Lawfare – Breaking News

By Maisa Abu Ghazaleh – Palestine News Network

The city’s Center for Democracy and Human Rights, along with the monitoring group the National Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, were part of a report issued under the name the Alahli Coalition regarding Israeli violations during the month of July.

The findings were not encouraging, with the Israeli authorities continuing to “commit more serious and gross violations of human rights which is inconsistent with the provisions of international law and the rules of international humanitarian law.”
The report, issued yesterday afternoon, is divided into chapters in which the first addresses the issues of home demolitions and attempts to seize property and evacuate homes, demolition, bulldozing, confiscation and settlements.

Chapter II addresses the issues of barriers, blockades, closures and raids, arrests and arbitrary detention, and abuse of the right to live. The report indicated that seven houses were demolished while 60 more notices were distributed.

Read More »Human rights violations are described as becoming increasingly gross and more serious in jerusal

(source: Huffington Post)

Majida Abu Rahmah: My imprisoned husband Abdullah Abu Rahmah passed the following message through his lawyer:

A year ago tonight, on International Human Rights Day, our apartment in Ramallah was broken into by the Israeli military in the middle of the night and I was torn away from my wife Majida, my daughters Luma and Layan, and my son Laith, who at the time was only nine months old.

As the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements I was convicted of “organizing illegal demonstrations” and “incitement.” The “illegal demonstrations” refer to the nonviolent resistance campaign that my village has been waging for the last six years against Israel’s Apartheid Wall that is being built on our land.

I find it strange that the military judges could call our demonstrations illegal and charge me for participating in and organizing them after the world’s highest legal body, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, has ruled that Israel’s wall within the occupied territories is illegal and must be dismantled. Even the Israeli supreme court ruled that the Wall’s route in Bil’in is illegal.

I have been accused of inciting violence: this charge is also puzzling. If the check points, closures, ongoing land theft, wall and settlements, night raids into our homes and violent oppression of our protests does not incite violence, what does?

Read More »A message from Isaraeli military prison on international human rights day

By Ramzy Baroud

(source: Znet- Ramzy Baroud’s blogspot)

Gaza’s troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped from the mainstream media’s radar, and subsequently the world’s conscience and consciousness. Weaning the public from the sadness there conveys the false impression that things are improving and that people are starting to move on and rebuild their lives.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel’s war last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Health declared that 344 Gaza patients have reportedly been added to the swelling number of casualties.

Khaled Abed Rabbu, once a young father of four is a precise living example, such an eloquent paradigm of what no human being ought to endure in this world laden with international human rights organizations, mediators, advocates and diplomats.

His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his little girls. He buried 7 year old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after burying any hope that Samar his 4 year old daughter’s future would be any less bleak.

According to an IslamOnline report, Khaled’s wife, Kawthar lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding a white flag. But their internationally recognized gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces and the shelling of their home and family commenced. These miserable36unfolded at Christmastime last year, when the Rabbu family was reduced by nearly half.

But since then, they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds. Completely surrounded still, and prevented from ever advancing back to point zero, the Israeli siege on Gaza is what one must certainly brand the quintessence of barbarism.

Read More »Fighting for the right to walk