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NPK-info - Nederlands Palestina Komitee / www.palestina-komitee.nl
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Hierin
* The hidden weapons factories, Amira Hass,
12-12-2001
* Message to the Israeli's for peace, Nizar Sakhnini,
14-12-2001
* Een MAIL-ACTIE "Bescherm de Palestijnen"
richting een aantal Kamerleden.
Wie meer Kamerleden - en ook andere brieven -
wil mailen dan de aangeboden
tekst, welkom.
* NPK attendeerde Kamerleden op "Palestina - 53
jaar VN-resl 194".
N.B. "call for the full implementation of
Resolution 194"
Opmerkelijk
Premier Kok heeft kennelijk alleen iets op te merken
[TV vrijdagavond 7-12]
over "wat Arafat/PNA moet doen",
Sharon/Israel lijkt van Nederland "alle
ruimte" te krijgen.
Vannacht sprak de VS een veto uit in de
VN-Veiligheidsraad [aldus CNN 13
uur] tegen een Palestina-Israel-resolutie die vroeg
om een monitoring-force
ter bescherming van de Palestijnen, en ook om een
onmiddellijk staakt het
vuren [tekst nog niet beschikbaar].
NPK/WL, 15-12-2001
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The hidden weapons factories
By Amira Hass
Haaretz
December 12, 2001
There's one laboratory for ticking bombs that the
Shin Bet and
European foreign ministers skipped when they demanded
Arafat take
action against terrorism. At this lab - which has
hundreds of
branches in the West Bank and Gaza - hundreds, if not
thousands, of
people are making the mistake of thinking "I'm
ready to die with the
Philistines."
The labs are the IDF checkpoints and blockades, which
gradually have
tightened the siege around every Palestinian
settlement, making
Avigdor Lieberman's plans for the cantonization of
the territories
look like a humane and enlightened program.
It's difficult to grasp all the information that
comes from these
besieged places. The lack of medical supplies, such
as oxygen tanks,
is a daily, desperate routine in the hospitals.
Cooking gas and fuel
and even drinking water routinely run out. Suppliers
have
difficulties bringing in fresh food.
Last week, the order went out that Palestinians are
banned from
using roads in Area C - some 60 percent of the West
Bank. Schools
are half empty. At Fowar refugee camp, for example,
the children
couldn't avoid the checkpoints and couldn't get to
their school in
Hebron for the past three days. The universities are
partially or
fully paralyzed, like Bir Zeit, where all the roads
leading to the
school have been closed because of the curfew on
northern Ramallah.
The school year has already been lost, and along with
it the
students' expensive tuition.
Along with the checkpoints, closures and curfews, an
unknown number
of people have lost their jobs in the private sector
or have been
forced to move, wasting half a salary on a second
rent. Every
peasant farmer who goes out to work his fields risks
his life;
whether he has to go through Area C, or because his
presence on a
security road for a nearby settlement turns him
automatically into a
"suspect."
The IDF counts every Palestinian mortar and land
mine, but doesn't
count all the stun grenades and tear gas grenades,
rubber-coated
bullets and live ammunition used by soldiers every
day to enforce a
total closure.
The northern neighborhoods of Ramallah have been
under curfew for
the last nine days. The soldiers in their tanks
enforce that order
every few hours by rolling into the middle of the
road and aiming
their cannons toward the hundreds of people trying to
get to the
city center through the hills. Sometimes the soldiers
throw a tear
gas grenade or a stun grenade, sometimes they shoot
"rubber."
Sometimes they confiscate the keys to cars and tell
the drivers to
pick up the keys at the Civil Administration. But the
Civil
Administration building is in Area C, where
Palestinians are
forbidden to go.
Without cameras and outside observers, it's as if
these things never
happened. The IDF can promise that it knows nothing
about any
shooting. Like the shots that killed taxi driver
Marwan Lahluh from
Arabe, who tried to get to besieged Jenin via dirt
roads, and was
shot in the chest by a bullet from a grove where the
Palestinians
say an IDF unit is posted.
The IDF promises that "humanitarian" cases
are allowed through the
checkpoints. If so, how come Tamer Kuzamer, a sick
baby, and his
mother, were not allowed through the Habla checkpoint
to get to a
doctor in Ramallah? His family looked for a
roundabout way, much
longer than the direct one, but the baby died en
route. Why did two
heart patients on their way back to Gaza from medical
treatment end
up waiting three hours last Friday night until an
Israeli lawyer's
intervention finally enabled them back into the
besieged strip? And
why should a woman, who gave birth only 14 hours
earlier, have to
wait in an ambulance for hours at the exit from
Nablus on the way
back to a village only 10 minutes away by car? When
there are no
journalists or diplomats around, the IDF's answer is
that "the
complaints are not known to us."
Every one of these examples should be multiplied by
tens of
thousands of people who are daily subjected to the
same harm, in
order to begin to understand the totality of the
Israeli siege. One
has to imagine the eyes of all those who see an old
man tottering on
crutches in the mud and rain as he shrinks past a
huge tank, or a
young girl with pigtails and in a school uniform,
cowering behind a
rock as a soldier throws tear gas.
Israel has but one answer: All is fair in the war
against terrorism.
That's why it's forgotten that the suicide terrorists
near the
Jerusalem hotel and on the Haifa bus slipped into
Israel despite the
checkpoints, and that the Jerusalem pedestrian mall
bombers came
from Abu Dis, which is in full Israeli security
control. And that's
apparently why there will be only more military
escalation and a
further tightening of the closure.
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From F r e e d o m, 14-12-2001
A MESSAGE TO THE ISRAELIS FOR PEACE: ARROGANCE IS
LEADING TO THE ABYSS
In his complete political bankruptcy, Sharon is
trying to abuse what he
thinks to provide him with a golden opportunity to go
full speed with his
sick designs of a "final solution" to the
Palestinian "demographic" problem.
How else, to use the words of Meron Benvenisti in his
article A Footnote for
the Future published in Ha'aretz on 13 December 2001,
"can one explain the
series of military actions whose only purpose was to
humiliate the
Palestinian collective, deny its legitimacy, and
destroy its
infrastructure?.
The Zionist-Arab conflict had been going on for over
one hundred years.
Reducing it to a pure and simple formula equating
what's going on within the
boundaries of British Mandate Palestine, within and
beyond the so-called
"Green Line", with what's going on in
Afghanistan is an oversimplification
of a complicated conflict, to say the least.
Ever since his notorious provocative and arrogant
visit to Haram al-Sharif
in September 2000, Sharon is following a systematic
effort to invoke the
kind of reactions that give him the pretext to keep
escalating his war
against the Palestinian people to achieve the
mainstream Zionist dream of
full control and hegemony in an undefined area of
British Mandate Palestine
and the surrounding countries.
Failure of his 1982 adventure in Lebanon was not good
enough to abandon his
dreams. Sharon still thinks that he can use a
new bunch of collaborators to
act in the role similar to what was assigned to Nimir
Hawari in the early
1950's, the Village Leagues in 1981, or the SLA in
South Lebanon following
his failure in Beirut in 1982.
Let's put aside the colonial project outlined by
Herzl. Let's forget
Ben-Gurion's vision of using the partition plan as a
tactic to build the
State and the power, which would make it possible for
expanding Israel's
territorial gains. Let's forget all the
procrastination tactics used by all
Israeli Governments since 1948 to give the pretence
that they are after
peace while they were in reality buying time to
create more facts on the
ground that are in flagrant contradiction with any
measures conducive to
peace. Let's also forget what Shamir arrogantly
declared following the
Madrid Conference in 1991 that he would keep the
peace talks running in a
vicious circle for ten years until there was nothing
left to talk about.
Let's forget all these documented facts, for a while,
and ask a simple
question: do the Israelis really want to live in
peace and harmony with the
Palestinians and Arabs around them as equals with
equal human rights or do
they want colonial dominance and control through
brute force?
If they want dominance and control, their only way is
to cling to Sharon and
let him go on with killings, home demolitions,
uprooting of olive and orange
groves, "redemption" of more Palestinian
lands, expansion of colonial
settlements that surround and isolate Palestinian
towns and villages from
each other, destruction of the Palestinian community
through oppression,
humiliation and all kinds of human rights violations
and racist
discrimination. In this case, don't get
surprised with the reaction the
oppressed and trodden Palestinians may resort to in
their desperation.
If, on the other hand, you want to live with the
Palestinians and the Arabs
in peace and harmony, then the road is clear enough.
Admit the wrong done
to the Palestinian people. Recognize their
legitimate human rights,
especially their Right of Return. Bring about
an immediate end the
occupation and let the Palestinians live in dignity.
In this case, you will
be surprised who will benefit more from this humane
relationship.
Don't fool yourselves, Sharon is not Bush and Israel
is not the U.S. Arafat
is not Bin Laden and the Palestinians are not the
Taliban. Hamas is not
Al-Qa'idah and Palestinian Resistance to
dispossession, oppression,
usurpation of rights and "confiscation" of
lands is not terrorism. Nizar
Sakhnini
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----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
Van: Amin Ghazal
Aan: Friends of Palestine
CC: ann
Verzonden: vrijdag 14 december 2001 18:23
Onderwerp: Bescherm de Palestijnen
Beste mensen,
Ben je van mening dat de Palestijnen beschermd moeten
tegen de aanhoudende
Israelische agressie?.
Stuur dan een e-mail naar een aantal van onze
volkvertegenwoordigers om ze
erop te wijzen dat ze actie moeten ondernemen.
Dat kun je doen door op onderstaande link te klikken:
Het enige wat je dan hoeft te doen is in een paar
velden je naam +
emailadres in te vullen en op send te klikken.
Bedankt namens de vele mensen in Palestina die ´s-nachts,
stijf van angst
geen oog meer dicht doen door de meestal nachtelijke
Israëlische aanvallen
met tanks, raketten en bulldozers .
Groet,
Amin Ghazal.
_______________________________________________________________________
----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
Van: Kees Wagtendonk
Aan: A.Harrewijn@tk.parlement.nl ; A.Koenders@tk.parlement.nl
;
A.Rouvoet@tk.parlement.nl ; A.Schimmel@tk.parlement.nl
;
A.vanArdenne@tk.parlement.nl ; A.vdHoek@tk.parlement.nl
;
A.C.Kant@tk.parlement.nl ; A.Kuijper@tk.parlement.nl
;
A.vBlerck-Woerdman@tk.parlement.nl ; Apostolou@tk.parlement.nl
;
B.Bakker@tk.parlement.nl ; B.Dittrich@tk.parlement.nl
;
Balemans@tk.parlement.nl ; Bussemaker@tk.parlement.nl
;
C.Ross@tk.parlement.nl ; C.vdKnaap@tk.parlement.nl ;
C.vdStaaij@tk.parlement.nl ; C.Vendrik@tk.parlement.nl
;
C.Eurlings@tk.parlement.nl ; Cloe@tk.parlement.nl ;
D.Hindriks@tk.parlement.nl ; Dankers@tk.parlement.nl
;
E.Meijer@tk.parlement.nl ; E.Roeles@tk.parlement.nl ;
E.vanSplunter@tk.parlement.nl ; F.Halsema@tk.parlement.nl
;
F.Karimi@tk.parlement.nl ; F.Orgu@tk.parlement.nl ;
F.Ravestein@tk.parlement.nl ; F.Timmermans@tk.parlement.nl
;
F.Weekers@tk.parlement.nl ; Feenstra@tk.parlement.nl
;
G.Leers@tk.parlement.nl ; G.Oplaat@tk.parlement.nl ;
G.vanHoven@tk.parlement.nl ; G.Verburg@tk.parlement.nl
;
G.Wilders@tk.parlement.nl ; H.Voute@tk.parlement.nl ;
H.Waalkens@tk.parlement.nl ; H.G.J.Kamp@tk.parlement.nl
;
J.Balkenende@tk.parlement.nl ; J.belinfante@tk.parlement.nl
;
JdHoopScheffer@tk.parlement.nl ; J.Geluk@tk.parlement.nl
;
J.Hoekema@tk.parlement.nl ; J.Niederer@tk.parlement.nl
;
Nieuwenhoven@tk.parlement.nl ; J.Smits@tk.parlement.nl
;
JvdWerff@tk.parlement.nl ; J.vWalsem@tk.parlement.nl
;
J.vdAkker@tk.parlement.nl ; J.Wijn@tk.parlement.nl ;
J.Witteveen@tk.parlement.nl ; L.Kortram@tk.parlement.nl
;
M.dePater@tk.parlement.nl ; M.Barth@tk.parlement.nl ;
M.deBoer@tk.parlement.nl ; M.Duijker@tk.parlement.nl
;
M.Rabbae@tk.parlement.nl ; M.Udo@tk.parlement.nl ;
M.vdHoeven@tk.parlement.nl ; MvdDoel@tk.parlement.nl
;
M.Verhagen@tk.parlement.nl ; M.Visser@tk.parlement.nl
;
M.Wagenaar@tk.parlement.nl ; M.Augusteijn@tk.parlement.nl
;
Middel@tk.parlement.nl ; N.Schutter@tk.parlement.nl ;
N.Albayrak@tk.parlement.nl ; Noorman@tk.parlement.nl
;
O.Cherribi@tk.parlement.nl ; O.Scheltema@tk.parlement.nl
;
P.Biesheuvel@tk.parlement.nl ; P.Rosenmoller@tk.parlement.nl
;
P.tVeer@tk.parlement.nl ; P.vHeemst@tk.parlement.nl ;
PvWijmen@tk.parlement.nl ; P.Visee@tk.parlement.nl ;
P.H.Hofstra@tk.parlement.nl ; R.Luchtenveld@tk.parlement.nl
; rpoppe@sp.nl ;
Remak@tk.parlement.nl ; Rijpstra@tk.parlement.nl ;
S.Blok@tk.parlement.nl ;
S.Dijksma@tk.parlement.nl ; S.Smeets@tk.parlement.nl
;
S.vanVliet@tk.parlement.nl ; T.Pitstra@tk.parlement.nl
;
T.Rietkerk@tk.parlement.nl ; T.Stroeken@xs4all.nl ;
Th.Meijer@tk.parlement.nl ; U.Lambrechts@tk.parlement.nl
;
U.Santi@tk.parlement.nl ; MB.Vos@tk.parlement.nl ; W.vanBeek@tk.parlement.nl
; W.vanderCamp@tk.parlement.nl ; W.vGent@tk.parlement.nl
;
Zijlstra@tk.parlement.nl
top
Verzonden: woensdag 12 december 2001 15:18
Onderwerp: Palestina - 53 jaar
VN-resolutie 194
Geachte mevrouw/meneer, Volksvertegenwoordiger,
Tweede kamerlid,
Hierbij brengen wij gaarne de tekst van de open
brieven van de Palestijnse
BADIL-Organisatie aan de Sceretaris
Generaal van de VN, Kofi Annan, en aan de
VN-lidstaten mbt uitvoering van
VN-res. 194 aangaande het recht op terugkeer en
compensatie van de
Palestijnse vluchtelingen onder uw aandacht. De
kwestie van de Palestijnse
vluchtelingen vormt een kernpunt van het
Palestijns-Israelisch conflikt.
Zonder een rechtvaardige oplossing hiervan is er geen
vrede mogelijk in het
Midden-Oosten.
namens het Nederlands Palestina Komitee
mvg
Kees Wagtendonk
Voor nadere informatie:
Nederlands Palestina Komitee
Postbus 10520, 1001EM Amsterdam
Tel. 020 6246 046
Fax 020 626 88 57
email: NPK@xs4all.nl
NPK-info - Nederlands Palestina Komitee / www.palestina-komitee.nl
BADIL Resource Center
For immediate release, 11 December 2001 (E/67/2001)
-----------------------------
53rd Anniversary of G.A. Resolution 194 (1948)
OPEN LETTERS to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
and to UN Member States and UN Agencies/Organs
Urging Support for Mr. Annan
in Implementing G. A. Resolution 194
Fifty-three years ago, on 11 December 1948, the UN
General Assembly passed a
resolution of monumental importance to the
Palestinian refugees - G.A.
Resolution 194. This year, the 53rd anniversary of
Resolution 194 follows
the conclusion of the one-year anniversary of the
al-Aqsa intifada, in which
the Palestinian refugees have made incomparable
sacrifices in asserting
their fundamental and inalienable rights to be free
from Israel's illegal
occupation and to return to their homes of origin.
These demands are
supported by the entire Palestinian people and
leadership, a fact that is
not surprising considering that nearly three-quarters
of the world's
Palestinians are refugees.
Therefore, upon this occasion of the 53rd anniversary
of Resolution 194, we
urge all interested persons, organizations and
governmental actors to call
for the full implementation of Resolution 194. The
following model letter
can be used to address key actors within the UN
system, including UN
Secretary-General Mr. Kofi Annan, Member States of
the UN (through their
foreign ministries), and key UN agencies and organs (including
the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs. Mary Robinson).
We especially recommend
that letters be sent to member states of the UN
belonging to the European
Union, as well as key states in the non-aligned
movement.
--------------------------------------------------------
Call for Full and Immediate Implementation of G.A.
Resolution 194:
Prerequisite for a Just and Durable Peace in the
Middle East
Your Excellencies:
11 December 2001 marks the 53rd anniversary of the
passing of UN General
Assembly Resolution 194 (1948), the landmark
resolution that reaffirmed the
fundamental, inalienable rights of the Palestinian
refugees - to return,
restitution and compensation.
Resolution 194 did not create new law but rather
affirmed the applicability
of existing binding law to the case of the
Palestinian refugees. Resolution
194 affirmed that three fundamental, inalienable
rights were held
individually by each Palestinian refugee, namely the
rights to: (1) return;
(2) restitution; and (3) compensation. Return was
expressly stated to be "to
their homes," i.e., to their homes of origin in
the territory that later
became the state of Israel. Because return was
expressly stated to be "to
their homes," restitution (i.e., the right to
receive one's property back if
it had been occupied by secondary occupants, looted
or confiscated by a
governmental authority in violation of international
law) was expressly
recognized to be a right held by the Palestinian
refugees. Finally,
compensation was not to be "in lieu of" the
right of return but rather
supplementary to it. Refugees choosing to return were
to be compensated if
their property had been damaged or destroyed.
Refugees choosing not to
return were to be compensated for all their property,
whether damaged or
not.
The comprehensiveness of the rights affirmed in
Resolution 194 demonstrates
that the goal of the international community in
affirming them was to try to
erase the effects of Israel's illegal displacement of
the Palestinian
refugees ("ethnic cleansing") and to do
"restorative justice" by attempting
to put the Palestinian refugees back in the position
they would have been in
had their illegal displacement not occurred. On this
53rd anniversary of
Resolution 194, it is high time to implement the
rights recognized and
affirmed by the international community in 1948. In
the intervening 53
years, the international community has not retreated
one iota from full
recognition of the rights affirmed in Resolution 194.
Therefore, upon this 53rd anniversary of Resolution
194, we hereby call upon
the entire United Nations system - including UN
Secretary- General Mr. Kofi
Annan, UN Member States and all UN agencies/organs (including
the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs. Mary Robinson) -
to undertake the
following measures to implement fully and forthwith
the three fundamental,
inalienable rights of the Palestinian refugees
enumerated in Resolution
194 - return, restitution and compensation:
1. Convene an international conference on mechanisms
necessary to implement
the three fundamental rights affirmed in Resolution
194 - return,
restitution and compensation. Since the rights exist,
practical plans for
implementing them must be designed. Palestinian
refugees themselves must
feature prominently in the decision-making processes
designed to restore
their rights to them.
2. Reinvigorate the UN Conciliation Commission for
Palestine (UNCCP) by
nominating new states to comprise its membership. The
current membership -
composed of the U.S., France and Turkey - is
completely inactive (and, in
the case of the U.S., completely biased).
3. Make public the property and land records of the
UNCCP for inspection by
Palestinian refugees and others, for example to be
used in designing a
mechanism for securing the restitution rights of the
refugees under
Resolution 194.
4. Issue a definitive pronouncement that under
international law, the
ethno-national concept of a "Jewish state"
(i.e., a Zionist state) is
completely prohibited and therefore illegal because
it necessarily involves
discrimination in favor of Jews and discrimination
against non-Jews. Such
state-sanctioned discrimination is prohibited under
the entire corpus of
international human rights law and, indeed, under the
UN Charter (which
Israel, as a member state of the UN, is bound to
uphold).
5. Mandate the creation of an internationally
supported return and
restitution mechanism whereby Palestinian refugees
would be fully restituted
of their properties, with interest calculated from
the date of taking.
6. Call for the imposition of comprehensive sanctions
upon Israel until it
agrees to implement the rights of the refugees under
Resolution 194. This is
a minimum requirement, since Israel's admission to
the United Nations was
expressly conditioned upon its implementation of
Resolution 194. Economic
and military aid to Israel must cease completely
until Israel comes into
compliance with Resolution 194, in order for other
states to avoid being
complicit in Israel's longstanding violation of the
international
law-guaranteed rights of the refugees enumerated in
Resolution 194.
Fifty-three years is far too long to wait for the
implementation of the
fundamental, inalienable rights of a population group
exceeding 5 million
persons. Concrete action to implement the rights of
the Palestinian refugees
is urgently needed now, in order to bring about a
just and durable peace in
the Middle East.
The United Nations system must fulfill its obligation
to uphold
international law!
Resolution 194 must be implemented now!
-------------------------------------------------
For more further information on the rights enumerated
in Resolution 194, see
BADIL Brief #8, "Palestinian Refugees and the
Right of Return: An
International Law Analysis," available at
www.badil.org/Publications/Briefs/Brief8.pdf.
For a longer legal analysis,
see BADIL's legal monograph, "The 1948
Palestinian Refugees and the
Individual Right of Return: An International Law
Anslysis," available at
-------------------------------------------------
BADIL Resource Center aims to provide a resource pool
of alternative,
critical and progressive information and analysis on
the question of
Palestinian refugees in our quest to achieve a just
and lasting solution for
exiled Palestinians based on the right of return. PO
Box 728, Bethlehem,
Palestine; tel/fax. 02-2747346; email:
info@badil.org; website:
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