TO DAY IN PALESTINE

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Land theft / Settlements

Netanyahu: Settlement blocs forever Israeli
“The message is clear – we are here and will remain here. We are planting and building; this is an inseparable part of the State of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday during a tree-planting tour of the West Bank settlement blocs. Netanyahu made the comments shortly after meeting the visiting US Mideast envoy George Mitchell. Mitchell has been pressing Israel to halt settlement construction in the West Bank.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838827,00.html

Dream location, legal nightmare as Jaffa gentrifies
...The prickly problem is the fate of Ajami’s 20,000 Arab residents, 80 percent of whom live below the poverty line. About a quarter of them live in state-run “Absentee Ownership” properties, which the Israeli government now wants to sell. Israel says these homes were abandoned by their Arab owners during the 1948 war that established the Jewish state. When the war ended, the state took them over as public housing for both Jewish and Arab families. Refugees, many of whom ended up in camps in the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip, down the coast, say their families were driven out of Jaffa and still lay claim to homes there. BORN SQUATTERS Most Arab residents of Ajami say they are living in homes that were once owned by their families, and should be treated as rightful heirs. Instead, they are “protected tenants” whose right to the homes expired after two post-1948 generations.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60C1P920100113

National Union MKs for unified Ghajar under Israeli rule
MKs Yaakov Katz, Michael Ben Ari tour Golan Heights, northern village, which may be divided; say they will fight against division in Knesset
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838845,00.html

Video: Leftists videotape settler stone-throwing near Hebron
Peace activists attacked by hooded settlers while documenting what they say is illegal Jewish construction in south Mount Hebron; leftist, activist injured in altercation. ’This was a lynch attempt,’ leftist says
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838541,00.html

Video: Palestinians build Israeli homes
some Palestinian workers have no other way to make ends meet other than to work for Israeli construction companies building the illegal settlements. Al Jazeera’s Jackie Rowland reports from the West Bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WqdJm3qjOM

Urgent aid needed for opening of Massafer Yatta school in the second semester
Last month, the new elementary school located in the middle of the cave dwellers area of south Mt. Hebron, lost its transportation car as a result of the Israeli army interference. Now, the opening of the school second semester is uncertain as a donation of 10,000 Shekels (2,700$) is needed for the purchase of another transportation car. Please read Hamed Qawasmeh report on this issue enclosed in the following link: http://ocha.unog.ch/ochafileupload/upload.aspx?publicID=u23011010434J7itusygXg
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=37948

Activism / Solidarity

“Thieves go home - Sheikh Jarrah is Palestine!”
[includes photo gallery] This was the largest demonstration yet in Sheikh Jarakh, were for some time now a demo is taking place every Friday, much like the demos in Bil’in, Nilin and other places ... almost a thousand protesters gathered today (Friday, 22.1.10) in an empty plot opposite Sheikh Jarakh, a few dozen yards away from the houses from which Palestinian families had been thrown out in order to allow settlers to move in. Side by side with the old battle horses one could see people for whom this was the first time. Among those who came was former minister Yossi Sarid. Also present were the painter Uri Lifshitz and several professors from the Hebrew University, whose buildings could be seen on a nearby hill. More or less young people stood besides more or less old ones, with the young shouting slogans, whistling with whistles specially donated for this purpose, singing and drumming. Almost all were Jewish.
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1264295157

Video: Sheikh Jarrah protest -22 January 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBnFBkhpgBE

Jerusalem is starting to resemble Tehran / Yossi Sarid
After I heard the version of the police I concluded that the police and we, “the anarchists,” were at two different demonstrations. For more than three hours we stood at the outskirts of Sheikh Jarrah - not a stone was thrown, not an arm raised, not a worshiper attacked, not a settler’s home broken into. But for the police’s disproportionate use of force and its false arrests, as a means of punishment and score-settling, one could say the demonstration was calm and orderly.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144646.html

Video: ’This is our village’ - a report from Nabi Saleh 22.01.10
[Note the difference from the above Sheikh Jarrah video - in the way Palestinian protesters are treated as opposed to Jewish ones.] Posted by Adam Horowitz: The following is a shocking video from Nabi Saleh, a Palestinian village of 500 residents located north of Ramallah. The village has been engaged in growing demonstrations during the past few weeks to protest the illegal seizure of valuable agricultural land by the Hallamish (Neve Tzuf) settlement. Settlers have also recently uprooted of hundreds of the village’s olive trees.You can find more on the recent protests in Nabi Saleh at Ibn Ezra.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/this-is-our-village-a-report-from-nabi-saleh.html

Video: Bil`in weekly demo 22.01.10 / Haitham Al Katib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBkPep1f1O4&feature=PlayList&p=CE651BB979DD7D0E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=47

18-year-old heroines
All were 18 when they made the hard choice: Say no to war and occupation, or say yes to prison. Omer Goldman: My father was deputy head of the Mossad, but I refuse to enlist in the Israeli military. I shall not be part of an army that needlessly implements a violent policy and violates the most basic human rights on a daily basis. Like most of my peers, I too dared not question the ethics of the Israeli military. But when I visited the Occupied Territories, I realized there was a completely different reality, a violent, oppressive, extreme reality that must be ended.
http://www.gilasvirsky.com/shministim.html

An open letter to the Israeli Ministry of the Interior - from Christian Peacemaker Teams
Things you may not know about internationals working in Palestine — Dear Ministry Personnel, At church this past Sunday in Jerusalem, the pastor read the names of church members to whom you had recently denied entry into Israel. Several worked for organizations that have been trying to meet human need in this area for decades. Everyone in that congregation probably felt the same chill I did as I imagined the interrogation, the airport jail cell, and the police van parked, blue lights flashing, on the tarmac to prevent us from leaving on the jet deporting us to our home countries. I will operate on the assumption that you think Palestinians should have the same human rights as Israelis, and that you honestly think internationals working in Palestine represent a threat to Israel’s security. If that is so, then I would like to enlighten you on a few points:
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256322

With peace talks frozen, Palestinians back protests (Reuters)
NABI SALEH, West Bank, Jan 24 (Reuters) - In the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, Palestinians frustrated by the failure of peace talks to protect their land from Jewish settlement growth are on the march, and ready to face the teargas. It is the latest example of Palestinians, their faith in the 17-year-old peace process sinking ever lower, turning to what they call popular resistance; code for protests that activists say are drawing an increasingly tough Israeli response.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE60H1ZT.htm

Iraqi singer to perform to sold-out Bethlehem crowd
Iraqi singer Elham Medfai arrived in Bethlehem Thursday ahead of a concert set for the Al-Khader Convention Center at 7pm on Friday. The 1,600 person venue sold out Thursday, and Medfai told Ma’an he felt privileged to “sing for a people who have suffered so much, like my own Iraqi nation.” The singer noted he has already performed the Palestinian National Anthem in several Arab states, and said he looked forward to singing it for the Palestinians themselves.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=255994

Violence

Israeli border police severely beat Palestinian workers, says family
Israeli Border Police detained and beat 10 Palestinian workers at dawn on Sunday at the Al-Za’iem crossing into occupied East Jerusalem, for seeking work without the appropriate permits, relatives told Ma’an. The workers, from the Al-Khadr village south of Bethlehem, were stopped at the crossing and, relatives say, were severely beaten with sticks and rifles. Father of detained Rani, 26, Hussein Salah, said his son sustained a number of fractures, as well as having his teeth broken, and is now unable to walk.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256304

Delegation of officials to meet with Jerusalem clan rivals
Public meetings will be held in Jerusalem to bring a halt to the ongoing clan violence that took place on Sunday, said chief of Jerusalem affairs for Fatah Hatem Abdul Qader ... One Palestinian was killed and five sustained gunshot wounds, as clan clashes continue to erupt in occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday, near the Old City, according to medical sources.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256345

Detention

PLC member: PA forces detained 6 colleagues
Six staff members of Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member were arrested by Palestinian Authority (PA) police as they exited the PLC Headquarters in Ramallah on Sunday, lawmaker Dr Mahmoud Ar-Ramahi reported ... The official term of the PLC came to an end Sunday, with sides calling into question the legitimacy of the PLO move to extend its term. One PLC member handed over his PA-issued vehicle in the afternoon, saying he was “no longer a PLC member.”
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256512

Israel releases detainee from Negev prison
The Ahrar Center for Prisoners’ Studies and Human Rights announced on Sunday that Israeli authorities released Fathi Al-Hayek, head of the Zeita local council in Nablus on Saturday, having served 38 months in the Negev Prison.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256323

Draft bill increasing penalty for assisting infiltrators approved
Migrant labor, Palestinians, organized networks are target for bill drafted by internal security minister. Proposed law enables prison terms of three to five years, replaces temporary orders in place since 1996
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838744,00.html

Guard suspected of smuggling phones to prisoners
A senior guard working in Israel Prison Service was arrested on suspicions of smuggling cell phones to security prisoners. The guard, 38-year-old Munir Halabi of the village of Yarka, served as chief warden of one of the prison wings at Ketziot Prison in southern Israel, where security prisoners are imprisoned for relatively short periods.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838106,00.html

Blockade

Egypt defends smuggling barrier with Gaza
Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has defended an underground steel wall along the border with neighboring Gaza as necessary for his nation’s security. Speaking to senior police officers Sunday, Mubarak said Egypt began the the barrier after a series of terrorist attacks on tourist resorts in the Sinai peninsula neighboring Gaza.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838781,00.html

One Gaza crossing open
Israeli authorities opened the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza on Sunday to allow the transfer of humanitarian goods and the limited export of strawberries and flowers from the coastal enclave. The official, Raed Fattouh, said between 55 and 65 truckloads of humanitarian aid, agricultural and commercial goods, will enter via Kerem Shalom to the south of Gaza. Additionally, limited quantities of industrial and domestic gas will be transferred, Fattouh said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256296

Barak approves social security payments to Gaza residents
As a goodwill gesture, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has authorized the annual transfer of NIS 25 million to Gaza Strip residents entitled to social security and pension payments from Israel. Since ties between Israeli banks and Palestinian banks in the Gaza Strip were severed following the Hamas takeover in the Strip and the declaration of the area as a “hostile entity,” there have been serious difficulties in transferring funds to approximately 1,000 beneficiaries who were employed in Israel in the past and currently live in the Gaza Strip.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144657.html

Press freedom

Foreign Press Association denies journalists pose as activists to work in PA
The non-governmental body that assists foreign correspondents in Israel said on Thursday it is not sure how a proposal to require a US-style journalist visa for reporters will affect its members, and denied Government Press Office assertions that journalists based in Israel are faking credentials in order to work for political NGOs operating in the Palestinian Authority. An FPA official said the people it works with are journalists and not activists, and their job is to report on what they see, not volunteer for foreign advocacy groups.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147951708&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Political/Diplomatic developments

Palestinian parliament’s term expires
Legislative Council in Ramallah, mainly consisting of Hamas representatives, will end its official term Sunday night. Fatah already declares it will consider body as illegal, whereas Hamas elements stress that current make-up will remain until new elections are held in Palestinian Authority. Efforts for internal reconciliation to be reinforced in coming days
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838950,00.html

PA: Peace talks cannot be revived
As PM Netanyahu says he is waiting for Palestinian president to resume negotiations, Palestinian leadership appears to have lost hope. PA sources say Palestinians deeply disappointed with the lack of American pressure on Israel, believe peace deal won’t reached during Abbas’ term
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838911,00.html

PM’s office: Shalit talks require nerves of steel
The online edition of German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had retracted Israel’s latest offer to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. According to the weekly’s sources, the entire deal is on the brink of collapse, although officials in Netanyahu’s office said negotiations were ongoing.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838733,00.html

Israel official reply on Goldstone Gaza report: Probe biased, flawed
Israel was set to submit its rebuttal on Thursday to a United Nations report accusing it of having committed war crimes in Gaza last winter. Though the Israeli response has been kept under wraps, it is expected to list the essential flaws in the report and explain why the report is biased against Israel and tainted with many problems.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144596.html

UN appoints new UNRWA head.
Filippo Grandi of Italy is the new Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. For the last five years he was the organization’s Deputy Commissioner General. Late last week, however, he replaced Karen AbuZayd, who has been the head of UNRWA since 2005
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1263147967490

Al Jazeera video: Interview with Osama Hamdan
Reactions to latest bin Laden tape, views of Hamas
http://palestinianpundit.blogspot.com/2010/01/al-jazeera-video-interview-osama-hamdan.html

Assad, Gaddafi say Arab countries must unite against Israel
Syrian president, Libyan leader meet ahead of Arab summit to discuss ’oppressing siege imposed on the Gaza Strip and the Israeli obstacle to peace’
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838931,00.html

Virtually no contact between Netanyahu, Jordan’s Abdullah
By Barak Ravid. A year after Operation Cast Lead and the beginning of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s second term, Israel-Jordan relations are in a deep slump. In talks with Haaretz senior officials in Jerusalem and Amman characterized the situation as a genuine crisis, adding that there is virtually no contact between Netanyahu and King Abdullah.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144651.html

Deputy Defense Minister: Israel making every effort to avoid war
Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said on Sunday said that while Israel was faced with military threats on all sides, it has strategically chosen to make every effort to avoid entering armed conflict with its enemies. Vilnai said that Israel had its eyes on Hezbollah, who it believes is rearming in violation of a United Nations resolution, and was ready to contend with any threat,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144710.html

Minorities in Israel

Minister pulls injunction against Arab conference
Police say Arab Democratic Party may hold convention in northern community after canceling distribution of Palestinian Authority scholarships — The minister’s office told Ynet, “According to information we received, the PA may be involved in some parts of the convention. This is illegal, which is why the minister allowed the law enforcement authorities to prevent it from taking place.” ... Arab Democratic Party sources stated, however, that no PA official was scheduled to take part in the ceremony in the first place and that the PA was still one of the bodies donating funds for the scholarships. “We are acting in accordance with the law, and we have no plans to act against the law,” said Knesset Member Talab El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta’al), the party’s chairman,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838098,00.html

Sa’ar: Arab citizens’ search for equality stymied by conflict with Palestinians
Political leaders gathered on Thursday to take part in the 5th annual Jaffa Convention on relations between Jewish and Arab citizens ... The conference, which took place two days after Israel received a stinging report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development criticizing it for its large social gaps that disadvantage Arab Israelis and haredim, was once again held under the slogan “A Call to Action.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147960823&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Ethiopian wife may be deported because husband suffered stroke
In 19 days Baza Almash will be deported to Ethiopia, because her husband has been in a nursing home, immobilized by a stroke, and the couple is no longer living as man and wife.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144658.html

Israel mulls adoption of Haiti quake orphans
Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog has instructed the staff Social Affairs Ministry to look into the possibility of adopting Haitian children, orphaned in the devastating earthquake which hit the island almost two weeks ago, Israel Radio reported on Saturday ... Israel is a signatory to an international children’s adoption treaty, with about 200 children adopted by Israeli families worldwide ... The children arrive in Israel and undergo conversion to Judaism in specialized rabbinical courts.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144507.html

’Non Jewish’ immigrant becomes Jewish after appeal to High Court
A new immigrant from Bulgaria who came to Israel on the basis of the right of return was informed by the Interior Ministry, three and a half years after first arriving in Israel, that he was not Jewish. As this conclusion automatically stripped him of his right to live in Israel, he was informed that he had to leave within two weeks. The immigrant petitioned the Supreme Court and was awarded a stay, which meant that he could not be expelled. Eighteen months later - and two days prior to deliberations before the Supreme Court - his attorney informed him that following a reevaluation of his case, he is now a Jew.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144656.html

IDF ceremony may be toned down to accommodate religious
Officials seek solution that will prevent religious youth movement from shunning IDF ceremony because of female singers
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838465,00.html

Fighting ’Arabization’ or solving housing shortage?
On Tuesday, the National Planning Council subcommittee responsible for general planning principles recommended that the National Planning Council authorize the construction of Kasif, a new haredi city in the Negev, 10 km. west of Arad. The move was met with criticism from environmental organizations for its effect on open spaces, but also from local leaders ... “No other population in Israel is willing to move en masse to outlying areas such as the Negev and the North where the Jewish population is dwindling and the Arab population is on the rise,” said [MK (United Torah Judaism) Moses.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147961774&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

JPost editorial: Haredim in the Negev
...Indeed, anything which moves any Jews from the densely packed Coastal Plain to underdeveloped parts of the country should, in principle, be considered a boon for Israeli society in general ... Yet there was no audible outrage when heads of Negev local authorities warned that “a haredi concentration would deter higher-quality populations from moving to the region.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147940839&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Other news

Report: Environmental impact of occupation high
The Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem released a report documenting the detrimental effects of the Israeli occupation of Palestine on the environmental systems sustaining both Israelis and Palestinians. The January report focused on the impact of the military operating in the West Bank and Gaza, and collected data on unexploded ordnances contaminating agricultural ground, and the contamination of drinking water in Gaza following the 2008-9 Israeli Operation Cast Lead ... “The policy of dual planning for Palestinian and Israeli road networks is incredibly wasteful and flies in the face of responsible and sustainable development practices,” the report said, noting that in the West Bank “there is 5.2km of road per 1000 people as opposed to 2.6km in Israel.”
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256442

Analysis / Opinion

A meeting of minds / Zvi Bar’el
...The boycott stems from the fact that a town like Ariel even exists. It stems from the occupation and from Israel’s insufferable policies in the territories. If the academic community is - rightly - worried about an international boycott, it would behoove it to raise its voice against the continued occupation, the inhumane closure of the Gaza Strip, the denial of the right of Palestinian students to matriculate. It must do so with the same conviction with which it is now objecting to university status for the college in Ariel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144668.html

Demography: An Arab/haredi threat? / Rabbi Andrew Sacks
...we read in the first chapter of Exodus that Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, was worried that the “Israelites were too many and too mighty for us.” He feared the rate at which they “multiplied.” He saw this group of seventy (by the way, this counts only the men) that had come into his land as having grown in number to the point that they now posed a threat. Pharaoh faced a demographic nightmare. There are lessons to be learned from this reading - many of them - but until a Torah study session in one of our Masorti staff meetings, I had never viewed this reading in the context of today’s events ... Israel faces real demographic challenges. But kowtowing to the haredi citizens and treating Arab citizens as less than first class members of society will never be the answer. For the Torah teaches us “Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/conservative/entry/demography_an_arab_haredi_threat

Shooting ourselves in the foot
Yair Lapid presents disturbing story about anti-Israel film funded by government — Yonatan Segal was a young actor who later became a rather marginal film director. About five years ago he turned to the Israel Film Fund – which is a public institution funded by the government – and requested support for a film regarding his mother’s experiences at the concentration camp. The fund approved the production and granted him one million shekels. Three years later, Segal came back to the fund with a new idea: He will take his mother’s story and shift it to Ramallah. Instead of two girls at a concentration camp, the film will recount the stories of two young Palestinian females under Israeli occupation.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838697,00.html

alternate reality:
Hamas is to blame for Israel’s failure to aid Gazans / Yom-Tov Samia
After the earthquake in Haiti, some observers say Israel has traditionally been quick to dispatch aid to natural-disaster victims in distant lands while ignoring the suffering of people much closer to its borders, namely the Palestinians in Gaza, for whose welfare it bears responsibility ... Yet the main culprit responsible for the Gazans’ condition is Hamas, which maliciously sacrifices the population’s welfare in the Strip because of its war on Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144667.html