The British-based rights group said the firing of rockets by Palestinian resistance -- which the Israeli military says has dropped by about 90 percent since its offensive in Gaza last year -- did not justify the sanctions.
"The blockade does not target armed groups but rather punishes Gaza’s entire population by restricting the entry of food, medical supplies, educational equipment and building materials," said Malcolm Smart, the group's Middle East and North Africa director, in a statement.
"The blockade constitutes collective punishment under international law and must be lifted immediately."
Amnesty said Egypt was partly to blame because it only occasionally opens its Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip -- the only terminal bypassing Israel.
It also faulted Cairo for starting work on an underground border wall in a bid to halt the smuggling tunnels that have become an economic lifeline to the territory.
"However, as the occupying power, it is Israel that bears the foremost responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the inhabitants of Gaza," Amnesty said.
Responding to the report, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev blamed Hamas.
Monday was the one-year anniversary of the mutual ceasefires that ended the 22-day Gaza war, which killed about 1,400 Palestinians - mainly civilians - and flattened entire neighbourhoods. Thirteen Israelis were killed during the fighting.
Israel imposed stricter sanctions on Gaza in 2006 following the capture of an Israeli soldier by Hamas and other resistance in a deadly cross-border raid.
It tightened the blockade when Hamas seized power in June 2007 to prevent a US-backed Fatah coup against Hamas’s democratic election.
Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.
The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza's sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.
Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, both of which are Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.
Additional Information:UN warns 250,000 Palestinians 'vulnerable' to "settler" violence: A report released by the United Nations last year says settlers angered over the destruction of outposts could exact revenge on 250,000 Palestinians in the West Bank.
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THE CARIBBEAN Community’s emergency aid mission to Haiti, comprising Heads of Government and leading technical officials, failed to secure permission Friday to land at that devasted country’s aiport, now under the control of the United States. Consequently, the Caricom ’assessment mission’, that was to determine priority humanitarian needs resulting from the mind-boggling earthquake disaster of Haiti last Tuesday, had to travel back from Jamaica to their respective home destinations.. On Friday afternoon the US State Department confirmed signing two ’Memoranda of Understanding’ with the Government of Haiti that made ’official that the United Stateas is in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid off-loading...’ Further, according to the agreements signed, US medical personnel ’now have the authority to operate on Haitian citizens and otherwise render medical assistance without having to wait for licences from Haiti’s government...’ Prior to the US taking control of Haiti’s airport, a batch of some 30 Cuban doctors had left Havana, following Wednesday’s earthquake, to join more than 300 of their colleagues who have been working there for more than a year. Last evening the frustration suffered by the Caricom mission to get landing permission was expected to be raised in a scheduled meeting at Jamaica’s Norman Manley International Airport with US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding who was making arrangements for the meeting with Clinton, following her visit earlier in the day to witness the devasation of the capital Port-au-Prince, said he could not comment on details to be discussed. He, however, told this correspondent: ’I appreciate the chaos and confusion at Haiti’s airport, where there is just one operational runway. But Haiti is a member of Caricom and we simply have to be facilitated and the truth is, there is hardly a functioning government in Haiti...’ Asked whether the difficuties encountered by the Caricom mission may be related to reports that US authorities were not anxious to facilitate landing of aircraft from Cuba and Venezuela, Prime Minister Golding said he could ’only hope that there is no truth to such immature thinking in the face of the horrific scale of Haiti’s tragedy...’ Golding, who has lead portfolio responsibility among Caricom leaders for external economic relations, had a personal first-hand assessment when he flew to Haiti on Thusday. A contigent of some 150 members of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF has since established a camp with medical facilities in the vicinity of Haiti’s airport. Ahead of last evening scheduled meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, Prime Minister Golding had discussed on Friday in Kingstom some of the probems to be overcome at a meeting he held in Kingston on Friday with the Prime Ministers of Barbados and Dominica and including the Community’s Secretary General.. Among urgent matters to be discussed with Secretary Clinton was to be possible use of the Norman Manley Airport as a primary hub, given its short distance from Haiti (45 minutes), for all emergency missions. The Community’s Secretary General (Edwin Carrington) explained that proper use of the Norman Manley Airport would be consistent with a decision last week for Jamaica to serve as the Sub-regional Operational Focal Point (SOFP) responses to the Haitian humanitarian crisis. |
The discovery of oil in Chad was supposed to allieviate poverty and human suffering, but it's only enriched Western Oil companies and the local dictators.By Brendan Schwartz and Valery Nodem,
Know Chad?
If you’ve heard of Chad -- no, not the Bengals’ Ochocinco -- you probably haven’t heard anything good about it. Almost continuous war since independence and its involvement the Darfur conflict have gotten Chad nothing but bad press. One author called it “a neglected tragedy of a nation.” Chad is in fact a strikingly beautiful country and its people are as vibrant and diverse as any. But without a doubt, there is great human suffering. And as many people have noted, the discovery of black gold isn’t helping.
The Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project, although relatively little-known to the general public, was for a time the source of fierce debate and high rhetoric in international development circles. The World Bank-financed project in the heart of war-torn Central Africa pumps 170,000 barrels/day of crude from Chad’s Doba basin to Cameroon’s Atlantic port city of Kribi, 1,080 kilometers away. Led by such corporations as Exxon and Chevron, the pipeline received plaudits from the World Bank as “an unprecedented framework to transform oil wealth into direct benefits for the poor, the vulnerable and the environment.” Nine years after the World Bank agreed to finance the pipeline, six years after oil went online, and just one year after the World Bank quit the project, Chad-Cameroon is slowly fading from the development spotlight. The World Bank quietly released their own evaluationof the project last week admitting that the project failed to achieve its two main goals of reducing poverty and improving governance. One hopes this is not the World Bank’s final evaluation of the project since oil is scheduled to flow for another twenty years and the worst of the project’s impacts are just beginning to be felt. This is an update from the field.
National Mourning and Broken Promises
For Chadian President Idriss Deby, oil revenues are a means to prolong abusive and undemocratic rule. He changed the constitution to become president for life, used over 30% of Chad’s oil revenues on war, and used money destined for development in “priority sectors” to grant opaque, no-bid public contracts to god knows whom -- all things he promised not to do. It is little wonder that Chadian civil society declared the pipeline’s inauguration a day of national mourning. The World Bank’s public sector lending arms (the IDA and IBRD) announced their withdrawal from the project in 2008 stating “Chad failed to comply with key requirements” of their participation, though the World Bank’s private sector lending arm (the IFC) had no problem staying on board to reap the benefits of its $200 million commercial loan. Many promises were also made to people living in the oil-producing zone in the southwest of Chad. Villagers were promised fair compensation for the loss of land expropriated by Exxon, employment with the oil companies for the life of the project, and 5% of oil revenues to be invested in their villages. According to local residents, these promises were empty.
The Displaced
A woman in the Bero village of the oil producing zone explained that Exxon had displaced her whole family and promised to build them new houses equipped with furniture and find them new land. Although new houses were built, the construction was so shoddy that Exxon was forced to return just two years later and rebuild them to avoid a major PR embarrassment. There is no furniture to be found. In theory, everyone displaced by the project received some form of compensation, but rarely has it been sufficient to restore their standard of living. This is because Chad’s oil happens to be located a few meters below Chad’s most fertile agricultural land. The farming problem is especially serious since the zone is Chad’s only breadbasket and feeds most of the country. Exxon and the project planners claimed that compensations would be paid to displaced people, but that “self resettlement” would take place naturally whereby villagers would find/purchase new land for farming from a “village land pool.” A recent Chadian report notes that this has not happened; many farmers have not found land or enough land. Agricultural production is continually declining and will ultimately penalize the entire country.
The Local Government of Exxon
Hoping to avoid paying too much compensation, Exxon has allowed many villagers to stay in the oil producing zone. Villagers often live precariously close to oil wells which turn round the clock. Increased banditry in the zone led the former governor of the Logone Oriental Province to instruct local police to “arrest or shoot on sight” anyone circulating through the zone after 6 pm. Now people living in the zone are literally surrounded by oil infrastructure and prisoners in their own homes. Almost every facet of their lives is governed by Exxon, the de facto local government.
Take the case of Namarde Keiro. His family lives within 500 meters of Exxon’s Operations Center and within twenty meters of an active oil well. As high voltage power lines tower over his home, Keiro’s family lives in what the World Bank calls “extreme poverty” with no access to clean water or electricity. On October 11 of this year, Keiro discovered an oil spill while returning home from his farm. He alerted Exxon employees who immediately cordoned off the area and “cleaned” it up before any outside observers could see the damage. The oil spill ruined Keiro’s fallow land, and so they decided to compensate him with a special gift: an empty Esso (Exxon’s operator) backpack.
(Pictured above: Esso backpack and remnants of the oil spill)
This was allegedly the fifth oil spill related to the project, yet was not reported by a single media outlet in or outside of Chad. If a journalist from the Associated Press made just one phone call to Exxon in Houston, Keiro likely would receive thousands of dollars of compensation within a week.
Employees of the oil consortium returned to Keiro’s home on November 6th with surveying equipment. Apparently they want to build a road which will pass two meters from the family’s mud hut. According to local NGOs, Exxon’s strategy is to make life so unbearable for local residents that they leave on their own accord with no compensation. It’s working.
Invisible 5%
As for the 5% of oil revenues promised to residents of the oil-producing zone -- it’s all being spent on so-called “Presidential Projects.” These are high-profile large infrastructure projects that Deby has gifted to the regional capital of Doba, more than a thirty-minute drive from the villages hit hardest by oil production. These projects, which include an already crumbling football stadium, are intended to win support for Deby’s party in the 2010 local elections and 2011 presidential election. When asked if any of the 5% funds had been spent in his village, the Chief of Meikiri choked up with laughter before finally catching his breath to say “no.” That was Sunday. On Monday, Exxon began drilling an oil well just feet from the soccer field of his village’s elementary school. $74 million dollars have been spent in the oil producing zone on development projects according to the Vice-President of the committee managing the “5% fund.” Yet nothing is visible in the villages playing host to the project.
Weapons, Weapons, Weapons
The greatest impact of oil in Chad has been felt not by the caged-in villages of the Doba Basin, but rather in the North and East of country where hundreds of millions of dollars of oil money has been used to purchase weapons for a war that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands. In 2007, Chad spent 4.5 times more money on the military than it did on health, education, and other social spending combined. Despite the World Bank’s guarantee of a model framework for oil-led development, oil has continued to fuel war where civilians are the primary victims. Chad even used oil money to purchase weapons which were later confiscated from JEM, the Darfurian rebel group Deby hired to protect his capitol from Chad’s own rebels. The oil for war and war for oil reality is deeply ingrained in Chad’s popular political consciousness. Nadji Nelambaye, the coordinator of a Chadian NGO, snapped “are you trying to provoke me?” when asked if he thought there was a link between oil and war in the country. He then launched into a passionate hour-long speech which 99% of Chadians would agree with. According to a recent International Crisis Group report, two of Chad’s high ranking ministers -- who happen to be President Idriss Deby’s twin nephews -- defected to the armed rebellion explicitly because of perceived misuse of oil revenues.
Cameroon, the Other One
Chad has received a lot of attention and criticism related to its oil adventures. However, almost 900 kilometers of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline pass through that other country: Cameroon.
Despite receiving minimal “transit revenues” from Chad’s oil, the pipeline’s social and environmental impacts are just a harsh for Cameroonians living along the pipeline route. 248 villages are directly impacted by the pipe and dozens more by roads, operations centers, and employee living bases all built expressly for the project. Unlike in neighboring Chad, no oil revenues have been set aside for development spending in the affected villages. The Cameroonian government claims it only receives $25 million per year and some of that money returns to impacted villages via increased social spending in the national budget. But the truth is no one knows where the $25 million is spent (or if that’s the true amount) and there is no accountability for the use of the revenues. Thus the accent of the debate in Cameroon centers on the (non)payment of compensation. The Environmental Management Plan (EMP), hundreds of pages of World Bank crafted policy jargon, required the oil consortium and Cameroonian government to pay all compensation before construction of the pipeline began in 2001. Today, Cameroonian NGOs have documented hundreds of cases in which compensation was never paid, partially paid, or paid in kind with shoddy materials. Try this Pu-pu platter of compensation disasters:
The Village Grandfather
Mongotsoe Akam is a quiet and awkward grandfather living in the small village of Ebaka in Cameroon’s East Province. He has been a farmer his whole life and seems content to continue living the traditional village life. During the pipeline’s construction, multiple subcontractors of the oil consortium were constantly buzzing around his home and farm. They were looking for laterite, a type of rock used to surface the unpaved roads the consortium built to transport materials and heavy machinery. Mr. Mongotsoe showed them the exact location of his laterite and negotiated a price for its extraction. Not only was he never paid for the use of his laterite, but he also was never compensated for the $50,000 worth of crops that were bulldozed to access the quarry. Mr. Mongotsoe politely waited until the pipeline construction was completed in 2003 to complain of his plight. When Exxon refused to pay, he asked an agricultural engineer from the Cameroonian Ministry of Agriculture to evaluate the damage to his land. Using EMP principles, the engineer’s report concluded Mongotsoe was owed a little over $50,000 and was sent to the director of Exxon’s environmental unit. Exxon later replied in a written notice that Mongotsoe’s claims documented by the Ministry of Agriculture are “not convincing” and “lack coherence.” In September, 2009 the oil consortium finally offered to settle with Mongotsoe for a mere $600. When the old man refused, an Exxon employee told two Cameroonian NGOs that Mongotsoe was trying to swindle the company since he knows they have tons of money. Can you imagine the headline in The Onion? “Cameroonian Grandfather Bankrupts Supermajor.”
Confusion in the Domps
A few hundred kilometers away in the village of Dompta, unemployed youth watch as small airplanes land and take off where they used to farm—now Exxon’s private landing strip. Their individual compensation payments were spent years ago and now they have no livelihood. The Chief of Dompta signed a contract with Exxon for the construction of a health clinic as “community compensation.” When the health clinic wasn’t built, he wrote to the oil consortium demanding they follow through on their written agreement. One of Exxon’s directors cordially replied that the health center would be built and the village could use health clinics in neighboring villages until then. Dompta’s chief died in 2007 and was replaced by his son as tradition requires. The new Dompta chief claims Exxon built a health center in Dompla (notice the difference in spelling), a village about 30 kilometers away and even proudly posted a sign that read “Dompta Health Clinic.” We will never know if this is a cruel joke or corporate idiocy because no one from the oil consortium has yet to comment on the issue. For the people of Dompta, it doesn’t really matter.
Fishing for Oil
No place in Cameroon has been overrun by the pipeline as much as the coastal city of Kribi. Traditional Kribians wake up around 5 am and ready their wooden canoes for the day’s fishing expedition. As each day passes, they paddle farther and farther to catch fewer and fewer fish. That’s because one of the principal fishing reefs was dynamited to make way for the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, which is buried under 11 kilometers of seabed. Supertankers from around to world come to dock at the Offshore Loading Facility just off Kribi’s coast, fill up on Chadian crude, and then head off to Europe and the US. The Cameroonian coast guard and Exxon private security won’t let fisherman drop their nets near the Offshore Facility and routinely harass artisanal fisherman as commercial Chinese trawlers illegally overfish the outer waters with impunity.
In January of 2007, an oil spill occurred in Kribi. As fisherman reeled in their day’s catch, they couldn’t help but notice the distinctly black color of all their fish. Exxon claims the damage was minimal. No independent analysis has been conducted to measure the impact of the spill in Kribi, which is also Cameroon’s premier tourist destination. The damage done to Kribi’s artisanal fishers is incalculable because the oil consortium’s environmental baseline studies don’t include sufficient data on fishing. Beach-front villages have been given $4,000 each in additional compensation, which Exxon calls “bon voisinage”—being good neighbors—but takes no responsibility for the collapse of Kribi’s fishing industry.
The World Bank asked the government of Cameroon and Exxon to jointly publish an official “Oil Spill Response Plan” before the project became operational in 2003. The plan was “inaugurated” at Yaounde’s ritzy Hilton Hotel on November 3rd, 2009. A member of a prominent Cameroonian NGO which has been monitoring the project was barred from the event because “he didn’t have accreditation.”
America’s Responsibility and What You Can Do
As America’s search for oil and gas intensifies on the African continent (soon to comprise 25% of all US oil imports), Americans should be aware of the human/environmental costs of their continuing lust for black gold and the actions of their corporations. Bluntly put, oil in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Chad, Angola, and Sudan has further impoverished people at best and caused inestimable human suffering in many cases. Ghana, Mauritania, Uganda, Sao Tome and others have nascent industries which could become strategic in the search for the world’s least renewable resource.
The ultimate goal of international campaigning is to “leave African oil in the soil” and build stronger governance beforehand since the extractive industries almost never contribute to development. However, powerful interests are making that objective difficult. Thus the fight will for now be concentrated on policy improvements. Here are a couple easy things you can do to influence policy and help prevent a repeat of the Chad-Cameroon debacle:
Contact your elected representatives to support Senator Richard Lugar's Energy Security through Transparency (ESTT) Act, S.1700. The bill would require energy and mining companies to reveal how much they pay to foreign countries and the U.S. government for oil, gas, and other minerals. The information would be included in financial statements that are already required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This would apply to both American and international companies listed with the SEC, covering a majority of the largest oil, gas and mining companies in the world. This bill is part of a large international campaign called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
Alert your elected representatives to the Human Rights Watch campaign to mandate that the US Export-Import Bank (ExIm) and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) require extractive industries companies who receive funding or political risk insurance from them to show that they have effective policies and procedures to address security and human rights, and give those companies the capacity to monitor compliance with those standards. Both ExIm and OPIC financed the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline.
On the eve of one of the most damning reports ever to be published on human rights abuses and suspected war crimes, Israel committed an act of piracy.
While western naval fleets are patrolling the waters off the coast of Africa, acts of piracy are being carried out routinely in the Mediterranean.
But the international community leaders couldn’t care less because most of those who are kidnapped, shot at and hijacked at sea are Palestinian fishermen from Gaza.
However yesterday Israel crossed a line after firing on and boarding a boat carrying aid and peace activists to Gaza.
The 21 on board included former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, who were taken prisoner by the Israeli navy after gunboats surrounded and seized the Free Gaza Movement relief boat 'Spirit of Humanity' on Monday.
The aid was seized, their mobile phones confiscated and no doubt cameras capturing the illegal actions of the Israelis were also removed.
"This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip," said Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party's 2008 candidate for President of the United States.
"President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that's exactly what we tried to do. We're asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey."
In the past the Israeli Navy has claimed that boats have entered their territorial waters and breached their part of the sea in the eastern Med.
However, thousands across the world who followed the progress of the Free Gaza Movement boat Spirit of Humanity by internet, GPS, Twitter and various other means of communications over the last 30 hours know for sure that the boat was illegally stopped in international waters.
This is piracy. Nothing more. Nothing less.
It’s anyone’s guess what will happen to the Humanity’s cargo of medical supplies, cement, olive trees, and children's toys.
But what we need from Barak Obama and Gordon Brown (there are at least half a dozen Brits on that boat) is strong leadership in which Israel apologises and allows the boat and its passengers to continue the journey into Gaza.
The G8 leaders all know what the Israeli Army did in Gaza and the war crimes that were carried out making it impossible for the Zionist military to travel into most European countries for fear of being arrested.
And in the next 24 hours Amnesty International will spell out exactly what was done on the ground during that 22-day war.
We know that the fourth largest military in the world, a military given weapons by Britain and the US, destroyed 50,000 homes, 800 industrial
properties and 200 schools.
During a recent trip to Gaza with the Viva Palestina convoy, I saw the scores of mosques bombed - even orphanages had been targeted. The net result was the slaughter of more than 1,400 civilians, including hundreds of children.
How long is Israel going to be allowed to behave as it wants ... and even likes?
I saw, with disbelief, some of the taunting, sadistic messages scrawled on lounge walls in bombed out homes by departing Israeli soldiers - one even left his email for “any complaints”.
I remember when Tony Blair, called the Taliban the most evil, brutal regime in the world and he justified this statement because he said they didn’t even allow children to fly kites.
He wondered at the mentality of a regime which could be so cruel to children.
That was way back in November 2001. Well I wonder what he would think of a regime which blocks cherries, kiwi fruit and chocolate from reaching the hand s of the children in Gaza? Yes, that’s how evil this Zionist regime is ... it can’t even bear the thought of these poor kids receiving a few tasty treats.
Every week, about 10 officers from the Israel Defense Force's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit meet to decide what sort of food the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip can eat.
Let’s name and shame the men this gruesome threesome - Colonel Moshe Levi, Colonel Alex Rosenzweig, and Colonel Doron Segal. All three decided a few days back that apricots, plums, grapes, avocados, cherries, kiwi fruit, green almonds, pomegranates and chocolate were "delicacies" and therefore expressly prohibited.
I will return to these three shameful soldiers at a later date, but let’s return to today’s events which has, in my view, reconfirmed Israel as a rogue state by launching into international piracy yet again.
You will notice the top of this story is called Pirates of the Mediterranean II - that’s because I wrote an article in December revealing how another free Gaza Movement boat, t he SS Dignity, was rammed by an Israeli naval gunboat.
The act of aggression on a peace mission was launched in international waters 90 miles off Gaza, without any warning to the captain of the Dignity or the crew. Israel claimed the incident was an accident and that its naval officers had made numerous attempts to communicate with the Dignity. The israelis ‘accidentally’ rammed the boat no less than three times.
The Israelis accused the international activists then of "seeking provocation more than ever." Isn’t it amazing how the Zionist State suddenly goes belly up and adopts a victim mentality?
Exactly what the hell is Israel up to by banning or trying to prevent boats from entering waters not in its territory? This is the Mediterranean. Just when did Israel assume complete authority of the Med?
Israel's deplorable attack yesterday, and its previous one on the unarmed Dignity is a violation of both international maritime law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which states, "the high seas should be reserved for peaceful purposes."
Delivering aid to the needy is just such a "peaceful purpose." Deliberately ramming or hijacking mercy ships and endangering its passengers is an act of terrorism and piracy.
I say Western fleets should now head to the Mediterranean to crack down on this breed of pirates who make the Somali gangs look like Captain Pugwash and co.
The Somali pirates are motivated by money - that makes them criminals. The Israelis commit these acts out of sadistic pleasure ... what does that make them?
And if they are allowed to continue, what will that make the likes of Obama, Brown and the other cabal of foreign leaders who look the other way?
Enough is enough. The time has come to acknowledge that Israel is a failed project, a rogu e state - and a danger to ordinary, decent, law-abiding members of the public.
Until it comes to heel the international community needs to impose sanctions, freeze its assets, stop selling arms and installing a UN peacekeeping Force to bring it under control bvecause it is a menace to its neighbours and the wider world.
For more information and updates, see the Free Gaza Movement web site (http://www.freegaza.org), including the latest release on the seizure
of the relief boat (http://www.freegaza.org/en/home/hope-fleet-news/976-israel-attacks-justice-boat-kidnaps-human-rights-workers-confiscates-medicine-toys-and-olive-trees).
For communications and updates from Cynthia McKinney, visit her Green Party page (http://www.gp.org/cynthia/index.php) and blog
(http://dignity.ning.com).
Journalist Yvonne Ridley and film-maker Aki Nawaz sailed to Gaza with the FGM on the first mission to break the siege in August 2008. Ridley was given a media award at the annual Muslim News awards. Her website is www.yvonneridley.org
On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television - a documentary that Americans won’t ever see. The gigantic bio-tech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years. Posted June 23, 2009
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THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Into War-Torn Afghanistan With Doctors Without Borders.
By Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre and Frédéric Lemercier.Translated by Alexis Siegel
Illustrated. 267 pp. First Second. Paper, $29.95
At home in the beleaguered West Bank town of Qalqilya, as her mother dresses her before dawn in an almond-green blouse and jeans, Jinan asks the same question she always does: "Mommy, why does Daddy have to sleep on the Israeli side?" And her mother Salam Nazal comforts her by saying, "Because that's where the best Palestinian men go to sleep, and your father is one of them." The town, which has elected a Hamas mayor, is known as a center of Palestinian militancy, and Israeli security forces conduct raids there on average five times a week. (See photographs of conflict in the Middle East.)
Salam cannot accompany her daughters because she is on an Israeli security watch list, although she has never learned why she's on it. Her immediate family lives in Jordan, so she must put the girls on a bus bound for Chattah-Gilboa prison inside Israel and hope that one of the many Palestinian women on board will help Jinan wrangle her sisters. "I'm so worried about having them go without me," says Salam, as she hoists her girls onto the bus, organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "But what can I do? This is their only chance to see their father."
Ali Nazal, 35, who sold clothes from a cart in the streets, is one of more than 10,300 Palestinian detainees currently inside Israeli prisons. Although he has yet to be tried, Nazal has been behind bars for the past two years. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of possessing weapons and harboring a fugitive — charges the family insists are based on false evidence from anonymous informers working for the Israeli security services. Salam says no weapons were found in their home but says the Israeli military demolished it anyway. The Israelis maintain that Ali was an active member of a militant organization and part of a cell that had been planning a terrorist attack.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Ali and his fellow detainees should never have been transferred to prisons outside the occupied territories. But since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in June 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have passed through Israeli jails. Nearly every Palestinian family has someone who was locked up in Israel at some point. Prison has become a rite of passage for rebellious teens and, for families seeking to visit detained loved ones, a nightmare of permits, checkpoints and body searches. It's not an easy journey for an adult, much less three unaccompanied tots carrying their lunch in a Barbie backpack.
Israel refuses to finance or arrange transportation for Palestinians making prison visits, leaving the task to the Red Cross. Every month, says Anne-Sophie Bonefeld, an ICRC spokeswoman in Jerusalem, her organization arranges the bus rides and bureaucratic paperwork that enable more than 20,000 Palestinians to visit relatives inside Israeli prisons. The Palestinian family-visitation program, which has been going on since 1967, is "the largest of its kind anywhere in the world," she says, although the number of visits has dropped slightly since 2007, when Israel barred families from the Hamas-controlled enclave of Gaza from making the trip.
For prisoner Ali, his daughters' visit is a rare treat. He last saw his youngest, Noor, when she was six months old. Now she walks and talks, and her moon-shaped, serene eyes seem to display perpetual bemusement over the whirlwind antics of her two sisters.
Qalqilya is encircled by Israel's security barrier, and at a checkpoint, the three girls dismount with the rest of the Palestinian passengers and are herded through a labyrinth of turnstiles, flashing lights, metal detectors and an X-ray machine that swallows up the Barbie backpack. Jinan and her sisters squirm through a turnstile too soon and are stranded in a security no-man's-land and yelled at by the disembodied voices of soldiers watching through closed-circuit cameras. When the girls finally emerge dazed from the checkpoint, Jinan runs over to a field of wildflowers and plucks a stem of Queen Anne's lace for her little sister.
Then the girls clamber aboard another ICRC bus, which is escorted to the prison by Israeli police. Skipping up the aisle, Jinan touches a man's bald head and asks, "What happened to your hair? Mine's soft and pretty." She snatches my cell phone and, within five seconds, has snapped a photo of a napping Palestinian woman and turned it into my screensaver.
Two hours later, the bus arrives at the high walls of Chattah-Gilboa prison. Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been waiting up to five hours in shrinking shade for the 45 minutes they will spend speaking with their relatives on a telephone from behind thick glass. The glass has small holes that allow the prisoners to touch fingertips with their visitors. Jinan and Dania climb the metal bars of the turnstile as if it were a piece of playground equipment. A buzzer blares, and a light over the turnstile flashes from red to green. A guard calls out a few names, and the eager crowd pushes Jinan and her sisters aside.
Another hour will pass before the girls are let in. By then, Noor is hot and cranky, in tears, crying for her distant mother. Their pretty pink and green clothes are smeared with dirt. I volunteer to escort them inside, but the prison wardens refuse. Instead, a veiled young woman with pale-gray eyes agrees to escort them into the visiting room.
That morning, their mother had shown the girls a photo of their imprisoned father so the younger ones would recognize him. It showed a solemn, heavyset man in a training suit of the Spanish soccer team Real Madrid. "He's been memorizing the Koran. That, and lifting weights," Salam told me.
Jinan assumes her responsibility and grabs the hands of her two sisters. They vanish inside the prison, scared but eager, leaving me to wonder whether Jinan will remember any of the many earnest and loving messages entrusted to her by Salam to pass on to their father.
With so many Palestinians still locked up in Israel, demands for prisoner releases remain at the center of most Israeli-Palestinian political negotiations. Those behind bars are a lost generation of Palestinians, and it's a safe bet that their children, like Jinan and her sisters, will inherit their parents' bitterness toward Israel.
Read "Israel's New Leader: Can the U.S. Work with Netanyahu?"
