[GushShalom] NO TO TRANSFER!
Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)
info at gush-shalom.org
Mon Mar 17 00:38:11 IST 2003
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Gush Shalom
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March 16, 2003
x Shock and instant protest at the killing of Rachel Corey
[] Join the emergency network for the Protection of the Palestinian People
- by creation of local subcommittees & mobilizing international public figures
[] Uri Avnery explains why he doesn't wait any longer 'crying wolf'
[] 'Stop the Transfer' joint protest in front of the Supreme Court this Thursday
[] fwd: Wednesday, demonstration against 'Purim Spiel' of settlers in Jerusalem
//\\//\\//\\
x Shock and instant protest at the killing of Rachel Corey
You got the earlier message which we sent out as a reflex when we heard the
shocking news of the killing of Rachel Corey. Right now we are back from the parking
lot in front of the Defense Ministry where a 60-strong vigil was mobilized within an hour
after the news broke through. A whole group of young people, the Tel-Avivian part of
the "refuser comunity" - chanting 'it is my friends who was murdered' - as well as such
senior activists as Uri and Rachel Avnery.
"Corrie was wearing a brightly colored jacket when the bulldozer hit her" told witnesses
to the New York Times reporter. What was on everybody' s mind: if this was not an
accident but intended as it seems from the descriptions, what will be next?
"She waved for the bulldozer to stop. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We
yelled, 'Stop, stop,' and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her
and then it reversed and ran back over her."
"A regrettable accident", says the army spokesman to Ha'aretz.
If it was NOT an accident but a way of intimidating and getting rid of international
observers, then it is another indication of the army preparing for dark designs.
[] Join the emergency network for the Protection of the Palestinian People
- by creation of local subcommittees & mobilizing international public figures
With the War Against Iraq imminent, and the anti-war movement and media
absorbed by that war, we feel the need to do something tangible for the
protection of the Palestinian people - whose situation may become dire as a
result of this war.
As a result of consultations between Palestinians and an Israeli delegation
including the whole range of peace and human rights groups an effort is
underway to create an emergency network. For this purpose, office has
been set up in Paris of the "International Committee for the Protection
of the Palestinian People" (ICPPP).
there is an address
ICPPP c/o CEDETIM
21 ter rue Voltaire
75011 Paris
Tel: +33 1 43 71 62 12 – (Lorent or Marine)
Fax:: +33 143 67 16 42
Currently the team is headed by:
Stephane Hessel
Gus Massiah
you can reach the team by email at:
cedetim at globenet.org
The idea is that ICPPP-sub-committees be set up all over the world who
can immediately disseminate urgent information to the media and
authorities in their own countries in case of an emergency in occupied
Palestine.
The first thing is to find at short notice public figures in the different
countries willing to give their name as members of the ICIPPP's advisory
board.
What we are afraid of are declarations made repeatedly by Israeli authorities
and media, indicating a number of planned measures that might endanger
the very existence of the Palestinian people on their land:
Plans such as:
Mass destruction of homes and infrastructures.
Efforts to transfer Palestinians from their homes to other districts or into
neighboring countries.
Elimination of the elected Palestinian leadership.
The Palestinian and Israeli organizations below shall inform ICPPP instantly
if such threats materialize. ICPPP, through its network of subcommittees
takes it upon itself, in such a case to alert world public opinion by all
possible means - in order to prevent Israel, under cover of the situation in
Iraq, to exempt itself from the norms of international law.
Palestinian Emergency Committee (PEC)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The Palestinian Emergency Committee includes the
whole Palestinian political spectrum and the NGOs
dealing with the principal services. It has subcommittees
in all Palestinian towns and villages.
Israeli Emergency Committee
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The Israeli Emergency Committee includes the whole spectrum
of peace and human rights organizations.
If you can set up a sub-committee and/or convince public figures
to join, please contact directly the Paris office - and let us know that
you did so.
Thank you
[] Uri Avnery explains why he doesn't wait any longer 'crying wolf'
Crying Wolf?
Uri Avnery
5.3.03
Hebrew at:
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article236_heb.html
"Why do you think that Sharon may exploit the American attack on Iraq in order to
carry out transfer in the occupied territories?" a journalist asked me, after we published
a warning to this effect in his paper. "Aren't you crying wolf?"
I could have given him the list of quotations from members of the present government,
who openly advocate the mass expulsion of Palestinians. I could have cited rumors. I
could have told him that a creeping transfer is going on all the time, by making the life
of the inhabitants intolerable through wholesale destruction of homes, closure, curfew
and starvation. But I preferred to tell him about some occurrences to which I was an
eye-witness in the past.
It happened in 1967, after the Israeli army had conquered the West Bank. Immediately
afterwards the writer Amos Kenan, who was a soldier serving in the Latrun area, came
to me. He put on my desk a report about what he had seen with his own eyes. (I was
at the time a Member of the Knesset and the editor of Haolam Hazeh newsmagazine.)
In the shocking report Kenan described how the inhabitants of four villages in the
Latrun area had been evicted from their homes. Men and women, children and old
people, had been forced to walk, in the stifling heat of over 30 degrees Centigrade,
towards Ramallah, a distance of 30 km. Immediately afterwards, the army had begun
to destroy the houses.
I hastened there. The four villages - Imwas, Yalu, Bet-Nuba and Dir-Ayub - were
already almost obliterated. I saw the bulldozers flattening the last houses. When I tried
to take photos, the soldiers drove me away.
>From there I went to the Knesset and begged senior officials to intervene. After they
contacted whoever they contacted, they told me that it was too late. The demolition
was finished.
Why these villages? Why in such a hurry? This area of the West Bank forms a bulge
that dominates the old road from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, which had been cut off in 1948.
The government was convinced that the world would force Israel to give back all the
territories it had occupied, as happened in the previous war, 1957. They thought that if
the four villages were erased without leaving a trace, Israel would be able to keep this
area, at least.
No pressure on Israel materialized, of course, and Israel was left in possession of all
the occupied territories until now. The refugees still linger in the camps of Ramallah.
On their land the "Canada Park" was created, to the greater glory of that humanist and
liberal country, which accepted the honor gratefully.
While the tractors worked in the Latrun area, something similar happened in Kalkilya.
After the town was conquered, the army started to systematically dynamite a central
neighborhood. The inhabitants were expelled and forced to walk to Nablus, some 25
km away. There they were lying around in public parks.
I received the information at an early stage. I drove there in order to make sure that it
was true, and proceeded to the Knesset. I buttonholed several ministers, including
Menahem Begin, who had just been appointed minister without portfolio, and Israel
Barzilai, the Mapam minister of health. I found some officials who could transmit the
information directly to the Prime Minister, Levy Eshkol.
I don't know whether this helped. But the demolition stopped suddenly. The inhabitants
were allowed to go home and the neighborhood rebuilt.
Why Kalkilya? Because of all the West Bank towns, it was the closest to Tel-Aviv.
>From a hill near the town, Jordanian field artillery had shelled the Tel-Aviv metropolitan
area. Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Defense, wanted to "straighten" the border.
Years later I heard that at the same time, in neighboring Tulkarm transfer had begun,
too. Ra'anan Lurie, the renowned cartoonists, who at the time was an army officer,
was present when the order was received to expel the inhabitants to Jordan. Far from
being a leftist, he refused the order, which he considered manifestly illegal. In spite of
that, buses were brought in and inhabitants were forced to mount. They were brought
straight to the Jordan bridge and driven across. Lurie testified to this later on.
But by far the biggest expulsion in that war took place in Aqabat-Jabr and the other
giant camps of the 1948 refugees near Jericho, the largest in the Middle East. They
were completely emptied, to the last man and woman, and all the inhabitants expelled
to nearby Jordan. In those camps were at least a hundred thousand refugees. When I
visited them immediately after the war, they were ghost towns.
After the war, some of these refugees tried to sneak back by crossing the Jordan river
by night. One day a soldier came to my office in an obvious state of shock and told me
that all these refugees, when caught, were shot on the spot.
I asked him to sign an affidavit and sent it to the Chief-of-Staff, Yitzhaq Rabin. His aid
answered in writing that the C-of-S has read the document. A day or two later, the
slaughter stopped.
I had another devastating experience. After the visit of the refugee camps, I drove back
on the steep road leading from Jericho to Jerusalem. In the sizzling heat of the Jordan
Valley, approaching 40 degrees Centigrade, hundreds of dusty people dragged
themselves along the road towards to Jerusalem. They had been induced to flee from
Jerusalem and Bethlehem to Jordan by threats and rumors about atrocities, but before
crossing into Jordan had been allowed to go back. Among them were women carrying
on their heads heavy loads of clothes, blankets and utensils and dragging little children
and old people walking with the help of sticks. Most of them were faint with fatigue and
thirst. We did the little we could to bring them water. It was terrible.
According to various estimates, between 100 and 260 thousand Palestinians were
expelled in this "little Nakba". In Oslo it was agreed that a joint Israel-Palestinian-
Egyptian-Jordanian committee would find ways to bring them back. It was never
convened.
General Matti Peled once told me that before that war, when he was commander of the
Jerusalem area, he one day encountered on his staff two officers who were unfamiliar
to him. When he interrogated them, they disclosed that they belonged to a secret unit
that was preparing mass expulsion for some future opportunity. Peled, of course, sent
them packing.
In the 1957 war, no transfer was carried out, because the war was against Egypt only.
During the 1973 war, no one had time to think about it. In Lebanon, Israel had no plans
for annexation.
In no previous war did Israel have a government, whose ministers openly debated mass
transfer. When a "separation fence" is being built that leaves several Palestinian
villages isolated between it and Israel proper, Palestinians, of course, fear that they will
be evicted. They also fear that adjacent towns and villages to the east of the wall will
be emptied.
Can I tell them that their fears are unfounded?
[] 'Stop the Transfer' joint protest in front of the Supreme Court this Thursday
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Join Us this Thursday 20/3/03 at 08:30 in the morning in front of the Supreme Court
in order to protest the government’s and the settlers’ attempt to pressure the Court
to authorize transfer, and in this way legitimize it.
Bring your gas masks in order to warn the public and Court of the poisonous gases
of racism and transfer which currently constitute the real existential threat Israel is
facing.
Background:
This Thursday the 20/3/03 the Supreme Court will convene to discuss the transfer of
the Palestinian inhabitants of the South Hebron hills.
The government and the settlers are pressuring the court to authorize the transfer, thus
legitimizing it.
The aim:
To create territorial contiguity between the Jewish settlements located in South Hebron
hills, which are near the green line, and the big Jewish settlement Kiryat Arba which is
adjacent to Hebron.
The government wants to annex the territory "clean of Arabs".
The means:
Deliberate policy which includes attempts to transfer a whole population, terrorizing the
inhabitants by employing violence, destroying their homes and wells and exerting
political pressure on the legal system to legitimize the transfer.
The result:
Uprooting hundreds of families from the land they have been living on since the 19th
century,which is also the source of their livelihood.
The significance:
Creating facts on the ground that will torpedo all chance to establish a Palestinian
state side-by-side Israel, and the eventual annexation the entire West Bank.
The danger:
The real danger facing Israel are not the Scud missiles but the insolent and shameless
entrance of racism and the ideas of transfer as a political solution into the political and
legal arenas.
This Thursday 20/3/03 at 08:30 we will hold a protest in front of the entrance to the
Supreme court. We will come with our gas masks in order to shun the poisonous
gases of racism and transfer which are the real existential threat.
For details contact: 02- 6241424
For More Background Information: www.southebron.tk
Sponsors of the event include Ta'ayush--Arab Jewish Partnership, Gush Shalom, The
Coalition of Women for a Just Peace, Black Laundry, The Committee Against House
Demolitions, Peace Now, Bat-Shalom, The Alternative Information Center
[] fwd: Wednesday, demonstration against 'Purim Spiel' of settlers in Jerusalem
------- Forwarded message follows -------
From: "Noa Milman" <noa at peacenow.org.il>
Date sent: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 16:25:57 +0200
Jerusalem is in danger
On Purim, Sharon's friend, millionaire Irving Moskovitz intends to bring hundreds of
settlers to Ras al Amud and turn Jerusalem into a second Hebron - with the consent of
the government!
The creation of settlements in the heart of an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem and
populating them with fanatical settlers will incite and inflame Jerusalem, damage the
chance for a peaceful future and destroy any chance for future normalcy in the area!
A Peace Now protest will take place at the site of the intended settlement on
Wednesday, 19/03/03. Meet at 9:00 am at the Bell Garden (Gan HaPa'amon)
To join us call: 03-5663291 or 02-5660648
---
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