Month: January 2012

Rosa Luxemburg – 93 years ago today

My Mentor, who shall be known as “Promeneur” until he authorizes otherwise, has sent a correction to a description I wrote about Rosa Luxemburg, in my post on Donor Opium [a film critical of Palestinian dependence on donor aid, which was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation]. He wrote [from London, via email]:

    “Starved to death??? How could you!

    Clubbed to the ground with a rifle butt by a proto-Stormtrooper, shot between the eyes, dumped in a Berlin canal … precisely 93 years ago today Sunday [15 January]. They’ll have gathered at spot, as they do every year.

    Memorise Brecht’s rhyme — ‘She told the poor what life was about / And so the rich have rubbed her out’.

    Slight frail fearless she was the real deal. Just who the Occupy movement could do with. Jewish, of course. Where’s her like today? Dare one wonder where she’d stand on … well you know what.”

Continue reading Rosa Luxemburg – 93 years ago today

Israel's Supreme Court allows continuation of ban on Palestinian spouses

Eleven judges of the Israeli Supreme Court decided in a narrowly split vote [6 in favor, 5 against] this week [on 11 January] to continue a ban that has been in effect since 2003, during the height of the Second Palestinian Intifada, on allowing Palestinian spouses to reside legally with their Israeli husbands or wives [and their children] inside Israel.

A Haaretz editorial on 13 January stated that: “In a 2006 ruling, 6 out of 11 justices said the law was unconstitutional, and in the current ruling, 6 out of 11 justices said the law, which was made more strict after the first ruling, was constitutional. That’s a disappointing outcome, in part because the first ruling was made not long after the terror attacks of the second intifada, while the current ruling was made during a period of calm, due in part to coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority…”

Continue reading Israel's Supreme Court allows continuation of ban on Palestinian spouses

Sari Bashi [Gisha] on Israeli military use of secret evidence

About ten days ago, Sari Bashi [Executive Director of the Israeli human rights organization GISHA, which was founded to advocate for Palestinian freedom of movement. wrote [in Hebrew] about one application of the Israeli military’s use of secret evidence against Palestinian detainees.

Bashi wrote that: “In the six years in which Gisha has been providing legal assistance to Palestinians, the High Court justices have yet to deliver a decision that goes against classified material presented by the Internal Security Agency (Shin Bet)“.

She added that “Experience shows that information about security risks can be based on [1] statements made by collaborators trying to please their handlers, and [2] people can be accused as security risks based on non-violent political activism, [3] a refusal to serve as a collaborator for the ISA [Israeli Security Agency], [4] a relative’s actions against the State of Israel, and [5] even because of the mere fact that a relative was injured or killed by the military, rendering the entire family suspect of wanting to seek revenge. And yes, it’s safe to assume that [6] in some cases the classified material does contain concrete evidence of violent actions.“.

One case taken on by GISHA illustrates how this secret evidence is used: a Palestinian man was arrested in 2010, but then, on the basis of secret evidence, was taken out of prison and sent by the military to Gaza — expelled, exiled, deported — an action that was upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court on the basis of secret evidence:

    You can’t sell Bakr Haffi’s case to the mainstream media, and you can’t win it in the Israeli High Court of Justice. The 38-year-old Palestinian man, a bee keeper by trade, has not seen his wife and two daughters for two years. It all began when he was arrested in his home in Tulkarem in the northern West Bank on suspicion of being a Hamas activist. After a month of interrogation that yielded no results, a military judge ordered his release. But instead of releasing him back to his home and family in Tulkarem, the military removed him to the Gaza Strip, which is listed as his place of residence in the Israeli-administered Palestinian population registry. Israel refuses to recognize relocation from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, even for people like Bakr, who moved to the West Bank back in 1999 and established a family there”.

So, it appears — and, can it be so? — that although an Israeli military judge in an Israeli military court in the West Bank ordered this man’s release, other military officers ordered the man to be taken to Gaza. In the current circumstances, this is a one-way ticket, with no possibility of return to the West Bank [although, under all the important agreements of the Oslo process, signed by Israel and the P.L.O. in the mid-1990s. the West Bank and Gaza were specifically said to constitute a single political unit … What happened to change that? Ariel Sharon’s unilateral “disengagement” which removed 8,000 Israeli settlers, and the military + security forces protecting them, from Gaza in September 2005…]

What is not entirely clear is whether the military judge knew what was about to happen, or maybe even ordered Bakr’s removal to Gaza as part of his ruling to release him from detention? Or, did another branch of the military take it upon itself to, in effect, make its own ruling on Bakr’s fate, regardless of what the military judge decided.

Continue reading Sari Bashi [Gisha] on Israeli military use of secret evidence

Donor Opium: making an argument that needs hearing

Here is an interesting film critical of the role that donor funding has played in making and keeping Palestinians aid-dependent in the occupied West Bank, Donor Opium:

It was produced by Palestinians in the West Bank with funding from the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation [named after a committed 19th Marxist who starved CORR: see above, here was clubbed and shot to death ].

And, it contains insightful analysis by Palestinian critics of the current situation that does not usually make its way into the mainstream media:
Linda Tabar – Bir Zeit University Center for Development Studies
Iyad ar-Riyahi – Bisan Center for Research and Development
Khaled Nakhleh – Development Expert
Khaled Sabawi – Palestinian entrepreneur
Sani Abdel-Shafei – Business consultant in Gaza

Among the interesting facts: some $9 billion dollars in donor aid has flowed, if not flooded, into the occupied Palestinian territory [West Bank + Gaza] since the start of the Oslo process in late 1993, yet 30% of Palestinians are still classified as poor, and half of them are classified as very poor.

Since the arrival of Salam Fayyad as PA Finance Minister [and also Prime Minister since 2007],
Palestinians in Ramallah alone have signed up for credit that puts them $3 billion in debt

Some 30% of the Palestinian GDP comes from foreign/donor aid.

And, some 20% of the Palestinian budget is spent on security…

UPDATE: More on the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation work in Palestine, from the organization’s website, here:

    “For almost 20 years, the international community has been declaring to work towards “the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state alongside Israel”. Billions of dollars have been spent, thousands of projects implemented and civil society initiatives supported. Yet, there is no state, but an artificially fragmented society in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in A-, B-, and C-Zones, and beyond. There is a lot of talk about ‘development’, but actual research points to the fact that the Palestinians have been de-developed with the help of international aid

…

Continue reading Donor Opium: making an argument that needs hearing

More on Israeli Stone Quarries in the West Bank: Yesh Din asks for wider review

The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din has just filed a petition with Israel’s Supreme Court [High Court of Justice] asking for a further hearing in the case of Israeli-owned stone quarries operating in the West Bank.

Yesh Din first challenged the legality of Israeli quarrying activities in the occupied West Bank in a petition filed in March 2009.

The petition focuses on the specific case of the stone quarries, but it exposes many of the incongruencies and the quite deliberate ambiguities of the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

On 26 December 2011, after almost two years of deliberation, a panel of judges of Israel’s High Court of Justice (HCJ), chaired by Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, “dismissed the petition and held that the quarrying activities are legal and do not violate the provisions of international law”.

Yesh Din has said that it considers that ruling “in our view both factually and legally mistaken”.

Yesh Din’s legal adviser, Attorney Michael Sfard indicated strong disagreement with the Supreme Court’s ruling by stating that ‘Quarrying natural resources in an occupied territory for the economic benefit of the occupying state is pillage”.

Yesh Din’s has posted its reaction to the Israeli High Court ruling on 26 December here.

Yesh Din has challenged, in the petition, the legality of Israeli actions during its prolonged occupation of a territory on which Israel evidently has an as-yet-unspecified claim.

Though Israel officially deals with the situation as an occupation, it avoids to the maximum extent possible using the word, or discussing the consequences.

Israeli arguments of ideological position generally say that the Palestinian territory is “disputed” rather than “occupied”.

Israel does not dispute, however, that its Ministry of Defense administers the West Bank.

And, the Israeli Ministry of Defense has installed a “Civil Administration” which restrictively regulates most aspects of Palestinian life in the West Bank. Israeli life in the West Bank, by contrast, is governed by Israeli law — in effect, creating a slow, partial, unclear and unofficial, but progressive, annexation.

While “facts on the ground” are proceeding apace, there has not yet been an official Israeli act of annexation. If and when annexation is declared, an international uproar can be expected.

Meanwhile, Palestinians argue that the Israeli creation of facts on the ground — particularly, though not exclusively, Israeli settlement-building — is intended to make the situation irreversible.

The exact nature of Israel’s claims to the Israeli/Jewish settlements that that the government has overtly and officially facilitated is still unstated.

It has become apparent that Israel does not want to evacuate not only the three or four major Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank, but also isolated settlements, and now even what have been called “unauthorized outposts”.

The new Yesh Din petition filed on January 10 asks for further Supreme Court review of the Israeli quarries’ continued exploitation of a Palestinian natural resource — by an expanded panel of judges.

In its new request, Yesh Din argues that “Relaxing the prohibition on harm to the capital of properties of the occupied territory lays the legal foundation for irreversible economic exploitation of occupied territory by an Occupying Power, despite the fact that the prohibition on such exploitation is amongst the primary objectives (and therefore amongst the primary principles) of the international law of occupation”

In fact, Yesh Din argues, the recent Supreme Court decision “permits the Occupier (in a prolonged occupation) to make use, for its own purposes, of plunder found in the occupied territory: to pump water found there, to transfer archeological findings out of the occupied territory, to exploit open spaces for waste disposal, to sell public property and other such irreversible acts which harm or alter the capital of public properties.”

To clarify the matter, Yesh Din said it is specifically requesting the High Court of Justice to hold a further hearing with a broader panel of judges, on the following questions:

  • What are the boundaries of the State of Israel’s authority in relation to its administration of the natural resources belonging to the territories occupied by Israel in ‘belligerent occupation’, and in this context, what is the relationship between Article 55 and Article 43 of the Annex to the fourth Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907)?

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  • Specifically, does an Occupying Power, in a prolonged occupation, have the authority to grant its citizens, or corporations owned by its citizens and/or registered in the Occupying Power, rights to quarry natural resources in occupied territory in general, and in quarries which did not exist prior to the occupation, in particular?

  • In as far as an Occupying Power is permitted to grant rights to quarry natural resources in occupied territory, is this authority subordinate to the principle of ‘continuity’ or to the principle of ‘reasonableness’?

  • Does the fact that Israeli quarries provide employment opportunities for Palestinians and pay royalties to the Civil Administration make granting these rights an act which should be considered, from a legal perspective, “for the benefit of the local population”?

The full request [in Hebrew, for those who read Hebrew] is posted here.

We have written earlier posts about the Supreme Court ruling on the Yesh Din petition, here and here.

Continue reading More on Israeli Stone Quarries in the West Bank: Yesh Din asks for wider review

Palestine National Council – will there be reform + universal elections? Fatah politicos may not endorse reform proposals

Part of the reform that some Palestinians have demanded, since being galvanized by Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square a year ago [January 25], has been their call for universal elections among all Palestinians wherever they are, on the basis of one person, one vote, for a new Palestine National Council [PNC], the PLO’s [Palestine Liberation Organization] parliament.

The idea may have been first circulated by Mamdouh Aker, a Ramallah medical doctor who was appointed by Yasser Arafat to found and head a then-new body, the Palestinian Independent Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

This commission, which makes annual reports compiling complaints it has received from Palestinians about abuses of their human rights, is now housed in its own office building basically just across the street from the back [service] entrance to the Palestine Legilative Council in Ramallah.

Aker told me in an interview in his office in this building in Ramallah that he had circulated the idea for first-time universal elections in an article he had written in Arabic in January 2010, and posted on one of the several active Arabic-language forums [including the Fatah Forum]. The article caught a great deal of attention, and was adopted by the new grouping of young Palestinians — a significant number of whom had grown up and gone to school in the U.S., and who were now back “home”, finishing university studies, and beginning to become active in trying to change the political situation which they regard as a hugely embarrassing stalemate. This group came together in support of the Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square [the first big one was held on January 25 last year] against human rights abuses by the Mubarak regime. But it was not until mid-March that the Palestinian demonstrators [which I will call “Manara Youth”, for lack of a better term to describe this new, loose, coalition] were able to hold their first relatively unmolested demonstration in support of what had then become known as the “Arab Spring”.

Aker told me, in our meeting, that he was advocating elections to revive and reform the important PNC on the basis of one-person, one-vote in almost every place in the world where Palestinians can be found — with one possible exception: the Palestinians who had become citizens of Israel, who he said should maybe not participate.

The idea of reforming the PNC is a very interesting approach.

Continue reading Palestine National Council – will there be reform + universal elections? Fatah politicos may not endorse reform proposals

Recommended reading: Amira Hass on forged documents used to transfer private Palestinian land to companies that built Israeli settlements in the West Bank

Today’s recommended reading is Amira Hass’ article in Haaretz, In West Bank, buying land isn’t always what it seems, with details about forged signatures on faked land sales of Palestinian lands that became Israeli settlements in the West Bank here.

In this report, Amira Hass writes: “This has been the settlements’ method ever since they were first established: a built-up nucleus on privately owned Palestinian land and around it a much larger ring bounded by broken-in tracks (in one process or another involving paving, fences, threatening dogs, armed Israeli civilians, guards and IDF patrols ). Thus it becomes impossible for Palestinian farmers to enter the perimeter of the ring in order to continue to cultivate their lands. ‘Going out to work in the field is always accompanied by fear’, admit the council heads of the four villages we visited in recent weeks: Silwad, Beitin, Burqa and Dura al Qar’a”…

Some of the privately-owned Palestinian land was “sold” — but not by its owners. Only two persons have been indicted so far, both apparently Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, who are now charged in an Israeli court [in a suit pursued by Yesh Din] by conspiring to sell West Bank land to an Israeli company after “falsely representing that the land had been purchased by the accused from the owners”.

One of the two [referred to as S.A.] was acquitted of conspiracy, if I understand the story correctly, but he was convicted of forgery — or, to be precise, “of forging the signatures of the six owners of the land on durable powers of attorney authorizing attorneys Moshe Glick and Nir-Tzvi to carry out the transfer of the rights to the land from its six owners to the defendants. Later he had attorney Zalman Segal of Karnei Shomron notarize authorizations confirming the signatures on the powers of attorney. In five cases the notarization was done at Atarot, an industrial zone between Jerusalem and Ramallah [emphasis added here — Atarot is very near the Qalandia Checkpoint, but has carefully been left on the Israeli/Jerusalem side of the checkpoint and Wall] , ‘with the submission of false evidence’ (which the indictment does not specify exactly) as though the signatories to the powers of attorney were present before Segal and had signed in his presence. In the sixth case – that of the late Aziz Hamed – the signature of notary Segal was forged, ‘though the truth of the matter is that at that time [November 2003] he was lying unconscious in the hospital in a vegetative state after having been injured in a serious traffic accident in July 2003’, as written in the indictment. Later S.A. signed a power of attorney that transferred all his rights on the land to the Keren Leyad Midreshet Yisrael”.

S.A. was convicted in October 2009 and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment, Amira Hass reported, while the other defendant [referred to as G.G.] was acquitted. Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Shulamit Dotan wrote in her decision that: ‘The move was intended to transfer lands owned by Arab residents to the ownership of Jews. The success of the conspiracy by the accused and his colleagues was liable, with very great likelihood, to have aroused hostilities between population groups in this context that could have been considered land theft. And, for their trouble, the two accused Palestinians “were to have received payment of NIS 2,000 for every forged power of attorney they signed. The indictment, like the ruling, does not indicate who was supposed to have given them that paltry sum in return for land that is so dear to the settlers’ lobby”…

What is there to say?

Russian-born Anastasia Michaeli, a member of the Israeli Knesset elected on the Yisrael Beitenu party list headed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, previously distinguished herself by throwning herself physically at, at attempting to assault, Nazareth-born Knesset member Haneen Zoabi during a hearing on Zoabi’s role on the Mavi Marmara, headed to Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla which was intercepted at sea by the Israeli Navy in May 2010.

Now, Michaeli has one-upped even herself.

After interrupting, and trying — during a recent Knesset committee debate — to drown out the words of her Knesset colleage Ghaleb Majadele, by shouting with visible contempt, Michaeli gets up and goes over to stand near him, then suddenly throws a glass of water on Majadele, who, like Zoabi, is an elected Knesset member and an Israeli citizen of Palestinian/Arab origin. It is shocking, and ugly … domestic violence of the worst sort.

Knesset TV image published in Haaretz

Haneen Zoabi, in a white shirt and black jumper, is seated almost next to Majadele, and reacts with instant shock, then a knowing smile.

Despite this physical attack, the Committee Chairperson does not intervene, nor does the Knesset security guard, who appears to go out of his way to avoid physically touching MK Michaeli …

    UPDATE: as the report of the attack went virtually viral on the internet, the Knesset Ethics committee acted the next day, Tuesday morning, to rebuke Michaeli by barring her from the Knesset for one month. It is a minimum punishment. Overnight, an editorial written by Natan Zahavi wasd published in the Hebrew-language newspaper Ma’ariv which, according to a summary translation provided by the Israeli Government Press Office, “refers to yesterday’s incident in which MK Anastasia Michaeli deliberately spilled a glass of water on MK Raleb Majdele and asserts that, ‘Spilling water in front of the cameras brought the Israeli parliament into the pantheon of the world’s primitive legislatures in which MPs trade punches, throw things and curse each other’. The author believes that MK Michaeli’s act, ‘is causing Israel to be portrayed as primitive and racist’, and urges Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, ‘who has been making super-human efforts to elevate the Knesset and its members’, to punish her as strongly as the Knesset by-laws allow”.

    The Knesset Ethics Committee’s website, here, informs us that “Rules of ethics of the Knesset demand that any member dedicates his/her time as needed to protect the honor of the Knesset and its members, and to behave in an appropriate and fitting manner as bespeaks his/her public position without taking advantage of the right to immunity … Within the framework of its responsibility, the Ethics Committee may place various sanctions on a Knesset member. These sanctions include a comment, an admonition, a reprimand, or a severe reprimand. Any decision of the Ethics Committee may be publicized with the name of the relevant Knesset member. Similarly, the committee may place any of the following restrictions on a Knesset member’s parliamentary activity: Suspension from Plenum sittings for up to six months; revoking the right to speak in the Plenum or in a committee for up to ten meetings; prohibiting the MK from proposing a bill or making a motion for the agenda … [However] The Ethics Committee is not allowed to restrict the right of a Knesset member to vote.

The attack was reported Monday by Ami Kaufman on +972 Magazine, here, and the link was posted on Twitter.

Kaufman’s story contains a video of what happened, with English subtitles. The video is also viewable [apparently without explanatory subtitles] on Youtube, here.

Kaufman writes, about Michaeli: “This person disgusts me. I can’t say it any more directly than that. She, and probably most of her party colleagues, think the worst of Arabs. They think they are the light unto nations, bringing European, civilized culture to Israel and its parliament. You tell me, who is civilized? Who is the primitive one? This is what happens when the right wing is drunk with power. It won’t end with water”.

Thanks to a link from the Angry Arab newsblog tonight, here, a response by MK Michaeli — who is apparently trying to re-brand this scene from ethnic insult to a feminist issue — is now available. According to the report, in French here, Michaeli has issued a statement defending her action, saying “The time when a man could publicly insult and act violently towards a woman is over … I think that using water is an excellent way to lower the temperature”. [“Dans un communiqué, Mme Michaeli a défendu son geste ‘L’époque où un homme pouvait insulter publiquement et agir violemment envers une femme est révolue’, a-t-elle affirmé, ajoutant: ‘Je pense que l’eau est un excellent moyen de faire baisser la température’.”]

She has to explain the business about throwing water on the face of a colleague … which is unusual, even in the Knesset. I keep thinking it looks like domestic violence … whereas calling on an opponent to “Shut up!” is perhaps impolite, but not a physical attack, and is in any case much more run-of-the-mill.

UPDATE: Haaretz has also reported this story, here, which I just discovered thanks to this Tweet by Max Blumenthal:
@MaxBlumenthal – Watch a former non-Jewish St. Petersburg beauty queen elevated to power in Israel dump water on Arab member of Knesset = bit.ly/y61Glx

The Haaretz article provided this background of how it started, including a partial transcript:

    “The argument erupted after MK Danny Danon (Likud) called for the dismissal of the principal of a school in the Negev town of Arara, who took students on a human rights march held in Tel Aviv last month. The Knesset discussion was held following a Haaretz report that the Education Ministry reprimanded the Israeli-Arab high school.   ‘You are marching against the state’ Michaeli shouted at Majadele, who answered back, ‘Shut up’. He then added, ‘She won’t shut me up. This is not Yisrael Beiteinu. Fascism will not be allowed to take over the house’. Michaeli replied, ‘It is disrespectful to the status of women in the Knesset. We will discuss the matter in the Ethics Committee’.  At a certain point in the argument, as it appeared that Michaeli was about to leave the room to calm down, she poured a cup of water and threw the contents at Majadele. Following that, she left the room in fury.  Majadele turned to Committee Chairperson, MK Alex Miller (Yisrael Beiteinu), and said,  ‘That says it all. I’m sure you wouldn’t condone such wild and fascist behavior. I’m telling you, I’m excited. This is predictable. We’ll take this matter to the Ethics Committee and we’ll call her to order’. This is not the first time Michaeli has been involved in a violent confrontation with an Arab Knesset member. During a stormy parliamentary debate about the Gaza flotilla last June, Michaeli forced her way over to MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad), who was trying to address the plenum from the Knesset podium, and attempted to forcefully remove Zuabi while blocking the microphone.  Michaeli was reprimanded for physically interrupting the speech of her colleague, while Zuabi was sanctioned for participating in the 2010 Turkish-sponsored flotilla to Gaza”.

In any case, Michaeli apparently failed to convince the Knesset Ethics committee that the insult was to her…

FURTHER UPDATE: The Jerusalem Post has finally covered this story, here, and is considerably more sympathetic to Michaeli’s version of events, though it does quote Majadele as saying: “For his part, Majadele said that never before had an MK poured water over a fellow-MK. According to the Labor MK, he asked her not to interrupt him, and when she did not listen to him, or to Knesset Chairman Reuven Rivlin, he told her to ‘shut up’. In a subsequent interview with Israel Radio, the Arab MK said that the incident was racist, and that Michaeli would never have done the same thing to a Jew. ‘I wasn’t surprised by her behavior… she’s done similar things to MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad) in past’, he added. He went on to say that he has been through a lot over the years, and is not bothered by such incidents”…

Stephen Hawking celebrated on 70th birthday

The Guardian’s Science correspondent Alok Jha has written a piece on the occasion of the 70th birthday celebration of scientist Stephen Hawking reporting:

    “The world’s most famous living scientists turns 70 today. Professor Stephen Hawking has defied medical expectations, since being diagnosed with a form of motor neurone disease at the age of 21 and given only a few years to live, to become one of the most accomplished physicists in the fields of black holes and the study of the early universe”.

Part of the birthday celebrations apparently involve a three-day scientific seminar in Cambridge, on The State of the Universe at which Hawkins will speak on the final day, Sunday [today].

    UPDATE: The Washington Post later reported that Hawking was not well enough, following a recent hospitalization, to attend the celebration in person, but he did deliver an address via videotape on Sunday, and “…in a recorded message played to attendees he repeated his call for humans to colonize other worlds. University of Cambridge Vice Chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz told the conference that Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed because of Lou Gehrig’s disease, had only recently been discharged from the hospital for an unspecified ailment … In his recorded speech, Hawking pleaded for interplanetary travel, arguing that humans faced a grim future unless they spread out from their terrestrial home. ‘I don’t think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet’, he said…”

Continue reading Stephen Hawking celebrated on 70th birthday

Dennis Ross: Palestinians should set up their own stone quarries in the West Bank!

In an otherwise uninteresting commentary published as an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Dennis Ross, adviser to several American presidents on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, suggested that … as Israel’s Supreme Court has just recommended that there should be  “no additional quarries” in the West Bank that are Israeli-owned, there is now some sort of “opening” for Palestinian ownership!

[Have we mentioned how much the terrible Qalandia checkpoint is clogged up by the huge double-dump truck convoys loaded with cut stone and spraying rock dust all over the area? These huge stone transport trucks mix with tens of thousands of stressed and some crazed-aggressive drivers, on a two-lane road — with just one lane in each direction. Many tens of thousands of people, and perhaps more, are forced to drive on this dreadful route around or through Qalandia every single day, for lack of any alternative routes…]

Ross’ piece in the Washington Post is entitled, How to break a Middle East stalemate…

It is an astonishing reading of the Israeli Supreme Court ruling.

In effect, as we have written earlier [on December 28] here, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by Tel Aviv-based lawyer Michael Sfard on behalf of the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din against the Israeli exploitation of Palestinian natural resources in the occupied West Bank.  The only argument from the Yesh Din petition retained by the Israeli Supreme Court is that there should be no more Israeli-owned stone quarries.  The Israeli government supported that argument in the Yesh Din petition, too — so it wasn’t really very hard for the Israeli Supreme Court to back it.

But, for Dennis Ross to extrapolate from that Israeli Supreme Court decision rejecting the petition, and argue that the Israeli Supreme Court has now opened the way to Palestinian ownership, is a surprising logical leap.

Dennis Ross wrote [referring to the Haaretz story here as his source], in his Washington Post opinion piece:

    To give one example, there are Palestinian stone masonry factories in Area A, but Palestinians have limited access to the rock quarries in the West Bank, which are in Area C. In a case brought against Israeli ownership of the rock quarries, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled late last month that no additional quarries should be Israeli-owned. That ruling creates an opening for private Palestinian ownership, should any new quarries be established — and there clearly is room for more”.

Continue reading Dennis Ross: Palestinians should set up their own stone quarries in the West Bank!