by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 15, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Noncooperation
By The Morning Star
Palestinians celebrated today after the Israeli government caved in to imprisoned hunger strikers’ key demands.
The Palestinians won key concessions on Tel Aviv’s notorious “administrative detention” policy and family visits in a deal mediated by Egyptian officials.
Israel agreed to allow some 400 prisoners from Gaza to receive family visits for the first time since 2006 and about 20 prisoners were released from solitary confinement, including one militant who had endured solitary since 2003.
Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe said the 300 Palestinian detainees currently held without charge under administrative detention would have their files reviewed after six months.
The detentions could only be extended if Israel presents concrete evidence against them to a military court.
Two men began the strike in February, refusing food for 77 days, becoming the longest ever Palestinian hunger strikers.
Around 2,000 other Palestinian prisoners, more than a third of the prison population, joined the strike in April, going without food for a month.
They remain under medical supervision to ensure there will be no complications when they begin to eat again.
Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said the prisoners pledged to stop helping to plan and conduct attacks from inside Israeli jails.
It also said the militant group’s commanders outside the jails made a commitment “to prevent terror activity” and warned that violence or resumed prisoner strikes would “annul the Israeli commitment.”
In the occupied West Bank and Israel, Palestinians cried for joy upon hearing news of the deal.
Thousands of people celebrated in Gaza by waving the Palestinian tricolour and distributing sweets.
From The Morning Star: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/119036
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 19, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Agence France-Presse
Israeli settlers have taken over dozens of natural springs in the West Bank, limiting or preventing Palestinian access to much-needed water sources, a United Nations report said on Monday.
The report produced by the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said at least 30 springs across the West Bank had been completely taken over by settlers, with Palestinians unable to access them at all.
In most instances, the report said, “Palestinians have been deterred from accessing the springs by acts of intimidation, threats and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers.”
The report said an OCHA survey carried out in 2011 identified a total of 56 springs that were under total or partial control of Israeli settlers, most in the part of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control.
“Springs have remained the single largest water source for irrigation and a significant source for watering livestock” for Palestinians, OCHA said, noting that some springs also provide water for domestic consumption.
“The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops.”
The report said in most cases where settlers were trying to limit Palestinian access to springs, they have undertaken to turn the area into a tourist attraction, constructing pools, picnic areas and signs carrying a Hebrew name for the spring.
“Such works were carried out without building permits,” the report said.
OCHA said the takeover of springs was an extension of settlement activity in the West Bank, which it pointed out is illegal under international law.
And it added that settler actions including “trespass, intimidation and physical assault, stealing of private property, and construction without a building permit,” are also violations of Israeli law.
“Yet, the Israel authorities have systematically failed to enforce the law on those responsible for these acts and to provide Palestinians with any effective remedy,” it said.
OCHA called on Israel to stop the expansion of settlements, “restore Palestinian access to the water springs taken over by settlers,” and to “conduct effective investigations into cases of settler violence and trespass.”
From Yahoo! News:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 21, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Noncooperation
By AFP
Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan has ended his 66-day hunger strike, the longest carried out by any Palestinian prisoner, after Israel agreed to set him free on April 17.
Mr Adnan has refused food since December 18, one day after he was detained without charge. He had lost more than 40 per cent of his body weight over the past nine weeks.
Mr Adnan’s wife, Randa Mussa hailed the deal as a “victory” for her husband. “He forced the occupation to give in to his demands and I hope he returns safe to us,” she said.
“The Israeli court decided to release Khader Adnan on April 17 and based on that he ended his hunger strike,” Palestinian prisoner affairs minister Issa Qaraqaa said.
Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the agreement meant “if there’s no new evidence against him, he will be released from custody on April 17.”
Mr Adnan, 33, was detained on December 17 and began refusing food a day later to protest his detention without charge and his alleged mistreatment by interrogators.
His protest, already the longest hunger strike carried out by any Palestinian prisoner, has attracted international attention and thrown a spotlight on Israel’s use of administrative detention, a military procedure which allows suspects to be held without charge.
Israeli officials described Mr Adnan as a “terrorist” from the radical Islamic Jihad movement, although he has never been charged with any offence, nor has any evidence against him been made public.
In January, a military court handed down a four-month administrative detention order against Mr Adnan, which he appealed in an unusual court session earlier this month held at his hospital bed in northern Israel.
But a military court last week rejected his appeal, prompting him to turn to Israel’s top court.
Doctors from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel who met with Mr Adnan in recent days had warned that his health was failing and that he faced “immediate danger of death” if he continued to refuse food.
Rights groups have also condemned the conditions in which Mr Adnan is being held at Ziv hospital in the northern town of Safed, where he is shackled to the bed by chains on both legs and on one arm.
His case has sparked demonstrations across the Palestinian territories, with thousands of people taking part in protests on Tuesday in the West Bank cities of Nablus, Jenin, Hebron and Ramallah. A protest was also scheduled in Gaza City.
In Ramallah, shops shut down as part of a general strike in solidarity with Mr Adnan, and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails were also on hunger strike in support of the detainee.
Palestinian officials had warned that Mr Adnan’s death in custody could spark a violent backlash, and a spokeswoman for the Israel Prisons Service said they were aware of the “implications” of such a development.
On Monday, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said he had sent a message to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and other top diplomats urging them to put pressure on Israel over the case.
“I asked them all to intervene in Adnan’s case. They must apply pressure on Israel to release him,” he said.
From The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9095823/Palestinian-Khader-Adnan-ends-record-66-day-hunger-strike-as-Israel-agrees-to-set-him-free.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Ma’an News Agency
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Amnesty International on Wednesday urged Israel to cancel plans to forcibly displace around 2,300 Bedouin residents from a Jerusalem district.
“Thousands of Bedouin living in some of the most vulnerable communities in the West Bank are facing the destruction of their homes and livelihoods under this Israeli military plan,” Ann Harrison, interim Deputy Director for Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program, said.
“Many are registered refugees and some have been displaced multiple times since 1948,” she added.
In July 2011, Israel’s civil administration officials first told UN agencies of a plan to evict some 2,300 residents of 20 Bedouin communities in a Jerusalem district to a site approximately 300 meters from the Jerusalem municipal garbage dump, an Amnesty statement said.
The communities are all currently located near illegal settlements in the Maale Adumim settlement bloc, many of them in areas targeted for settlement expansion.
Community representatives told Amnesty International that they reject the plan because it would be impossible for them to maintain their traditional way of life if they were moved to a restricted area near the garbage dump.
Israeli officials have emphasized that the displacement plan envisions connecting relocated Bedouin communities to the electricity and water networks. They have not explained why Israel can provide such services to illegal settlements and unrecognized settler outposts in the West Bank, but not to longstanding Bedouin communities.
“Israeli military officials are putting a gloss on their plans by portraying them as a way of providing Bedouin with basic amenities such as water and electricity, but in fact such forcible relocation of Bedouin would merely perpetuate years of dispossession and discrimination and could constitute a war crime,” said Ann Harrison.
Building in illegal Israeli settlements increased by 20 per cent in 2011, according to the Israeli monitoring group Peace Now, and the Israeli authorities moved to recognize 11 new settlements, home to some 2,300 settlers, by legalizing outposts built without governmental authorization.
Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank forcibly evicted almost 1,100 people in 2011, an 80 per cent increase over 2010 and more than any year since the UN began keeping comprehensive records in 2005.
Ninety per cent of the demolitions occurred in vulnerable farming and herding communities in Area C, including demolitions in several of the Jahalin Bedouin communities.
From Ma’an News Agency: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=458823
