Solidarity and action appeals from Occupation Info…
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APPEAL: No right to health – Please help Abu Musa Jahalin! |
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(07-11-06) – Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Excerpt: Abu Musa was told long ago by an Israeli professor that he needed an operation on his back. Having been badly beaten by Israeli Border Police, when homes – tin and cardboard shacks — were bulldozed on his hillside. Those shattered places in his body are returning now to haunt him. He hasn’t walked for months. All muscles in his legs have gone. He’s down to 36 kilos, a wasted shell. The wounds are going septic; amputation a possibility. Not having money to stay in the Emergency Room, now he’s in sleepless pain in the tin hut on the hill. Makassed, a Palestinian hospital in Jerusalem, is so de-developed, so dried up, they say it’s dangerous. Abu Musa is mukhtar (leader) of a group of Negev refugees dumped in the West Bank by Israel in the Fifties, when they were driven off their own land. As a West Bank ID holder, he can’t go home and certainly can’t be free in any way, even though freedom for Bedouin is their most sacred value. He can’t even go into nearby Jerusalem, to pray or work or seek a doctor or a hospital – an Israeli smuggled him in this time (a hospital security guard tried to evict him!). Settlement expansion pushes his people into ever tighter ghettoes. The Wall slices through the area; a huge new police base occupies the next hill. If we can’t raise the shekels Israel should be responsible for, as occupying power, thoughts of Abu Musa’s future are pure theory. (And as to global warming warnings, they imply a need for specialists in desert survival, so a day will probably come when we’ll regret this folly of shortsightedness, as we deculture indigenous people and “civilize” them…) Please help. Related Link(s): Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Angela’s Blog. |
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APPEAL: Israel intends to destroy an entire indigenous Bedouin village in the Naqab (Negev, southern Israel) |
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(07-11-06) – Appeal, Housing and Land Rights Network (via NormanFinkelstein.com). Excerpt: The Housing and Land Rights Network of Habitat International Coalition (HIC-HLRN, in cooperation Village Committee of al-Sira and the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, request your URGENT intervention in the following situation in Palestine. Israel has declared an area encompassing the indigenous Bedouin village of al-Sira as a military zone, based on 1980 legislation “The Negev Land Acquisition (Peace Treaty with Egypt) Law” allowing the expropriation of lands for the purpose of establishing the Nevatim Air Force Base. Although the village lies outside the air force base, Israeli authorities ordered the confiscation of al-Sira’s lands and the demolition of the entire village, without consulting or informing residents of the decision. Three months ago, dozens of police officers and officials from the Ministry of the Interior posted seven house demolition warning notices in al-Sira, home to 350 indigenous Palestinian Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel. The village residents challenged the injunction in court. The residents demolished one house by themselves upon the order of one of the judges. The local inhabitants were constructing the house for a divorced woman, mother of four children who suffer from various health problems (retardation, deafness). They now live in a makeshift lean-to. On 7 September, approximately 200 police officers and inspectors returned to the village and posted 45 demolition notices as well as an additional six houses that had been given a prior warning. This means that all of the houses and structures in the village are to be torn down. As of today, no alternative housing solution has been found for the residents. The building inspector in the Ministry of the Interior asserts that his job is merely to demolish the houses. The State of Israel’s Bedouin Authority, which is responsible for settling this population, has not offered any concrete solutions. Related Link(s): Housing and Land Rights Network, Sample Letter for Israeli Officials, Sample Letter for European Officials, Case updates, Video: The Unrecognised. |
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APPEAL: Help release AIC member Ahmad Abu Hannya from ‘Administrative Detention’ (internment) |
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(07-11-06) – Appeal, Alternative Information Center. Excerpt: The Alternative Information Center (AIC) urges you to appeal to the Israeli authorities for the immediate and unconditional release from administrative detention of our colleague and friend Ahmad Abu Hannya. Ahmad, the coordinator of the AIC youth group, was detained at a checkpoint on his way to work on May 18 2005 and placed in administrative detention, which is imprisonment without trial or charges. As all of the approximately 900 Palestinian administrative detainees currently being held by Israel, Ahmad and his attorney are not even permitted to know the evidence against him. Ahmad has been adopted as an appeal case by Amnesty International (see link below). The continuing detention of Ahmad and so many other Palestinians blatantly violates international law, which permits administrative detention as an exceptional and highly regulated measure. Administrative detention violates the fundamental right to liberty and due process, and is used by Israel as a tool to oppress political activists in Palestine who struggle non-violently against the Israeli occupation and for a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis. Related Link(s): Alternative Information Center, Amnesty International’s Action Page, B’Tselem – Administrative Detention information. |
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