Monday, August 2, 2010 at 06:01PM Following Mr Mahmoud Abbas's recent grave statements made on June 9, 2010 at a dinner in Washington DC hosted by the S Daniel Abraham Centre for Middle East Peace, we invite you to sign our petition asking Mr Abbas to retract his statement about an exclusive Jewish claim to Palestine.
Monday, August 2, 2010 at 03:23PM Monday, August 2, 2010 at 09:11AM The razing of a Bedouin village by Israeli police shows how far the state will go to achieve its aim of Judaising the Negev region.
Article by Neve Gordon from guardian.co.uk, 28 July 2010.
The signs of destruction were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and the cattle were nowhere to be seen – perhaps because the police had confiscated them.
Scores of Bedouin men were standing on a yellow hill, sharing their experiences from the early morning hours, while all around them uprooted olive trees lay on the ground. A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than three hours.
I suddenly experienced deja vu: an image of myself walking in the rubbles of a destroyed village somewhere on the outskirts of the Lebanese city of Sidon emerged. It was over 25 years ago, during my service in the Israeli paratroopers. But in Lebanon the residents had all fled long before my platoon came, and we simply walked in the debris. There was something surreal about the experience, which prevented me from fully understanding its significance for several years. At the time, it felt like I was walking on the moon.
This time the impact of the destruction sank in immediately. Perhaps because the 300 people who resided in al-Arakib, including their children, were sitting in the rubble when I arrived, and their anguish was evident; or perhaps because the village is located only 10 minutes from my home in Be'er Sheva and I drive past it every time I go to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; or perhaps because the Bedouins are Israeli citizens, and I suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.
They say the next intifada will be the Bedouin intifada. There are 155,000 Bedouins in the Negev, and more than half of them live in unrecognised villages without electricity or running water. I do not know what they might do, but by making 300 people homeless, 200 of them children, Israel is surely sowing dragon's teeth for the future.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 04:00PM The material relates to the right to life, the use of human shields and the mistreatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention facilities, plus the use by the Israeli army of children as human shields, and the findings of a review of 100 sworn affidavits collected in 2009, including the finding that Palestinian children were made to sign confessions written in Hebrew in 32 percent of cases, a language they did not understand.
The Human Rights Committee is made up of 18 independent experts who will review Israel's third periodic report at its 99th Session in Geneva, in July 2010.
Monday, May 24, 2010 at 04:54PM