A family is an entire world. But instead of making every effort to guard the right to a family life, the High Court of Justice decision regarding the petitions against the Citizenship Law confirmed the invasion, rending and destruction of this personal world by the state. This is a generalization, since in Israel of 2006 the right to a family life is recognized as a constitutional right, which is entitled to protection from invasive harm on the part of the state. But that is not the case when it comes to Israel’s Arab citizens who have chosen to marry partners from among their people who live under Israeli occupation. At least not according to the opinion of the majority in the High Court, which was written by the outgoing deputy president of the Supreme Court, Mishael Cheshin. Read more about Constitutional chauvinism
The Palestinian Arab minority and the Jewish majority in the State of Israel live largely in separate areas. With the exception of the mixed cities, in which a significant Palestinian minority lives alongside a clear Jewish majority, most of the Palestinian population lives in its own communities, as does the Jewish majority. This territorial separation is also seen within the mixed cities: most of the Palestinian minority lives in its own neighborhoods, which are distinct from the neighborhoods inhabited by the Jewish majority. Read more about Behind the Walls: Separation Walls between Arabs and Jews in Mixed Cities in Israel
During the reported period, IOF killed 28 Palestinians in the OPT, including 27 in the Gaza Strip. This number includes 21 unarmed civilians, including 7 children. Seven of the victims were from the same family (father, mother and 5 of their children), who were killed on Friday, 9 June 2006, when IOF fired a number of shells, while they were at the beach in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. Field investigations conducted by PCHR and those conducted by a Human Rights Watch military expert refute this claim and prove that the victims were killed by shrapnel from IOF shelling. Read more about Weekly report on human rights violations
Israel should immediately launch an independent, impartial investigation of a June 9 Israeli artillery strike on a beach north of Gaza City, Human Rights Watch said today. Seven Palestinian civilians picnicking on the beach were killed that day and dozens of others were wounded. Human Rights Watch researchers have visited the site to examine the fatal crater and have interviewed victims, witnesses, security and medical staff. “There has been much speculation about the cause of the beach killings, but the evidence we have gathered strongly suggests Israeli artillery fire was to blame,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and Africa division at Human Rights Watch. Read more about Human Rights Watch: Artillery Strike Probably Killed Palestinian Family
The Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, has ordered his department to hurriedly draft the country’s first immigration law to protect Israel’s Jewish majority. He said a Basic Law was needed within eight months, the expiry date of the temporary Nationality and Entry into Israel Law. The Knesset has repeatedly renewed the law since the it was first passed in July 2003 to prevent Palestinians from the occupied territories who marry an Israeli from gaining residency or citizenship rights in Israel. Read more about Ministry plans ‘universal’ immigration law to ban Arabs from residency rights in Israel
The head of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police, Benzi Sau, has been promoted to a senior position in the Public Security Ministry in defiance of the findings of a state inquiry that implicated him in the chain of events that led to the killing of 12 Arab citizens and a labourer from Gaza by the security forces in October 2000. This is Sau’s third promotion since the deaths, despite a recommendation from the Or Commision of Inquiry that Sau not be considered for promotion again until September 2007. Read more about Israeli police commander promoted despite role in deaths of Arab citizens
Imagine the following scenario. A Palestinian gunman boards a bus inside Israel and rides it to the city of Netanya. Close to the end of the line, he walks over to the driver, levels his automatic rifle against the man’s head and pumps him with bullets. He turns and empties the rest of the magazine — one of 14 in his backpack — into the passenger behind the driver and two young women sitting across the gangway. As bystanders in the street outside look on in horror, our gunman then reloads his weapon and sprays the bus with yet more fire, injuring 20 people. Read more about How Israel’s Jewish terrorist became a victim
On Tuesday noon, 13 June 2006, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) committed a new extra-judicial execution in Gaza City, which killed 11 Palestinians, including 9 civilian bystanders. A man, his two children and two paramedics were among the victims. The targeted person in this attack was a member of the Islamic Jihad. Investigations conducted by PCHR indicate that IOF aircrafts launched a missile at dozens of civilians, including paramedics, who gathered near a civilian car shortly after IOF aircrafts attacked it, targeting a member of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad. Read more about 11 Palestinians, Including a Man, His Two Children and Two paramedics, Killed and 30 Others Wounded in an IOF Air Strike on a Civilian Car in Gaza
Jonathan Cook’s new book “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State” focuses attention on the descendants of Palestinians who managed to remain in “sovereign” Israel during the ethnic cleansing of 1948. In this book review, EI contributor Raymond Deane says Cook meticulously analyzes the political basis for the daily discrimination exercised by the Jewish state against its Arab citizens. Cook lays bare the Zionist ideal of a state that is racially pure, and demonstrates how successive generations of Israeli politicians and soldiers - the former tending to be enlisted from the ranks of the latter - have sought to bring about this regressive aim. Read more about Book Review: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State
Five Israeli human rights organizations demanded today in an urgent appeal to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense that they take immediate action to end the killing of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territories, and to eradicate the factors contributing to these killings. The organizations (B’Tselem, ACRI, PCATI, HaMoked and PHR-Israel) state that the killing of a family at the Gaza seashore on Friday (a father, mother and five children), apparently by a shell fired by Israeli soldiers, is a terrible addition to an already horrifying statistic: according to B’Tselem data, since the onset of the second Intifada, 3,431 Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have been killed by Israeli security forces. Read more about Israeli human rights organizations: End killing of civilians
