'Twice-exiled Palestinians flee Syria for Lebanon'

Some 13,000 members of Syria’s Palestinian refugee community have gone back to square one in neighbouring Lebanon. Like their ancestors, they too have been forced to flee their birthplace into exile.

“The Palestinians can endure anything. But the children cannot understand that I cannot bring them milk or change their nappies, that I have no choice but to let them live in misery,” said Umm Khalil, cradling one of her children.

Like other Palestinians, Umm Khalil’s ancestors fled their home in what was then northern Palestine to Syria when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

This week, she fled Yarmuk camp in south Damascus after a deadly air strike and clashes between pro- and anti-regime fighters.

Umm Khalil has found shelter in a rented home in Shatila refugee camp, south of Beirut.

Since the weekend, some 3,000 Palestinians have arrived in Lebanon, fleeing the escalating violence.

Sixty-year-old Ahmed told AFP: “We Palestinians move all the time. We emigrate, we are used to it. We lived well in Damascus.”

But his new home is dark after sunset, as there is no electricity for much of the day.

Ahmed’s family of seven shares four bed covers, providing little comfort from the cold, wet winter.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) says some 13,000 Palestinian refugees have fled Syria’s 21-month conflict for neighboring Lebanon.

Many have rented cheap housing in several of Lebanon’s 12 camps, which an international organization described as “the worst in the region” for Palestinian refugees.

Amira and her children fled a battered camp near south Syria’s embattled city of Daraa a month ago.

“When two rockets fell near the house I decided to leave,” Amira said, holding her three-month-old baby. “I did it for the children. For two weeks I didn’t have any milk for my youngest.”

She once made a living selling bedcovers and homeware in Daraa, but in Shatila Amira has become dependent on charity.

“Since 1948, this has been our life,” said her husband, Salem.

The family of six shares a tiny, humid apartment in Shatila, paying $300 a month.

Suffocated by the high cost of living, Salem has trouble making ends meet. A few days a month, he finds work in construction.

Although UNRWA and other groups provide basic assistance to Palestinians arriving in Lebanon from Syria, many refugees feel abandoned, especially now winter has begun.

Salem’s family sleeps on thin mattresses on the floor, and rainwater seeps into their sparsely furnished home.

“There are organizations that help Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and others help Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. But for the Palestinians from Syria in Lebanon, there is nothing,” he said.

“For Palestinians coming from Syria, this second exile is even more difficult,” added Salem’s friend Osama, a young Palestinian raised in Lebanon.

“Salem’s grandfather fled Palestine for Syria. Though Salem doesn’t himself remember the Palestinians’ 1948 exodus, he is now going through something very similar to what his ancestors suffered.”

In Lebanon, Palestinians face new difficulties, including a lack of job opportunities and sordid conditions in the camps.

Unlike Palestinians in Lebanon, those in Syria enjoyed the same social rights as Syrian citizens, said writer Salameh Kaileh, who was expelled from Syria after being jailed and tortured.

Because of their high level of integration into Syrian society, Palestinians have been swept up in the country’s 21-month conflict.

“The Palestinians are living through all that is happening in Syria,” said Kaileh. “The youth feel just as Palestinian as they feel Syrian.”

Mohammed, 23, fled Yarmuk for Shatila with his pregnant wife and their nine-month-old daughter. He misses Yarmuk, even though it has become a battleground.

“In Syria we are treated just like the Syrians,” he said. “For example, if we make a mistake, we are arrested just like any other Syrian.”

He believes the rebels “have destroyed a country of security, where life is not expensive.”

In spite of the conflict, which has divided the Palestinians over President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, they all agree on wanting to return to Syria – “before we go back to Palestine, of course.”

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VIDEO: Remi Kanazi 'This Poem Will Not End Apartheid'

Watch Remi Kanazi perform 'Ths PoemWill Not End Apartheid'.

'BBC admits pandering to Israeli propaganda'

One of the most consistent aspects of the BBC’s reporting of Gaza and Israel is the insistence of its journalists that any “outbreak of violence” is the fault of the Palestinians.

When Israel bombs or shells Gaza, this is unfailingly reported by the BBC as being in “response” or “retaliation” to rockets being fired from the blockaded territory. The unflinching regularity of this one-sided reporting by the UK’s state broadcaster is meticulously recorded in More Bad News from Israel, the book by Greg Philo and Mike Berry which contains research by the Glasgow Media Unit into the BBC’s reporting of the occupation.

The BBC’s coverage of Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza in November was no exception. An article published on the BBC’s website the day Hamas commander Ahmed al-Jabari was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City stated that the killing “follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory” (“Israeli air strike kills Hamas military chief Jabari,” 14 November 2012).

The article went on to feature an Israeli army spokesperson’s claim that al-Jabari had “a lot of blood on his hands” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that a “clear message” had been sent to “Hamas and other terrorist organizations.” Netanyahu’s comments ended with the words: “We will continue to do everything to protect our citizens.”

All of Israel’s key propaganda messages were conveyed, while the reality was carefully hidden. There is, of course, the ongoing reality that Israel is an occupier and a serial violator of international law — facts which are buried under the credibility and authority the BBC accords to its politicians and spokespeople and what they say.

Ignoring reality

On an immediate level, another crucial reality was ignored. By assassinating al-Jabari — itself an illegal act of extrajudicial murder which the BBC failed to examine, even as it printed Netanyahu’s triumphal “clear message” — Israel had violated a ceasefire brokered three days earlier.

This information, so casually ditched by the BBC’s journalists — online, on television and on radio news — was absolutely crucial. It emboldened the lie, disseminated across the BBC’s media outlets, that al-Jabari’s killing and the eight-day onslaught that came next followed “a wave of rocket attacks” from Gaza.

It didn’t. Al-Jabari’s assassination and the ensuing attack on Gaza which killed more than 160 Palestinians, including more than 30 children, followed a ceasefire, which the Palestinian groups in Gaza had been observing and may well have carried on observing if Israel hadn’t broken it. Couple this with the fact that, in 2008, Israel broke another ceasefire to instigate a three-week massacre in Gaza, killing 1,400 Palestinians, including 352 children, and a picture builds of an aggressive Israeli state, regularly bombing and shelling a civilian population with no regard for agreed truce arrangements.

Uneasy pattern

Take into account that both attacks on Gaza, in 2008 and 2012, came just months before Israeli elections, and an uneasy pattern begins to emerge — one which responsible journalists would, presumably, want to question and investigate.

Moreover, al-Jabari was killed as he carried with him, in the car that was hit, a draft agreement for a permanent truce with Israel, raising yet another vital question: was Israel trying to sabotage a possible end to the violence?

Such facts and the questions they prompted appeared to be irrelevant to the BBC’s presenters. On 18 November, four days after al-Jabari was killed, Samira Ahmed hosted BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live program. This included a 15-minute debate entitled “Are Israeli military actions justified?” featuring Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and right-wing political commentator Charlie Wolf.

The justification for military action put forward by Ahmed to start the debate was “Hamasrocket attacks.” And this is where the debate stuck. Any attempt by Atwan to give depth or context to the discussion, by mentioning the blockade, the occupation, or Israel’s year-round attacks on Gaza, were batted away by Ahmed who unfailingly came back with the rejoinder: “But wouldn’t it all stop if Hamas stopped firing rockets?” The implication of course was that Hamas starts violence, and Israel responds because it has to protect its citizens.

That Palestinian rocket attacks might be a response to 45 years of ongoing occupation, combined since 2006 with a crippling blockade, is not a possibility the BBC is willing to discuss on its airwaves.

In just 15 minutes, the former Channel 4 News presenter revealed how completely she has attuned herself to the BBC’s commitment to the Israeli narrative by referring to “Hamas rocket attacks” 15 times, and never once to Israel’s ceasefire violations and the complicated questions these violations raise.

Blaming the victims

This fits in with what would appear to be her employer’s editorial policy on Israel and Gaza. In an email sent on 21 November to a member of the UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and seen by this writer, the BBC Complaints Department explains in some detail how the broadcaster had gone out of its way to lay the blame for the violence of the previous eight days on the Palestinians.

The email, signed off “BBC Complaints,” states: “Since the news of Israeli air strikes in Gaza our coverage has pointed out on numerous occasions that the attacks are in response to recent rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”

It adds: “Our initial online report on 14 November pointed to how the attack on Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari and another Hamas official ‘follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory’ and how ‘the United States said it supported Israel’s right to self-defense, and condemned militant rocket attacks on southern Israel.’”

Seemingly oblivious to or unfazed by the inaccuracy of its own reporting, the message goes on: “On the BBC’s News at Ten that same evening, the BBC’s Gaza and West Bank correspondent Jon Donnison’s report explained that ‘Israel says the strike followed a wave of rocket attacks from inside Gaza,’ before hearing directly from Israeli Army Spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich as she explained how ‘I can just elaborate that the target of the operation is to protect Israeli civilians. The same lives of Israelis that have been under constant rocket attack for the past year.’”

In a twist of almost comic absurdity, given eight days of reporting which squarely blamed Hamas for the violence and equated the fear caused by the 12-pound and 90-pound Palestinian rockets with the terror induced by Israel’s 500-pound to 2,000-pound bombs, the email ends with: “We will continue to report on developments from the region in a fair, accurate and impartial way.”

The email highlights the BBC’s willingness to ignore facts and important questions — for example, why did Israel really kill al-Jabari? — in favor of a narrative that, deliberately or not, echoes that of the Israeli government.

Child deaths unreported

Less than a week before al-Jabari’s execution, Israel had killed seven Palestinians in Gaza in the space of 48 hours. Of these, five were teenage boys (“New Israeli escalation against the Gaza Strip,” Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 11 November 2012).

The first to die, 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa, was shot in the abdomen by Israeli soldiers. Two days later, brothers 16-year-old Mohammed Harara and 17-year-old Ahmed Harara were killed playing football when Israeli forces fired shells at their playground. As people rushed to help, three more shells were fired, and an 18-year-old and 19-year-old were killed.

It is safe to assume that if five Israeli teenagers, including two brothers playing football and a 13-year-old, had been killed by Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza, it would be headline news for the BBC.

The Israeli killing of the Palestinian youngsters was ignored on BBC television and prime-time radio news. Even when al-Jabari was killed, four days after the Harara brothers lost their lives, and some kind of premeditated build-up to the eight-day assault began to emerge, the BBC still refused to mention Israel’s two-day killing spree in Gaza a few days earlier.

Official line

All BBC journalists stuck to Israel’s official line that the assassination of 14 November, and what followed, was in retaliation to Palestinian rockets — and conveniently omitted from their reports the fact that Israel had been engaged in killing Palestinian children in the days immediately preceding al-Jabari’s execution.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote to the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs program Today on 12 November to ask why it had not covered the killing of the five Palestinian teenagers on 8 and 10 November.

The program’s assistant editor, Dominic Groves, wrote back to say: “Even in the space of a three hour program it is not always possible to cover every development in a story — especially one as long running and complex as the one in the Middle East.”

And yet the killing of five young boys by Israel isn’t a “development in a story;” it is news in itself. When the Today program can give prominent coverage to a Palestinian rocket attack on a bus in April 2011, which killed a 16-year-old Israeli schoolboy, how can Groves claim the same program has no room to report on the slaughter of five Palestinian boys by the Israeli army? (“Israeli boy Daniel Viflic dies after rocket hits bus,” 18 April 2011).

Since the latest “ceasefire” came into effect on the evening of 21 November, Israel has been flying its F-16s over the skies of Gaza, 40 Gaza fishermen have been detained by Israeli forces, and a 20-year-old Palestinian has been shot and killed by Israeli fire, while 54 Palestinians, including six children have been injured (“Protection of civilians weekly report,” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 28 November - 4 December 2012 [PDF]).

Like the everyday struggle of Palestinians in Gaza, currently dealing with power cuts lasting eight hours each day, this has gone unreported by the BBC and other mainstream media because no one, yet, is firing rockets back.

Source

'Gaza crisis: Israel airstrikes hit Hamas HQ'

Israel has targeted the headquarters of Hamas leaders and other key facilities in Gaza, on the fourth day of Israeli air strikes in the coastal enclave.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniya's office, which Egypt's PM had visited on Friday, was among the buildings destroyed.

At least 38 Palestinians and three Israelis have died since Israel killed Hamas's military chief on Wednesday.

Israel earlier put 75,000 reservists on stand-by amid speculation of an impending ground invasion.

Militants in Gaza have continued to fire rockets into Israel, after aiming at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Friday.

Following a lull, Gaza City was hit by a string of large explosions shortly after 03:00 local time (01:00 GMT) on Saturday.

There was another series of strikes in and around the city after 05:00 local time, with several targeting Hamas' cabinet buildings, which correspondents say were likely to have been empty.

One of the targets was the house of a Hamas leader in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City.

The BBC's Paul Danahar tweeted from the scene: "A mother in her wrecked home... is scurrying around collecting her daughters dolls, dusting them off."

Our correspondent said Mr Haniya's HQ was the most damaged of any building he had seen. Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil had visited it on Friday morning.

At least eight Palestinians are reported to have been killed in overnight strikes. The dead are said to include three members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing.

Israel issued a statement saying it was targeting rocket launching squads and weapons storage facilities and smuggling tunnels on the border with Egypt in southern Gaza.

Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said 200 targets had been hit overnight, including 120 rocket launchers.

There are rumours that a ground attack is imminent, but Israeli officials say no decision has been made.

Israel blocked access to three major routes leading into Gaza on Friday. Call-up papers have already been sent to 16,000 Israeli reservists, with officials authorising the mobilisation of another 75,000.

Militants and civilians, including at least seven children, have been among the Palestinians killed during Israeli strikes in recent days, Hamas says.

The group's military leader Ahmed Jabari was killed on Wednesday. A senior commander was killed on Friday, officials said.

Two Israeli women and a man died when a rocket hit a building in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi on Thursday, officials said.

'Iron Dome'

Before the recent offensive, Israel had repeatedly carried out air strikes on Gaza, as Palestinian militants fired rockets across the border.

On Friday, Hamas said it fired rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Haaretz newspaper said it was the first time since 1970 that a rocket had been fired at Jerusalem.

Israel's army says the operation - codenamed Pillar of Defence - has hit more than 800 sites in Gaza, including underground rocket launchers & infrastructure.

It says hundreds of rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza since Wednesday, a quarter of which had been intercepted by its radar defence system, Iron Dome.

The army said about 10 rockets were fired from Gaza early on Saturday and that three soldiers were injured one rocket strike in southern Israel.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has accused Israel of carrying out "massacres".

Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem arrived in Gaza through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to show support for Hamas. Later on Saturday he visited the wreckage of Mr Haniya's HQ.

Western leaders and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have appealed for both sides to stop the violence.

In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, President Barack Obama reiterated US support for Israel's "right to defend itself".

Mr Obama also spoke to Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi. Mr Mursi has called the Israeli raids "a blatant aggression against humanity" and promised that Egypt "will not leave Gaza on its own".

Ties between Hamas and Egypt have strengthened since Mr Mursi's election earlier this year.

Hamas was formed as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Mr Mursi belongs.

Iron dome defensive system

1. Enemy fires missile or artillery shell

2. Projectile is identified and tracked by radar. Data is relayed to battle management and control unit

3. Data is analysed and target ting coordinates are sent to the missile firing unit

4. The missile is fired at the enemy projectile exploding nearby to destroy the munitions

Source

Palestinian Hip-Hop group DAM feature new song 'If I Could Go Back In Time'

Palestinian Hip-Hop group DAM have featured a new song called 'If I Could Go Back In Time' featuring Amal Murkus.

Watch it here:

'Gaza housing crisis worsens as Egypt restricts building material'

GAZA (IRIN) - Ayman Subhi, like the other 1.6 million residents of the Gaza Strip, is often a victim of international developments beyond his control.

When he graduated from college two years ago, he planned to build a home large enough for the family of six he supports (including his grandfather, parents and siblings) who currently share 90 square meters on the ground floor of a three-story home split among seven families.

But in August, an attack on an Egyptian army outpost in Sinai, a few kilometers from the Gaza border, put his plans on hold.

The attack by unknown gunmen, which was blamed on Palestinians from Gaza (Egyptian investigations are still ongoing), killed 15 Egyptian soldiers and led Egyptian PresidentMohammed Morsi to start shutting down the network of underground tunnels through which smugglers send commercial supplies, aid, and allegedly arms and fighters between Egyptand Gaza.

The tunnels supply most — 80 percent according to one estimate — of Gaza’s construction materials, which are officially restricted by Israel and Egypt’s six-year blockade of the coastal territory.

The closure of some of the tunnels (the percentage is uncertain) has exacerbated an existing housing crisis in Gaza caused by rapid population growth and extensive damage and destruction of homes during Israeli military operations, but most of all by Israeli restrictions on imports of construction materials, according to aid workers. Egypt also tightly controls its border with Gaza.

According to Hassan Madhoun, manager of the Association of Engineers in Gaza, construction activities have decreased 40 percent since the tunnel closures, signaling “a possible threat to the future of the sector,” which employs 75,000-150,000 people (no official numbers exist).

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the flow of construction materials through the tunnels had largely halted in early August but has gradually increased since then. It is now at about 70 percent of previous operating capacity, OCHA said, which is still about 45 percent more than what enters through the official Israeli crossing at Kerem Shalom.

“What I need is to get a house for me and my family,” Subhi said. “Closing tunnels — with no viable and sustainable solution — is diminishing dreams of a young Palestinian generation to own a house.”

Shelter gaps

Gaza currently needs more than 71,000 housing units — about 23 percent of the total housing in Gaza — to meet its gaps in shelter, according to the Unified Shelter Sector Database (USSD) managed by a grouping of aid agencies working on shelter in Gaza, known as the Shelter Sector. More than 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza are still displaced as a result of an Israeli military attack in 2008-09 called Operation Cast Lead.

Israel implemented some minor easing of its blockade in 2010, but still considers construction materials like aggregate, steel and cement to be “dual-use” items, which it says can be used for dangerous purposes. It allows their entry only through international aid projects, but Israeli procedures are so “slow, bureaucratic and costly,” according to aid organizations, that international donors have played a limited role in construction projects.

In March, the head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said Israel had denied all UNRWA’s requests to implement construction projects since mid-2011 (“Press conference by chief of United Nations relief agency for Palestine refugees,” 12 March 2012).

In late September, the Israeli authorities announced the approval of 14 UN housing and civilian infrastructure projects; the average review process for each project was 20 months.

The tunnel closures have added to the usual constraints.

Overcrowding

Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. “Overcrowding is now a major issue,” said the most recent fact sheet by the Shelter Sector. This is leading to increased domestic and gender-based violence, a general breakdown of social and cultural norms, and the building of lower quality homes that raise “serious concerns of disaster risk reduction in a region vulnerable to future conflict or natural disasters such as earthquake or flooding,” the factsheet said (“Shelter advocacy sheet,” January 2012 [PDF]).

Families that have been hosting those displaced by Operation Cast Lead are now at “breaking point,” the Shelter Sector said, after providing assistance to friends and relatives for over three years. Due to a lack of funding, international assistance to those host families has now stopped. The UN appeal for $415 million for aid projects in the occupied West Bank and Gaza in 2012 is one-third under-funded.

In an environment where many individual Gazans could not afford to buy construction materials from the tunnels before the Sinai attack, OCHA said prices are now 15-20 percent higher. Some items, like gravel, have at times as much as doubled in price, according to Osama Kuhail, head of the Palestinian Contractors’ Union.

The reduced availability and higher prices have cut profits, decreased and delayed construction projects (with contractors fined for not completing projects on time) and led some companies to start laying off workers, Madhoun and Kuhail said.

Markets are turbulent, with contracting companies increasingly feeling they are at the mercy of the status of the tunnels: “They’re closed, they’re open; the supplies enter Gaza, no they don’t,” Kuhail said.

“We do not want more than what is our right — the right to have a house,” Madhoun said. “Why is the world silent on the suffering of more than 1.5 million living in besieged Gaza, who are prevented from living normal lives like the rest of the people in the world?”

Pledges of foreign aid

Meanwhile, some countries, like Qatar and Turkey, which for domestic political reasons may wish to send stronger signals to Israel, have started to dispatch aid through Islamic organizations or directly purchase local products in a bid to circumvent Israeli restrictions.

The Emir of Qatar, in the first visit of a foreign head of state to Gaza since Hamas won an election in 2006, last month pledged $400 million in aid, including two housing complexes (one of them includes 3,000 housing units and other related facilities such as schools, mosques, recreation and parking areas in Khan Younis in the southern part of the Strip).

But for now, Subhi, the 24-year-old college graduate, is still waiting to build a house. He said: “I have faith that this situation will not last, and things will get better.”

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The Palestinian Film Festival kicks off!

The 4th annual Palestinian Film Festival kicks off today, and will continue until December 2nd.

This year's theme is 'Visit Palestine.'

It starts off in Sydney tonight at Palace Cinema, Leichhardt! There are many great films on offer for you to see, and it's not worth missing! Offering many great films such as Last Days in Jerusalem, Yala to the moon, Tears of Gaza, Fix Me, The Shooter, Haneen and more!

Session times for Sydney
Session times for Brisbane
Session times for Melbourne
Session times for Perth

Get your tickets here.

Official Website / Official Twitter

See you there!

'Settlers Uproot Palestinian Trees near Hebron'

A number of extremist Israeli settlers uprooted dozens of olive and prune trees that belong to a resident of Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.

Resident Rashed Hamed Az-Zaro, stated that the settlers uprooted his trees located near the Keryat Arba’ illegal settlement, and left the scene.

The Palestinian Agricultural Relief reported that, last year, the settlers uprooted more than 70 Roman Olive trees that belong to the resident.

The Agricultural Relief added that this year witnessed a sharp escalation in the number of Israeli settler attacks against Palestinian villagers and their lands.

Two days ago, a Palestinian resident was injured in Orif village, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, after Israeli soldiers opened fire at dozens of villagers who clashed with Israeli settlers invading their village.

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'Israel kills Palestinian near Gaza border: medics

(Reuters) - Israeli soldiers have shot and killed a Palestinian man who approached a fence near the border with Israel, medics said on Monday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the shooting took place after darkness fell on Sunday, saying troops opened warning shots when a man walking west of the border in a riverbed failed to heed orders to leave the buffer area Israel maintains to try and prevent cross-border attacks.

Palestinian medics said the victim was an unarmed, mentally unfit man and that they had to wait a couple of hours for permission to pick him up, early on Monday. They suspected he died of injuries for which he might have been treated.

The Israeli spokeswoman could not confirm that information or say whether or not the victim was armed, saying more details about the case may become clearer later on Monday.

The shooting took place during a period of increased tensions at the Israel-Gaza frontier, with militants often firing rockets at Israel and Israel launching aerial raids targeting Palestinian gunmen.

The Gaza Strip, a coastal territory crowded with more than 1.5 million people, many of them refugees, is controlled by Hamas Islamists who reject Israel's existence.

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'Palestinian PM thanks UAE for financial aid'

Palestinian Prime Minister Dr Salam Fayyad thanked the UAE for transferring $42 million to the Palestinian National Authority treasury as a financial help.

Fayyad stressed the importance of solidarity of the Arab brothers with the Palestinian people and their national authority, especially in such critical circumstances, thus enabling the PNA to respond to the needs of the people and enhance its ability to withstand hardships

Source

'Twenty killed in Al-Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Syria'

Activists in the Syrian opposition stated Sunday that the Syrian army bombarded a location, were armed fighters were believed to be hiding, in the Al-Yarmouk refugee camp, near Damascus, leading to the death of at least 20 persons.

They added that the Al-Yarmouk refugee camp, located near the southern entrance of Damascus, became a battlefield due to armed conflicts took place between the resistance and Syrian soldiers. 

Mohammad Al-Hour, one of the opposition activists, told Reuters that Al-Yarmouk refugee camp a high density population, therefore, any shelling will lead to a large number of casualties. 

He added that among the twenty killed Sunday were several medics, while dozens of persons were injured due to the bombardment, some seriously. 

There are approximately half a million Palestinian refugee living in the Al-Yarmouk refugee camp; most of them were forced into exile during Israel’s creation in the historic land of Palestine in 1948.

It is worth mentioning that the Al-Yarmouk refugee camp was repeatedly bombarded by the Syrian army, an issue that led to dozens of casualties.

Source

'BDS key to a "just peace," says Palestinian Christian Boycott Activist'

This summer, headlines about Palestine dominated news from gatherings of Christian churches. North America’s United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and United Church of Canada voted to boycott products from Israeli settlements.

Meanwhile the Church of England’s General Synod [council] affirmed its support for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, which campaigns against settlement goods (“United Methodists call for boycott of products made by Israeli companies operating in occupied Palestinian territories,” Palestinian BDS National Committee, 3 May 2012).

Church websites and newspaper editorial pages were filled with debates on apartheid and divestment.

At the center of these efforts lay a document with the full title “A moment of truth: A word of faith, hope, and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering.” Known as the Kairos Palestine Document, this December 2009 appeal from Palestinian Christians asks the world’s churches to use “boycott and disinvestment as tools of non-violence for justice, peace and security for all,” and the international community to begin “a system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel.”

Over three years the document and Kairos Palestine, the organization behind it, have infused church-based activism for Palestine with focus and clarity.

Answering the BDS call

Michigan-based Anne Remley of the Religious Society of Friends, a Quaker group, said in an email that: “We Ann Arbor Friends (Quakers) have been buoyed to know that Palestinians, including Christians and those who prepared the Kairos call, are asking for people all over the world to join in the urgent campaign for BDS.”

She is also a member of the meeting’s Palestine Israel Action Group, which successfully advocated the Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation’s divestments from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Veolia Environment — companies which profit from Israel’s occupation. “We know other Christian denominations are working hard, too, to answer this call, and we have felt partnership with them and with Palestinian Christians and all Palestinians, as we’ve kept working at the project year by year,” Remley said.

Rifat Odeh Kassis, a 54-year-old Lutheran and general director of Defence for Children International – Palestine Section, coordinates Kairos Palestine and oversaw the drafting of its founding statement. “We were a group of around 15 members who worked together for about a year and a half to produce the document,” he said via email. “The reason it took so long was mostly due to the wide variety of the authors’ backgrounds. They represent a wide range of denominations and contexts; they include ordained clergy and laypeople, young people and older people, men and women, activists, academics, and so on.”

But drafters emerged from this lengthy process with a document holding wide appeal for Palestinian Christian society. “Kairos Palestine has a strong support base; more than 3,000 Palestinian Christian figures have signed and adopted it, as have many Christian organizations,” Kassis added.

This shows broad support for the goals and strategy of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in general, Kassis said. “Most Christians in Palestine and their organizations support the BDS call … The heads of churches are more hesitant in expressing public support due to the kind of relations they have with Israel. Israel blackmails them against participating in such activism.”

Organizing under repression

In one prominent example, Israel sought in September 2010 to revoke the Jerusalemresidency of Bishop Suheil Dawani of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and expel him to the West Bank. Israel’s Ministry of the Interior claimed that Bishop Dawani, a Nablusnative, had “acted with the Palestinian Authority in transferring lands owned by Jewish people to the Palestinians and also helped to register lands of Jewish people in the name of the Church.” Bishop Dawani and his supporters protested that he had undertaken no land deals whatsoever (“Bishop of Jerusalem to take court action over visa refusal,” Anglican Communion, 4 March 2011).

The case ended in his favor a year later, after intervention by both Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (the head of the global Anglican Communion), and Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. While Bishop Dawani never spoke of the reasons for his attempted expulsion, it followed a series of moves critical of Israel by the Church of England, including its 2006 vote to divest from Caterpillar.

For Kassis, who has been arrested by Israel several times, the main purpose of his organization is to strengthen Palestinian Christians’ capacity to organize under repression. “Kairos Palestine’s first goal is addressed to its own people: we seek to send a message of steadfastness and nonviolent resistance to the Christians in Palestine,” he said. “We need to be patient and strong — not passive. Kairos’s second goal is addressed to Christians around the world: to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians in order to end the oppression committed against them.”

Within Palestine, BDS initiatives are only part of Kairos Palestine’s efforts. It also “works on the theological front,” Kassis said, “highlighting the Palestinian understanding of Christianity and countering the theology that harms our rights and our struggle,” and runs multiple advocacy projects. These include BDS, as well as “Come and See” pilgrimages and campaigns for religious freedom and residency rights in Jerusalem.

The organization’s ongoing initiatives are no less participatory than its founding process. “Kairos Palestine works with multiple different communities, but most notably with youth, women and clergy,” Kassis explained. “Kairos is now at the core of work undertaken by most Christian-related organizations in Palestine, and it has become part of the curriculum in some schools. More broadly, its messages and activities have been personally taken up by many activists and organizations participating in the struggle for a just peace in Palestine. Its ‘ownership’ is shared and alive in this way.”

Global network

Globally, Kairos Palestine cultivates a network of activists and supporters. “So far, we have around 16 Kairos groups representing a wide range of organizations and churches in many different places,” Kassis said. “Many conferences and consultations have also been held on Kairos Palestine; many groups have come to visit and dialogue with us; and many churches have passed resolutions to enhance their cooperation with Kairos and made decisions to implement some of the document’s recommendations, like boycotting and divestment.”

“Despite this progress, we still hope for more from the churches worldwide,” Kassis added. “We want them to be courageous and side with the oppressed by taking practical steps to end this oppression.”

He means taking sides: “Our occupation is not balanced,” Kassis said. “We are not equal sides: Israel is the strongest party, they occupy us, and they oppress us. Any talk about maintaining ‘balance’ in such a profoundly unbalanced situation is a call to maintain the state of oppression as it is and justifies keeping silent. Jesus provides a completely opposing example: he took sides with the oppressed and challenged the empire. Jesus actually chased out the ones who were selling their products in the temple — he didn’t just deliver a sermon!”

Response to Israel lobby’s attacks

Efforts sparked by Kairos Palestine have drawn the attention of Israel’s supporters, as mobilizations against church initiatives by the United States’ American Jewish Committeeand Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and Canada’sCentre for Israel and Jewish Affairs demonstrate. These responses involved online petitions, coordinated personal appeals to pastors and other local leaders, the deployment of staff to church conventions, and public claims of anti-Semitism against church figures and organizations.

Months before the Presbyterians’ General Assembly, the church’s Israel/Palestine Mission Network (which supports boycott and divestment proposals) responded to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ allegations of “anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and at times anti-Semitic content” within the group. The network said aggressive tactics by these “paid ‘pro-Israel’ lobbyists” showed they were “desperately fight[ing] to take back control of a debate they can no longer win through their bullying behavior” and “name-calling and attacks in an attempt to change the subject” (“The IPMN Condemns Smear Campaign,” Israel/Palestine Mission Network, 7 Februrary).

Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester and a prominent Israel supporter in the Church of England, suggested that “over-lobbying by some members of the Jewish community” backfired in the church’s General Synod: “we know how the Synod works and it’s not a good way to get things done” (“Jewish lobbying with Church of England ‘backfires,’” The Times of Israel, 10 July 2012 ).

Demanding rights

Kairos Palestine’s success has also earned respect from other BDS leaders. “For us, in the Palestinian BDS movement, the Palestinian Christian voice is so important in promoting our struggle in the sense that it shatters all Zionist stereotypes about the occupation being in defense of Judeo-Christian ideals against Islamic ‘barbarism,’” saysHaidar Eid, a member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and professor at Gaza City’s Al-Aqsa University.

“Kairos Palestine addresses all Christians in the world, asking them to stand against injustice embodied in Israel’s multi-formed oppression of Palestinians, Christians and Muslims,” he said.

Kassis also stresses unity between Christian and Muslim Palestinians, a topic he has researched extensively. “In 2008, two colleagues and I conducted a study,” he said. “We found that the main reason for Christian emigration was the lack of political stability (around 35 percent) and the very least significant reason was religious persecution and discrimination (less than 0.8 percent). Muslim-Christian relations were strong and solid for the last 1,500 years” (“Palestinian Christians: Facts, Figures and Trends,” Diyar, 2008 [PDF]).

Like the wider BDS movement, Kairos Palestine demands rights, not political outcomes. “Kairos doesn’t talk about any specific political solution, but it does talks about the necessary conditions in order to achieve a just peace for all,” Kassis said. “A ‘just peace’ in our situation means ending the occupation, granting the Palestinians the right to self-determination, granting Palestinian refugees the right of return, acknowledging the consequences of the Nakba [the systematic ethnic cleansing project leading up to Israel’s foundation] on the Palestinians inside Israel, and ending discrimination against them.”

“For me personally, I think that a one-state solution is more human, more civilized, and answers more fully to the needs of the Palestinians,” he added. “Any other solution might divide the Palestinians among too many places and obstruct their unity as one nation.”

Growing activism

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Remley, who calls church organizing a “main strand of BDS action in the US,” expects activism inspired by Kairos Palestine to grow. “I see this work as extremely helpful in giving us information to take back to our congregations where study groups are increasingly taking place, as among Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Unitarians especially,” she said.

For Kassis, as well, its future looks bright. “Within the global church, Kairos is being put on the agenda of almost all church bodies,” he said. “It is a call they can’t ignore; they have to deal with it. Many churches thanked us for being so united in our message and our language and they see Kairos as the best tool for them to rally behind the Palestinian cause. Of course, other right-wing churches see the document as something radical they refuse to support. Our challenge, then, is to educate them more.”

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