THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY2007
this page will be updated during February:

UPDATE
4th February
Jeff Halper's Concept of An Israeli "Matrix of Control"
 
Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) based in Jerusalem. He's also a professor of anthropology at Ben Gurion University and has lived in Israel since 1973. ICAHD was originally formed as a non-violent, direct-action group to resist Israeli home demolitions in the OPT. It's activities now include resistance to settlements, land expropriation, fruit and olive tree uprootings and other crop destruction, bypass road construction, policies of "closure" and "separation," denial of civil and human rights, and all other elements of repression of a people under occupation it wants to help end to achieve an equitable and sustainable peace only possible once Palestinians have their own sovereign integral independent state.
 
Halper established the concept of a repressive "Matrix of Control" to explain how Israeli governments dominate Palestinian life. For these long-suffering people ever to achieve justice and a land of their own, this system chaining them in bondage must end. Here's how it works.
 
Halper explains it's composed of three layers of control. The first one is "physical control" of key "links and nodes." It's done through illegal OPT settlements on expropriated land, use of military zones, industrial parks, control of aquifers and other natural resources, checkpoints, control of all border crossings, a network of bypass roads for Jews only, national parks for recreation underneath which are former Palestinian villages destroyed and their history erased to make way for them, and the oppressive (World Court ruled) illegal Separation or Apartheid Wall claimed for security but, in fact, another part of a land grab and confinement agenda. It's being built to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians and keep those remaining virtual prisoners in restricted cantonized OPT areas. They're isolated from and unconnected to others as part of Israel's policy of ghettoization, repression and social control.
 
Halper's second control layer is bureaucratic and legal encompassing a host of policies constricting Palestinians in a maze of procedures and restrictions. These include harassing zoning and other regulations governing the following:
 
-- Allowable home and village construction. -- Building permit restrictions.
 
-- Home demolitions for violations of code.
 
-- Land expropriation designated for Israeli "public purposes."
 
-- Agricultural restrictions and crop destruction for violations.
 
-- Licensing and inspection of Palestinian businesses.
 
-- Closures anywhere, any time, for any reason.
 
-- Movement and travel restrictions within and outside the country.
 
-- Many other politically motivated harassing rules and regulations designed to make life impossible for people forced to abide by them. These are politically motivated actions confining Palestinians to designated enclaves or cantons. Israel claims they're legal, but, in fact, they're not. They deny fundamental human and civil rights guaranteed under numerous international laws, covenants, and protocols established by Geneva Conventions and the UN governing a broad definition of rights and freedoms including economic, social, cultural, political and other ones in peace and war.
 
Israel is a signatory to these laws yet flagrantly violates them. It's also brazenly ignored over five dozen UN Resolutions going back decades condemning or censuring it for its actions against the Palestinians or other Arab people, deploring it for committing them, or demanding, calling on or urging the Jewish state to end them. Israel flaunts the rule of law observing only what comes out of its Knesset. It arrogates to itself the right to act in its own interest, law or no law, and gets away with it because its supportive partner and paymaster in Washington winks and nods approval, funds it lavishly, and supplies it with the most modern weapons of war to use against any adversary. Palestinians, on the other hand, are vulnerable and defenseless. They have only crude weapons, their bodies and redoubtable spirit to use in self-defense.
 
Halper's third "Matrix" layer uses violence as a means of social and political control. It includes military occupation, mass imprisonment and routine use of torture as documented by Israeli human rights monitoring group B'Tselem saying it's flagrant and widespread and violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 1984 UN Convention Against Torture. It also relies on an elaborate use of collaborators, pressure on families to sell their land, and military and civil authority oppression in the OPT. All this is falsely justified in the name of security just like harsh US laws and their enforcement are here. In fact, they're just police state measures to harass and round up dissenters and control a restive population resisting a hostile government harming its welfare.
 
Most people in the US know little about what's happening in the OPT because information about it is suppressed in the corporate-controlled media. The Israeli public is better informed but not well enough about the "Matrix." Americans are willing to sacrifice some freedom for security not realizing when they do they lose both. Israelis, on the other hand, want peace and are willing to give up some territory for it. Palestinians, however, are victims and understand the "Matrix" well because they live under its harshness affecting their daily lives. Achieving their dream one day depends not only on gaining their own independent state, but also freeing themselves from "the key nodes of the Matrix" Halper explains do the following:
 
-- Gives Israel full control of all aspects of Palestinian life in the OPT.
 
-- Most often lowers Israel's military profile creating an image of administration and Israel's right to defend itself hiding the ugly reality on the ground of an oppressive occupier.
 
-- Creates a cramped space for a Palestinian cantonized mini-state relieving Israel of an obligation to service it.
 
-- Deflects international opposition beneath the cover of conventional administrative and bureaucratic mechanisms.
 
-- Creates deplorable conditions leading to despair and belief a truly sovereign independent state is unachievable hoping Palestinians will accept the crumbs offered them or give up and leave.
 
This bureaucratic web of containment disguises a hard line Kafkaesque system of social control and oppressive enforcement harshly treating anyone resisting it. Visible on the surface under a military head of a "Civil Administration" is a face of "proper administration, upholding the law, and keeping public order and security." It makes the occupation invisible except for its victims disciplined by it harsh rules. Halper describes the control mechanisms:
 
-- Military assaults against the civilian population and infrastructure (including targeted assassinations and willful collateral killing). It's now ongoing daily in Gaza and the West Bank and documented by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, B'Tselem and others on the ground.
 
-- Use of collaborators and undercover "mustarabi" army units, mass arrests, administrative detentions, (kangaroo court) trials and widespread torture of detainees.
 
-- Absence of civil law replaced by military rule supplemented by Civil Administration policies.
 
-- Mass expropriation of Palestinian land mostly in the OPT but also affecting Arab Israeli citizens.
 
-- Construction of over 200 settlements on occupied land for 400,000 Israeli Jews since 1967 in the West Bank including Palestinian East Jerusalem.
 
-- Dividing the OPT into Areas "A," "B," "C," and "D" in the West Bank; "H-1" and "H-2" in Hebron; nature reserves for Jews only; closed military areas; security zones; and "open green spaces" for Jewish-only housing developments in over half of East Jerusalem leaving Palestinians confined to unconnected cantons surrounded by Israeli settlements, restricted roads and checkpoints.
 
-- An interconnected restricted highway and bypass road system linking the settlements and effectively incorporating them into Israel proper like suburbs are to downtown areas of US cities.
 
-- Controlling aquifers and other key natural resources including rainfall Palestinians are forbidden to collect by law even though they have limited access to other water sources.
 
-- Controlling OPT holy places as pretexts to maintain a "security presence" there.
 
-- Maintaining permanent "closure" of the West Bank and Gaza.
 
-- Restricting movement using a discriminatory system of work, internal and external travel permits.
 
-- Schemes to displace those unwanted by exile, deportation and revoking residency rights.
 
-- Home demolitions, land expropriation, denial of basic services and impoverishment.
 
-- "Master plans" to continue settlement expansion and develop of new ones.
 
-- Agricultural restrictions along with hundreds of thousands of olive and fruit trees destroyed since 1967 and other crop land disrupted or expropriated.
 
-- Using various other means of social control and harassment against an unwanted people in a racist Jewish state wanted for Jews only.
 
All this is a scheme to traumatize, intimidate and break the will of the occupied people hoping they'll give up and leave vacating the land for Jewish development and settlement. It hasn't worked for six decades and never will because too much is at stake, and Palestinians, like Jews,know their own land one day they intend to get. This scheme worked for the Jews and for decades Israel has full support of its policies from the US, the West and most Arab states aligned with the Global North for benefits they receive believing sacrificing Palestinians' interests is a small price to pay.
 
Halper believes settlements are central to maintaining the "Matrix" because all other development is woven around them including connecting roads, industrial areas, military installations and zones, and the entire security scheme of checkpoints and other mechanisms of control. The only way to end the "Matrix" is to remove all settlements from the OPT, replacing checkpoints and border restrictions with normal transit arrangements just like in any other country or between them. It also means ending military occupation and rule allowing the Palestinians the right to a real integral state they govern freely and not Israeli dictated cantons unconnected to others that are effective open air prisons by any other name the way they're now conceived and laid out.


3rd February:

Anarchists block Tel Aviv street

Left organization attempts to raise awareness of city's residents by closing off street, demonstrating Palestinian daily reality around separation fence

Yael Barnovsky 02.03.07

Protesting against the separation fence, "Anarchists Against the Wall" activists blocked the entrance to one of Tel Aviv's main streets, Rothschild Boulevard, with barbwire and a sign saying "restricted military zone" on Saturday.


Anarchists in Tel Aviv Saturday (Photo courtesy of activestills.org)

This is the anarchists' second Tel Aviv protest aimed at demonstrating the daily difficulties the separation fence places on residents of the Palestinian Territories.

The demonstration did not last long, and since the act was illegal, the anarchists refused to reveal their identities for fear of getting arrested. The organization included dozens of Israeli, Palestinian, and foreign youths who oppose the construction of the fence, which, according to them, violates the rights of the Palestinian population and takes away their land.

Every Friday the organization participates in a demonstration near the village of Bilin where the fence is currently under construction, and which the anarchists claim harms the life fabric of the residents.

"It is important that we remind the citizens and residents of Tel Aviv that they should oppose the police and military occupation any way possible. We tried to make what Palestinian civilians go through on a daily basis clear to them," said one of the demonstrators to Ynet. The anarchists explained that an organized, authorized demonstration would not get the message across properly, so stronger measures had to be taken. "The situation is so bad that a protest with signs won't help. The occupation has been going on for decades now and there is no end in sight. The damage Israel has caused during the years of occupation is nothing compared to the damage the military and government sources, in the name if Israel's citizens, cause the Palestinians on a daily basis," said an activist. www.ynetnews.com


ISRAELI LAW AMENDMENTS - THE ISRAELI VERSION OF THE NUREMBERG LAWS...

AND - IN THE USA THE LOBBY TRIPS AND TILTS...

Ethnic cleansing with a capital 'E' and the beginning of the Israeli version of the infamous Nuremberg laws!

West Bank heart surgeon faces possible deportation from Israel

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/818293.html
Ha’aretz Update Saturday, January 27, 2007

By Reuters : "He's the only professional surgeon in the West Bank............"

An open-heart surgeon based in the West Bank said on Saturday he had been detained at Israel's airport and faced possible deportation.

After being detained for more than a day at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, Israel granted Dirgham Abu Ramadan, a German cardiologist of Palestinian origin, a one-week extension on his tourist visa and allowed him to enter the country.

"They told me I was allowed in for seven days during which I would either get a work permit or I leave the country," Abu Ramadan told Reuters.

Abu Ramadan has performed surgeries at hospitals across the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip for years. He said he has 270 surgeries scheduled in the coming months.

Mazen al-Shawa, general manager of the al-Mezan Hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron, said Abu Ramadan was scheduled to perform eight procedures on Saturday alone. "This is a very grave issue. He's the only professional surgeon in the West Bank," al-Shawa said.

Some Palestinians can receive treatment at Israeli hospitals but it is difficult to get permits and many cases have been refused.

Shlomo Dror, an Israeli defence ministry spokesman, said Abu Ramadan received a week-long tourist visa and was required to apply within seven days for a permanent work permit.

Abu Ramadan told Reuters by telephone from the airport that he has been working legally in the West Bank for years and that a lawyer was working on his work permit.

Thousands of expatriates of Palestinian origin have been entering the West Bank for years on tourist visas because of the difficulty of getting permanent residency cards and other permits issued by Israel.

But since the Hamas Islamist movement took power in March, Israel has tightened up on the use of tourist visas, which had been renewable every three months by leaving the West Bank and returning again.

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat reached a deal last month with the Israeli government to allow foreign nationals of Palestinian origin to get Israeli visas that would allow them entry to Palestinian areas.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem estimates that Israel has frozen 120,000 Palestinian family reunification requests since a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000.

Israeli Knesset passes law to revoke citizenship of 'unpatriotic' Israelis
http://www.imemc.org/article/46504

 Wednesday January 10, 2007 23:12 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies - 1 of IMEMC Editorial Group saed@imemc.org

A new law passed Wednesday will allow the Israeli government to revoke the citizenship of citizens considered unpatriotic to the Jewish state of Israel. The law is expected to be applied especially to the 20% of Israeli citizens who are of Palestinian origin. 

Passage of the controversial law comes just as a torrent of criticism was launched by Knesset member Ahmed Tibi against the Knesset for alleged discrimination against its Arab members. Tibi accused the Knesset of discriminatory practices, in which Arab members are required to ask permission, even to use the bathroom, while Jewish members of the Knesset are not.

The new law, passed despite a recommendation against it by the Israeli Attorney General, allows for the deportation and revocation of citizenship of Israelis for a wide range of offenses, including "visiting enemy nations" and "encouraging terror against Israel", with the latter being so open to interpretation that many Palestinians with Israeli citizenship fear that simply being Palestinian will be reason enough for Israeli officials to revoke their citizenship.The Israeli Attorney General called the law, "a drastic and extreme move that harms civil liberties."  He also stated that the new law violates international law.

The Israel Lobby Trips and Tilts

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Suppose the movers and shakers in the Israel lobby here -- Abe Foxman, Alan Dershowitz and the rest of the crew -- had simply decided to leave Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid alone. How long before the book would have been gathering dust on the remainder shelves? Suppose even that Dershowitz had rounded up his unacknowledged co-authors in all their tens of thousands and sallied forth to buy up every copy of Carter’s book and toss each one into the Charles River, would not that have been a more successful suppressor than the blitzkrieg strategy they did adopt? 

Of course it would. For weeks now the lobby has hurled its legions into battle against Carter. He has been stigmatized as an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, a patron of former concentration camp killers, a Christian madman, a pawn of the Arabs who “flatly condones mass murder” of Israeli Jews. (This last was from Murdoch’s New York Post editorial, relayed to its mailing list by the Zionist Organization of America.)

Any day now I expect some janitors at the Carter Center to resign, declaring that they can no longer in all conscience mop bathrooms that might have been used by the former President, their letter of protest duly front-paged by the New York Times, just like the famous fourteen members of the Carter Center’s Board of Councilors. Actually there were, at the time of resignations, 224 people on this board, where membership is mostly a thank you for a financial donation to the center. So the headlines could be saying, “Nearly 95 per cent of Carter Center Board Members Back Former President.”

But the assault on Carter is all to no avail. With each gust of abuse, Carter’s book soars higher and higher on the bestseller lists, reaching number 4 on Amazon itself. This doesn’t prove the lobby has no power. It proves the lobby can be dumb. Adroit lobbying consists in preventing unpleasing material reaching the light of day. Lobbying thrives in furtive darkness: slipping language into a bill at the last moment, threatening to back a campaign opponent, making quiet phone calls to the Polish embassy. Pressure is now being exerted on Farrar, Straus and Giroux to abandon its impending publication of Mearsheimer and Walt’s attack on the lobby.

The Israel lobby retains its grip inside the Beltway, but it’s starting to lose its hold on the broader public debate. Why? You can’t brutalize the Palestinian people in the full light of day, decade after decade, without claims that Israel is a light among the nations getting more than a few serious dents. In the old days, Mearsheimer and Walt’s tract would have been deep-sixed by the University of Chicago and the Kennedy School long before it reached its final draft, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux wouldn’t have considered offering a six-figure advance for it. Simon & Schuster would have told President Carter that his manuscript had run into insurmountable objections from a distinguished board of internal reviewers. But once a book by a former president with weighty humanitarian credentials makes it into bookstores, it’s hard to shoot it down with volleys of wild abuse.

The trouble with the lobby and the Christian zealots who act as its echo chamber is that they believe their own propaganda about Israel’s equitable social arrangements and immaculate political and legal record in its relations with the Palestinians. Use the word apartheid and they howl with indignation. The shock is about thirty years out of date. Israeli writers have used the word apartheid to describe arrangements in the occupied territories for years. Hundreds of prominent South African Jews issued a statement six years ago making the same link.

As in so many things, conventional elite opinion lives in a bubble, believing mere assertion and ranting about anti-Semitism will carry the day. The New York Times featured a spectacularly disingenuous hatchet job by its deputy foreign editor, Ethan Bronner, and another assault by former Clinton-era Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross. The latter rolled out the ritual accusations about Arafat’s rejection of Clinton’s proposals in December 2000, which is nonsense, as Ross surely knows. Clinton himself acknowledged in 2001 what later historians have substantiated, that both sides accepted his proposals in principle, while filing reservations. (Israel’s amounted to 20 single-spaced pages.)

The Times’ attacks were matched in the Washington Post by Jeffrey Goldberg, formerly of the IDF and a notorious trafficker in fictions, such as the supposed terror ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Amazon ran his vulgar ravings under the “Editorial Reviews” heading—a space usually reserved for short blurbs from Publishers Weekly and the like.

But if the lobby is fighting rearguard and increasingly futile actions to suppress all discussion here of what Israel is doing to Palestinians, it continues to exercise very serious clout in such enclaves of timidity as the U.S. Congress. Bush was not foolish in singling out Iran for threats in his January 10 address. The Democratic reaction to Bush’s escalation against Iraq and Iran has mostly been confined to nervous talk of “symbolic votes.” This temperate posture is surely not unconnected to the fact that the lobby’s prime foreign policy task, joined by Israeli hawks like Bibi Netanyahu, has been to rally support for an assault on Iran.

What an irony! Desperate for an end to the war, the voters hand Congress to the Democrats. Barely more than two months later Bush is kidnapping Iranian diplomats from in their consulate in Irbil, Iraq -- a calculated provocation arousing scant tumult here. Bush is also deploying a larger naval force to the Persian Gulf, as Israel plants stories about its possible recourse to nuclear weapons. Some provocation, maybe a seizure by the U.S. of an Iranian tanker, is easy to imagine in February. In the Congress, there’s barely a whimper out of the Democrats amid these terrifying prospects. It may have made a mess of its war against Carter’s book, but as a ferryman across the Styx toward Armageddon the lobby is doing a competent job.
www.counterpunch.com