Sunday Argus on Palestine......

My Reply published in Sunday Argus, December 4, 2011. See Powell's article below.

Powell’s “’Freedom riders” put Israeli policies on spot” (Sunday Argus, 20 November 2011) refers:

A multitude of books written, and 60 plus years of analysis, have punctuated the gloomy growth of Israel’s controls over its ‘territories’. But one thing seems to be certain, as Powell’s article suggests: Israel’s defensive tactics, repeated over and over again, only bring disjointed dialogue, if any at all. Peace with justice is simply not in the equation.

A friend of mine criticized the recent Russell Tribunal on Palestine (held Dec 5-6 at District Six Museum) as being ‘dreadfully biased and political’.  Indeed.  Pity that more pro-Israeli factions did not attend as they could have – this was a people’s Tribunal where evidence (good and bad) is brought forward. 

Aren’t these abstaining tactics obscuring the value of rightful and legitimate dialogue? Did not the overwhelming evidence brought forth by witnesses at the Tribunal – from Palestinians and Israeli Jews and Arabs– provide the attendees and critics with countless examples of human rights violations?

Is this ‘dreadfully biased’? It’s pathetically biased until the Israeli State stops its psychological warfare and starts to confer transformative and peace-seeking actions upon its increasingly repressive policies towards its Palestinian neighbors.

And this has nothing to do with the call that “Israel has the right to exist”.

It’s about attending to the prescripts of international humanitarian law and stopping the military occupation.

Carol Martin, Cape Town

Former Ecumenical Accompanier for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI)

In West Bank

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Sunday Argus, 20 November 2011  WORLD page

‘Freedom riders’ put Israeli policies on spot.

Protesters thrown off bus reserved for West Bank settlers.

BY  Ivor Powell

Picture:   DEMO RIDE: An Israeli border police officer detains a Palestinian activist after removing him from a bus at Hizme checkpoint on the edge of Jerusalem this week. Calling themselves ‘freedom riders’, six Palestinians boarded the bus used by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. They were taken off the bus and detained.    PICTURE: REUTERS

THE VEXED question addressed by the Russell Tribunal in Cape Town this month – Is the government of Israel guilty of apartheid practices in its treatment of Palestinians? – was spotlighted in the occupied West Bank this week when a group of so-called “freedom riders” attempted to board a bus reserved for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers. Accompanied by the press, the Palestinian activists staged a carefully orchestrated piece of political guerrilla theatre when they got on board the bus that links Israel’s controversial West Bank settlers with Jerusalem, claiming the right to travel freely in their own country.  

Styling themselves after civil rights activists in the southern states of the US who deliberately flouted laws enforcing bus segregation in the 1960s, the Palestinian freedom riders were seeking

to highlight discriminatory legislation imposed by the Israeli authorities. Their claimed right was,

predictably enough, denied them. The six freedom riders were forcibly removed from the bus and arrested. But they had made their point. Even before the activists boarded the bus, spokesperson Hurriyah Ziada read out a statement demanding “the ability to travel freely on our roads, on our own land, including the right to travel to Jerusalem”.

In the wake of a series of suicide bombings in the Intifada that erupted in 2000, Israel placed severe travel restrictions on Palestinian nationals. The permit system has been compared with the

apartheid-era “dompas”. As one of the freedom riders put it, as quoted in the Washington Post: “Those are racist laws. Tell me isn’t this racist discrimination between me and the settlers?”

But other events in occupied Palestine in recent weeks have – in the perception of Palestinian activists at least – shadowed the days of apartheid in South Africa in more sinister ways. These alleged apartheid tactics included the firebombing of dissidents and activists. Funding and material aid were cut off from extraparliamentary opposition groups, whether through legislation or by force of arms.

One such event took place in the West Bank village of Jayyus, where a Christian worker, Zodwa Nsibande, awoke in the early hours of Wednesday last week to find the house was on fire.  “I was woken by a whoosh of a semi-explosion in the porch area and woke up the others,” Nsibande recalled. “Together the team managed to put the fire out before Palestinian police and firemen arrived on the scene.”  Along with three other South Africans and a contingent of international humanitarian aid workers under the auspices of the World Council of Churches, Nsibande is attached to the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine, an agency that operates inside the occupied territories and, while monitoring alleged abuses, seeks to promote dialogue.

Ecumenical accompanier Ian Bell told Independent Newspapers the residents had found clear indications of deliberate arson in the fire that was started at a side door to the house – including the remains of a petrol canister. While it remains unclear just who set the fire, the ecumenical accompaniers –dousing the blaze before it got out of control – said they believed the incident was connected to a pattern of latenight incursions into the territory by groups connected to the Israeli Defence Force.

The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme is an integral part of the international campaign to

“Stop the Wall” – the giant security wall built by the Israeli government to cut off Palestinian territories from Israel proper. The agency was also outspoken in drawing attention to the closure of a group of human rights organisations earlier this month.

In another incident this month, the Israeli navy intercepted two aid ships, one under an Irish flag and the other Canadian, sailing under the auspices of the human rights coalition Freedom Waves and seeking to defy an Israeli blockade to deliver medical supplies to Gaza.  The Freedom Waves flotilla followed the earlier and highly publicised voyage of the Turkish-registered Mavi Marmara in May 2010. Its boarding by Israeli commandos left nine dead.   Boarded about 80km from shore – in international waters – on November 4, the latest aid ships were again commandeered by the Israeli military. The 27 passengers, including parliamentarians, journalists and human rights activists, were arrested.   They are apparently charged with illegal entry into Israel. Six have subsequently been deported after signing voluntary deportation orders.  The other 21 refused to sign.

● With the Russell Tribunal on Palestine’s verdict – rejected by the Israeli authorities – still hanging in the air, news reached Independent Newspapers on Friday that the order had been given to destroy a cluster of Bedouin encampments in the north of the Jordan Valley.  The “forced removals” are justified in terms of a policy whereby Israel asserts military control over nearly 30 percent of the total territory in the occupied West Bank. The evacuation will affect about 72 people, many of them women and children.

According to the Stop the Wall campaign, this will be the fifth time that some of the nomads have been uprooted since 2001. In a statement calling for an immediate response from the diplomatic community, Stop the Wall said: “The families continue to endure human rights abuses carried out by the Israeli police and the Israeli military.”