30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11
1
11
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11
Palestinian Weekly Report is a periodical insight into the latest developments of the Palestinian Issue. It’s issued by The Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia and it focuses on the most important news and analysis about the happenings of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation in the Holy Lands of Palestine. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect PCOM's editorial policy.
Contents
News Tour Jordan's king receives Hamas as leader ................................................................................................ ...................................... 3 Palestinian-Israeli Israeli talks in Amman end without progress ................................................................ ...................................... 4 Israel steps up campaign of arresting Palestinian parliamentarians ...................................................... ................................ 5 EU concerned over arrest of Dweik and other MPs ................................................................ ............................................... 6 Israel confiscates 350 acres in occupied Jerusalem in just three weeks ................................................ ................................ 7 Baroness Cathy Ashton visits Gaza ................................................................................................ ......................................... 7 Tadamun: Israel detained student because of his graduate project ...................................................... ................................ 8
Press Release Israeli Army kidnaps the Speaker of the Palestinian Parliament ............................................................ ................................ 9
2
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11
News Tour Jordan's king receives Hamas leader The crackdown upset many Jordanians of Palestinian origin, a majority of the population, who saw it as a dangerous precedent in a country where many native Jordanians oppose a larger political role for Palestinians. 'Historic visit' A senior Jordanian official called Meshaal's trip on Sunday a "protocol visit", the AFP news agency reported. However, Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, who are ideologically close to Hamas, is portraying Meshaal's visit as "historic".
30/01/2012 Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is in Jordan on his first official visit since he was forced to leave in 1999 for what authorities called "illicit and harmful" activities.
"The meeting today (Sunday) is historic. Qatari mediation is supporting the palace's efforts to reformulate Jordan-Hamas relations in line with national interests," Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood said on its website.
The trip on Sunday by Meshaal, who was accompanied by Qatar's crown prince, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, is seen as a rapprochement between the Jordanian monarchy and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Meshaal said he hoped "other chapters in a strong relationship" with Jordan would follow. "Hamas is concerned about the security of Jordan and its stability and we respect this," he said.
Jordan's King Abdullah held talks with Meshaal, who is usually based in Damascus, and his five-member delegation of top Hamas officials including deputy chairman Mousa Abu Marzouk. Sheikh Tamim attended the talks as a mediator.
Meshaal also responded to calls from some in Israel for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland in Jordan as a substitute for the Palestinian refugees' right to return.
Meshaal, who has Jordanian nationality, was born in then Jordan-administered West Bank in 1956 and lived there with his family until they were forced to flee when Israel occupied the territory in 1967.
"The Hamas movement categorically rejects all alternative homeland projects in Jordan and we insist on restoring all our rights fully so that Palestine is Palestine and Jordan is Jordan," Meshaal said.
Relations between Hamas and Jordan have been strained since 1999, when the authorities expelled Meshaal and three other Hamas members during a crackdown on the group amid charges that it harmed Jordanian security and stability.
Speaking from Amman, Al Jazeera's Nisreen El Shamayleh said the visit could be to help improve relations between the government and Jordan's Islamists, who have been one of the groups staging protests calling for reform since January 2011. 3
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11 "King Abdullah has realised the important role Islamists groups are playing in [the Arab] revolutions and since he has faced protests at home here in Jordan he has decided to reach out to Hamas," our correspondent said.
Meshaal survived a 1997 assassination attempt in Amman by two agents by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad who tried to poison him outside his office. Source: Aljazeera English
She said the meeting is also an attempt to mend relations with Qatar, which has strained relations with Jordan in recent years. _________________________________________________________________________________
Palestinian-Israeli talks in Amman end without progress no more meetings would be held between negotiators from the two sides prior to consultations with Arab and international bodies. Jordanian Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, said that results of the discussions were being evaluated and that consultations would be undertaken with the Arab League, the Arab Peace Initiative Committee, and the Middle East Quartet. He also said that no talks would be held next week “to allow us to assess where we are and how to move to the next stage�.
27/01/2012 A three-week long round of meetings in the Jordanian capital, Amman, between the Palestinian and Israeli negotiators; Saeb Erekat and Isaac Molkho, has ended without having led to a resumption in negotiations or any other steps forward for the political process.
Judeh said that the meetings revealed differences between the stances taken by the two sides, but that they were marked by clarity, frankness, and genuineness.
Palestinian and Israeli sources have said that in light of the PA’s insistence on a halt to illegal settlement construction as a precondition to the resumption of negotiations, alongside Tel Aviv's continued refusal to comply with any Palestinian demands, the meetings in Amman yielded no progress.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, previously called for the resumption of peace talks in Jordan, asserting that negotiations were the only way to make progress. Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has said that he is prepared to return to the negotiating table should Israel recognize the borders of the Palestinian State.
High-ranking Palestinian sources announced that the Erekat-Molkho meeting, which took place on Wednesday, January 25, was the fifth and last in a series of "exploratory" talks between the two sides. The sources added that
Source: MEMO
4
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11
Israel steps up campaign of arresting Palestinian parliamentarians realignment is taking place across the Arab world and this democratic process is confirming that, in many countries across the Middle East, like it or not, the people have spoken and Islamic groups are the preferred choice to lead the governments. The success of the Nahda Party in Tunisia is one example; the overwhelming victory of the Freedom and Justice Party (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt is another. Yet Israel clearly recoils at this example of democracy at work and instead of accepting, as the rest of the world is, that it is up to the people of the Middle East to decide who governs them, the Zionist state continues to arrest democratically elected Palestinians.
24/01/2012 Israel has finally done what it has waited almost a year and a half to do; in a raid contravening international law it arrested two members of the Palestinian Parliament who had been seeking refuge in the International Red Cross compound in East Jerusalem. We all knew it was only a matter of time before Israeli forces made their move. Israel has no regard for democracy, so why would it matter that those it arrested are democraticallyelected members of the Palestinian parliament? Israel cares little for international law and even less for international public opinion. Arresting them was to be expected after the occupation authorities had served illegal deportation notices on the two men. Is there any other country in the world which seeks to "deport" people from their own city?
Khaled Abu Arafeh and Mohammed Totah, dragged from their refuge in the Red Cross compound, will join Aziz Dweik, the Palestinian Speaker, who was arrested last week. The extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu has been desperate to make sure that Egypt agrees to stick by the peace treaty between the two countries, and yet yesterday, when the new Islamist-led Parliament was beginning its first session in Cairo, Israel went ahead and arrested the Muslim members of the Palestinian parliament in the Occupied Territories. Has there been any condemnation from international parliamentarians at this outrageous behaviour? While Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office spent the day sending out press releases in relation to Syria and Iran, and even criticism of Palestinians, it remained silent on Israel's illegal arrests of the Jerusalem MPs. It is hard to imagine such a silence if dozens of British MPs were detained by occupying forces. Yet again we are witnessing an incredible bout of double standards and hypocrisy by the British and other Western governments.
These MPs, like all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, are "Protected Persons" for the purposes of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention which renders their forcible transfer out of Jerusalem illegal. Israel cares about none of these things and that's why, every day for the last week or so, we all knew that these MPs would also be arrested and would join the dozens of other jailed Palestinian parliamentarians in Israeli prisons, despite having committed no crime.
The Jerusalem MPs have committed no crimes. On the contrary, they are the victims of crime. Israel's attempt to deport them in 2010 was and remains illegal. It is just one aspect of Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing of
This move demonstrates, once again, how out of touch Israel is with developing trends across the region. An unprecedented democratic 5
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11 occupied Jerusalem, and "Judaisation" of the city.
the
contrived
community more or less gives Tel Aviv the green light to continue with the ethnic cleansing of the remaining 270,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem. The status of all of them is now in peril; their Jerusalem identity documents and residence permits can be withdrawn at any time by an increasingly right-wing Israeli government. If the international community doesn't care about parliamentarians being arrested, is it likely to say much about anonymous individuals and families who are being thrown out of their homeland?
During their period of refuge in the International Red Cross compound, the MPs received messages and visits of solidarity from hundreds of people from all over the world, including members of the European Parliament and the British parliament. Baroness Jenny Tonge, Lord Raymond Hylton, Labour MP and Shadow Justice Minister Andy Slaughter, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and many others have made the trip to Jerusalem to show their support to fellow parliamentarians. To be fair, the British government has also made representations to the EU and the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister about their plight, but to no avail. Far from being arrested for being criminals of one kind or another, as Israel likes to claim, somewhat mendaciously, these are respected parliamentarians who have been persecuted by the Israeli authorities in order to prevent them from carrying out the duties for which they have been elected in free and fair polls.
Israel is already a pariah state due to its policies of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, prolonged military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land; an antidemocracy campaign such as this puts it even further beyond the Pale and away from what defines a decent, humane society. Israelis and their supporters like to claim that Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East"; that is becoming a bit of a tired joke. In reality, Israel is rapidly becoming a neo-fascist, apartheid state in a sea of Muslim democracy. The times they are a-changin' and Israel is being left behind; it needs to start a-changin' too.
Beyond the injustice of the arrest of these two men, the lack of serious condemnation and action against Israel from the international
_________________________________________________________________________________
EU concerned over arrest of Dweik and other MPs Palestinian legislative council speaker Dr. Aziz Dweik and other MPs. It said that the EU missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah were disturbed over the Israeli arrest of MP Mohammed Totah and former minister Khaled Abu Arafa from the Red Cross headquarters in Jerusalem. The statement said that the missions were also concerned at the arrest of Dr. Dweik and two other MPs Mohammed Tafesh and Abdul Jabbar Fuqaha. Source: PIC
28/01/2011 The European Union expressed concern in a statement on Sunday over the Israeli arrest of
6
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11
Israel confiscates 350 acres in occupied Jerusalem in just three weeks The PLO report pointed out that Israel has approved the construction of 734 housing units for settlers in the city since the beginning of 2012. The organisation believes that this is part of Israel's colonisation plans, which include one-sided legislation to give a veneer of legality backed up by its military power. "The international community," the report continued, "is still turning a blind eye to Israel's illegal practices and settlements in Jerusalem." This, it adds, gives the Israeli government additional encouragement to accelerate the rate of settlement construction and the depopulation of local Palestinians through the demolition of their homes, the confiscation of their identity cards and the construction of the annexation wall.
25/01/2012 The Israeli occupation authorities have confiscated 350 acres of land in the occupied city of Jerusalem and the surrounding area in the past three weeks. Details of the land grab have been given in a report prepared by the Department of International Relations at the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which described the illegal settlement operations in East Jerusalem as a "war crime" and "state terrorism". The ongoing theft of Palestinian land is, claims the PLO, "undertaken by the right-wing extremist government in Israel for the purpose of the Judaisation of the city and its annexation, so as to make the implementation of any political solution possible."
Calling on the world community and the UN Security Council "to take decisions binding on Israel, as an occupying power," the PLO said that every effort should be made "to stop these [Israeli] policies that are against international and humanitarian law as well as international legitimacy resolutions, which criminalise the settlements and consider them illegal and immoral." Source: MEMO
__________________________________________________________________________________
Baroness Cathy Ashton visits Gaza
25/01/2012
visit was part of a tour to the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel to encourage the two parties to resume peace negotiations. She began her visit at an industrial complex, administered by UNRWA, where she held a press conference to announce the allocation of $55 million for the UN agency. Thereafter, she went to a charity which works with deaf children, funded by the EU, where an agreement was signed to continue EU support for the project.
The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs visited Gaza today (Wednesday 25 January), crossing from Israel at Beit Hanoun in Northern Gaza. Baroness Cathy Ashton's
The Deputy Speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Dr Ahmed Bahr, was critical of the visit. "Will the High Representative visit the Palestinian parliament in Gaza City which 7
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11 Israel destroyed during Operation Cast Lead?" he asked. "Or will she meet with the families of those killed and wounded, or see the homes of civilians which were bombed and destroyed?" He already knew the answer: of course not.
Palestinian people or would she pass by in the same casual manner as UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who visited the family of Israeli soldier and ex-hostage Gilad Shalit but refused to visit the homes belonging to the families of Palestinian prisoners.
Undeterred, Dr Bahr also asked if Cathy Ashton would examine the suffering of the _________________________________________________________________________________
Tadamun: Israel detained student because of his graduate project research was posing a threat to Israel's national security. According to Betawi, the student young man chose a graduate project on the construction of a pilotless plane model and started to make online research on the subject before the IOF detained him. Israeli interrogators told the student he could not go on with his graduate project for security reasons and should pledge to choose another one of no threat to Israel's security in order to release him. 29/01/2012
The Israeli occupation authority and its forces have imposed a ban on the access to many chemicals, fertilizers, and even lathes to be used in labs and workshops by the Palestinian universities and their students.
The international Tadamun (solidarity) society for human rights said the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) detained about one month ago a 20-year old university student from Tulkarem city because of his graduate research project.
Source: PIC
Spokesman for the society Ahmed Al-Betawi said the IOF detained earlier this month student Ali Takatika, majoring in computer engineering, at the pretext his graduate
8
30th Jan, 2012
Issue No: 11
Press Release Israeli Army kidnaps the Speaker of the Palestinian Parliament Israeli Occupation Army has kidnapped Dr Aziz Dweik, Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), on Thursday 19th January 2012. Aziz Dweik, a senior Hamas leader, was on his way home when the Israeli Army stopped his car at an army checkpoint in the West Bank where he was immediately arrested. Witnesses said that Israeli soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded Dweik before taking him to an unknown destination. Dweik’s arrest makes the number of illegally-detained Palestinian MPs in Israeli jails 25 MPs, in addition to about 5000 other Palestinian prisoners. In light of this, Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM) extremely condemns this illegal kidnap, which aims to hinder the reconciliation process among the Palestinian factions. We also call the Palestinian Authority to immediately end all kinds of negotiation and security coordination with the Zionist regime; as an initial reaction to this Israeli act of arrogance. We also call all parliaments, Parliamentarians, and legislative forums, as well as all International governmental and non-governmental bodies, all over the world, to exert pressure on the Israeli regime to release Dr Dweik and his fellow MPs as soon as possible.
Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM) Friday, 20th January, 2012
9