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"A slow process of ethnic cleansing" - Jaggi Singh
In Leibowitz's words, "This is about diluting the Palestinian population without attacting media attention". Abu Id's continued imprisonment is the only way the Israeli government might succeed in expelling him to Jordan.
"A slow process of ethnic cleansing"
by Jaggi Singh
JERSUALEM, December 19, 2002 -- Today, in Tel Aviv District Court, a Palestinian worker, Jihad Abu Id, will be demanding his release from an Israeli prison. Abu Id has been detained for the last six months, ever
since he was arrested for working in Israel without a permit.
Abu Id comes from a village called Bidu, located near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The normal process to deal with "illegal" Palestinian workers in Israel is to detain them for no more than a day, and then remove them to their village of origin in the occupied territories.
However, in the case of Abu Id, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior is trying to deport him to Jordan. The excuse: he's married to a Jordanian woman. According to Sharon Bavli, the state attorney at the Israeli Interior Ministry that is attempting to force the removal of Abu Id, his marriage to a Jordanian forfeits his rights to reside in Palestine itself.
Abu Id has been jailed for the last six months in Israel's Maasiyahu Prison, a special facility for deportees which, according to Israeli human
rights lawyer Shamai Leibowitz, includes a whole section of Palestinians in similar situations to Abu Id.
Abu Id's is resisting his deportation by petitioning both the Tel Aviv District Court today, as well as at the Israeli Supreme Court in the coming weeks. At the latter tribunal, he will fight to re-establish his status as a Palestinian. Today in Tel Aviv, his lawyer, Leah Tsemel, will simply ask for his release on bail.
The decision in Tel Aviv today is crucial, according to Leibowitz. If Abu Id is released, and returns to Bidu in the West Bank, it will be difficult for the Israeli authorities to go in and grab him, due to the attention
that will bring within the village, and perhaps beyond.
In Leibowitz's words, "This is about diluting the Palestinian population without attacting media attention". Abu Id's continued imprisonment
is the only way the Israeli government might succeed in expelling him to Jordan.
Abu Id's family situation also speaks to the nature of the process of dispossession, and the long, quiet struggle for many Palestinians to establish their identity and basic right to reside in their own villages
and towns.
Abu Id's father was illegally deported from Bidu to Jordan in 1970 by an Israeli military commander who issued a deportation order in territories that were illegally occupied after the Six Day War in 1967. That
deportation was eventually determined to be illegal, more than two decades later, and the family returned to Bidu in 1994, where Abu Id has lived for the past eight years.
According to government documents read by Leibowitz, the Israeli state attorney's office estimates between 50-60,000 Palestinians who they deem
to be deportable from the occupied territories, for reasons similar to Abu Id.
To engage in a mass search and expulsion of these thousands of so-called "illegal" Palestinians is not feasible on both a logistical and public relations level (although some in the Israeli right, which is becoming the mainstream, would forcibly "tranfer" all Palestinians tomorrow if they had their way). Instead, deportations happen quietly, one-by-one, in circumstances like Abu Id's. It's what Leibowitz has no hesitation calling "a slow process of ethnic cleansing".
Leibowitz also doesn't hesitate to underline the complicity of the Israeli courts in the expulsion policy of the Israeli goverment, calling the judicial branch "just a long arm of the political branch ... they all
collaborate together."
A decision about Abu Id's release is expected later today in Tel Aviv.
-- Reported by Jaggi Singh in East Jersualem.
[For more info about the case of Jihad Abu Id and other Palestinian deportees, please contact Shamai Leibowitz in Tel Aviv at +972 3 670 4170.
Jaggi Singh (jaggi [at] tao.ca) is a member of the International Soldarity
Movement (ISM): http://www.palsolidarity.org. He is a writer and an anarchist social justice activist based in Montreal, as well as a member of the No One Is Illegal campaign, an immigrant and refugee rights movement in Canada (nooneisillegal [at] tao.ca).]
by Jaggi Singh
JERSUALEM, December 19, 2002 -- Today, in Tel Aviv District Court, a Palestinian worker, Jihad Abu Id, will be demanding his release from an Israeli prison. Abu Id has been detained for the last six months, ever
since he was arrested for working in Israel without a permit.
Abu Id comes from a village called Bidu, located near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The normal process to deal with "illegal" Palestinian workers in Israel is to detain them for no more than a day, and then remove them to their village of origin in the occupied territories.
However, in the case of Abu Id, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior is trying to deport him to Jordan. The excuse: he's married to a Jordanian woman. According to Sharon Bavli, the state attorney at the Israeli Interior Ministry that is attempting to force the removal of Abu Id, his marriage to a Jordanian forfeits his rights to reside in Palestine itself.
Abu Id has been jailed for the last six months in Israel's Maasiyahu Prison, a special facility for deportees which, according to Israeli human
rights lawyer Shamai Leibowitz, includes a whole section of Palestinians in similar situations to Abu Id.
Abu Id's is resisting his deportation by petitioning both the Tel Aviv District Court today, as well as at the Israeli Supreme Court in the coming weeks. At the latter tribunal, he will fight to re-establish his status as a Palestinian. Today in Tel Aviv, his lawyer, Leah Tsemel, will simply ask for his release on bail.
The decision in Tel Aviv today is crucial, according to Leibowitz. If Abu Id is released, and returns to Bidu in the West Bank, it will be difficult for the Israeli authorities to go in and grab him, due to the attention
that will bring within the village, and perhaps beyond.
In Leibowitz's words, "This is about diluting the Palestinian population without attacting media attention". Abu Id's continued imprisonment
is the only way the Israeli government might succeed in expelling him to Jordan.
Abu Id's family situation also speaks to the nature of the process of dispossession, and the long, quiet struggle for many Palestinians to establish their identity and basic right to reside in their own villages
and towns.
Abu Id's father was illegally deported from Bidu to Jordan in 1970 by an Israeli military commander who issued a deportation order in territories that were illegally occupied after the Six Day War in 1967. That
deportation was eventually determined to be illegal, more than two decades later, and the family returned to Bidu in 1994, where Abu Id has lived for the past eight years.
According to government documents read by Leibowitz, the Israeli state attorney's office estimates between 50-60,000 Palestinians who they deem
to be deportable from the occupied territories, for reasons similar to Abu Id.
To engage in a mass search and expulsion of these thousands of so-called "illegal" Palestinians is not feasible on both a logistical and public relations level (although some in the Israeli right, which is becoming the mainstream, would forcibly "tranfer" all Palestinians tomorrow if they had their way). Instead, deportations happen quietly, one-by-one, in circumstances like Abu Id's. It's what Leibowitz has no hesitation calling "a slow process of ethnic cleansing".
Leibowitz also doesn't hesitate to underline the complicity of the Israeli courts in the expulsion policy of the Israeli goverment, calling the judicial branch "just a long arm of the political branch ... they all
collaborate together."
A decision about Abu Id's release is expected later today in Tel Aviv.
-- Reported by Jaggi Singh in East Jersualem.
[For more info about the case of Jihad Abu Id and other Palestinian deportees, please contact Shamai Leibowitz in Tel Aviv at +972 3 670 4170.
Jaggi Singh (jaggi [at] tao.ca) is a member of the International Soldarity
Movement (ISM): http://www.palsolidarity.org. He is a writer and an anarchist social justice activist based in Montreal, as well as a member of the No One Is Illegal campaign, an immigrant and refugee rights movement in Canada (nooneisillegal [at] tao.ca).]
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December 20, 2002 -- I write this article from Beit Sahour, a Palestinian own -- no more than thirty minutes south of Jerusalem -- that has been enduring 24-hour curfew for almost one-month. Technically, I'm inside the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. And technically, I've disobeyed an Israeli high court ruling that allowed me to stay in Israel for seven days on the very specific condition that I not visit the Palestinian
territories. All this in spite of the failed attempts of the Israeli Secret Service and the Interior Ministry here to have me deemed a security threat, based on "secret evidence" presented in a closed court hearing
that excluded my lawyer and me.
Technically, I'm now open to arrest and expulsion by the Israeli authorities, not because of any criminal act, or potential act, but because I've dared to visit Palestine in defiance of their orders.
But, speaking of technicalities, it is worth remembering that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is unequivocally illegal, according to international laws and conventions. And to get even more technical,
East Jerusalem -- where I spent several days "legally" before traveling past checkpoints and soldiers to Bethlehem and Beit Sahour -- was illegally annexed to Israel after the 1967 war. All part of a colonization
project -- involving the building of illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied territories, and the continued expropriation of Palestinian land -- that goes criminally beyond the righteous goal of securing a safe
and sustainable Jewish homeland within Palestine.
It's not just easy-to-dismiss anarchists like me that point to the illegal Israeli-occupation of Palestine, and the accompanying illegal settlements, as the principal acts of violence in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Thousands of dissident Israelis increasingly speak out -- my US$5000 bail was generously posted by one of these peace activists -- while more and more soldiers are jailed for refusing to serve in the territories. Even Michel Sabbah, the soft-spoken Latin Patriarch in the Holy Land (and I don't often find myself agreeing with "patriarchs"), had no hesitation in telling the Jerusalem Post this past week that "[a]ll the
Palestinian violence is the justified result of the occupation."
To obey the Israeli court ruling on not traveling to Palestine is to be complicit in the process of normalizing Israel's occupation. It allows the occupying power to continue to dictate its rule over the occupied, and it's nothing less than the imposition of a colonial practice and mentality. It's a mentality mimicked by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs that consistently refuses to strongly object to the occupation and Israel's policy of inhibiting the presence of what they term "Palestinian sympathizers" in the occupied territories, even when those sympathizers hold a Canadian passport.
It's not for an occupying power to decide who can or can't enter Palestine. Rather, it is those Palestinians who daily resist the occupation, to determine whether they want to welcome international solidarity activists.
I received an invitation to come to Palestine by members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led organization
using non-violent direct-action methods of resistance to confront and challenge the illegal Israeli Occupation Forces and its policies, while recognizing the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and
occupation via legitimate armed struggle (again, according to widely recognized international conventions).
That invitation to visit was emphatically re-extended after the Israeli court ruling that barred my entry to the territories. I've decided then to ignore the Israeli security services and listen to the Palestinian activists. It was an easy choice to make.
The ISM is part of longstanding efforts to cultivate direct solidarity between Israelis, internationals, and the Palestinian grassroots resistance that is at the heart of the intifada. It aims to break the silence about the reality of occupation, about the collective punishment that the Israeli Occupation Forces impose on Palestinians through land confiscations, home demolitions, mass arrests, checkpoints, curfews, and the killing of unarmed civilians by one of the best-equipped armies in the world.
The ISM, and their many allies -- including the tireless members of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) in Montreal -- dare to stand in the way of a colonial occupation, by direct action if necessary.
I feel privileged to be able to observe, support and participate in this crucial work, and notwithstanding the Israeli Security Service, I intend to stay.
[Jaggi Singh is a writer, independent journalist and a social justice activist based in Montreal.]
territories. All this in spite of the failed attempts of the Israeli Secret Service and the Interior Ministry here to have me deemed a security threat, based on "secret evidence" presented in a closed court hearing
that excluded my lawyer and me.
Technically, I'm now open to arrest and expulsion by the Israeli authorities, not because of any criminal act, or potential act, but because I've dared to visit Palestine in defiance of their orders.
But, speaking of technicalities, it is worth remembering that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is unequivocally illegal, according to international laws and conventions. And to get even more technical,
East Jerusalem -- where I spent several days "legally" before traveling past checkpoints and soldiers to Bethlehem and Beit Sahour -- was illegally annexed to Israel after the 1967 war. All part of a colonization
project -- involving the building of illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied territories, and the continued expropriation of Palestinian land -- that goes criminally beyond the righteous goal of securing a safe
and sustainable Jewish homeland within Palestine.
It's not just easy-to-dismiss anarchists like me that point to the illegal Israeli-occupation of Palestine, and the accompanying illegal settlements, as the principal acts of violence in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Thousands of dissident Israelis increasingly speak out -- my US$5000 bail was generously posted by one of these peace activists -- while more and more soldiers are jailed for refusing to serve in the territories. Even Michel Sabbah, the soft-spoken Latin Patriarch in the Holy Land (and I don't often find myself agreeing with "patriarchs"), had no hesitation in telling the Jerusalem Post this past week that "[a]ll the
Palestinian violence is the justified result of the occupation."
To obey the Israeli court ruling on not traveling to Palestine is to be complicit in the process of normalizing Israel's occupation. It allows the occupying power to continue to dictate its rule over the occupied, and it's nothing less than the imposition of a colonial practice and mentality. It's a mentality mimicked by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs that consistently refuses to strongly object to the occupation and Israel's policy of inhibiting the presence of what they term "Palestinian sympathizers" in the occupied territories, even when those sympathizers hold a Canadian passport.
It's not for an occupying power to decide who can or can't enter Palestine. Rather, it is those Palestinians who daily resist the occupation, to determine whether they want to welcome international solidarity activists.
I received an invitation to come to Palestine by members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led organization
using non-violent direct-action methods of resistance to confront and challenge the illegal Israeli Occupation Forces and its policies, while recognizing the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and
occupation via legitimate armed struggle (again, according to widely recognized international conventions).
That invitation to visit was emphatically re-extended after the Israeli court ruling that barred my entry to the territories. I've decided then to ignore the Israeli security services and listen to the Palestinian activists. It was an easy choice to make.
The ISM is part of longstanding efforts to cultivate direct solidarity between Israelis, internationals, and the Palestinian grassroots resistance that is at the heart of the intifada. It aims to break the silence about the reality of occupation, about the collective punishment that the Israeli Occupation Forces impose on Palestinians through land confiscations, home demolitions, mass arrests, checkpoints, curfews, and the killing of unarmed civilians by one of the best-equipped armies in the world.
The ISM, and their many allies -- including the tireless members of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) in Montreal -- dare to stand in the way of a colonial occupation, by direct action if necessary.
I feel privileged to be able to observe, support and participate in this crucial work, and notwithstanding the Israeli Security Service, I intend to stay.
[Jaggi Singh is a writer, independent journalist and a social justice activist based in Montreal.]
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