A bomba diplomática que explodiu na semana passada foi o relatório da Organização das Nações Unidas determinando que Israel impõe um regime de apartheid aos palestinos.
Como era de se esperar, o novo secretário geral da ONU, Antônio Guterres, considerado 'a friend of Israel', renegou o relatório imediatamente.
Os ex-primeiros secretários da ONU pecavam por omissão e subserviência aos EUA. Este português, sionista de corpo e alma, peca por suas convicções sectárias, alheias ao Direito International e aos Direitos Humanos. Guterres/Netanyahu/Trump, são desastres humanos.
Os ex-primeiros secretários da ONU pecavam por omissão e subserviência aos EUA. Este português, sionista de corpo e alma, peca por suas convicções sectárias, alheias ao Direito International e aos Direitos Humanos. Guterres/Netanyahu/Trump, são desastres humanos.
The head of the United Nations' West Asia commission, Rima Khalaf, has resigned over the pressure to withdraw the report that accused Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Palestinians. Lebanon-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which comprises 18 Arab states, published the report on Wednesday and said it was the first time a UN body had clearly made the charge.
"I resigned because it is my duty not to conceal a clear crime, and I stand by all the conclusions of the report,” Rima Khalaf stated, proudly.
Although UN Secretary General ordered the removal of the report on Israel apartheeid, you can find it in full here.
And here: The report on Israeli Apartheid the U.N.was pressured to take down.
Rima Khalaf resigned as executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia after the agency was forced to retract a report stating that Israel is an “apartheid regime.” Khalaf’s letter of resignation to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was translated and posted by poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha on her Facebook page. Here is that translation:
"Honorable Secretary General,
I have given a great deal of consideration to the letter I received from your office, and I assure you that I in no way question your right to issue instructions to remove the report from the ESCWA web site, as I do not question that as employees of the United Nations, we must all execute the orders of our Secretary General.
I know very well your commitment to the principles of human rights in general and your position on the rights of the Palestinian people specifically. And I also understand the anxiety you must have in these difficult times that leave you with few good choices.
It is clear to me the kinds of pressures and threats to which the United Nations and you personally are subjected by states with authority and influence, because of the publication of the ESCWA report (Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid). I am unsurprised that these s, which are run today by governments with little concern for international principles and human rights, should resort to tactics of fearmongering and threats when they fail to defend their policies and practices which violate the law. It makes sense that a criminal would attack those who defend the cause of his victims, but I find myself incapable of bowing to such pressures, and not because of my role as an employee of the United Nations, but simply as a sane human being. For I believe—as you do—in the values and noble principles that have always represented the forces of good throughout history, and upon which our organization, the United Nations, was founded. And, like you, I also believe that discrimination against any human being on the basis of religion or skin color or gender or ethnicity is absolutely unacceptable, and cannot be made acceptable by political maneuvering or brute force. And I believe that to speak truth to power is not only a human right, it is our obligation.
Over the course of two months, I have been instructed to withdraw two reports published by ESCWA, not for any error or shortcomings within the reports themselves and not necessarily because you yourself disagree with their content, but because of political pressures from countries implicated by their blatant violations of the rights of people in the region and human rights in general.
You have seen with your own eyes how the people of this region are enduring episodes of pain and suffering unprecedented in their modern history, and that the deluge of catastrophes that has overtaken them today is a direct result of unchecked oppression which has been ignored, or covered up, or openly engaged in by governments with dominance and force within the region and outside of it. These same governments are the ones pressuring you today to silence the voice of truth and the calls for justice represented by this report.
In view of all that I have stated here, I can only insist on the findings of the ESCWA report, which state that Israel has built an apartheid regime which aims to give one ethnic group control over another. The evidence provided in the report is incontrovertible, and here it is sufficient to point out that anyone who has attacked the report has been incapable of calling into question a single word of its actual content. I see it as my obligation to shine a light on the truth and not to hide it or obscure the testimony and evidence it provides.
The painful truth is that an apartheid regime still exists in the 21st century, and this is unacceptable under any law and is morally unjustifiable.
As I make this statement, I claim no moral superiority and no greater clarity than you possess, the matter is simply that my statements are a result of an entire life spent here, in this region, witnessing the horrific consequences of stifling people and preventing them from expressing the truth of their suffering through peaceful means.
As such, and after great consideration, I realize that I too have no choice. I cannot withdraw, once again, a United Nations report, an exceptionally researched and well-documented report about grave violations of human rights. I also realize that the clear directives of the Secretary General of the United Nations must be executed. And so the only way to resolve this tangle is for me to step aside and leave it to someone else to do what my conscience prevents me from doing. I realize I have only two weeks of service remaining in my post, so my resignation is not meant to exert any political pressure on you. I am simply resigning because I believe my duty to the peoples of the region that we serve, and to the United Nations, and to myself, is not to silence the testimony about a crime that causes such suffering to so many human beings. For this reason, I submit to you my resignation from the United Nations".
Translator Lena Khalaf Tuffaha prefaced the posting with these words: Dr. Rima Khalaf, career diplomat extraordinaire, personal hero, and Executive Secretary of ESCWA, resigned today after the UN Secretary General tried to withdraw a report that correctly identified Israel as an apartheid regime. Anyone who cares about freedom and equality should read her letter of resignation, which I have translated here. Her letter is a document that is now part of the history of the struggle for freedom. And anyone in the west who’s super worried about women in the Arab world should sit down, because we have Rima and many women like her who just need everyone to get out the way so we can get our work done. Khalaf women don’t play. Palestinian women don’t play.
UN officials accused of bowing to Israeli pressure over children's rights ...
By the way, check it out: No Way to Treat a Child
She opposes Israel’s occupation, wants Hillel to allow participation by groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, is against Jewish federation funding for Israeli projects in the West Bank and wrote favorably of the efforts of Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-BDS group, to get “international corporations to stop profiting off human rights abuses.” (The Anti-Defamation League has called JVP one of America’s top 10 anti-Israel groups.)
“The hypocrisy of expecting feel-good social justice projects to offset millennials’ deep outrage at the grave injustices committed by the Jewish state is almost too much to bear,” wrote Zimmerman, who is in her mid-20s. “No public relations trick can save Israel’s image. The problem isn’t with the hasbara [propaganda]. The problem is nearly 50 years of occupation. The problem is rampant racism in Israeli society. The problem is attacks on human rights defenders by extremists and by the state. The problem is a Jewish establishment that ignores or justifies all ofthis'.
Simone backed Bernie Sanders in 2016's USA's presidential race.
Mensagem, extremamente bem articulada, de um jovem jornalista palestino a Radiohead para que o grupo não se apresente em Israel.Palestinian journalist Ali Al-Arian sent a very good message for one of his favorite artists, Thom Yorke - Radiohead : Don't normalize apartheid. Cancel the show in Tel Aviv.
Na semana passada, o Monsenhor Manuel Musallam, um dos padres palestinos mais respeitados na Cisjordânia, denunciou a cumplicidade da Autoridade Palestina com Israel e disse: Está passando da hora de uma revolta pacífica através da desobediência civil: Palestinian priest: Oust PA and start civil disobedience 13/03/17: 'It's dance or die': The ballet dancer forbidden to perform by Islamic State
14/03/17: Palestinians protest over PA-Israel security ties.
. Supporting BDS is enough to get detained by the cops in Israel
15/03/17: How Zionist terrorism determined Palestine's fate.
. How to hold Israel accountable for the crime of apartheid.
Inside Story: Israel is imposing an apartheid on Palestinians
16/03/17: Gisha, an Isreli human rights group reported a sharp decline in the number of Palestinians Israel allows to enter from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, warning that tighter restrictions could fuel more hostilities.
Gisha, that advocates for greater freedom of movement for Gazans, says just 7,301 Gazans entered Israel last month for treatment or in transit to the West Bank, a 40 percent drop from February 2016 and one of the lowest monthly inflows since Israeli military Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
It says around two-thirds of Gaza businessmen and women have had their Israeli entry permits revoked since 2015.
A Terceira Guerra Mundial pode estar mais próxima do que se pensava. Reforçado pelo apoio do presidente dos Estados Unidos, Israel passou a atacar a Síria, além da região do Golã. Desta vez foi perto de Palmyra - cidade estratégica n conflito que opõe o governo sírio ao Estado Islmâmico - recém-conquistada pelo exército de Assad após os "rebeldes" terem destruído grande parte do sítio arqueológico. Netanyahu ataca a Síria para atacar o Irã, mas está brincando com fogo desafiando Vladimir Putin. Desde 2013, como mostra o vídeo acima, que Israel vem invadindo o território sírio sem nenhuma repreensão da ONU. Primeiro, apoia por Barack Obama. Agora, por seu cupincha Donald Trump.
Israeli aircraft struck several targets in Syria near Palmyra—which the Syrian government just happened to retake from ISIS. In the most serious clash between Israeli and Syrian forces since the start of the Syrian conflict six year ago, Israeli aircraft struck several targets in Syria overnight, the Israeli military said Friday.
Israel targeted a military site near the ancient city of Palmyra, the Syrian military said, in what would be one of its deepest airstrikes inside Syrian territory since the civil war began there.
Palmyra, once held by ISIS and retaken by the Syrian government, is strategically important to both the regime and its opponents.
Most of Israel's reported strikes have been around the capital of Damascus, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In response, Syrian forces fired anti-aircraft missiles at the Israeli jets, saying they downed one aircraft and hit another. Israeli vehemently denied the assertions, calling them "absolutely not true." The hasbara can't hide the evidence of the photograph taken by the Syrian aricraft.
18/03/17: Enquanto isso, os ataques à Faixa de Gaza continuam para forçar o Hamas a reagir e Israel recomeçar a "podagem de grama" com mais uma operação militar genocida.
Israeli warplanes launched 3 raids on 
With 96% of the water undrinkable, families in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory does not only exist above ground.
I have already spoken about the theft of Palestinian hydric resources in 2010 - A arma da sede na ocupação da Palestina.
With gas, the story is much the same.
Since 1967, Israel has systematically colonized Palestinian natural resources and, in the field of hydrocarbons, has prevented Palestinians from accessing their own oil and gas reserves. Such restrictions have ensured the continued dependence of Palestinians on Israel for their energy needs. The Palestinians’ own efforts to develop their energy sector fail to challenge Israel’s overarching hegemony over Palestinian resources. Rather, they pursue growth and state building within the reality of the occupation, further reinforcing – even if inadvertently – the asymmetric balance between occupied and occupier.
Al-Shabaka Policy Fellow Tareq Baconi reviewed the context of recent gas deals. How efforts to develop the Palestinian energy sector fail to challenge this reality and rely primarily on occupation-circumventing practices that seek to enhance quality of life within the context of the occupation. As Baconi argues, these efforts ultimately reinforce the role of the Palestinian territories as a captive market for Israeli energy exports and lay the groundwork for regional normalization under the rubric of “economic peace.” He underscores that lasting peace and stability will only be produced if the underlying factors that maintain Palestinians as subservient to Israel’s rule are addressed and makes a number of policy recommendations as to how to do so.
These are the facts.
Until a few years ago, both Israel and Jordan relied quite heavily on Egyptian gas imports. In 2011-2012, and especially after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, gas exports from Egypt became unreliable. This was due to both domestic issues within Egypt’s energy sector as well as increased instability in the Sinai Peninsula, which housed the main route of the pipeline carrying gas to Israel and Jordan. With the drop of Egyptian imports, Israel and Jordan began seeking alternative sources of supply. In 2009, an Israeli-American consortium of energy firms discovered Tamar, a field roughly 80km off the coast of Haifa, containing 10 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas. With Israel’s energy security in jeopardy, the consortium rapidly moved toward production, and gas began to flow in 2013. A year after Tamar’s discovery, the same consortium identified the much larger Leviathan gas field, estimated to hold around 20tcf of gas.
These are the facts.
Within the space of a few years, Israel moved from being a regional gas importer to acquiring the potential to become an exporter. It looked to both the local markets as well as neighboring countries and further afield to identify potential export destinations. Within its immediate vicinity, the implications for advancing economic normalization were evident: As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently declared, producing gas from Leviathan “will provide gas to Israel and promote cooperation with countries in the region.”
Jordan became the first country to commit to buying Israeli gas. Negotiations began between Jordan and Israel soon after Leviathan’s discovery, and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed in 2014. That same year, gas sales agreements were also finalized between Tamar’s owners and two Jordanian industrial players, the Jordan Bromine and Arab Potash companies. The MoU signed with Jordan’s government entailed a commitment from Jordan to buy Israeli gas for a period of 15 years. This was met with vigorous protests in Jordan: Many activists rejected dealings with Israel, particularly given its onslaught on the Gaza Strip that year, and Jordanian parliamentarians voted against the deal. In early 2017, gas began to flow from Israel to Jordan Bromine and Arab Potash, although players kept a low profile to avoid reigniting protests.
Anger that Jordan was financing Israel’s gas sector was aggravated by the fact that Jordan had other prospects for the purchase of gas. Following the decline of Egyptian gas, Jordan had constructed a terminal for the import of liquefied natural gas in Aqaba, on the coast of the Red Sea, which started operations in 2015. Furthermore, Egypt’s discovery of the supergiant gas field Zohr in 2016 resuscitated prospects for the resumption of Egypt’s role as a regional gas supplier. Nonetheless, and doubtless influenced by external pressure, Jordan formalized its MoU with Israel in September 2016, overriding parliamentary objections and popular protests.
As Israel became awash with gas, the Gaza's Strip pitiful reality became starker than ever. The Gaza Strip has been under blockade since 2007. The Gaza Power Generation Company (GPGC), the sole company of its kind in the Palestinian territory, currently runs on liquid fuel that is purchased and transported into the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. To supplement power from GPGC, Gaza purchases electricity from the Israeli Electricity Company as well as from the Egyptian electric grid. 1 Even so, fuel purchased for power generation in Gaza is insufficient to meet local demand, and the Strip has suffered from chronic electricity shortages since Israel imposed the blockade.
In early 2017, protests swept throughout Gaza as inhabitants of this coastal Palestinian enclave protested having electricity for only three to four hours daily. Aside from the tremendous restrictions these shortages put on mundane facets of life, electricity outages have a crippling impact on the economic activity of the private sector, healthcare, education, and life-sustaining facilities such as water sanitation plants. Stunted operations in these areas have consequences that are both immediate and lasting, impacting rising generations.
Israel induced blame for Gaza’s energy crisis to be fired in all directions, except the right one, itself.
Protestors flooding the winter streets blamed Hamas’s government, the PA, and Israel. Anger was directed at Hamas’s government for allegedly diverting funds from the purchase of fuel necessary to run Gaza’s only power plant toward other activities, including the building of tunnels. Frustrated demonstrators accused the PA of supporting the blockade by controlling fuel purchases and transfers into Gaza. The power company itself, a privately owned operation, is repeatedly criticized for supposedly making profit off the backs of ordinary Gazans who suffer from these shortages. To mitigate the particularly painful winter months of late 2016 and early 2017, interventions into Gaza’s energy sector were forthcoming from Turkey and Qatar in the form of fuel supplies that allowed the resumption of power generation from GPGC. These measures are at best short-term palliatives that will carry Gazans through another chapter of a chronic crisis.
Protestors flooding the winter streets blamed Hamas’s government, the PA, and Israel. Anger was directed at Hamas’s government for allegedly diverting funds from the purchase of fuel necessary to run Gaza’s only power plant toward other activities, including the building of tunnels. Frustrated demonstrators accused the PA of supporting the blockade by controlling fuel purchases and transfers into Gaza. The power company itself, a privately owned operation, is repeatedly criticized for supposedly making profit off the backs of ordinary Gazans who suffer from these shortages. To mitigate the particularly painful winter months of late 2016 and early 2017, interventions into Gaza’s energy sector were forthcoming from Turkey and Qatar in the form of fuel supplies that allowed the resumption of power generation from GPGC. These measures are at best short-term palliatives that will carry Gazans through another chapter of a chronic crisis.
In this Palestinian wave of popular anger and recrimination, the impact of the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and Israel’s broader colonization and control of Palestinian resources is diluted, if not pushed to the background.
Yet Palestinians discovered gas reserves almost a decade before Israel’s gas bonanza. In 1999, the Gaza Marine field was discovered off the coast of Gaza, and the license for exploration and production was awarded to BG Group, the major British oil and gas company since acquired by Shell. In the early days of the discovery, this national treasure was hailed as a breakthrough that could offer Palestinians a windfall. At a time when the Oslo Accords that had been signed in 1993 still seemed plausible, the resource discovery was viewed as something that could provide Palestinians with a much-needed boost toward self-determination.
With an estimated 1tcf of gas, Gaza Marine is not sufficiently large to act as an exporter. But the gas volumes it holds are sufficient to make the Palestinian energy sector entirely self-sufficient. Not only would Palestinians not have to import Israeli or Egyptian gas or electricity, but the Gaza Strip would not suffer from any electricity shortages. Moreover, the Palestinian economy would enjoy a significant source of revenue.
That move to sovereign rule was not to be. Despite persistent attempts by owners of the field and investors to develop Gaza Marine, Israel placed unyielding restrictions that have prevented any measures from taking place. This is despite the fact that exploration and production from Gaza Marine would be relatively straightforward given the shallow depth of the reserve and its location close to Palestinian shores. 2 According to documents uncovered by Al-Shabaka, Israel initially prevented the development of this field as it sought commercially favorable terms for the gas produced.
After Israel discovered its own resources, it began citing “security concerns” that were heightened with Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip. Although Netanyahu allegedly considered allowing Palestinians to develop Gaza Marine in 2012 as part of a broader strategy to stabilize the Gaza Strip, these efforts have yet to materialize. Given the recent acquisition of BG Group by Shell, and the latter’s global asset divestment program, it is likely that Gaza Marine will be sold off.
Until Israel ends its stranglehold on the Palestinian economy, this Palestinian asset is likely to remain stranded. Indeed, the manner in which the Israeli and Palestinian gas discoveries have shaped economic development in Israel and the Palestinian territory elucidates the power disparity between the two parties. Unlike Israel, which rapidly secured energy independence after the discovery of its gas fields, Palestinians are unable to access a resource they discovered close to two decades earlier. Rather than addressing the root cause of the blockade and the occupation regime that has prevented their control of resources such as Gaza Marine, Palestinians are instead forced to seek immediate measures that mitigate the pressing misery they face. Although this is understandable in the context of a brutal occupation, efforts to enhance quality of life under occupation overlook the longer-term strategic goal of securing energy independence within the broader goal of freedom from occupation and realization of Palestinian rights.
The notion of “economic peace” has a long history in the region and has manifested itself in various forms, including recently in Secretary of State John Kerry’s economic development proposal. This view also appears favored by the Trump administration’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. Rather than directly addressing the political impasse caused by Israel’s prolonged occupation and other violations, such proposals address issues related to quality of life, trade, or economic growth, presumably as a stepping stone to peace. With similar thinking, once the Israeli gas discoveries were made, the Obama administration began to explore ways to position Israel as a regional energy hub.
Proponents of this approach of separating national and political rights from economic incentives would argue that there is an obvious commercial advantage for Israeli gas to be used within the Palestinian territory and Jordan. Israel now has an excess of gas, and these regions are still dependent on energy imports. In the case of the Palestinian territory, dependence on Israel already exists, and not only in Gaza: close to 88 percent of Palestinian consumption is supplied by Israel, with the West Bank importing almost the entirety of its electricity from Israel. Advocates for economic peace believe that prospects for instability diminish when such mutual dependency is reinforced.
Jordan is not the sole prospective recipient of Israeli gas. In 2010, the PA approved plans for the establishment of the Palestine Power Generation Company (PPGC), the first such company in the West Bank and the second in the Palestinian territory after GPGC in Gaza. Located in Jenin, this 200 megawatt power plant is spearheaded by private investors (including PADICO and CCC) who are working to strengthen the Palestinian energy sector by securing electricity generation in the West Bank and reducing the high cost of Israeli electricity imports. PPGC entered into negotiations with Israel to purchase gas from Leviathan for electricity generation. Palestinians protested this decision, calling for efforts to develop Gaza Marine instead of relying on Israeli gas. Talks collapsed in 2015, but it is unclear if these have merely been temporarily suspended.
There are several national and regional dangers to the push for closer integration through gas deals in the absence of a concurrent effort on the political front.
The first danger is that Palestinian energy security is pinned to Israel’s goodwill. Israel can and has in the past used its power to effectively turn the taps off for Palestinian consumers. The most evident (and violent) manifestation of Israel’s willingness to withhold power to Palestinians is its decision to destroy without hesitation the sole power generation company in the Gaza Strip during its bombardment of the coastal enclave in 2006 and again in 2014.
Secondly, this approach legitimizes the Israeli occupation, soon entering its fiftieth year. Not only is there no cost to Israel’s prevention of Palestinian state building, there is rather a direct reward in the form of revenue from the sales of gas to territories maintained indefinitely under Israel’s territorial control.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, such energy exchange and trade in the pursuit of economic peace in the absence of any political prospects merely entrenches the power imbalance between the two parties – the occupier and the occupied. Such integration propagates a fiction of normative sovereign relations between an occupying power and a captive economy in the West Bank and Gaza.
The case of gas demonstrates most starkly how Palestinian state building efforts through the development of national resources have been elided in favor of alleviating energy crises within the framework of truncated sovereignty. Instead of addressing Palestinians’ inability to explore their own natural resources, American diplomats are actively working with Israel to facilitate negotiations that enhance Palestinian “quality of life” that ultimately leaves them bound to Israel in perpetuity.
This approach carries regional dangers as well. Jordan too is currently dependent on Israel for around 40 percent of its energy imports. Jordan’s willingness to enter into this kind of commitment, despite several geostrategic disadvantages, advances Israel’s normalization in the region even as it maintains its occupation of Palestinian territory. This disposition heralds several threats at a time when the Trump administration is proposing the pursuit of “outside in” diplomatic measures that might entirely circumvent the Palestinians.
In normal conditions, mutual dependency and economic development are indeed anchors against instability and hold the benefit of advancing the quality of life of the inhabitants of the region. However, they must not be viewed as an end in their own right, and certainly not as a substitute for the realization of Palestinian rights. Such a depoliticized view can only go so far. Focusing solely on economic peace has detrimental consequences precisely because it overlooks the broader historical context that has led to Palestinian, and possibly regional, dependency.
In normal conditions, mutual dependency and economic development are indeed anchors against instability and hold the benefit of advancing the quality of life of the inhabitants of the region. However, they must not be viewed as an end in their own right, and certainly not as a substitute for the realization of Palestinian rights. Such a depoliticized view can only go so far. Focusing solely on economic peace has detrimental consequences precisely because it overlooks the broader historical context that has led to Palestinian, and possibly regional, dependency.
Economic growth will never remove Palestinian calls for sovereignty and rights or the demand for self-determination. That was a lesson that was fully articulated with the eruption of the first intifada close to 30 years ago, after decades of normalized economic relations between Israel and the territories under its military occupation. While “economic peace” could offer short-term relief, it will only pave the way toward greater stability if it is built on a foundation of equality and justice.
Palestinians’ right to their own resources is subject to final status negotiations with the Israelis. The current gas agreements being pursued will create an infrastructure of dependency that will be difficult to untangle in the case of a negotiated settlement. More importantly, given the vanishing hopes of a negotiated two-state solution, these agreements merely concretize the status quo.
Therefore, while economic relations may have to be pursued to avert humanitarian suffering, as the case might be with increasing fuel and electricity supply to Gaza, the PLO and PA as well as Palestinian civil society and the Palestine solidarity movement must continue to use all the tools at their disposal to push for justice and rights for Palestinians.
Certain elements of economic peace may serve the Palestinians in the short term by underpinning economic growth and development. But these cannot come at the expense of an indefinite state of dependency and truncated sovereignty. Palestinians must work on two fronts: They must push to hold Israel’s occupation accountable in international forums. And they must ensure that prospects of forced economic integration and any attempt by Israel to impose a one-state apartheid reality is met by a call for rights and equality. Whichever political vision is pursued for Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinian leadership must formulate a strategy around these gas deals and contextualize notions of economic development within the wider struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Faced
with this reality, Israel guaranteed itself a nearly blanket exemption
from the obligation to pay compensation for all this harm. The state
does not offer Palestinians harmed by the IDF a genuine
opportunity to file for damages in Israeli courts, offering them no more
than the illusion of being able to do so. By broadening the legal
definition of what constitutes “warfare activity” and inclusive
construal of this term by the courts, on the one hand, and introducing a
series of procedural and evidentiary restrictions in legislation and
case law, on the other, Israel has rendered virtually nonexistent the
chances of Palestinian plaintiffs getting compensation for the harm they
suffered.
Paying
compensation to persons who have suffered injury to themselves or their
property is not an act of charity – it is the state’s obligation under
international law. Not compensating Palestinian victims severely
infringes upon their human rights as they are denied redress for
violation of the basic rights to life, physical integrity and property.
Denying the right to receive compensation is tantamount to a violation
of the right in itself: the significance of human rights is not limited
to merely having them entrenched in some law or international covenant.
If no sanctions are enforced when human rights are breached, the rights
become moot and the perpetrators have no incentive to institute a change
in policy.
Israeli law stipulates that Israel is liable for damages that are a result of negligence, but it exempts the state from paying compensation for acts performed during “warfare activity”.
The exemption in law regarding “warfare activity” had been broadened over the years by the courts, even before legislative amendments were completed. Gradually, judges included more and more types of incidents under this definition, and in some instances chose in advance not to examine the circumstances in which the incident took place, not even the question of whether the soldiers were indeed in physical or mortal danger. Moreover, a good part of the actions of Israel’s security forces in the Occupied Territories has been – including during the first and second intifadas – straightforward policing activity such as staffing checkpoints, making arrests, imposing and enforcing curfews, and dispersing demonstrations.
However, over the years, the High Court has sanctioned almost every human rights violation that the state wished to carry out in the Occupied Territories: punitive home demolition, administrative detention, restricting freedom of movement, expelling Palestinians from the West Bank, building the Separation Barrier, imposing a blockade on Gaza, taking over land, removing entire communities from their land, separating families – to name but a few.
PS: A desinformação que a grande mídia protagoniza e sua cumplicidade na propaganda dos poderosos.
Mike Robinson, Patrick Henningsen and campaigner Robert Stuart take a look at what is quite possibly one of the worst example of mainstream media fake news in history - the BBC Panorama documentary Saving Syria's Children.
PALESTINA
Madama residents went out to enjoy the good weather at a spot south of the village. Soldiers guarding the nearby settlement of Yitzhar came there and threw tear-gas canisters at the villagers. Ahmad Ziyadah, a B’Tselem camera project volunteer, began filming the soldiers and was ordered to leave. When he refused, he was violently detained. When his brother came to help him, a soldier fired a rubber-coated metal bullet at short range at his knee. Ziyadah, who did no more than film the soldiers, was kept in custody for six days with the backing of a military court. The footage, which shows only the end of the incident, was edited by B’Tselem.
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