Madison Rafah Journal

The message below is from Cassandra Dixon, who is about to leave for Palestine for a two-month stay in the West Bank with Christian Peacemaker Teams, accompanying Palestinians to deter attacks by settlers. (I hope that Cassandra will be allowed into Palestine, since earlier this month, two people who were scheduled to lead a CPT delegation were arrested at the Israeli airport, deported and told they could not return for 10 years. Two CPT members were similarly turned away last fall (more on that story).

If you would like to be on Cassandra's e-mail list for updates while she is in Palestine, please contact her at chrepairs(at)yahoo.com.

Note that she is also in need of support for this trip.

Thanks,
Barb Olson

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Agence France Presse, Jan 20, 2010

JERUSALEM – Israel will maintain a security presence along the eastern border of a future Palestinian state in order to prevent weapons smuggling, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.

"The ability to proliferate into contiguous areas thousands of rockets and missiles… is something that creates a monumental security problem," he said at a news conference with foreign reporters in Jerusalem.

"We must ensure that in that entry there is a way to stop the infiltration of weapons."

"In the case of the future settlement with the Palestinians, this will require an Israeli presence on the eastern side of the prospective Palestinian state," he said, refusing to elaborate on the nature of such a presence.

This was Netanyahu's first public comment since coming to power last year on the issue of borders of a future Palestinian state, and comes amid intensive US efforts to restart the peace negotiations which were suspended a year ago.

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Upgrading Israel's Ariel University Center to a university will bolster plans to expand the campus in the Jewish settlement. The far-right Yisrael Beitenu party hailed the move.

Josh Mitnick, Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 2010

Tel Aviv, Israel
Israel’s Defense Ministry has given a green light to expand a college in the West Bank, a move aimed at strengthening Israeli ties to a settlement located deep within territory that Palestinians claim as part of a future state.

Upgrading the status of the "Ariel University Center" would promote an ambitious plan to expand the campus and student body of 11,000. Some 18,000 mostly secular Israelis live in Ariel, a sprawling bedroom community located 12 miles east of the 1967 Green Line.

The decision could add another point of friction with the Obama administration, which pushed Israel to adopt a 10-month freeze in new settlement construction last year.

"An Israeli university in the West Bank is a political statement that, 'We are here, and we are going to stay here,' " says Assaf Meydani, a lecturer at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa’s school of government.

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Gush Shalom, Haaretz, Jan 15, 2010

International Solidarity Movement, 15 January 2009

On the night of December 9th 2009, over 200 Israeli soldiers entered the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Their mission: to round up local grassroots activists, whose promotion of popular struggle Israel had no answer for. Amongst those taken was 45 year old Wa’el Al-Faqeeh. Fifty soldiers stormed his home, pointing their weapons at him and his family as though the man they had come to arrest embodied a formidable threat. But those who know Al Faqeeh know that he worked tirelessly — and on a largely voluntary basis — in defense of human rights and the promotion of the strategies and philosophy of Palestinian non-violent resistance.

Political prisoner Wa’el Al-Faqeeh has been detained without charge by Israeli authorities for over a month, and is now facing trial in a military court scheduled to begin on the 19th of January. The abduction of Al-Faqeeh from his home, along with 4 other activists in the Nablus region, marked the beginning of the recent surge in Israel’s targeting of leaders of Palestinian popular resistance.

We call on you to take effective and public action to end the arrest, detention and mistreatment of Palestinian human rights activists such as Wa’el Al-Faqeeh. Deprived of his liberty and his voice, we ask you to join us in exercising our freedom of speech where he can not by calling for the release of Wa’el Al-Faqeeh and all political prisoners inside Israel’s jails.

What you can do to help:

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Dane County Chapter

Speaker: Jennifer Loewenstein
Tuesday, January 12, 2010  7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Friends Meeting House
1704 Roberts Ct, Madison  [Map]

Please join us for our first meeting of 2010 to hear our Global Citizen of the Year award winner, Jennifer Loewenstein.

Free parking is available at the Friends Meeting House or the Associated Bank on Monroe Street.

Agenda
7:00 pm Announcements and Business
7:20 pm Featured Presentation

UNRWA Map of Refugee Camps in Gaza

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Mike Murray, The Capital Times, January 8, 2010

Dec. 27 marked the one-year anniversary of Israel’s brutal invasion of the occupied Gaza Strip, which was commonly referred to as “Operation Cast Lead.”

During this three-week act of aggression, Israel killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, injured thousands more, and destroyed billions of dollars of Palestinian civilian infrastructure. Today, Israel continues to subject the 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip to a dehumanizing blockade — an illegal act of collective punishment — that denies Palestinians adequate access to food, clean water, sanitation, electricity, and even school books and construction materials for rebuilding.

While most governments around the world have maintained an official silence about the siege of Gaza, activists worldwide are beginning to speak out against Israel’s illegal actions. Recently, a worldwide coalition of activists organized solidarity marches around the world — including Egypt and Gaza — to protest the siege.

Back in the United States, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, has begun to demonstrate an admirable proclivity for compassion, courage and rationality in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an institution where all three of these characteristics are sorely lacking on this issue: Congress. Many progressive and independent-minded members of Congress are beginning to tire of their colleagues’ unthinking support of Israel and are showing a willingness to challenge both Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians and our government’s unconditional support for Israel.

Recent events in Congress have revealed that many members — including Baldwin — are no longer willing to march in lockstep behind Israel. The most striking example was the House’s reaction to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known as the Goldstone Report. The Goldstone Report was issued by the U.N. and was written by a group headed by imminent international human rights jurist Richard Goldstone. The report detailed human rights violations that were committed both by Israeli invasion forces against Palestinian civilians and by Hamas fighters during the Gaza conflict.

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