issue no 124

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Issue No : 124 2th March 2015

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


Palestinian Cultural Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

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Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

Egypt court labels Palestine›s Hamas as terrorist group, Palestinians shocked

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P 22

FEATURED STORY

Articles & Analyses

Read in This Issue

The US, Palestine and the pursuit of justice

Italian lawmakers urge recognition of Palestinian state

China reiterates support for Palestine

ISIL forces Iraq›s Palestinians to flee againP10

P14 P20

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P15

Banksy unveils new Graffiti works in Gaza, Palestine

Solidarity with Palestine at Stanford

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CONTENTS

Palestinian Cultural

Organization Malaysia

Articles & Analyses

News of Palestine

FEATURED STORY

Egypt court labels Palestine›s Hamas as terrorist group, Palestinians shocked 4

Hamas: Dagan›s remarks on Gaza admission of Israel›s military defeat 5

ISIL forces Iraq›s Palestinians to flee again 6

Laurance: Apparently no one cares about Gaza 8

Italian lawmakers urge recognition of Palestinian state 10

Israeli police detain 5 women at Aqsa compound 11

Spy Cables: Abbas and Israel ally against 2009 UN probe 12

Banksy Unveils New Graffiti Works In Gaza, Palestine 14

China Reiterates Support For Palestine 15

Palestine govt calls for protecting holy sites 16

Israel issues demolition order for school near Hebron 17

Israel settlers torch W. Jerusalem Christian school 18

Assad regime executes four Palestinian refugees in Homs 19

Solidarity with Palestine at Stanford 20

The US, Palestine and the pursuit of justice 22

Palestinian Cultural

Organization Malaysia

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Featured Story

Egypt court labels Palestine›s Hamas as terrorist group, Palestinians shocked

The verdict was issued on Saturday by the Cairo Court of Urgent Matters, in a move that could further sour the relations between the Egyptian government and the Palestinian group.The ruling came weeks after the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, was also labeled a “terrorist” organization. The Cairo Court of Urgent Matters on January 31 claimed in a lawsuit that the group was involved in recent attacks against Egypt’s security forces.Hamas’ spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, at the time rejected “the Egyptian court’s decision against Qassam Brigades,” adding, “It is a political, dan-gerous decision that serves only the Zionist oc-cupation.”A source close to Hamas’ armed wing also said the resistance movement would no longer ac-cept Egypt as a broker between Palestinians and the Israeli regime, saying, “After the court’s decision, Egypt is no longer a mediator in Pales-tinian-Israeli matters.”

Hamas reactionFollowing the Egyptian court’s announcement on Saturday, the Palestinian resistance group released a statement describing the court’s de-cision as “shocking and dangerous.”“The Egyptian court’s decision to list the Hamas movement as a terror organization is shocking and is dangerous, and it targets the Palestinian people and its factions of resistance,” the state-ment added.The movement also noted that the decision “will have no influence on the Hamas movement, which enjoys the respect of all the nation and the leaders of the nation.”

Egypt-Palestine relationsFollowing the ouster of Egypt’s former president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013, relations between the Egyptian government and Hamas, which governs the besieged Gaza Strip, have strained.Egypt has stepped up the destruction of cross-border tunnels into Gaza since then. More than 1,600 tunnels have been demolished since the military-backed government came to power in Cairo last year.In early January, Egyptian army sources said the military had begun operations to increase the size of the existing 500-meter buffer zone along the border with Gaza to a full kilometer.The Cairo authorities decided to create the buffer zone after the deadly attacks in the restive Sinai Peninsula that targeted more than 30 Egyptian soldiers in October 2014.The underground routes are the only lifeline for the people of Gaza living under the Israeli block-ade. Palestinians use the tunnels to bring es-sential supplies, such as foodstuff, cooking gas, medicines, petrol, and livestock into the impov-erished Palestinian territory.

Feb 28, 2015 Source: PRESS TV

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The Hamas Movement said that the former Mossad chief’s remarks about the military failure of premier Benjamin Netanyahu in the Gaza Strip was an additional Israeli admission that the Palestinian resistance had soundly defeated the Israeli army.Spokesman for the Movement Sami Abu Zuhri stated on Friday that all the Israeli government’s attempts to mitigate the impact of its defeat by the resistance in Gaza would be doomed to fail-ure.Former head of the Mossad Meir Dagan had said that Netanyahu’s attitude towards regional is-sues caused great strategic damage to Israel, admitting, in particular, that the last war on Gaza had failed miserably.Dagan stated in an interview conducted by Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the way Netanyahu always dealt with internal and external issues would not serve Israel’s interests and would inflict, instead, strategic losses upon Israel.

28 Feb. 2015 Source: PIC

Hamas: Dagan›s remarks on Gaza admission of Israel›s military defeat

News of Palestine

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ISIL forces Iraq›sPalestinians to flee again

Hudda Awad, 49, was born in a refugee camp. Today, under the weathered tarp of the fifth tent she’s called home, she says she is sure she will die in one.

“Most of my life I’ve lived in the camps,” Awad tells Al Jazeera. “From when I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp up to now - all of my children were born in the camps.”

Awad and her family have led a hard life. Awad has spent a total of 33 years in different refu-gee camps across the Middle East.

Fleeing from Haifa during the Palestinian Nak-ba in 1948, her parents took shelter in Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank, where she was born in 1966. Five decades later, Awad speaks to Al Jazeera under the soft thud of rain hitting the plastic sheets of yet another tent, this time at Baharka Camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Baharka Camp currently houses 1,120 inter-nally displaced families who have fled the re-cent fighting between the Islamic State of Iraq

and the Levant (ISIL) and coalition forces. While the camp was created for Iraqi IDPs, 18 Palestinian families also reside in Baharka Camp under refugee status.

The camp is lined row after row with weath-er-battered tents. Clothes hang above open sewer canals that snake between quarters, attempting to dry in the cloudy weather. The ground is saturated - large pools of stagnant water are constantly pumped away from the living spaces in the camp as more rain beats down, leaving everything covered in a thick layer of mud.

The Palestinians at the camp try to stick to-gether, Awad says, pointing out the tents of the other Palestinian families who live nearby.

“We [the Palestinians] here are professional refugees,” Awad continues with a wry smile, to the laughter of her son and daughter who sit beside her on the well-kept mats that line the inside of her UNHCR tent.

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“We are teaching [the Iraqis] here how to make their rooms, how to make a kitchen area in the tents, even a living room,” Awad says. “We teach them how to make their tents weatherproof, how to secure against the rain. I’m a professional, I’ve lived my whole life as a professional refugee.”

The Palestinian families at Baharka have all been displaced several times, some twice within the last year, having fled to Khazir IDP camp in the summer when ISIL took Mosul, before fleeing again a couple of months later to Baharka when ISIL also turned Khazir into a battlefield.

Khadra Ibrahim, who lives a few tents down from Awad, was one of the many who fled Khazir during ISIL’s advance. While Ibrahim was also born in a refugee camp, it’s been nearly four decades since she left Khan al-Shieh camp in Syria as a 23-year-old newly-wed.

“I never thought I would be living in a camp again,” Ibrahim says. “When I left Syria I thought for sure I was leaving that life behind for good. I should have known better, I am a Palestinian refugee - I have no country.”

According to Nazmi Hazouri, the consul gen-eral for Palestine in Iraqi Kurdistan, this con-stant upheaval of Palestinian refugees in Iraq has become the norm.

“They always have to move according to their situation, and now [because of ISIL] we have a completely new situation for them. Baharka camp is not for Palestinians, it’s for Iraqis IDPs, but there are 18 Palestinian families there now.”

As one of the 85 individuals that make up those 18 families, Awad is all too aware of how she and her fellow Palestinian refugees must always adapt - after a lifetime of flee-ing, she can no longer imagine an end to the upheaval.

“If I’m honest, I feel like this is going to contin-ue forever,” she tells Al Jazeera. “For us, liv-

ing in camps will go on and on. We have nothing.”

Navigating the muddy path behind Awad’s tent, Ahmad Mohammed Adiyab paces around the Palestinian section of the camp sporting a UNI-CEF branded beige vest. Adiyab is on temporary employment with UNICEF, where he makes $15 a day teaching children how to eat healthy and keep fit. The job is a luxury for a Palestinian refu-gee in Iraq, he says.

Adiyab’s family originally hail from Acre, but since 1948 they have been displaced several times, passing through Lebanon, Kuwait, and eventually Iraq.

“Now I’m here after ISIL tried to kill me. They shot up my car in Anbar when they started taking over the area,” Adiyab tells Al Jazeera, pausing to flip through photos of the bullet-ridden car he says was attacked by ISIL fighters.

Adiyab worked as a mechanic in Anbar province for seven years, where he scraped the money together to rent a house and live independently during his time there. When ISIL took the area however, he was forced to flee yet again.

“I like my job here, I like doing humanitarian work, but of course, I would rather just leave,” Adiyab says. “I wish I was not Palestinian. I am sorry if this makes anyone angry or sad. All of my life moving and living in refugee camps is because I’m Palestinian.”

Having no other choice but to live life on the move, passing from camp to camp, Adiyab has decided against marriage and children - inheriting this life would be a curse, he says.

For now his family are his fellow Palestinian refu-gees, bonded through a longing for their home-land, their constant upheaval and current strug-gle.

“The feeling of all the Palestinian people here is that we are one family, we look after each other, and we look out for each other,” he says. “We are outside of our country. We need each other.”

26 Feb 2015 Source: Al Jazeera

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Laurance: Apparently no one cares about Gaza

Writing for Al Jazeera last October, ahead of the Cairo Donor Confer-ence for Gaza, I warned that it was not enough to pledge large sums - as donors duly did. We needed to learn from past failures and ensure that the aid was actually delivered. Alas, six months on from the at-tacks, my worst fears have been realised. Pledges have not been fulfilled, reconstruction has stalled and hope is draining away.

This month we learnt that just over 5 percent of the money pledged to rebuild Gaza after last summer’s devastating 51-day conflict with Israel has been delivered. What does this say about the internation-al community’s commitment to the beleaguered territory and its 1.8 million residents?

I was in Gaza last week and have never known the place more de-

pressed. The rubble has not been cleared. Power cuts con-tinue. The economy has not begun to recover and poverty is widespread. You see destroyed buildings everywhere.

Some 100,000 people are still homeless after their homes were destroyed in the bombing. Some of them have moved in with other members of their family and are living in im-possibly crowded conditions. Others, less fortunate, live in caravans, UN shelters or in damaged homes exposed to the elements. It was cold and wet while I was there. The situa-tion teeters on the brink of another major crisis.

Another major crisis

I visited Gaza with a team of UK surgeons, specialists in limb reconstruction, who are working with their Palestinian colleagues to help repair the bones of some of those most seriously injured last July. This is a programme run by Medi-cal Aid for Palestinians with funding from the UK Depart-ment for International Development.

We carried about $265,000 worth of medical equipment with us from the UK, dragging it in suitcases on the long walk from the Erez crossing. I saw it immediately be put to use in the operating theatres of Shifa hospital. Wonderful in many ways - but what kind of system is it when this is the

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way you equip your hospitals? When the local doctors are reliant on visiting consultants to teach them new skills because they cannot leave Gaza to train outside?

The health services are struggling to cope. They are overburdened and un-der-resourced. There are, once again, severe shortages of drugs and con-sumables as the supplies delivered in the war run out. Many of the staff have not been paid for months, others are receiving only 60 percent of their salaries as a result of the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis which has been compounded by Israel’s with-holding of tax revenues. What health service in the world could function in a situation like this?

I also saw the impact of the contin-ued legacy of the conflict. Over 8,000 “explosive remnants of war” - unex-ploded shells, grenades, bombs - re-main scattered across Gaza, posing fatal risks to children in particular. During my visit, our surgeons helped treat three seriously injured children who’d picked up one of these deadly devices. It was a reminder that while we mark the six-month anniversary of the ceasefire, the conflict continues to take a terrible toll.

Collective failureWhile the logistics of getting medical aid into Gaza are difficult, they are nothing when compared to the ob-stacles in the way of meaningful re-construction. To meet Gaza’s housing needs, including rebuilding destroyed or severely damaged homes and ad-dressing natural growth, 735 truck-loads of materials need to enter Gaza every day for the next three years.

This daily truck requirement was not

reached for the entire month of November when an average of only 287 trucks with building materials entered Gaza per day. While December saw a slight improvement, the whole process stalled in January due to a lack of funds.

Why? Everyone is blaming someone else. The Palestinians blame Israel for the ongoing siege and point to the failure of the Gaza Reconstruc-tion Mechanism (GRM) which was established as a temporary system after the war to facilitate the transfer of materials for reconstruction.

Israel blames the Palestinians for their inability to heal their divisions and abide by the terms of agree-ment of the reconstruction mechanism. The UN points the finger at donors who have not delivered on their pledges.

Ordinary Palestinians in Gaza look on with grow-ing dismay. They feel abandoned and forgotten. They are the ones suffering while those with power over them remain locked in entrenched positions. They are unable to leave and powerless to change things. Although the people of Gaza are astonish-ingly resilient, this impasse and continuing isolation are testing them to the limit.

The deadlock must be broken. Donors must deliver on their pledges. The PA and Hamas must settle their differences for the greater good of their people and for the possibility of peace. Israel must live up to its responsibilities as the occupying power and lift the siege. Egypt, too, must play its part by reopen-ing the Rafah crossing on a regular and reliable ba-sis.

Considering the horrors of what we saw last July and the very real possibility of it being repeated, we must start fresh new efforts to return hope to Gaza.

Tony Laurance is the chief executive of Medi-cal Aid for Palestinians and former head of the WHO in Palestine.The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect PCOM’s editorial policy.

26 Feb 2015 Source: Al Jazeera

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Italian lawmakers on Friday backed a non-binding resolution that en-courages the government to recog-nize Palestine as a state, a move that underlines European frustration over stalled Middle East peace ne-gotiations.

European countries have become increasingly critical of Israel, which since the collapse of the latest U.S.-sponsored talks last April has pressed on with building settlements on territory the Palestinians want for their state.

Italy’s Chamber of Deputies voted by 300 to 45 to pass the motion pre-sented by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) “to promote the recognition of Palestine as a democratic state”.

While most developing countries recognize Palestine as a state, most Western European governments do not, supporting the Israeli and U.S. position that an independent Pales-tinian state should emerge from ne-gotiations with Israel.

Friday’s symbolic vote does not change the position of the Italian government which, like other Euro-pean countries, still supports a ne-gotiated two-state solution.

Italy’s Chamber of Deputies also ap-proved on Friday a second motion calling for the “timely return to direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians”.

Both motions were criticized by the PLO Executive Committee for falling

Italian lawmakers urge recognition of Palestinian state

short of an unconditional recognition of Palestine.

“We call on the Italian government to recognize the Palestinian state without conditions, to take serious and concrete measures to end the (Israeli) military occupation and to work toward a just peace,” PLO committee member Hanan Ashrawi said in a state-ment.

In a statement issued by its Rome embassy, Israel said it “positively acknowledges the choice of the Italian parliament not to recognize the Palestinian state and to have preferred to sustain direct nego-tiations between Israelis and Palestinians”.

Italian lawmakers did not back a stronger motion, supported by the left-wing Left Ecology and Liberty party, that would have “fully and formally recog-nized the Palestinian State”.

Ireland, Britain and France have held similar parlia-mentary votes on the status of Palestine in recent months. Sweden went further, officially recognizing Palestine.

The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jeru-salem.

While Gaza’s boundaries are clearly defined, the precise territory of what would constitute Palestine in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will only be determined via negotiations with Israel on a two-

state solution. Feb 27, 2015

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Israeli police detain 5 women at Aqsa compound

Israeli police on Tuesday detained five Palestinian women as they left the Al-Aqsa Mosque com-pound, a lawyer told Ma’an.

Ramzi Kteilat, a member of the group “Lawyers for Jerusalem,” said that one of the women was released while the others would be held for another day.

The four women still being held were identified as Jihad Ghazzawi, Fatima Ulayan, Latifa Mkheimer, and Khadija Khweis.

Meanwhile, two women from Jerusalem were released after being held for a day, Kteilat said. They were arrested the day before outside the Al-Aqsa compound.

Upon their release, Wisal Idrees and Sina Sheikha were banned from entering Al-Aqsa for 45 days and ordered to pay a fine of 500 shekels ($125).

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Spy Cables: Abbas and Israel ally against 2009 UN probe

Revelations about Palestinian Authority Presi-dent Mahmoud Abbas’ capitulation to Israel and the United States are nothing new.

The Palestine Papers published by Al Jazeera in 2011 included scores of internal memos that provided evidence of PA collusion with Israel. They revealed backing for Israeli policies that resulted in the jailing and deaths of Palestin-ians, and described PA’s complicity in efforts to help Israel dodge war crimes charges for its 2008-09 assault on the Gaza Strip.

It’s the latter that has resurfaced in the Spy Cables, which include an account of the head of Israeli intelligence, Meir Dagan, lobbying on behalf of President Abbas in an effort to sup-press the Goldstone Report.

South African jurist Richard Goldstone had led a UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mis-sion that established war crimes were com-

mitted by both sides during Israel’s 2008-09 assault on Gaza - which killed around 1,400 Palestinians, many of them children, in addi-tion to 13 Israelis.

The 47-member Human Rights Council, made up primarily of countries in the devel-oping world, was poised to refer Judge Gold-stone’s findings to the UN General Assembly. Such a referral at the time was widely hyped as a devastating threat to Israel. It could - at least in theory - have paved the way for a formal international war crimes investigation (even though that would have certainly been prevented by the a US veto at the UN Secu-rity Council).

But the Israelis and Americans preferred to nip a UN referral in the bud, launching an ag-gressive lobbying campaign to cajole allies and even adversaries to squelch the Gold-

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stone Report.

They argued that if the Human Rights Council referred Goldstone to the Assembly, it would have a damaging effect on the (already mori-bund) peace process. At the time, South Af-rica was a voting member of the Council. And despite the longstanding support that South Africa’s ruling ANC gave to the Palestinian struggle for freedom - and Israel’s former alli-ance with the apartheid regime that was oust-ed in 1994 - the Israelis sought to persuade the South Africans to vote in their favour.

A secret intelligence report details an urgent call placed by the head of Mossad to his South African counterpart on the eve of the Human Rights Council vote. Much of the re-port expresses bureaucratic bewilderment over how Dagan had reached the South Afri-can spy boss on his personal mobile, as that number had never been given to anyone from Mossad.

More to the point are the State Security Agen-cy contemporaneous records of the specific pleadings Mossad Chief Meir Dagan made during his October 15, 2009 call:

• “Mossad fears that by acknowledging the report it could give the impression to other terror organisations that highly populated ar-eas could be used as human shields during terror operations. By this a new form of terror-ism and warfare could be implemented and could be seen as a victory for terrorism.”

• “If the report is accepted it could be a blow to the peace process. Israel will feel that it will not be able to defend itself and will have much more reservations in the peace pro-cess.”

• “President Abbas (ABU-MASEN) is also having reservations about the success for the Palestinian people, if the report is accepted by the international community. This will play into the hands of Hamas and weaken his position as well as that of the PLA. (Abbas) can however not take this stance in public and have to agree with the report in public. Mossad sees President Ab-bas as key to stabilising the situation in order for the peace process to continue.”

If the alleged claims made by Dagan about Ab-bas’ preferences prove true, they offer further evidence that the man claiming to lead the Pal-estinian national movement has also worked to shield his occupier from accountability for war crimes.

While it’s true that Abbas has now agreed to sign the Rome Statute and join the International Criminal Court, it remains unlikely to result in justice for war crimes committed in 2008-09 or 2014.

That’s because the ICC cannot launch its own probe if either of the parties is undertaking what is vaguely determined to be a “credible” investi-gation. The Israeli military is running 15 criminal investigations stemming from the 50-day war, and has expressed confidence that they would head off a parallel probe by the Hague-based court.

In 2009, as Israel tried yet again to weaken oversight of its actions by the United Nations, its spies should have known better than expect the South Africans to fall in line.

Pretoria was unmoved by Dagan’s brazen call, and voted at the Human Rights Council to refer Goldstone’s report to the General Assembly.

Given Abbas’ own track record, however, his fail-ure to muster the fortitude to hold Israel account-

able won’t have surprised anyone. 23 Feb 2015

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Banksy Unveils New Graffiti Works In Gaza, Palestine

World renowned British street artist Banksy has revealed a se-ries of new works in the Gaza Strip, created in the wake of the Israeli Army’sOperation Protec-tive Edge, which saw 18,000 Palestinian homes reduced to rubble.

At least 447 children were killed in a series of eight attack on the Strip in 2014, which led Amnesty International to accuse Israel of war crimes.

The two-month bombardment saw thousands of family homes destroyed, and reports say no cement was allowed into the Strip to allow them to rebuild.

Following on from a series of pieces on the West Bank wall in 2005, Banksy has released a short documentary highlighting the Gazan plight and showcasing four new pieces.

“Gaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons - they don’t have their electricity and drink-ing water cut off randomly almost everyday.” – Banksy

This piece, entitled “Bomb Damage”, is inspired by The Think-er by Rodin.

Street art is a remarkably prolific art-form in Palestine, with graffiti being embraced as the latest way to show their plight to the masses.

Artists such as Hamza Abu Ayyash and Majd Abdel Hamid showcase their work in spray paint and cement across the oc-cupied territories, offering an interesting and unique insight to life under Israeli control.

26/02/2015 Source: The Huffington Post UK

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China Reiterates Support For Palestine

Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao on Saturday reiterated China’s support for Pales-tine and urged peace talks with Israel, Xinhua news agency reported.

Li made the remarks when meeting with a delegation from the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) led by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri.

“China will continue to support the Palestinian cause and support Palestine’s aspiration to join the international community as a state,” said Li.

“We hope Palestine and Israel will continue working towards a resolution through peace negotiations,” he added.

China has pledged to continue enhancing communication with the Middle East and work with countries involved in reaching an inclusive and just resolution to the Israeli-Pales-tinian conflict.

Shukri said he appreciated China’s long-standing and firm support and looked forward to China playing a bigger role in the issue.

Feb 28 2015 Source: BERNAMA

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Palestine govt calls for protecting holy sites

The Palestinian Foreign Minis-try on Thursday called on both the Vatican and the internation-al community to protect Islamic and Christian places of worship from what it described as “Jew-ish extremism.”

The ministry’s appeal came shortly after Israeli settlers re-portedly torched a Christian reli-gious school in West Jerusalem.

“We strongly condemn this act,” the ministry said in a statement. “Yesterday a mosque near Bethlehem was torched and to-day a church in Jerusalem [was attacked].”

Extremist Jews, it asserted, continued to attack Muslim and Christian places of worship while the Israeli government did nothing to stop them.

The Palestinian Foreign Minis-try blamed the Israeli govern-ment for the attacks, calling on the Vatican, the international community and the UN to help protect religious sites.

The Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem and all Palestine, Theophilos III, also denounced on Thursday what he called “repeated” attacks on Christian and Muslim places of worship in the Palestinian territories by ex-tremist Jewish settlers.

“The targeting of churches and

mosques is caused by pervasive racism and hatred,” he said in a statement.

Theophilos III said Christians represented an “integral part” of the Holy Land, its history and its future, going on to as-sert that the Greek Orthodox Church was one of the world’s most important churches.

“Criminals won’t intimidate this church or its flock,” he de-clared.

He called on government agencies to address repeated set-tler attacks on places of worship.

Earlier Thursday, Jewish settlers set fire to a room in a Chris-tian school in West Jerusalem, which they also sprayed with anti-Christian graffiti.

On Wednesday, Jewish settlers set fire to a mosque near the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem, which they also covered with anti-Arab and anti-Muslim graffiti, according to a Palestinian official.

Several instances of settler attacks on Muslim houses of worship have been reported recently, both in the Israeli-oc-cupied West Bank and in the self-proclaimed Jewish state itself.

26 Feb 2015 Source: World Bulletin

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Israel issues demolition order for school near Hebron

Israeli occupation forces this morning distributed demolition orders to a school, some buildings, and tents in the city of Yatta, south of Hebron, the coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlement in Hebron said.

In a statement to the Palestinian Information Centre, Rateb Al-Jabour said that the occupation forces were accompanied by teams from what is known as the Hebron City Administration and they raided the village of Al-Majaz, handing out demolition orders to the village’s main school, attended by dozens of students from neighbouring villages. They also gave out warnings to remove tents be-longing to two brothers from the Abu Aram family.

He added that these warnings are part of a plan to seize Yatta territories, amount-ing to 50,000 dunams (50 square kilometres).

According to Al-Jabour, the school is made up of a number of caravans, which were donated by a European institution in early this year and is attended by 22 students. The Israeli authorities did not set a date for the demolitions.

26 February 2015 Source: MEMO

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Israel settlers torch W. Jerusalem Christian school

Israeli settlers on Thursday torched one of the rooms of a Christian reli-gious school in West Jerusalem and inscribed phrases offending to Jesus Christ on its walls.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement that unidentified people had committed a crime of “na-tional proportions.”

She added that fire was set to the school room and a toilet used by priests and students of Christianity inside the school.

Samri noted that the attackers also wrote phrases offending to Jesus Christ on walls near the room.

“Firefighters had put off the fire, which caused material damage in the

place,” Samri said, noting that the fire had not caused any human casualties.

A member of the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian Fatah movement, meanwhile, said Muslim and Christian places of worship were being increasingly targeted by Jews.

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fully respon-sible for these crimes,” Dimitri Diliani said in a statement.

Diliani called on the United Nations to offer protection for Palestinians and their places of worship.

On Wednesday, a group of Jewish settlers set fire to a mosque near the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem and sprayed racist phrases against Arabs and Muslims on its walls, according to a Palestinian official.

Several attacks, called the “price tag,” by Jewish settlers targeting Muslim houses of worship have recently been re-ported in areas across the self-proclaimed Jewish state and the occupied West Bank.

26 February 2015 Source: World Bulletin

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Assad regime executes four Palestinian refugees in Homs

The Syrian regime is reported to have executed four Palestin-ian refugees on Wednesday from the Al-Aideen refugee camp in Homs.

The four victims are named as Wesam Al-Sayyed, Rami Subheya, Ahmed Al-Shuaibi and Abdul Razzaq Amayre.

Amayre is a Palestinian refugee from the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus.

Palestinian sources in Al-Aideen said Syrian regime forces kid-napped three of the four men’s wives to force them to surrender.

The men were found shot dead only a few hours after they sur-rendered.

According to the sources, the men’s wives are still being detained.

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria reports that more than 2,670 Palestinian refugees were killed in Syria from the beginning of the crisis until 25 February.

Friday, 27 February 2015 Source: MEMO

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Solidarity with Palestine at Stanford

The massive Palestinian civilian death toll of Operation Protective Edge last summer marked a water-shed moment for the growth of sen-timent in solidarity with Palestine in the United States. In an August Gal-lup poll, 51 percent of young adults in the U.S. said Israel’s actions were unjustified, whereas just 25 percent said they approved of them. Jewish Voice for Peace experienced rapid growth across the country. The wide-ly-shared images and videos of the horrors of the assault, which killed over 1,500 civilians and 500 chil-dren, gave a strong impetus to shifts in opinion that have beenunderway since Operation Cast Lead in 2008, the last time Israel attacked Gaza on

this scale.

This turning tide has broken through at Stanford University. Out of Occupied Palestine -- a coalition of 19 student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, Movimiento Estu-diantil Chicano de Aztlán, the NAACP, and the Black Student Union -- is in the midst of an intense campaign to get the university to stop investing in companies that enable viola-tions of international law and human rights abuses against Palestinians. As of Feb. 7, over 1,600 Stanford students had signed ourpetition, whereas the anti-divestment petition had received just a little over 300 student signatures.

As organizers of the divestment campaign, we have expe-rienced firsthand a very positive reception as we canvass in dining areas and residences with our petition, as well as at our educational events. A decade ago, Palestine solidar-ity activists on campuses didn’t get the benefit of the doubt when we talked about human rights for Palestinians. The most common responses were “it’s too complicated,” or “what about terrorism,” or “I don’t really know enough.” That

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needle has moved. Progressive young people today iden-tify the plight and recognize the struggle of the Palestin-ians. We see it in the context of empire, racism, and in-equality.

Stanford students have organized a resurgence of politi-cal activism that highlights the intersections of exploitation and several forms of oppression in the world around us. The early “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations last year were the first time many students had engaged in civil disobedience demanding more from our government -- demanding justice. Since then, a number of young people across the country and at Stanford have become newly familiar with the camaraderie and adrenaline pulses of protests.

Their boldness grew over time. When the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner was not indicted, more than one hundred Stanford students walked onto Highway 101 and shut it down in their red college sweaters. Then, on Martin Luther King Day, 68 students participated in an action on the San Mateo Bridge and chanted until they were all ar-rested, and then chanted some more. It was during this last protest that a massive Palestinian flag was unfurled onto the bridge for every local news helicopter to see.

“We proudly carry the Palestinian flag as we call on Stan-ford to divest from human rights violations in the occupa-tion and related state violence in the US,” stated the press release about the demonstration. “Combating the triplets of racism, militarism and materialism was one of the big-gest legacies King left us.”

Shared solidarity and struggle across communities at Stanford have mirrored what is currently happening across global communities. Students are piecing together that many of the same corporations facilitating human rights violations in Palestine also work within the US: providing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets used on protesters to police departments, constructing a concrete wall to enforce borders, and profiting off mass incarceration. A recent trip by Black Lives Matter leaders and Ferguson activists to Palestine further reveals how two communi-ties threatened by state-sanctioned violence are acknowl-edging these connections between injustice abroad and injustice at home.

On Feb. 17, the Undergraduate Senate of the Associ-

ated Students of Stanford University passed Out of Occupied Palestine’s resolution to divest from corporations facilitating the occupation of Pales-tine. The first senate vote a week prior had achieved a 9-5 majority, but at the re-vote, it achieved a 10-4 ma-jority, passing the two-thirds thresh-old required. This victory comes on the heels of the passage of a similar resolution by the University of Cali-fornia Student Association, which represents the 233,000 students enrolled in the UC school system. Two months before that, United Auto Workers Local 2865, which repre-sents 13,000 student-workers across the entire UC system, became the first US labor union to vote to support the Palestinian call for divestment.

The passage of the divestment reso-lution at Stanford is an astounding leap forward for a campus at which, two years ago, a similar resolu-tion only received one vote in favor from the student senate. Today, over 1,600 students at Stanford believe the university should act. Almost all of the key social justice oriented stu-dent groups on campus back this call, and their support will last well after this senate vote. And now, the elected body representing under-graduates at Stanford has added its voice to that call. A critical mass of Stanford students have decided that justice for all includes freedom for Palestine, and that we as students can and must take action to bring it into being. Solidarity with Palestine is here to stay, and in all likelihood to grow, at Stanford.

02/26/2015 Source: Huffington Post

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The US, Palestine and the pursuit of justice

28 Feb 2015

Daoud Kuttab

In an ironic way, the judgement by a US court against the PLO and the Palestinian Authority maybe the best thing that has happened to Palestinians in years. By opening up the US courts to so-called victims of terrorism, the US administra-tion has, consciously or uncon-sciously, walked into a trap that could ultimately prove in favour of Palestinians.

According to the New York Times, the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Or-ganisation were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly sup-porting six attacks in Israel be-tween 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and in-jured.

Once the US courts agree to adjudicate cases of violence against Americans in the Middle East, they will have no choice but to take similar cases by Jewish terrorist groups against American Palestinians and ul-timately state terrorism acts by the State of Israel.

Articles & Analyses

There are plenty of cases of Palestinian Americans injured and killed by Israel, and Israeli citizens. Americans own proper-ties in the occupied West Bank that have been damaged or ex-propriated by Israel and Israelis.

Pursuit of justiceIn reaching the various legal instruments connected with the Oslo Accords, Palestinians agreed to an Israeli demand that no Palestinian will be allowed to sue Israel or Israelis for injuries that occurred during the Pal-estinian Intifada (uprising). No such agreement exists with the US and there is no reason why in pursuit of justice, Palestinian Americans can’t seek justice as

well.

Furthermore, Palestinians at large have a much more legiti-mate case in seeking retribu-tion for crimes of war that have been occurring regularly since 1967. The US Congress might be unhappy with the UN recog-nised state of Palestine joining the ICC, but it can’t have jus-tice work only in one direction. If Americans want to apply the value of justice and equality, then they have to accept that if American courts are going to be involved in forcing the PLO to pay for actions carried out by individuals then by the same to-ken it must allow Palestinians to do the same thing with Israelis.

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If the PLO/PA fail in their bid to overturn the unusual and highly irregular hundreds of millions of dollars in judgement against the Palestinians, then the Palestin-ian government must make de-mands of Washington that are similar to those made by Israel. The US must commit through legal instruments not to allow the legal pursuit against Pales-tinians.

Having Americans from New York take a case against the PLO in New York is highly preju-dicial. It is impossible for Pales-tinians to get a fair trial in a high-ly politicised pro-Israeli court system. Taking a small part of the conflict and putting it on trial while ignoring decades of occu-pation, death and destruction is simply preposterous.

If anything, it’s the Palestinians who are the real victims in this conflict and they should be the ones suing Israel and Israelis for their systematic violations of Palestinian life, land and well being.

The larger issueThe fact that a New York court has acted as if it were the Inter-national Criminal Court carrying out judgements and demanding compensation for those injured in a Middle East conflict, raise an even larger issue. Will the

US courts take other cases re-flecting the various world con-flicts that are brewing through-out the globe?

In 2003, an Israeli bulldozer driver premeditatedly ran over a 23-year-old American peace activist, Rachel Corrie. The Is-raeli driver has not been held accountable for his act. Will an American court agree to sue Israel and the Israeli army for which the bulldozer driver worked?

If terrorism is the killing of civil-ians for a political cause, does the killing of peace activists constitute as terrorism or state terrorism? In October 2014, a Palestinian-American teen born in New Orleans, Orwa Abd al-Wahhab Hammad, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the occu-pied territories; will his family be allowed to sue and can they choose the most sympathetic district to file the legal case against them in this case?

US officials are bound to say that the legal system in Amer-ica is totally independent. This might be true on most local cas-es, but once American judges operating in a district that is bi-ased a certain way, start acting unilaterally against one party (and the injured one to boot) this will not accomplish the cov-eted “justice”.

If terrorism is the killing of civilians for

a political cause, does the killing of peace activists constitute

as terrorism or state terrorism?

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issue no 124

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