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Saturday, November 20, 2010

The annual Palestinian olive harvest dates to antiquity and continues today much the way it has for centuries

Palestinian olive harvest plows on, despite tension with settlers

The annual Palestinian olive harvest dates to antiquity and continues today much the way it has for centuries – although in recent years, the presence of settlers has made the harvest more challenging.

Nada Salah harvests olives in the West Bank. Josh Mitnick

By Josh Mitnick, Correspondent / November 19, 2010

Farata, West Bank

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

As fall progresses, a heavy patter can be heard amid the terraced hills of the West Bank. It is raining olives again in the Levant, as Palestinian villagers embark on the annual harvest that lasts through November.

Families spend entire days together on ladders, stroking and tapping olive branches to release their fruit. The bounty gathered up in plastic tarps underneath is loaded on wagons to local village olive presses, where oil is extracted.

The harvest dates to antiquity, and scattered across the region are stone presses from biblical periods. With their shriveled bark and twisted branches, the trees cut a distinctive silhouette on the hillsides. Some have survived for hundreds of years....READ MORE

Economist: Israel, the United States and Palestine- Fix those borders first

"...Two states or one?

Everyone understands, says a senior Israeli minister, that this is the core issue behind the row over the freeze. When ministerial hawks such as Benny Begin (who belongs to Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party) or Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister who leads the far-right Yisrael Beitenu, oppose a new freeze, in truth they resist the idea of the two-state deal that may ensue.

When Mr Netanyahu tries to make his coalition partners agree to a freeze by using imprecise wording, he wants to defer the day when this fundamental ideological conflict in his cabinet is laid bare, between pragmatists who are reconciled to an independent Palestine and the ideologues who still want a Greater Israel. He also means to defer the day when he must himself decide which camp he belongs to." http://www.economist.com/node/17526060

Friday, November 19, 2010

'No link' between peace process, US Israeli aid: Abbas

'No link' between peace process, US Israeli aid: Abbas
Fri Nov 19, 8:45 am ET

DUBAI (AFP) – Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said he refuses to link the troubled Middle East peace process with a US offer of additional military aid to its Israeli ally, in a newspaper interview published on Friday.

"We refuse to allow the offer of planes be linked in any way to a freeze on settlements," he told the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

"We have nothing to do with all that. This is our position and it will not change," said Abbas, who insists on a renewed Israeli moratorium on settlement building before he returns to direct US-brokered peace talks with Israel.

"The United States is an ally of Israel and we can not prevent that," said the Palestinian president.

"But let their aid be carried out far removed from the Palestinian peace negotiations and not be used as a pretext for giving more weaponry to Israel," he said.

Israel has agreed to consider a renewed moratorium in exchange for a package of US incentives, reportedly including the delivery of an additional 20 warplanes to the Jewish state.

Washington's aim is to bring Abbas back to the negotiating table with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Direct peace negotiations resumed on September 2 but collapsed three weeks later with the expiry of a 10-month Israeli ban on West Bank settlement building.

Palestinian Writer Shehadeh Straddles "A Rift in Time"

Palestinian Writer Shehadeh Straddles "A Rift in Time"
05.11.10 - 11:17

Jerusalem - PNN/Exclusive - Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh’s new book “A Rift in Time” is aptly titled to straddle past and present. Yet it also spans genres, crosses rivers, and connects two men from two very different eras—Shehadeh himself and his great uncle Najib Nassar, a proud subject of the Ottoman Empire, conscientious objector, and exile.
Shehadeh read selections from the book at the Swedish Christian Study Center, near Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate, on Thursday night. The book is his fourth; his third, “Palestinian Walks,” won Britain’s prestigious Orwell Prize for political writing. A writer, lawyer, and founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq, Shehadeh has spent most of his life in Ramallah.

“A Rift in Time” is part biography, part travelogue, memoir, ecology book, and novel. In it, Shehadeh traces the buried tracks of Najib Nassar, the “odd one out” in his family tree: a self-proclaimed novelist, pioneer of Palestinian journalism, wanderer and casual prophet who was sentenced to death in 1915 by the Ottomans after he objected to participation in the First World War. He fled his family home in Haifa and embarked on a series of travels across the then-undivided Levant, into present-day Lebanon, down through Palestine, and across the Jordan River to live with Bedouin shepherds. Nassar died in March 1948, just a few months before the Nakba.

In Nassar’s travels, Shehadeh found occasion to express his deep longing for an undivided land in which to wander, wonder, and examine flowers by the roadside—the subject of his critically acclaimed “Palestinian Walks,” and a pastime he still enjoyed as he researched and wrote “A Rift in Time.” But he said he has never considered the practice mere escapism.

“Everything has been designed by Israel to make Palestinians feel like strangers in their own land,” he said, referring to the thousands of villages renamed or wiped off the map after 1948. “This will be my way of resisting.”

Romantic resistance is Shehadeh’s project, not public demonstration. “A Rift in Time” offers readers a time of relative peace and unity—though Palestine was occupied by the Ottoman Empire, whose crimes Shehadeh will not excuse, the Palestine of his great uncle Nassar was nonetheless eminently accessible, unblocked by the settlements, settler roads, barbed wire fences and concrete walls of the current, Israeli, occupation.

Najib Nassar, Shehadeh explains, was the first to warn against selling land to Zionists, an advocate of sustainable agriculture, and a supporter of Ottoman participation in World War I only if it joined the Allies. As for his descendant, he predicts only that peace in Palestine is “unlikely in my lifetime.” But where Nassar prophesized, Shehadeh dreams.

“Mainly [the book] is about an act of imagination, to try to make readers overcome the malaise and the depression,” he said. “Borders become real when we internalize them. The trick is to see beyond them.”

Demanding Israel End Depletion, Endangerment of Natural Resources in Arab Lands Under Its Occupation

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-8BC3FZ?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

Second Committee Approves Text Demanding Israel End Depletion, Endangerment of Natural Resources in Arab Lands Under Its Occupation


Full_Report (pdf* format - 104.2 Kbytes)


GA/EF/3298

Sixty-fifth General Assembly
Second Committee
29th Meeting (PM)

Members Also Pass Draft Resolutions Relating To Globalization, International Trade, Sustainable Development

The General Assembly would demand that Israel stop exploiting, damaging, depleting or endangering natural resources in occupied Arab lands, by the terms of one of five draft resolutions approved today by its Second Committee (Economic and Financial).

By other terms of that text, titled "Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources" the General Assembly would recognize the right of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples to claim restitution for such illegal actions.

Further by the draft, the Assembly would call upon Israel to cease all actions that harmed the environment in all the territories under its occupation, as well as the destruction of their vital infrastructure, including water pipelines and sewage networks. The Committee approved the text by a recorded vote of 162 in favour to 7 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, United States), with 3 abstentions (Cote d'Ivoire, Panama, Papua New Guinea).

Prior to the vote, Israel's representative said the Committee's annual text on the subject continued deliberately to omit key facts, notably his country's interest in preserving and protecting the natural environment, and in addressing, with its regional neighbours, their mutual concerns through existing mechanisms, joint working groups and capacity-development programmes focusing on agriculture and food security, forestry, desalination and water management. He added that the text also conveniently ignored numerous agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, opting instead to advance the political agenda of condemning his country.

A representative of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine retorted, in a general statement after the vote, that holding workshops on water and oil issues did not give Israel it the right to violate the right of the Palestinian people right to sovereignty over their natural resources. He thanked all those who had voted in favour of the text, saying the Committee's broad support for it illustrated once again the international community's rejection of Israel's colonial occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem.

The Committee also approved — by a recorded vote of 159 in favour to 7 against (Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, United States), with 3 abstentions (Colombia, Congo, Panama) – a draft on the oil slick on Lebanese shores. By its terms, the Assembly would reiterate its deep concern, for the fifth consecutive year, over the destruction by the Israeli Air Force of oil storage tanks near Lebanon's El-Jiyeh electric power plant due to its adverse implications for sustainable development in that country. By other terms, the Assembly would request that Israel assume responsibility for prompt and adequate compensation to Lebanon and Syria, whose shores had been partially polluted. The compensation should pay for the cost of restoring the marine environment and repairing environmental damage.

Speaking before the vote, Israel's representative expressed disappointment with the text, saying it exploited the Committee's professional nature in order to advance the political agenda of specific parties, and aimed at "institutionalizing an anti-Israel narrative within the United Nations". The draft "cherry-picked" certain information and failed to provide relevant context, thereby disregarding the Committee's fundamental obligation to remain objective and impartial.

Lebanon's representative responded by emphasizing that the Committee was indeed the right forum to address that issue, adding that the overwhelming support for the text illustrated the international community's view that the issue was a just cause for his country. He called on Lebanon's friends to step up assistance as since the country was still engaged in treating waste-water, rehabilitating its shores and restoring its ecosystem....READ MORE

Monday, November 15, 2010

LATimes THANK YOU for publishing Hanan Ashrawi's most recent article on Palestine.


AnneSeldenAnnab at 11:36 AM November 15, 2010

THANK YOU for publishing Hanan Ashrawi's most recent article on Palestine. I have long admired Ashrawi's heroic perseverance and dignity- and her obvious ability to clearly explain the facts to a mainstream American audience. When the goal is a just and lasting peace, it becomes more and more obvious that the choice at hand is not one state VS two states. Modern reality is that the only real choice is a secular two state solution and settlement right now, to once and for ALL stop perpetuating and exasperating the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Op-Ed

Israeli actions jeopardize two-state solution

Israel's refusal to cease Jewish settlement construction will make it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. Failure of the two-state solution has ramifications for the region and the U.S.

PLO DELEGATION: Daily News & Analysis

Daily News & Analysis
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010

PEACE NOW:
Report: In 6 weeks the settlers almost made up for the 10 months
Settlement Freeze
http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&docid=4818

LOS ANGELES TIMES:
Israeli actions jeopardize two-state solution (By Dr. Hanan Ashrawi)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ashrawi-mideast-20101115,0,6866472.story

THE INDEPENDENT (UK):
The Holocaust survivor whose life is in danger again
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-holocaust-survivor-whose-life-is-in-danger-again-2134223.html

SALON.COM:
Eric Cantor's Pledge of Allegiance
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/13/israel

HUFFINGTON POST:
Netanyahu's Defiance and U.S. Timidity Makes Mockery of Peace Drive
(By James Zogby)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/netanyahus-defiance-and-u_b_783111.html

HAARETZ:
Jerusalem must be divided (By Akiva Eldar)
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/jerusalem-must-be-divided-1.324728

DISCLAIMER: Contents of [Daily News & Analysis Newslist] articles do not necessarily represent the
views of the Palestine Liberation Organization.





Welcome: Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO) website
The Official Voice of Palestine in the U.S.

The General Delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the U.S. located in Washington DC is the official representative of the PLO in the United States. Its primary objective is to protect and promote the interests of the Palestinian people in the United States, through official relations with the U.S. government, commercial contacts with the business community, and through public outreach and educational efforts aimed at fostering a better understanding of Palestine and Palestinians amongst the American public at large.

Fact Sheets


Ending the occupation and the conflict needs to be the point....

RE: This Is Your Brain on Metaphors By ROBERT SAPOLSKY
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/this-is-your-brain-on-metaphors/?ref=opinion
comment i posted online

66.
Anne Selden Annab
Mechanicsburg PA
November 15th, 2010
8:48 am

Metaphors and synecdoche distract and entertain- but symbolic suggestions and game theories will only perpetuate the Israel/Palestine conflict.

FULLY respecting universal basic human rights and the rule of fair and just laws is the first real step towards establishing a just and lasting peace.

Ending the occupation and the conflict needs to be the point.... "Like people everywhere, Palestinians simply deserve a country where they can be first-class citizens. They have taken upon themselves the responsibility of building the institutions, and the state, of Palestine, the indispensable state for peace." Ziad Asali http://www.americantaskforce.org...


"Though outwardly identifying as a Palestinian American was never easy, internally it created the character that drove him to greatness..."

Joey Salameh introduces his father, Mr. Ghassan Salameh, ATFP Honoree for Excellence in Business, at the ATFP Fifth Annual Gala, Washington, D.C., October 20, 2010.

TRANSCRIPT:

Good evening,

Tonight I have the privilege of introducing a man whose story brings great pride to the Palestinian community. A man whose identity as a Palestinian American shaped him more than anything else--gave him his relentless drive and deep-rooted values.

To recognize his accomplishments is to recognize overcoming a lifetime of adversity; he surmounted the challenges of being not only an immigrant, but also a refugee.

He came to the United States and enrolled in college, financing his education by working menial jobs with low pay and long hours. After earning a degree in Engineering and later an MBA, he began his 30 year ascent to the top of one of the most prestigious management consulting firms.

He has worked tirelessly to give his family every opportunity he never had, and instill the same work ethic, drive, and values in his children.

Though outwardly identifying as a Palestinian American was never easy, internally it created the character that drove him to greatness.

Dad, we all look up to you, thank you, and applaud you. Your family could not be more proud.

Please join me in recognizing my father Ghassan Salameh.

ATFP Award for Excellence in Business
Mr. Ghassan Salameh

"Peace Starts Here" is more than a slogan....UNWRA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/15/middle-east-peace-starts-here-development

Middle East peace starts with development

The Middle East peace process needs the help of aid workers to build a lasting peace through education, health and opportunity

Chris Gunness

"Peace Starts Here" is more than a slogan. It raises challenging questions about peace itself at a time when the very notion of a just and durable peace is under threat and when the Middle East peace process needs all the support it can get from us, the humanitarian actors working on the ground.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is using this powerful phrase as the basis for an outreach campaign that explains who we are, but more importantly who are the 4.8 million Palestine refugees we serve and why our human development work with them, in the Arab countries and territories around Israel, provides a starting point on which peace – one day – can and will be built.

Peace Starts Here also raises some very practical questions about what you need to do to establish and nurture peace: it might begin with a signature on a piece of paper, but what next? Education? Opportunity? Prosperity? Security? Justice? And after all that, what next?

READ MORE


AND/OR explore (& hopefully help support) UNWRA

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The holocaust survivor whose life is in danger again

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-holocaust-survivor-whose-life-is-in-danger-again-2134223.html
In the Israeli city of Safed, an 89-year-old man has been accused of treachery for welcoming Arab students. Catrina Stewart reports
First they threatened to burn his house down. Then they pinned leaflets to his front door, denouncing him as a Jewish traitor. But Eli Tzavieli, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, is defiant. His only "crime" is to rent out his rooms to three Arab students attending the college in Safed, a religious city in northern Israel that was until recently more famous for Jewish mysticism and Madonna.

A campaign waged by Shmuel Eliyahu, the town's radical head rabbi, culminating in a ruling barring residents from renting rooms to Israeli Arabs, means that Safed is fast emerging as a byword for racism...READ MORE

My letter to the NYTimes RE I Believe I Can Fly by Thomas L. Friedman

RE: I Believe I Can Fly by Thomas L. Friedman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/opinion/14friedman.html?ref=opinion

Dear Editor,

I think Friedman makes a good point in "I Believe I Can Fly" about climate-deniers, Republicans, and really any one and every one with the wrong priorities plus the power and/or the podium to do real damage with their ideas. BUT I think Friedman's approach to Israel is wrong. Very wrong- dangerously wrong....

Insisting that Israel requires a Jewish majority in order to survive helps shape harmful polices on both sides: Jewish Israelis are being motivated to demonize and evict more Palestinians, while the persecuted and impoverished Palestinians are being convinced that huge families plus religious extremism will magically free Palestine from "the river to the sea."

The two state solution to once and for all end the Israel/Palestine conflict for everyone's sake must be based on respecting the rule of fair and just laws- and universal basic human rights, regardless of any one's supposed race or religion.


Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) Condemns Israel's East Jerusalem Settlement Expansion Plan, Calls on US to Act


ATFP: Building Palestine, the Indispensable State for Peace

Palestinians in Lebanon Hold Little Hope for Reconstruction

Palestinians in Lebanon Hold Little Hope for Reconstruction

Three years after the war between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam has ended, most of the Nahr el-Bared camp remains in ruins, 05 Nov 2010
Photo: VOA - H. Murdock

Three years after the war between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam has ended, most of the Nahr el-Bared camp remains in ruins, 05 Nov 2010

Related Articles

They call the temporary housing "barracks" or "containers." Some of the two-story blocks of rooms are made of concrete, and they are decorated. Others are made of tin.

For more than three years, about 10,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have been living in the barracks, after their camp was destroyed in a three-month-long battle between the Lebanese Army and an Islamic militant group known as Fatah al-Islam.

“This house is for animals,” said Ahmed Abueid, as he poked his head into a single metal room that houses six Palestinian refugees on the outskirts of the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon. “Animals cannot live like this. We want to go to our houses in old camp. Quickly."

Abueid is one of about 30,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon displaced by the war that left 400 people dead and the camp demolished. Most of the camp's buildings are still heaps of gray rubble, riddled with bullet holes.

Abueid said he was promised a new home after his building was flattened in 2007, but now has little hope that the camp will be rebuilt.

Families say in the over-crowded temporary housing, their children are often sick.
VOA - H. Murdock
Families say in the over-crowded temporary housing, their children are often sick.

In the barracks, displaced families say they rely on the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency for small amounts of food and medicine. In neighboring towns, displaced families receive $150 a month to help pay the rent.

But the United Nations says the families may be cut off in the next few months for lack of funding. The agency has not been able to raise any of the $18 million needed to sustain these basic services in 2011.

Agency spokesperson Hoda Samra Souaiby said if help does not arrive soon, families will stop receiving aid before the end of the year.

"If the funding does not come,” she said, “more than 3,400 families would be left without rental subsidies, of course, and the whole relief operations will have to stop. But I do not think we will reach this stage, and I certainly hope that we would not reach this stage."

The reconstruction process has long been marred by delays and lack of funding. The United Nations says it has only enough money to rebuild about 25 percent of the camp.

Souaiby said there is no way of knowing when more of the camp might be completed, because the agency still needs $209 million for the project.

"Previous camps that have been destroyed in Lebanon were never rebuilt,” she added. “This in itself is a challenge. It is the reconstruction of a whole city, a whole town."

Nancy's mother says her temporary apartment is infested with mice or rats.  When she was 2-years-old, Nancy was bitten several times in the face.
VOA - H. Murdock
Nancy's mother says her temporary apartment is infested with mice or rats. When she was 2-years-old, Nancy was bitten several times in the face.

The apartments in the barracks are cramped, leaky and sometimes infested with mice and bugs. Teenage girls are sometimes forced to share rooms with their brothers, which is considered shameful by many Palestinians. They say the food, medicine and small cash subsidies they receive from the United Nations are not nearly enough, and work is scarce.

Those who do find jobs with construction companies rebuilding the camp say the pay is low, and often late.

Mahmoud Getawi is a displaced refugee, working on reconstruction of the camp. He often has to wait weeks for payments. When he asked the company why, his supervisors blamed international donors who pledged funds but have not yet delivered it. Construction is often halted when the companies do not have money.

Getawi said he thinks his new home might be finished when his children, one of which is unborn, are adults.

“Maybe they will be for my children,” he said, laughing. “Not for me.”

The United Nations estimates as many as 60 percent of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are un-employed or underemployed. Even though there are several generations of Palestinians living in Lebanon, they are considered foreigners and need special permits to work. They are banned from working in many professions, like medicine, engineering, and law. They cannot buy or inherit property.

Wafa Abdulla Abuaudi said three years ago, after the war, international organizations provided enough food for the refugees to survive.

“After one year, they stopped,” she said, huddled in a concrete doorway in one of the barracks.

Now, every three months she gets enough food to feed her family for two weeks and has no hope that she will ever move into a new house in the camp. The first buildings might get finished, she said, but after that, the money will be gone, and the international community will forget about Nahr el-Bared.

Other women who were born and raised in the Nahr el-Bared camp, and have never been to Palestine, joked about the reconstruction. "We'll get to move back to Palestine,” one woman said, “before we are able to move into those houses.”

PA urged to free West Bank blogger

PA urged to free West Bank blogger
Published yesterday (updated) 13/11/2010 20:01

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Supporters of a Palestinian blogger detained this month over his opinions on religion have launched a petition calling for the young man's release from a Palestinian Authority prison.

Walid Husseini, 25, was detained two weeks ago without charge in the northern West Bank city of Qalqiliya, security officials said and family members confirmed. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.

"Nobody knows anything," said Guss Yonis, the founder of the Arabic-speaking Irreligious Coalition, which is based in Jordan. "They're refusing to release any information about him."

Yonis told Ma'an that his petition, which had been signed by some 200 people by Friday, was intended to draw attention from the media and human rights groups which have remained silent since the arrest.

Security sources have said that the PA launched an investigation over reports that Husseini was behind Facebook and blog posts that had infuriated conservative Muslims in recent months. Some of the posts altered verses from the Koran, the Muslim holy book; others included caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.

The arrest was viewed by many in Qalqiliya as a necessary action on the part of the PA. Questioning religion is considered taboo in Palestinian society, much of which has abandoned a history of popular secularism amid a growing trend toward fundamentalism across the Arab and Muslim world since the 1980s.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has banned Facebook, The Associated Press reported Saturday. The authorities reportedly deemed the popular social networking site as in conflict with their strictures.
A Palestinian youth plays a traditional musical instrument called the Oud, while another splashes spring water on himself near the West Bank village of al Wallaje, near Bethlehem November 11, 2010. REUTERS/Nir Elias (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY)

Palestinian smugglers push sheep through a smuggling tunnel from Egypt to the Gaza Strip in the Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, Nov. 13, 2010. Muslims worldwide are preparing for the Eid-al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice, with the sacrificial killing of sheep, goats, cows or camels.(AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

A Palestinian child plays with animals for sale at a livestock market in the West Bank city of Jenin, Saturday, Nov. 13, 2010. Muslims worldwide are preparing for the Eid-al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice, with the sacrificial killing of sheep, goats, cows or camels. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2010, a Palestinian worker returns to the West Bank village of Kifel Hares, near the Jewish settlement of Ariel. It's a startling fact: Most of the workers building Israel's West Bank settlements are Palestinians — even though their leaders, and many workers themselves, consider these communities a toxic threat to their dream of an independent state. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Palestinian Muslim men pray while religious Israeli Jews stand behind them during a joint event held by the Jews and Palestinians to pray for rain in the West Bank village of al Wallaje, near Bethlehem November 11, 2010. REUTERS/Nir Elias (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS RELIGION SOCIETY)

An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man drives back while Palestinians, foreign and Israeli left-wing activists participate in a weekly demonstration supporting Palestinians evicted from their homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010. The Arabic banner, top left, reads 'Jewish and Arab refuse to be enemy'; the Hebrew banner, second left, reads 'Sheikh Jarrah is Palestine'; the Arabic banner, bottom right, reads 'Enough settle in Sheikh Jarrah'; the Arabic banner, top right, reads 'Enough occupation'; the Hebrew banner reads 'Let Justice Win'. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

A Palestinian holds a banner during a weekly demonstration supporting Palestinians evicted from their homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Australian artist Jane Korman, right, participates in a weekly demonstration supporting Palestinians evicted from their homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Australian actress Jane Corman poses in a dress next to an Israeli border policeman during a protest to show solidarity with Palestinians against a Jewish settlement in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem November 12, 2010. REUTERS/Baz Ratner (JERUSALEM - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS ENTERTAINMENT)

The last keffiyeh that curators say was worn by late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is displayed in the Yasser Arafat Foundation office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2010. Six years after his Nov. 11, 2004 death, the keepers of Arafat's memory are still gathering and sifting through his belongings, including pistols and trademark sunglasses from his guerrilla years and the military-style suits he favored until the end. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Bittersweet Remembrance Sunday for Palestinian veterans

Palestinian refugee Abu Ahmed, 88, who served in the British army during World War II, drinks tea at home in the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Shemali near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on November 2. Ahmed is among some 30 Palestinians in Lebanon who fought under the Union Jack during the war but who were forced to flee their land in 1948 after the creation of Israel. (AFP/File/Joseph Eid)

Bittersweet Remembrance Sunday for Palestinian veterans

by Jocelyne Zablit Jocelyne Zablit Sat Nov 13, 12:04 pm ET

AIN AL-HELWEH, Lebanon (AFP) – Mussa al-Hussein may have a hard time recalling dates and places, but the 86-year-old Palestinian does not miss a beat when asked for his ID number when he was in the British army in Palestine in World War II.

"5472," he fired off assuredly, sitting in his rundown home in the densely populated Ain al-Helweh refugee camp in the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon.

Hussein is among some 30 Palestinians in Lebanon who fought under the Union Jack during the second World War but who were forced to flee their land in 1948 after the creation of Israel.

The majority have since been living in squalid refugees camps with little hope of ever returning home.

On Sunday, when Remembrance Day is celebrated in Britain, Hussein will stand alongside his fellow veterans at an annual ceremony in their honour in Beirut organised by the British Embassy, which has been trying to secure the men some regular assistance in recognition of their service.

"They will come on Remembrance Sunday from Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre, aged 80 or 90... they will travel three or fours hours to get here and they will stand in the sun with their medals on... proud ex-soldiers," Frances Guy, Britain's ambassador to Lebanon, told AFP.

Guy said given that the veterans had served less than 20 years in the British army, which withdrew the last of its troops from Palestine in May 1948, they were not entitled to a pension.

"The Palestinians are in a particular case because they were chased out of their homes immediately after they served with the British army, and if there is a way that we could help make the end of their lives more comfortable, then perhaps we should be doing that," she said.

The veterans, whose numbers have dwindled over the years, receive the equivalent 150 dollars annually from the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League, a charity that provides assistance worldwide to needy ex-servicemen or women.

Several non-governmental organisations also provide medical and other assistance on a case by case basis.

But for Manhal Freih, 84, a twice-decorated veteran who joined the British army at the age of 16 and who now lives in the Burj al-Shemali refugee camp in the southern city of Tyre, the aid is all but negligible.

"We witnessed so much and suffered so much and in return we have received very little," said the blue-eyed Freih whose only keepsake from his military service is a cane.

At the time it was a prop to learn correct rifle positions, but now it is used as a walking stick.

"When I fought for the British, I was fighting against the Nazis, there was no Israel at the time," added the father of 13 who sports a white handlebar moustache and still has the energy to do daily push-ups and exercises.

"You should have seen me as a soldier," he said wistfully, dressed in a traditional white headdress. "I really looked sharp.

"Our superiors were all British, and I recall one who was called Mr Ridley and who was feared by everyone," he added.

Freih said that while he does not regret joining the British army he felt rejected because there was little recognition for his years of service.

"We live in dire conditions in a land that will never be ours," he said of the camps in Lebanon. "And you know when you live a free man, even if it's in a cave, you are king."

Ibrahim Adawi, 84, who was part of the British army's cavalry for two years and who lives in the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut, said he holds no grudge against Britain, though he would welcome a little more aid for himself and his family of nine.

"My ID was 8250," he said softly in English before quickly switching to Arabic.

Adawi, who uses a walker because of a recent fall, has preserved his soldier's service book which bears his picture as a young man and states that he enlisted on November 6, 1946.

Like his fellow veterans, he has trouble recalling specific incidents or places of deployment during his years of service.

"I don't regret one bit having served with the British army," he said, sitting next to his wife in a sparsely furnished single room that is his home. "I salute them.

"You know, once a soldier always a soldier -- and if I could serve with them again I would proudly do so."

For Hussein, a frail man with a deeply lined face, Sunday will mark an opportunity to stand proud and forget, even for a brief moment, his life of suffering in the refugee camps.

"I haven't missed one invitation over the years," he said, taking a long draw on his cigarette and showing off a fading black and white picture of himself as a young man in uniform.

"I feel I am somebody on Remembrance Sunday."

There are about 30 Palestinians who fought under the Union Jack during World War II living in squalid refugees camps in Lebanon. When Remembrance Day is celebrated in Britain, the veterans will attend the annual ceremony in their honour in Beirut organised by the British Embassy, which has been trying to secure the men some regular assistance in recognition of their service. (AFPTV)

A picture shows the military service book of Palestinian refugee Khalaf Attiyeh and a medal that was awarded to him by the British army, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Shemali near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on November 2. Attiyeh is among some 30 Palestinians in Lebanon who fought under the Union Jack during the war but who were forced to flee their land in 1948. (AFP/File/Joseph Eid)