A-Infos (en) Palestine, Collective punishment leaves 500 indegeneous Palestinians homeless

["Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" <info@gush-shalom.org>]

==========================================================
July 3, Action Alert: Collective punishment leaves 500 Palestinians homeless 
==========================================================
Sender: worker-a-infos@ainfos.ca
Precedence: list
Reply-To: a-infos-d

 ________________________________________________
      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
 ________________________________________________

Last night, an Israeli settler named Yair Har-Sinai was shot to death near the 
settlement enclave in the south of the West Bank. Fellow-settlers, who were 
today very extensively interviewed, told two things about him: that unlike 
other settlers, he did not carry a gun and claimed to be in favor of 
coexistence; and that more than any other settler, he was zealous in constantly 
staking a claim to "state lands", i.e. confiscated Palestinian lands, day and 
night herding his sheep on them so as "to make them into Jewish lands  in 
practice" - which, from their point of view, is the highest praise 
possible. 

One could feel sorry for this misguided man, as for the ever-increasing number 
of victims which are claimed by the violent whirlwind of the past nine months. 
But any impartial observer would have to admit that Har-Siani's two attributes 
were in flat contradiction to each other. You just can't be a seeker after 
coexistence, much less an unarmed pacifist, and at the same time actively 
engaged in dispossing your neighbors. Har-Sinai died of that contradiction. 
 
This happened last night. This morning, just hours after Har-Sinai's body was 
found, Israeli military forces entered into neighboring Palestinian villages, 
systematically blowing up houses and the caves in which many of the poor 
Palestinian peasants of  this area have their dwellings, destroying terraces 
and filing up wells. Some 500 people were rendered homeless. Full details are 
as yet not available, since the army surrounds the whole area, allowing in 
neither human rights field workers nor even the Red Cross which offered to 
provide tents to the newly-
dispossed families. 

This was, clearly, an act of collective punishment, in flagrant violation of 
international law. It was also something even worse - using a killing as a 
pretext for continuing the implementation of a long-lasting, comprehensive plan 
of dispossesion. Already in 1982, the whole area - some 86,000 dunums - had 
been declared "a closed military zone" and the Palestinians residing in it 
ordered to leave, so as to make place for the creation of Israeli settlements.
They refused to live the string of small villages, often consisting of caves 
rather than houses, where their ancestors had lived for hundreds of 
years: Wad Rakhaim, Karbet al-Nabi, Imnaizel, al-Shatneh and Kharbet al-Sussia 
(the name of the last, as well as its lands, were appropriated for the Israeli 
settlement created nearby). For the past two decades they had been living 
precariously on the fragments left of their land, subject to harassment and 
constant encroaching by the settlers. Now, it seems, the killing is being used 
in order to complete the work of dispossession. 
(For some of the above information we are indebted to the 
Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq <haq@alhaq.org>). 

This tragic and infuriating affair illustrates as nothing else the deadlock in 
which we are. The government of Israel demands a ceasefire - "complete, utter 
quiet, with not a shot fired and not a stone thrown" in the words of Prime 
Minister Sharon. At the same time, settlers are allowed to continue expanding 
their armed enclaves and dispossessing their neighbors, under the protection 
and with the active cooperation of the mightiest army in the Middle East.


GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/


                       ********
               The A-Infos News Service
      News about and of interest to anarchists
                       ********
               COMMANDS: lists@ainfos.ca
               REPLIES: a-infos-d@ainfos.ca
               HELP: a-infos-org@ainfos.ca
               WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca
               INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org

 To receive a-infos in one language only mail lists@ainfos.ca the message
                unsubscribe a-infos
                subscribe a-infos-X
 where X = en, ca, de, fr, etc. (i.e. the language cod