Israeli bulldozers demolished five Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem Tuesday, raising tensions in the city days before the arrival of a US peace mediator.

The demolitions were the first carried out in the city in nine months, a lull dovish Israelis had attributed to international condemnation of the controversial policy. The Jerusalem municipality said the houses at various stages of construction and a storage facility were destroyed because they were built without permits. The demolitions were carried out in the Palestinian areas of Isawiya, Jebel Mukaber and Beit Hanina.

A municipality spokesman said that the city’s policy is to demolish illegal structures whether they are in Palestinian or Jewish areas of the city. However, Palestinian residents say it is virtually impossible for them to get building permits from the Israeli municipality.

Three of the houses had been inhabited, with one of them belonging to a family of sixteen, wothe Abu Rumelas, according to Palestinian reports. Two demolitions were carried out in an area overlooking the highway linking East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim.There was no reported violence.

But moderate Palestinians said the resentment fueled by the demolitions will make it harder for the Palestinian Authority to continue the indirect peace talks with Israel that are being conducted by US special envoy George Mitchell.
”Israel is making it very difficult to have a negotiating process that will lead anywhere” said Bernard Sabella, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. ”People will say there is nothing to negotiate about.” ”When the municipality demolishes after not giving licenses and restricting the land it is not being fair or just,”Sabella added.

Andy David, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said, however that the demolitions are a matter of law enforcement in Israel’s capital. ”We are speaking of residents of Israel and when they break the law there are consequences. If they followed the law, the demolitions would not take place.”

In another apparent setback for compromise in the city, a Jerusalem planning committee has given the green light for thirty two more housing units to be built for settlers in Pisgat Zeev, part of the occupied East Jerusalem area Israel captured and annexed in 1967. The annexation was never recognized internationally, and most of the world at least rhetorically She the Palestinians in viewing East Jerusalem as their future capital. The approval was to have been given last week,but was delayed apparently so as not to impinge on the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama at the White House last Tuesday.

The US is calling for a resumption of direct Israeli peace talks with the Palestinians, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he wants to first see progress in the indirect talks on borders and security. The dovish Israeli group Ir Amim condemned the demolitioins.”It is already very tense and more demolitions push Palestinians to the limits,’’said its director Yehudit Oppenheimer.She voiced concern that Tuesday’s action might be the start of a surge in demolitions.

Jerusalem– Evidence has emerged that Israel’s then Gaza commander obstructed the military police investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death seven years ago of American non-violent activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer.

The apparent intervention of Major-General Doron Almog, then head of Israel’s southern command, is documented in testimony taken by Israeli military police from the commander of the bulldozer a day after Ms Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003. The hand written affidavit, seen by the Scotsman, has emerged during a civil suit currently being pursued by the Corrie family against the state of Israel with the aim of proving the latter bears responsibility for her death.
Ms Corrie, 23, was critically wounded when a D-9 bulldozer buried her with sandy soil near the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, according to fellow volunteers with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement, who were with her. Ms Corrie died of her wounds after being evacuated by ambulance.Ms Corrie, wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and carrying a megaphone, was among a group of ISM volunteers that over a period of three hours sought to block two army bulldozers from demolishing Palestinian homes.

In death, Ms Corrie, from Olympia, Washington, became a symbol of idealism and self-sacrifice to many and an embarassment to Israel. Her correspondence from Gaza inspired the play My Name is Rachel Corrie, which debuted at the Royal Court theatre in 2005 but was cancelled at theaters in New York City and Toronto out of concern it would offend members of the Jewish communities there.

The Israeli military has maintained that its troops were not to blame for the killing of Corrie and that the driver had not seen her. It accused Corrie and the ISM of behaviour that was ”illegal, irresponsible and dangerous”.

In remarks this week, Maj-Gen Almog denied ordering the bulldozer commander to desist from testifying. In the affidavit, the commander of the D-9 tells military police investigators that he did not see Corrie before she was wounded. However, Alice Coy, now a nurse in Glasgow, and an ISM volunteer activist who was near Corrie during the incident, said in an affidavit to the court that ”to the best of my knowledge the bulldozer driver could see Rachel while pushing earth
over her body.”

The D-9 commander, who was a reservist named Edward Valermov, was in the middle of his testimony when a colonel dispatched by Maj-Gen Almog entered the room and ordered him to desist from speaking, according to the document. The military police investigator wrote ”At 18:12 reserve Colonel Baruch Kirhatu entered the room and informed the witness that he should not convey anything and should not write anything and this at the order of the general of southern command.”

On March 19, 2003 the US state department announced that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had promised US President George Bush that the Israeli government would undertake a ”thorough, credible and transparent investigation” of Rachel Corrie’s death.

Hussein Abu Hussein, lawyer for the Corrie family, says Almog’s intervention blocked the possible emergence of evidence that could have determined whether Valermov’s assertion that he did not see Corrie was reasonable. ”Do I believe him? Of course not. There is no doubt this was manslaughter,” Mr. Abu Hussein said. ”First of all we claim the state is responsible for the death of Rachel. And secondly we claim that the investigation was not professional.”
”When you, the state of Israel, fail as an authority to perform your function of having a credible investigation, when your standard falls from reasonable, objective standards than you have caused evidentiary damage,” Mr Abu Hussein said.
In his testimony before he was stopped, Valermov said that the bulldozers, manned by two people, were ordered by their company commander to continue their work despite the presence of the ISM protesters. He said that troops in an armored personnel carrier threw stun grenades, used tear gas and fired shots toward the ground in order to scare the protesters away. ”It didn’t help and therefore we decided to continue the work with all possible delicateness on the orders of the company commander.” Valermov testified that the protesters nearly touched the bulldozers, making it impossible to advance, but that after the company commander’s order ”we started mvoing with the D-9, we continued laying bare the area from all of the things that were”there.

The testimony was interrupted after Valermov, who was in the D-9 with its driver, named only as Yevgeny, said he did not know if Corrie had been harmed by the shovel of the D-9 ”It was only when we moved the D-9 backwards that I saw her. The woman was lying in a place where the instrument had not reached. As soon as we saw the harmed woman we returned to the central corridor , stood and waited for orders.”

Mr Valermov’s last statement before Almog’s interdiction was ”my job was to guide. The driver cannot guide himself because his field of vision is not large.”

Another army document makes clear Almog opposed the military police investigation. Dated March 18, 2003, a military police investigator petitioning a judge for permission to conduct an autopsy on Ms. Corrie’s body explains that ”we arrived only today because there was an argument between the general of southern command and the military advocate general about whether to open an investigation and under what circumstances.” The judge granted the request provided the autopsy would be done in the presence of a US diplomat as the Corrie family requested. But in the end, the inquest was carried out by Israel’s chief pathologist without any US official being there, in apparent violation of the judge’s ruling.
In a phone interview from Olympia, Washington Craig Corrie, Rachel’s father, termed Almog’s intervention in Valermov’s testimony ”outrageous”

”When you see someone in that position taking those steps you not only have to be outraged, you have to ask why is he covering up, what has he done that he needs to take these steps to cover it up?

Queried on Wednesday, Major-General Almog denied halting Valermov’s testimony. ”I never gave such an order, I don’t know such a document. I conducted my own investigation, I don’t remember what I found. There were 12,000 terrorist incidents when I was general in charge of southern command. I finished seven years ago, if they want to invite me [to testify] they know the address. I certainly didn’t disrupt an investigation, this is nonsense. In all of my service I never told anyone not to testify.”

Asked if he gave an order to harm foreign activists interfering with the army’s work, Major-General Almog responded: ”What are you talking about? You don’t know what a general in charge of command is. The general in charge of command has 100,000 soldiers. What are you talking about?”

Moshe Negbi, legal commentator for the state run Voice of Israel radio, said of Almog’s interdiction: ”If a commander prevents a witness from testifying than it is disruption of an investigation, a criminal offense whose penalty is three years imprisonment.”

Major-General Almog narrowly escaped arrest in Britain in 2005 on a war crimes charge for allegedly ordering the destruction in 2002 of fifty civilian homes in Rafah, where Ms. Corrie was later killed. Israel said the homes were being used to stage attacks. General Almog was tipped off to the arrest attempt and did not disembark at Heathrow, returning instead to Israel on the El Al flight.

Asked about Almog’s interdiction, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman said: ”Any military police investigations are completely independent and cannot be influenced by outside sources.”

The Israeli state attorneys handling the case, Irit Koren and Nir Gincharsky declined to be interviewed for this article. The trial is due to resume in September.

Assawiya, West Bank — Anwar Khatib has been harvesting olives for four decades, but this year the crop is especially sparse and bitter. It’s not just the lack of rainfall that has made yields in the occupied West Bank only a third of what they are in a good year. It is that Mr. Khatib does not want to be injured or killed while picking his trees.

They are close the Palgei Mayim settlement, its white prefabricated homes spread out like toy boxes on the neighboring hill. “Every year there are problems,” he sighed after someone told him that seven Israeli settlers had been spotted nearby. “We can’t get to the trees.”

In recent years, fundamentalist settlers who believe the area belongs to them by divine will have attacked and shot Palestinians as they harvested near settlements. Three years ago farmers from this village south of Nablus had to be treated in hospital after being beaten by settlers wielding sticks, residents said.

Still, Mr. Khatib, a tall man with green eyes and a salt and pepper beard, needed to get to his trees Friday. He, like Palestinians in villages throughout the West Bank badly needs the income from the oil the olives produce.
The Friday sermon was echoing through the orchards from the village mosque’s loudspeaker. But Mr. Khatib’s would-be saviour came from another faith, surprisingly for him that of the Israeli enemy In a show of friendship to the Palestinian farmers, a dovish Israeli rabbi had come to Assawiya with ten rabbinical students to offer protection from settlers and show a kinder face of Judaism based on the bible’s teaching that all humans are created in god’s image.

“This is my first time meeting a rabbi, it’s great that he came,” Mr. Khatib said after meeting rabbi Arik Ascherman, the lanky, Arabic-speaking American-born head of Rabbis for Human Rights. Ascherman, considered by settlers and the army to be their number one nuisance during the harvest, has been bouncing from hilltop to hilltop this season as the army evicts him from one closed military area after another. “In recent years they have been keeping us out more and more because they do not want us checking on them from up close.” Rabbi Ascherman said.

Rabbi Ascherman says there has been less violence thus far this year compared to previous ones and credits the army with “doing a good job keeping peace” where it is deployed. But, he adds “in many places they have been telling Palestinians to hurry up and finish when farmers still had work to do.” David Ha’Ivri, a spokesman for settlers in the northern West Bank says RHR and other left-wing Israeli groups “come from outside to provoke violence between local Arabs and Jews. Their presence causes the problem.” He says

In a bid to help Mr. Khatib, rabbi Ascherman called an Israeli officer and asked whether troops could show a presence near his trees so that the Palestinian would feel safe from settler attack. The officer declined, so Ascherman himself decided to accompany Mr. Khatib. But very quickly the same officer, a member of Israel’s Druse Arab minority, pulled up in a khaki vehicle, alighted and called out: “Ascherman you’re in a closed military area. Get out of here. Allah be with you. You are looking for trouble.”

Soon a distraught Mr. Khatib also left, along with two relatives who had come to help him harvest. They said the officer had told them that if they wanted to be protected while they pick they should come again on Tuesday and do it in “coordination” with the army.
“It’s a lie. There will be no picking on Tuesday,” said Mr. Khatib.
“The coordination they mean is that between the army and the settlers,” a relative joked bitterly.

Over the years, Mr. Khatib said, he has lost half of his olive groves to expropriations for Jewish settlements. He did not apply for compensation because that would amount to selling his land to the Israelis, something considered high treason among Palestinians.

His cellphone rang. It was rabbi Ascherman, who said he had spoken to the officer and that the latter had told him that Mr. Khatib could pick today. The rabbi suggested Mr. Khatib call the officer and hear this for himself. But Mr. Khatib declined. He kept walking back to the village, further away from the trees he once picked alongside his grandfather.

The problem began on March 26, when hundreds of soldiers– their faces daubed with black camouflage paint– took over Hares with search and detain raids on houses at three in the morning. The stated purpose as told to troops: to stop stonethrowing at settler roads by youths from the village. Soldiers blindfolded Shamlawi, a soft spoken 25 year old university student, and fastened plastic hand restraints on him very tightly “I said they are too tight,but the soldier did not respond.” He recalled.

Palestinians begging to have their restraints loosened, the blows and kicks some endured while bound and blindfolded, being forced to stand in the sun for much of the 3 am to 3 pm operation, being cursed at by soldiers–these were the hallmarks of the Hares operation, according to testimonies of two soldiers whose accounts were made available by the anti-occupation soldiers’ and ex-soldiers group Breaking the Silence.

The Hares operation appears to have been one of the “daily humilitations-large and small” in the words of Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, that Palestinians endure and that, in Mr. Obama’s view, help make continuation of the status quo of occupation “intolerable.”

The Israeli army spokesman says an investigation has been opened after complaints from Palestinian residents of Hares and that soldiers have received clear instructions not to use violence against detainees.

One soldier, a sargeant, described how the severe hand-tying continued for seven hours despite pleas of Palestinians.

“There are people who think you need to tighten the restraints all the way, until no drop of blood will pass from here to there,” the soldier said.” It doesn’t take much time until the hands turn blue. Not everyone had a blue hand, but there were a lot of people that you know weren’t feeling anything,” A second soldier told Breaking the Silence that he loosened the restraints of some Palestinians.

The first soldier said about 150 Palestinians were bound, blindfolded and detained at the village school in the operation It was clear that many of the people detained had not done anything wrong but that they were held to gather intelligence from them, he said.

The worst beatings were in the bathrooms , he said.“The soldiers who took [detainees] to the toilet just exploded them with beatings, cursed them with no reason,” the first soldier said. “When they took one Arab to the toilet so that he could urinate, one of them gave him a slap that brought him to the ground. He had been handcuffed from behind with a nylon restraint and blindfolded, he wasn’t insolent, he didn’t do anything to get on anyone’s nerves, just like that, just because he’s an Arab. He was something like fifteen years old.” The first soldier said he saw a lot of soldiers “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there ten hours, you’re not doing anything, it’s boring so they beat people up.”

“There were a lot of reservists that participated, and they totally had a celebration on the Palestinians: curses, humiliation, pulling hair and ears, kicks, slaps. These things were the norm, this was the whole batallion. The incidents in the toilets were extreme. But slaps and curses, humiliation and kneeing and things like that were, like, the norm.”
The bathroom beatings were “not beatings that drew blood, they were dry beatings but still a beating.”he said

The soldiers’s testimonies are likely to add fuel to a controversy over remarks by the commander of their brigade, Colonel, Itai Virob, who testified in a military court case last month concerning a separate incident that hitting detained Palestinians is justified to accomplish missions. “Standing them against walls, pushing them, a blow that doesn’t cause injury. These are things that are certainly commonly used in an attempt to accomplish the mission.” He said. Despite a reprimand of Col. Virob by West Bank commander General Gad Shamni and a disavowal by army chief of staff Lt. Gen Gabi Ashkenazi, his remarks raise doubt about whether the abuses in Hares can be dismissed as an isolated occurrence or low-level improvisations. Gen Shamni issued a pamphlet recently stressing “when someone is detained stopped or held by IDF soldiers they are absolutely and clearly forbidden to use any force or violence towards them.”

Mr. Shamlawi’s blindfold was lifted when an interrogator from the Shin Bet intelligence agency tried to enlist him as a collaborator and offered him a rare permit to work in Israel, he recalled He declined. Afterwards, he watched as a high school student he knew, his hands bound and his blindfold slightly lifted, asked soldiers to go to the bathroom, and said he wanted water. “They put him on the floor, they kicked him on his legs and beat him,” he said. Ten or fifteen other soldiers were watching, Mr. Shamlawi recalled. “They all laughed,” he said.

“This was humiliation of him and of me,” he said. “ I couldn’t do or say anything because if you say anything they will hit you.”

Later he was brought into a room holding about fifty youths. “A soldier called out on a microphone: “You are all children of prostitutes.” He said an officer came in and removed the soldier. But another officer made jokes about several of the detained youths not being in the room anymore because they had been sent for five years to prison.

In the soldiers rest area the mood was upbeat after the operation, the second soldier told Breaking the Silence. He recalled hearing some soldiers voice disappointment that the villagers were so poor there was nothing to steal from them. “There was a lot of joy at other people’s misfortune,” the soldier said.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said last night he thought the operation would only last “several more days.” But media reports said army top brass were pushing to escalate the operation by sending thousands of army reservists in to the heart of Gaza cities. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was ambiguous about how long the military push—which has the stated objective of freeing southern Israel from Hamas rocket attacks would continue. He told the cabinet it was nearing completion of its objectives, but added that “patience, determination and effort” are still needed to achieve a change in the security situation of southern Israel, against which rocket firings have lessened but not stopped. A rocket struck the yard of a kindergarten in the port city of Ashdod yesterday.
Backed by helicopter gunships, troops and tanks pushed into the eastern and southern parts of Gaza City, confronting Hamas militants who fired anti-armour missiles and mortar bombs, Reuters reported. It said that ten gunmen were killed. Medical officials said Israeli forces had killed 15 civilians, including four members of one family and that Israeli shelling of two villages south of Gaza City had set fifteen houses on fire.

Eight hundred and eighty four Palestinians have been killed, including 275 children and 93 women since Israel launched the campaign on Dec. 27, according to Gaza health officials. Thirteen Israelis have died from rocket firings against southern Israel and while fighting in Gaza.

The Israeli army says its operation is a “proportional response to the ongoing threat posed by Hamas.”
Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza, while at the same time complaining that Hamas is “manipulating” the Western media.

Gaza City physician Moussa al-Haddad said by telephone last night that “We are in a cage and bombs are coming from everywhere.”

“I’m speaking to you in the dark. There is no electricity at all and no cooking gas. I have family members who live on the sea and their houses have been set on fire. It’s horrible.”

”I know god will not leave us alone,” he added.

Iyad Sarraj, a Gaza City psychiatrist, said the Israeli campaign “causes so much hatred, not just pain. When ordinary people are killed it produces more radicalism, more extremism and more violence. Is this what Israel wants?”

The New York based Human Rights Watch organization called on Israel halt the use of white phosphorus shells—which cause horrific burns – saying its researchers had observed them being fired over Jebalia and Gaza City. The Israeli army yesterday did not deny they were being used in Gaza, saying when queried only that troops conform to international law regarding the weaponry that is used. The use of white phosphorus to make smokescreens to hide military operations is generally permissible in international law. But HRW says their use in densely populated areas of Gaza violates provisions requiring that all feasible precautions be taken to avoid harm to civilians.

Ahmed al-Ladawi, a doctor at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital told France 24 yesterday that “in the last few days people have come into the Emergency Room with first, second and third degree burns. People have burns on their whole body, arms and legs and also faces. The martyrs are burned from head to foot. We as doctors can’t explain this kind of burns. It’s effecting dozens of patients every day.”

Meanwhile, Israeli army officers admitted yesterday that there had been no Hamas fighters in a school shelled by the military on January 6, causing the deaths of more than thirty Palestinian civilians. Instead, they said a probe had revealed that there were fighters in an adjacent building. The officers said it had been a mistake to use mortars against the fighters and that more precise weaponry should have been used.

Human Rights watch staffer Fred Abrahams said yesterday that “the conduct of Israeli forces without any shadow of a doubt has risen to the elevel requiring independent international investigation. “War crimes may have been committed and an investigation would determine” whether or not that is the case, he said. He added that Hamas rocket attacks are a war crime and that the militant Islaimic group has also stored weapons in mosques and apparently dug tunnels in civilian areas.

Israeli army spokesman Captain Benjamin Rutland said the Israeli army operation is a “proportional response to the ongoing threat presented by Hamas.” He said Israel takes great care to avoid injury to civilians and that pilots have aborted numerous missions because of this. Hamas, he added uses the population as human shields and has booby trapped an “enormous number of civilian houses.”

“The kids are crying about the dark,” said Mr. Al-Atamneh, a father of five children aged one to fifteen.
This and other scenes of deprivation and hardship are being obscured by a blanket Israeli ban on the entry of foreign journalists to Gaza that has been in effect since Nov. 4

Mr. Al-Atamneh, who spoke during a phone interview, says the power company has cut down to just two hours of electricity a day, citing shortages of fuel because of Israel’s sealing of border crossings.

“We have been without cooking gas for two months. Now,without electricity, we can’t make food or bread,” he says “You see food in stores but you don’t buy it because you can’t cook it.”

The sealing came after a Nov. 4 army raid into Gaza that Israel said was a preemptive strike against an attempt by militants to kidnap soldiers. It triggered Hamas rocket fire against southern Israel, rocking a five month old ceasefire across the Israel-Gaza frontier. Army officials say about 150 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israel, with one Israeli woman being lightly wounded. About seventeen Palestinian militant fighters have been killed during the escalation.

The closure was lifted for Monday to allow supply trucks in but was then reinstated with Israeli authorities citing continued rocket fire. Heads of major international news organizations including the BBC, ABC news, Agence France Presse, Associated Press and CNN on Wednesday issued a protest of the press ban to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, stating that “we are gravely concerned about the prolonged and unprecedented denial of access.” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev responded that there is no policy to keep the press out of Gaza. “Because of [Hamas] violence the crossings have not been able to function normally and many people have been inconvenienced, not just journalists. Only vital humanitarian supplies are being allowed. We hope this situation will change quickly.”

Gaza business consultant Sami Abdul-Shafi termed the ban “alarming” adding that it would further isolate Gaza from the rest of the world. Of daily living conditions, he said: “We are not facing famine or hunger but this is not the only criterion for gauging the health of the Gaza Strip.You also feed animals in stables. We are facing scarcity of fuel and every need taken for granted in the outside world.”

A spokeswoman in Cairo for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees said that Egypt has not responded to requests for information about the 91, who were returned shortly after crossing illegally from Sinai into Israel, in at least some cases without any chance to present asylum requests.“We don’t have access to this group, we do not where they are,” the UNHCR spokeswoman said

According to an IDF reserve soldier who participated in a hot return in August, refugees were blindfolded and forced back to Egypt only twenty minutes after they had been shot at by Egyptian police for trying to cross into Israel.

Israel revived the hot returns policy in August for the first time since 48 refugees, most of them Sudanese, disappeared after being forcibly returned a year earlier. At least five of them are known to have been sent back to Sudan, despite what the government said were assurances from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that this would not happen. The punishment for visiting Israel is protracted imprisonment or death, according to Sudanese law..

Andy David, Israeli foreign ministry deputy spokesman said: “Complaints that they are disappearing in Egypt should not be brought to Israel. We can’t be held responsible for what the Egyptians are doing.” He said there was an “understanding” with Egypt that refugees should be well treated, “but it is not Israel’s responsibility to not deport someone back to Egypt because of the chance he will be treated differently.”

“Most of those trying to cross are not from Darfur and are not refugees. They are deported back to where they have come from and this is what every country does,” he said. The New York based Human Rights Watch says Israel’s position contravenes the 1951 International Convention on Refugee Rights, to which it is a signatory. The convention bans expelling refugees to places where their lives and liberty are in danger

Anat Ben-Dor, head of the refugee legal clinic at Tel Aviv University, said in response to the disappearance of the 91 persons “We have been very disappointed with the state’s position that unless UNHCR says otherwise, Egypt is a safe country. We would expect the state to halt the returns in light of this.”

Mr. Muncie, 34, from Glasgow, Scotland is a non-violent participant in the little known battle off Gaza’s coast between the state of the art ships of the Middle East’s most powerful military and the rickety motor boats of Gaza’s fishing fleet.

On Friday, “there were three or four bursts in the general direction of our boat,” said Mr. Muncie, who makes his living as an online poker player. “In such a situation when we have cameras we start filming.”

“Two hours later, at around 1:00 pm, a large Israeli navy ship fired its water cannon against the boat for three or four minutes precisely when the fisherman were pulling in their nets.” Mr.Muncie added

Mr. Muncie said that the first incident occurred about 9 miles off the Gaza coast but that other boats he has been on have been stopped with Israeli machine gun fire as little as two or three miles off the coast. In response to a question for this article, Israeli army officials declined to specify what the fishing limit is.

The Israeli military says it takes action against the Gaza boats in order to thwart attempts to smuggle weapons and explosives into the Strip “Unfortunately, Gaza is turning more and more into a barrel of explosives, smuggled through the sea and through tunnels from Egypt,” says Israeli army spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovitch.

But Mr. Muncie and Israeli human rights groups say that Israel is harming fishermen who are simply trying to make a living. “Israel has the right to protect its population from threats but these measures have an impact on a greater population instead of those involved in attacks,” says Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman of Israel’s B’tselem human rights group. “The impact of this, like other Israeli measures is to harm the economy. Fishermen can hardly leave shallow water before they are harassed.”

Maj. Leibovitch, the army spokeswoman, counters:“We have no intention to harm and do not act in a way to harm innocent people trying to make a living. The problem is with people smuggling explosives.”

Mr. Muncie is one of six volunteers affiliated with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement who escort fishermen. He arrived in Gaza in August from Cyprus on a boat that successfully—to his surprise—challenged the Israeli blockade of the Strip.He plans to stay in Gaza for another two months, he said.

One fisherman Mohammed Musleh, who was without foreign escort was seriously wounded in the leg by Israeli gunfire last month. “The Israeli soldiers and higher commanders are quite well aware they can shoot Palestinian civilians without any recourse and even without negative publicity,” Mr. Muncie says. “They are aware that the same doesn’t apply to foreigners like myself.”

“You see the soldiers on the boat with large machine guns opening fire. The feeling is they are firing at you and your heart jumps. But in retrospect I don’t believe they were trying to hit me because if they wanted to they would have done so.”

“All forms of non-violent resistance involve some calculated risk, what we do is a non-violent reaction to violent oppression and one has to accept these risks. The fishermen accept that they must face risks to just go about their jobs and feed their families. If they were to take no risks whatsoever they wouldn’t be able to fish at all, the Israelis would just push them further and further back to shore”

Mr. Muncie first became interested in the Palestinian issue in 2002 when a television report prompted him to find out more about the conflict and he “became aware there was a military occupation of several decades violating human rights and that it wasn’t two equal sides, it wasn’t a conventional military conflict.” He previously volunteered with ISM in the West Bank flashpoint of Hebron.

Maj. Leibovitch, the military spokeswoman, said that any explosives smuggled into Gaza would end up being used against Israeli civilians. “Unfortunately, our long and sad experience shows us there is no specific criteria for the average terrorist. It could be a fisherman, it could be a grandmother, it could be an educated scholar, it could be a woman who has a family. That’s why we suspect different angles of the population.”

Yesterday, Israeli state attorney Yochi Gnessin repeated in the court that 91 people have been returned to Egypt, where human rights activists believe there is a grave danger they will be—or may have already been–forcibly repatriated to their countries of origin, including Sudan and Eritrea. The actual number of those expelled is slightly higher when one takes into account reports by (distressed) Israeli soldiers of additional returns.

One of the expulsions back to Egypt was carried out only twenty minutes after refugees had been fired on by Egyptian soldiers, according to an Israeli reservist. Brig-Gen. Strick, in his deposition, conceded that a “specific failure” had occurred and that the army had violated its own regulations in not interviewing the “infiltrators” before they were expelled.

Egypt is by no means the final stop for these unfortunate human beings who were essentially thrown to the sharks by Israel. In June, Egypt forcibly repatriated 1200 refugees to Eritrea– where many of them ended up in incommunicado detention in harsh military prisons according to Amnesty International. And if and when expellees arrive back in Sudan, as happened to some after an August, 2007 Israeli return of refugees to Egypt, their prognosis is bleak (footnote: others not returned to Sudan are still believed missing in Egypt). Israel is considered by Khartoum an enemy state and the punishment for visiting Israel is protracted imprisonment or execution. Deporting refugees into a situation of danger to their lives and liberty is a clear breach of the 1951 international convention on refugee rights, which Egypt and Israel have signed and which the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is supposed to uphold.

Therein lies the rub. UNHCR, which has offices and staff in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—including lawyers—apparently only sees and hears what it wants to. And, judging from its statements, it does not want to know about 91 hapless African asylum seekers whose lives are in danger. Or to have to do its job and remind Egypt and Israel of their obligations under international law. So for UNHCR, Brig-Gen.Strick’s deposition does not exist.

Here is the response I received Tuesday from UNHCR’s Cairo office to my query of whether the refugee agency had any information about the fate of the asylum seekers returned to Egypt. “UNHCR has no information or confirmation from the Egyptian or Israeli sides on the group. Our information is mainly from the local media reports, but we are unable to officially confirm or verify indeed that there has been a return movement from Israel.”

Annex: Ahmed Elzobier, spokesman of the Darfur Center for Human Rights and Development, London, assesses what awaits Sudanese nationals who entered Israel if they are forcibly returned to Sudan. Dated July 28, 2007

“I have asked my lawyers friends here in Khartoum and their reply as follows: Sudanese Refugees in Israel might have violated article (52) of Sudan’s criminal law, and article 6 of the security forces who have powers to arrest for indefinite period of time if they have been categorized under that article.

The risk is high for these Sudanese refugees if they were to return to Sudan, I am not sure if they will face the death penalty or life imprisonment. Unless they has been arbitrarily charged of committing offence against the state as stated in the criminal act 1991 article 50 and 51 because they applied for asylum in Israel.

However, according to my lawyers friends’ best judgment article 52 is the most likely scenario in the case of the refugees.

The criminal act 1991

Article (52)

Dealing with an enemy state

Whoever, without permission therefore, joins the service of any state, which is declared by Sudan as enemy state, or involves himself in any commercial, or other transaction with it, or with the agents thereof, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten yeas, or with fine, or with both.

Also the security forces act state in article 6

F) Combat the subversive activities of foreign states or organizations, groups, individuals or states
or Sudanese groups inside and outside the Sudan. “

Meanwhile, Egyptian police shot dead two African refugees seeking to reach Israel near the border.

Reuters quoted security sources in Egypt as saying that Egyptian police spotted three unarmed migrants during a patrol and shot at them after they fled towards Israel. The two dead men were believed to be Sudanese, but carried no identity documents “They refused to stop or obey the police officers, prompting police to open fire and causing two to be killed,” one of the sources quoted by Reuters said. A third man was arrested..

Meanwhile, an Israeli army spokesman said that eleven Eritrean, four Sudanese and one Nigerian “infiltrators” were returned to Egypt on Sunday, bringing the total to 107 refugees returned to Egypt during the last three weeks. One forced return, on August 23, was carried out twenty minutes after refugees had come under fire from Egyptian troops, according to a reservist soldier involved in the action. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, admitted “wrongdoing” in the army’s not giving 91 people returned towards the end of August a chance to explain why they wanted asylum.

“The asylum seekers were not questioned seriously. They were supposed to be given a chance to explain who they were and why they want asylum. Apparently they were not given a chance to do that,” Palmor said on Sunday.

A second Israeli soldier serving along the frontier with Egypt termed the returns “awful” during an interview on Monday.

“ We don’t know what goes on on the Egyptian side. In Egypt I don’t think they will have a life.” The soldier said.

The soldier added: “We can hear the Egyptian soldiers shooting. I really think what we hear sometimes is them shooting at people.” Twenty two migrants have been shot dead by Egyptian forces this year while trying to reach Israeli territory.

Egyptian officials have said the persons returned by Israel will be sent back to their countries of origin. Forty eight refugees returned by Israel to Egypt last August are still missing, according to the US-based Human Rights Watch group.Amnesty International says twenty of them were returned to Sudan. The punishment in Sudan for visiting Israel, an enemy state, is life imprisonment or execution, according to the Darfur Center for Human Rights..
Most among the 1200 Eritreans forced by Egypt back to Eritrea in June are in incommunicado detention in military prison, according to Amnesty International.

Israeli refugee rights advocates say the returns violate Israel’s obligations under the 1951 Convention on Refugee Rights, which bans deporting refugees to places where their lives and liberty are in danger.

The returns to Egypt may pave the way for future expulsions among the 7000 African asylum seekers who have come to Israel over the last two years, refugee rights advocates say.. The rapid returns “show that the requirement of individual scrutiny of cases is being waved here,” said Anat Ben-Dor, head of the refugee rights clinic at Tel Aviv University, which is waging a legal battle against the returns.

Michael Alford, a representative at The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Tel Aviv, said of the returns: “We need to get more information and we are talking to the Israelis and Egyptians. We take it extremely seriously but we have to know what the situation is before we start jumping up and down.”

Jerusalem – Some Israeli soldiers have strong misgivings about their unpleasant new task returning African refugees to Egypt, where they are at high risk of being deported back to Sudan, Eritrea or the other regimes they fled.

In Sudan, the refugees face possible protracted imprisonment or execution and in Eritrea incommunicado detention for an unknown period in a military prison with a high likelihood of being tortured. Another possibility is that they will disappear and be forgotten by the world as happened to 48 refugees returned by Israel to Egypt on Aug. 19, 2007 who remain unaccounted for. Israel has returned more than ninety refugees to Egypt in recent weeks and many further expulsions are expected. Israeli refugee rights lawyers say the practice violates Israel’s obligations under the International Convention on Refugee Rights, which bans deporting refugees to places where their lives and liberty are at risk The government insists those entering Israel from Egypt are all economic migrants, although it does not carry out hearings to determine whether this is the case.

One soldier offered the following account of the Israel Defense Force’s return of refugees to Egypt on Sat. Aug 23, 2008. “The army cameras first saw the people on Friday night. On Saturday morning they came, we went towards them. The Egyptian soldiers started shooting at them. One refugee who was already on our side got a bullet in his leg.”

“The refugees don’t know where the border is. We gathered them, seventeen of them. I thought it would be the regular procedure [giving them water and a medical check-BL]. Then the main officers arrived. They told us to cover their eyes and to handcuff them. That had never been done before. We put everyone on an army bus that went to the border. The officers talked to the Egyptian officers, they moved the fence and handed them over. That was it. We gave them over to the Egyptians just twenty minutes after they had been shot at by the Egyptian army.”

“The next day there were another seven refugees from the same group. They were waiting for us. We just gave them back to the Egyptians without asking them any questions, without asking are they in danger. The only question we had was: are there more of them. This was also done within minutes. The officer wanted it done as fast as possible.”

“ It was wrong-morally it’s wrong. This country was founded by refugees from all over the world. When you see people who have just been shot at and are begging for your help, your basic instinct is to help. You don’t know if you are sentencing them to hell or to death by giving them back. They don’t want to be there and it doesn’t feel right to give them back. I’m definitely questioning my willingness to do these things. It’s a battle inside of me.”

The Israeli army had been carrying out the deportations in secret but some individual soldiers were dismayed by the expulsions and disclosed what was going on to Israeli refugee rights groups.

Ninety one African refugees were deported in “hot returns” between August 23-29, according to figures offered by the government during a supreme court hearing today.

The article does not mention that 48 refugees deported by Israel in a “hot return” to Egypt on Aug. 19, 2007 are still unaccounted for, according to the New York based Human Rights Watch.

Israel deports African migrants to Egypt in crackdown

CAIRO (Reuters) – Israel has forcibly returned to Egypt dozens of African migrants who had slipped into the Jewish state, and rights activists say they fear some are refugees who risk torture if Egypt sends them home as expected.

Egyptian security sources said Israel had returned 48 migrants of Eritrean, Sudanese and Senegalese nationality to Egypt this month, and that Cairo planned to deport them all.

The Israeli returns come as Egypt is under scrutiny by rights groups over its deportations of up to 1,200 Eritrean asylum seekers in June. The United Nations objected to the deportations, saying the Eritreans could face torture at home.

“It’s clearly a flagrant violation of international law,” Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said of the Israeli move.

He said the returns meant the migrants were now certain to be deported by Egypt “to countries where they face a serious threat of detention, torture and even the death penalty”.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed that the army had handed “an undisclosed number of African refugees” to Egypt and said Israel planned to deport 27 more migrants caught on Sunday.

“They have not been returned to Egypt yet but will be after the army coordinates their return with Egyptian authorities,” the spokesman said. He did not give the nationalities.

Activists say Eritreans had surpassed Sudanese as the largest group of African migrants in Israel. Nearly all arrive via Egypt and include Pentecostal Christians fleeing religious persecution and others trying to avoid military service.

Many African migrants are not keen to stay in Egypt, where they face racism and economic marginalisation, activists say.

ERITREANS AT RISK

Egypt for years tolerated tens of thousands of African migrants on its territory, but its attitude soured in recent months after it came under pressure to halt a rising flow of Africans across the sensitive Sinai border with Israel.

Egypt cracked down hard in June, and its deportations of probable refugees were its largest in decades. Egyptian police have also shot dead at least 20 African migrants at the border this year, most of them Eritrean, Ivorian or Sudanese.

Activists said Eritreans returned by Israel were particularly at risk, citing an Amnesty International report that 740 of the Eritreans sent by Egypt to Eritrea in June were then held without charge and sent to military camps and prisons.

London-based Amnesty said it was “seriously concerned” over the well-being of those detainees and added that they were at grave risk of torture.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry has criticised the “Western wail” over the migrants and says Cairo was simply trying to balance its security needs with respect for international obligations.

Anat Ben Dor, head of the refugee rights clinic at Israel’s Tel Aviv University, said she had filed a request in court for an injunction to stop Israel from deporting more migrants.

“I would say that given what’s been going on in Egypt recently, Eritreans should be treated as people at risk, and probably Sudanese as well,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency said UNHCR was aware of reports of deportations of migrants from Israel, but had no official confirmation of the returns.

Link to original article.

Jerusalem – When I broke the story last November on this website and elsewhere that 48 African refugees deported by Israel to Egypt on Aug 19,2007 had been confirmed as missing by the United Nations Higher Commission on Refugees I certainly did not imagine that on Aug. 19, 2008 their whereabouts and condition would still be unknown..

God only knows what these people forgotten by the world have been through and are still going through, between Egyptian jails notorious for torture and a Sudanese regime that makes travel to Israel punishable by death or life imprisonment..

We now know that entire groups of people can disappear –perhaps indefinitely–when Israel, Egypt, Sudan and the UNHCR—which is supposed to be protecting the refugees—are involved and when indifference immobilizes us.

The refugees, 44 of them Sudanese, had crossed to Israel on Aug. 17 from Egypt but were expelled by the Israeli army into the Sinai Peninsula two days later after being denied hearings and access to UNHCR officials in contravention of the 1951 Convention on Refugees, to which Israel is a signatory. We know they were all arrested by Egyptian forces because Egypt submitted a list of their names to UNHCR.

But Egypt refused repeated requests by the UNHCR to access the refugees. Nor could their relatives access them. They were held in incommunicado detention. However, I was able to confirm that at least five of the refugees were forcibly repatriated by Egypt to Sudan after 24 days in prison. According to an Egyptian official quoted by the Associated Press, the number of those forcibly repatriated to Sudan was twenty..

Bill Van Esveld, a fellow at Human Rights Watch who monitors Egypt, told me today in reference to the 48 deportees “We just don’t know where they are.”
He took issue with UNHCR’s closing of the file on the 48 based on Egyptian

government statements that they had all been released.

“Human Rights Watch in mid-April documented the forced repatriation in mid-April of 49 Sudanese and Amnesty International documented in early June the forced repatriations of 1200 Eritreans in violation of Egypt’s refugee law obligations”.

“Based on that, it seems you need more than just the word of the Egyptian government to be credibly satisfied that the 48 people deported by Israel to Egypt really have been released”

Meanwhile, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has passed on first reading a bill that could make the “hot return” without hearings policy part of the state’s legal canon-meaning it would be easier for Israel to deport refugees into dangerous situations in the future. The provision is part of legislation known as the Vilnai Bill that would also make any unauthorized crossing into Israel—including by refugees— punishable with 5-7 years in prison.

Appendix:
Sudan criminal act 1991
Article (52)
“Whoever, without permission therefore, joins the service of any state, which is declared by Sudan as enemy state, or involves himself in any commercial, or other transaction with it, or with the agents therof shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or with fine or with both.”
Sudan security forces act Article 6 gives security forces the power to arrest for an indefinite period in order to: “combat the subversive activities of foreign states or organizations, groups, individuals or states or Sudanese groups inside and outside the Sudan.”
Source: Darfur Center for Human Rights

ends