Freies Politikforum für Demokraten und Anarchisten

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

At least 14 Palestinians were shot and injured with rubber-coated steel bullets in clashes that erupted in Qasra village in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus after settlers descended on the area in an attempt to attack residents, a local monitor said.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settler activity in the northern occupied West Bank, said clashes broke out after Israeli forces responded to a dispute between Israel settlers and local Palestinians from the village.

The settlers had tried to attack the eastern area of the village, but were stopped by locals who forced them to retreat before Israeli forces arrived at the scene, Daghlas said.

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768655

Israeli forces turn family home into military barrack near Bethlehem

Israeli forces raided a Palestinian home in al-Maniya village in the southern occupied West Bank district of Bethlehem and turned it into a military barrack on Wednesday, locals said.

Muhammad Froukh, a resident of the home, told a Ma'an that Israeli forces raided the house and expelled the family out of their home.

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768653

Hebron residents live in fear as killings, closures mark daily life

Israel’s response to an upsurge in violence since the beginning of October has seen unprecedented closures of Hebron’s Old City, with residents living in a constant state of fear amid killings by the Israeli army and attacks from Jewish settlers.

Hebron, the largest city in the occupied West Bank, has borne the brunt of violence in recent weeks, with at least one third of the more than 70 Palestinians killed by Israel’s army residents of the district, nine of whom were shot dead in the Old City over the past week.

The city is no stranger to restrictions and violence, with over 800 Jewish settlers protected by more than double that amount of Israeli soldiers all intermingled among 30,000 Palestinian residents.

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768654

Israel’s decades-long policy of holding Palestinian bodies

Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian dead, and its impact on the living, is being questioned once again as the government continues to withhold the bodies of 22 Palestinians killed following attacks on Israelis during the month of October.

The refusal to turn over the dead to their families -- a policy that Israeli authorities supposedly halted near the end of the Second Intifada -- has provoked controversy among Israeli officials and led tomass protests in the occupied West Bank.

A total of 33 Palestinian bodies were held by Israel during October, and eleven have since been returned, according to the Palestinian National Committee for Retrieving Bodies of Martyrs.

The majority of those being held had killed or injured Israeli military and civilians in attacks, but the actual involvement of others in attacks at the time of their death has been disputed by the United Nations and Amnesty International.

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768641

Saudi team refuses to play qualifying match in the West Bank

Tensions boiled between the Palestine and Saudi football federations over the latter’s refusal to play the second leg of a qualifying match for the 2018 World Cup and 2019 Asian Cup in the occupied West Bank, citing security reasons. ...
.... The first leg of Palestine versus Saudi Arabia was originally set to take place in Ramallah, with the Palestine team hosting the Saudi one. But the two federations agreed to swap the fixtures, and on 11 June, Palestine played Saudi Arabia in Jeddah, losing 3-2.

After agreeing to the fixture swap, Tayseer Nasrallah, the spokesperson for the PFF, said, “We emphasised to the Saudi brothers the high importance of their support for the Palestinian team hosting its home games in Palestine.”

The Saudi team’s decision not to play in Ramallah strained relations with the head of the Palestine Football Federation, Jibril Rajoub, who categorically rejected Saudi’s request to play the match outside the West Bank in a neutral zone. To Rajoub, this option represented a threat to the “sovereignty” of the Palestine Football Federation.

“We need to point out to all those who fear normalisation with Israel that no such fear should arise as long as the goal is to play against the team of Palestine on the land of Palestine,” he stated.

http://972mag.com/yitzhak-rabin-never-supported-palestinian-statehood/113295/

Yitzhak Rabin never supported Palestinian statehood

Ahead of the 1992 elections in Israel there was a televised debate between Yitzhak Rabin and incumbent prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. At the end of the debate Shamir was allowed to ask his opponent a question of his choice: “Do you really want a Palestinian state within the land of Israel?” Rabin answered decisively: “I oppose a Palestinian state between us and the Jordan [river]. At the same time, I don’t not want 1.7 million Palestinians to become citizens of Israel.” Rabin added that he voted in favor of the “autonomy plan” that Menachem Begin proposed as prime minister in 1978.....
..........The Israeli Left, meanwhile, has invented a populist version of Yitzhak Rabin that never existed. Since Rabin’s assassination the Israel Left has shoved those facts and details under the rug in order to manufacture its own messiah. Yitzhak Rabin’s widespread use of the word “peace” will always enable the Israeli Left to present him as a supporter of Palestinian statehood, despite the fact that he always opposed it. You will never hear a leader of one of Israel’s left-wing parties admitting at a peace rally that Rabin opposed Palestinian statehood. The myth must be protected so that the Left can be trusted, even if in reality the basis of its mythology is unfounded.

http://972mag.com/yitzhak-rabin-never-supported-palestinian-statehood/113295/

Palestinian women's rights overlooked in favour of national liberation

....Kuttab believes that many NGOs and donors take women’s rights as an abstract concept, and their actions are “irrelevant to the context”. They focus on either the political or social oppression of women, and disregard the manner in which the two work together to reinforce one another.

“To be relevant, we cannot just implement UN guidelines and allow them to trickle down, it loses its meaning at a local level,” Kuttab explained. Abu-Duhou echoed this sentiment: “We can’t keep thinking that the state of Palestine is a normal state... what works here doesn’t work anywhere else, we are unique in that sense.”

Within the process of building a state, Kuttab believes it is imperative that women’s rights are not forgotten. By combining the struggle for national rights with the struggle for women’s rights, there is hope for a future Palestinian state structure based on principles of social equality.

She affirms that Palestine needs “to find a formula where women’s rights are on the agenda and not de-linked to the national struggle”.

“Women’s rights are intertwined with national rights, they should go hand in hand,” Abu-Duhou told MEE. “When we’re building a state, we know what kind of a state we want: democratic, liberal... within that ideology we build rights, and women’s rights should be at the forefront of the national rights movement... one shouldn’t take a precedence over the other.”

“[Women] need to liberated, and at the same time we need to liberate our land.”

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-women-oppressed-rights-overlooked-favour-national-liberation-1771812742