Human Rights
EI's Human Rights section offers reports and news about human rights violations on the ground, bringing you feature articles, statements from international bodies, and reports from local and international human rights organisations, including the Weekly report on human rights violations from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. Quality submissions are welcomed.
Jerusalem mayor to raze 200 Palestinian homes
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 9 February 2010
Jerusalem's mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighborhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil. His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan. Jonathan Cook reports from Jerusalem. [MORE]
Justice denied in Gaza
Mel Frykberg, The Electronic Intifada, 8 February 2010
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Gazans hoping for a modicum of justice following Israel's indiscriminate military assault on the coastal territory during December 2008 and January 2009 -- which left 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead -- could be waiting in vain. The Israeli government has taken the offensive in the propaganda battle and attacked United Nations-appointed Justice Richard Goldstone's report into war crimes committed during the war. [MORE]
Israel slaps six-month travel ban on Palestinian map expert
Marian Houk, The Electronic Intifada, 5 February 2010
Citing "security reasons" -- the ubiquitous and unanswerable catch-all phrase against which it is almost impossible to mount any defense -- Israel's Ministry of the Interior has just issued a six-month travel ban on map expert Khalil Tafakji. Tafakji, like almost all other Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, is a "permanent resident," but not a citizen of Israel. Marian Houk reports. [MORE]
Report: Israel stole $2 billion from Palestinian workers
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 4 February 2010
Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than $2 billion by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists have revealed. A new report, "State Robbery," to be published later this month, says the "theft" continued even after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994. Jonathan Cook reports. [MORE]
Raze illegal buildings -- unless they are Jewish
Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler , The Electronic Intifada, 4 February 2010
SILWAN, occupied East Jerusalem (IPS) - Backed by armed security men, the municipal inspectors race their jeeps through the narrow alleyways and up a hillside crowded with buildings. One block of flats stands out for its unusual seven-story height in an area of the city where two or three storied buildings are the norm. And then there is the giant, blue-and-white Israeli national flag draped demonstratively over the front of the building, from the roof down to the ground. [MORE]
Canadian organization attacking Palestinian rights groups
Press release, Various undersigned, 3 February 2010
The Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy, a not-for-profit organization created by Canada's parliament in 1988 to encourage and support human rights around the world, recently voted, with substantial objection, to repudiate grants given to Al-Haq and Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, two well-known Palestinian human rights organizations located respectively in the West Bank and in Gaza. [MORE]
Interview: "We need a new, united strategy as one people"
Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 3 February 2010
The Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), based in Nazareth, is one of the first human rights organizations in Israel, founded during the first Palestinian intifada by lawyers and community activists to monitor human rights violations. The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof recently interviewed Mohammad Zeidan, the general director of HRA. [MORE]
Palestinian politicians face tide of persecution in Israel
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 2 February 2010
Leaders of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel warned this week that they were facing an unprecedented campaign of persecution designed to stop their political activities. The warning came after Said Nafaa, a Druze member of the Israeli parliament was stripped of his immunity last week, clearing the way for him to be tried for a visit to Syria three years ago. Jonathan Cook reports. [MORE]
Palestinians unfairly stripped of citizenship in Jordan
Charles Fromm, The Electronic Intifada, 2 February 2010
WASHINGTON, (IPS) - The Jordanian government should halt the arbitrary revocation of nationality from its citizens of Palestinian origin, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Monday. The report, "Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality," details the Jordanian government's efforts to strip more than 2,700 Jordanians of their citizenship between 2004 and 2008. [MORE]
"Redeeming" the land: from kibbutzniks to Hilltop Youth
Carmelle Wolfson, The Electronic Intifada, 1 February 2010
After the 1967 war the value of the kibbutz -- instrumental in defining territory for the Jewish State of Israel -- as a frontline force had become obsolete. The then burgeoning settler movement soon came to replace the kibbutz as a central colonizing body. Occupying Palestinian land and cultivating it to be inhabited by exclusively Jewish communities, the strategies of settlers are not much different than early kibbutzniks. Carmelle Wolfson writes. [MORE]
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