November Features -2000

Zionist Entity: Features

November Thursday 02-2000:

For many liberals, the Palestinians are getting what they deserve(1)

Half-way to Al-Quds, Simon began telling me about his Israeli war service. At 73, his army life was over but he had fought in 1967 and 1973 and ended up in Beirut in 1982, landing on the beaches north of Sidon, leaving before the Sabra and Chatila massacres. Mercifully, there was no talk of "terrorists", only of peace, and when his wife asked why the Palestinians should not have Arab east Al-Quds as the capital of their new state and this, remember, just four weeks after the death of the Oslo agreement I wondered if there was not an undiscovered Israel.

Our minibus was climbing the hill into Al-Quds from Tel Aviv when Simon's wife she suddenly asked me about Mohammed al-Durah, the 12-year-old shot by Israeli soldiers as he cowered in his father's arms in Gaza: "What was he doing at the time?" she asked sharply. Why was he on the street?"

In fact, he had accompanied his father to buy a car because the father had to walk to the Gaza border at two each morning for permission to work in Israel and had been returning home when they were trapped by gunfire. But I understood the implication of these questions at once: if Mohammed did not have good reason to be on the streets of Gaza at the time, if he had been participating in a demonstration, then maybe the little boy had got what he deserved.

This odd disconnection comes in many forms. When I arrived at Ben Gurion airport last week, the young immigration officer cheerfully asked me to remember that Israel was a small country threatened by people outside who wanted to take it". I suggested that the Palestinians had been living in "Palestine" or modern-day Israel for generations, that they were not "outside" save those who had been expelled from their lands by Israel, and that United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 might, in the end, bring a real peace. "What is 242?" she wanted to know.

How strange that 242 which is shorthand for any Palestinian who wants to refer to the UN resolution demanding an Israeli withdrawal from occupied lands would mean nothing to a young, educated Israeli immigration officer. Oslo, of course, had a meaning for her, the very word used with such contempt by the Palestinians of the occupied territories. Deir Yassin, the scene of the worst massacre of Arabs in the 1948 war, would not. The same disconnection creeps into the Israeli press and, of course, into the foreign media.

Israelis are invariably "murdered" or "lynched" by Palestinians usually a perfectly accurate description but Palestinians are inevitably "killed in clashes": the implication being that they may have been killed by their own people.

Reuters news agency has followed the Israeli line. Its Monday report on killings by Israelis in the occupied territories refers to Palestinians "wounded in stone-throwing clashes" and "killed in earlier clashes", adding that the "clashes" began on 28 September, that the "clashes have halted peace talks" and that Israeli Arabs have complained about "the killing of their brethren in clashes". But when on the same day an Israeli security guard was shot dead, his killer was accurately described as a "suspected Palestinian gunman".

On the same day, the Associated Press reported: "Palestinian shooting attacks on Jewish settlements" but spoke of a Palestinian who was, of course, merely shot "in clashes".

This double standard of Israeli and foreign reporting finds its way into the most unexpected places. Staying at the King David Hotel in Jewish West Al-Quds, I found myself watching the hotel's home-video history. As British military headquarters at the end of the Mandate, the hotel was blown up by Menachem Begin's bombers. So what did the hotel video tell me about an act which, if perpetrated by Palestinians , would be described by Israelis as an act of bestial terrorism? The video proudly boasts that the King David is "the only hotel in the world that was bombed by a future prime minister" and refers to the perpetrators whose victims included 41 Arabs, 28 British and 17 Jews as "activists" who were dedicated to their cause.

Only now, five weeks into the "Al-aqsa" intifada, has the Al-Quds Post given an Arab George Abu al-Zulof the opportunity of countering the vicious claims that Palestinians deliberately use their children as human-shield "martyrs" during stone-throwing demonstrations.

But at least the Israeli press is more self-critical than Palestinian newspapers. It was an Israeli paper which first pointed out that the country was in no position to claim that Yasser Arafat was no longer a fit "peace partner" when Israel itself has a lame duck Prime Minister who is asking Ariel Sharon, leader of the right-wing Likud party, to join his government. And the brave reports of Amira Hass in Haaretz provide Israelis with a vivid and accurate description of the suffering of Palestinians under occupation.

Similarly, the occupied territories. Since Mr Arafat's major towns are now in his own hands, Israelis repeatedly tell me, I have no right to call the West Bank "occupied" in my reports to The Independent. So what, I ask myself, is that checkpoint on the edge of Nablus that prevents its peoples incinerating their garbage outside the town? And who are the soldiers who repeatedly tell me in the West Bank that I cannot go down any of half a dozen roads to Jenin or Ramallah? Are these Swiss soldiers? Is it the Burmese army that is shooting stone-throwers in Nablus and Gaza?

When my minibus reached Al-Quds, Simon and his wife said goodbye and they and their friends prepared to set off for home. They were all liberals, all seeking peace, all prepared to allow the Palestinians a real state.

1- Independent, 2-11-2000.

November Tuesday 07-2000:

Two laws for two peoples(1)

Three Arab teens and three Jewish youngsters were arrested for taking part in the recent inter-ethnic clashes in Nazareth and Afula. While the Arabs are still in jail, the Jews were released to house arrest.
By Aryeh Dayan
The similarities between three minors arrested during rioting in Nazareth the day after Rosh Hashanah and three minors arrested in Afula the day after Yom Kippur are uncanny. All six youths were born to and raised by well-established and comfortable middle-class families. All are considered good students in their respective schools. Both trios were arrested, a week apart, for allegedly committing similar crimes, and none of the individuals had a prior criminal record. All six are now being represented in court by the same lawyer - Attorney Ahmed Masalha.The parallel stories of these six young men, whose names cannot be published due to their age, could ostensibly be used by the police and representatives of the State Prosecutor's Office to prove that equal treatment is given to Arab youths who threw stones at policemen in Nazareth and Jewish youths who shouted "death to the Arabs" and attacked Arab passers-by there.
However when the Knesset's Interior Committee convenes this morning to discuss the issue of minors arrested during the rioting in October, official spokesmen will refrain from mentioning their story - because the similarities between the two groups of youths ended the moment they were arrested.
The Arab youths, three high school students aged 15 and 16, were arrested in Nazareth on October 3 during one of the stormy riots that took place in the Arab sector. The next day, they were brought to court to extend their detention. A police representative argued that two of the youngsters, brothers from the village of Iksal, were suspected of disturbing public order and attempting to stab a policeman. The third youth, a resident of Nazareth, was suspected of rioting and trying to attack a policeman who was doing his job. A judge from the juvenile section of the Nazareth Magistrates Court agreed to the police request and extended their detention for another week.
The indictments against them were prepared quickly and submitted to the court during that time. The prosecution attached to the indictment a request to detain the three until the end of legal proceedings against them. Judge George Azoulay, a juvenile judge in Nazareth Magistrates Court, deemed the request unjustified. He saw before him three youths from good homes, high school students with no previous criminal record. Judge Azoulay felt there was no reason, even if the three did indeed participate in the demonstrations and even if they did throw stones at policemen, to prevent them from continuing their studies during the course of their trial. He therefore instructed that they be released to house arrest and allowed to go out each day to attend school.
Azoulay announced his decision on Sunday morning, October 8, the eve of Yom Kippur. A prosecution representative asked him to delay the release of the three by 48 hours so that the prosecution could, immediately after Yom Kippur, appeal their release to the District Court. Azoulay agreed to this and instructed that the three youths be returned to detention in the meantime.
Nissim Maman, the Nazareth District Court judge who heard the state's appeal the day after Yom Kippur, did indeed overrule Azoulay's decision, and ordered that the three youths be kept in jail until the conclusion of proceedings. Maman accepted the argument of the prosecution, whose representative declared that the need to distance the three from any chance to take part in the ongoing rioting overrode their right to continue attending school. The prosecution expressed doubt that their parents could prevent them from participating in protests, and Judge Maman felt that this doubt was justified.
Maman maintained this position even after he was told that the principal of the school where the three are students had expressed willingness to personally guarantee that they would no longer participate in demonstrations or other protests.
Even after the lawyer pointed out to him that no date had yet been determined for the start of proceedings against the youths, and that there was therefore a reasonable possibility that their detention could last many weeks, perhaps even months, Maman was adamant.
While these three Arab youths were being taken from Judge Maman's chambers back to jail, the Afula police arrested the three Jewish youths. The indictments against them were drawn up even faster and submitted to the court within two days. These indictments state that the three high school students, aged 15, 16 and 17, were charged with "congregating together with hundreds of others with aim of disturbing the peace" on the night Yom Kippur ended, around 8 P.M., on the roads leading to Upper Afula and Givat Hamoreh. The disturbances, the indictment further states, lasted until around midnight and the three accused took an active part in it, acting in a way that "could instill fear in the public." Furthermore, "They burned tires and shouted 'death to the Arabs."
The three boys, the indictment continues, "repeated their actions" the next afternoon as well, joining an earlier gathering in the Afula industrial zone, as they shouted "death to the Arabs." The indictment states that one of the three youths "threw stones then at a restaurant owned by Muhammed Zoabi," and that one of his friends "threw stones at a restaurant owned by Issam Amara." They were charged with "forbidden gathering," "rioting" and "causing damage with malicious intent."
The prosecution asked to detain them until the conclusion of proceedings and again encountered resistance from the court. Judge Dana Marshak-Marom, a juvenile judge in the Afula Magistrates Court, rejected the request, ordered that the three be released to house arrest, expressed confidence in their parents' ability to prevent them from attending additional demonstrations and determined that "despite the danger presented by the accused, it is possible to suffice with an alternative detention," i.e., house arrest.
Again the prosecution appealed to the District Court in Nazareth, and the appeal this time was presented to Judge Hashem Khatib for a ruling. Khatib's ruling on the matter of the Jewish detainees was the reverse of Maman's ruling on the Arab detainees: while Maman accepted the state's appeal and left the Arab youths in jail, Khatib rejected the state's appeal and approved the release of the three Jewish boys to house arrest. The prosecution did not appeal this decision to the Supreme Court, and allowed the three Jewish boys to return home, three days after they were first detained.
That day marked the 10th day of detention for the Arab youths, who were in jail until the conclusion of proceedings. "Youths who join a crowd that has been riled up by racist cries of 'death to the Arabs' and participate in searches for Arabs in order to harm them just because they are Arabs, are undoubtedly dangerous to public security and the danger they present is proved by their actions," Judge Khatib wrote in the explanation of his decision to release the three to house arrest. "On the other hand, these are minors aged 16, 15 and 17, and this is their first arrest. From the information before me, it appears that until the case at hand, they behaved in a normative fashion."
The question under discussion, Khatib explained, is this: Are the demonstrations and riots continuing, or has calm been restored, making possible the release of the youths to house arrest without fear that they will revert to their previous actions.
"It is true that it is still too early to tell, because there has been a genuine calming of the situation, but there is still no guarantee that things have quieted down and the situation is back to normal," he wrote on October 13. "However, in the last two days, there has a been a certain calm apparent in areas inside the Green Line which can also support the ruling of the lower court on releasing them to an alternative detention." The prosecution refrained, as mentioned, from appealing the decision, and the three Jewish youths returned to their homes and schools.
Encouraged by his success with his Jewish clients, Attorney Masalha sought to do the same for his Arab clients. Based on the district court's ruling that "there are signs of a restoration of calm in areas inside the Green Line," he approached the Magistrates Court and asked for a new hearing on the decision to keep the three Arab youths in custody. He argued that the decision to detain them was based on the prosecution's determination that the accused should be held as long as the riots continue, so that they cannot participate in them.
This time, however, a surprise awaited attorney Masalha. The prosecution, which in the hearing on the Jews, had not disputed the court's ruling regarding a restoration of calm, presented a police document prior to the hearing on the Arabs' case, seeking to prove that the rioting had not calmed down. Police Superintendent Reuven Raveh of the Amakim district police, signed a document stating that during the week of October 10-17, there were no less than 73 incidents of disturbances. Judge Azoulay, of the Nazareth Magistrates Court, read the document, was convinced that it destroyed the basis of Attorney Masalha's arguments, and rejected his request for another hearing on the detention of the Arab youths.
Masalha did not give up, and appealed Azoulay's decision to the District Court. The appeal was submitted for a ruling to Judge Khatib, who just a few days earlier had released the three Jewish youths. Based on the wording of his decision, it is clear that Khatib was not pleased by the submission of the police document. First he asked, almost rhetorically, why in the previous hearing, which dealt with the matter of the detained Jews, "Why wasn't I presented with a list of the violent incidents related to the same background?" Afterward, he examined the document and determined that "the overwhelming majority of incidents specified in it actually happened in Jewish communities, and only a few took place in communities in the Arab sector." Eventually, he decided that the document was not enough to prevent the release of the youths, accepted the appeal and sent them off to house arrest.
"The appellants are minors, aged 15 and 16, high school students, with many achievements in their studies and sons of normative families," he wrote in words very similar to those used to describe the Jewish youths. "The case before us is their first clash with the law, their behavior up until this case was exemplary and satisfactory to all those who came into contact with them. There is cause to assume that they did what is attributed to them after being swept away by others who are older than they."
Attorney Masalha's joy upon hearing Judge Khatib's decision was premature. The prosecution, which had refrained from appealing Khatib's decision to release the Jewish youths from Afula, now rushed to appeal his decision to release the Arab youths from Nazareth. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the state again submitted the police document. Justice Mishael Cheshin, who heard the appeal, got the opposite impression from Judge Khatib.
"Those 73 incidents, whose details, I, of course, will not get into," Cheshin wrote, hinting at Khatib's determination that most of them took place in Jewish communities, "revolve around intentional and planned acts to cause damage to people and property. Especially in these days, we cannot say that these actions are spontaneous or were taken in self-defense. These actions are acts of aggression, serious aggression, and the overall impression that arises from these events is a serious one. Indeed, most of the incidents - most, but not all - were specific incidents of stone-throwing, arson and other serious actions; yet the threat to human life is not diminished even if a rock is thrown toward someone's head during a localized incident." Based on this explanation, Justice Cheshin decided to accept the state's appeal and leave the three Arab youths in custody. They have been in detention for over a month, and the end of the legal proceedings against them is still far off.
Members of the Knesset's Interior Committee, which will today discuss the detention of minors during the October rioting, will hear from a police representative that there are 32 minors being detained until the conclusion of proceedings against them - 24 Arabs and eight Jews. From Justice Ministry representatives, the court will hear opinions similar to those that State Prosecutor Edna Arbel wrote to the District Attorneys offices, directing them to take a tough stand: "In light of the importance of detaining rioters until the conclusion of proceedings as a means of controlling the wave of violence, a tough policy should be adopted with regard to detention of those who take part in riots and acts of violence, Arabs and Jews alike, until the conclusion of proceedings." Arbel's instructions do not differentiate between adults and minors.
"The state prosecutor's tough policy has become a policy of collective punishment," says Attorney Jadir Nicola, who is coordinating the handling of the cases of those detained in October for Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. "The policy on Arab detainees is to oppose any release, regardless of the circumstances. Such a policy is not in line with the detention law, which requires that the individual circumstances and alternate detentions be considered."
Nicola tells of a minor from Acre who has been detained until the conclusion of proceedings, even though two days prior to his arrest he was injured in a car accident, and of a 19-year-old from Iksal, who, because of his detention until the conclusion of proceedings, may lose his chance of admission to the Hebrew University medical school.
Attorney Nicola, who was invited to appear today before the Knesset Interior Committee, intends to present data showing that contrary to what is said in Arbel's document, the detention policy differentiates between Jews and Arabs. In the rioting that took place between September 28 and October 30, the data shows, the police arrested 1,000 Israeli citizens - 34 percent of them Jews and 66 percent Arabs. Up until October 30, 314 indictments have been issued; 79 percent of the Arabs have been charged. The number of people detained until the conclusion of proceedings on that day stood at 184 - 84 percent of them are Arabs.

1- Haaretz, 7-11-2000.

November Thursday 09-2000:

Battling for the right to speak up (1)

By Tamar Rotem

The Arab students at Ben-Gurion University have not been allowed to organize on campus.
Last week the sound of drumbeats came through the closed doors of lecture halls of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva. Students had read in the newspapers that riots were expected at the universities. They looked uneasily at one another. Had the dire predictions come true?.The noise, it quickly turned out, was part of the festival atmosphere of happenings organized by the Students' Union to mark the first week of studies in the new academic year. Still, there were plenty of strident notes, mainly emanating from the Arab students at the universities. In the wake of the disturbances in and around Arab villages last month, they launched a campaign for recognition of their right to organize and demonstrate on campus. So far, the Arab students have chalked up a few points in their favor, including, for the first time, support from Arab and Jewish lecturers.

Despite the directive issued by the Council for Higher Education barring political activity on all campuses during the first week of studies, Ben-Gurion University last week permitted Arab and Jewish teachers to hold a symposium entitled "Jewish-Arab Equality and Coexistence on Campus and in the State." Some 300 students and lecturers showed up for the event, which was held last Tuesday in the presence of the university's rector, Prof. Nahum Finger.

Among the symposium speakers was Mahmoud Mahamid, the chairman of the Arab Students' Union, an organization that is not officially recognized by the university.

During the symposium many of those present noticed that everything was being documented by video cameras. It turned out that the university's security unit had decided to film those in attendance "for security purposes." A petition is currently being circulated in the university - it has so far been signed by about 20 Jewish and Arab lecturers - demanding that the institution's administration ensure that "this disgraceful act" never be repeated.

Ben-Gurion University always took a relatively conservative position in regard to Arab students and issues relating to freedom of expression, as compared to other institutions of higher learning. Now its approach is apparently about to change, although the episode of the filming of the symposium attests to the ambivalence of the heads of the university toward any such change.

There are few Arab students enrolled at BGU, and this is one of the explanations offered for why they have never constituted a genuine force on the campus, in contrast to the situation at the University of Haifa and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There are some 750 Arab students at BGU among a student population of 15,000 or so. The majority of the Arabs (approximately 70 percent) there come from the north of the country.

Some 19 percent of the students (more than 2,000) at the University of Haifa are Arabs, and the proportion in Jerusalem is similar. "In the north they are plugged into their towns and villages, to their source of strength," explains Raif Jumaa, a member of the Culture Committee of the Students' Union at BGU and a resident of the village of Abu Snan in Western Galilee. "Here, the majority of the students are far from home and feel cut off."

The university's regulations do not permit political activity on the grounds of the campus. This effectively neutralizes the Arab students. Whereas other universities (Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University) have allocated areas for demonstrations, in Be'er Sheva the place for a meeting or demonstration (even if it refers to the size of the tuition fees) has to be coordinated anew each time. The elections for the Students' Union are also held on the basis of rules that differ from those in the other universities - not on the basis of political parties as is the case on the other campuses, but according to departments of study. However, in the natural course of things the struggles that are waged within the Students' Union generally assume a political character. In other words, there is political activity on campus, but it is concealed.

In contrast to the other universities, where Arab student committees operate freely, at BGU the body that is supposed to look after the well-being of the Arab students functions as a kind of shadow organization. For the most part, its activity is conducted outside the university (with police authorization), sometimes right next to the main entry gate of the campus. At the end of last year, elections to the Arab students' committee were held for the first time, one reason being to consolidate it as a legitimate body that represents the Arab students. Mahmoud Mahamid, who is active in the Hadash party and is doing his M.A. in Hebrew literature, was elected chairman of the committee.

Last week Mahamid wanted to organize a meeting between freshmen and veteran Arab students in order to help the new students to acclimatize. However, Dean of Students Ya'akov Afek initially turned down his request for a room in which to hold the encounter. It was only when lecturers exerted pressure that permission was granted to hold the meeting, albeit under restrictive conditions. "They told us what we could talk about and what we were not allowed to talk about," Mahamid says. "I was forbidden to refer to the violent events or to talk about discrimination and inequality. The next thing you know, they would have written my text for me and told me to read it out verbatim."

Finally a compromise was worked out, and the encounter took place last Wednesday in the presence of the dean of students and the rector. Mahamid did not mention the "violent events" by so much as a word.

Mahamid, 26, who is from Umm el Fahm in the Galilee, has been living in Be'er Sheva for the past seven years. He intends to do his M.A. thesis on Hebrew poetry of the Middle Ages (among the paitanim - the writers of liturgical verse - he likes Ibn Gvirol and Yehuda Halevy, though he is visibly uncomfortable at mentioning this). He thinks the university ban on organizing and demonstrating violates freedom of expression and is an attempt to silence dissent.

Nowadays, many of the lecturers at the university agree with him. In the wake of the disturbances in "Israel" and the territories, a group of lecturers, Jews and Arabs alike, including heads of departments and research institutes such as Dr. Lev Grinberg, who is the head of the Humphrey Center for Social Research, and Dr. Ismail Abu Saad, who heads the Center for Research of Bedouin Society, spoke out against the ban on campus demonstrations, and activity for freedom of expression was launched. Last week's conference on coexistence and equality was the first manifestation of the new thrust. Mahamid hopes to operate openly this year, with the backing of lecturers, in an effort to put a stop to the discrimination he alleges in the awarding of scholarships and dorm space.

Dr. Amnon Raz Karkutzkin, from BGU's Department of History, maintains that the university's demand for an apolitical campus is unreasonable, particularly in the existing reality in "Israel". "The right for party activity by Arabs is legitimate," he says. "An Arab students' committee is something elementary. Obviously, in a body consisting of a national minority, national and political issues will come up for discussion, because for the Arabs even the question of dorms is a political one, and the demand for recognition is also legitimate." At the same time, he notes, an incipient change in the university's approach is discernible. "The fact that the university lent its auspices to a meeting with the participation of the Arab Students' Committee was important. It helped calm passions and also contributed to the creation of a legitimate political dialogue. That was a step toward the recognition of the Arab Students' Committee."

"This is the most open campus in terms of relations between Jewish and Arab lecturers," says Dr. Tabath Abu Ras, from the Department of Geography, "but it is the worst in terms of freedom of expression. Even in Iran universities permit students to express themselves in every sphere." Not many at the university know that 20 years ago, Abu Ras, who is today a political geographer and a member of Hadash who assists the Arab Students' Committee, was expelled from the campus for engaging in political activity. He is now in his second year as a teacher. When he was studying for his B.A. and founded an Arab-Jewish students' movement called Campus in Be'er Sheva, he was expelled. He sued the university over the expulsion; the court sought to reach a compromise in which he would resume his studies on the condition he undertook not to engage in political activity. He decided to drop out of school. He later studied in the United States.

Now, Abi Ras says that it is important for him to point out that Jewish and Arab lecturers have been acting together. Next spring the Arab students will put their case to the university's Board of Governors. "It will not be so terrible for the university to allocate an area for political activity," he says. "We could agree on controlled political activity, and of course whatever is done would have to be within the framework of the law."

Next week BGU will host a conference on the right to demonstrate. Among those expected to attend are the civil rights attorney Avigdor Feldman, Prof. Kenneth Mann from Tel Aviv University, and activists from the Adalah organization for Arab minority rights in "Israel". Meanwhile the Rector, Prof. Finger, ardently defends the university's position. A students' union that is based not on political parties but on "representation by professions and disciplines" is preferable, he says, as it enables the problems that affect students to be dealt with more effectively. The university's approach, he says, helps it preserve "a bit of civility" and enables it to be "the only sane place around."

The university, he points out, does not prevent social or cultural organizing. "If the Arab students wanted to establish an Omar Khayam fan club, would we object?

1- Same source

* This term is absolutely unacceptable. ""Israel"'s" Army is that of war and aggression for it protects land gained by force, confiscation and war in contradiction with the simplest rights of human confessed by the international laws and conventions.