Land, Property, Resources Theft & Destruction / Ethnic Cleansing / Apartheid / Restriction of Movement
Jerusalem Municipality officers, accompanied by armed forces, canvassed Silwan on Sunday, 30 October morning to deliver vast numbers of demolition orders to Palestinian families and store-owners in the village. A military raid of the village was staged immediately thereafter.
Aqsa foundation warns of the plans to demolish the Bab al-Maghareba bridge
AFEH intends to launch an information campaign warning of the dangers of the occupation plans to demolish the rest of the bridge leading to the Bab al-Magahreba of the Aqsa Mosque.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7bpakNVd7Jdk2aSacTMNon5NiIiMR%2bq8soimU5v1Gw0Dn73Oz%2fo5tJkV%2bpVZ02eWvSKCnkIQZHeb1egv2C8TKohnmDb1DY%2bjvuBms8KSzDqY%3d
On Thursday November 3rd at dawn, 8 military jeeps with around 25 soldiers and one bulldozer arrived at Um Alfagara. The bulldozer immediately began to demolish six pylons built for bringing electrical wires from the nearby village of Attwani to Um Alfagara. The bulldozer worked a couple of hours, guarded by the Israeli Occupation Forces until the six pylons were torn down and destroyed.
Nil’in: The solitary confinement of olive trees
The selective Israeli permission system prevents many families from Nil’in from reaching their land behind the wall to pick their own olives as the olive harvest season nears its end. The families who received permissions have until the 10th November to pick their trees Most of the Palestinians from Nil’in who received permission are women and young children studying, forcing them to choose between school obligations and the important harvest of olive trees.
About one month ago we reported to you on the state of the local schoolhouse in Palestinian Susiya [Susya]… A little while before arriving at the Susiya school, we learned of yet another act of destruction inflicted by the Israeli Military Occupation’s “Civil Administration” arm.
Palestinian Killed, Three Wounded, As Army Air Strikes Khan Younis
Palestinian medical sources reported that the Israeli Air Force fired, on Saturday evening, missiles into Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian and injuring at least three others.
http://www.imemc.org/article/62451
Youth Injured By Israeli Fire In Gaza
Israeli soldiers opened fire on Saturday morning at Palestinian civilians near the “Nahal Oz” zone, east of the Gaza Strip leading to the injury of a Palestinian youth, the Maan News Agency reported on Saturday morning
Army Attacks Weekly Protests Against The Wall, Injuries Reported
Israeli soldiers attacked on Friday the weekly nonviolent protest against the Annexation Wall and settlements, in Bil’in village near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, dozens suffered the effects of teargas inhalation. Soldiers also attacked nonviolent protests in Nil’in village, Nabi Saleh, Kafr Qaddoum, and Al Ma’sara.
2 rockets hit Hof Ashkelon; 1 hurt
Fired within space of three hours, rockets explode in open areas south of Ashkelon. One foreign worker sustains light wounds caused by shrapnel.
Hamas calls on Arab League to end the siege
Hamas called on the Arab League to break the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip in response to Israeli piracy against international solidarity activists who were trying to break the siege.
Only hours after activists from popular committees and youth movements throughout the West Bank formally presented the Egyptian ambassador, His Excellency Yasser Othman, with an appeal and a petition to open the Rafah crossing unconditionally and permanently, the Palestinians of Gaza learned that the crossing will in fact be closed for six consecutive days during the Eid holiday. A petition was originally issued by Gaza-based civil society sectors including academics, students, workers, and youth. It was immediately supported publically by Egyptian revolutionaries and grass-roots organizations as well as renowned International human rights defenders such as Desmond Tutu and Richard Falk.
http://palsolidarity.org/2011/11/act-now-rafah-border-crossing-closed-for-6-days/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+palsolidarity+%28International+Solidarity+Movement%29
Israeli soldiers kidnapped on Saturday a Palestinian resident, active in nonviolent resistance against the Annexation Wall and settlements, in Beit Ummar Town, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
Gaza flotilla activists planning series of aid ships over coming months
In light of the previous flotilla’s failure earlier this year, organizers have been operating quietly in an effort to avoid bureaucratic delays and Israeli efforts to stop the operation, says Huwaida Arraf.
Israel Interrogates Four Activists Of Solidarity Ships
Israel sources reported that the Israeli Authorities interrogated four activists who were onboard the Irish and the Canadian ships (Freedom Waves) that were intercepted by the army, on Friday, while on their way to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.
AP – Israel has begun deportation procedures for a group of pro-Palestinian activists who tried to breach its naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
France, Britain, Columbia, Bosnia to Abstain on Palestinian Statehood Vote, Richard Silverstein
Most people concerned with the UN Secuity Council’s upcoming vote on Palestinian statehood have been focussing on the number 9. Nine votes are required to pass a resolution and if it receives that many, a member may then veto the resolution. Apparently, if Palestine fails to secure the nine votes (which would be followed by a U.S. veto), it is unlikely the General Assembly would then take up the matter. This is what the U.S. hopes as it wishes to avoid the embarrassing phenomenon of vetoing a resolution supporting a policy it purports to support (Palestinian statehood). With the statehood bid supposedly dead, the Obama administration would breathe a sigh of relief that it, and its ally Israel, had dodged a bullet.
Israel, U.S. to embark on largest joint exercise in allies’ history
U.S. Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro says security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper, more intense than ever before.
What Israeli, U.S. leaders of 1977 hoped would be Jerusalem’s fate
A previously unpublished transcript of a meeting between Israeli and U.S. leaders in Washington on December 17, 1977, offers a surprising revelation: Prime Minister Begin’s suggestion that autonomous international religious councils would oversee Jerusalem’s holy places.
Iran demands UN censure of Israel, US ‘threats’
Islamic Republic urges UN to officially denounce Washington, Jerusalem over their reported threats to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities; say such statements ‘violate international law’.
US ‘not seeking’ confrontation with Iran
State Department tries to downplay bubbling speculation over possible strike against Islamic Republic, says US would rather exercise, exhaust ‘tough diplomacy’ first.
U.S. military official: We are concerned Israel will not warn us before Iran attack
Senior U.S. military official tells CNN U.S. ‘increasingly vigilant’ over military developments in Iran and Israel, says ‘absolutely’ concerned Israel may attack Iran nuclear facilities.
Peres: I believe Israel, world approaching military option on Iran nuclear threat
President says nations of the world made commitments to Israel and they must now make good on those commitments to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability.
Suddenly, this week, everyone was talking about an attack on Iran. But charges by politicians that it’s the media that are blowing this story out of proportion invite incredulity.
Territory of Lies: Israeli-Occupied Hearing on ‘Iranian Plot’, Maidhc Ó Cathail
In the wake of the much-heralded FBI sting that supposedly foiled a dastardly plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard elite Qods Force – involving a bumbling, failed used-car salesman’s botched attempt to hire a reportedly Mossad-trained Mexican drug cartel – to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a crowded but fictitious Washington D.C. restaurant, a duly alarmed U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security convened an urgent hearing on “Iranian Terror Operations on American Soil.” As evidence of Tehran’s supposed threat to the Homeland, the Committee heard testimony from “expert witnesses” who could best be described as propagandists for Israel. Commenting on the partisan line-up, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations remarked, “If it wasn’t so serious, it would be satire.”
The Israeli government has been openly threatening Iran with attack for years, and we have learned not to take their outbreaks of war hysteria too seriously. During the last year of George W. Bush’s final term in office, there was heightened speculationthat Tel Aviv was pressuring Washington to launch such an attack, and indeed itappears Vice President Dick Cheney argued for precisely that, albeit to no avail. Now the war talk has been revived by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, along with his defense minister, Ehud Barak, has not only been arguing within the Cabinet for such a strike, but has now supposedly moved into the implementation stage.
Debunking the Iran “Terror Plot”, Gareth Porter
At a press conference on October 11, the Obama administration unveiled a spectacular charge against the government of Iran: The Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, right in Washington, DC, in a place where large numbers of innocent bystanders could have been killed. High-level officials of the Qods Force were said to be involved, the only question being how far up in the Iranian government the complicity went.
Israel Will Not Attack Iran. Period, Uri Avnery
Everybody knows the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. ‘Hold me back!’ he shouts to his comrades, ‘Before I break his bones!’ Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran. Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens.
35 dead and injured in two consecutive explosions southwest Iraq’s Baquba
35 people, mostly Al Sahwa militants, were killed and injured in two consecutive explosions south-western Baquba, a Diyala police source reported on Thursday.
The Lede Blog: Protesters Blocked From Returning to Bahrain’s Pearl Square
Hundreds of protesters were prevented from returning to a symbolic square in Manama after the funeral of a man the main opposition party said was beaten to death by security forces this week.
Bahrainis clash with police at funeral (Reuters)
Reuters – Thousands of Bahraini Shi’ites clashed with security forces on Friday during the funeral of a man opposition group Wefaq said died after a police assault, witnesses said.
AP – Bahrain has released a teenage Iraqi football player detained for seven months in Bahrain on suspicion of participating in anti-government protests.
King Abdullah Names Brother as Saudi Arabia Defense Minister
Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, 76, is seen as a possible candidate to someday rule the nation.
State Department training Islamic political parties in Egypt
U.S. assistance to Egypt is helping political parties of all ideologies prepare for the upcoming elections — even Islamic parties that may have anti-Western agendas. ”We don’t do party support. What we do is party training…. And we do it to whoever comes,” William Taylor, the State Department’s director of its new office for Middle East Transitions, said in a briefing with reporters today. ”Sometimes, Islamist parties show up, sometimes they don’t. But it has been provided on a nonpartisan basis, not to individual parties.”
Egyptian military court rejects Maspero activist’s appeal
Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces must immediately release a prominent blogger and activist detained in connection with the bloody crackdown on the Maspero protests, Amnesty International said today, after a military court rejected on Thursday his appeal against his continuing detention.
Alaa Abdel Fattah, the Egyptian blogger and activist who has been jailed for refusing to answer the questions of a military prosecutor about the Maspero Affair, has been shifted to another cell. In another heart-breaking dispatch from prison, he explains why: I am writing this note with a deep sense of shame. I have just been moved from Ist’naf (appeal) prison, at my request and insistence, because I simply couldn’t withstand the difficult conditions there: because of the darkness, the filth , the roaming cockroaches, crawling over my body night and day; because there was no courtyard, no sunshine and, again, the darkness.
Thomas Friedman’s bouts of hypocrisy, Belén Fernández
Belén Fernández takes The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to task in this excerpt from her new book, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work.
I saw Dan Senor speak last year at Cornell when he was on book tour for his well-timed intervention about Israel’s miracle economy. Jewish groups on campus which I didn’t even know existed popped out to paste their names onto posters as sponsors of his talk. Senor was a spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and an adviser to the Bush II administration, and so almost certainly culpable for war crimes, but for the organized campus organs of American Jewry, mobilizing Jewish identity behind state aggression and the murder of millions is nearly reflexive.
5 Issues David “Go GOP” Ramadan Refused To Address During Campaign
Matt Lee Takes It to State Department’s Nuland Again, Richard Silverstein
The AP’s Matt Lee is going to make himself a mini wonk-celebrity for his habit of making mince-meat of the State Department’s Victoria Nuland during her press briefings. Yesterday, he took her on over the UNCESCO defunding and Israel’s announcement it would be building 2,000 new settlement housing units and withholding PA tax revenue in punishment for the UN organization’s vote to accept Palestine as a full member.
‘Occupy London Stock Exchange’ protests outside of parliament
About 200 anti-capitalist protesters linked to a group camped outside London’s St Paul’s Cathedral demonstrated on Saturday outside the parliament. Protesters from the Occupy London Stock Exchange (OLSX) group had set off on a march towards Trafalgar Square but a breakaway group headed to the square outside the Houses of Parliament. Scuffles broke out as police tried to block the demonstrators, some wearing Guy Fawkes masks that have become a symbol of their protest, from moving into the square but some managed to get in.
AP – Officials say a second Iraq war veteran is hospitalized after getting hurt during protests in Oakland.
Nurses join Occupy SF to march for tax
About 200 nurses joined Occupy San Francisco protesters Thursday and marched from the Federal Reserve building up California Street to Wells Fargo Bank’s main branch, promoting a tax on financial transactions
Green candidate for mayor based in Occupy Tucson tent
TUCSON, Ariz (Reuters) – There is no bank of telephones at Mary DeCamp’s campaign headquarters, no volunteers eager to bring her message to the masses. The Green Party candidate for mayor of Tucson, who is days away from losing her home to foreclosure, is flanked by fellow Occupy Tucson activists as she directs her long shot bid for public office from a borrowed tent in a local park.
Occupy Chicago shouts down Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) probably felt right at home in Chicago Thursday after protesters from the Occupy movement interrupted his speech on budget reforms. The governor was about to speak at the Union League Club of Chicago when about 50 protesters disguised in suits temporarily delayed him from taking the podium.
Protesters occupy Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office
About 20 unemployed and underemployed D.C. residents occupied the office of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell (KY) on Thursday, pledging to remain until the senator met with them about the Rebuild America Act.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/03/protesters-occupy-sen-mitch-mcconnells-office/
They ain’t got no Park Rangers in Apartheid israel – nosiribob – they got israeli nature AUTHORITY!
Who apparently are a buncha child-abusing sadists!
Is there no end to evil on this planet? Yes it is evil to be in control of the so-called holylands and subject it’s natives to daily remorseless atrocities for the past 22,995days.
Twenty-two thousand and nine-hundred and ninety-five days = 63 years.
i think this is the same palestinian own land we posted about here in Orwell in East Jerusalem. the settlers want it for a parking lot. the municipality is claiming they are not confiscating it!
so they are arresting/harassing the kids who use it?
“to enter private land”.
For Israeli forces there is no “private land”.
They feel like they own everything ,and everybody in the area.
No respect for private property, no respect for people rights, no respect for people’ lives. No respect for anything.
They are the MASTERS.
And , what an irony, they call it (for the world to see) a democracy.
If words don’t follow actions , they are useless, empty, they are a travesty of themselves.
Palestinian children’s lives are less important than car parking obviously, and all that tourist revenue. After all, Palestinian children might grow into Palestinian adults, and how scary is that to those fragile, vulnerable, cowering-in-constant-fear Israelis? You know, adults with expectations of civil and human rights – outrageous, eh.
“They made us many promises, more than I can remember.
But they kept but one–They promised to take our land…and they took it.”
Chief Red Cloud – Sioux