Democracy Now! Headlines for February 01, 2010

Democracy Now!

US to Expand Missile Defense System in Persian Gulf

In a move expected to heighten tension in the Middle East, the Obama administration is quietly expanding its land- and sea-based missile shield system in the Persian Gulf region. The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. In addition, the US is keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down missiles. The Obama White House says the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran. In addition, Washington is helping Saudi Arabia to create a 30,000-strong force to protect oil installations and other infrastructure.

Obama Seeks $44B Increase for Pentagon; $5B for Nuclear Arsenal

President Obama is unveiling a record $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 today. The budget would boost war spending while trimming domestic expenditures. Obama is seeking a $44 billion increase in the military’s budget. If approved, this will bring the Pentagon’s budget to $708 billion. The Obama administration is also asking Congress to increase spending on the US nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years. Obama is seeking the extra money despite a pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world. The Obama administration argues that the boost in spending is needed to ensure that US warheads remain secure and work as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages.

Bush Administration Attorneys Clears Torture Memo Authors

Newsweek magazine has revealed the Justice Department will soon issue a report clearing former Bush administration attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee of professional misconduct for authoring memos justifying waterboarding and other forms of torture. The Office of Professional Responsibility determined Yoo and Bybee showed “poor judgment” when they wrote a 2002 memo approving so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, but the report recommends no disciplinary action against the men. An earlier draft of the report, prepared by the Bush administration, had recommended Yoo and Bybee be referred to state disciplinary authorities for sanctions that could have included the revocation of their licenses to practice.

US Resumes Medical Evacuation Flights from Haiti

The White House said Sunday the US would resume medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims after suspending the flights for five days. The US military ended the evacuation flights on Wednesday because Florida officials complained that their hospitals were overwhelmed and that they needed a plan for reimbursement for the care they were providing. Medical officials said the suspension of flights had been catastrophic for patients. Dr. Barth Green of Project Medishare for Haiti said, “People are dying in Haiti because they can’t get out.”

Haitians Block Road and Seize Trucks to Protest Lack of Aid

In the Haitian town of Gressier, residents blocked roads and seized trucks on Friday to protest the lack of aid. Residents said that trucks with humanitarian assistance have driven through the town on the road to Léogâne, but have not stopped to distribute any in Gressier. Meanwhile, in the town of Carrefour, residents continue to suffer due to lack of aid. Many residents, including fifty-six-year-old Simone Charles, now live in a makeshift tents.

Simone Charles: “Today marks the sixteenth day that I have been here with the children. I am dying of hunger. I used to walk, but now I can’t because I am so weak. I can’t even drink a little bit of water.”

10 US Baptist Missionaries Arrested for Trying to Smuggle Out Haitian Children

Haitian authorities have arrested ten Baptist missionaries from the United States after they were caught attempting to smuggle thirty-three Haitian children out of Haiti. Haiti’s Prime Minister Max Bellerive accused the missionaries of “illegal trafficking of children." Child welfare groups expressed outrage over the group’s attempt, saying some of the children had parents who survived the January 12 earthquake. The missionaries say they were only trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children. The children have been taken to an orphanage in Haiti run by the international aid group SOS Children’s Villages, headed by George Willard.

George Willard: “The situation for children in Haiti at the moment is really dramatic. There are thousands of unaccompanied children. We, SOS Children’s Villages and other NGOs, have to take care of them. We have to give them a safe place, safe and secure place, because outside they are really vulnerable and they are living in danger. So we have to bring them in and then slowly checking if their relatives or family is still capable.”

Hamas Accuses Israel of Assassinating Top Hamas Official in Dubai

A top operative from Hamas has been killed in Dubai. Mahmoud Mabhouh was found dead in his room in a hotel on January 20. Hamas officials accused Israel of assassinating Mabhouh and of “moving the battlefield abroad.” His death occurred three days after an Israeli cabinet minister visited Abu Dhabi. Israel had accused Mabhouh of being involved in the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and for delivering arms from Iran to Hamas.

Israel: No Indictments in Tristan Anderson Shooting Case

Israel’s Justice Ministry has announced no soldiers will be indicted for shooting an American activist last March in the West Bank. The activist, Tristan Anderson, was critically injured when Israeli soldiers fired a high-velocity tear gas canister directly at his head in March. Anderson was taking part in a weekly nonviolent protest against Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank village of Ni’lin.

Israeli Officers Disciplined for Using White Phosphorus in Gaza

In other news from the region, the Israeli army has disciplined two high-ranking officers for approving the use of white phosphorus shells during Israel’s assault on Gaza last year. The Israeli paper Haaretz reported that a military inquiry concluded that a division commander and a brigade commander endangered human life by firing the highly incendiary weapon toward a compound run by a UN aid agency.

Tony Blair Defends Invasion of Iraq

Former British prime minister Tony Blair defended the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq on Friday. Blair testified during Britain’s inquiry into the Iraq war.

Tony Blair: “My view is if we had left Saddam there and he’d carried on, as we said, with the intent to develop these weapons and the know-how and the concealment program and the sanctions had gone, I have little doubt myself, but it’s a judgment and other people may take a different judgment, that today we would be facing a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran, competing both on nuclear weapons capability and competing, more important perhaps than anything else, competing as well as the nuclear issue, in respect of support of terrorist groups.”

Report: Leader of Pakistan Taliban Killed in Drone Strike

State-run TV in Pakistan has reported Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has died from wounds sustained in a US drone strike two weeks ago. The US has accused Mehsud of being behind the suicide attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan. The previous head of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a drone attack last August.

US to Restart Aid to Honduras

The Obama administration said on Friday it will restart aid to Honduras after toppled President Manuel Zelaya flew into exile and the country swore in a new leader. The United States had cut off more than $30 million in non-humanitarian aid to Honduras following the June 28 coup that ousted Zelaya.

CAIR Calls for Probe into FBI Shooting of Muslim Cleric in Michigan

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling for independent investigation into the death of a Muslim cleric who was shot dead by federal agents during a raid in Dearborn, Michigan in October. An autopsy reports shows the cleric, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was shot twenty-one times and then handcuffed. The FBI wanted Abdullah on charges of weapons violations and conspiracy to sell stolen goods.

One injured during a Bil’in night invasion

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

Starting the month off with a bang!

Four Shabak (Israeli Intelligence) jeeps and one military hummer rolled through Bil’in around 3am this morning. Computer screens with GPS maps were visible in the jeeps. They started throwing sound bombs amongst houses when camera people arrived on the scene.

Soldiers in the last hummer taunted the camera people by making chicken noises. It seemed like they were looking for someone or were lost in Bil’in as they turned down side streets and returned to the main road between the school and the mosque. Earlier in the evening residents of Bil’in reported seeing the military throwing tear gas at young kids who were near the Israeli Apartheid Wall. Invasions like this are not uncommon in Bil’in. One person from Bil’in was injured while running to document the invasion last night. There were no arrests. This happened less than one week since the arrest of Bilin Popular Committee member Mohammad Al Khatib.

No people in Chagos: A conservative approach to marine conservation

by Sean Carey

Mauritius Times

Frank Pope’s article in The Times last week,“Investment is essential for biological wonderland of the Chagos islands”, was written to highlight the pristine state of the British Indian Ocean Territory and why the area should be designated a Marine Protected Area (MPA). “There is none of the fertiliser, pesticide, silt or construction debris that are choking reefs elsewhere,” he says before issuing a series of warnings about the various categories of people who, with the notable exception of “scientists who go without sunscreen for fear of contaminating the water”, would mess up the area if allowed in. Put simply, the claim is that the current pristine quality of the Archipelago is all down to “the lack of inhabitants”. Tourists are particularly problematic we are told: “Conservationists warn that even small numbers of visitors would risk destroying the area’s value as a scientific reference point against which to gauge climate change.” Fishermen are also dangerous because according to one marine scientist “the position of the islands and the prevailing currents helps to seed fish stocks and reefs elsewhere in the Indian Ocean”.

But then we come to Pope’s real target: the possible return of some of the exiled Chagos Islanders whose case is currently before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Their return to their homeland would involve “constructing an airport and town” which would be “both financially and environmentally ruinous” to the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office although Pope conveniently omits to mention that Mauritius has stated that it will pick up the costs of resettlement and install suitable transport links (not necessarily an airport) once sovereignty of Chagos is regained from the UK.

It is also revealing that Pope does not provide any details of the negative environmental effects of the population of around 3500 people (who may or may not use sunscreen) composed of US and British military personnel and their predominantly Filipino workforce on the base on Diego Garcia, the largest in southernmost island in the Chagos Archipelago. For the record, the base boasts the world's longest runway built on crushed coral -- after a total of 5 million cubic yards of 'coral fill' was blasted and dredged from the reef and the lagoon for construction purposes (or “harvested”, as the US Navy puts it).

Nor do we read anything about the significant number of people that sail through the area and armed with the appropriate £100 a month permit issued by the BIOT authorities can moor on the outer islands of the Archipelago like Peros Banhos and Salomon where some of the Islanders once lived.

In fact, Pope’s highly selective account well illustrates a general problem with a traditional and conservative approach to conservation that has a long but not very glorious history. Last year leading US investigative journalist, Mark Dowie, published Conservation Refugees: The Hundred –Year Conflict between Conservation and Native Peoples (MIT Press) where he exposed some of the injustices that have often been at the heart of many apparently successful land conservation projects.

At Yosemite in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, for example, there was a concerted and ultimately successful effort from the mid-19th-century until 1914 when the area became a national park, to expel a small group of Miwak Native Americans who are thought to have settled in the valley some 4000 years ago.

Similarly, nearly all of the other national parks in the USA, including Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Mount Rainier, Yellowstone, and Zion, were created by expelling, sometimes violently, tribal peoples from their homes and hunting grounds so that the areas recovered could remain in a “state of nature” free from human contamination.

This process has been replicated in other parts of the world as well. Indeed, Dowie estimates that over the last 100 years at least 20 million people, 14 million in Africa alone, have been displaced from their traditional homelands in the name of nature conservation by consciously employing “the Yosemite model” (which in Africa was renamed “fortress conservation”) often with the tacit backing of NGOs like The Nature Conservancy, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and the African Wildlife Foundation.

Exactly 40 years ago, a British social anthropologist, Mary Douglas, in a lecture delivered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London pointed out that in assessing risks to environments caused by “human folly, hate and greed” it was vitally important to achieve a moral consensus by carefully scrutinising the concepts and theories which powerful groups used to explain things to themselves (and others).

But Douglas also issued a warning that relying on mainstream scientists who had absorbed not only the biases of their own professions but were also possessed by the emotional (and she might have said political) attachment to system-building was of little use for guidance in trying to resolve serious environmental problems. Insight was much more likely to come from those operating at the margins or where a number of disciplines intersected, she claimed.

History has proved Douglas right. According to Mark Dowie and others, the old model of conservation which falsely opposed nature (good) and culture (bad) is being replaced with something much more dynamic, a new transnational conservation paradigm. A younger generation of scientists recognise that properly engaged indigenous and traditional peoples have a vital role to play in preserving fragile ecosystems.

Which brings us neatly back to the Chagos Islanders. They may be relatively recent inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago (they first arrived in 1783) but no one can legitimately claim that they do not possess the status of an indigenous or traditional people just like those descendants of former African slaves and Indian indentured labourers who live on other Indian Ocean islands like Mauritius, Reunion, Rodrigues and the Seychelles. And the only reason the Chagossians no longer reside in their homeland, part of the colony of Mauritius until it was illegally excised in 1965, is because they were forcibly removed by the British authorities.

While the evidence is clear that uncontrolled fishing can have catastrophic consequences the idea that a small settlement of Chagossians and a carefully controlled number of eco-tourists are going to destroy the pristine qualities of the proposed MPA in the Chagos Archipelago is nothing short of preposterous and flies in the face of evidence from other parts of the world like American Samoa, Australia, Chile, Indonesia and the Philippines where indigenous and traditional peoples are fully involved in the conservation and maintenance of marine reserves.

Environmentalists like Pope may be able to line up a fair number of scientists and traditionally-minded conservation groups to back their argument, but the rest of us realise that the game has moved on. This is not just because of evolving social and political realities which have undermined a hierarchical view of the world based on the principle that conservationists always know best, but because the old opposition between nature conservation where humans were seen as “the enemy” in the preservation of biological diversity has been rightly found wanting and is being slowly but surely being replaced by a much better model.

Dr Sean Carey is Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM) at Roehampton University

US frame-up of Aafia Siddiqui begins to unravel

by Ali Ismail

World Socialist Web Site

Pakistani victim of rendition and torture

Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui went on trial in a federal courtroom in New York City on January 19, charged with the attempted murder of US personnel in Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province in 2008. The case against Dr. Siddiqui, 37, is rapidly unraveling due to lack of evidence and discordant testimony from witnesses.

It is becoming increasingly evident that the charges amount to a frame-up that has been staged to cover up the fact that Siddiqui, along with her eldest son, had been held without charges in the US military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2008 where they were subjected to torture. Two of Dr. Siddiqui’s younger children are still missing.

According to the account given by US authorities, Aafia Siddiqui was taken into custody by Afghan security services in July of 2008 after they alleged having found a list of US targets for terrorist attacks as well as bomb-making instructions and assorted chemicals.

Despite these claims, Siddiqui is not charged with any terror-related offenses. Instead, she is indicted for allegedly having seized an automatic weapon and fired on her Afghan and American captors when a group of FBI agents and US Army officers arrived to collect her. The most serious charge against her is using a firearm in committing a felony, the gun in question being a US soldier’s rifle.

Siddiqui was shot twice in the stomach and barely survived after medics at Bagram air field had to make an incision from her breastbone to her bellybutton to remove the bullets. It was reported that part of her intestines had to be removed to save her life.

The accusations against Siddiqui strain credulity and have been fervently denied by her relatives, her defense attorneys, and human rights organizations, all of whom claim that she had been held in secret US detention facilities where she was physically and sexually abused ever since she disappeared off the streets of Karachi in the spring of 2003 with her three children, then seven, five, and six months old.

According to the German weekly, Der Spiegel, just a few days before she disappeared, Affia Siddiqui had contacted her former professor, Robert Sekuler, at Brandeis University in search of a job, complaining that there weren’t any job opportunities in Pakistan for a woman of her educational background.

Dr. Siddiqui is a Pakistani national who was educated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University. In July of 2001, she and her husband at the time were scrutinized by the FBI for their alleged association with Islamic charities. Following the events of September 11, 2001 the couple returned to Pakistan at a time when hundreds of Pakistanis and other Muslims were rounded up for questioning across the US. The family resided in Karachi where Aafia Siddiqui was employed at Aga Khan University.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Aafia Siddiqui and her children were kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence agents on their way to the airport in Karachi. Their whereabouts remained unknown until Aafia Siddiqui and her eldest son, Ahmed, were reported detained in Afghanistan in July of 2008, several years after their disappearance. While the Pakistani Interior Ministry had initially confirmed that the abduction had taken place, it later claimed to have been mistaken and stated that Siddiqui was not in Pakistani custody. This about-face was an attempt to conceal the complicity of Pakistani intelligence services in the US government’s rendition of Siddiqui to Afghanistan and her subsequent ordeal.

Aafia Siddiqui’s sister, Dr. Fauzia Siddiqui, had informed the press that she and her mother had journeyed to the US in 2003 to meet with FBI officials, who had claimed that Aafia Siddiqui would soon be released. In Pakistan, Siddiqui’s family was repeatedly harassed and received numerous death threats from sinister forces within the Pakistani ruling elite. The family was ordered not to make any public appeals in support of Aafia and her three children.

Between 2003 and 2008, when Siddiqui’s whereabouts were still unknown, the US claimed she was working on behalf of Al Qaeda. In May of 2004, she was listed by US officials as one of the seven “most wanted” Al Qaeda fugitives. The US has also spuriously claimed that she is married to Ammar al-Baluchi, who is reported to be the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the so-called “mastermind” behind the 9/11 attacks. The claim that Siddiqui was married to al-Baluchi was based solely on coerced statements made by Mohammed, who has been repeatedly tortured.

The US military and the FBI have consistently denied that Siddiqui had been in US custody prior to her arrest in 2008. In reality, Aafia Siddiqui spent the years between 2003 and 2008 at the detention facility at Bagram air base, where many referred to her as the “Grey Lady of Bagram.”

Around the same time as her staged arrest, the British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, had been bringing attention to an unknown female detainee in Bagram prison who was known as Prisoner No. 650. In his book, “Enemy Combatant,” Moazzam Begg recalled hearing the woman’s piercing screams as she was being tortured while he was imprisoned in the same facility. According to Ridley, in 2005 male prisoners at the facility were so disturbed by her screams and sobs that they staged a hunger strike that lasted for six days.

When she was arrested in 2008, her then 11 year-old son Ahmed, a US citizen, was by her side. The traumatized boy has since been repatriated to Pakistan, where he is now living with his aunt, Dr. Fawzia Siddiqui. According to his aunt, Pakistani authorities have forbidden Ahmed from speaking to the news media.

Siddiqui’s appearance has changed markedly since 2002, according to her lawyers. She has suffered a broken nose, is deathly pale, and extremely frail, weighing about 100 pounds. When she arrived in the US, she was suffering from acute trauma, according to her lawyers who were outraged that she did not immediately receive the urgent medical attention. Siddiqui had been suffering from agonizing pain from the wounds she had sustained in Afghanistan and was slumped over in her wheelchair when she arrived in court in August of 2008.

Her trial was delayed as her lawyers argued that she was mentally unfit to participate in her own defense. However, prosecutors eventually found mental health experts to allege that she was faking her condition to escape punishment. Judge Richard Berman ruled that she was mentally fit for trial.

The paucity of media attention given to the trial is noteworthy, particularly given that Siddiqui was listed as a top Al Qaeda suspect. The tabloid press in New York City, where the proceedings have received limited attention, press has taken her guilt for granted, cynically dubbing her “Lady Al Qaeda.” The trial is being closely watched in Pakistan, where Siddiqui’s ordeal has outraged many and has sparked protests around the country.

From its beginning, the trial has been marked by questionable irregularities, and the judge has gone out of his way to accommodate the prosecutors. Not a single Pakistani journalist was granted press credentials for the opening statements last Tuesday. Defense attorneys protested the robust security measures put in place during the trial, which obviously reinforces the notion that Siddiqui poses a security threat to the US.

In a clear violation of her rights, Judge Berman has repeatedly thrown Siddiqui out of the courtroom for what he called her “outbursts”. The “outbursts,” were Siddiqui’s anguished claims of innocence and protests that she was tortured.

“Since I’ll never get a chance to speak,” she had told the court. “If you were in a secret prison, or your children were tortured…Give me a little credit, this is not a list of targets of New York. I was never planning to bomb it. You’re lying.”

The trial has also been marked by contradictory testimony from prosecution witnesses, which has undermined the case against Siddiqui.

On the third day of the trial, Assistant US Attorney Jenna Dabbs displayed several photographs of the room where the prosecution claims the shooting occurred. However, Carlo Rosatti, an FBI firearms expert who investigated the case, acknowledged last Friday that he had found “no shell casings, no bullets, no bullet fragments, no evidence the gun [the soldier’s M-4 rifle] was fired.” The only shell casing from the scene was from a 9-milllimeter pistol with which Siddiqui was shot. On the fourth day of the trial, another FBI agent testified that the FBI never found Aafia Siddiqui’s fingerprints on the M-4 rifle.

The warrant officer who shot Siddiqui also took the stand, recounting the version of events laid out by the prosecution. He claimed that on the day he and his colleagues went to collect Siddiqui, she suddenly got a hold of his rifle and aimed it at US personnel, at which point he opened fire with his 9-millimeter pistol.

When Siddiqui yelled out, “I never shot it,” she was tossed out of the courtroom for the remainder of the day.

The unnamed warrant officer, who had hobbled to the stand using a cane, was also permitted to recount how he was wounded in a recent and totally unrelated roadside bombing in Afghanistan, shedding tears as he did so. While having absolutely no relevance to the trial, the soldier’s wounds were invoked as part of a brazen attempt by prosecutors to sway the jury. Judge Berman’s allowing the testimony demonstrates the rigged character of the trial.

Sensing that Siddiqui was indeed emotionally unstable, prosecutors moved to force her to testify in the hopes that she would incriminate herself. Defense attorneys argued that she wasn’t mentally fit to take the stand. Once again, Judge Berman sided with the prosecution.

Berman warned Aafia Siddiqui that she is not permitted to speak about events prior to her arrest in July of 2008. Nevertheless, on Thursday Siddiqui repeatedly told the jury that she was held in secret prisons by US authorities, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. She told the jury how she was shot just after she peeked through a curtain in search of an escape route. She added that it would be ludicrous to believe that a soldier would leave his gun where an allegedly dangerous suspect could get a hold of it.

“It’s too crazy,” she said. “It’s just ridiculous. I didn’t do that.”

When asked by a US Attorney about the contents of her purse which allegedly contained chemicals, bomb-making instructions, and a list of US targets, Siddiqui said, “I can’t testify to that, the bag was not mine, so I didn’t necessarily go through everything.” Siddiqui’s lawyers have claimed the bag and its contents were planted evidence. Her attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, said back in 2008 that Siddiqui had been carrying what amounted to “conveniently incriminating evidence.”

“Of course they found all this stuff on her. It was planted on her. She is the ultimate victim of the American dark side,” another one of her attorneys had told the Associated Press in 2008.

Siddiqui also told the jury that her children were constantly on her mind and that she was disoriented at the time of her arrest in 2008.

On Friday, the prosecution called Gary Woodworth of Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club in Massachusetts to testify. Woodworth claimed that Siddiqui had taken a 12-hour pistol course at some point in the early 1990s. The Associated Press of Pakistan reported that Woodworth was noticeably distressed when the defense team demanded to know how it was possible for him to recall a specific individual from two decades earlier, when he’d had hundreds of students. Woodworth admitted that he had no records or documentation to back up his assertions, insisting that he was good at remembering faces.

Also on Friday, FBI Special Agent Bruce Kamerman testified that Siddiqui grabbed the assault rifle in a fit of rage. However, he appeared to be flustered when one of Siddiqui’s attorneys produced his hand-written notes in which there was no mention of her grabbing the gun.

In spite of the obviously fabricated character of the prosecution’s case, there is no guarantee of an acquittal.

Even if she is found not guilty, the fate of Aafia’s Siddiqui’s other two children, Mariam and Suleman, remains unknown. Siddiqui recounts that, while she was held in solitary confinement for five years, she was endlessly forced to listen to recordings of her screaming, terrified children. Her baby, Suleman, she said, was taken away from her immediately, never to be seen again. She said her daughter Mariam was occasionally shown to her, but only as an obscure figure behind a sheet of opaque glass.

The horrifying case of Aafia Siddiqui and her three children is but one example of the criminal and inhuman practices of US imperialism and its ally, the Pakistani bourgeoisie. Hundreds if not thousands of Pakistanis have been kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence services and handed over to US personnel to be dispatched to Bagram, Guantanamo and other “black site” torture chambers around the globe. While the Pakistani government now claims to be doing everything in its power to bring Siddiqui back to Pakistan, its supposed efforts are little more than damage control.

6,000 rally in Tokyo against Futenma relocation

Japan Today

TOKYO —Some 6,000 people gathered Saturday in Tokyo to rally against relocating the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station within Okinawa, as debate on the issue intensifies following the local election victory of a relocation opponent. Consumer affairs minister Mizuho Fukushima, who took part in the rally, reiterated her resolve to see the base moved out of Okinawa or Japan altogether. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has said all options remain open, including the current plan to relocate it within Okinawa, until a final decision is taken in May.

‘‘I hope to win the struggle in terms of having the land for the Futenma base returned and seeing that no more burdens are placed on Okinawa,’’ Fukushima said in an address to the gathering, which was organized by civic groups such as Peace Forum and included more than 100 participants from Okinawa.

‘‘We have several months to go before reaching a conclusion at the end of May, and we will definitely win with all our might,’’ said the head of the small ruling coalition partner Social Democratic Party.

Nasser Gawi expelled from Sheikh Jarrah – settler detained, weapon seized

International Solidarity Movement

Video: Settler attacks Nasser Gawi with M-16

Nasser Gawi and one settler have been expelled from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah for 15 days after the settler attacked local residents and threatened them with an M-16.

At 7PM on Sunday night a settler occupying the Palestinian Gawi family house in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah fought neighborhood residents and threatened them with an M-16 automatic rifle.

The settler first threw rocks at the tent the Gawi family has stayed in since being evicted, provoking angry shouts from the family. When the settler descended to the street, he physically attached a neighborhood boy, shaking and pushing him. Other adults stepped in and the settler began pushing and eventually punched Nasser Gawi. Numerous blows were exchanged before the settler began wildly waving his M-16 rifle, he then cocked the gun and pointed it at neighborhood residents and internationals who were present.

The incident ended when the police arrived and after a few minutes siezed the settler’s gun. Though both Nasser Gawi and the settler were barred from returning to the neighborhood for 15 days, the settler returned to pick up personal belongings.

After his family was expelled in 1948 from what is now the state of Israel, the Gawi family was relocated to a refugee camp in East Jerusalem. The UN and Jordan allowed them to trade their food aid for permanent residence in houses in Sheikh Jarrah. After building a life in East Jerusalem the family was forcefully evicted from their house on 9 August 2009 and took residence in a tent outside their house. Now, after being attacked and threatened by a settler with a gun, Nasser Gawi has been expelled again from his living space yet again.

Read Maan post about the incident.

Background on Sheikh Jarrah

Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes in the manner of the Hannoun and Gawi families, and the al-Kurd family before them. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, mostly from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.

So far, settlers took over houses of four Palestinian families, displacing around 60 residents, including 20 children. At present, settlers occupy all these houses and the whole area is patrolled by armed private security 24 hours a day. The evicted Palestinian families, some of whom have been left without suitable alternative accommodation since August, continue to protest against the unlawful eviction from the sidewalk across the street from their homes, facing regular violent attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.

The Gawi family, for example, had their only shelter, a small tent built near their house, destroyed by the police and all their belongings stolen five times. In addition, the al-Kurd family has been forced to live in an extremely difficult situation, sharing the entrance gate and the backyard of their house with extremist settlers, who occupied a part of the al-Kurd home in December 2009. The settlers subject the Palestinian family to regular violent attacks and harassment, making their life a living hell.

The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to evict all Palestinians from the area and turn it into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. On 28 August 2008, Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik.

Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and the Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from East Jerusalem.

Legal background

The eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, are a result of claims made in 1967 by the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesseth Yisrael Association (who since sold their claim to the area to Nahalat Shimon) – settler organizations whose aim is to take over the whole area using falsified deeds for the land dating back to 1875. In 1972, these two settler organizations applied to have the land registered in their names with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Their claim to ownership was noted in the Land Registry; however, it was never made into an official registry of title. The first Palestinian property in the area was taken over at this time.

The case continued in the courts for another 37 years. Amongst other developments, the first lawyer of the Palestinian residents reached an agreement with the settler organizations in 1982 (without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian families) in which he recognized the settlers’ ownership in return for granting the families the legal status of protected tenants. This affected 23 families and served as a basis for future court and eviction orders (including the al-Kurd family house take-over in December 2009), despite the immediate appeal filed by the families’ new lawyer. Furthermore, a Palestinian landowner, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi, has legally challenged the settlers’ claims. In 1994 he presented documents certifying his ownership of the land to the courts, including tax receipts from 1927. In addition, the new lawyer of the Palestinian residents located a document, proving the land in Sheikh Jarrah had never been under Jewish ownership. The Israeli courts rejected these documents.

The first eviction orders were issued in 1999 based on the (still disputed) agreement from 1982 and, as a result, two Palestinian families (Hannoun and Gawi) were evicted in February 2002. After the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court finding that the settler committees’ ownership of the lands was uncertain, and the Lands Settlement officer of the court requesting that the ILA remove their names from the Lands Registrar, the Palestinian families returned back to their homes. The courts, however, failed to recognize new evidence presented to them and continued to issue eviction orders based on decisions from 1982 and 1999 respectively. Further evictions followed in November 2008 (Kamel al-Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). An uninhabited section of a house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by settlers on 1 December 2009.

"Together we can end this occupation"

by Jody McIntyre

The Electronic Intifada

The Israeli military recently dropped hundreds of leaflets warning Palestinian residents from the village of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip not to travel within 300 meters of the border – the distance of Israel’s so-called “buffer zone.” In response, local activists marched to and nonviolently demonstrated inside the “buffer zone” against the illegal action. The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre recently spoke with demonstration organizer Saber Zanin.

Jody McIntyre: Can you tell us about yourself?

Saber Zanin: My name is Saber Zanin. I am 31 years old, living in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. I am a Palestinian who loves life, peace, justice and equal rights for all.

I come from a poor family, around 20 of us in all, from Beit Hanoun. In November 2006, our house, the house I lived in my whole life, was completely destroyed by Israeli air strikes, and then by a tank which came to finish the job. We don’t know why they chose to target our home, but this is an example of the collective punishment we face living in Gaza.

I had the idea to create a group of volunteers, to work together in the local community, to resist Israel’s occupation through nonviolent methods, and to encourage others to do the same. In September 2007, the “Local Initiative” was formed. Rather than relying on governmental institutions or foreign agencies, we work in a personal capacity, and rely on ourselves for everything we need. Altogether the group now consists of around 60 young men and women, from 17-35 years of age, and although we have no political affiliation, we all agree on socialist principles of helping those most in need, and on each individual’s freedom to express their own views.

The group works with all sections of society: women, children, people with disabilities and teenagers. In particular, we give priority to the farmers and residents working and living in the so-called “buffer zone.” As a group, we visit the residents and offer them aid brought by charities to Gaza (although this is small in amount, and limited in effect) for nothing in return, and we accompany the farmers who continue to work on their land, despite regularly being shot at by the Israeli military for doing so. We also work with the young kids in their area, taking them presents, playing games with them and making parties for them, as well as practicalities such as not going out onto the street in certain areas.

The people living in the “buffer zone” are the foundation of the Local Initiative. If there are any farmers who want help working on their land, we will go to help them. We have also organized protests against Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank and the “buffer zone.”

We are always looking for ways to encourage others to join us in our popular resistance against the occupation, and as part of this we try to teach the local community about the human rights they possess: the right to freedom of expression, the right to live freely, the right to an education, to work, to health care, and to a home. We want people to know about their rights so that when they are taken away from them, they will fight for them.

JM: As someone who used to participate in armed resistance against the occupation, what made you adopt nonviolent resistance?

SZ: Any occupied people have the right to resist, and Palestinians are occupied by the Israelis. It is our fundamental right to resist against this occupation. I used to participate in armed resistance, but armed resistance isn’t everything. I am convinced that popular resistance, and protesting against the occupation through nonviolent methods, can actually achieve more than armed resistance, by gaining the sympathy and support for our struggle from people around the world. When we go to protest against Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, as they do in the villages of Bilin and Nilin, and now here in Beit Hanoun in Gaza as well, we have international activists marching with us, and the whole world is watching. Our demonstrations are nonviolent, so the Israeli army has no excuse to shoot at us and to kill us. I believe that this is one of the noblest ways of protesting against the occupation.

Last week, the Israeli military dropped hundreds of leaflets near the “buffer zone,” instructing residents not to go within 300 meters of the border. We reject this illegal de facto land grab, and in response organized a march to the “buffer zone” on Monday [11 January]. The march was under the slogan: “With popular resistance, we challenge the decisions of the Israeli occupiers.” We protested against the occupation through nonviolent means.

We will now be marching to the “buffer zone” every Monday. We will not be intimidated by the Israeli army’s threat, and we will never give up until the occupation is over.

JM: How can people living abroad support your struggle?

SZ: As we move into the new year, the Local Initiative is in urgent need of funds, in order to continue supporting the families living in the “buffer zone,” and to purchase materials in order to document the ongoing crimes of the Israeli occupation forces.

We truly hope that activists from around the world will support us. They could also write in the media against Israel’s crimes, organize demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy – some governments have even expelled the Israeli ambassador! In the UK an arrest warrant was issued for Tzipi Livni for the war crimes she committed against the people of Gaza, and this should serve as an inspiration for others to follow. Together, we can end this occupation.