Letter dated 23 November 2009 from the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EGUA-7YCSN9?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

Letter dated 23 November 2009 from the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General (A/ES-10/470–S/2009/605)

Source: United Nations General Assembly; United Nations Security Council

Date: 24 Nov 2009

General Assembly
Tenth emergency special session
Agenda item 5 Illegal
Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem
and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Security Council
Sixty-fourth year

The situation in the entirety of the Occupied Palestinian Territory in all its aspects remains critical, with conditions deteriorating and tensions rising daily. In this regard, the situation in the Gaza Strip is particularly grave.

It has been over two years since Israel, the occupying Power, began its illegal, inhumane blockade on the Gaza Strip; a blockade that has brought Gaza's economy to a grinding halt and has caused the socio-economic living standards for 1.7 million Palestinian civilians to plummet. The suffering of the civilian population was further deepened by the brutal, merciless military aggression waged on Gaza by the Israeli occupying forces. The wounds, scars and trauma inflicted by the series of Israeli assaults that wreaked human havoc and wanton physical destruction throughout the Gaza Strip continue to be felt to this day as the population remains under siege and reconstruction and recovery continue to be obstructed by the occupying Power. Successive Israeli military attacks, which peaked a year ago during the 22-day aggression, have killed and injured thousands of Palestinian civilians, including hundreds of children and women.

Today, while the memory of the Israeli atrocities in the last aggression are still fresh in our memory, Israel, the occupying Power, is attempting to further raise tensions and reignite the cycle of violence, with the attendant grave consequences.

On Sunday, 22 November 2009, in the early morning hours, Israeli warplanes struck several civilian targets in the Gaza Strip. These attacks injured eight Palestinian civilians and caused widespread trauma to the families living in the area. Israeli warplanes also targeted metal workshops in a densely populated neighbourhood in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip and also struck areas in Nuseirat in central Gaza as well as other areas near the Rafah border in southern Gaza.

These attacks are stark manifestation of recent statements made by the Israeli military Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, before high school students on Friday, 13 November 2009, when he clearly stated that war is Israel's response to United Nations General Assembly resolution 64/10 on the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Goldstone Report). Ashkenazi said that "the Goldstone report deserves a response", and that Israel "must explain the justice of that war and explain that there is the possibility that we will be forced to act again". Such statements warrant the immediate attention of the international community as they constitute clear threats and indicate the blatant contempt Israeli leaders have towards the United Nations, international law and the lives of the Palestinian civilians under their occupation. Moreover, such statements reaffirm the deplorable mindset of impunity guiding the actions and policies of the occupying Power's political and military leadership.

It is also abundantly clear that Israel's intention is to deflect world attention from its ongoing illegal settlement campaign in the West Bank, particularly in and around Occupied East Jerusalem, by taking such provocative and violent actions in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israeli leaders have made it clear that they have not given any serious consideration to the findings and conclusions of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, hence the threat of carrying out yet another merciless and destructive military aggression against the besieged and suffering civilian population in Gaza.

Israel is flagrantly rejecting and violating its obligation as a Member State to respect the General Assembly resolution on the Goldstone report by launching investigations into the serious violations of human rights law and grave breaches of international humanitarian law it committed during its military aggression against Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. The international community must uphold its responsibilities in this regard and act to defend its expressed collective will and the integrity of the international system by ensuring Israeli compliance. Israel's disregard of civilian lives and of international law must be confronted directly, firmly and immediately. Standing idly by while such threats and actions continue can only encourage the occupying Power to add another long list of war crimes to its heavy dossier. Palestinian children in Gaza, who are still suffering trauma from Israel's last war, deserve a principled international position to ensure that they are spared further undue suffering.

This letter is in follow-up to our previous 349 letters to you regarding the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, since 28 September 2000. These letters, dated from 29 September 2000 (A/55/432- S/2000/921) to 18 November 2009 (A/ES-10/469-S/2009/598), constitute a basic record of the crimes being committed by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people since September 2000. For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations committed against the Palestinian people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of the present letter distributed as a document of the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly, under agenda item 5, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Riyad Mansour
Ambassador
Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations

Israel needs to be held accountable for its racism before it becomes a precedent for other countries to follow.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009,

http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=22017

Ethnic cleansing, pure and simple

Israel stripped over 4,500 Jerusalemite Palestinians of their “residency rights” in 2008.

This marks a huge acceleration of a policy that has been in force since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. In these 41 years, Israel has now stripped over 12,000 Palestinians of their “permits” to live in Jerusalem, 35 per cent or so of those in 2008 alone.

It also maps out exactly where the current right-wing Israeli government, which has made no secret of its wish to Judaise Jerusalem, a travesty of history if ever there was one, is heading.

The policy shows many things about Israel to anyone who wants to see. One is this: Israel does not even bother to pretend to adhere to any kind of international law or internationally accepted standards for behaviour towards a population under occupation.

East Jerusalem, Israel’s unilateral and unrecognised annexation notwithstanding, is occupied territory (indeed, all of Jerusalem remains, under international law, a corpus separatum). As such, the residents of Jerusalem and their descendants have their right of residency guaranteed under international law.

They cannot be stripped of that right simply because of some arbitrary rule that Israel made up about having to prove your “centre of life” is in Jerusalem and not being absent for too long. After all, what kind of uproar would there be if Jews who live in Israel were similarly stripped of their residency rights in America, Poland, Germany or wherever they are originally from?

But of course, the key here is that the Palestinians of Jerusalem are not Jews. And that is what this is all about. There is no way to sugar coat what Israel is doing here. It is ethnic cleansing, pure and simple. It is not quick and dramatic like in 1948, when many people were forced to flee at the point of a gun. Rather, it is slow and administrative, forced out by the stroke of a pen.

There is no excuse for this kind of behaviour. There is certainly no excuse for international inaction over the issue. Israel will claim that Palestinians in Jerusalem would not face this problem if they accepted Israeli citizenship rather than the “residency permit” the colonising power is issuing the indigenous population. But that is tantamount to forcing Palestinians to accept an illegal occupation of their land.

What next? All visitors to Jerusalem will have to sign a paper acknowledging Israel’s “eternal right to Jerusalem” before being allowed to enter?

Israel needs to be held accountable for its racism before it becomes a precedent for other countries to follow.

3 December 2009

"A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories." Seeing History Through Arab-American Eyes

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/american-life/people/Seeing-History-through-Arab-American-Eyes-78221802.html

People

Seeing History Through Arab-American Eyes

Mohamed Elshinnawi | Washington, DC 01 December 2009

Photo: Mohamed Elshinnawi

Author Alia Malek says she wrote "A Country Called Amreeka" to put a "human face" on the Arab-American community, and to counter the public fear and misunderstanding fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks

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In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Alia Malek, a successful Syrian-American civil rights attorney, was shocked by what she saw as a dangerous and misguided public backlash against Arab-Americans. Malek was confident that somebody would write a book that would put a human face on the Arab-American community and educate Americans about a culture that was so poorly understood.

"People seemed to think that Arabs only existed 'over there,' that there weren't actually Arab-Americans who had been part of the United States since the late 1800s. And I sort of went about my life practicing law, thinking that inevitably, somebody was going to write a book like this. And by the time I decided to do a career switch and go to journalism school at Colombia University four years later, nobody had yet written the book that I thought was so inevitable. So that is why I decided to write the book," Malek says.

Arab-Americans assimilated and became invisible

Her new book is titled, "A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories." It is a collection of narratives about some of the 3.5 million people of Arab descent who live in the United States - individuals with roots in Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Syria. Set against the backdrop of the past 40 years of American history and international developments, Malek's subjects share their stories and demonstrate that, even as they play football, work assembly lines and hold public office, they have remained largely shut out of the national conversation.

Malek, who began her legal career as a civil rights attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, contends that U.S immigration laws before 1965 were racially biased. And she says they hindered the naturalization of Arab immigrants to such an extent that most Americans were unaware there was an Arab-American community.

"I think that is why they assimilated and became almost invisible. And then, in that post-1965- immigration pop culture, [in] the media, Arab-Americans were not part of their discourse, it was not a part of the American consciousness. You did not have a TV show of Arab-Americans; there was something that remained very foreign about 'Arabs'," she says.

Stories mark historic moments in past 40 years

Each chapter of "A Country Called Amreeka" focuses on a major historical event as seen through the eyes of an Arab-American, allowing readers to relive the moment in that person's skin. In the chapter exploring how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict played out for Arabs living in the United States, Malek tells the story of Luba, the wife of a Palestinian refugee who yearns for her hometown of Ramallah after it is occupied by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

In one passage from the book, Luba struggles to explain her heartache to her young American-born daughter, Mona, whose puzzlement at her mother's distress highlights the gap between Arab heritage and life in Amreeka:

"Now all Jerusalem is with the Jews and now it is Ramallah's turn to be taken," Luba explained. "And that is why I am crying and that is why I want you to shut up and stop asking questions!"

But Mona continued: "The Jews, aren't they human beings? Aren't they people?"

"Yes, of course they are human beings," Luba responded. "They are people like us."

"Then why can't they be in Ramallah?" Mona demanded.

"Mona, this is your house. Do you want your neighbors to come and tell you to get out and take your home and they live here? Is this right?" (Malek, 2009).

In another chapter, the reader sees the 1963 burning of a black church in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, through the eyes of a dark-skinned Lebanese-American. There's a Palestinian-American surrounded by anti-Arab violence during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and a homosexual Arab-American who was afraid to be gay in the Middle East and is now afraid to be an Arab in America.

And there is Lance Corporal Abraham, a Yemeni-American Marine who is deployed to Iraq in the 2003 U.S. invasion. Because he is an Arab, Abraham is rebuked as a traitor by an Iraqi mother, whose two young daughters had been killed during a U.S. military operation.

Malek says,"I hope people sort of sympathize with Abraham and the difficulties he was going through, both as a young married father with a wife half-way across the world, and also the concerns he has as he and his Marine brothers come back alive from the war, as well as just seeing 'the good, the bad and the ugly' of the American invasion of Iraq."

Book mentions earlier immigrants

The author also recalls the Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian Christians who were part of America's first great wave of immigration starting in the 1880s, and who found work in the mines and opened grocery stores. She examines the impact of the 1965 immigration reform legislation that allowed Arabs to escape political upheaval in their own countries and settle in Detroit, Michigan, where many found work Ford Motor Company assembly lines. Malek hopes her American readers will come to know these people in a new and more positive light.

"I hope they can see that the history of Arab-Americans is basically as old as the history of a lot of immigrant groups that we easily accept as part of the American mosaic. And that they see that we are in American society; we are voters and consumers and producers and teachers, and husbands and wives and neighbors and everything else that we think that other fellow Americans are. I mean, there needs to be rightful re-insertion into the American imagination of the place of Arab-Americans," she says.

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Joint letter to Assistant Secretary of US State Department Michael Posner on the US State Department Annual Human Rights Report

Source: Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights; Al Mezan Center for Human Rights; BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights; Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)

Date: 01 Dec 2009

Assistant Secretary Michael Posner
US State Department
Washington, D.C.

Dear Assistant Secretary Posner:

We are international human rights attorneys and advocates and nongovernmental organizations working for the advancement of human rights in the world and in Palestine/Israel. We understand that your office is mandated under the Foreign Assistance Act to prepare annual reports to Congress on the human rights record of all countries receiving foreign assistance from the US government. We were gratified to learn that someone with your human rights advocacy record has taken the helm of this important section of the State Department. We share your personal and professional commitment to ensuring that all recipients of US military and economic assistance comply with internationally recognized human rights standards. It is because of this concern that we write to you in advance of your office's preparation of the Human Rights Country Report for Israel.

Over the years and particularly during the prior administration, we have noted with dismay that Israel's Human Rights Country Report has been incomplete in certain respects and has failed to provide the specific information required under the Foreign Assistance Act. As you know, the report must include information regarding whether a country has "consistently violated internationally recognized human rights" and findings of international organizations that indicate whether a country has committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. In addition, the report must provide information on whether the country receiving US aid has attempted to prevent investigations into its human rights abuses.

The main deficiencies of the human rights report on Israel in the past have been the following:

- there is less and less information on root causes and historical context that would establish the systematic, consistent, and long-term nature of the human rights abuses perpetrated against Palestinians;

- findings and concluding observations from UN human rights treaty-bodies and UN special mandate holders on serious violations of human rights including the deprivation of the right to life and liberty, racial discrimination, and torture, is completely missing (though information from UN agencies concerned with humanitarian affairs, e.g., OCHA and UNRWA, is included);

- Israel's policy of not cooperating with and its practice of denying entry to UN special rapporteurs is not mentioned;

- the findings and recommendations of the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion on the separation wall, including its recommendation for third party states to not provide material assistance to Israel for the construction of the wall and the maintenance of its associated regime (e.g., its settlement construction and segregated road system), are barely mentioned;

- there is no reference to Palestinian refugees from 1948 and 1967 and Israel's obligations under international law to permit their return and to provide them with reparations;

- Israel's human rights abuses are presented in an incidental format woven in between Palestinian-on-Palestinian human rights abuses so that it is difficult to ascertain whether the abuses taking place are part of a consistent pattern of human rights violations or whether it is an unintended consequence of the low intensity warfare being waged between Palestinian militia groups and the Israeli military, i.e., a function of the "fog of war;" and

- findings of nongovernmental organizations and human rights organizations indicating that Israel has or may have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity are not included, instead, the report merely aggregates certain data from a select group of nongovernmental organizations.

During the 2009 reporting cycle, there have been very well-documented reports of massive gross violations of human rights constituting war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. Of particular note is the report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Gaza ("FFMG") which derived its mandate from the UN Human Rights Council. The head of the FFMG, a former judge of the South African constitutional court and former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has made clear that what distinguishes Israel's conduct during its offensive in Gaza, dubbed "Operation Cast Lead," was the fact that, in at least 11 separate incidents, civilian deaths were not "collateral damage" resulting from Israel's attempt to hit legitimate military targets. Rather, Judge Goldstone and the FFMG found that the killing of civilians appears to have been the direct objective of the Israeli military in these incidents. The FFMG also found that the operation was in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for it resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas. The FFMG's findings are corroborated by investigative reports prepared by other nongovernmental organizations including the National Lawyers Guild, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Physicians for Human Rights, as well as by reports from Palestinian and Israeli organizations.

Because Congress must rely on the State Department's reports on human rights to determine whether countries may, consistent with federal law, continue to receive US military and economic aid, it is essential that the report accurately reflect the human rights situation in countries around the world. Therefore, we respectfully request that your office provide all due attention in the preparation of its 2009 report on Israel to the findings of the FFMG and to the reports and findings of other nongovernmental organizations and UN bodies that have been documenting and reporting on the human rights situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians living as refugees outside of Israel, and those living in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Each one of the organizations signing this letter is prepared to provide your office with any information you need in the preparation of your report. We look forward to working with and supporting the work of your office in the future.

Sincerely,

ADALAH
THE LEGAL CENTRE FOR ARAB MINORITY RIGHTS IN ISRAEL
Shf'a 'Amr/Haifa

ADDAMEER
PRISONER SUPPORT AND HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION
Ramallah

AL-DAMEER ASSOCIATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Gaza

AL HAQ
Ramallah

AL MEZAN CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Gaza

AMERICAN ARAB ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE
Washington, D.C.

ARAB ASSOCIATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Nazareth

BADIL RESOURCE CENTER
FOR PALESTINIAN RESIDENCY AND REFUGEE RIGHTS
Bethlehem

CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
New York

DEFENSE FOR CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL
Palestine Section
Ramallah

INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES
Washington, D.C.

ITTIJAH
UNION OF ARAB COMMUNITY BASED ASSOCIATIONS
Haifa

JERUSALEM LEGAL AID CENTER
Jerusalem/Ramallah/Salfit

HOUSING AND LAND RIGHTS NETWORK
HABITAT INTERNATIONAL COALITION
Cairo

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
New York

PALESTINIAN CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Occupied Palestinian Territories

US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION
Washington, D.C.

WOMEN'S CENTRE FOR LEGAL AID AND COUNSELING
Ramallah/Jerusalem

Susan Akram
Clinical Professor
Boston University College of Law

Dr. Naseer H. Aruri
Chancellor Professor (Emeritus)
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Former Board Member, Amnesty International

George E. Bisharat
Professor
University of California Hastings College of Law

Dr. Jeff Handmaker
Institute of Social Studies
The Netherlands

Zaha S. Hassan, Esq.
Attorney and Human Rights Consultant

Nadia Hijab
Policy Analyst and Human Rights Advocate

Abdeen Jabara, Esq.
Former President,
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

Victor Kattan, Teaching Fellow
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London

Daniel Machover
Chair, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights
London

Karma Nabulsi
Professor, Oxford University

Bret Thiele
International Human Rights Lawyer—Geneva
Former Board Member, Amnesty International

UN Palestinian refugee agency faces deficit

There are 4.7 million Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNA6rmZIDIH-__o7Oqb7jqafxBxQ

UN Palestinian refugee agency faces deficit

(AFP) – 4 hours ago

GAZA CITY — The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Wednesday it was facing an "unprecedented" budget deficit that could force it to cut back on services to more than 4.7 million people.

"There is an unprecedented deficit in the UNRWA budget, and our balance has hit zero for the first time since our establishment 60 years ago," said Adnan Abu Hasna, the Gaza spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency.

"If this deficit continues and if donors do not increase their assistance to UNRWA we may have to cut back on some of the programmes we provide for refugees in the entire Middle East, not only in Gaza and the West Bank," he told AFP.

UNRWA provides vital services, including food aid, health care and education, to more than 4.7 million Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Abu Hasna said the agency had run a deficit of 7.3 million dollars out of a total 2009 budget of 545 million dollars and was not sure if it would have enough cash on hand to pay December salaries.

The agency forecasts a deficit of 54.5 million dollars in 2010.

Abu Hasna said the international community had pledged to increase assistance to address the shortfall but had yet to deliver, perhaps because of the global economic crisis.

He specifically singled out the Arab League, which has pledged to cover eight percent of UNRWA's budget but at present is only paying one percent.

The UN-registered refugees include those who fled or were expelled from what is now Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants. Their fate is one of the core disputes of the Middle East conflict.

Naomi Shihab Nye Poem: Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye (1953-)

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~~~~~~~~

A Girl's Dream [1977 oil on canvas] by Nasr Eleyan

A Palestinian woman resting in her home. By Nasr Abdel Aziz Eleyan

UN’s Middle East envoy urges halt to demolitions, evictions in East Jerusalem

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33114&Cr=palestin&Cr1=

UN’s Middle East envoy urges halt to demolitions, evictions in East Jerusalem

Robert H. Serry, Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Process

1 December 2009 – The top United Nations envoy to the Middle East today reiterated Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for an immediate end to demolitions, evictions and the instalment of Israeli settlers in Palestinian neighbourhoods, as he visited the Sheikh Jarrah area in East Jerusalem, outside a house that was occupied by settlers.

“Provocative actions such as these create inevitable tensions, undermine trust, often have tragic human consequences and make resuming negotiations and achieving a two-State solution more difficult,” read a statement issued by the spokesperson for the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry.

Last week senior UN political official Haile Menkerios told the Security Council that Israel’s refusal to freeze settlement activity was one of several key challenges to the peace process.

Mr. Ban has issued a series of statements recently calling for a halt to Israeli settlement activity and the demolition of Palestinian homes and evictions in East Jerusalem.

In October he stated that Jerusalem must be the capital of two States – Israel and Palestine – with arrangements for the holy sites acceptable to all, if peace in the Middle East is to be achieved.

News Tracker: past stories on this issue

Israeli-Palestinian peace moves at ‘deep and worrying impasse,’ UN official warns

Israel’s Interior Ministry stripped 4,577 Palestinians of their right to live in East Jerusalem last year, an all time record in 42years of occupation

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=243675

Thousands in East Jerusalem lost residency rights

Published today (updated) 02/12/2009 10:45

The blue Israel-issued ID card given to Jerusalemite Palestinians [MaanImages]

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israel’s Interior Ministry stripped 4,577 Palestinians of their right to live in East Jerusalem last year, an all time record in 42 years of occupation.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz made the figures public on Wednesday. Last year’s total was 21 times the average of the previous 40 years.

In the first 40 years of Israeli occupation Israel revoked residency rights of 8,558, than double the number who lost their ID cards last year alone.

The Interior Ministry told Haaretz that the increase stemmed from a 2008 decision by the previous Israeli government to investigate the legal status of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel of Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual said the 250,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have the same legal status as people who immigrated to Israel legally, but are not entitled to citizenship.

"They are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967," he said, according to Haaretz.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank in 1967, and annexed a chunk of the West Bank as a part of the city, which it declared its capital. Palestinians in the annexed territory refused Israeli citizenship. Like the international community, they do not recognize the legitimacy of Israeli control over the area.

Jerusalemite lawyer Usama Al-Halabi said in a recent interview with Ma’an that “every Palestinian with Israeli identity has no real rights to life in Jerusalem. Israel can confiscate the identity at any time.”

Because of their status as non-citizen residents, Palestinians in Jerusalem can easily lose their ID cards. According to lawyers who spoke to Ma’an, simply leaving for five years, or obtaining residency or citizenship in another country can endanger a Jerusalem resident’s rights.

The Way Forward.... respect for the dignity of all peoples

"And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom, and justice, and opportunity, and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are. That is the moral source of America's authority.

Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop an architecture of institutions - from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank - that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings.

We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades - a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.

For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours. What we have fought for - and what we continue to fight for - is a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity.

As a country, we are not as young - and perhaps not as innocent - as we were when Roosevelt was President. Yet we are still heirs to a noble struggle for freedom. Now we must summon all of our might and moral suasion to meet the challenges of a new age"

READ THE FULL SPEECH

The President has outlined his strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Watch the full video of his address.

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A view of Jerusalem's Old City with the Dome of the Rock Mosque, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009. Israel issued a stern warning to the EU on Tuesday over a purported plan to recognize east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, saying the proposal would damage Europe's credibility as a Mideast mediator. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)