South Africa – Breaking News

 Israeli Settlers Terrorise Palestinian Villagers

By Mel Frykberg

AT TUWANI, West Bank, Mar 9 (IPS) – "I couldn’t run. My pregnancy was too far advanced and there was nowhere to hide," said Amna Salman Rabaye, 31, as she recalled the terrifying incident several months ago.

Rabaye from the Palestinian Bedouin village of At Tuwani in the southern West Bank was grazing her sheep when she was assaulted by a security guard from the adjacent illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’on.

"We saw a group of masked Israeli settlers armed with sticks and chains heading towards us. The younger shepherds ran and managed to escape, leaving me with the flock of sheep," Rabaye told IPS.

"It was physically impossible for me to run and I also didn’t want the settlers to kill or steal my sheep. The security guard pushed me over but I was not injured," recalled Rabaye who was then seven months pregnant.

At Tuwani was established over 300 years ago by nomadic tribes of Bedouin who first moved into the area seeking shelter in the nearby caves. However, Israeli settlers built the adjacent Ma’on settlement in 1982. The nearby illegal outpost of Havot Ma’on was built at a later date.

Outposts normally comprise small settlements ranging from a few caravans, which are sometimes connected to water and electricity, to slightly larger settlements. They are referred to as outposts by the media as they are generally not recognised by the Israeli government.

The settlements, however, which are legal under Israeli law can number from several hundred residents to small towns with thousands of inhabitants, and all the associated infrastructure.

There are nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and nearly 200,000 in East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli information centre for human rights B’Tselem.

Under international law, including various UN Security Council resolutions, the settlements are built illegally on Palestinian land.

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The necessity of cultural boycott

Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada

The international movement to boycott Israel has gained irrepressible momentum. (Mushir Abdelrahman/MaanImages) June 23, 2009 If there is anything new in the never-ending sad story of Palestine it is the clear shift in public opinion in the UK. I remember coming to these isles in 1980 when supporting the Palestinian cause was confined to the left and in it to a very particular section and ideological stream. The post-Holocaust trauma and guilt complex, military and economic interests and the charade of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East all played a role in providing immunity for the State of Israel. Very few were moved, so it seems, by a state that had dispossessed half of Palestine’s native population, demolished half of their villages and towns, discriminated against the minority among them who lived within its borders through an apartheid system and divided into enclaves two million and a half of them in a harsh and oppressive military occupation. Almost 30 years later it seems that all these filters and cataracts have been removed. The magnitude of the ethnic cleansing of 1948 is well known, the suffering of the people in the occupied territories recorded and described even by the US president as unbearable and inhuman. In a similar way, the destruction and depopulation of the greater Jerusalem area is noted daily and the racist nature of the policies towards the Palestinians in Israel are frequently rebuked and condemned. The reality today in 2009 is described by the UN as "a human catastrophe." The conscious and conscientious sections of British society know very well who caused and who produced this catastrophe. This is not related any more to elusive circumstances, or to the "conflict" — it is seen clearly as the outcome of Israeli policies throughout the years. When Archbishop Desmond Tutu was asked for his reaction to what he saw in the occupied territories, he noted sadly that it was worse than apartheid. He should know. As in the case of South Africa, these decent people, either as individuals or as members of organizations, voice their outrage against the continued oppression, colonization, ethnic cleansing and starvation in Palestine. They are looking for ways of showing their protest and some even hope convince their government to change its old policy of indifference and inaction in the face of the continued destruction of Palestine and the Palestinians. Many among them are Jews, as these atrocities are done in their name according to the logic of the Zionist ideology, and quite a few among them are veterans of previous civil struggles in this country for similar causes all over the world. They are not confined any more to one political party and they come from all walks of life.

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October 14 2008 Complaint The South African Zionist Federation complained against the strap above the headline of an article by… Read More »The south African zionist federation vs the star ruling by press ombudsman joe thloloe

What Kind of State?

by Nadia Hijab

Israelis fear that Obama will make them recognize Palestinian rights and force them to give up the Palestinian and Syrian territory they have been busy colonizing since 1967, notes Nadia Hijab.

Arab and Israeli commentators have pretty much outlined the speech Barack Obama will deliver in Egypt during his June visit, even though he is still meeting with the region’s leaders in Washington. While some are optimistic, many are fearful. Israelis fear that Obama will make them recognize Palestinian rights and force them to give up the Palestinian and Syrian territory they have been busy colonizing since 1967. Arabs fear Obama will announce that their leaders plan further concessions in the form of expanded normalization with Israel in the Arab and Islamic worlds before a full withdrawal and comprehensive peace. They also fear his speech will nix the Palestinian right of return, which is both an individual and a collective right under international law, and support Israel as a “Jewish state” instead of the state of all its citizens. There is agreement on one thing: The Obama administration wants to see a comprehensive peace centered on a two-state solution in its lifetime. If this is indeed the case, Palestinians and Israelis face an existential question: What kind of state will each have?

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