Issue No: 45
Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM)
28th May, 2013
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28th May, 2013
Issue No: 45
Read in this report:
Occupation demolishes 11 Jerusalemite houses within one day (P.4)
Hamas: Kerry's economic plan, a new attempt to deceive public opinion (P.4)
Arab businessen pledge to invest in Gaza (P.7)
Netanyahu will not freeze settlements (P.6)
Malaysian NGO delegation arrives in Gaza (P.8)
Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM)
Article: A slap on the face (P.8)
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Issue No: 45
CONTENTS
NEWS OF PALESTINE Hamas: Kerry's economic plan, a new attempt to deceive public opinion ................................ 4 Occupation demolishes 11 Jerusalemite houses within one day ............................................... 5 Israeli forces escort rightists at Aqsa compound ....................................................................... 5 Netanyahu will not freeze settlements in return for resumption of negotiations ....................... 6 Israel renews administrative detention of 11 Palestinians ......................................................... 7 Arab businessmen pledge to invest in Gaza .............................................................................. 7
MALAYSIA & PALESTINIAN CAUSE Malaysian NGO delegation arrives in Gaza .............................................................................. 8
ARTICLES & ANALYSES A slap on the face ....................................................................................................................... 8
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NEWS OF PALESTINE
Hamas: Kerry's economic plan, a new attempt to deceive public opinion He stressed that all the Palestinian segments have always rejected any attempt to restart talks with the occupier. On the other hand, the Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh expressed his surprise towards president Abbas's recent statements in favor of security coordination with the occupier, saying that it is not part of the Palestinian culture. 27/05/2013 Hamas movement has considered Kerry's new economic plan to activate the Palestinian situation in West Bank as a new attempt to deceive the public opinion.
Haniyeh criticized PA concessions during its repeated meeting with US secretary of state John Kerry, stressing that many enticements and money were offered to his government, but they were refused because "Palestine is not for sale."
Fawzi Barhoum, the movement's spokesman, warned of the serious impact of Kerry's plan, saying that US previous projects were only attempts to provide more time to implement the Israeli Judaization and racist schemes.
During his speech to the World Economic Forum in Jordan Abbas revealed that PA security services returned 96 Israeli soldiers who had mistakenly entered the PA-controlled areas, to the Israeli authorities in 2012.
The spokesman for the movement said that the repeated meetings between Kerry and Abbas raise doubts about the future of the Palestinian reconciliation, rights and resistance.
"Kidnapping soldiers is not in our nature, we do not use these methods, and we want to live with neighbors in mutual respect. Any Israeli that comes onto Palestinian ground will be welcomed and returned safely to his home," he said.
PA is subjected to US pressures to renew negotiation with the occupation that will affect seriously the Palestinian unity and reconciliation, he added.
Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM)
Source: Agencies
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handed out dozens more of demolition notices in Jerusalem
Occupation demolishes 11 Jerusalemite houses within one day lands threatened with confiscation, and started the demolition without any prior notice. The Information Center said the residential building in the Jabal Mukaber, which consisted of four apartments, has been built since 1973, and that some years ago the occupation tried to buy it. 23/05/2013 The Israeli authorities on Tuesday demolished 11 apartments in the occupied city of Jerusalem, displacing more than one hundred Jerusalemite citizens, mostly women and children. Wadi Al-Helwa Information Centre said in a report published on Wednesday that the Jerusalem municipality teams, accompanied by military and police forces, demolished in Tur neighborhood and Jabal Mukaber in eastern Jerusalem 7 Palestinian houses and a residential building of four apartments. The occupation authorities said the apartments were built without a permit on
In a related context, the occupation municipality in Jerusalem handed to dozens of citizens notifications informing them of its intention to issue administrative demolition orders in case they do not stop construction work in their buildings. The lawyer Nael Rashid said he filed an administrative petition to the Administrative Court in Jerusalem against these warnings, and that he found out that they were arbitrarily issued against citizens who had been earlier fined for carrying out unauthorized building work. Rashid stressed that the issuance of administrative demolition orders against houses inhabited for decades represents a flagrant violation. Source: Agencies
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Israeli forces escort rightists at Aqsa compound 27/05/2013 Israeli security forces and right-wing Jews toured the al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Monday accompanied by intelligence officials, a local group said.
The al-Aqsa Foundation said in a statement that the female officers led the group through the Moroccan Gate, before splitting into separate groups. Muslim worshipers shouted "Allahu Akbar" at the group, the statement said,
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adding that such visits have increased recently. Also Monday, settlers from the religious Zionist Ateret Cohanim organization took control of two shops belonging to Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem. Witnesses said dozens of settlers guarded by Israeli police raided the two shops.
They evacuated all the contents of the shops and changed the locks. She shops had been closed for years. The group claims that the stores were seized before 1948 under the Absentee Property Law, and an Israeli court had ordered evacuation of the stores. Source: Ma’an News Agency
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Netanyahu will not freeze settlements in return for resumption of negotiations President Mahmoud Abbas has had such an opportunity once before: "This will not happen again." If the Palestinians want to talk, he added, "They know we are waiting for them at the table". The paper noted that after four rounds of talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah in the past two months US Secretary of State John Kerry is seeking to revive peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis. 27/05/2013 An Israeli official has claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not freeze West Bank settlements in order to facilitate the resumption of peace talks and negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
"Kerry urged Israel to halt settlement activity voluntarily, but added that the demand for such a freeze, as a precondition to direct talks, was not helpful," the Jerusalem Post pointed out.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the official said that Palestinian Authority
Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM)
Source: MEMO
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Israel renews administrative detention of 11 Palestinians promised he would be released and deported to Egypt.
22/05/2013 Al-Tadamun human rights organisation said on Tuesday that the Israeli occupation has renewed the administrative detention of 11 Palestinians, including a former hunger striker and two Palestinian lawmakers. The administrative detention order against Samer al-Barq, 39, from Jayous village in Qalqilya was renewed for six months. AlBarq went on a hunger strike in April 2012 for 120 days. On November 23, 2012, he ended his hunger strike after he was
With the renewal of the order against alBarq's, Al-Tadamun advocate, Osama Maqboul, accused the Israeli occupation of breaching pledges of release and deportation. Others whose administrative detention orders have been renewed include members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Mahmoud al-Ramahi and Basim al-Za'areer. Both were detained at November, 2012. The Israeli occupation renewed the administrative detention of another eight Palestinians from various cities and villages across the occupied West Bank. Many Palestinian prisoners have recently gone on hunger strike in protest against administrative detention which is a military detention order issued on no apparent basis. Source: MEMO
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Arab businessmen pledge to invest in Gaza Karim made his remarks in an evening meeting held on Thursday by the ministry of economy at Movenpick hotel in honor of the visiting businessmen.
25/05/2013 Head of the Palestinian businessmen forum Jamal Karim, who has led a delegation of Arab businessmen to Gaza, pledged to carry out investment projects supporting the steadfastness of Gaza people in the face of the occupation.
The head of the delegation said that their visit to Gaza was aimed at developing some familiarity with the investment environment in the Strip. "The nation is awake and is waiting for the right moment to march to the resistance land in order to liberate Jerusalem from the profanity of the Zionist occupation," he stated.
Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia (PCOM)
Source: PIC
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MALAYSIA & PALESTINIAN CAUSE
Malaysian NGO delegation arrives in Gaza and activists from humanitarian work groups in Malaysia. Azmi Abed al-Hamid, the chairman of the board, held a news conference at the Rafah crossing where he stressed the strategic relationship between Malaysia and Palestine. Walid al-Amoudi, an NGO leader in Gaza, welcomed the delegation.
26/05/2013
A delegation of Malaysian NGOs arrived in the Gaza Strip Sunday to check the humanitarian situation and open projects. The delegation includes 80 representatives
Source: Ma’an News Agency
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ARTICLES & ANALYSIS
A slap on the face Authority (PA), the United States, EU and all those who still are working to revive the moribund peace process.
By Khalid Amayreh*
The recent Israeli decision to build four major settlements in the West Bank, including one in the vicinity of Ramallah, is a slap on the face of the Palestinian
The decision is a clarion political statement which expresses Israel's intransigence and rejection of all peace efforts despite the humiliating surrender displayed by the PLO leadership as well as the disgraceful concessions offered to Israel by the Arab League with regard to the so-called Arab initiative. In fact, even without the building of additional settlements in the West Bank, Israel has already decapitated any
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remaining chances for establishing a viable Palestinian state, especially a territorially contiguous entity with East Jerusalem As its capital. The phenomenal Israeli settlement expansion, along with the unrelenting unlimited political and military support Israel is receiving from the U.S., leaves no real chance as to the possibility that Israel might rethink its policies. There are two main reasons for this prognosis: First, Israel is too fanatical and stubborn to rethink its settlement policies, as the vast majority of Israelis would reject any notion of giving up the spoils on the 1967 war. Second, the U.S. government, including Congress, White House and the media is reeling under effective Jewish-Zionist control that seriously restricts American freedom, ability and independence to pursue an honest policy toward the Palestinians. Indeed, for this to happen, the U.S. will have to undergo a real revolution in America's collective thinking, something that is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. This also means that the ongoing efforts by the American Secretary of State John Kerry to revive the clinically-dead peace process are doomed to failure. It is just a pointless repetition or regurgitation of past American and international efforts to resolve the Palestinian question. Needless to say, all these efforts, from William Roger (1968) to John Kerry (2013), failed due to purely domestic considerations, namely the rejection by a Jewish controlled Congress of any
proposal that would make Israel give up the occupied territories. This also means that it is foolhardy to count on the U.S. to convince, let alone force Israel to walk in the path of peace. The U.S. is too weak, even if willing, to do so. Moreover, the classical Jewish mentality is too insolent, too self-absorbed and too uncompromising to allow for a dignified peace in the region. Needless to say, the U.S., Israel's guardian-ally and bankroller, has had more than half a century to force or convince Israel to give up the occupied territories, but to no avail. And there is no convincing reason which would make any honest observer believes that the Obama administration will succeed where all other administrations since Lyndon Johnson's failed. The more likely goal of the present American administration is to bully or cajole the powerless and gutless PA to cede fundamental Palestinian rights, including the paramount right of return for millions of refugees who were uprooted from their ancestral homeland at the hands of Jewish-Zionist invaders. So the American logic goes like this. If the Obama administration is too weak and two cowardly to pressure Israel to give up the occupied territories in implementation of international law, the same administration is at least powerful enough to bully the vulnerable Palestinian leadership, e.g. Mahmoud Abbas, to give up Palestinian rights "for the sake of peace."!! But the Obama administration is very likely to be mistaken in thinking that Abbas would be able to sell the highly politicized Palestinian public a deformed deal with Israel that would seriously compromise the right of return as well as other vital issues pertaining to Jerusalem,
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the Jewish sovereignty.
colonies
and
Palestinian
The Palestinian people is stronger than its leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas may try to play the financial card, given the fact that the financial survival of the PA depends to a large extent on American bribes. Congress prohibited the transfer of funds to the PA when the latter sought international recognition at the United Nations a few months ago. Eventually, the funds were released after the Obama administration persuaded Congressional leaders that a financially sunk PA would harm Israeli interests and was likely to benefit Hamas. There is little doubt that Congress would resort to the same punitive measures if the PA leadership showed determination to cling to Palestinian national constants by refusing to capitulate to Israeli dictates and conditions. In the final analysis, Mahmoud Abbas would have to choose the less of the two evils, either be answerable to his people who reject any deviation from the wellknown redlines or commit a political and moral suicide by succumbing to American and Israeli pressure. The Palestinian question has been extant since the Balfour Declaration in 1917. It is therefore sad and illogical that some Palestinian leaders are prompted to think that "now it shall be or not at all."
Towering Palestinian leaders lived and died without compromising our national rights. On this occasion, we mention Izzidin al-Qassam, Hajj Amin Husseini, George Habash, Yasser Arafat, Ahmed Yasin, Abdul Aziz Rantisi and others. Abbas must never be think that the Palestinian cause must be resolved in his lifetime. He should show a real willingness to leave this world, when his time comes, rather than act under pressure. After all, time is on our side. True the Israelis are trying to narrow our horizons by building more settlements. But eventually, that which can be built, can be destroyed. More to the point, it is now crystal clear that Palestinians already constitute a numerical majority west of the River Jordan. This is a factor of both historical and strategic significance. It shows that Abbas and cohorts should not be chasing after a futile peace deal that would only consolidate and perpetuate the historical injustices meted out to our people. With these facts in mind, it is not far fetched to think that at a certain point in the near future, Jewish-Zionist leaders would grovel at Palestinian feet to "beg for peace" as the circle of history would haunt Israel as it did haunt many other oppressive states and empires before. So Mr. Abbas, you don't have to worry about the Palestinian cause and people. Israeli inequity shall not prosper. Israel will disappear sooner than many people think.
* Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist based in Dura, near Hebron. He is barred from leaving the West Bank. For many years Amayreh was confined to his home village of Dura near Hebron by the Israeli military occupation authorities.
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