ICAHD-USA» News

Home Demolitions in Beit Hanina Captured on Video

ICAHD-USA — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:00:32 +0000

Two videos taken on November 24th show the demolition of homes in the Bedouin community of Beit Hanina. Beit Hanina’s residents have long been targeted for removal by the Israeli occupation, and home demolitions have been frequent on the pretext that homes are built “without permits.” But as is well-documented, the occupation does not give permits to Palestinians to build on their own land, even as Israeli colonies, illegal under international law, sprout everywhere. Beit Hanina, which straddles the line between Israeli-declared “greater” Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank, was bissected several years ago by an “apartheid road,” Road 443, built by Israel for the exclusive use of Israelis.

The destructive action left twenty people homeless, including six children. Since 1967 around 2,000 homes have been demolished in East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). The Israeli authorities demolished more than 670 East Jerusalem homes between 2000 and 2008. The number of outstanding demolition orders for East Jerusalem is estimated at up to 20,000.

ICAHD estimates that about 25,000 Palestinian homes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories were demolished between 1967 and 2010.

(reposted from Electronic Intifada)

UN Special Rapporteur Falk’s Statement on Bedouin Displacement

ICAHD-USA — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:12:30 +0000

On the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Prof. Richard Falk, called urgent attention to the plight of the Palestinian Bedouin of the occupied West Bank. “The recent unprecedented pressure by Israeli authorities and settlers to expel Palestinian Bedouin communities from Area C is deplorable, illegal and must cease.The proposed relocation of the Palestinian Bedouins, without the free and informed consent of the communities, amounts to forced transfer of protected persons under international humanitarian law.” Prof. Falk added “The proposed transfer of Bedouin communities raises a number of concerns under human rights law, especially with respect to forced eviction and forced displacement.”

ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain and ICAHD UK Director Linda Ramsden met with the Special Rapporteur staff in Geneva earlier this month, to ask of the Rapporteur to convey his grave concern of imminent displacement, and deliver the recent publication “Nowhere Left to Go: Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin Ethnic Displacement.”

Please visit the ICAHD website for more information.

No Home, No Homeland: East Jerusalem Ethnic Displacement

ICAHD-USA — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:32:35 +0000

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) will submit complaints to the UN’s Special Rapporteurs – claiming that Israel’s policy in East Jerusalem violates international law and may constitute a war crime.

In a press conference held Monday, October 31st ICAHD launched its latest report on illegal Israeli practices in East Jerusalem: ‘No Home, No Homeland: A New Normative Framework for Examining the Practice of Administrative Home Demolitions in East Jerusalem”. Speaking at the press conference were ICAHD Co-Founder and Director, Dr. Jeff Halper; Co-Director Itay Epshtain, Advocate Michael Sfard, and Advocate Emily Schaeffer. Following the press conference, Dr. Halper led a tour of East Jerusalem, to highlight report findings.

ICAHD submitted three complaints to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestinian Territories. ICAHD demanded to open an investigation into the legality of Israeli policy in East Jerusalem.

The complaints are based on a report that states that Israel is committing severe violations of international law in East Jerusalem. The report, written by Advocate Emily Schaeffer and edited by Advocate Michael Sfard, analyzes Israeli policy and practice in East Jerusalem under international human rights law and international humanitarian law. The report concludes that Israel is perpetrating serious violations of these laws by denying the right to adequate housing, development, and self-determination, as well as violating the prohibition on residency revocation.

Furthermore, the report states that demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem is, in the majority of cases, a war crime of destruction of property. By destroying homes, limiting the possibility to build legally, and denying permanent residency status of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Israel is forcing the migration process on the basis of ethnicity – which violates international law, and is possibly a war crime.

The report also states that there is evidence that the actions and policies implemented by Israel in East Jerusalem are designed to preserve a demographic balance in the city of a Jewish majority – a motive that is forbidden by international law.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is setting a precedent by turning to the UN. This is the first time that an Israeli organization has requested the opening of an investigation into Israeli practices.

“Seeking justice, we appeal to the international community. UN bodies are better equipped to investigate and rule on Israeli profane policies.” Said Itay Epshtain, Co-Director of ICAHD in the press conference this morning. “Unfortunately, the Israeli High Court disregards Palestinians’ human rights, in particular their right to adequate, safe and permanent housing, development and national self-determination.”

Advocate Emily Schaeffer, author of the report, warned about the consequences of Israeli policies. ”The Israeli practices toward East Jerusalem have set in motion a process of displacement of the Palestinians from the city, a process which can only be expected to increase should these policies and practices remain”.

East Jerusalem House Demolitions – Background Information

The pretext for home demolitions in East Jerusalem is solely administrative. Administrative home demolitions entail the demolition of homes and structures built without Israeli authorization.

While Palestinians represent about 30% of Jerusalem’s population, they live in an area that comprises only 9% of the city. The state of Israel is spearheading a policy for the Jewish population of Jerusalem to be a majority of 70%, while keeping the Palestinian population at 30%.

To preserve this ethnic ratio, the Israeli government has applied a discriminatory policy against Palestinians in East Jerusalem. One of the expressions of that policy is the extreme difficulty in planning and building new homes. Applications to rezone or increase density are regularly denied, as are applications to build in the small areas that are allocated for residential construction. Palestinians therefore have no opportunity to lawfully meet the housing needs of a growing population.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem hold permanent resident status, and it can be lost if they do not permanently reside in East Jerusalem. Therefore they struggle to stay in the area, but Israeli administrative policy poses a bureaucratic wall that makes it almost impossible for Palestinians to legally build homes.

Israeli policy leaves Palestinians nothing but two choices: stay in the area, build irregularly, and risk a demolition and forced displacement from their homes, or leave East Jerusalem, and endanger their residency status that includes losing the right to return to their homes.

If Palestinians have their residency revoked, they are rendered stateless and residency-less. That violates the right to practice self-determination, and the right to citizenship, residency and nationality, enshrined in international human rights law. This forced deportation, on the basis of ethnicity, is a violation of international law and may constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law.

Demolition of houses in and of itself is a denial of Palestinians’ right to adequate housing. Demolitions have major implications for the victims: the families whose homes are destroyed are not given alternative housing or compensation. A significant number of them spend months in makeshift tents or in the streets following the demolition of their homes. In addition to the loss of value of the home, and the destroyed property, owners are expected to pay heavy fines of tens of thousands of ILS.

Since 1967, Israel has demolished more than 2,000 homes in East Jerusalem. Between 2000 and 2011, 771 homes were demolished. The number of demolition orders issued to homes in the area currently stands at about 1,500.

For a presentation highlighting the report findings, click here…

To download the ICAHD publication “No Home, No Homeland: A New Normative Framework for Examining the Practice of Administrative Home Demolitions in East Jerusalem”, click here…

Jeff Halper testifies before Russell Tribunal on apartheid question

ICAHD-USA — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:25:18 +0000

Israeli, Palestinian, and international legal experts recently testified at the Russell Tribunal in South Africa, which convened to determine whether to classify Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as apartheid. This is what the Tribunal found.

The Russell Tribunal is what happens when governments abrogate their responsibilities towards their own citizens and peoples under their control. States, along with the United Nations, are obligated to enforce international law and human rights conventions. When they don’t, as in their failure to apply to Israel and its Occupation the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the people themselves must rise up and demand that they do. Civil society forums such as the Russell Tribunal may not carry formal authority, but they represent millions of people the world over who believe that simply leaving governments free to pursue their narrow agendas driven by power, sectarian ideology, militarism and the profits of a few is to doom us all to continued war, bloodshed and injustice.

In the late 1960s, the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre convened a Russell Tribunal on Vietnam. In the mid-1970s a Tribunal was also convened on the issue of human rights abuses in Latin America. Over the past year, the Tribunal has been convened once again, this time on the issue of Palestine. Along with other Israeli, Palestinian, and international legal experts – human rights workers and activists – I testified at the session just recently held in Cape Town, South Africa. The setting was appropriate, as the Tribunal asked whether, in light of international law, Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians can be classified as apartheid, thereby holding Israel accountable for its policies, including through international sanctions.

ICAHD’s Jeff Halper Speaking to the Tribunal

The Russell Tribunal is not a court – or rather, it is a people’s court. Although prominent legal experts sit on the jury, such as Michael Mansfield, QC, and José Antonio Martin Pallín, a former Spanish Supreme Court Justice, leading political figures do as well. Stéphane Hessel, for example, is a Holocaust survivor, former French diplomat, and an author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ronnie Kasrils, a Jewish member of the African National Congress, was a former member of the post-apartheid South African government. Other jurists with what might be called moral authority included Mairead Maguire, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland; the African-American author and activist Alice Walker; Yasmin Sooka, a member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Cynthia McKinney, former US Congressional representative; and the former Minister of Culture from Mali, Aminata Traore. The Tribunal opened with greetings from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Representing civil society rather than governments, the authority of the Tribunal is indeed only moral and intellectual. It does not judge governments. Instead, it sets out before world public opinion gross violations of human rights and international law, hoping in that way to mobilize grassroots opposition that, in turn, will influence how governments behave. The Tribunal met, fittingly, at the District Six Museum, which commemorates the destruction and dispersal of Cape Town’s multicultural District Six community by the apartheid government.

In the case of the Israel’s 44-year Occupation, such an initiative is certainly called for. Despite the Palestinians’ acceptance of the two-state solution in 1988 and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, in which the Arab League unanimously agreed to make peace with Israel and integrate it into the region, Israel refuses to end its settlement building or the construction of other massive, irreversible “facts on the ground,” such as a web of Israeli-only highways linking the settlements to Israel proper; the construction of a “separation barrier” twice as high as the Berlin Wall and five times longer, snaking deep into Palestinian territory; and the annexation of East Jerusalem.

Mohammad Khatib, a Palestinian from Bil’in, speaking to the Tribunal

Indeed, it is likely that Israel’s facts on the ground have eliminated the two-state solution. Israel, however, which considers the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” – an integral part of its territory – will not even contemplate a one-state solution. It is the permanent confining of the Palestinian population to tiny enclaves in the Occupied Territory under institutionalized Israeli domination and control that leads to the charge that Israel has constructed an apartheid regime. And since, as many expert witnesses testified before the Tribunal, the human and national rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel are also limited by law, regulations, and a hostile political and social climate, the reality of apartheid extends inside Israel itself.

The “crime of apartheid” is defined in international law as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them” – “racial group” being extended to “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, national, or ethnic origin.” The Tribunal took the four Articles of the Convention Against the Crime of Apartheid and invited expert witnesses to systematically address them. (The Israeli government was invited to submit testimony as well but did not deign to even acknowledge the offer.)

The two days of testimony highlighted the systematic oppression of the Palestinians. Some of the details – of restrictions on life and movement in the Jordan Valley, for instance, or the extent of Israel’s security services in vetting teachers and principals in Arab public schools inside Israel – surprised and shocked even witnesses who had worked for years in the field. My own testimony on house demolitions revealed that three times more homes are demolished inside Israel (all of Arab citizens, of course) than in the Occupied Territory.

In the end, the jury found ample grounds to conclude that “Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalized regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law…. The Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the occupied Palestinian territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid. Palestinian citizens of Israel, while entitled to vote, are not part of the Jewish nation as defined by Israeli law and are therefore excluded from the benefits of Jewish nationality and subject to systematic discrimination across the broad spectrum of recognized human rights. Irrespective of such differences, the Tribunal concludes that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.” The Russell Tribunal calls on all the relevant actors – the state of Israel, the international community, and civil society itself – to end apartheid in Israel/Palestine and pave the way for a just peace between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

Read the findings:

ICAHD publication highlights growing risk of displacement for Jerusalem periphery Bedouin

ICAHD-USA — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:02:45 +0000

Villagers sort through rubble after the demolition of a Bedouin community near Jerusalem.

The Palestinian-Bedouin communities living in the hills to the east of Jerusalem are at an exceedingly growing risk of forced ethnic displacement. The communities have been informed by the Israeli authorities that they have no option but to leave the area, as part of a larger plan (to begin as early as January 2012) to relocate Bedouin communities living in Area C (Jerusalem periphery, Jordan Valley, and south Hebron Hills), where Israel retains control over security as well as planning and zoning.

The Bedouin homes are currently located in an area that holds strategic significance for further expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. This includes the E1 plan, which foresees the expansion of Ma’ale Adumim, an illegal Israeli settlement, and its linkage to Judaized East Jerusalem and Jordan Valley settlements. If implemented, these plans, along with Barrier construction in the area, risk preventing Palestinian growth and development and disrupting the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state. The forced displacement of the Bedouin would also be detrimental to their semi-nomadic way of life. As available land shrinks, Bedouin refugees are faced with nowhere to go.

Meanwhile, the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin are seeking ways to improve their general living conditions. Communities living in the area have appealed to local and international organizations to support projects that will contribute to improving their conditions, projects designed help the Bedouin to build sustainable livelihoods and resist forced ethnic displacement and the Israeli Occupation.

A copy of the complete publication is available here.

Khan Al-Ahmar Homes Demolished

ICAHD-USA — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:30:21 +0000

Five family homes were demolished on Monday, October 31, 2011, in the Jerusalem periphery Palestinian-Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar.

Fifteen army jeeps and a bulldozer showed up at the rural community, in the hills east of Jerusalem, and demolished five family homes, displacing 71 people, including some 60 children. ICAHD staff arrived at the community a few short hours after the demolition to find family members mourning the loss of their homes and property. Abu Khamis, a Khan al-Ahmar community activist, told ICAHD staff: “We will not be forced off our land; if Israel demolishes, we will rebuild.”

The Palestinian-Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar (Jerusalem periphery) is fighting for survival. The 180-strong community faces the threat of imminent displacement if the Israeli authorities demolish their homes and school as planned. This may well destroy the community, one of 20 in the area, who have become victims of creeping settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing.

The land the community lives on has been slated for the expansion of settlements in the Ma’ale Adumim municipal area, in the Jerusalem periphery, despite the community’s decades’ long presence. Israeli authorities see Khan al-Ahmar and the other Palestinian-Bedouin communities in the area, more than 2,300 people in all, as a hindrance to the planned expansion of Ma’ale Adumim, Kfar Adumim, and other surrounding illegal settlements, and to the construction of the West Bank wall which would de facto annex this strategically significant area to Israel, rendering a Palestinian state unviable.

The Khan al-Ahmar Jahalin School is the only school to provide primary education to children of the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin tribe. Built in 2009 by Italian NGO Vento Di Terra (Wind of Earth) and local NGOs, the eco-friendly school, providing schooling for over 70 students, is slated for demolition.

If implemented, the Israeli development plans would be the culmination of years of settlement expansion at the expense of the Palestinian-Bedouin communities. Since 1991, when large parts of the communities’ living areas were integrated into the expanded boundaries of Ma’ale Adumim, Israeli policies have increased the pressure on the communities to leave their homes.

The recent house demolitions are part of an ongoing policy designed to forcefully transfer Bedouin of the Jerusalem periphery, as highlighted in the ICAHD publication Nowhere Left to Go: Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin Ethnic Displacement.

House demolitions, evictions, and property confiscations, exacerbated by settler harassment and the economic effects of movement restrictions, have left these communities struggling to make ends meet and living in fear.

ICAHD calls for an immediate end to the occupation of Palestinian Territory and to demolitions of Palestinian houses, schools, and infrastructure, which cause displacement and dispossession.

ICAHD calls for the transfer of powers and responsibilities related to the sphere of planning and zoning in the West Bank, including area C, to Palestinian jurisdiction in accordance with international law and bi-lateral agreements, so as to allow for a nondiscriminatory planning system to include community participation in all levels of the planning process.

ICAHD calls for a safe return of all families forcibly displaced to their homes and compensation for any harm they have suffered, including the destruction of land, homes, and property.

Ads calling for end to U.S. military aid to Israel come to San Francisco

ICAHD-USA — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:23:05 +0000

Commuters in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco stations will see Israeli and Palestinian grandfathers urging aid cut-off for the sake of peace and justice.

Berkeley, CA – Eye-catching ads calling for an end to United States military aid to Israel will greet travelers on Bay Area transit systems beginning today.

Part of a year-old national campaign, the ads depict Israeli and Palestinian grandfathers, each holding a grandchild, calling for an end to the military assistance in the interest of building “peace with equality and justice.” They went up today in three of the busiest stations on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system – 12th St. Oakland, Downtown Berkeley, and Civic Center San Francisco – as well as on the Muni level of the Embarcadero station in San Francisco and on a Powell Street cable car. Next week the same ad will be posted in the 16^th St./ Mission station in San Francisco.

Chief sponsor of the local ad campaign is Northern California Friends of Sabeel, the local affiliate of an international peace movement initiated by Palestinian Christians to bring justice and peace to the Holy Land through non-violence and education. Co-sponsors include Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, the Middle East Children’s Alliance, and Bay Area Women in Black.

The U.S. currently provides Israel with $3 billion in military assistance annually – more than $340,000 per hour – despite Israel’s open defiance of stated U.S. policy, United Nations resolutions, and international law. Cumulatively, Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II, having received more than $112 billion in aid since 1949, according to the Congressional Research Service. Today Israel ranks second only to Iraq among recipients of U.S. funding, even though Israel’s gross domestic product per capita is higher than, for example, Italy’s.

“Israel is one the wealthiest countries in the world. American aid encourages its violation of international law and moral conventions and creates serious problems for us around the world,” said Hassan Fouda, a member of Northern California Friends of Sabeel and one of the organizers of the ad campaign. “Congress is planning deep cuts in social security, unemployment compensation, educational grants and other programs that help vulnerable Americans. Transferring billions of taxpayers’ money to Israel now is immoral. Americans need to speak up and be heard.”

Appearing on San Francisco cable cars, this ad urges peace and justice.

The ads are part of an initiative launched in October 2010, by a Chicago-area community group called the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine. NorCal Sabeel followed with ads in several BART stations last December. Since then similar ads have appeared in transit stations, on buses, or on billboards in Washington, DC; Boston, MA; Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ; and Albuquerque, NM. More cities are planning their own campaigns soon.

The previous round of ads in BART stations not only garnered considerable coverage in the local media, but also provoked a series of counter-ads sponsored by an Israel Lobby organization called Stand With Us. In response to complaints about those ads, BART removed them on the grounds that they appeared “disparaging or demeaning to Palestinians as a whole” and violated the district’s advertising standards; they were then replaced with new ads accusing the Palestinian leadership of “teaching hate and violence.”

The new ads now appearing in the Bay Area feature photos of Jeff Halper, a Minnesota-born Israeli professor, and Salim Shawamreh, a Palestinian construction supervisor born in Jerusalem, and a grandchild of each. Halper is co-founder and coordinator of the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD); Shawamreh’s Jerusalem home has been destroyed by Israeli wrecking crews, then rebuilt by volunteers organized by ICAHD, four times since 1998. The two men and their families have become close friends. They have toured the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom, speaking out against Israel’s 44-year occupation of the Palestinian territories.

For more information:

on the overall campaign, see www.TwoPeoplesOneFuture.org
on the Bay Area campaign, see BuildPeace.org
on Friends of Sabeel-North America, see www.fosna.org
on American Muslims for Palestine, see www.ampalestine.org
on Jewish Voice for Peace, see www.jvp.org
on Bay Area Women in Black, see www.bayareawomeninblack.org

URGENT ACTION: Save the Khan al Ahmar School!

ICAHD-USA — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 03:40:42 +0000

The Khan al Ahmar Jahalin School is the only school to provide primary education to children of the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin tribe. © Ben Guss

The Palestinian-Bedouin community of Khan al Ahmar (Jerusalem periphery) is fighting for survival. The 180-strong community faces the threat of imminent displacement if the Israeli authorities demolish their homes and school as planned. This may well destroy the community, one of 20 in the area, who have become victims of creeping settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing. Write Israeli Minister of Defense Barak to demand he refrains from pursuing the demolition of the Khan al Ahmar School.

The land the community lives on has been slated for the expansion of settlements in the Ma’ale Adumim municipal area, in the Jerusalem periphery, despite the community’s decades’ long presence. Israeli authorities see Khan al Ahmar and the other Palestinian-Bedouin communities in the area, more than 2,300 people in all, as a hindrance to the planned expansion of Ma’ale Adumim, Kfar Adumim and other surrounding illegal settlements, and to the construction of the West Bank Barrier, which would de-facto annex this strategically significant area to Israel, rendering a Palestinian state unviable.

The Khan al Ahmar Jahalin School is the only school to provide primary education to children of the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin tribe. Built in 2009 by Italian NGO Vento Di Terra (Wind of Earth) and local NGOs, the eco-friendly school, providing schooling for over 70 students, is slated for demolition.

Though the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the request by neighboring settlers of Kfar Adumin and Regavim – an Israeli organization dedicated to demolishing Palestinian homes – to to close the school, the petition has set the clock ticking for the demolition of the school. Such a demolition would effectively deny the children of the community their education and jeopardize their future.

House demolitions, evictions and property confiscations, exacerbated by settler harassment and the economic effects of movement restrictions, have left these communities struggling to make ends meet and living in fear. The people of Khan al Ahmar have now exhausted all legal avenues to protect their homes and the school building from demolition. If these are destroyed, the community will not only be plunged into deeper poverty but may very well be displaced and dispersed.

ICAHD calls for an end to the occupation of the Palestinian Territory and an immediate cease of demolitions of Palestinian houses, schools and infrastructure, which cause displacement and dispossession.

ICAHD Calls for the transfer of powers and responsibilities related to the sphere of planning and zoning in the West Bank, including area C, to Palestinian jurisdiction in accordance with international law and bi-lateral agreements, so as to allow for a nondiscriminatory planning system to include community participation in all levels of the planning process.

ICAHD calls for families that have been forcibly displaced to be allowed to return to their homes in safety and dignity, and be given compensation for any harm they have suffered, including the destruction of land, homes and property.

Israeli Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, will execute the demolition order in coming days, unless pressured to call it off. Write Barak urgently to demand he refrains from pursuing the demolition of the Khan al Ahmar School.

Tell him of your concern for the Khan al Ahmar community fate and situation, express your opposition to the policy of house demolitions in both the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and ask him to end it immediately.

Please send urgent e-mails or faxes to:

Minister of Defense Ehud Barak

Fax: +972 3 691 6940/696 2757

Email: minister@mod.gov.il

Salutation: Dear Minister

Please copy protests to your Foregin Minister.

UNOCHR leader Baroness Valerie Amos speaks on house demolitions

ICAHD-USA — Mon, 16 May 2011 21:14:28 +0000

ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain met with United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Baroness Valerie Amos on Sunday (15/05/11) to highlight the apartheid-like system of occupation, disfranchisement, oppression, and the denial of self-determination.

Following the meeting, attended by various officials from the UN and Palestinian and Israeli NGOs, the UN humanitarian chief was quoted saying,

“Palestinians are utterly frustrated by the impact of Israeli policies on their lives. They can’t move freely around their territory. They can’t plan their communities. They are evicted from their homes. Their homes are regularly demolished. I don’t believe that most people in Israel have any idea of the way planning policies are used to divide and harass communities and families. They would not themselves like to be subjected to such behavior.”

To read the the press release from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, click here.

ICAHD mourns the tragic slaying of Juliano Mer-Khamis

ICAHD-USA — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:29:41 +0000

APRIL 7, 2011

The ICAHD family mourns the tragic slaying by masked gunmen of our friend and comrade Juliano Mer-Khamis in Jenin. Juliano was a major figure in the struggle for a just peace and the forging of a new multi-cultural society in Palestine/Israel based on human rights, freedom, equality and, not least, creative, critical expression.

Juliano, filmmaker, actor, and the co-founder and director of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, supported the work of ICAHD and frequently attended our summer rebuilding camp in the West Bank, showing his films to our activists and sharing his thoughts and vision. That vision was of a bi-national society, although Juliano was far too critical to confine himself to “Jewish-Israeli-Palestinian” dichotomies. As a man of the theatre as well as a political figure driven to forge a better society against sectarian forces who sought only to divide and dominate, he opened issues of equality, gender, religion, and individual expression, bringing young people – his “actors” – into experiential encounters with them. This may have cost him his life; in both the societies in which he lived, Israeli and Palestinian, the conflict has not only suffocated equal rights and individualism by group-think sectarianism, but has legitimized the use of violence against anyone envisioning unfettered pluralism. Juliano did not allow fear or pressures to shut him up, but it is having its effects on all of us. Liberals and even those of the critical left are hunkering down; many of Israel and Palestine’s brightest young people are fleeing.

The ones that envision and work for a just society are decreasing among us. The loss of one of the bravest, one of the most energetic, articulate, and creative among us, the symbol of what might be, is a cruel blow, not only to his family, to whom our condolences go, but to the rest of us who must struggle on without him. No, not “without him,” since Juliano will always inspire and guide us. Someone of his presence, like Rachel Corrie, cannot be easily removed from the scene. Juliano, we will miss you but we will continue your struggle.

- Jeff Halper