NPK-info 03-01-2005


______________________________________________________________________ NPK-info 03-01-2005- Nederlands Palestina Komitee / www.palestina-komitee.nl ______________________________________________________________________ Hierna - Jayyus calls upon the people of the world [24 members EU Election Monitors delegation will be present!!] - De onderhandelingen hervatten... om wat te doen? - Zionism and peace in Palestine Call for observers during the Palestinian Elections the 9th of January - http://www.globalproject.info/art-3128.html En zie - Overview of Political Significance of Jayyous, Angela Godfrey Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, December 25, 2004 http://www.palestinemonitor.org/new_web/significance_jayyous.htm - A parade of charlatans, Hasan Abu Nimah & Ali Abunimah, 29 December 2004 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3463.shtml Dutch business goes on - Military trade Philips irresponsible business behaviour http://www.antenna.nl/amokmar/PressReleasePhilips.html - Philips helpt Israël bombarderen http://www.antenna.nl/amokmar/art/2004_7Philips.html - Heineken vergroot belang in Israël http://www.nu.nl/news_pda.jsp?n=462506&c=32 NPK/WL, 3-1-2005 ______________________________________________________________________ Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign www.StoptheWall.org PRESS RELEASE: December 31, 2004 JANUARY 4, 2005: Mobilization in Jayyus against the Destruction of Village Land and the Next Phase of Israel’s Colonial Apartheid Policies Contact: Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign: +972-265-65-890 (Sharif Omar: +972-54-736-9771, Jamal Juma’: +972-52-285-610) Email : jayyus@stopthewall.org, activism@stopthewall.org jayyus (Qalqiliya district), palestine - The people of Jayyus and the Jayyus popular committee of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign are calling for a day of action on January 4, 2005, against the destruction of their land and the next phase of Israel’s colonial Apartheid policies. This new phase has been initiated by the construction of new settlements, settlers-only roads, and Israeli industrial zones on Palestinian lands isolated by the Apartheid Wall and is a further proof of Israel’s intention to confiscate these lands, ghettoizing the Palestinian population behind the Wall as a permanent border. In Jayyus, on December 10, occupation forces began the construction of Nofei Zufin, a new settlement on isolated village land (which adds to the settlement of Zufin, built on lands appropriated from Jayyus in 1993). Since then, they have already destroyed a wide swath of land and uprooted more than 400 olive trees. If it is completed, this new settlement will definitively lock the people of Jayyus into a sealed Bantustan, deprived of their farmlands, livelihood, and space for future population growth. Against this plan for the total demise of Palestinian life in Jayyus, the village calls upon: · Palestinian presidential candidates to be present on January 4, 2005 in order to support the actions of the people of Jayyus. · Politicians, prominent persons, and nationals from as many countries as possible to come to Jayyus on January 4 in order to adopt a seedling olive tree and plant it in the place where their trees have been uprooted. · All organizations to urge supportive politicians, other prominent persons, and any delegations that will be in Palestine during that period to respond to this call and contact the media immediately. · Ambassadors and international official representatives in Palestine to protest with their governments asking for concrete pressure on Israel to implement the decision of the International Court of Justice and respect international law, and to visit Jayyus lands. The Wall in Jayyus has already isolated approximately 8,600 dunums (2,150 acres) of land – some 72% of the village’s lands – in addition to destroying another 550 dunums in its path. The Wall has caused the uprooting of thousands of trees. Valuable water resources, olive and citrus groves, and greenhouses are isolated behind the Wall. The situation in Jayyus reflects similar situations throughout Occupied Palestine, where communities already devastated by the first phase of the Wall’s construction are now being hit with even greater devastation during its second phase. Today, the Apartheid Wall, with its horrendous effects on Palestinian life, is merging with the longstanding policies of settlement expansion, the creation of Jewish-only infrastructure in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and industrial zones - Israeli sweatshops for the impoverished Palestinian population - into a comprehensive scheme of colonial domination and conquest. Six months after the International Court of Justice decision calling for the dismantling of the Wall and the payment of reparations, the international community has yet to comply with its obligations to enact the decision by concrete pressure on Israel. The media can play a crucial role in stopping Israeli crimes. Activists and delegations who want to support the people of Jayyus on January 4, as well as members of the media who are interested in covering the January 4 action in Jayyus and the Israeli destruction of Palestinian life more generally, should get in touch with the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign office. We will be happy to provide further information about Jayyus; to help with press arrangements for the January 4 action; and to set up media interviews with members of the popular committee in Jayyus coordinating the action, and with other members of the community in Jayyus whose lives have been affected by the Wall and by the latest acts of destruction by Occupation Forces. For more information please see: · In Jayyus, Destruction of Land and Uprooting of Trees Lays the Foundation for a New Settlement on Village Land Isolated by the Wall (http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/832.shtml) · Do the Wall’s Roots Start to Reveal Themselves?(Abdul-Latif Khaled)( http://stopthewall.org/communityvoices/823.shtml) · Two Years in Jayyus (Photo Story) (http://stopthewall.org/photos/828.shtml) ** www.StoptheWall.org http://www.stopthewall.org/ is the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign’s main tools of communication with the world. It gives you regular updates about the Apartheid Wall and the resistance to it on the ground, analysis, personal testimonies, an overview on world wide solidarity actions and a selection of mainstream media articles. The website is already available in English, Arabic, Italian and soon as well in Spanish. Please visit and let others know about http://www.stopthewall.org/. If you are running your own website, you can use our syndication tools and link facilities to inform others about our site on your website. (See: http://stopthewall.org/activistresources/545.shtml and http://stopthewall.org/activistresources/599.shtml .) In order to guarantee regular updates you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter on: http://stopthewall.org/activistresources/599.shtml. ______________________________________________________________________ http://www.stopusa.be/scripts/texte.php?section=BR&langue=0&id=23350 De onderhandelingen hervatten... om wat te doen? Luc Vancauwenberge 22-12-2004 Geïrriteerd verklaarde de Palestijnse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Saëb Erakat onlangs: "Vrede is mogelijk. Je hoeft de bezetting maar te stoppen. Als er niets verandert, dan mag je zelfs Moeder Teresa benoemen tot President van het Palestijns Gezag, Nelson Mandela tot Eerste Minister en Gandhi op mijn post dan nog zullen de Israëlische regering en sommige kringen in Washington hen in verband brengen met het terrorisme."1 De Verenigde Staten en de Europese Unie (EU) willen terug naar het routeplan, het vredesplan van mei 2003 dat in de oprichting van een Palestijnse Staat voorziet. Maar welke Staat? Yasser Arafat wilde een Palestijnse Staat aanvaarden met alleen de Bezette Gebieden en Oost-Jeruzalem als hoofdstad (wat slechts 22% van het territorium is van het historische Palestina) en met "een billijke regeling voor de vluchtelingen". Dat was al een zware toegeving. Want resolutie 194 van de UNO verleent alle (4 miljoen) vluchtelingen het recht op onvoorwaardelijke terugkeer. Voor Israël was die toegeving nog niet genoeg. Tijdens de Top van Camp David in juli 2000, stelden Clinton en de Israëlische minister Barak (van de arbeiderspartij), Arafat voor Jeruzalem helemaal op te geven (het zou volledig Israëlisch worden), 80 procent van de joodse nederzettingen te behouden en 10.000 vluchtelingen in 10 jaar te laten terugkeren! Dit voorstel, dat als "uiterst genereus" werd bestempeld, stelde een Palestijnse Staat voor op 81 procent van de Westelijke Jordaanoever, verdeeld in 3 kantons zonder territoriale samenhang.2 Toen Arafat weigerde, stuurde Barak het bericht de wereld in "dat er geen Palestijnse gesprekspartner is". Israël beslist dan, met de steun van de Verenigde Staten (en de medeplichtigheid van de EU), de Palestijnse weerstand brutaal neer te slaan. Voor Sharon kan een Palestijnse Staat opgericht worden op ongeveer 40 procent van de Westelijke Jordaanoever (wat ruwweg overeenkomt met het tracé van de muur) en in Gaza.3 Israël en de Verenigde Staten hopen dat de verdwijning van Arafat en drie jaar van ongehoorde brutaliteiten het winnen van de Palestijnse weerstand. Maar geen enkel Palestijns leider zal het Palestijnse volk nog meer toegevingen kunnen doen slikken. Na tientallen jaren van zionistische bezetting, van verzet en van immense offers is het Palestijnse volk niet bereid zijn rechten op te geven. Of zoals de bekende Palestijnse dichter Mahmoud Darwish zegt: "Hij (Arafat) is wel weg, maar wij zeggen geen vaarwel aan het verleden". 1 http://www-cgi.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0411/10/bn.02.html 2 Amnon Kapeliouk "Arafat, l'irréductible", blz. 426 3 Toespraak van Herzliya, december 2002 http://www.herzliyaconference.org ______________________________________________________________________ ZIONISM AND PEACE IN PALESTINE** Peaceful co-existence requires respect for and acceptance of the other as an equal human being with equal human rights. Zionism is based on ethnic superiority and complete denial of the other, which leaves no room for peace with Zionism in Palestine. From the Zionist perspective, peace meant specifying borders for Israel and the return of Palestinian refugees to the homes and lands, which were stolen from them to provide accommodation for alien colonial settlers. This was the reason behind the failure of all peace initiatives and efforts made for over five decades. The Zionists wanted to buy time in order to expand their territorial boundaries and to avoid any return of the Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed from Palestine. In a speech to the Israeli Knesset on 15 June 1948, Israeli Foreign Minister, Moshe Sharett (Shertok), refused repatriation of the Palestinian refugees. He stated, "A wave of returning refugees might explode the state from inside." (Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: 1987, p. 223, citing Record of the Knesset, vol. 1, 1949, session 43) In a cabinet meeting that was held on 16 June, David Ben-Gurion spoke out against a return of Arab refugees. Sharett agreed: "They will not return. This is our policy, they shall not return." (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland. London/Boston: 1987, p. 145) Ben-Gurion recorded in his war diary, in 1949, that Abba Eban, Israel's ambassador to the UN, "sees no need to run after peace. The armistice is sufficient for us; if we run after peace, the Arabs will demand a price of us - borders [that is, in terms of territory] or refugees [that is, repatriation] or both. Let us wait a few years." (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947 - 1949, p. 22, citing quotations in Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, p. 465 and citing David Ben-Gurion, Yoman Hamilhama-Tashah [the war diary 1948-9], ed. Gershon Rivlin and Elhannan Orren, Tel Aviv, 1982, iii, p. 993) In an effort to bring about a peaceful end to the war in 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte was appointed by the UN as a mediator between the Arabs and Israel. He submitted a ninety-page report to the UN Security Council on 16 September 1948. Bernadotte was assassinated in the Jewish part of Jerusalem on the following day in the Katamon quarter of Jerusalem. His final proposals to end the conflict were published on 20 September. Following Bernadotte's assassination, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution # 194 on 11 December 1948. The resolution expressed its "Deep appreciation of the progress achieved through the good offices of the late UN Mediator in promoting a peaceful adjustment of the future situation of Palestine, for which cause he sacrificed his life". The resolution also established a Conciliation Commission consisting of the representatives of the U.S., France, and Turkey to assume the functions given to the UN Mediator on Palestine and to carry out any other functions and directives given to it by the General Assembly or by the Security Council. Peace negotiations held under the patronage of the Palestine Conciliation Commission were opened in Lausanne, Switzerland on 26 April 1949. During the PCC discussions in 1949, the Arabs were ready to make peace with Israel provided the refugees were allowed to return to their homes. Israel rejected the offer. The "return" and "rehabilitation" of the Palestinian refugees are inconsistent with the Zionist objective of building an exclusive Jewish State. The PCC took two steps to try to break the logjam: 1. Set up a Technical Committee on Refugees to workout measures for implementation of the provisions of UN resolution # 194. 2. Called an international conference at Lausanne where, under PCC chairmanship, the parties could discuss the whole range of issues - refugees, Jerusalem, borders, recognition - and hammer out a comprehensive peace settlement. (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge, 1987, p. 260) The Lausanne protocol stated that the aim of the conference was to achieve "as quickly as possible the objectives of the General Assembly resolution # 194 of December 11, 1948, regarding the refugees, respect for their rights, and the preservation of their property, as well as territorial and other questions". Under the threat that the US would prevent Israel's admission to the UN, Israel finally agreed to attend the conference. The PCC conference was opened in Lausanne, Switzerland on 26 April 1949. In his guidelines to the delegation in Lausanne with respect to negotiating peace, Sharett pointed out that "it behooves us to do so not with haste and trepidation but by revealing strength and the ability to exist even without official peace." According to Sharett, since official peace was not a vital necessity, Israel had nothing to lose from procrastination. (Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: 1987, p. 215, citing ISA 120.02/2447/3 & ISA 93.03/2487/11) The efforts of the PCC were unsuccessful. It called for a return of the refugees to their homes. Israel simply rejected that. Palestinian homes and lands were coveted to settle colonial settlers coming from all corners of the world. It also called for the assumption of the functions of mediation started with Count Bernadotte to arrive at a "final settlement of questions outstanding between the Governments and authorities concerned". This meant final boundaries for Israel and peace with its neighbors, which would have limited its desire for expansion. (For a detailed account on the PCC conference and the myth of Israel's extended hand for peace, see: Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: 1987, pp. 201-232) Failure of the PCC to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict was replicated with all other peace initiatives and efforts ever since. Israeli PM Shamir declared that he wanted the negotiations in Washington, which followed the Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid on 30 October 1991, to continue for 10 years, if need be, so that he had enough time to keep on going with planned Israeli settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and leave nothing for the negotiations to talk about. (Mohammad Hassanein Haikal, Secret Negotiations between the Arabs and Israel, in Arabic, Cairo, 1996, Volume III, p. 254) Benjamin Netanyahu was elected as Israel's Prime Minister in May 1996. On 17 June 1996 Netanyahu's office released a statement outlining his government's guidelines with regard to the peace process. It said no to withdrawal from the OPT, no to a Palestinian State, no to an official Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, and no to the refugees' right of return "to any part of the Land of Israel [sic] west of the Jordan River". (Elia Zureik, The Palestinian Refugees: Background. Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, 1996. p. 127) Dov Weisglass, Sharon's senior adviser and one of the initiators of Sharon's disengagement plan, was speaking in an interview with Ha'aretz. According to Weisglass, "The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda". (Ha'aretz, 6 October 2004) In his speech at the 5th Herzliya Conference, Sharon put it in unequivocal words, "The understandings between the U.S. President and me protect Israel' s most essential interests: first and foremost, not demanding a return to the '67 borders; allowing Israel to permanently keep large settlement blocs which have high Israeli populations; and the total refusal of allowing Palestinian refugees to return to Israel." After decades of bloodshed, we are still running within a vicious circle. Zionism and peace in Palestine are irreconcilable. The road for peace requires acknowledgement and correction of the wrong done in Palestine, abandonment of the Zionist myth and acceptance of Palestinian Arabs as equal human beings with equal human rights. Nizar Sakhnini, 31 December 2004 ______________________________________________________________________