Palestine Update 588
Opinion
Palestine and UN membership, Palestinian prisoners, Sabra Shatila remembered
Will Palestine get a full membership in the United Nations? The US will obstruct it. Nor would Israel countenance the possibility. Still, Palestine will persist and the international community will likely vote in favour of Palestine. Then the veto will be exercised to end the attempt. There are more details in the report we share from Asharq Al-Aswat.
On the positive front, we read that Independent Jewish Voices Canada has called on the Canadian government to condemn the Israeli raids on seven Palestinian human rights organizations. They ask that Canada dismiss the Israeli claims and, instead, call out Israel’s anti-democratic ways as an underhand way to delegitimize and finally quiet Palestinian civil society.
At least 1,000 Palestinian prisoners suspended their hunger strike after Israeli prison authorities were compelled to turn around ruthless actions on prisoners for months. The Supreme National Emergency Committee, which manages the prisoners’ protests, views the reversal as a success for the prisoners. They did not bow down to Israeli coercion. In a statement they stated that “the prisoners are ready to pay every price for their dignity and rights”. Equally important, they are backed by a people and a resistance that is willing to pay all costs in order to support its fighters in the occupation’s prisons. This is a moral and political victory for the prisoners and the Palestinian resistance.
Post-Covid tourists are back on the streets of Bethlehem which buoys especially the MSME tourism sector. While tourism is one of the main sources of income for the residents and the city, the pandemic, and the subsequent shutdown of tourism have resulted in the loss of jobs for many residents. But Israel tour guides and tour operators are creating a monopoly from the tourist trade. As a shopkeeper said: “Many shops are empty and the reason is that guides and bus drivers are asking us for huge commissions, more than 40 percent, and it is cutting our income so we depend on a small number of tourists“.
It is forty years and several generations since the brutal Sabra Shatila massacres. Israel’s callous lackadaisical attitude in pursuing the investigations is couples by oddities. Israel wants the world to believe that the archives concerning the communications between the Christian militia blamed for the massacre, the Lebanese authorities, and Israel have been lost! This is not merely a blatant denial of justice. Perpetrators must do sizeable jail time.
In solidarity
Ranjan Solomon
US Pressures for Calm in West Bank, Curbs Palestinian Efforts for ‘Full UN Membership’
The United States is pressuring the Palestinian Authority (PA) to stop its request for “full UN membership” and pushing a plan to ensure calm in the West Bank, according to a Palestinian source. The source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the US envoy, Hady Amr, arrived in Ramallah on Wednesday, ahead of the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf, who will visit Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
US focuses on two main issues including blocking the Palestinian movement to obtain full membership at the UN because that would embarrass Washington, which may resort to veto at some point. The second issue is maintaining calm in the West Bank, pushing forward Israeli facilities, and strengthening the Palestinian economy. Amr met Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, who stressed the need for the US to fulfill its promises towards Palestine and support its move to request “full membership” in the UN. Shtayyeh stressed that the Palestinian people and leadership are facing considerable pressure. Israel is escalating its unprecedented repressive measures, including the incursions into al-Aqsa mosque, arrests, extrajudicial killings, and appropriation of land, and there is no political horizon amid the problematic financial situation on the other. “We seek to revive the political file again by requesting to become a full state membership at the UN in light of the absence of political initiatives to resolve the Palestinian issue,” said Shtayyeh
The premier briefed the US envoy on the progress in implementing the financial and administrative reform agenda and steps taken in various fields to reduce expenditures and face the financial crisis. He also discussed the financial challenges caused by the illegal Israeli deductions of Palestinian tax revenues and the drop in international assistance.
Read full story from Asharq Al-Aswat
Canada: A Jewish association condemns Israeli’s decision to close human rights organizations
While Israelis raids has resulted in the closure of seven human rights organizations in Palestine last week, a Jewish organizations, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, has called on the Canadian government to condemn the Israeli raids. According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), “On October 19, 2021, Israel’s Minister of Defense Benny Gantz announced that he was designating six respected and credible civil society Palestinian NGOs as “terrorist organisations,” effectively criminalizing them. This was followed two weeks later by a military order which officially allows Israeli occupation forces to shut down the NGO offices in the West Bank, to confiscate their property, and to arrest and prosecute their staff. This puts the work and safety of the NGOs’ employees and volunteers in serious danger.” CJPME has urged the Canadian government to take a strong stand for human rights defenders in Palestine, especially by condemning Israel’s criminalization of Palestinian NGOs, and firmly rejecting the fraudulent “terrorist” designation.
“Israel’s crackdown on these organizations is a blatant anti-democratic attempt to delegitimize and ultimately silence Palestinian civil society,” said IJV Communications and Media spokesperson Rowan Gaudet. “This motive is made especially clear by the attack on Defense for Children International–Palestine which is investigating the killings of some 37 Palestinian children this year alone… Just this past June, Justin Trudeau reiterated that Canada and Israel ‘are close friends bound together by shared democratic values’,” said Gaudet. “Does this mean we can expect Canada to shutter the offices of Canadian human rights and Indigenous groups and seize documents they’re using to investigate our government? Or will Canada finally condemn these actions and join with its European allies in rejecting Israel’s claims?”
Source:
Palestinian prisoners halt mass hunger strike after Israel ‘ends punitive measures’
At least 1,000 Palestinian prisoners suspended their hunger strike on Thursday after Israeli prison authorities acquiesced to their demands to reverse harsh measures imposed across prisons for months. The Supreme National Emergency Committee, which manages the prisoners’ protests, said in a statement that Israel “realized that the prisoners are ready to pay every price for their dignity and rights. “And that behind them stands a people and a resistance that is willing to pay all costs in order to support its fighters in the occupation’s prisons. “That is why the enemy decided to stop its unjust decisions and arbitrary measures…and respond to their demands.”
The announcement came hours after the prisoners launched the strike as part of a series of escalating steps they have adopted since February amid the Israel Prison Service’s (IPS) continued failure to respond to their demands to reverse measures taken against them following the escape of six prisoners from the Gilboa prison in September 2021. The punitive measures included limiting yard time, increased restrictions on prisoners serving long sentences – especially those serving life sentences who are put in solitary confinement – and the constant transfer of prisoners between prison facilities, which leads to a state of instability inside jails.
“We are entering a new stage of confrontation with the jailer, by officially announcing the dissolution of organisational bodies in all prisons in a step of rebellion against the [IPS’s] decisions as a last stage before initiating an open hunger strike,” the committee said in a statement on Saturday. The dissolution of organisational bodies was aimed at forcing Israeli authorities to deal with prisoners as individuals and not through the organisations representing them.
Dirgham al-Araj, a former prisoner who spent 20 years in Israeli prisons, told MEE: “The goal of the hunger strike is to demand the restoration of minimum dignity by improving living conditions.” Araj, a professor of the prisoner movement course at Al-Quds University, said that hunger strikes proved successful in the past when they earned popular support.. “Moving the street means a great economic and security cost to Israel and will put pressure on it in many ways,” he said. “Therefore only the Palestinian street is capable of making the prisoner strikes successful.”
Read entire narrative in Middle East Eye
Streets of Bethlehem are once again visited by tourists … But Israel controls the industry
While the years following the Covid were marked by a tourist vacuum, Bethlehem is gradually regaining its past liveliness, with tourists flocking to the Manger Square to visit the renowned Church of the Nativity, the symbol of Christianity.
“We had very bad days during the Coronavirus pandemic and we stayed at home with our wives and family, without work. But for the last two months, we can see some tourists but not exactly what we expected. I hope that in the future it will increase and it will be good” said Issa, one of the many tour guides who are in charge of telling the history of the city and its historical monuments. Indeed, if tourism seems to have regained the city, the number of foreigners is certainly not at its former level.
It even seems that Corona has transformed tourism and the way tourists visit the city. Jack, a souvenir store owner is particularly affected by this new tourism, which he says is controlled by guides and bus drivers: “Many shops are empty and the reason is that guides and bus drivers are asking us for huge commissions, more than 40 percent, and it is cutting our income so we depend on a small number of tourists“.
While tourism is one of the main sources of income for the residents and the city, the pandemic, and the subsequent shutdown of tourism have resulted in the loss of jobs for many residents.
The increased control of tourism is accentuated by the Israeli authorities: “Most of the tour guides come from Israel and from Israeli companies that work with some of the local population. Unfortunately, since the Oslo agreements, we follow Israel. What Israel imposes, we follow. We have authority without authority, that’s the real meaning. So we, Palestinians, we don’t have airports, we have to depend on Israel to get tourists in and out and Israeli guides to help in the area.”
Read more from Palestine News network and watch PNN Video
Remembering the Sabra Shatila Massacre, Forty Years Later
Excerpts from an article by BY DR. SWEE ANG – ELLEN SIEGEL
Forty years ago, during the week of September 12, we were trying to heal the wounds and repair the mutilated and destroyed bodies of those injured by Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. Crucial to the evacuation agreement was the protection of the civilians left behind after the evacuation of the PLO, and Israel’s undertaking not to invade and occupy Beirut. With the guarantee of protection by the multinational peace keeping force, thousands of displaced civilian war victims returned to Sabra Shatila to rebuild their homes and lives. Within hours, sounds of heavy artillery and machine guns could be heard close by. It continued all day and soon the periphery of the camp was hit relentlessly. We went to an upper floor of the hospital where we watched as flares went off, lighting areas of the camps, followed by gunfire.
We were ordered by the Phalangists (Lebanese Christian militia working under Israeli control) to assemble at the front of the hospital. We were marched, at machine-gun point, down Sabra Street, the main street of the camp – passing dead bodies, passing hundreds of women and children from the camps being lined up and held at gun point by soldiers. We heard the chatter of ongoing communication from the militias’ walkie-talkies. Eventually we were turned over to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) forward command post where Israeli soldiers were looking down on the camps with binoculars. We were driven out of the area by IDF vehicles.
Within weeks, Gaza Hospital re-opened and we returned to practice our profession faithfully on those who survived, those who remained. We heard that an Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the Massacre was being established in Jerusalem. We asked to go to Jerusalem to bear witness, to testify, to speak for those who could not.
We asked for justice at the Israeli Commission of Inquiry. But we knew that a greater universal justice beyond the Commission of Inquiry must be restored to the Palestinians.
The Commission was only investigating the conduct of the Israeli Army in the camp massacre. But even that justice has been denied.
Forty years have passed, and many generations later, the painful memories remain. Investigations, interests, questions continue. Israel claimed recently that the archives concerning the communications between the Christian militia blamed for the massacre, the Lebanese authorities, and Israel have been lost!
