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Palestine

The Life and Death of Juliano Mer-Khamis

Adam Shatz

On the afternoon of Saturday, 4 April 2011, Juliano Mer-Khamis walked out of the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp and got into his old red Citroën. It was four o’clock, the sun was hot and the street crowded. He put his baby son, Jay, on his lap, placing the boy’s fingers on the steering wheel; the babysitter sat next to them. As he set off, a man in a balaclava came out of an alleyway and told him to stop. He had a gun. The babysitter told Juliano to keep driving, but he stopped. The gunman shot him five times, then walked back down the alley. He left his mask in the street. Jay survived; the babysitter escaped with minor injuries. When Israeli soldiers arrived, less than thirty minutes later, Juliano was dead. They took his body to Israel, along with his car, computer, wallet and other effects.

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Calling US Middle East “peace process” the farce that it is

September 19th, 2013 in Israel

Great piece by Bill Van Es­veld, a Mid­dle East re­searcher at Human Rights Watch based in Jerusalem, pub­lished in The Hill:

Twenty years ago, Is­raeli and Pales­tin­ian lead­ers signed the Oslo ac­cords on the White House lawn, open­ing the “peace process” that the US is try­ing to rein­vig­o­rate. Yet the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has failed to learn the les­son of the past two decades: keep­ing human rights vi­o­la­tions off the peace talks agenda is a los­ing strat­egy. In this re­spect, Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry’s re­cent shut­tle diplo­macy has ac­tu­ally reached new lows.

Kerry, ac­cord­ing to news re­ports and other sources, met with Eu­ro­pean lead­ers in Vil­nius on Sep­tem­ber 7 and urged them to post­pone new rules that would en­sure Is­rael could not use Eu­ro­pean Union funds to sup­port West Bank set­tle­ments.

But Eu­ro­pean sources say the rules are re­quired by the EU’s own law, which in­cor­po­rate its oblig­a­tions under in­ter­na­tional law not to “rec­og­nize” il­le­gal ac­tions by other coun­tries. Al­low­ing EU aid to be used to ben­e­fit Is­rael’s set­tle­ments could breach that law. Kerry con­tended that Eu­rope’s at­tempt to pre­vent it­self from vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tional law could com­pli­cate the peace process.

This isn’t the first time. The U.S., in the name of pro­mot­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, has con­sis­tently ap­plied pres­sure to block ac­count­abil­ity for rights vi­o­la­tions, from ve­to­ing Se­cu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions crit­i­cal of Is­raeli vi­o­la­tions to call­ing on Pales­tine not to join the In­ter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court – even at times when the peace process has been prac­ti­cally mori­bund.

Is­rael’s of­fi­cial po­si­tion is that the pri­mary re­spon­si­bil­ity for Pales­tini­ans’ human rights in oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ries lies with the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity. Yet Is­rael al­lows Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity se­cu­rity ser­vices to op­er­ate in less than 20 per­cent of the West Bank.

In the areas of the West Bank where Is­rael has ex­clu­sive con­trol of se­cu­rity, its jus­tice sys­tems finds 99.74 per­cent of Pales­tin­ian de­fen­dants guilty of “se­cu­rity of­fenses,” but closes more than 90 per­cent of Pales­tin­ian com­plaints of set­tler vi­o­lence with­out even fil­ing an in­dict­ment. Only six Is­raeli sol­diers have been con­victed of un­law­fully killing Pales­tini­ans since 2000, and none served more than seven months in jail.

The U.S. has also failed to ad­dress abuses, in­clud­ing cred­i­ble al­le­ga­tions of tor­ture, by the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity. U.S. diplo­mats in Jerusalem told me that the U.S. would op­pose Pales­tin­ian ef­forts to sign human rights treaties. This has been an op­tion since the ma­jor­ity of UN mem­ber states rec­og­nized Pales­tin­ian state­hood in 2012 and would make it eas­ier to hold the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity to ac­count for abuses. But the U.S. diplo­mats I spoke to said such a move would be “un­help­ful to final sta­tus ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

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Deir Yassin : April 9 1948

Sixty years ago today, early in the morning of April 9th 1948, commandos of
the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir

Yassin, a beautiful Arab village with cut stone houses located on the westside of Jerusalem.

It was several weeks before the end of the British Mandate and the declaration of the State of Israel. The village lay outside the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish state; it had a peaceful reputation; it was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven
out some Arab militants.

But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and with the knowledge of the mainstream Jewish defence force, the Haganah, it was to be conquered and held.

In spite of being better armed, the two Jewish gangs were at first unable to
conquer the village. But after they elicited the help of a small band of
Palmach troops (the elite fighters of the Haganah), Deir Yassin soon fell.
The Palmach soldiers left; it was then that the massacre began.

That evening, over tea and cookies in the neighbouring Jewish settlement of Givat
Shaul, gang members told foreign correspondents that over 200 Arabs were
killed and forty taken prisoner.

This was reported in the New York Times the very next day (4/10/48, p.6). The terrorists claimed to have lost four of their own forces. They boasted of the “battle” but made no mention of the male Palestinians whom they had loaded onto trucks, paraded through some
Jewish sections of Jerusalem, and then taken back to a stone quarry between
Givat Shaul and Deir Yassin and shot to death.

On April 13th the New York Times reported that 254 Arab men, women, and children had been killed at Deir Yassin; there was no mention of prisoners.

The official Zionist leaders of the Haganah denounced the dissidents of the
Irgun and the Stern Gang accusing them of massacre, robbery, looting and
barbarism. Ben Gurion even sent an apology to King Abdullah.

But this horrific act served the future state of Israel well. As Begin said, “Arabs
throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of ‘Irgun butchery’
were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This
mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede.

The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be
over estimated.” (The Revolt, p.164) While modern historians argue that
Begin’s claims were exaggerated and that the actual number of Arabs killed
was closer to 100, they all agree that the massacre at Deir Yassin marked
the beginning of the depopulation of over 400 Arab villages and the exile of
over 700,000 Palestinians.

In spite of protests by Martin Buber and other noted scholars, within a year
the village was repopulated with orthodox Jewish immigrants from Poland,
Rumania and Slovakia. Its cemetery was bulldozed and its name was wiped off
the map.

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