february 2005

FEBRUARY 1st.2005 : Israel's attorney-general has ordered the government to rescind a decision to enforce a decades-old law under which large tracts of Palestinian land in Arab East Jerusalem could be confiscated, officials said. (However please see also, next file by John Ward Anderson, 7th Feb.inst.ed.JB)

The government invoked the 1950 Absentee Property Law last July and word leaked out this month, alarming Palestinians who feared an attempt to usurp their claims to East Jerusalem, which they want as the capital of a future state.

Israeli media said the move had angered the US administration, which regarded it as an obstacle to new peace prospects raised by the election of moderate Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas on 9 January to replace Yasir Arafat.

In a lengthy legal opinion, Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz told the government to cancel implementation of the law in East Jerusalem, saying it violated obligations under international law and was sure to be overturned by the Israeli supreme court.

'Law is illegal'

"This decision cannot stand," Mazuz said in a four-page ruling on the law, which allows a state custodian to seize East Jerusalem property belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank. 

A justice ministry source said Mazuz had determined the law would not withstand supreme court appeals.

"If the attorney-general says it [the law] won't stand up [to appeal], then it means that yes, this law is illegal," the justice ministry source said. The government was obliged to adhere to Mazuz's decision, the source added..

Officials at the finance ministry, which is responsible for implementing the law, and at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, declined immediate comment.

Bureaucratic mishap

Haaretz said the decision was approved at a 22 June meeting of the Ministerial Committee on Jerusalem Affairs attended by only two members, both rightists.

Since there were no opposing votes in the meeting, the decision was automatically approved by the government two weeks later without a cabinet vote or a notation in cabinet minutes.

Mazuz said that due to a bureaucratic mishap, he was not informed of the decision and only found out by chance when legal complaints were made to his office.

He wrote that the ministerial committee had acted outside its powers and improperly applied the law, causing "numerous legal difficulties".

"These have to do with imposing the law and the reasonability of imposing it under these circumstances and with regard to Israel's obligation under international law."

Land confiscation

Under the Absentee Property Law enacted two years after the country's founding, land belonging to people living in "enemy countries" was confiscated by the state.

The measure allowed confiscation of the property of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who became refugees in the 1948 war and scattered mainly to Arab states.

While technically applied to East Jerusalem after Israel captured it in the 1967 Middle East war, the law was never implemented.

The decision raised hackles among Palestinians already worried by Israeli plans to demolish dozens of houses near its West Bank barrier as well as plans to require East Jerusalem residents to obtain permits to visit the West Bank.

Some Palestinian landowners, according to their lawyers, have already received notices that their plots in the city have been seized under the law even though they live nearby - just outside the city limits in the West Bank.

Reuters

The Voting restrictions in Jerusalem explained, the Great Land Grab.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, FROM INTERNAT.SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

January 9, 2005

Because of Israeli imposed conditions, only 6,000 of the 124,000 Palestinians from East Jerusalem who hold Israeli-issued Jerusalem IDs are eligible to vote within East Jerusalem near their homes.  Those 6,000 must vote for their President in six Israeli government controlled post offices. The remaining 118,000 East Jerusalem residents must travel to surrounding towns and villages to vote, often passing through Israeli checkpoints or around Israel's Apartheid Wall.

Only 4.8% of East Jerusalemites will actually find their names on the East Jerusalem voting lists at the six Israeli post offices near their homes.  The vast majority are being turned away and told to travel on to the surrounding towns and villages to vote.  The Jaffa Gate post office seems to represent an extreme example of this problem.  By 12:30 PM, ISM volunteers were told by an Israeli post office employee there that only one of approximately 40 Palestinians who came to vote there had been allowed to vote so far.  Similarly, ISM volunteers have been told that only 34 few East Jerusalemites succeeded in voting at the Israeli post office in Shufat, and 56 voted in Beit Hanina so far.

On top of restricting the vote to 4.8% of the eligible Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities have imposed numerous other constraints on East Jerusalem residents' right to vote.  The requirement that Palestinians cast ballots in Israeli post offices allows Israeli authorities to maintain a façade that Jerusalem residents are casting absentee ballots, and mailing their votes back to their homeland.  Already worried about voting in Israeli post offices, East Jerusalemites also fear traveling to vote in the towns and villages outside of East Jerusalem.  Israeli authorities could claim that as evidence that they are not residents of Jerusalem, and strip them of their Jerusalem IDs and their rights and benefits.


Other major violations in East Jerusalem include Israeli restrictions on registering voters and campaigning in East Jerusalem.  Israeli authorities closed down Palestinian voter registration centers in East Jerusalem. While they eventually allowed door-to-door registration, staff conducting the registration told ISM volunteers that they were prohibited from carrying any documents identifying them with the Palestinian Central election Commission, and from displaying the Palestinian flag or colors.  Israeli authorities have also limited the posting of candidate and voter education posters to a few designated public locations.  Presidential candidates have also been arrested and harassed by Israeli police on the few occasions when they attempted to campaign in East Jerusalem.

The Israeli government's effort to deny Palestinians' right to vote in East Jerusalem serves as one example of the impossibility of conducting free and fair elections under Israeli military occupation.9TH JUNE 2005

HERE IS THE "LEGAL" EXPLANATION IN HA'ARETZ,20TH JUNE 2005israeli's new land grab discovered:Gov't decision strips Palestinians of their East J'lem property
By Meron Rappaport, Ha'aretz.
Thu., January 20, 2005 Shvat 10, 5765
The government decision in July confirms a decision reached in the ministerial committee for Jerusalem affairs a month earlier. The decision was presented to the prime minister and attorney general and met with their approval, but the decision was not publicized until now and is not listed on the Web site of the Prime Minister's Office.

The Sharon government implemented the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem last July, contrary to Israeli government policy since Israeli law was extended to East Jerusalem after the Six Day War. The law means that thousands of Palestinians who live in the West Bank will lose ownership of their property in East Jerusalem.

Government officials estimate the assets total thousands of dunam, while other estimates say they could add up to half of all East Jerusalem property.


www.kibush.co.il
LAW MODELLED ON ENGLISH COLONIAL LAW:
The Absentee Property Law of 1950 stipulates, among other things, that an absentee is someone who at the time of the War of Independence "was in any part of the land of Israel that is outside the area of Israel" - that is, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to the law, absentee assets are transfered to the authority of the Custodian for Absentee Property, without the absentee being eligible for any compensation. When East Jerusalem came under Israeli law, then-attorney general Meir Shamgar directed that the law not be applied to West Bank residents who have property in the parts of East Jerusalem that became part of the State of Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reissued that directive in 1993.

With the recent construction of the fence in the Jerusalem region, Palestinian landholders from Bethlehem and Beit Jala requested permission to continue working their fields, which are within Jerusalem's municipal jurisdiction. The state's response stated that the lands "no longer belong to them, but have been handed over to the Custodian for Absentee Property." At stake are thousands of dunam of agricultural land on which the Palestinians grew olives and grapes throughout the years.

"These people's property was always considered absentee assets, but so long as no fence existed, these people could get to their property and everything was fine from their standpoint," said a senior judicial official involved in the case. "The fence is the result of terrorism. It's not fair that a man becomes an absentee because his tie to his land has been cut without his doing. But morality is one thing, and what is written in our laws another."

The Palestinian landholders and their Israeli lawyers term it a "land grab," and also worry that nascent Housing Ministry plans will build on part of absentees' land.


/www.kibush.co.il

Moshe Amirav former city council member

Amirav said that once the land seizures in Jerusalem are scrutinised in court, the expropriations of Israel's early years could also be challenged.

"This opens a Pandora's box," he said. "The minute you open it, you open all the legal and moral questions of 1948."
  
Dahla, an attorney who represents the Bethlehem municipality and some of the Bethlehem landowners, said he believes the land seizures are part of a plan to expand Jewish neighbourhoods in eastern Jerusalem.
  
"We're talking about land that those Palestinians in Bait Jalla have owned for hundreds of years," Dahla said. "They are not absentees ... in fact they continued to cultivate the land up until now."

This information co-ordinates with the recent Election rule in East Jerusalem that confused hundreds of people, and especially the candidates for election and the foreign monitors:

Palestine election results

update:

The Election Labyrinth of East Jerusalem, ISM Election Day Report
from Hebron, Nablus--Reportback from Donna

From the ISM Media Office:
The Election Labyrinth of East Jerusalem
January 9, 2005
By Molly Picon

Many friends and family in the U.S. have asked me about whether or not I think the Palestinian elections will be conducted in a free and fair manner. Today was an eye-opener about the meaning of free and fair. Take a deep breath, dear reader, and I'll take you through the many twists and turns taken by Palestinian residents of Jerusalem trying to vote in the PA elections.

Palestinians who live in Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens. This means that although they are required to pay taxes TO the Israeli government, they are not represented BY the Israeli government. Palestinian residents of Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. They also receive poorer social services from the Israeli government. According to the Israeli Committee against Home Demolitions, the Palestinians of East Jerusalem receive 6-8% of the social services in the municipality even though they pay one third of the taxes.  Voting rights for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem were an enormous problem in these elections. From the Israeli perspective, if all of the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem were permitted to vote in Jerusalem, it would mean that the Palestinian Authority would be responsible for protecting their interests. If the Palestinian Authority were to have a significant number of constituents in East Jerusalem and these constituents were acknowledged as Palestinian by Israel, this would strengthen the Palestinian claim to East Jerusalem. This is life for Palestinians in the only "democracy" in the Middle East.

Of the 124,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem only six thousand were eligible to vote within East Jerusalem itself due to the Israeli imposed restrictions.  The Israeli government limited Palestinian voting to six Israeli post offices which had minimal capacity to serve as polling stations. The other 118,000 residents had to cross through Israeli imposed checkpoints or around Israel's apartheid wall in order to vote in surrounding villages and towns. Naturally, the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem worried about losing the meager social services provided to them by the Israeli government, not to mention their rights to their homes, if they succeeded in voting in the areas surrounding Jerusalem. Since the city of Jerusalem is such a sensitive issue in terms of sovereignty over holy sites and territorial issues, the city's Palestinian residents are left in the middle of the dispute, without proper representation and under threat from settler nationalist groups intent on keeping all of Jerusalem as part of Israel.

We began our day as election eyewitnesses at the largest voting station in East Jerusalem, the Salahadin post office. There were a few people gathered and ready to vote. It was then that things became rather hairy, as many who came to Salahadin were turned away from the voting station because their name was not on the list of people eligible to vote in East Jerusalem. It seemed that no one knew which 4% of the 124,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem were eligible to vote in the place where they lived and which had to go to the surrounding villages and towns.

Never mind that Israel and the U.S. picked their favorite before the election even started. You have, no doubt heard of Abu Mazen, my reader? Never mind that the Israelis restricted freedom of movement for every candidate running besides the one they picked. Have you heard of the multiple arrests of Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi? Do you even know who he is? Did you know that he is a PhD in medicine with one graduate degree in philosophy and one in civil administration? Did you know that he is the president of the Medical Relief Committee, which he founded? Have you heard of Bassam Al-Salhi who holds a master's degree in political science from Birzeit University? What about Taysir Khaled who holds a Masters degree in Economy and Political Science from Heidelberg University? These men, along with Abu Mazen (who before you ask, has a PhD in Law from the University of Damascus) have been among the leaders of the Palestinian struggle for justice. They are not rag-tag thugs as our government, or the Israeli press, would have us believe.

But I digress. Never mind that Israel and the U.S. hand-picked the winner before the elections even started. Never mind the significant Israeli police presence around each and every polling station in East Jerusalem. I mean, would you feel comfortable voting knowing that you could potentially be arrested and held for months without trial and without even knowing what you were being accused of? Never mind the American loser John Kerry who stopped by for photo-ops with the Shin Bet. Never mind all of this.

In addition to the police presence, when our group arrived at our second destination, the Jaffa street post office polling place, there were teenage Jewish settlers hanging around outside the post office, eyeballing Palestinians trying to vote unsuccessfully. At 12:30pm one Palestinian out of 50 potential voters was allowed to vote at this polling station. The settler children were given microphones and cameras for Israel National Radio (aka Arutz Sheva), an anti-Palestinian propagandist radio station. We internationals were like a magnet for them. A Jewish representative of the Jerusalem Municipal Council in his thirties tried to walk into the post office with an enormous Israeli flag in his hand. When he was stopped by security, he said: "Jerusalem is part of my country, the State of Israel, and this is the flag of the state of Israel. I should be allowed to go wherever I want to go in Jerusalem with this flag."

After the incident subsided, one of the settler teens, with an Arutz Sheva microphone in hand and a yellow star with the word `settler' written in Hebrew on his lapel, asked if I wanted to give an interview. I said no. He asked why. I said I'm not interested. He asked why. I told him I don't talk to Israel National Radio. We were approached again by a different settler teen who insisted on knowing our opinion on whether the elections were free and fair. I told him that we weren't interested in speaking to him. He insisted on knowing our opinion. I told him to stop harassing us and to leave. He said that he had the right to stand there. I told him that I would call the police if he didn't leave us alone. I stood my ground (I was boiling inside, just boiling) and he left. It was at this point that another settler teen shoved a video camera in the faces of the other three members in my group. He demanded that they tell him the names of the candidates running for Palestinian president.

My Swedish friend (who you may remember from my last report back, with the Barbie-doll hair?) insisted that he stop filming her. When she put her hand to her face, the settler teen went to the police and claimed that she assaulted him. The police of course did nothing and the settler teen came right back over and shoved the video camera in our faces again. It was at this point that the four of us turned our backs and he went on to harass one of the EU election monitors. Another settler teen approached and insisted on knowing why we supported these Arabs. He asked if we knew what he knew: that there have never been a Palestinian people, and that the term was a construct. We refused to answer his ridiculous question. Are the people who have lived in this place for centuries also a construct? Are they fungible, like the US loans with repayment waived (in other words, grants for Israel with no US oversight)? It was at this point that the settler teen accused my Barbie-blonde Swedish friend of perpetrating the Holocaust. He told her that she wanted all of the Jews in Israel to move back to Europe. She clarified that she didn't want him or any of his friends anywhere near her country.

It was at this point, after the realization that Palestinians had left the polling place, thoroughly intimidated by the settler presence and aware that if they tried to vote inside the post office they would probably be turned away, that we decided to leave. The Israelis were clear about the fact that they were not interested in reigning in the settlers (are they ever clear in action that they want these people to stop?) The settlers sent their children out to incite violence, as after all, they are the ones who spawn terrorists and confronting them was not what we were there to do. We heard about more incidents throughout the day of settlers trying to intimidate Palestinians on their way to the polls, but the EU monitors claim that every one was able to reach the polling places without physical violence.

At around 2:30pm, former president Jimmy Carter negotiated a deal with the prime minister's office that allowed Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to vote inside the city with their I.D. cards, whether their name appeared on the list of those eligible to vote in the city or not. However, at the time at which the polls closed and Abu Mazen was declared the winner (a huge shock to all, I mean what a roller coaster ride!) only six or seven Palestinians had voted at the Jaffa Gate.

So, dear reader, were the elections free and fair as was reported? The Palestinian residents of Jerusalem worked as hard as they could, organizing buses and vans to the surrounding areas in order to get out the vote. The Palestinians care deeply about changing their situation and want more than anything to have a just and democratic society. They made every effort to make the elections run smoothly under occupation. I share their hopes that Israel will stop this nonsensical occupation and that they will one day achieve their goal.

The day after the elections, the Israelis closed the Qalandia and Ram checkpoints for "security reasons" in both the direction of Ramallah (away from Israel) and in the direction of Jerusalem. While my friends and I waited at Qalandia with about 200-300 Palestinians all too familiar with these regular accusations and hassles, I thought "no matter what they say, no matter what they do, no matter what's decided, I will always remember that these people are Palestinians and that this place is Palestine."

PALESTINIAN VOTES CURTAILED BY ISRAEL IN JERUSALEM ; POLITICAL DOUBTS AND FEARS CONSTRAIN PALESTINIAN VOTERS

Sharon : Thanks to me, free elections are happening in Palestine

For other drawings on world news  :
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/tableauxpastels/caricatures-mariali/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, FROM INTERNAT.SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

January 9, 2005

At approximately, 12:30 PM today, 5 ½ hours after the opening of polling stations, the first Palestinian voter succeeded in casting a ballot at the Jaffa Gate post office in the old city of East Jerusalem.  Israeli imposed obstacles to voting at the Jaffa Gate polling station typify the problems Palestinians are experiencing as they attempt to conduct democratic elections under Israeli occupation.  The Israeli government is attempting to limit Palestinian voting in East Jerusalem in particular as part of an attempt to deny Palestinian rights and identity there.

Because of Israeli imposed conditions, only 6,000 of the 124,000 Palestinians from East Jerusalem who hold Israeli-issued Jerusalem IDs are eligible to vote within East Jerusalem near their homes.  Those 6,000 must vote for their President in six Israeli government controlled post offices. The remaining 118,000 East Jerusalem residents must travel to surrounding towns and villages to vote, often passing through Israeli checkpoints or around Israel's Apartheid Wall.

Only 4.8% of East Jerusalemites will actually find their names on the East Jerusalem voting lists at the six Israeli post offices near their homes.  The vast majority are being turned away and told to travel on to the surrounding towns and villages to vote.  The Jaffa Gate post office seems to represent an extreme example of this problem.  By 12:30 PM, ISM volunteers were told by an Israeli post office employee there that only one of approximately 40 Palestinians who came to vote there had been allowed to vote so far.  Similarly, ISM volunteers have been told that only 34 few East Jerusalemites succeeded in voting at the Israeli post office in Shufat, and 56 voted in Beit Hanina so far.

On top of restricting the vote to 4.8% of the eligible Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities have imposed numerous other constraints on East Jerusalem residents' right to vote.  The requirement that Palestinians cast ballots in Israeli post offices allows Israeli authorities to maintain a façade that Jerusalem residents are casting absentee ballots, and mailing their votes back to their homeland. 

During visits to voters' homes over the last week in East Jerusalem, a number of Palestinians explained to ISM volunteers that voting in Israeli post offices is intimidating and will reduce turnout.  They fear Israeli authorities will take the list of voters, and, as a punishment for voting in a Palestinian election, strip voters of their Israeli-issued Jerusalem identification card and their right to live in Jerusalem, and of the benefits that they have paid for through taxes to the Israeli government.

Already worried about voting in Israeli post offices, East Jerusalemites also fear traveling to vote in the towns and villages outside of East Jerusalem.  Israeli authorities could claim that as evidence that they are not residents of Jerusalem, and strip them of their Jerusalem IDs and their rights and benefits.

Other major violations in East Jerusalem include Israeli restrictions on registering voters and campaigning in East Jerusalem.  Israeli authorities closed down Palestinian voter registration centers in East Jerusalem. While they eventually allowed door-to-door registration, staff conducting the registration told ISM volunteers that they were prohibited from carrying any documents identifying them with the Palestinian Central election Commission, and from displaying the Palestinian flag or colors.  Israeli authorities have also limited the posting of candidate and voter education posters to a few designated public locations.  Presidential candidates have also been arrested and harassed by Israeli police on the few occasions when they attempted to campaign in East Jerusalem.

The Israeli government's effort to deny Palestinians' right to vote in East Jerusalem serves as one example of the impossibility of conducting free and fair elections under Israeli military occupation.

Subsequent to acknowledging the above information we can perhaps see why Abdul Latif Gheithwas arrested and unavailable for consultation from the many Jerusalem citizens who would have needed his advocacy for their votes:
Release of Addameer's Chairman of the Board of Trustees Abdul Latif Gheith

After 6 months of being held in Ofer Detention Center (just outside Ramallah) as an administrative detainee, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, Abdul Latif Gheith, was released on January 27, 2005. Mr. Gheith, 63 years old, was arrested on July 29, 2004, by Israeli soldiers while crossing the Qalandya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

Like all administrative detainees, the Israeli occupying authorities held Mr. Gheith on secret evidence unavailable to him or his lawyers. Israeli military regulations effective in the Occupied Palestinian Territories allow for the Israeli army to detain any Palestinian for a period of 8 days without providing reason for the detention. Although Gheith is a resident of Jerusalem and holds a Jerusalem ID card, he therefore is governed by different regulations of detention, the Israeli occupation authorities have dealt with Gheith based on military regulations in effect for holders of West Bank ID cards.

Abdul Latif Gheith, a prominent public figure in Jerusalem and the Palestinian community at large, has devoted his life to the protection of human rights and social justice activities. He has most recently focused much of his energy and activism on social justice and human rights issues as relate to violations of the rights of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, particularly against the Annexation Wall that has created enclaves of Palestinian residential areas and suffocated Palestinian society. Mr. Gheith is a member of the Palestinian Civil Society Committee on Jerusalem and a member of the Higher Palestinian National Committee on Political Prisoners.

The specter of administrative detention is not unfamiliar to Gheith who, like thousands of other Palestinian activists, has been targeted by this form of arbitrary and debilitating punishment. In 1988, with the beginning of the first Intifada, Gheith was arbitrarily detained for 6 months and, following a brief release, was detained again in 1989 for another 6 months of administrative detention.

Addameer would like to thank all those organizations and individuals who supported the campaign to free Abdul Latif Gheith, and all who continue to support the release of all Palestinian political prisoners.