children suffers from malnutrition; nearly 50 percent of the population lacks access to clean water.

After visiting South Sudan last month, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos remarked, “The situation in the country is extremely precarious, and the risk of a dangerous decline is very real. Food insecurity has already increased, and 2012 will witness an earlier, and a longer, season of hunger.”

Wou Riek, 25, is worried about the violence in South Sudan. He is from Jonglei’s Murle community. His mother, he said, has fled the fighting.

Riek was 17 when he left Sudan and made his way to Israel after spending four years in Egypt. When asked about his last memories of South Sudan, which was in the midst of a civil war when he fled, Riek answered, “There is no need to recall this. Everyone knows what happened between the north and south.” He was referring to the 21-year civil war that saw more than two million killed and millions more displaced.

Riek said that he fears for his life in returning to South Sudan.

South Sudan’s army is widely reported to have been lax in its duty to protect citizens. Soldiers often identify with their ethnic group rather than the state, and sometimes turn a blind eye to attacks, or assist in them. Many have reportedly raped women and girls from rival tribes.

Cross-border clashes have also fueled concerns that war could erupt with Sudan again. Although a peace treaty was signed in 2005, Sudan has bombed the pro-south stronghold of South Kordofan in recent months. And tensions over South Sudan’s oil reserves remain high.

In a report released last week, the Israeli Knesset admitted that South Sudan is in a humanitarian emergency. “In recent months, we’ve received information on the deterioration of stability and the humanitarian situation in the state,” the report stated.

Responding to a recent letter protesting the deportation of South Sudanese, signed by 400 Israeli artists, writers, and academics, Interior Minister Eli Yishai remarked, “In my time as Interior Minister I have and will continue to preserve Israel as a Jewish state.”

In December 2011, Yishai told Army Radio that he intends to guard the state’s Jewish majority and that, accordingly, he will see to it that all Africans are returned to their home countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called African asylum seekers a “threat” to the state’s “Jewish and democratic character.”

The deportation of South Sudanese refugees is part of the Israeli government’s ongoing efforts to expel non-Jewish migrants.

Hundreds of children of Southeast Asian migrant workers, along with their parents, are currently being deported. Most of the mothers arrived legally but lost their visa because they gave birth in Israel and did not send their babies back to their home country within the three-month period allotted to them by the state. Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that this policy was a violation of Israel’s own labour laws.

In January, Israel announced its intention to expel 2000 refugees from the Cote d’Ivoire, despite the fact that some could face persecution, violence, and death back home.

The state is also deporting Eritreans of Ethiopian origin to Ethiopia, even though officials in the Ministry of Interior say that the country is unsafe for mixed Ethiopians. An Israeli judge has likened the move to “gambling with human life.”

Addressing the audience of refugees and Israelis on Saturday night, a 14-year-old girl from South Sudan said, in fluent Hebrew, “I know that you are all scared that we came here to take over your country and to take from you all something that isn’t ours, but that’s the last thing that I wanted in the world.

“I’m here to ask you for help, but I’m not here to stay here. I want to return to my country but I do not want to put my life in danger and the lives of my little brothers and that of my little brother who was just born.”

Killing of Zuhair al-Qaissi exposes Israel’s attitude to Supreme Court

by adminin Israel, Writing

The Guardian, March 14, 2012

The recent escalation between Israel and Gaza began after Israeli forces assassinated Zuhair al-Qaissi, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a militant group composed of members of various Palestinian parties. Haaretz noted that the PRC was “the organisation that captured Gilad Shalit”, the Israeli soldier who was freed in October 2011. The army says that al-Qaissi was behind the August 2011 attack that took place on the Israeli-Egyptian border – even though the PRC denied involvement and it was later revealed that the militants came from Sinai, not Gaza.

While army sources took care to point out al-Qaissi’s alleged involvement in the August 2011 incident, his assassination wasn’t just an act of punishment. No, Israel killed him on the basis of secret evidence – evidence that is not subject to legal or judicial review – that supposedly proves that al-Qaissi was planning a terror attack. Never mind that the Israeli supreme court’s December 2006 ruling placed numerous restrictions on such assassinations.

Fatmeh el-Ajou, an attorney with Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, explains that while the judgment did not place a blanket prohibition on targeted killings, it stated that the decision to carry out an assassination must be made on a case-by-case basis, “depending on the evidence that [security forces] have”. But, without seeing the security forces’ secret evidence, it’s impossible to know if al-Qaissi was indeed planning an attack, and if the army was in line with the 2006 ruling. There’s no transparency in this so-called democracy and, without transparency, there is no accountability to the state’s highest court. “From the perspective of human rights law,” el-Ajou adds, “assassinations are not legitimate … They should only be carried out if there is a ‘ticking bomb.’ [Suspects] should be brought to trial.”

To some extent, the 2006 ruling dovetails with this, stating that, whenever possible, the person in question must be arrested and tried – which is exactly what didn’t happen in 2007, when the army violated the supreme court’s restrictions on targeted killings and assassinated two men they had the power to detain instead. And then there’s the laundry list of less dramatic examples, instances when state bodies quietly ignore the court, revealing Israel to be the weak democracy it is. Such cases have spurred former deputy attorney general Yehudit Karp to send not one but two letters of complaint to the current attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. Here’s a partial sampling of rulings that Israel can’t be bothered to fully implement:

• In 2002, the supreme court ordered the municipalities of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Nazareth Illit to “add Arabic to all municipal signs”, Adalah writes. Last April, the supreme court chastised the municipality of Nazareth Illit (upper Nazareth, a predominately Jewish area) for its lack of compliance with the nine-year-old ruling.

• In 2006, the supreme court struck down the binding arrangement, a policy that binds migrant workers to one employer, essentially making his or her visa contingent on his employer’s whim. Last year, the Knesset circumvented this ruling, passing legislation so severe that human rights groups referred to it as the “slavery law”.

• In 2007, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the separation barrier in the West Bank Palestinian village of Bilin served no security purpose in its location and ordered the state to move the fence. While Israel did move it in 2011, more than four years after the court’s decision, villagersare still separated from some of their land.

• During the December 2008 to January 2009 Israeli military operation known as Cast Lead, Israel barred media from the Gaza Strip. Even though the supreme court ruled against the ban, the press was not admitted to Gaza.

• In April 2011, the supreme court overturned the policy that stripped migrant workers who had children in Israel of their legal status, calling it a violation of the state’s own labour laws. Almost a year later, Israel is still deporting some of these women and their children, despite the fact that the very mechanism that made them “illegal” has been nullified.

In his 2006 ruling on targeted killings, former supreme court president Aharon Barak quoted an earlier judgment in which he’d stated: “At times democracy fights with one hand behind her back.” But in its war on Palestinians – and anyone that Israel deems an “other” – not only does the state use both hands, it fights with the proverbial gloves off.

Where is the Bedouin Intifada?

by adminin Israel, Writing

CounterPunch, February 9, 2012

As Israel steps up its expansionist policies both inside and outside the Green Line, the Bedouin community has come under particularly intense pressure.

Inside of Israel, the state seeks to Judaize the Negev (Naqab) desert. This “development” includes last  year’s Prawer plan which recommends that Israel relocate some 30,000-40,000 Bedouin citizens, ripping them from their villages and sticking them in impoverished townships, to clear the area for Jewish-only settlements. `

After the Israeli cabinet passed the Prawer plan in September 2011, Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel likened it to “a declaration of war.”

Al Arakib could be considered an opening battle. The state first demolished the unrecognized village in July 2010—destroying homes and tearing olive trees from the ground to make way for a forest to be planted by the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF). After the Bedouin residents of Al Arakib rebuilt their village, Israeli forces returned and destroyed it again. Since then, Al Arakib has been demolished and rebuilt over 30 times.

Israel’s policies are just as inhumane on the other side of the Green Line, where the so-called “Civil Administration” seeks to remove 27,000 Bedouin from Area C in order to expand illegal Israeli settlements. The Civil Administration’s plans will be carried out over the next three to six years.

The United Nations reports that Israeli forces demolished 44 Palestinian-owned buildings in East Jerusalem and the West Bank last month, including 14 houses. 66 people were displaced, 40 of whom were Bedouin.

Recent years have seen Israel escalate its campaign to push Palestinians and Bedouin out of their homes. According to the UN, nearly 1100 Palestinians and Bedouins were displaced by Israeli house demolitions in 2011—approximately 80 percent more than 2010.

So where is the Bedouin Intifada?

***

In 2004, the Israeli daily Haaretz called a Bedouin uprising “practically inevitable.” Lurching from one alarmist quote to the next, the article labeled the Bedouin a “ticking bomb,” a “keg of dynamite,” depicting them not as native inhabitants but as criminals who have taken over the Negev.

Amidst the hysteria came a fetishizing remark from Reuven Gal, then-Deputy National Security Advisor for Domestic Policy, who commented that, to the Bedouin, “honor is more precious than money.”

The writer concluded, ominously, “Every plan to develop the Negev is likely to face violent opposition because of the Bedouin who live in the area.”

The article drips with racism and colonialism—Israeli plans to displace the Bedouin constitute “development.” Not only are the Bedouin sure to oppose such “progress,” they are likely to be “violent.” And then there are the Orientalist depictions of the Bedouin as reactionary, volatile beings unable to control their impulses, especially when “honor” is at stake.

But it would be wrong to blame the writer and his interviewees alone.

In his book Good Arabs, Hillel Cohen describes an incident that took place in 1950, when the Israeli army’s chief of staff visited a Bedouin tribe, reporter in tow. The journalist recounted a “royal meal,” eaten against the backdrop of “the echoes of gunshots” and “riders’ galloping.” The evening climaxed with a ceremonial “presentation of the sword of the desert.”

Cohen explains that the reporter’s depiction “fit well with that period’s common portrayal of the Bedouin as hospitable noble savages…”

An Orientalist view of the Bedouin is deeply rooted and, as the 2004 Haaretz article suggests, persists. So feverish proclamations about a Bedouin Intifada should be taken with a camel-sized grain of salt.

We should also consider the motives behind such “warnings.” As, Jaber Abu Kaf, a representative of the Regional Council for Unrecognized Bedouin Villages told Haaretz in 2004, claims of an imminent Bedouin Intifada “are baseless and are intended to promote a political agenda.”

***

But, for argument’s sake, let’s say that the Bedouin would like to revolt, violently, against Israel’s discrimination.

Let’s set aside the quiet acts of resistance, the small, silent intifada, already taking place: rebuilding demolished homes; the day-long general strike held in December of 2011; the massive protest outside the Prime Minister’s office on the same December day.

And let’s set aside individual agency and pretend the Bedouin can only react, collectively, to Israeli policies.

So why hasn’t that “ticking bomb” exploded?

The answer lies, in part, in the state’s founding. Before Israel was established in 1948, some 91,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev. After the war, only twelve percent of the original population remained. Many of the Bedouin facing forced transfer from the West Bank today are refugees whose families fled or were driven from the Negev during the nakba.

Shattered and scattered, the Bedouin were subject to additional Israeli efforts to divide and rule. A number of those who had managed to hang on to their land in the Negev were pushed off of it. In some cases, the state appointed local mukhtars, pitting families against one another, and putting weak leaders, or those who would serve Israeli interests, at the head of villages.

Israeli authorities also sowed seeds of disunity by actively encouraging–and rewarding–collaboration. That some took the bait undermines the Orientalist assertion that the Bedouin value honor more than money.

Israel has also fomented poverty in the Bedouin community. In the 1970s, the state built seven townships for the Negev Bedouin that are home today to approximately 80,000 Bedouin. These ghettos have the country’s highest unemployment and school dropout rates as well as the social problems that accompany poverty and hopelessness, including rampant drug abuse.

Those that remained in the desert have not had it much easier. Despite the fact that many Bedouin live in villages that predate the state itself, Israel does not recognize most of these communities. Some 80,000 Bedouin live in the unrecognized villages that lack infrastructure and high schools. Rawia Aburabia, an attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), calls the status of Bedouin education, “catastrophic,” pointing out to a drop out rate that tops 40 percent.

There is also the contentious issue of military service. Some Bedouin tribes serve in the Israeli army; many do not. This creates tension within the community and serves as yet another obstacle to the unity needed for a successful uprising.

***

With Palestine’s Bedouin divided between Israel and the surrounding countries; split between those who serve in the Israeli army and those who don’t; struggling to survive; lacking leadership and a cohesive national strategy, an organized and sustainable uprising is unlikely. The international community, then, has a responsibility to stop the home demolitions and forced transfers that Palestinians and Bedouin face in the West Bank and inside Israel.

Advocating for outside intervention runs the risk of sounding patronizing, at best, colonial, at worst. That’s the beauty of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. The call for BDS comes from Palestinian civil society and is self-empowering.

While some Palestinians don’t consider the Bedouin to be Palestinian—and many Bedouin don’t consider themselves Palestinian, either—BDS is an appropriate response to Israel’s treatment of the Bedouin. They suffer from the same discriminatory policies that plague the Palestinians. And the two communities share common hopes for human and civil rights, to return to their homeland, and to live in freedom, justice, and dignity.

Destruction of waqf: Israel’s grave offenses

by adminin Israel, Writing

Al Akhbar English, December 19, 2011

Jewish settlers torched a mosque near Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on December 15.

Earlier that week, Jewish rightists set fire to a mosque in Jerusalem. They scrawled graffiti on the walls reading “Mohammed is a pig,” and “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat condemned the desecration of the religious site. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did the same in October when a mosque was burned in the north of the country.

“The images are shocking and do not belong in the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

When Muslim and Christian cemeteries were vandalized that same month, Netanyahu spoke out again—remarking that Israel would not “tolerate vandalism, especially not the kind that would offend religious sensibilities.”

But such statements belie the Israeli government’s long-standing attitude towards Muslim religious properties or waqf. Meaning literally endowment, waqf and income from waqf serves a charitable purpose for one’s family or community. Under Ottoman rule, waqf properties were exempt from taxes.

Following the 1947-1948 nakba, which saw some 700,000 Palestinians driven from their homes, Israel used its newly created Absentees’ Property Law to seize, among other things, waqf.

In Jaffa, alone, “There was a huge amount of waqf,” says Sami Abu Shehadeh, head of Jaffa’s Popular Committee against Home Demolitions and a PhD candidate in history. “I’m talking about hundreds of shops; I’m talking about tens of thousands of dunams of land; I’m talking about all the mosques…and there were all the cemeteries, too.”

Jaffa was renamed Yafo in 1948 and was annexed by the Tel Aviv municipality between 1948 and 1949. Most of the mosques were closed and several later became Jewish-owned art galleries.

In 2007, attorney Hisham Shabaita, three other Palestinian residents of Jaffa, and a local human rights organization, filed a lawsuit against the state of Israel, the Custodian of Absentee Property, and the Jewish Israeli trustees responsible for administering Tel Aviv-Yafo’s waqfholdings. The plaintiffs didn’t ask for the land back. Nor did they request compensation. They simply wanted to know what had happened to the properties, what their estimated earnings were, and where the money was going or had gone.

The court’s response? The information cannot be released because it apparently would embarrass the state, harming its reputation in the international community. The plaintiffs have filed an appeal and the case is expected to reach the Israeli Supreme Court.

But it’s not hard to guess what happened to the waqf properties, in part because the state admitted that all of the land had been sold. There are other clues: in the 1950s alone, the state demolished 1200 mosques. Later, the Hilton hotel, which stands in an area now known as north Tel Aviv, was built on a Muslim cemetery. Bodies were unearthed and relocated, stacked upon each other in a tiny corner of what was once a large graveyard.

Another Muslim cemetery became a parking lot for Tel Aviv University.

There are also the forgotten corners, properties the state appropriated and then neglected. The Sheikh Murad cemetery, which dates back to at least the 1800s, stands between the South Tel Aviv neighborhoods of Shapira and Kiryat Shalom. Its headstones were smashed by vandals years ago. Bits of marble have been pried off the graves, presumably for use or sale.

Locals have dumped garbage on the grounds and, the last time I checked in on the cemetery—not long after Muslim and Christian graves were vandalized in Yafo—two men were shooting heroin under the shade of a pomegranate tree. Fruit rotted on the ground.

Abu Shehadeh says that the local Islamic committee is building a fence around the cemetery in hopes of protecting it from further misuse. He adds that only Palestinian collaborators with Israel, who are often relocated to South Tel Aviv, have been buried in the graveyard since 1948.

The Jewish neighborhoods Kiryat Shalom and Kfar Shalem both stand on the land of the Palestinian village Salame, which was established before the 1596 Ottoman census. According to Abu Shehadeh, a number of Muslim cemeteries were destroyed to make way to house the country’s new occupants.

And then there’s Jerusalem.

With the approval of the Jerusalem municipality, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is building a “Museum of Tolerance” on a Muslim graveyard. Excavations are taking place at the site, which has served as a parking lot for several decades now, and skeletons are being exhumed so that the Los Angeles-headquartered, “global Jewish human rights” organization can teach tourists a thing or two about co-existence.

Sergio Yahni of the Alternative Information Center, an Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental organization, explained that much of Jewish West Jerusalem is built on waqf.

“One of the most striking demolitions [on land designated as waqf],” he continues, “was made [in the Old City] during the 1967 war. [Israeli forces] didn’t take care [to see] if people were out of the houses…[in some cases] they brought the buildings down on people.”

Several Palestinians who disappeared from the Old City during the war were believed to be killed during the demolitions.

This occurred in the area adjacent to the Al Aqsa Mosque. Some eighty percent of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter is built on waqf.

Jewish Israeli leaders and journalists have expressed alarm at the recent rash of vandalism and arson. In light of the fact that the government itself has perpetrated such violence against Muslim properties for over 60 years, the surprise is misplaced, at best. At worst, it is a disingenuous attempt to relieve the state of its responsibility by pointing the finger at “extremists.”

 

Unwelcome

by adminin Israel, Writing

dsc05730Tablet, June 3, 2011

It was one of the wordiest, most sophisticated protest placards I’ve ever seen a child hold. The pink sign, gripped by two Filipino-Israeli boys, read in Hebrew: “Prime minister, how long will children, innocent of crime, pay the price for the situation you created with your own hands?”

There were the usual catchy slogans, too, at Tuesday afternoon’s demonstration against deportation. Protesters chanted things like, “Kids aren’t criminals. Why are they being arrested?” (It rhymes in Hebrew.)

As the pink sign suggests, however, the struggle against the deportation of migrant workers and their children has gotten complicated. In the past, it was simple: These children speak Hebrew; they go to school here; they want to go to the army. They’re Israeli. So, they must stay here, in Israel.

Continue reading “Unwelcome”

Israel quashes West Bank protests

by adminin Israel, Writing

naksa_day_mya_guarnieri1Maan News Agency, June 5, 2011

An estimated 300 Palestinians who gathered at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem were met with tear gas and rubber coated bullets on Sunday, as they marked the 44th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

“To Jerusalem we go,” read signs held by protesters, who marched to the checkpoint separating the central West Bank from Jerusalem, located on the route of the separation wall, built some 5 kilometers on the Palestinian side of the 1967 border.

“Freedom is a human right,” another sign said, held by one of the few men who were able to bypass a heavy Israeli military cordon outside the checkpoint, which severed the crowd in two.

Continue reading “Israel quashes West Bank protests”