Palestinians Boycott Goods Made in Israel's West Bank Settlements

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian government announced Tuesday that it is enforcing a boycott of goods made in Israel's West Bank settlements and has confiscated more than $1 million in merchandise from shops and companies.

Israeli products, including those made in settlements, are commonplace in the West Bank, either for lack of a Palestinian-made alternative or because consumers prefer them to local goods. As a result, previous Palestinian efforts to stem consumption of Israeli-made goods have failed.

The confiscation of settlement products, which began in November, marked the most serious government effort to date to enforce a boycott. Palestinians consider Israel's continued settlement expansion as the biggest obstacle to eventual independence and say Israel's recent pledge to curtail construction is insufficient.

About 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements and another 180,000 in east Jerusalem — land the Palestinians seek for their state.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said a boycott is counterproductive.

"I don't think by concentrating their efforts on boycotts they will achieve any of the political goals, if these still include reaching a peace agreement with Israel," Palmor said.

Palestinian Economics Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh said the boycott of settlement products is long overdue.

"Consuming settlements' products is wrong, nationally, economically, politically, and must stop right away," Abu Libdeh told a news conference at the Information Ministry in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

He said about $1 million worth of merchandise were seized in November, another $66,000 on Monday evening and that the campaign would continue. Targeted items include juice, canned goods and cosmetics.

A ban of goods made in Israel would violate interim peace accords, but the international community agrees with the Palestinians that Israel's West Bank settlements are illegal. Several European countries are also making efforts to boycott settlement products.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, the territory's Hamas rulers further restricted the movement of its 1.4 million residents. Gaza has been virtually cut off from the world since a violent Hamas takeover in 2007, with border closures enforced by Israel and Egypt.

Hamas recently announced that even the few still able to travel — university students, top business people, patients with life-threatening illnesses — need to get permission from Hamas to leave the territory.

The ruling has further complicated the already obstacle-ridden travel of those seeking treatment in Israel.

At Gaza's Erez crossing into Israel, medical workers said that Hamas police on Tuesday held up an ambulance carrying a baby boy for about an hour, demanding that his parents first get a travel permit. The boy had swallowed a battery and was headed to Israel for urgent treatment.

Dozens more patients were returned to Gaza and told to apply for permission, in line with the new policy, the medical workers said.

Hamas government spokesman Hassan Abu Hashish said the new policy was meant to minimize "chaos." He did not elaborate.

FoxNews

Tom Gross: Independent Palestine Being Built with Israeli Help

Tom Goss writes that the condition of the Palestinian territories is rapidly changing, especially in Nablus.

Nicer cars are being seen, more business is being created, movie theaters are opening, and the overall economic situation is improving. And it is happening, in part, due to trade with Israel:

Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah.

Last month, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city.

Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities….

I’ve long said that the Jewish communities in the Palestinian territories need to be seen as vehicles of mutually-beneficial interaction between the two, and that trying to create a Jew-free Palestine or Palestinian-free Israel will only increase extremism and quickly fail.

Goss also notes in the article that the Palestinian economy grew by 7% this year, but Abbas says it is really 11%, “helped along by strong economic performances in neighboring Israel.”

Palestinians need to realize that an attack on Israel’s well-being is an attack on their own well-being, and Israelis should see the Palestinians as an exciting new market that will benefit them as it grows.

World Threats

The good life on the West Bank

In the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross provides an eye-opening antidote to the usual boilerplate fantasies about Palestinian deprivation:

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I've seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

... The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d'Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city.

Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant.

New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe.

Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Last month, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

...In June, the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl related how Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him why he had turned down Ehud Olmert's offer last year to create a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank (with 3% of pre-1967 Israeli land being added to make up the shortfall).

‘In the West Bank we have a good reality,’ Abbas told Diehl. ‘The people are living a normal life,’ he added in a rare moment of candor to a Western journalist.

Nablus stock exchange head Ahmad Aweidah went further in explaining to me why there is no rush to declare statehood, saying ordinary Palestinians need the IDF to help protect them from Hamas, as their own security forces aren't ready to do so by themselves yet.

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance.

When might we read this in the British press or hear it on the BBC?

Melanie Phillips

Hamas moves on Fatah 'collaborators'

By Khaled Abu Toameh

The Hamas government has placed dozens of Fatah members under house arrest out of fear that they might exploit the current IDF operation to regain control of the Gaza Strip.

The move came amid reports that the Fatah leadership in the West Bank has instructed its followers to be ready to assume power over the Gaza Strip when and if Israel's military operation results in the removal of Hamas rule.

Fatah officials in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas militiamen had been assaulting many Fatah activists since the beginning of the operation last Saturday. They said at least 75 activists were shot in the legs while others had their hands broken.

Wisam Abu Jalhoum, a Fatah activist from the Jabalya refugee camp, was shot in the legs by Hamas militiamen for allegedly expressing joy over the IDF air strikes on Hamas targets.

"Hamas is very nervous, because they feel that their end is nearing," a senior Fatah official said. "They have been waging a brutal campaign against Fatah members in the Gaza Strip."

Meanwhile, sources close to Hamas revealed over the weekend that the movement had "executed" more than 35 Palestinians who were suspected of collaborating with Israel and were being held in various Hamas security installations.

The sources quoted Hamas officials as saying that the decision to kill the suspected collaborators was taken out of fear that Israel might try to rescue them during a ground offensive. The officials claimed that at least half of the victims were killed by relatives of Palestinian militiamen who were killed as a result of information passed on to Israel by the "collaborators."

Justifying the latest crackdown on Fatah, a Hamas official in Gaza City said that his government had received information according to which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had instructed his loyalists in the Strip to start moving toward undermining Hamas.

"We will kill them all if they try to help Israel bring down our government," the official said. "We will hang Mahmoud Abbas and [former Fatah security chief] Muhammad Dahlan in the public square if they try to enter the Gaza Strip aboard Israeli tanks."

The Hamas official said that his security forces had launched a massive "preemptive" campaign aimed at thwarting Fatah's attempts to "spread anarchy and chaos." He confirmed that many Fatah operatives had been shot in the legs over the past few days by Hamas "to make sure that they don't help Israel."

Fahmi Za'arir, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, accused Hamas of "executing" a number of Fatah detainees. He said the Fatah leadership knew of at least two Fatah men who were shot dead by Hamas after being released from prison. He named them as Nasser Muhana and Saher al-Silawi.

Za'arir said that several Fatah members who attended funerals of victims of the IAF strikes were severely beaten by Hamas militiamen who accused them of collaboration with Israel.

It was "shameful" that Hamas was directing its weapons and energies against its own people instead of fighting against Israel, the spokesman said.

The decision to place Fatah operatives under house arrest was issued by the much-feared "Internal Security Apparatus," which reports to the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry in Gaza.

The order, which was delivered to the Fatah activists on Thursday, reads: "You are forbidden from leaving your home for 48 hours unless you want to attend Friday prayers. Anyone who violates the order will be punished."

Source: Jerusalem Post
H/T: Gateway Pundit

Israel poisoned Arafat, nephew says

From correspondents in Ramallah
November 10, 2008 10:09pm

FORMER Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died four years ago this week, was poisoned by Israel, a relative says.

"Every day there are statements and clues about the elimination of Arafat and every day we draw closer to the poisoning theory," Nasser al-Qidwa, a nephew of the late Palestinian leader, said.

"In a year or two, the nature of the poison administered to Yasser Arafat and the procedure used will be known,'' said Mr Qidwa, who heads the Yasser Arafat foundation.

"In any case, Israel is responsible for his death. There were preparations to get rid of the political leadership of the Palestinian people."

The precise cause of Yasser Arafat's death on November 11, 2004 remains unknown, but several Palestinian leaders are convinced he was poisoned by Israel, which emphatically denies the claim.

Thousands of people are expected to take part in ceremonies to mark the fourth anniversary of his death in the West Bank city of Ramallah tomorrow.

Source: Adelaide Now

Bombs in Gaza, Parties in Ramallah

As Hamas-Fatah tensions increase across the West Bank and Gaza, the city of Ramallah has become a bustling oasis from strife.

By Rinat Malkes

The car bomb that exploded last weekend in the Gaza Strip killed not only six Palestinians, but seems to have completely wiped out any hope of ending the ongoing strife between Hamas Islamists and Fatah secular loyalists.

Tensions have greatly increased since the incident. According to sources in Gaza, Hamas officials have set up roadblocks across the Strip to check for guns, explosives, and suspects. The atmosphere of fear and suspicion in the early days of the Hamas takeover has returned to the streets and at least six people were wounded last Sunday as clashes broke out in Gaza City after Hamas-run security forces battled members of the Army of Islam group. Read more ...

Source: Pajamas Media
H/T: Gramfan

Jewish conductor Barenboim takes Palestinian citizenship:

World-renowned Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim has taken on honourary Palestinian citizenship, saying he hopes the move will serve as a symbol of peace in his troubled region.

"I hope that my new status will be an example of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence," said Barenboim, who received a passport at the end of a Saturday night concert he played in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim, seen here in 2006, says he believes Israelis and Palestians are blessed to be living with each other. (Canadian Press)

Ramallah is a town that Barenboim has visited often, promoting contact between young Arab and Israeli musicians.

"I believe that the destinies of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked," said Barenboim, who is also music director at the La Scala opera house in Milan, Italy.

Former Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouthi said the passport had been approved by the previous government, which lost an election last June. The passport had actually been issued about six weeks ago.

The 65-year-old Barenboim has never been one to shy from controversy. In 2001, he conducted an opera by composer Richard Wagner in Jerusalem despite protests against the performance of a work by a German accused of being anti-Semitic.

Barenboim, the former music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has often voiced his opposition to Israel's occupation of the West Bank. "We are blessed, or cursed, to live with each other. I personally think we have been blessed," said Barenboim.

In 1999, Barenboim established the Diwan Orchestra with Palestinian-American academic Edward Said. The orchestra includes Israelis, Palestinians and citizens from Arab countries.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com