Monday, December 2, 2013

My letter to the NYTimes RE Gaza Need Not Be a Sewer

In designating 2013 as the UN International Year of Water Cooperation, the UNGA United Nations General Assembly recognizes that cooperation is essential to strike a balance between the different needs and priorities and share this precious resource equitably, using water as an instrument of peace. Promoting water cooperation implies an interdisciplinary approach bringing in cultural, educational and scientific factors, as well as religious, ethical, social, political, legal, institutional and economic dimensions.

RE: Gaza Need Not Be a Sewer by ALON TAL and YOUSEF ABU-MAYLA (Alon Tal of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is a visiting professor at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. Yousef Abu-Mayla is a water expert at Al Azhar University in Gaza.) 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/opinion/gaza-need-not-be-a-sewer.html?ref=international


Dear Editor,

Gaza need not be a sewer... Gaza also should not be a prison camp for Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel.

The water conflict is indeed "part of other, more intractable issues," and as such decoupling is at best only a temporary measure- one that is very vulnerable to Israel's tendency to collectively punish Palestinians who refuse to idolize and endorse Israel as "The Jewish State".

Admirable efforts to solve Gaza's water crisis are worth supporting, but moving forward should factor in the vital importance of ending the Israel-Palestine conflict with a just and lasting peace based on full respect for international law and universal basic human rights.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
AREA C: Israeli forces on Monday demolished four houses and eight agricultural structures in the southern Jordan Valley, leaving at least 50 Palestinians homeless

Hussein Ibish: Freedom and equality are at the core of the Palestinians’ struggle

Christmas message from Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun of Palestine..." Today, our little town has become even smaller due to the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, but the message of Jesus Christ remains in our hearts, overcoming with hope the despair of decades of living under a foreign occupation and being deprived of our rights."

In protest of the Prawer-Begin Plan, which if implemented, will result in the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Bedouin in the Negev desert, Bedouin and other activists organized a ‘day of rage.’

Israel's plan to forcibly resettle Negev Bedouins prompts global protests

Our Compass: Nelson Mandela by Salam Fayyad of Palestine

UNRWA digitizes Palestinian refugee experience, documenting the mass displacement of Palestinians from 1948 to the present day.

New York Times: Photographs Tell a History of Palestinians Unmoored

THE ECONOMIST: "Nobody knows whether the gamble with Iran will pay off. But it is already clear that the risks are low, the prize is potentially vast—and the alternative is dire."

International Emmys Award for Best Documentary to "5 Broken Cameras" in which a Palestinian farmer examines upheaval in a West Bank village.

Arab Idol Assaf in appeal for UN Palestinian agency

A Palestinian human rights group urges tougher EU measures on Israeli settler violence

ATFP Hopes Iran Deal Will Enhance Middle East Stability and Security ATFP provides an independent voice for Palestinian-Americans and their supporters and advances human rights and peace. It categorically and unequivocally condemns all violence against civilians, no matter the cause and who the victims or perpetrators may be.

Voicing solidarity with Palestinian cause, UN officials stress importance of resumed peace talks

The Office of International Religious Freedom ( http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/)   Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to:


Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries

Why Muslims should love secularism: Though secularism is widely misunderstood as anti-religious and iconoclastic, all it means is the neutrality of the state on religious affairs ...  "Muslims must recognize secularism as the only real path to religious freedom, rather than confusing it with an attack against religion." Hussein Ibish

Bible scholars: Zionists have 'weaponized' scripture: "One bad (theological) interpreter is worse than 100 terrorists..."

Israeli soldiers destroy 60 olive trees near Bethlehem... IT ADDS UP: Since 1967, 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been uprooted by Israelis in the occupied West Bank

NGO: Israel okays 829 new settler homes in West Bank

Destruction and Appropriation of Palestinian Heritage .... Palestine & UNESCO Protecting heritage and reasserting sovereignty : The first installment of a two-part policy brief from Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon: JFK left indelible imprint on me

Israelis and Palestinians must refrain from undermining renewed talks... Settlement plans threaten renewed hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace, UN envoy warns

It is widely accepted that under international law, the Jewish settlements in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 are illegal. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons... "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies." BBC News

Poll: Oslo brought 'political normalization' but no benefits "83.3 percent of the respondents believe that settlement construction increased “unprecedentedly” in the Palestinian territory as a result of the Oslo Accord."

Israel's policy of erasure : A path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians requires not simply dealing with settlements but with the whole complex of displacement, suffocation and erasure.

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." Eleanor Roosevelt


UNITED NATIONS 2013: The nations of the world call on Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice concerning the apartheid wall and all UN resolutions.

2013: Palestine refugees’ properties and their revenues ...Recalling its resolutions 194 (III) of 11 December 1948 and 36/146 C of 16 December 1981 and all its subsequent resolutions on the question

"The direct threat to Israeli and Palestinian existence — and, in fact, to the existence of all peoples in the region — is the absence of peace in Palestine." Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh in The Jordan Times

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

Christians are being driven out of regions around the world where they are a minority

Palestinian villages subject to Israeli mock raids not told they are exercises: Israeli military rejects complaints by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din over 'training' arrests of Arabs and raids on homes

Washington Post 2013: Israeli hard-liners eye West Bank

Israeli Settler Violence Map

'It is where religious freedom is most dishonored or repressed that the forces of violent religious extremism are likely to thrive.' Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom: JFK's call for religious freedom can transform...

  • All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Live by the Golden Rule

Dear President Obama... Let Freedom Ring

194

Globalizing Martin Luther King, Jr.


This Week in Palestine: In Palestine we have no physical control over our borders, and therefore have no say in how anyone could be treated at any given moment in time. But what we do have control of is the Palestine we write about, describe, and photograph in the folds of this issue’s pages.


At ATFP Gala, White House Reaffirms Commitment to Palestinian State, Opposition to Settlements and Settler Violence


Pomegranates in season along the path!
The Arab Peace Initiative
1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.
2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:
I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.
II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.
III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:
I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

Jordan's King Abdullah II explains that extremism has "grown fat" off of the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Charter for Compassion is a call to restore the Golden Rule to the center of religious, moral and civic life. The path to a just economy and a peaceful world requires listening, understanding and treating all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Freedom for Palestine - OneWorld

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