A home demolition in Hebron. (Photo: Occupied Palestine)
AFP reports:
Israel is dispossessing Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as its Arab minority with a “strategy of Judaisation,” a United Nations representative charged on Sunday.
Presenting her preliminary findings after a tour of Israel and the Palestinian territories this month, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, said she had seen a pattern of discrimination.
“From the Galilee and the Negev to east Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities promote a territorial development model that excludes, discriminates against and displaces minorities, particularly affecting Palestinian communities, side by side with the accelerated development of predominantly Jewish settlements,” she said.
“As a whole, it is clear that Israeli policies and practices for the Palestinian population in east Jerusalem and the West Bank violate international human rights and humanitarian law,” she added. . .
Her findings will be presented to Israel and the Palestinians, before being compiled into a final report due out in May 2013.
The initial findings presented on Sunday also accuse Israel of violating the rights of “low income persons of all identities, who find it increasingly difficult to obtain housing under existing policies.”
Rolnik noted that the state controls 93% of the land inside Israel, providing it with a “golden opportunity to promote housing,” she said.
“You can control land prices here, unlike other countries,” she said.
Helena Cobban added in an email to me:
What is really interesting is this UN official moving from a laws-of-war (IHL) context for her judgments to using a generalized anti-discrimination frame that extends seamlessly over the (once and former) Green Line.
From one perspective this is very concerning. Under IHL Israel, as the occupying power in East Jerusalem, has no right to move any of its civilian population into OEJ, period. And that would apply whether it implanted a robust mix of Palestinian-Israeli citizens and Jewish-Israeli citizens into OEJ and the rest of the occupied West Bank, or not. (Which of course, it doesn’t.)
From another perspective, this shift from an IHL optic to a general human-rights optic erases the increasingly fictional notion of the Green Line. It focuses an international spotlight on issues of gross housing and land-use discrimination inside as well as outside 1948 Israel… and it opens the way for a much more robust discussion of Palestinian *rights*, as such, and how they may be restored…
I don’t think it’s right to call it Judaisation. These people are not really Jews in the sense of belonging to a religious community with a long shared tradition of morality and decency , of adherence to the tenets of faith , of respect, of tikkun olam etc.
They are more like members of a cult.
The UN has condemned this for 60 years. Wake me when they actually do something.
Krauss
Judaism has always outlasted its zealots and extremists . There is no other way to endure over 25 centuries . And this time is no different.
Hajo Meyer on Leviticus 19:34
http://vimeo.com/19395262
And nothing will be done
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/israel-and-proxy-terrorism/252971/
Israel and Proxy Terrorism
By Robert Wright
Feb 13 2012, 8:43 AM ET 83
Should Israel be classified as a state sponsor of terrorism? That question is being debated in the wake of a story that NBC News broke late last week.
Citing unnamed US officials, NBC reported that Israel has used an Iranian opposition group to carry out those much-publicized assassinations of Iranian scientists. The group in question is the M.E.K. (Mojahedin-e Khalq, or People’s Mujahedin of Iran), which since 1997 has been designated a terrorist group by the United States because of its alleged assassinations of US citizens.
The argument for considering Israel a supporter of terrorism comes in two varieties:
1) According to NBC, Israel gives the M.E.K. the funding, training, and weapons to carry out the assassinations–and that would seem to constitute support for a terrorist group.
2) Leaving aside the M.E.K. involvement, there’s the argument that the assassinations inherently constitute terrorism. Andrew Sullivan and Kevin Drum had previously suggested that whoever is behind the assassinations is committing terrorism, but this NBC story is the first mainstream media corroboration of the widespread suspicion that Israel is behind them.
After the NBC story broke, Paul Pillar, a former CIA official who teaches at Georgetown, dusted off the definition of terrorism used by the US government for purposes of keeping statistics: “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” That, says Pillar, is what these assassinations are.