Tel-Aviv,
7.10.98
Jam haKinereth:
Wasserstand extrem niedrig
Gallej Zahal berichtet, vom tiefsten Stand
des 'galiläischen Meeres' (See Genezareth),
Israels wichtigstem überirdischem
Wasserreservoir, seit fast zehn Jahren. Der
Wasserpegel stehe nur noch einen 1m über der
«untersten roten Linie». Einen
vergleichbaren Tiefstand hatte es in den
vergangenen 60Jahren nur dreimal gegeben,
zuletzt 1989. Ein Absinken um weiter 30cm
wird für November erwartet. Von Juni bis
August hat die israelische
Wasser-Gesellschaft «Mekorot» 540.Millionen
Kubikmeter Wasser abgepumpt. Das sind
20.Millionen mehr als im Vorjahres-Zeitraum.
Unbedingt ausprobieren - Unser Tip -
Just for the fun of it!
Begehung einer Austellung
Taaruchat Menorot / Israel Museum
Die Geschichte eines Symbols
Guerilla Ambush in Lebanon:
Two Israeli Soldiers
killed - six others wounded
Yesterday
afternoon, two Israeli soldiers were killed
at a guerilla ambush in Lebanon, and six
others wounded - the latest victims in an
endless, futile war, raging on unabated half
a year after the Netanyahu Government
decided "in principle" to withdraw the army
from Lebanon. Just a few days ago - on the
eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement - we
took part in the March of Forgiveness held
in the streets of tel Aviv by the Four
Mothers movement. To the accompanying sound
of the Shofar, the traditional Ram's Horn, .
the soldiers' mothers who founded that group
distributed leaflets to bypassers: "Just as
the Shofar ushers in a new year, we demand
that the government usher in a new policy
concerning Lebanon and seek forgiveness for
the failed policies of the past." This
afternoon, they will again picket the
Defence Ministry - as they already did so
many times in the past year... (You can
contact the Four Mothers at:
lindabz@post.tau.ac.il).
Guerrilla
War is also raging at Hebron
An active
guerrilla war is raging at Hebron - the
unhappy West Bank city which was
partitioned, 20% of its territory and 30,000
of its inhabitants being left under a harsh
occupation regime so as to preserve the
armed enclave of 450 Israeli
religious-nationalist settlers created in
the city center. Last week, a Palestinian
grenade attack left fourteen wounded Israeli
soldiers of the garrison charged with
guarding the settlers (and far outnumbering
them). Since then, Palestinian Hebron is
besieged by the Israeli army, while
Palestinian inhabitants in the part of the
city still directly occupied are under
curfew - which does not prevent repeated
violent confrontations with the army. We
have gotten news from a group of Jerusalem
activists of the Hebron Solidarity Commitee,
who arrived in embattled Hebron to
demonstrate for the only sensible solution:
removal of the settlers. Less than a minute
after they began their peaceful vigil,
police and soldiers surrounded the group,
confiscated their banners and taking them
off to interrogation and detention.
Meanwhile the settlers, to whom the curfew
of course does not apply, are "celebrating
the Sukkot Holiday" with processions in the
streets of Hebron, as well as busing in
their political friends from elsewhere, to
be entertained at "an open-air performance
by superstar Hassidic artists" (as the
settler internet site put it).
Riots
in Umm El Fahm
Meanwhile, we
found nearly all our energy diverted to an
unexpected arena: the outbreak of what
seemed a new Intifada - not in the Occupied
Territories but at Umm El Fahm, an Arab town
within the pre-'67 borders. In law, the
inhabitants of Umm-El-Fahm - like their
counterparts in numerous other Arab villages
and towns - are Israeli citizens, a full 20%
of the total; they vote in parliamentary
elections, and in the past decades started
to realise some of the political
possibilities which are open to an organised
minority in a political system based on
coalition governments. But officials in
charge of such key issues as land, water or
"law and order" continue to treat Arab
citizens as enemies, to be held down,
"controlled" and discriminated. This
decades-old situation is no longer tolerable
to a new, confident and assertive generation
among Israel's Arab citizens.
Like so many
earlier confrontations, the conflagration at
Umm-El-Fahm was ignited by the declared
confiscation of land - taking yet a new bite
of what was left after most of the town's
agricultural lands were confiscated in the
1950's and 1960's. Officially the
confiscation was aimed at creating a
military training ground - but past
experience had shown such military
confiscations to be often leading to the
eventual construction of civilian housing,
with the right to purchase such housing
reserved to Jews only. The flames of
rebellion were fed by the brutal attack of
the riot police on the local high school,
apparently aimed at "nipping resistance in
the bud" and achieving the exact opposite.
For three days the town was a battlefield;
several hundred inhabitants were wounded,
some of them severely, by the semi-military
"border Guards" using clubs, tear gas,
rubber-coated bullets and in at least some
cases live ammunition. They were as brutal
as they could come without actually killing
somebody.
Very soon,
members of various peace groups made their
way to the area to bear witness and express
solidarity - first from nearby Kibbutzim,
followed by organised delegations from
Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem organised by such
groups as Chadash, Gush Shalom, Peace Now,
Rabbis for Human Rights, TANDI, and Bat
Shalom. All were stunned by the police
brutality. Some became personally embroiled
in the confrontations, getting more than a
whiff of tear gas (the already experienced
locals offered onions, smelling which seems
to be an effective antidote). Dozens of
activists from Peace Now and Gush Shalom,
joining local youths in a vigil with banners
reading "No to Confiscations - No to Racism"
were doused to the core by police water
cannons turned on them, and chased by the
relentless police for more than a kilometre
- a large group remaining together
throughout the chase, Jews and Arabs
chanting in unison "Today, we are all
Umm-El-Fahm!" even while the Border Guards
wielded their batons. The compromise with
which the clashes ended represents at least
a partial victory for the townspeople: while
the confisction is not abolished, the army
would not take possession for the next three
months, and the landowners would be free to
complete the olive harvest. With a modicum
of common sense, the government should
quietly let this status-quo continue
indefinitely, rather then risk a repeated
outbreak next January. But good sense seems
sometimes in short supply among government
officials... A stream of visitors is
continuing to arrive at the now-quiet town
and visit the highschool - made into a
virtual place of pilgrimage where the
bloodstains of the wounded pupils are still
visible on the classroom walls. Labor
Knesset Members supported the request for an
independent investigation of the police
conduct made by the Israeli Highschool
Teachers Union - a body which usually shies
away from controversial issues.
As it happened,
the Bat Shalom women's peace organization
opened today its already scheduled "Succat
Shalom" (Peace Tabernacle) at Meggido
Junction, just a few kilometres up the road
from Umm-El-Fahm. This annual event -
bringing together Jewish and Arab women (men
are not excluded, either) for peace vigils
and intensive discussions - has got this
year a new meaning. (The Peace Tabernacle
will stay in place also on Wednesday and
Thursday, Oct. 7 and 8. Info from Yehudit
Zaidenberg, (06) 653 3785; Su'ad Abdul Hadi
(06) 646 6352.; Bat Shalom
batshalo@netvision.net.il).
Clinton-Netayahu-Arafat summit
With all these
happenings, we have nearly lost sight of
another intensive American mediating effort
towards the Clinton-Netayahu-Arafat summit
due in Washington in the middle of this
month. Could it be that this time it's going
to lead to something? Clinton certainly
throws all that is left of his personal
prestige behind it. Reading the Israeli
papers these days one gets, however, the
feeling of deja vu: the same predictions of
an impending deal were made in January when
the three also met in Washington, and on May
when the venue was London... By and large,
Israelis seem to have lost interest in the
long and weary process.
New
Settler Housing:
Netanyahu Announced New
Constructions at Tel Rumeida
For the
peace-oriented, the Prime Minister has just
provided a new reason for scepticism: in the
midst of supposedly crucial preparatory
talks with Secretary of State Albright,
Netanyahu announced the construction of new
settler housing at Tel Rumeida in the heart
of Hebron - and tomorrow evening he is to be
the guest of honor at the ceremony where the
settlement of Ariel will get the status of a
city - which also entails the construction
of an additional 3,000 housing units at this
settlement, which is constantly expanding at
the expense of neighboring Palestinian
lands. At the time of this provocative event
- tomorrow, Wednesday at 8.00 PM - Peace Now
will hold a protest demonstration at the
entrance to Ariel. For details of
transportation call (03) 5663291 or contact
peacenow@actcom.co.il. And on the morning of
Friday, Oct. 9, the Yesh Gvul movement will
follow with a protest action at a settlement
(whose identity they will keep secret to the
last moment); here, information can be
gotten from Micha 02-6233749, Yisrael 02
5631892, or
ishai@shatil.nif.org.il.
Israeli
Committee for Mordechai Vanunu
In September
The Israeli Committee for Mordechai Vanunu
and for a Middle-East Free of Nuclear,
Biological and Chemical Weapons - to use its
full name - marked the twelfth anniversary
of The Nuclear Whistleblower's kidnapping
and incarceration. The committee's
activists, together with like-minded
volunteers from all over the world, picketed
Vanunu's prison at Ashkelon ,the Defence
Ministry in Tel-Aviv, and the Dimona Nuclear
Pile - where some of them were arrested
trying to carry out a "citizen's
inspection". Next week, on Monday, October
12, a further vigil at Ashkelon Prison will
mark Vanunu's 44th birthday. (Details from
Rayna Moss 03-6882587,
legalese@netvision.net.il) Supporters are
also urged to send cards and gifts of books
for the birthday to: Mordechai Vanunu,
Ashkelon Prison, POB 17, Ashkelon, Israel.
In between
these actions, the issue of nuclear arms
came up to the top of Israeli public
consciousness - in a sudden flurry of
threats and counter-threats between Israel
and Iran, with each side proudly displaying
bombers and missiles capable of reaching the
other's territory. This verbal exchange
coincided ironically with the new peak in
Teheran's rapprochement with the West. For
Israel to become part of such a
rapprochement would require at least some
willingness to reciprocate on its demand
that other Middle East countries give up
their arsenals of mass destruction. A
hopefull glimpse in this direction was
created by Nes Ziona Mayor Yossi Shvo. Shvo,
an average Israeli poitician, in no way a
radical, started a campaign against the
top-secret State Biological Institute
located in his city, just south of Tel-Aviv.
Persistant newspaper articles - abroad and
recently also in the Israeli press -
identified this as the place where chemical
and biological weapons are produced on a
large scale. Mayor Shvo has not commented on
the morality of producing and stockpiling
such weapons, nor on the long-term results
for the Middle East; he simply declared his
displeasure with having this institute in
his city, and already got an injunction from
the Supreme Court forbidding the Biological
Institute to extend its boundaries, and
mandating an independent environmental
study.
The
House of Muhammad Fakia of Kattana Village
Since September
16, when five Palestinian houses were
demolished on a single day by the Israeli
army, the demolition crews seem to have
taken a break - confining themselves to
threatening "reconnaissance patrols" by
military jeeps near some of the threatened
houses. Moreover, the military government
announced that 700 "illegal" houses and a
further 1300 "illegal extentions of houses"
would be spared. Both of these results could
be attributed to the international protest
campaign in which many of you have taken
part. Still, we have no illusions that the
struggle is over. The military government
says that the "pardoned houses" are those
which were "built close to existing
Palestinian towns and villages" - but
refused to clarify exactly what "close to"
means. Certainly, it seems unwilling to
identify these houses and give their
inhabitants an official permit. And the new
dispensation gives no new hope to those who
live in thousands of Palestinian homes not
near town or village boundaries, nor to
Beduins whose camps are being systematically
destroyed.
This weekend -
Friday and Saturday, October 9-10 - Israelis
and Palestinians will once again directly
defy the house demolitons policy by jointly
and openly rebuilding a demolished house -
the house of Muhammad Fakia of Kattana
village, which was destroyed on August 12,
leaving a family with thirteen children
homeless, as winter is approaching.
This action is
being organized by the Coalition Against
Home Demolitions - comprising Bat Shalom,
Gush Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights and
others. (It is the action originally
scheduled for October 3.)
- Friday, 9
October: 8:15 a.m: Leave from Gan
HaPa'amon in Jerusalem. Return to
Jerusalem about 3 p.m. (pre-Shabbat).
- Saturday,
10 October: 8:15 a.m: Leave from Gan
HaPa'amon, Jerusalem. 8:00 a.m.:Leave
from Arlozoroff Railway Station in
Tel-Aviv.
Adam Keller and Beate
Zilversmidt
Meanwhile the
Prime Minister's Office should continue to
receive critical post.
The text below is an example, which you may
use.
To
Prime Minister Netanyahu,
pm@pmo.gov.il
Your office has
announced the "pardoning" of 700 Palestinian
houses against which demolition orders were
issued. But nowhere have these 700
privileged houses been identified, so as to
give their inhabitants a minimal feeling of
security. Moreover, I cannot accept your
office's position that hundreds of other
Palestinian houses must be demolished
because they have been constructed "on
state-owned lands or in areas which
constitute a security risk". The
"state-owned lands" in the occupied
territories are a Palestinian property which
should benefit the occupied population. The
"security-risk" referred to is the totally
unaccepatbel concept that areas around
illegal Israeli settlements in occupied
territory must be kept "free of Arabs."
I call upon you to cease altogether
the demolition policy:
Living in a house is a right and not a
favor.
THE OTHER
ISRAEL
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