Palestine – Features

By Amira Hass

(source: Haaretz)

A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, or their indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years.

When the order comes into effect, tens of thousands of Palestinians will automatically become criminal offenders liable to be severely punished.

Given the security authorities’ actions over the past decade, the first Palestinians likely to be targeted under the new rules will be those whose ID cards bear home addresses in the Gaza Strip – people born in Gaza and their West Bank-born children – or those born in the West Bank or abroad who for various reasons lost their residency status. Also likely to be targeted are foreign-born spouses of Palestinians.

Until now, Israeli civil courts have occasionally prevented the expulsion of these three groups from the West Bank. The new order, however, puts them under the sole jurisdiction of Israeli military courts.

Read More »Idf order will enable mass deportation from west bank

Israeli men arrested upon arrival on island by officers claiming they came to spy on Dubai citizens

By Itamar Eichner

(source: YNet News)

Three Israeli men have been turned out of Mauritius on suspicion they were there on a secret mission to spy on tourists from Dubai, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.The three arrived on the island, an exotic tourist destination in the Indian Ocean, in order to conclude their trip to the Soccer World Cup.

But they never made it to the turquoise beaches. As soon as they landed immigration officers, who were convinced they were Mossad agents who had come to the island to disturb the peace, placed them under arrest and submitted them to hours of intensive interrogations.

The three 30-year old men all reside in Tel Aviv. Ido and Roee Reicher, a pair of twins, are computer engineers and their friend, Avi Levinstein, owns a sushi restaurant. They had been planning their trip for six months.

"We heard it was paradise. It’s cold in South Africa, and we were told it’s hot in Mauritius, so we decided to spoil ourselves and come back with a tan," Roee said. He said they had arrived Saturday on a British Airways flight, and were held up at passport control. "They looked at our passports, flipped through them, and then began to speak in French, saying, ‘Israelis, Israelis’," Roee said.

Read More »Mossad agents expelled from mauritius

Hindu holy man reveals truth of terror attacks blamed on Muslims

By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi

(source: The Independent)

India is being forced to confront disturbing evidence that increasingly suggests a secret Hindu terror network may have been responsible for a wave of deadly attacks previously blamed on radical Muslims.

Information contained in a confession given in court by a Hindu holy man, suggests that he and several others linked to a right-wing Hindu organisation, planned and carried out attacks on a train travelling to Pakistan, a Sufi shrine and a mosque as well as two assaults on Malegaon, a town in southern India with a large Muslim population.

He claimed the attacks were launched in response to the actions of Muslim militants. “I told everybody that we should answer bombs with bombs,” 59-year-old Swami Aseemanand, whose real name is Naba Kumar Sarkar, told a magistrate during a closed hearing in Delhi. “I suggested that 80 per cent of the people of Malegaon were Muslims and we should explode the first bomb in Malegaon itself. I also said that during partition, the Nizam of Hyderabad had wanted to go with Pakistan so Hyderabad was also a fair target. Then I said that since Hindus also throng [a Sufi shrine in] Ajmer we should also explode a bomb in Ajmer which would deter the Hindus from going there. I also suggested the Aligarh Muslim University as a target.”

Police in India have suspected for some time that Hindus may have been responsible for the attacks carried out between 2006 and 2008, and in November of that year several arrests were made, including that of a serving military officer. But the confession of Swami Aseemanand, obtained by an Indian news magazine, is perhaps the most damning evidence yet that Hindu extremists were responsible. It also suggests those involved were senior members of a religious group that is the parent organisation of India’s main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“The evidence is not conclusive but people have to take notice of this,” said Bahukutumbi Raman, a former national security adviser and now a leading regional security analyst. “This could aggravate tensions between India’s [Hindu and Muslim] communities. It will create problems.”

Read More »Saffron terrorism

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

(source: www.salem-news.com)

In a follow-up to the very successful 15 May36(the beginning of the global uprising), activists around the world called for a day of protests Friday (tomorrow). In Bethlehem, we gather after Friday Prayers in front of Omar’s Mosque (the Nativity Square) and march towards the apartheid wall.

President Obama tried in his (Cairo II) speech to again convince a sceptical world that the US promotes democracy and human rights. We have heard all of this orientalist talk before and yet have seen no action/change. The change is coming from the people waving Palestinian and Egyptian flags everywhere. Even Obama’s rhetoric seems hypocritical: why speak of peaceful demonstrations being suppressed in Syria and Libya but not speak about the constant repression of demonstrators by the Israeli apartheid regime? Obama even went further than other US presidents and talked as a typical Zionist: he lectured us, the native people, that we should stop “de-legitimising” Israel and accept it as “a Jewish state”, “for the Jewish people”. Even Reagan who, supporting apartheid South Africa in his first term, did not ask that we stop de-legitimising South Africa and recognise it as a “White state”, “for the white people”. What about International law (not mentioned by Obama) and what about a state of all its citizens (including the refugees who must be allowed to return to their homes and lands)? No, these basic rights are to be removed and the colonisers have a right to security but the colonised must be content to live in a demilitarised ghetto and accept their

dispossession.

Ronald Reagan refused to speak to AIPAC. But Obama agreed. Reagan at least pulled troops out of Lebanon while Obama still keeps his troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan (and uses the verbal trick of “ending combat mission”). Obama will also host war criminals at the White House and Netanyahu (the gang leader) will address the (Israeli-occupied) congress. No mention will be made of Israel’s illegal use of US weaponry in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet, the successes of the popular uprisings in the Arab world, including the new uprising that started on 15 May in Palestine and two scandals that hit the apartheid state this week, add to the cracks in the “Iron Wall” (fortified by the US). In one scandal, Russia charged the Israeli military attaché working at the Israeli Embassy with espionage and expelled him. Russia and Turkey and many other countries previously friendly to the apartheid regime have been changing. Israeli papers also reported that Ron Arad, national security adviser to Netanyahu, did not actually resign voluntarily but was fired because he leaked “sensitive information”. The “sensitive” information was that the United States had given Israel unequivocal guarantees that its “strategic capabilities” in the nuclear field would be preserved and strengthened (according to Haaretz). This put another nail in the coffin of the “change we can believe in” façade and embarrassed Obama.

Read More »Unchanging Obama challenged by the changing landsCape