Atta Jaber shows tomatoes from his field after Israeli army contractors destroyed it and removed the irrigation system near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, on October 29, 2009.
The Israeli army claims the field poses a security threat because it is too close to the settlement.
Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org
Jihad el-Shaar is pleased with his mud-brick house in the Moraj district of Gaza. The 80-square metre home is a basic one-storey, two-bedroom design, with a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room, made mostly with mud and straw.___________________________________________________________________
“My wife and our four daughters and I were living with family, but it was overcrowded, impossible. We knew we had to build a home of our own,” Shaar said. “We waited over two years for cement but because of the siege there is none available. What could we do, wait forever?”
So he decided to do it with mud.
Building earthen structures like bread ovens and small animal pens is a technique many Palestinians are familiar with, but extending the method to houses isn’t a notion that has taken hold in Gaza.
Jihad el-Shaar got the idea from his travels in Asia and the Middle East. “I travelled in Bangladesh, India, Yemen, Turkey…they all use some similar technique of building houses from earth. All you need is clay, sand and some straw.” These he mixed with water, and poured into brick moulds that were left in the sun to dry for three days. Good enough to build a fine house with.
While some Gaza residents speak of shame at the way life has ‘gone backwards’ with the siege – using cooking oil in cars, wood fires for cooking, and horse and donkey carts for transportation – Shaar is proud of his clay home.
“In the winter it is warm, and in the summer it will be cool. There’s no problem with leaking, and this type of house will last a lifetime,” he says. “And it was cheap to build. A house this size made of cement would cost around 16,000 dollars at least. This one, because it was made with simple, local materials cost just 3,000 dollars.”
Prior to Israel’s crippling siege on Gaza cement would have cost 20 shekels (about five dollars) a bag. Now, with cement among the many banned items, what does make it into Gaza through tunnels under the Egypt border costs ten times as much.Read more.
A group of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals build a shack on the lands of the Jabari family in protest of the illegal building of settlements, next to a shack that was put by the settlers a few weeks ago, close to the settlement of Kyriat Arba, in Hebron, on 8.05.2009. The settlers tried to destroy the shack and put it on fire but they did not manage. They also repeatedly attacked and provoked the group.The Israeli soldiers and police arrived at the scene and violently pushed the group away while the settlers were allowed to stay. 8 Israelis, 2 Palestinians were detained. Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org
A Palestinian throws away a torch that was sent by some settlers who attempted to set h[sic] [fire to] the protest Palestinian shack on fire during an action against the settlements in Hebron on 8.05.2009...The settlers tried to destroy the shack and put it on fire but they did not manage... Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org
An Israeli activist argues with an Israeli settler during an action against the settlements in Hebron on 8.05.2009... Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org
Other Israeli changes in Sheikh Jarrah include plans to evict two large families from homes they have occupied for more than 50 years on the grounds that they are not legal owners. It is believed their dwellings will be given over to settlers. Plans to demolish 88 Palestinian homes in the Silwan neighbourhood are temporarily on hold as a result of international pressure.
A British diplomat criticised the Israeli steps last night. “They [the new Israeli government] asked us for a pause while they formulate policy but if there will be a pause in the peace process there also needs to be a pause in the actions we are seeing in East Jerusalem. Such steps contradict Israel’s stated goal of peace,” the diplomat said. [my emphasis] Read more
Officials in Turkey traced the documents the lawyers requested and provided affidavits that the settlers' land claims were forged. The search of the Ottoman archives, Mr Abu Ahmad said, had failed to locate any title deeds belonging to a Jewish group for the land in Sheikh Jarrah.The settlers who wish to build apartments on the land, claim that it was bought by Sephardi Jews in the nineteenth century. Let's see what happens now. Mrs Kurd (63) who is living in a tent on wasteland near her former home (a tent which, incidentally has been torn down six times) to protest the evictions, will never get back her husband, who was chronically ill, and died shortly after eviction. 500 residents face eviction and demolition of their homes in the Sheik Jarrah area, which is close to the old city and Palestinian (and Jewish) holy places. The U.S., unusually, has protested the proposed evictions (and I guess, actual, if we take the case of Mrs. Kurd).
Can you imagine that happening to your parents? From Mondoweiss, referencing a Paul Woodward editorial comment on the piece Labor joins Likud in Israel's unlikely new government,written for Time by Tim McGurk (25 March, 2009), comes the following quote, and really, it is what most of us are thinking, I would say:A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey.
After the Israeli army's assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to Ottoman land registry archives in Ankara for the first time, providing what they say is proof that title deeds produced by the settlers are forged.
On Monday, Palestinian lawyers presented the Ottoman documents to an Israeli court, which is expected to assess their validity over the next few weeks. The lawyers hope that proceedings to evict about 500 residents from Sheikh Jarrah will be halted.
The families' unprecedented access to the Turkish archives may mark a watershed, paving the way for successful appeals by other Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank caught in legal disputes with settlers and the Israeli government over land ownership.
Interest in the plight of Sheikh Jarrah's residents peaked in November when one couple, Fawziya and Mohammed Kurd, were evicted from their home by an Israeli judge. Mohammed Kurd, who was chronically ill, died days later.
Meanwhile, Fawziya Khurd, 63, has staged a protest by living in a tent on waste ground close to her former home. Israeli police have torn down the tent six times and she is facing a series of fines from the Jerusalem municipality.
The problems facing Kurd and the other residents derive from legal claims by the Sephardi Jewry Association that it purchased Sheikh Jarrah's land in the 19th century. Settler groups hope to evict all the residents, demolish their homes and build 200 apartments in their place.
The location is considered strategic by settler organizations because it is close to the Old City and its Palestinian holy places.
Unusually, foreign diplomats, including from the United States, have protested, saying eviction of the Palestinian families would undermine the basis of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The help of the Turkish government has been crucial, however, because Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire when the land transactions supposedly took place.
. . .
Kurd said she would stay in her tent until she received justice.
"My family is originally from Talbiyeh," she said, referring to what has become today one of the wealthiest districts of West Jerusalem. "I am not allowed to go back to the property that is rightfully mine, but these settlers are given my home, which never belonged to them."Read more.
If Obama really believes that the status quo is untenable then it’s up to him to demonstrate that he means what he says.Note: April 1, useful information: A layman's guide to home demolitions in East Jerusalem
Netanyahu is clearly ready to get straight back to business as usual: talking peace, building settlements.(my link insertion)
is a major push to urge the Victorian state government to dump the contract with Connex which is coming up for renewal in November this year. Under the contract signed with Israel, Connex will operate a public transport service to Jewish settlements that Israel is continuing to build illegally deep inside the West Bank under its military occupation. The service will benefit some 450,000 foreign settlers while 2.6 million Palestinians are excludedis going well. Time is of the essence, though, hence, I refer you back to Paul Woodward's comments about Obama.
This is what the settlements look like. Pretty permanent, huh? The simple reality is that 127 years after the beginning of the first Jewish wave of immigration, 112 years after the founding of the Zionist movement, 61 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, 41 years after the beginning of the occupation, the Israeli-Palestinian war continues along all the front lines with undiminished vigor.
The inherent aim of the Zionist enterprise was and is to turn the country – at least up to the Jordan River – into a homogeneous Jewish state. Throughout the course of Zionist-Israeli history, this aim has not been forsaken for a moment. Every cell of the Israeli organism contains this genetic code and therefore acts accordingly, without the need for a specific directive.
In my mind I see this process as the urge of a river to reach the sea. A river yearning for the sea does not recognize any law, except for the law of gravity. If the terrain allows it, it will flow in a straight course, if not – it will cut a new riverbed, twist like a snake, turn right and left, go around obstacles. If necessary, it will split into rivulets. From time to time, new brooks will join it. And every minute it will strive to reach the sea.
The Palestinian people, of course, oppose this process. They refuse to budge, set up dams, try to push the stream back. True, for more than a hundred years they have been on the retreat, but they have never surrendered. They continue to resist with the same persistence as the advancing river.
ALL THIS has been associated, on the Israeli side, with an obstinate denial, using a thousand and one guises, pretexts, self-serving slogans and sanctimonious untruths.
