Update on the Conference! Watch videos and check out the organizations that participants are visiting!

The participants are still in Jerusalem and had the opportunity to listen to four very different Jewish Israeli organizations working for peace and justice.

The first organization, Rabbis for Human Rights, views their commitment to protecting the human rights of minorities and Palestinians as a religious one. They have called themselves "the rabbinic voice of conscience in Israel". The organization seeks to give voice to the Jewish tradition's concern for the 'stranger' and others vulnerable within society, and are bound by a Jewish responsibility to defy silent complicity. Check out what they do in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Participants also met with BTselem. Known for their accuracy, BTselem documents human rights abuses committed in the West Bank and Gaza and petition the Supreme Court to take action. BTselem is also known for their Camera Distribution Project which effectively gives Palestinians living under occupation a voice by providing them with cameras to document their lives. Check out some footage below!



After lunch, the participants stood in protest against the Israeli occupation with Women in Black. These brave Jewish Israeli women stand in silent protest in a public square every Friday at 1:00 pm with signs held high that call for the end of the occupation. Despite all kinds of insults hurled their way, they have maintained this tradition for over 20 years!

At the end of the day, the participants went on an ICAHD Tour. ICAHD stands for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. ICAHD opposes and resists a practice that Hillary Clinton understatedly described as "unhelpful" to the peace process which is the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in occupied territory. Check out this link about ICAHD's alternative tours.

Finally, the participants moved to Bethlehem for the night and will be going to a Palestinian city heavily impacted by the occupation, Hebron. It is the only Palestinian city with settlements INSIDE of its boundaries. Therefore, there is a strong if not suffocating Israeli military presence and Palestinian movement is greatly restricted within their own city limits.

Keep reading for reflections from participants about their trip to Hebron!

ICAHD CALLS FOR AN IMMEDIATE HALT TO ISRAEL’S POLICY OF HOME DEMOLITIONS

One can only describe Israel’s obsession with demolishing Palestinian homes in light of the exclusive Jewish claim to the entire Land of Israel harking back a century or more. It is not a policy specific to any particular time or place, nor is it confined to the Occupied Territories. In 1948 and for years after, Israeli governments systematically demolished more than 500 entire villages, towns, urban centers and neighborhoods, both to prevent the return of the Palestinian refugees and to take their lands and properties. Since the Occupation began in 1967, another 24,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished, including 4000 in the latest attack on Gaza. And in 2004, the Israeli government announced the establishment of a Demolition Administration within the Ministry of Interior; targeted for destruction are 20-40,000 homes of Israeli (Arab) citizens classified as “unrecognized villages.” (One Bedouin village in the Negev, al Twazil, has been demolished 18 times.)

It must be stressed that Israel has never explained or justified its long-standing practice of demolishing Palestinian homes by security. For the most part it has offered no explanations at all, treating the phenomenon as a purely internal matter. Occasionally it justifies the wholesale destruction of homes in military operations as “collateral damage.” According to Ha’aretz (15.2.09), “Israel Defense Forces investigations into last month's offensive in the Gaza Strip indicate the army could face significant difficulties justifying the scale of destruction of civilian homes during the fighting. A military source involved in the investigation told Haaretz, “It's clear to us that in a small portion of the combat sectors immeasurable damage was caused, and that is very difficult to justify from a legal perspective, particularly if such justifications are called for in legal proceedings with international organizations.” As for the thousands of homes demolished due to a lack of building permits, which Israel justifies on a legal basis, it neglects to say that its explicit policy since 1967 has been to deny permits to Palestinians, or to restrict them severely.

When one surveys the consequences of Israel’s house demolition policy from 1948 until the present, the conclusion is inescapable: a systematic and ongoing campaign is being waged to either rid the country of its Palestinian population or, failing that, to confine the remaining Palestinians to tiny, delimited, disconnected and impoverished enclaves, in Israel as well as in the Occupied Territories.

At this very moment, together with the “routine” demolitions that are the Palestinians’ daily fare, 88 homes in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem – the entire al Bustan quarter – are threatened with immediate destruction, as are two apartment buildings housing 34 families in the adjacent al Abbasiyya quarter. House demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem are illegal under international law, serve no obvious purpose, have severe humanitarian effects and fuel bitterness and extremism. They also violate the first phase of the Road Map. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) calls on the international community to enforce its stated opposition to this cruel policy and end it immediately.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is based in Jerusalem and has chapters in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Please visit the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions' websites:

www.icahd.org

www.icahduk.org

www.icahdusa.org

Demolition orders for the East Jerusalem neighborhood of al Bustan

Israel has issued orders for the demolition of an entire neighborhood in East Jerusalem called al Bustan which would uproot 2,000 people and replace their homes with...an open park. The demolition orders are for 80 Palestinian homes that the Israeli authorities claim were built illegally. However, many of these homes were built BEFORE Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.

As for construction after 1967, Israel has employed a policy of planning, development, and building that severely restricts construction by Palestinians creating a situation in which Palestinians are unable to obtain permits to build or even make additions to existing homes. Because of this, many Palestinians are forced to build without a permit because they have no other way to provide shelter for their families.

On the U.S. Secretary of State's visit to Israel, Clinton stated that activities like the demolition orders are "unhelpful" and "not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the road map." While Clinton's remarks are an understatement and the demolition orders are not only destroying the peace process but also in clear violation of Humanitarian Law, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat responded by charging the Palestinians with feeding Clinton misinformation and that the land had been set aside as open space and parks (apparently after the land had already been built on before 1967 when Israel acquired the land).

For more information about these particular demolition orders please follow these links:

ICAHD article about this neighborhood
PNN article about this neighborhood