UPDATE: On the other hand, this might not happen after all. One of the main recipients of leaked documents, Barak Ravid, has just reported on Haaretz that “Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday morning that the meeting between between Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is likely to be canceled … In an interview with Army Radio, Barak said that Fayyad is not interested in meeting with Netanyahu, because of differences of opinion over the issue of Palestinian tax revenues. In addition to this, a European diplomat and two Israeli officials confirmed that Fayyad is against the passing of a missive to Netanyahu from PA President Mahmoud Abbas, which was due to take place at the meeting, and that he does want to head the Palestinian delegation meeting Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The time and place of the meeting were still unconfirmed on Tuesday morning. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Tuesday morning that he had still not been notified by Israel of the time the meeting is due to take place. Erekat also insisted that Fayyad would be attending the meeting … If Fayyad does not attend the meeting, Saeb Erekat will head the delegation. If this is the case, it is uncertain whether Netanyahu would actually attend thye meeting, or whether he would prefer Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho to attend in his stead. Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, who is expected to attend Tuesday meeting, told the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Robert Serry, that the meeting’s goal is merely transferring Abbas’s message and that what is important is what happens afterwards”.

OK.

This situation becomes even more ridiculous.

We have reported about this letter — draft versions in Arabic + English were leaked to the Israeli media — for the past two weeks.

According to these leaked DRAFT versions, Abbas will say that the P.A. has lost its “raison d’etre” — a nice French term, meaning that Abbas is saying the P.A. has lost any meaning or purpose, so there is no reason for it to exist.

Does anyone else remember the late Yasser Arafat saying in Geneva, when he was being pinched to say certain things in December 1988, after his proclamation of Palestinian independence in Algiers in November 1988, and he said that aspects of the PLO Charter were “caduc” [another French word, meaning something like "no longer valid", or maybe "defacto, null and void"].

If this does not mean that Abbas is dissolving the P.A. and turninhe g the keys over to the Israelis — unless of course they immediately recognize the State of Palestine, stop all settlement building, and agree on minor land swaps — I don’t know what it could mean.

It is not clear what the real and lasting significance of this letter will be.

For one thing, it will not bind Hamas.

Perhaps this is part of the Israeli interest in this “pas de deux” [a dance step, as in "it takes two to tango"].

Though Hamas might not mind too much having the P.A. declare itself “caduc”, the way this move is being choreographed will only entrench the division between the West Bank and Gaza.

The DRAFT version of the letter does say that the Oslo Accords have been rolled back in many areas — and in the same text, the letter notes the Oslo Accords’ insistence that Gaza and the West Bank are parts of a single territorial unit…

Al-Arabiya’s website is reporting that independent P.L.O. Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi [who ran in the 2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections on the same ticket as Fayyad] explained that this letter “is a last ditch effort indicating that we’re doing everything possible in order to realize a two-state solution … We hope that there’s a positive response, but we’re sending a message that, without one, we have a strategy for what follows”.

The same post on Al-Arabiya notes that Abbas told the official Palestinian News Agency WAFA last week that “All options are all on the table for Palestinians, with the exception of dissolving the national authority or withdrawing recognition of Israel. We are not seeking the isolation of Israel, but rather to isolate its settlement policy”…

The Times of Israel said that the DRAFT letter from Abbas was “bitter”.

Haaretz’s Barak Ravid first wrote about this letter ten days ago, here, as we reported here — but Haaretz did not publish the full text.

In his article, Ravid noted that “The letter was meant to include a threat to dismantle the PA, although that paragraph was later taken out due to heavy U.S. pressure”.

Ravid also reported the news that at the end of March, “a secret meeting was held between Saeb Erekat and [Netanyahu adviser Yitzhak] Molho. While the two hold occasional phone conversations, last week’s session was the first meeting between the two officials in two and a half months. In the meeting, Erekat relayed the content of the letter Abbas intends to pass on to Netanyahu in the coming days. Molho and Erekat are expected to meet again before the Palestinian delegation arrives for the meeting with Netanyahu”.

Ravid did Tweet the DRAFT letter’s four pages, in Arabic, and the links were included in our post, here.

But, it is likely that the letter that will be delivered is in English, because when Israelis and Palestinians sit together for negotiations, they speak in English, and when they draft agreements [like the Oslo Accords], it is done in English. Really.

In the letter, which is still apparently in DRAFT form, Abbas writes:

“Twenty years ago, we concluded with Israel an agreement under international auspices which was intended to take the Palestinian people from occupation to independence. Now, as a result of actions taken by successive Israeli governments, the Palestinian National Authority no longer has any authority, and no meaningful jurisdiction in the political, economic, social, territorial and security spheres. In other words, the P.A. lost its reason d’être”.

Journalists [including here] are reporting that Abbas has “stopped short” of dissolving the P.A.

Abbas has been reported to be contemplating just that. His former negotiating partner, Yossi Beilin, called on Abbas to dissolve the P.A. in an article published on FP recently here. Beilin wrote to Abbas, via FP:

“One simply cannot continue with an interim arrangement for almost 20 years. This was not the intention when we spearheaded the Oslo process in late 1992 — you from Tunis and I from Jerusalem — or when we assiduously worked on what subsequently became known as the ‘Beilin-Abu Mazen Agreement’ between 1993 and 1995. You and I both understand that the current situation is a ticking time bomb … Do not hesitate for a moment! Do not accept the request of President Obama, who merely wants to be left undisturbed before election day. Do not let Prime Minister Netanyahu hide behind the fig leaf of the Palestinian Authority — impose upon him, once again, the responsibility for the fate of 4 million Palestinians. Remain as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which will give you the authority to lead the political negotiations if and when they resume. But for the sake of your own people, and for the sake of peace, you cannot let this farce continue”.

The words from Abbas are clear — and it does not seem possible to understand them as saying anything other than the present game is over.

If this doesn’t mean that the P.A. is being dismantled, then the Palestinian people have good reason to want to know why not.

UPDATE: In an informal poll conducted Monday afternoon in Ramallah, four Palestinian men all expressed puzzlement, uncertainty, and thinly-disguised disgust.   One, a former journalist, gave a standard template analysis: “Abbas is just playing for time… he knows nothing will happen until after Obama is re-elected in November”, he said.  One, a senior leader in a small Palestinian faction, said only: “Our problems are more serious than anybody really knows”.

Meantime, the real question is: why will Salam Fayyad be delivering this letter to Netanyahu? [It may happen on Tuesday 17 April in Jerusalem...]

Is it just because Netanyahu prefers Fayyad to Sa’eb Erekat? It’s true that Fayyad and Erekat will be accompanied by the Secretary of the P.L.O. Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo — but Fayyad’s position is only with the P.A.

All three men are expendable — though all of them have survived strong criticism before.

Fayyad is the Prime Minister and Finance Minister of the Palestinian Authority [P.A.] created by agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] as a local temporary and subsidiary body to administer the occupied Palestinian territory during negotiations.

Fayyad was appointed PM in the P.A. by Abbas to replace Hamas leader Ismail Haniyya, after Hamas kicked Fatah/Palestinian Preventive Security out of Gaza in mid-June 2007, and Abbas retaliated to that “military coup”, as he called it at the time, by a political coup dissolving a short-lived “National Unity” Government. This is one reason why Hamas refused to agree to keeping Salam Fayyad as PM in a new “technocratic” government that was supposed to be formed after a reconciliation agreement concluded in Cairo last year.

Fayyad himself has never been formally involved in negotiating, though he has had a couple of official meetings in Jerusalem previously [one was with Condoleezza Rice, during the Annapolis process].  Fayyad is a resident of East Jerusalem, and does not need a permit to travel around Jerusalem [or within Israel, if he wanted...]

We have speculated on this in a previous post [on 7 April], published here.

The DRAFT letter from Abbas, meanwhile, calls on the Government of Israel to do the following:

“1- Accept the two-state solution on the 1967 borders with possible minor and mutually agreed upon land swaps of equal size and value;
2- Stop all settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem;
3- Release all prisoners, in particular those imprisoned prior to the end of 1994; and
4- Revoke all decisions taken since 2000 which undermine agreements signed between Israel and the PLO”.

These are obligations, the Abbas DRAFT letter says [meaning, not "pre-conditions" as the Israellis complain].

If Israel refuses to honor these obligations, the Abbas DRAFT letter says:
“We will seek the full and complete implementation of international law as it pertains to the powers and responsibilities of Israel as occupying power in all of the occupied Palestinian territory.  For the Palestinian Authority—now stripped of all meaningful authority—cannot continue to honor agreements while Israel refuses to even acknowledge its commitments. The P.A. is no longer as was agreed and this situation cannot continue”.

What does that mean — “The P.A. is no longer as was agreed and this situation cannot continue”…

It does not sound like a call to return to the situation before the Camp David talks of the summer of 2000, or to the pre-Second-Intifada situation…

It sounds, in fact, just like a decision to dissolve the P.A. …

Hundreds of tickets were cancelled at the request of Israeli authorities, who circulated the names of those they suspected were flying as part of the Air Flotilla “Welcome to Palestine” campaign.

Here is a copy of the letter sent by Israeli authorities to European airport authorities:

The Air Flotilla participants intend to tell Israeli passport control agents that the purpose of their visit is to go to Bethlehem [in the occupied West Bank].

And, here is a copy of the letter that Israeli authorities intend to distribute, in various languages, to mock Air Flotilla participants:

A piece published in Haaretz, here makes an attempt at explanation: “The Israel Defense Forces is not allowing vehicles in or out of A-Ram, a Palestinian city of 60,000 northeast of Jerusalem, because of a recent increase in stone and firebomb throwing at army patrols by local youth, the army said. Late Sunday night, soldiers placed large boulders across all four lanes of the road at the city’s main entrance to block incoming and outgoing vehicular traffic. Pedestrians are not restricted, the IDF said”.

Oh.

LATEST UPDATE: Ma’an News Agency is reporting on Thursday afternoon [12 April] here that the IDF has removed the huge square boulders that it petulantly put at the end of the main street of ar-Ram last weekend.The IDF put the boulders on the end of the main street that comes out right across the street from a large IDF military base [8211]. Other than being a graphic expression of petulance, the gesture was empty of significance, as Palestinians found it possible to move around from the other end of the main street, beside The Wall — or, alternatively, from the alternative option of a bumpy dirt track that opened out right next to the blocked main street… The Ma’an report said that the roadblocks were removed “after intervention from the Palestinian Authority, officials [presumably, Palestinian] said Thursday”.

UPDATE: I drove through Qalandiya and into ar-Ram to see for myself, between noon and 1 pm on Wednesday. I discovered that the road along The Wall was open, and cars can pass in and out of ar-Ram through that route. It is at the other, western, end of the main street of ar-Ram, right across from an IDF military base [8211] where the big boulders have been dropped to block the road. But, I also saw, cars have found another way out of that side of ar-Ram, and are using a dirt road in single file to come out just beside the boulder-blocked entrance.

Ar-Ram was once a beautiful garden community in between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It grew exponentially in recent decades, with thousands of Hebronites moving in and opening shops which thrived on commerce, taking advantage of the daily travellers passing in front of their road-side stores and shops.

It is located just before Qalandia. As the Checkpoint was established there at the start of the Second Intifada, new opportunities for roadside commerce developed, without severe disruption of the established businesses along the route between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

But, when the Checkpoint became more of a “terminal” [looking like the entrance to a cattle processing facility, or worse], the IDF’s construction of The Wall began around Qalandia.

No one was informed about the route of The Wall. Palestinian residents of the area watched it take shape, and only learned what path it would take as the construction proceeded.

Qalandia Checkpoint became a gate in The Wall, which was built at both edges of the checkpoint. The Wall then sliced off the Qalandia/Jerusalem Airport, on the very edge of the area [the runway comes right up to the very edge of the Qalandia checkpoint], but on the “Israeli” or “Jerusalem” side of The Wall, and not on the “West Bank” side.

The route of The Wall then extended south, down the middle of the road connecting Jerusalem and Ramallah. Here, it’s path carved out the Atarot industrial zone, so that it is on the “Israeli” or “Jerusalem” side of The Wall. On the other side of The Wall, here, is ar-Ram…

Now, ar-Ram is like an appendix, surrounded on three sides of the Wall. The suburb of Dahiet al-Bariid, on the south side of ar-Ram, is divided by The Wall into two, with part on the “West Bank” side, and the other part on the “Jerusalem” side [as some of its residents had asked the Israeli Supreme Court to order, which the Court did].

Blocking off the main street with large boulders now, easily, cuts ar-Ram off completely for vehicular traffic. But, there are many many people living in the small and encircled area.

See UPDATE above — There is a way in an out of ar-Ram, but it is the only way in and out [plus the dirt track that emerges beside the blocked entrance]. The first Palestinian football/soccer stadium upgraded by FIFA, the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium, is located in ar-Ram. there are already unbearable traffic jams in and around Qalandia … And, there is no hospital in ar-Ram. What if there is a mass medical emergency? How will ambulances be able to operate?

The mayor of ar-Ram noted that “more than 70 percent of A-Ram residents work in Israel proper, while nearly 60 percent of the city’s pupils study in Jerusalem or in schools out of A-Ram”

He said this sudden and shocking move by the IDF was “collective punishment”.

The ar-Ram mayor told Haaretz: “It’s true, there were incidents [rock throwing, etc]. But how many people were there? No more than 20 to 30 little kids who see this as a game. If something like this would happen in Tel Aviv, would they close down the whole city? And why would there be army or police patrols around here anyway? Israelis don’t come here”.

The Palestinian Authority Cabinet recently adopted a set of recommendations following the terrible crash in the road between ar-Ram and the Jaba’a checkpoint, just before [or after] the junction in front of the Adam settlement. In the crash, a fuel truck collided with a bus carrying kindergarten schoolchildren from the Palestinian towns of Anata and the Shuafat refugee camp on an outing, in which five small kids and one of their teachers died. The Palestinian Cabinet recommendations involved establishing of an important civil emergency coordination point inside ar-Ram…

For purposes of the article, and after having been asked by Haaretz, some further explanation was given: “The IDF Spokesman said that during the past few weeks, ‘representatives of the Civil Administration approached area residents and officials of the Palestinian Authority and asked them to stop the violent and dangerous behavior; when there was no response, the obstacles were placed. Placing obstructions in Judea and Samaria is done in accordance with situational and security assessments. The IDF works to assure a normal life for all the residents of the region, while taking all necessary security precautions’.”

UPDATE: On 10 April, Peter Beinart [author of the book, The Crisis of Zionism] wrote an Op-Ed for the NYTimes in which he explained his own position this way: “I’m too young to have seen the terrifying wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973, when Arab armies threatened to vanquish the Jewish state. I’ve never known an Israel that didn’t occupy the West Bank. But like the older man, I’ve seen whole communities of Jews take refuge in Israel. Among my formative memories of the Jewish state are the pictures of Anatoly Sharansky, fresh from a Soviet jail, descending onto the tarmac at Ben-Gurion airport and the images of nearly destitute Ethiopian Jews, separated from the rest of our people since the days when the Temple stood, entering the planes that the Jewish state had sent to take them home. So perhaps it’s no surprise that my book argues that Jews need a state for self-protection and cultural expression, but worries that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank menaces the democratic ideals upon which the state was founded. Some in the organized American Jewish community think this places me on the left. I disagree. I actually occupy a shrinking center of American Jews fiercely committed to Israel’s existence but profoundly troubled by its current course. Our most high-profile critics sound like the man at my University of Maryland talk, unwilling to confront any contradiction between a nation whose declaration of independence promises ‘complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of race, religion and sex’ and an occupation that has held millions of Palestinians as non-citizens for more than forty years … The more permanent Israel’s occupation of the West Bank becomes, the more American Jews will be forced to choose between a Jewish state that is not fully democratic and a binational state that loses its Jewish character. And faced with that choice, a great chasm will divide American Jewry: with most older American Jews on one side, and many non-Orthodox, younger American Jews on the other. Saving Israel as a democratic Jewish state and preserving the Zionist consensus in American Jewish life are two sides of the same struggle. Since my book came out, I’ve sometimes been called a controversial, polarizing figure in the American Jewish community. The accusation makes me sigh. I’ve seen enough questioners like that those at the University of Maryland to realize that if the two state solution dies, the real polarization will be yet to come”.

This could be paired with the Hussein Ibish piece also published in The Daily Beast during the last week, entitled “Show, Don’t Tell: Why the Apartheid Analogy Falls Flat”, which argues why the “A” word [Apartheid] should not be used [and also against a one-state solution]. In this piece, Ibish, who works for the American Task Force on Palestine, writes:
* Because they do not understand what life under occupation means for Palestinians, most Americans are not ready to accept at the outset of any conversation that Israel practices apartheid.
* [I]t is much more effective to simply describe the realities: Every aspect of daily life in the occupied Palestinian territories for every individual is defined by whether the Israeli government categorizes them as an Israeli settler, and therefore a citizen of the state with all the rights and responsibilities accruing to citizenship, or a Palestinian noncitizen living under occupation.
* This discrimination applies to the laws people live under: where they may live; what roads they may use; what access they have to resources like land, water, education, and social services; whether they may be armed for self-defense; whether they may travel freely or have to pass through rigorous checkpoints with the permission of a foreign army; whether they may leave their country with any reasonable expectation of being able to return unimpeded; whether they have any say in the government that rules them or are totally disenfranchised; and whether they are routinely subjected to severe abuses under detention and military tribunals. All these, and almost all other aspects of daily life in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, are all radically separate and unequal on an ethnically-defined basis.
* The system of ethnic discrimination imposed by military force and Israel’s ‘civil administration’ in the occupied territories is by far the most extreme form of discriminatory abuse anywhere in the world today. When they learn these details, audiences conclude for themselves that this is a wicked, immoral and indefensible system.
* The implied one-state solution suggests that Israel is simply practicing extreme discrimination within an already-existing single state. This effectively lets Israel off the hook completely when it comes to the occupation. And, worse, it suggests that the expansion of settlements is merely construction taking place within that existing state rather than illegal colonization in occupied territories.
* No decent person who is made aware of the realities of life under occupation for Palestinians can fail to see its immorality…
This is posted here.

Earlier this week, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a human rights organization working for better health care for Palestinians, announced that Adnan had agreed to accept IV infusions of liquids, including salts, glucose and vitamins — apparently because the Israeli Supreme Court had agreed to hear Adnan’s appeal against his sentence of Administrative Detention, handed down by an Israeli military court [in the West Bank].

No date has been announced yet for the Israeli Supreme Court’s hearing of the appeal filed by Khader Adnan’s lawyer/legal team against his Administrative Detention, and the two-day Jewish weekend has started, observed over the period of Shabbat [Friday sunset to Saturday sunset].

Though the legal team which is supporting Adnan, headed by Israeli-Palestinian/Arab lawyer Jawad Bulous, has often spoken about going “as far as Israel’s Supreme Court”, it has often appeared hesitant, and appears quite concerned about not racking up an unfavorable decision which would then become a “legal precedant”. The legal team is, apparently, appointed and paid by the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs.

Israel’s Supreme Court will begin work again on Sunday, the normal start of the work week here.

Today is Day 62 of Khader Adnan’s hunger strike against Israeli Administrative Detention [and Sunday will be Day 64].

After her second visit in a week to her husband in Ziv hospital in Safed, the Galilee [which became part of Israel in 1948], Khader Adnan’s wife, Randa, told Donald MacIntyre of The Independent that she “is convinced that the Israeli authorities only allowed the visit because they wanted the family to put pressure on her husband to end his hunger strike. He had started this on 18 December in protest at his arrest, his treatment and the subsequent detention order served on him. ‘My father-in-law said to him: “We want you to stay alive. You cannot defeat this state on your own”. He told him he wanted him to end the strike. I told him I wished he would drink a cup of milk. But he said: ‘I did not expect this from you. I know you are with me all the time. Please stop it’ … I know my husband. He will not change his mind. I expect him to die”.

Adnan’s wife, who is pregnant, was also accompanied by her two young daughters.

According to MacIntyre’s report in The Independent, published here, “The day before the visit, a Red Cross delegation had gone to her home to warn her that her husband’s heart could fail ‘at any minute’. They told her that he was suffering from muscular atrophy, which was affecting his heart and stomach, that his pulse was weak, and that his life was now in extreme danger”.

Somewhat surprisingly, a senior medical official at Ziv Hospital reportedly said on the day of the visit that Adnan’s condition was “stable”.

The Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoner Affairs said, several weeks ago, that Adnan’s was “the longest hunger strike in Palestinian history”.

Indeed, previous hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners have ended at points where they might have been on the verge of making an impact.

MacIntyre’s report in The Independent noted that: “Mr Adnan, 33, a mathematics graduate who runs a bakery in nearby Qabatya, has long been politically active. He has been convicted for being a spokesman of Islamic Jihad, one of the most militant Palestinian factions. And he has been arrested numerous times by Israel, and at least once by the Palestinian Authority, since leading a student demonstration in 1999 at Bir Zeit University against the visiting French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. But his family insists that he has never been involved in violence; nor has he been charged with it. Indeed, on this occasion, he has not been charged with any crime. His hunger strike has focused growing attention on the practice of administrative detention, in which Palestinians can be held without trial and on the basis of secret intelligence dossiers which are not shown to the defendant or his lawyers”.

The article also reported that: “Mrs Adnan said that he is determined to continue his fast. His resolve has been hardened, she said, not only by his summary arrest and its circumstances (he was seized while in the lavatory) but by his treatment during interrogation. She claimed her husband had been held for seven-hour periods – interspersed with one-hour breaks – on a short chair with his hands tied behind its back, causing him intense discomfort, and that parts of his beard had been torn out by interrogators. She said he had also been subject to psychological pressure, which his lawyers told her he raised in one of his several military court appearances. ‘They told him bad words about me. They said “your wife is not pure”. They told him “now you have been arrested she is free to do anything”.’ She says he told the military court that one interrogator later admitted to him: ‘We know you love your wife and that she loves you. That’s why we said things against her’.” Mrs Adnan, who said that her husband had repeatedly declared that ‘my honour is more precious than food’, added that her only hope now is that Israel will decide ‘to whiten its face in the world by releasing him’. She said that it is for him to take the final decision, and that when she urged him to drink milk she was mainly carrying ‘a message from his mother’.”

Mr. Adnan’s sister told The Independent that “Mr Adnan was a model father who ‘loves life”, and she added: “I am not sure that he wants just to deliver a message. He also wants to end the administrative detention. We have so much faith in Allah to get him out of this situation. We believe that God will not let him down”…

Richard Falk, the American professor emeritus of international law who is serving as the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory [oPt], is now visiting somewhere in the region [he was barred from entry on his last visit in December 2008]. He wrote in an opinion piece published by Al-Jazeera yesterday here that: “From the outset of his brutal arrest in the middle of the night – in the presence of his wife and young daughters – he has been subject to the sort of inhumane and degrading treatment that is totally unlawful and morally inexcusable. Its only justification is to intimidate, if not terrify, Palestinians who have lived for 45 years under the yoke of an oppressive occupation. This occupation continuously whittles away at Palestinians’ rights under international humanitarian law – especially their right to self-determination, which is encroached upon every time a new housing unit is added to the colonising settlements that dot the hilltops surrounding Jerusalem and the West Bank. The case of Khader Adnan is a revealing microcosm of the unbearable cruelty of prolonged occupation”.

Falk added, in his piece: “And who is Khader Adnan? We do not know very much about him except that he is a member of the Islamic Jihad Party. There are no accusations against him that implicate him in violence against civilians. His fellow prisoner from an earlier period of confinement in Ashkelon Prison, Abu Maria, recalls his normalcy and humanity while sharing a cell, emphasising his interest in informing other Palestinians: “Prison was like a university in those times and he was one of the professors”. Commenting on his hunger strike that has brought him extreme pain, Abu Maria says he is convinced that Khader Asnan wants to live, but will not live in humiliation: ‘He is showing his commitment and resistance in the only way he can right now, with his body’.”

There is no news about that. [The answer, it seems, is: apparently not.]

Physicians for Human Rights reported yesterday here that the Israeli Supreme Court has accepted to hear his appeal against the sentence of Administrative Detention he is protesting, “as soon as possible” — and that Adnan has now accepted to have IV infusions of liquids, salt, sugar + vitamins [though without otherwise ending his hunger strike].

However, PHR-Israel noted, he is still “in immediate danger of imminent death”.

Adnan, now in an Israeli hospital in Safed, is apparently not being force-fed, but he is still shackled to his hospital bed, where his family found him still wearing the clothes [at least, the same underclothes] he was in when he was detained.

UPDATE: A Reuters report picked up and republished by Ma’an News Agency says that “In an open letter released Wednesday, Adnan said he was not seeking to enter the Guinness Book of Records with his action, but wanted to denounce the manner of his arrest and the subsequent detention. ‘I was safe in my home and they (Israeli forces) broke into my home and terrified my daughters and my family in the same monstrous way that they do every night to dozens of Palestinians’, he wrote”. The report added that “A senior medic at the Sieff Hospital in the northern Israeli town of Safed said Adnan was in a stable condition. ‘There is no immediate danger to his life, but he is at a critical point, as anyone would be after hunger striking for so long’, said Dr Raymond Farah, head of the hospital’s Internal Medicine Department”.
But, the same report noted that Khader Adnan’s wife, Randa, said after visiting him in the hospital on Wednesday that “His health has drastically deteriorated from the last time I saw him … I expect the worst”. This was posted here.

UPDATE TWO: The IsraelNationalNews website reported today here that “Israeli officials say they will consider forcibly terminating Adnan’s hunger-strike should he begin to suffer serious health effects, but say that hasn’t happened yet”.

Administrative Detention is a practice that has been used against Palestinians; it is a practice that has been continued by the Israeli system of military justice the occupied Palestinian territory since the West Bank + Gaza were captured in the June 1967 war. Apparently, this practice is an adaptation of a policy used in exceptional circumstances during the British Administration of Palestine prior to the British withdrawal in mid-May 1947.

It has been used to a greater or lesser degree in the 45 years since the start of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, depending on the level of Palestinian resistance + unrest.

Over the past year, the number of Palestinians sentenced to Administrative Detention has increased from just over 200 to just over 300 — an increase of one-third in recent months.

If used at all, it should be only in the most exceptional circumstances. But, dreadful as it is, it has instead become quite routine in the West Bank.

But, Administrative Detention is applied almost exclusively to those accused of supporting Hamas or Islamic Jihad, organizations organized around Islamist ideologies, and which are regarded as opponents by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights earlier posted a press release on their website here containing one reference to Rolnik’s use of the term.

Also see our earlier post on Ms. Rolnik’s report of her preliminary findings here.

In a statement published here on their website, the Jerusalem-based organization NGO Monitor said that “the term originated with Arab rejectionists and has been promoted by fringe non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that falsely claim the mantle of human rights. ‘Judaization’ is an anti-Jewish racist term which suggests that the presence of Jews is alien and unacceptable … This immoral rhetoric is part of the broader delegitimization campaign that is counterproductive to fostering peace in the region. As with the false ‘apartheid’ analogy, it is invoked with the same goal to demonize”.

Anne Herzberg, legal advisor for NGO Monitor, said in the statement that “The term Judaization is immoral and employed for antisemitic goals; we expect that it would not be invoked by a UN Special Rapporteur claiming to operate with a human rights framework … Raquel Rolnik’s use of it makes peace more difficult to achieve, and in light of this she should resign immediately”.

Ben White, writing here on the Electronic Intifada website, notes that the same term, “Judaization”, has been used without any uproar by Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon here, as well as by Israeli academics, and Israeli public officials [including a rabbi]…

Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights office in Geneva reports that “The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk, will conduct a field mission from 10 to 20 February, visiting Egypt, the occupied Palestinian territory and Jordan to gather information on the broad range of human rights concerns connected to Israel’s occupation of Palestine”.

Falk was unceremoniously deported in mid-December 2008, the last time he showed up in Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in exercise of his mandate — he had not been granted a visa, and arrived on his national [U.S.] passport.

Israeli officials said that the decision not to admit Falk was based on their outrage that some months earlier, Falk had visited in what he said was a purely private capacity — but had allowed himself to introduced at a conference in Ramallah as the forthcoming UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the oPt

Now, Falk is apparently about to test the waters again. The statement published on the UN Human Rights website here, quotes Falk as saying: “This mission will focus particularly on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, the human rights implications of prolonged refugee status, disturbing patterns of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their properties, as well as the conditions and treatment of Palestinians detained by Israel”.

The UN statement adds that Falk “will convene a press conference at the end of his visit on 20 February, in Amman, and he will submit a full report on his mission to the Human Rights Council in June 2012″.

UPDATE: Addameer put a name on this decision Monday night, reporting in a statement received by email that: “In the Appeals Court decision confirming Khader’s administrative detention, Judge Moshe Tirosh stated that according to the secret material available to the judge but not available to Khader or his lawyers, the court decision was ‘balanced’. He also commented that the secret material confirms that Khader Adnan is a political leader in the Islamic Jihad party. In his decision, Judge Tirosh completely disregarded Khader’s lawyers’ numerous arguments, including the lack of evidence that Khader Adnan has carried out any activities providing grounds for detention; that administrative detention is used in an arbitrary manner; and that affiliation to a political party is aligned with the right to freedom of expression, assembly and political association. Furthermore, in response to Khader’s statement during the appeals hearing on 9 February, which outlined the details of the torture, inhuman and degrading treatment to which he was subjected by Israeli Occupying Forces since his arrest, the military prosecutor stated that these allegations were exaggerated and did not take place in the way Khader described. In commenting on Khader’s life-threatening health condition, Judge Tirosh stated that only Khader is to blame for his physical health condition as a result of his choice to continue his hunger strike and that his medical condition will not influence the administrative detention decision … Physicians for Human Rights-Israel doctors were permitted to visit Khader today and conduct medical examinations. This examination is only the third since he began his hunger strike. His medical condition, already at a life-threatening stage, continues to deteriorate and he is experiencing extreme pain”.

Khader was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on his home near Jenin on December 17.

No specific accusations — other than being a threat to the peace + security of the area — and no evidence has been presented by Israeli security services. That is what happens in cases of Administrative Detention — and that is why it is impossible to mount any legal defense.

Sentences of Administrative Detention can be renewed indefinitely — and have been for up to six consecutive years. Longer, too, is possible under the Israeli military justice system in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military court’s confirmation of the earlier sentence of Administrative Detention — to last four months, starting from January 8, until May 8 — was confirmed Monday, which is the 58th day of Khader Adnan’s hunger strike in protest of the Administrative Detention procedure, and abuses during his arrest and detention.

Physicians for Human Rights – Israel noted in a statement, posted here, that “According to the World Health medical association, after the 42nd day of a hunger strike, it is expected that individuals will begin to lose their hearing and vision, and suffer bleeding in the gums, intestines, and esophagus. The body will gradually stop functioning. After the 45thday, there is a high risk of death due to vascular system collapse and/or cardiac arrest”.

Human Rights Watch, in a statement issued on 11 February and posted here, said that “Adnan, 33, has been on hunger strike for 55 days. According to a 2006 study by the British Medical Association, ‘during the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland […] death generally occurred between 55 and 75 days’. In general, ‘the final stage’ of a hunger strike occurs between 45 to 75 days ‘due to cardiovascular collapse or severe arrhythmias’, the study said”.

In other words, death by starvation usually occurs because of a collapse in heart functioning and in the vessels and veins that compose the blood circulatory system.

Today, in remarks published on the Mondoweiss blog, here, Khader Adnan’s wife, Randa, said: “My husband is dying inside an Israeli jail. The world should make sure I am able to see him”. According to this post on Mondoweiss, Randa said that “a human rights organization coordinated our family’s first visit to him in the hospital last Tuesday. They refused to allow us to stay with him for more than 15 minutes”…

According to the Human Rights Watch statement, Khader Adnan’s “wife, Randa, said he has been arrested nine times, first in 1999, sometimes under administrative detention, and that he had also been convicted and sentenced by military courts for advocating on behalf of Islamic Jihad, an organization banned by the Israeli authorities … [but that] Adnan’s lawyer said the only known allegation against him arose when Adnan was questioned after his detention about his participation in a graduation ceremony for a kindergarten that was allegedly funded by Islamic Jihad”.

However, an interview published on 9 February on the Electronic Intifada website here, seems to confirm Adnan’s association with Islamic Jihad. In the piece, American-Israeli Bekah Wolf interviews her husband, Beit Ummar activist Mousa Abu Maria [who she married, by proxy, when he was being held in Administrative Detention]:

Bekah Wolf: How do you know Khader Adnan?

Mousa Abu Maria: We met in 2001 or 2002 in Askelon prison. He was an organizer in the prison, because it wasn’t the first time he’d been in jail. He used to lead classes about Palestinian history and the uprising. Prison was like a university in those times and he was one of the professors.

BW: What was he like as a person?

MAM: Most [foreign] people think if you have a beard or you’re a member of Islamic Jihad, you just sit and pray all day. Khader would joke around, just like anyone else. He’s my age, we were young, we were like any other young people. He would try to make us feel like we weren’t in prison, like we were in a dorm room. He was always organizing the prisoners, which of course got him in trouble with the guards. He was often put in solitary confinement, but would come out and continue what he was doing before.

Al-Jazeera reported today here that “Khader Adnan, widely believed to be a leader of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, has been refusing food since he was detained on December 17, without trial or charge”.

On the other hand, Adnan is [according to some reports] a schoolteacher, and would not likely still have had his job when he was arrested in December if he were a leader of Islamic Jihad, as Al-Jazeera wrote, because the PA has fired many schoolteachers in the West Bank for allegedly having ties to Hamas… But maybe that is why he is now identified as a baker? He is also reportedly a graduate student of economics at Bir Zeit university.

The Al-Jazeera article also reported that “Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have joined a fellow inmate on a hunger strike, after human rights groups reported the original protester’s life was in danger”.

Rolnik concluded a 12-day official visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory [oPt, in UN terminology] on Sunday, and discussed her preliminary findings with the media at a press conference given in the American Colony Hotel [a long-standing site of Palestinian interaction with international figures that is now too expensive for most Palestinians but where Israelis feel comfortable], in East Jerusalem.

An official visit to Israel means that a visa was issued by the Government, indicating an official welcome.  This official visit, said Rolnik, came after an official invitations from the Government of Israel, and from the Palestinian National Authority.

The invitation came in the wake of unprecedented public protests in Israel last summer [by groups and individuals referred to as the J-14 movement], which involved the establishment of “tent cities” in major Israeli cities, over the soaring and now-unaffordable prices of both rental and owned housing in Israel. [In Israel, despite confusing "reforms" in ownership laws, most of the land is ultimately owned by the State].

Rents are also soaring in the oPt — where many people own both the land on which their homes are built, as well as the structures as well — but with a different dynamic, based on the calculation over how much the employees of international embassies, organizations, and NGOs are willing, with substantial allowances from their employers, pay. Rents for decent apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem rival prices in New York and Geneva — starting at $2500 dollars and rising — and internationals simply just pay, telling themselves + their organizations that they are helping Palestinians stay in their homes, though this has nothing to do with the extortionist prices being asked, and it does not at all benefit those Palestinians who are actually living under threat.

Rolnik started her remarks by noting that while “Israel has a very impressive record of providing adequate housing for waves of Jewish refugees and immigrants, deliberate state policy since the 1990s has made housing in Israel unaffordable for many … new public housing projects have stopped, except for the elderly, while the stock of public housing units has shrunk except in the periphery [in isolated locations, where there is little public transportation and few work opportunities] … and rent assistance subsidies have not been updated vis-a-vis the recent dramatic rise in rents … The policy now is to offer state lands only for the highest price … and housing has been provided [also for the highest price] mainly by the private sector since the 1990s”.

Rolnik said, “In my view, more revision [= review] of this policy is needed”.

It is also important to note, she said, that “laws in Israel are discriminatory, and directly or indirectly violate the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and deny the rights of equal access for all” to adequate housing.

She said that there would be an opportunity for a period of consultations with both the Israeli government and with the Palestinian Authority after her preliminary report is presented to both.  The final version of her report will be discussed during a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in July 2013, she said.  It will then probably be forwarded to the UN General Assembly for adoption at the end of 2013, together with a whole confusing package of reports [that may seem confusing + duplicative because they will be publicized at various points along the way] that will be submitted first to the UN Human Rights Council.

Rolnik was one of three UN Human Rights rapporteurs who received last October the report prepared by Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition [ICAHD] about Israel’s “ethnic discrimination”  — which Sfard said at the time seemed to be a deliberate and possibly criminal policy aimed at getting rid of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.  ICAHD asked the UN Special Rapporteurs to investigate — and Sfard also said that the Israel Government itself should conduct an investigation of the findings. Sfard said at a press conference organized by ICHAD at the time that “our observations bring us for the first time to the conclusion that, yes, there is a place between the Jordan River and the [Mediterranean] Sea where Israel is trying to chase Palestinian residents away – and that place is East Jerusalem. This is a very, very severe allegation”. This is discussed at length in an article published in the current issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly, here.

In her oral presentation, Rolnik did use the word “Judaization” twice — a fairly brave act, even for an official independently affiliated with the UN — and at one point she was asked [by Phil Weiss of the Mondoweiss blog] to clarify what she meant. ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain quickly reported via email afterwards that Rolnik said: “Throughout my visit, I was able to witness a land development model that excludes, discriminates against and displaces minorities in Israel which is being replicated in the occupied territory, affecting Palestinian communities. The Bedouins in the Negev – inside Israel – as well as the new Jewish settlements in area C of the West Bank and inside Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem – are the new frontiers of dispossession of the traditional inhabitants, and the implementation of a strategy of Judaisation and control of the territory.” This taken from the “Transcript” of Rolnik’s remarks, and was also picked up and used in the title + the text of an article published by Ma’an News Agency here.

Rolnik did not mention in her remarks or her “transcript”  that many Palestinian citizens of Israel are either themselves internally displaced, or descended from those internally displaced, during the 1948 War of Independence.

And, while hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, from 1947 through the early 1950s, many thousands of Jewish immigrants were housed in urban homes built and owned by Palestinians who fled during the turmoil that surrounded the creation of the State of Israel.

Those Palestinians who fled or were forced to flee during the fighting, but who did not remain inside the armistice lines negotiated by the UN, became refugees. Many of them, and their descendants, still live inside refugee camps in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — as well as in neighboring countries Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. [There are no recognized Palestinian refugee camps, administered by UNRWA, anywhere else in the world, including in Egypt, which refused to have them.]

Rolnik added that it was “an extremely complex legal situation”, and that while Israeli housing policy focussed on “Jewish refugees and immigrants from the holocaust, from Arab countries in the Middle East, and from the crumbling USSR”,  it has “discriminated against certain groups according to their ethnic origin”.

In the Jaffa and in Akka, she said, there was a marked process of “gentrification + discrimination”.

And, she said, there has been “disregard of social and cultural specificity … and everything which is not European should be transformed by planning” — including Palestinian villages and Bedouin camps in the Negev which “predate the State of Israel and which are established on their own ancestor’s land”. But, she said, “why should they have to relocate to have adeequate housing — why can’t they have adequate housing where they are now?” She did refer briefly to the Israeli argument that it wanted to develop the “touristic potential” of some of these sites. Bedouin villages in the Negev have been repeatedly demolished over the past year because of a plan for the Jewish National Fund to plant new forests there.

Rolnik also noted that although she had been given extensive briefing on the pending Government law on the proposed relocation of the Bedouin communities in the Negev, but that according to views expressed by the Bedouin themselves as well as by civil society groups, “the proposed law strips the Bedouins of their democratic right to participate meaningfully in the planning of their own regions on their own historical sites”.

The Jahalin Bedouin, who were earlier displaced from the Negev and who have been living in the desert areas in the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, have also been targeted by recent Israeli army-ordered home demolitions, “on the grounds that these areas are not suitable for residence, so they have to move, while the very same area is planned for the expansion of Maale Adumim”.

Rolnik said, in answer to a question, that although she asked Israeli officials many times how much is Israel allocating for settlements to expand, “I never got an answer [though] I raised it many, many times in many, many meetings”.

In East Jerusalem, Israeli policies severely restrict Palestinian building, Rolnik said — although she noted that Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat told her that the municipal budget was allocated equally to both the eastern and western parts of the city [comments from participants in the press conference urged her to look into facts that contradict Barkat's statement.]

Rolnik noted, in a written “transcript” of her remarks [and also in her oral presentation], that she “was informed that enforcement of building and planning laws, including demolition and the levying of fines, is executed in a discriminatory manner. According to the information received, even though numerically Palestinians are accountable for only approximately 20% of the building infractions in the city, more than 70% of the demolitions are carried out against Palestinian buildings”.

There were restrictions even in Ramallah [the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority], she said, and added that she found the situation in Hebron “extremely tense” — having witnessed that the presence of Israeli soldiers to protect the Israeli settlers [living in the city center] has “created a climate of fear and intimidation”.

“Israel is obligated under international law to find housing for protected persons living under their occupation”, Rolnik said at the press conference.

She carefully noted, in her oral presentation, that she “was not provided by the PA with a scheme for housing for vulnerable persons in the West Bank — except planned communities for middle-income Palestinians”, which she said was “worrying”.

“Middle-income” Palestinians are almost uniformly employees of the PA — which depends on international donor support to pay both salaries and pensions — or a few employees of international or non-governmental organizations. Their salaries were cut for over a year by donors after the Hamas victory in 2006 elections, and were only restored after an international donor “love-in” with the Ramallah-based PA after the Hamas rout of PA/Fatah Preventive Security forces in Gaza in mid-June 2007. [New and tightened sanctions were imposed on Gaza, while funding was lavished on Ramallah.]

These same “middle-income” Palestinians have become newly-vulnerable again this year — after having all sorts of mortgages, bank loans for new cars, and other consumer credit schemes were offered and readily snapped up — because of the Palestinian “UN bid” for full membership in the UN that was formally deposited with, but not yet disposed of by, the UN Security Council in New York.

Additional threats accompany every move towards Palestinian reconciliation [mainly, Fatah + Hamas], which has moved slowly alongside the Palestinian “UN Bid”…

The pre-prepared “transcript” of her remarks noted that “As a whole, it is clear that Israeli policy and practices for the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem and the West Bank violate international human rights and humanitarian law. Israeli is obliged under international law to find an appropriate housing solution for the protected persons, the Palestinian residents, living under its occupation”.

By the organization of material, Rolnik’s presentation seems to finesses the matter of whether Israel still occupies the Gaza Strip — though the UN’s official position was sent by the International Court of Justice 2004 Advisory Opinion on The Legality of the Construction of a Wall”; the ICJ itself referred to the Oslo Accords agreed between Israel and the PLO, which state at several key points that the West Bank and Gaza constitute a single political unit.

In any case, the transcript of Rolnik’s remarks on Gaza says that she “witnessed the dire conditions faced by the population and the detrimental effects of the Blockade [sic] on the housing situation and on infrastructure, which added additional burden to the already existing overcrowding and limitations due to the exiguity of the Gaza Strip and the added territorial limitations … At the same time, I was impressed by the degree of active engagement of Gaza inhabitants undertaking the reconstructions [n.b. - no cause for the need for reconstruction was noted] and amelioration of their living conditions … [and] strategies adopted by UN Habitat, IDB and UNDP of self-help reconstruction, making available direct funds to the households to rebuild demolished houses, have a very positive impact. I was, however, concerned that these self-help schemes are available only to those with registered legal titles over the land, so that the most needy, those who are squatting public land, are left with no other alternative other than waiting for many years for the international donor projects to be completed”.

In her final prepared remarks, Rolnik noted that:

“In different legal and geographical contexts, from the Galilee and the Negev to the West Bank, I received repeated complaints regarding lack of housing, threats of demolition and eviction, overcrowding, lack of community development, the disproportional number of demolitions affecting Palestinian communities and the accelerated development of predominantly Jewish settlements. The Barrier [n.b. - here, again, Rolnik uses Israeli terminology, and not the UN terminology] makes visible what the territorial planning regime has silently implemented for decades, and the blockade [sic] is the most extreme expression of separation as a restriction to survive + expand.

In all my interviews with Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as my visits to Palestinian communities, I was impressed by the collective sense of frustration and extreme insecurity with regard to their housing and property rights. I also observed a complete lack of faith that the Israeli military, political or judicial authorities would take effective action to protect their rights, which are enshrined in international instruments to which Israel is party. It is important to note that Israel’s spatial strategy has been heavily shaped by security concerns, given the belligerent, conflictive nature of Israeli-Palestinian relations, with waves of violence and terror. But certainly the non-democratic elements in Israeli spatial planning and urban development strategies appear to contribute to the deepening of the conflict, instead of promoting peace. Additionally, within Israel, privatization, deregulation and commercialization of public assets has undermined the declared goal of the Jewish foundation of the State of Israel — to provide a safe and adequate home for all Yishuv, regardless of nationality or income level. It would appear, therefore, that the Israeli planning, development and land system now violates the right to adequate housing not only of Palestinians under Israeli control, but also of low income persons of all indentities, who find it increasingly difficult to obtain housing under existing policies. Both aspects of this discriminatory system should be changed to allow all people under the Israeli regime to attain the most basic human right for adequate housing, within the framework of dignity and equality”.

Rolnik has served as the UN Human Right’s Council’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing since 2008. From Brazil, Rolnik is an architect + urban planner, as well as an academic.