Bethlehem News Updates Volume 10, January 3, 20

In this update:

- Gaza briefing. As we send this, Israel has begun a ground invasion.
- Bethlehem brief
- Visiting Villages of '48
- Boycott L'Oreal Products << www.BDSmovement.net >>

As we send this, Israel's genocidal assault on the people of Gaza continues; ground troops have invaded. There are eight International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers on the ground in Gaza. They all came on the Free Gaza Boats (www.freegaza.org). We urge you to read their eyewitness reports at: http://www.palsolidarity.org/main. A particularly powerful one from the Italian volunteer is at: http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2009/01/01/vittorio-arrigoni-writes-from-gaza/.

Look for our report in the upcoming January 8 Sacramento News and Review.

Even if you have already contacted Congress (202-224-3121) please call again AND ask you friends, family and co-workers to do the same. The Gazan people are utterly alone! Only international pressure will stop the Israeli killing machine at this point.

There have been several good reports written about what is going on. Here are a few:

The injured were lying there asking God to let them die, Fikr Shaltoot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/29/israel-gaza-attack-shifa-hospital

Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood, Mustafa Barghouthi
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/12/view_from_a_pal/

Gaza Voices, American Silence, Ken Ring,

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/12/gaza-voices-american-silence

Israel Over-reaches, Nadia Hijab, http://imeu.net/news/printer0015233.shtml

If Hamas did not Exist, Jennifer Loewenstein, www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein01012009.html;


Bethlehem Brief:

The electricity was going on and off yesterday. Our town of Beit Sahour, has not been receiving water and we know of some homes that have run out of their storage capacity and they have been without water for three days. We are very fortunate that our house has a well. (Essentially no new wells can be dug by Palestinians because Israel restricts them digging deep enough to reach one of the aquifers. Cisterns, however, are legal) Ultimately, Israel controls both the electricity and water to the West Bank.
The Bethlehem checkpoint was closed for Palestinians again for 48 hours beginning yesterday, preventing thousands of workers from getting to their jobs. After the Gaza assault started, tour companies cancelled holiday stays in Bethlehem, another hit against the already-weak economy here.
In the last week, we know personally of two European women who were stripped searched at the airport when leaving Israel.


Visiting the Villages of '48: Ain Hood, Ain Hood Jadeed, Al Majedel, Ma'lul

In our last update we promised to describe our travels though the Galilee. With the events in Gaza, it is difficult to concentrate on anything but Gaza. However, we also know that what is happening in Gaza today is part of decades of strategic and continued assault on Palestinians – first carried out by Zionist militias in 1948 and since then by the state of Israel. Even as we are shocked and sicken by what is happening, we painfully aware that this is yet another horrific chapter of the same story.
Keep this in mind as we describe finding the remains of destroyed Palestinian villages of 1948 in the Galilee. Hold the images of the frightened, suffering and dieing Gazans, 80% of whom are refugees; forcibly transferred from their native lands. (In 1948, an estimated 800,000 Palestinians were killed, fled in fear, or were forcibly removed their homes and lands by the Zionist militias.)
As you witness on your TV screen the rubble of Gazan buildings bombed today, we would like you to also think about the covered and hidden remains of the approximately 500 destroyed Palestinian cities and villages of 1948. And then ask yourself is it possible that what is happening in Gaza now could also be forgotten by the world; an erased history, forgotten, distorted, twisted.
Of course, we all know that history is written by those that conquer. While many keep repeating that the issue of Israel/Palestine is very complicated, this much, this fact, is very simple. Palestinians were forcibly removed and continue to be removed, either by restriction, theft or death, from their land.
The Galilee is located in the north part of the current state of Israel. It is home to a small Palestinian majority. An area that was to have largely remained Palestinian under the 1947 UN partition plan, the Palestinians who live there managed to escape transfer in 1948. For more information about Palestinian villages, see www.palestineremembered.com
There are about 1.5 million Palestinians living inside modern day Israel, about 20% of the total Israeli population. Although they are now Israeli citizens, they lived under martial law until 1966 (Israel still maintains repressive emergency laws) and today they live a separate and unequal existence to the Jewish citizens of Israel. The Palestinians citizens of Israel live mainly in three areas - the Galilee, the Triangle (a small area that lies along the upper western side of the West Bank), and the Negev. Approximately 10% live in encampments and unrecognized villages, about 8% live in "mixed" towns where they are a minority. The remaining Palestinian population of Israel lives in exclusively "Arab" cities and villages. A third of these Palestinians are internally displaced persons, refugees of 1948 or from Israel transfer policies of the 1950's. Although Palestinians make up 20% of the population, they own only 3% of land in the current state of Israel. Most of their property was confiscated by the Israeli authorities, which involved laws that effectively "legalized" state theft of their lands.
In many ways, traveling through the Galilee feels very much like being in the Occupied West Bank - without the Apartheid Wall and checkpoints. Jewish only cities look very much like the illegal Jewish only settlements that are now ubiquitous in the West Bank. Palestinian cities and villages are readily recognizable from a distance. Witness the density of the buildings with little or no open space as expansion is prohibited Israeli authorities, and the mosque or steeple.

Ein Houd and Ein Houd al Jadida: Occupation and Marginalization

Ein Houd is on of the few Palestinian villages to have escaped demolition in 1948; its entire population however, was forced out. The majority were expelled, moving through several internment camps, to the West Bank and Transjordan. Most of them (and their descendents) now live in the Jenin Refugee camp or in Jordan. A small minority managed to escape expulsion and fled about 1 kilometers away (as the crow flies). They named this place Ein Houd al Jadida (New Ein Houd)
While international law recognized in 1948 their right to return, they have never been allowed to do so. Instead, in the early 1950's it was transformed into a exclusively Jewish Israeli artist's colony and the name was hebrew-ized into Ein Hod. Artists live in some of the old Palestinian homes. Near the entrance is a larger than life metal sculpture of a naked woman and a full clad man - a culturally-offensive slap-in-the face to the people from whom the town was stolen. Even more offensive, the mosque is now a trendy cafe. We asked a few puzzled people where the mosque was and were referred to a longtime town resident who would only talk about the historic plight of Jews, refusing to even acknowledge the native inhabitants in whose stolen home he now lived.
We left and traversed a windy bumpy, narrow road to Ein Houd al Jadida (New Ein Houd). The village, until recently, was "unrecognized" which meant they were deprived of all basic public services; water, electricity, roads, etc. Donkeys were the main transportation until the late 1980s. At that point the villagers began to pressure Israel to recognize them and grant them normal rights. The response was immediate; the application of a policy of intimidation. Demolition notices were posted. Since all the buildings were constructed while the community was "unrecognized" the permit procedures had not been done and so all the homes were "illegal." Villagers had to channel their energy into saving their homes instead of becoming "recognized. Finally in 1994, the received "recognition" but nothing has changed. In fact, the initial land they were recognized as owing has now been re-surveyed and halved, the land going for a national park. That at least brought asphalt to the steepest parts of the road.


Al Mujaydil: Destroyed and occupied

We arrived to Nazareth after dark and found our way up a hill to the convent where we were staying. In the morning we met with the director of the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Displaced Persons in Israel, Dahoud Badr, himself a refugee from the village of Al Ghabsiya. Dahoud told us about his organization, which started in 1992 to help Palestinian-Israeli refugees be able to return to their villages and lands (from which they were ethnically cleansed, starting in 1948). Some villages were completely destroyed, evidence of their existence remains. Over the remains of others, Israeli colonial settlements were built. Dahoud sugested a few villages in the area that we could visit.
With the help of a young Palestinian-Israeli man we met at a gas station, we were able to find the Palestinian church that was damaged, but left staying from the village of Al Mujaydil. Most the village refugees went to Nazareth and petitioned the new Israeli government to come back. Israel told the Christians among them that they could return; and the Christians said they would not return without their Muslim townspeople. Today the church has been repaired and is operational, Father Jack, its Palestinian priest, holds regular services. Nearly all his parishioners are Palestinian-Israelis, most live in Nazareth, a few kilometers away. They are not allowed to live in the exclusively Jewish city built on the village's land. Occasionally he receives Russian immigrants who come to church in disguise; pretending to be Jews so that Israel would let them emigrate, these church-goers are in fact Christians.
Israel built the settlement of Migdal Ha'emeq on the grave of Al Mujaydil starting in the 1950s. The French company L'Oréal opened a factory there in 1999. One of the ways to oppose the Israel's apartheid and occupation is to join the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. Begin by boycotting L'Oréal products, which include the L'Oréal Paris; Garnier; Maybelline New York; Softsheen, Carson; CCB Paris brands. See below for a message from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee about this boycott. Or visit: www.BDSmovement.net Note that Israel products have a barcode that begins with 729.


Ma'lul: In Ruins

Without the very detailed hand-drawn map from Father Jack to Ma'lul, we would not have found the village. There are no signs to Ma'lul and although it happens to be fairly near a major road it is hidden from sight. In the 1950s it was common practice for Israelis to plant fast growing pine trees that effectively covered up destroyed villages. The Jewish National Fund collected money for trees through the "Plant a Tree in Israel" campaign.
As we approached on a dirt road, we drove along an electric fence with dogs chained on the side opposite us; they were allowed to run on a short tether. On the fence were yellow signs that said "Warning Mines" on them. We did not understand what these meant until we traveled the next day to the occupied Golan and realized these were land mines left by the Israelis; in the occupied Golan, there are 76 minefields, some inside Arab towns which have killed children. It is utterly barbaric that Israel planted and then left these land mines.
We then spotted two buildings, ruins of churches; the mosque had been completely destroyed. Ma'lul was a village of 800 people. Some of its stolen land was used for a military base and some went to the Israeli settlement of Migdal Ha'emeq.
We met a Palestinian family gathering a special wild green for cooking. They told us that some of their neighbors were from this village. "There are 500 stories like this one," the father of the family said, referring to the estimated number of Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed in 1948.
We stayed at Ma'lul until the twilight edged closer to night. The more we explored, the more we discovered building foundations, cisterns, shapes of doorways, colored tiles; features describing a life lived here. And not that long ago……
Why would anyone question their right to return? For more information about the Villages of '48, see www.palestineremembered.com and www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?lang=english