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LAND TO THE FARMERS - NOT TO THE HIGHWAYS!

A report from the other Israel covering the elections in May and direct actions in that country among other things.
"The Other Israel" <otherisr@actcom.co.il>

The call for boycott on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, launched a year ago by the Gush Shalom movement (info@gush-shalom.org), continues to reverberate, and sometimes in unexpected spots. The Israeli McDonalds recently declared that they will not open branches in any of the settlements. True, the Israeli concessionnaire of McDonald's, Omri Padan, is a bit of an unusual businessman; he actually was twenty years ago among the founders of Peace Now. In a recent newspaper interview (Ha'aretz, 15.1.98), Padan explained his corporate policy:

"Of our sixty-five branches - none is in the Territories. McDonald's-Israel neither did nor will open a branch at any Israeli settlement beyond the Green Line. We have been approached on that issue by settlers from Ariel [on the West Bank], Katzrin [Golan Heights] and several other settlements. I turned them all down out of hand. The only exception I would consider making, should it fit with business criteria, is opening a branch in East Jerusalem. I don't believe in being a pure businessman without taking politics into account. You can't seperate the two. Already when I was the general manager of Kitan Textiles I told the board I would resign immediately if they move to open a plant on the West Bank. In McDonald's-Israel I am owner as well as general manager. I have the privilege of not needing to compromise on my principles"

Padan's was a rare exception in Israel of the recent months: a clear, unambigous, uncompromising public statement of position. Ever since the Knesset decided upon early general elections, the leaders of the Israeli opposition seem determined to avoid contoversial issues, contorting themselves so as to fit the supposed wishes of the amorphous "undecided voters".

Labour Leader Barak's campaign, emphasizing socio-economic issues and almost completely avoiding mention of the Palestinians, is explicitly modelled upon Clinton's in 1992 and Blair's in 1997. However, the United States and Britain were not torn down the middle by the need to make difficult decisions regarding Occupied Territories where the situation nears the boiling point...

Yitzchak Mordechai, the man who held Israel's Defence Ministry until this week, seemed less calculated in the stormy row with the Prime Minister. In his first angry speech after being sacked from his ministerial position, he sharply denounced Netanyahu for wrecking the Wye Agreement - and did it quite well. But a day later, after being officially installed as the leader and prime ministerial candidate of the newly-founded Center Party, Mordechai too started spewing a string of "safe" cliches, forgotten as soon as he had uttered them..

It is highly presumptuous to contradict such noted "spin doctors" as James Carville, adviser both to Clinton and Blair in their campaigns, and now employed by Barak. Nevertheless, Gush Shalom (info@gush-shalom.org) undertook that presumption in a recent newspaper ad:

"He who tries to escape from the Palestinian issue, the Palestinian issue will pursue him. All the candidates of the Left and the Center are trying to ignore the centrality of the Palestinian issue - but any day something may happen to remind us that centrality. It would be advisable for all candidates to formulate their solution in a clear and open way, before events compel them to do so. Urgent social issues should, indeed, play an important role in the election campaign - but they, too, are inseparably bound up with the need to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (Haaretz, 15.1).

By fixing elections date as late as May 17, the government - with Labor's help - effectively decreed that during four whole months Israel would be absorbed in staring at its own navel. The international community unwittingly encourages this attitude by pressuring the Palestinians to delay their declaration of independence, scheduled for May 4 - so as "not to help Netanyahu's campaign." In the meantime, the Palestinians are expected to endure daily hardships in silence.

On Tuesday this week, the police of our enlightened country opened fire on members of the Dirba family and their neighbors in the Issawiyeh neighborhood of East Jerusalem, who were trying to save from demolition the house which was home to Mahmud Issa Dirba and thirteen members of the family. Like thousands of other Palestinians under Israeli rule, the Dirbas were denied a permit to build on their own land, and had no option but to build "illegally". During that confrontation the young Zaki Obeid, Mahmud Dirba's nephew, was severly wounded by a rubber-coated steel bullet which penetrated his neck. Just as this briefing is being written, the news came that he died in hospital, and the police announced that it is "preparing to counter the expected riots in Issawiyeh". In such ways is preserved "The Unity of Jerusalem, Eternal Capital of Israel" - a principle to which all Prime Ministerial candidates pay lip service. Two campaigns ago, they averred just as forcefully that there will be "No talking with the PLO" and "No Palestinian State"...

Most of the daily trampling on Palestinian rights and Palestinian lives remain virtually unknown. Yesterday we heard the following from our friends of the Christian Peacemakers Team, a group of dedicated American pacifists based at Hebron (klaskern@aol.com).

(...) Visited Abdel Jawad Jabber. Israeli bulldozers had just finished destroying again the terraces reconstructed by Jabber's son Jawdi after they were razed in September 1998.(...) At the Bani Naim area east of Hebron we saw a road being widened for use by settlers, and in addition a "by-pass road" about one km long has been created through a Palestinian farmer's olive orchard. The farmers said that the uprooted olive trees were buried in a pit severa kilometers away.

A nearly identical report we got from Salah Ta'mari, who represent the Bethlehem District in the Palestinian Legislative Council: "Today our peoples' happiness at the long awaited rain that fell in recent days was washed away as Israeli settlers from Efrat suddenly showed up with several huge bulldozers and began digging into the muddy land belonging to Palestinians in Artas and Southern Bethlehem They were armed to the teeth and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to stop them as they slashed into Palestinian soil, including the land of Artas' ancient, historic monastery (...). (Full report from infopal@palvision.net.)

Veteran activists sometimes fall into despair at so much injustice being perpetrated by "our" government and its settler proteges, knowing that even straining our limited resources to the utmost we cannot possibly be everywhere. This week we were encouraged by a newcomer to the struggle for the West Bank land - "Green Action" (info@greenaction.org.il), a group which hitherto distinguished itself in acts of ecological civil disobedience inside Israel. They are strongly opposed to the government's policy of unrestrained highway construction, cutting arrogantly across the landscape and destroying the last spots of unspoiled nature which still survive in this ancient land. They brought with them a lot of youthful energy and experience in defying the police, acquired in both the ecological struggle and the recently-ended militant university students' strike.

On January 24, they got up long before dawn, so as to be on in time to block the bulldozers involved in constructing Highway 45 on confiscated Palestinian land near Ramallah. Climbing ridges and trudging several kilometres through muddy tracks, the Green Action activists were able to avoid the military and police who had been tipped off about the intended action, and took the construction site by surprise. Some climbed on bulldozers and jackhammers and chained themselves, others sitting down in the machines' path, altogether paralysing work on the site for several hours. About forty people participated, Green Action being reinforced on this occasion by individuals active in Peace Now, Gush Shalom and the Committee Against House Demolitions.

It took a whole lot of police and the use of considerable violence (though not as much as used against Palestinians) to finally dislodge them. As a participant put it: "from the scene of struggling bodies being carried or dragged tothe police van arose a cacophony of shouted slogans, with a curious mixture of ecological and political themes: Highways - No! Railways - Yes!; The land to the farmers - Not to the highways!; Stop the highway, stop the occupation!." In Hebrew, "Kvish" (highway) and "Kibush" (occupation) are both derived from the same root, "to press down".. (The full account, due to be published in the coming issue of The Other Israel newsletter, is available from otherisr@actcom.co.il)

* *

Already for years Gideon Levy of Ha'aretz is persistently exposing, week after week, Israel's darkest and dirtiest spots. So he had revealed to us on January 22 the case of Yassar Abu Halaf, the 16-year old Palestinian Jerusalemite cancer patient whose treatment was abruptly cut off by an inhuman bureacratic procedure: Jerusalemite Palestinians who move the few kilometres from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem to a suburb in the occupied West Bank immediately lose their entitlement to medical insurance. (Such a rule does not, of course, apply to Israelis who move to a settlement.)

It is a cruel and inhuman policy, which must be opposed root and branch. But in the meantime, the only chance to save Yassar's life is by collecting enough money to finance the continuation of his treatment - which his family has no chance to do on its own. The humanitarian task has been undertaken by activists Na'ama Shik-Eytan (phone 03-5186827, 03-6820873) and Natalie Rothman (natalier@post.tau.ac.il) who will provide the necesary bank details to anybody willing to donate.

* *

In recent months, thousands of olive and other fruit trees belonging to West Bank farmers were uprooted - some by Israeli settlers attempting to harass and intimidate them, others by the military authorities' "Civil Administration" clearing land for settlement expansion and by-pass roads. Between 1987-1997 some 250,000 trees have been uprooted - more than 30,000 in the past year alone - striking at the very core of the Palestinian economy and livelihood of thousands of families.

This year, the Jewish Tree Festival of Tu B'Shvat falls very near to Id-el-Sejura, the Palestinian National Arbor Day - a good occasion to plant trees together in a spirit of peace.

TOMMOROW, Friday January 29, planting will take place at the call of the Committee Against House Demolitions (halper@iol.co.il, rhr@inter.net.il), the Palestinian Land Defense Committee, Netivot Shalom and the Forum of Israeli and Palestinian Educators. The planting will take place on the "Green Line" between Israel and the West Bank; Israeli and Palestinian schoolchildren, youth and adults will together plant olive and fruit trees on land spanning the Israeli Kibbutz Yad Hanna and private farmland of the Palestinian village Kufr Khaduri, where orchards were uprooted this year.

Transportation: >From Jerusalem: parking lot of Gan HaPa'amon (Liberty Bell Park, next to the gas station, at 8:30 AM. (Further information: Arik Ascherman 050-607034)

>From Tel Aviv: El Al Terminal, Arlozorov Railway Station, at 9 AM. Further information: Amos Gvirtz 09-9523261 or Yaakov Manor 050-733276).

Those travelling from other parts of the country will meet at Beit Lid Junction at 9:45. Estimated return time: 2-2:30 PM.

* * Another tree planting will take place on Saturday, January 30, at the Lebanese border. There, the Four Mothers Movement (lindabz@post.tau.ac.il), dedicated to getting Israel out of Lebanon, will hold a ceremony to inaugurate and plant the first hundred trees in a "Peace Forest" - an act aimed at expressing the hope of citizens on both sides of the border who are tired of decades-long fighting. The first trees will be planted by Mr. Aharon Valenci, Chair of the regional Council of Upper Galilee and Mr. Majid Kzamel, a bereaved father from the Druze Village of Beit Jan.

Transportation: 10.00 AM from Arlozorov Railway Station, Tel-Aviv. Further meeting points will be at Ra'anana Junction and the Supersol in Netanya. Renedezvous for all cars: Ma'ayan Baruch Parking Area next to the Alon Gas Station east of the Hatzbani River.

Further information: Four Mothers Office 03-6953739; Linda Ben-Zvi: 09-9508356; Ya'el Erez 03-6052837. (Please give advance notice your intention to come by bus.)

Following the tree planting, participants will travel to the site of the helicopter crash where 73 soldiers, en route to Lebanon, perished February 1997. Led by Mr. Kzamel, whose son Faddi was among the victims, participants will collect stones from the site which will be brought to Tel-Aviv.

On FRIDAY NEXT WEEK, February 5 - which is the anniversary of the helicopter disaster - these stones will be placed as a memorial in front of the Defence Ministry gate. (Friday February 5, 1.00 PM, Defence Ministry, Kaplan St., Tel-Aviv.)

* * *

Conscientous objector Yehuda Igus, a 28-year old student from Jerusalem, was today (Thursday) recognised by Amnesty International as Prisoner of Conscience. Igus is for the second time in two months imprisoned at Military Prison-4. The Appeal's Committee - composed of military officers - repeatedly rejected Igus' requests to be exempted from reserve service, not taking seriously his outspoken anti-militaristic convictions. In a letter sent to the Minister of Defence in August last year, Igus wrote:

"(...) I view the military (...) as an instrument of oppression of the individual, and his right to be a free human being. Furthermore, it is difficult for me to ignore the fact that the State of Israel, via the IDF, has oppressed the Palestinian people for over 50 years through violent killings, theft and conquest (...).

The IDF deals with conscientious objection by repeated "disciplinary imprisonments" which are imposed in camera by the direct commanding officer, thus avoiding court-martials which would provide publicity and where the accused has the right to be represented by a lawyer and call witnesses. Igus - like previous objectors - is being again and again called up to reserve duty and upon each of his refusals sentenced to a new short term of imprisonment.

Letters of support to: Sergeant Yehuda Igus, ID: 4656781, Military Prison-4 Army Post 02507, Israeli Defense Forces

Letters of protest: Defense Minister Moshe Arens Fax: +972-3-691-6940

For information about protest actions in Israel, the U.S. and U.K.: Moran Cohen, ph: 02-6222790, email <morac@netvision.net.il>. N.B. You can add your name to a petition! * * *

And what more? Is it perhaps also relevant to tell you that this year started very badly for us? We had within weeks to say forever goodbye to too many friends, who were also fellow peace activists: Shalom Zamir - killed while crossing the street in a traffic accident; Jeffrey Thomash - murdered (yes!) in his appartment; and only days ago, Inbal Perelson, Elias Jerayssi, and Yochanan Lorwin, all working at the Alternative Information Center (Jerusalem/Bethlehem) drowned in a sudden flood which caught them during a hike in the desert. With Yochanan the undersigned were especially close.

Adam Keller Beate Zilversmidt

P.S. For your notice: The Other Israel website - http://members.tripod.com/~other_Israel/ Gush Shalom - http://www.gush-shalom.org

P.S. For your notice: The Other Israel website - http://members.tripod.com/~other_Israel/ Gush Shalom - http://www.gush-shalom.org (Hebrew & English) + a lot of interesting links!

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