Arab News Blog

Israeli security forces have arrested a Turkish employee of a charity organisation operating in the West Bank.
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AP – Israeli security forces demolished a handful of illegal structures in West Bank settlements Tuesday, including a wooden bunker that hard-line Jewish activists had defiantly named after President Barack Obama.

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AFP – Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and east Jerusalem during anti-settlement protests after the Muslim Friday prayers.

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Palestinian protesters in East Jerusalem were repressed by Israeli security forces on Tuesday, leaving over 100 persons wounded. Recent Israeli moves to claim sites in the Palestinian West Bank, holy to Christians and Muslims as well as Jews, as Israeli heritage sites– have alarmed Palestinians that the Likud government may have designs on the Aqsa Mosque, among the holier sites in Islamic lore.

Aljazeera is saying that the demonstrations and clashes spread from Jerusalem to Ramallah and Hebron (where the Israelis have inserted a synagogue into the mosque over the alleged tombs of Abraham and the patriarchs).

Aljazeera English has video:

Looks to me like peaceful protesters or stone-throwing youth facing 3000 heavily armored and armed Israeli security forces.

The USG Open Source Center translates an Arabic article about Palestine Liberation Organization leader Saeb Erekat’s denunciation of what he calls Israeli attacks on Palestinian holy sites. His warning that Israel and the US are playing with fire to inflame Muslim passions in this way should be heeded. The Israeli occupation of Jerusalem was one of the three reasons given by Usama Bin Laden for his creepy war on the United States. For a billion and a half Muslims, Jerusalem is their third holiest city, and when all Palestinians have been expelled from it, there will be a big bang.

“PA’s Erekat Decries ‘Attacks’ on Holy Sites, Says Israel ‘Playing with Fire’
“Erekat Calls on International Community To Rein in Israeli Futile Policy” — Ma’an headline
Ma’an News Agency
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Bethlehem, 16 March (Ma’an) — Dr Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, condemned the Israeli policies of dictating terms, settlement activity, provocations, and attacks on holy sites, similar to the ones that took place on 16 March. Erekat said: No sooner did the Arab world, the Palestinian leadership, and the international community announce to the US Administration their decision to launch proximity talks in a bid to end the conflict, than the Israeli Government disregarded this decision by issuing tenders for the construction of settlements, carrying out raids, dictating, assassinating, laying siege, imposing closures, and taking provocative steps of a religious nature.

Speaking to Ma’an Radio Network, Erekat said: “Not only do we denounce these Israeli acts, but we also hold the Israeli Government solely responsible for the repercussions of the futile and provocative policies of imposing facts on the ground, which seek to torpedo efforts to launch the peace process.”

Erekat also noted that he has been mandated by President Mahmud Abbas to travel to Moscow, carrying with him written messages, documents, and maps for Quartet members, which shed light on the inflammatory Israeli practices in Jerusalem. He further argued that the Israeli policies are playing with fire and adding fuel to it. Therefore, the written messages urge the international community to intervene immediately in order to curb the Israeli occupation and force it to halt its practices and unavailing policies.

Erekat went on to say that the Palestinian leadership is relying heavily on the international community and stated: “We are part of the international community and we resort to international law. Treating Israel as a country above the law destroys the international community’s peace efforts in the region and has proved that the Israeli Government disparages international law.” He also pointed out that the US Administration and the international community are capable of forcing Israel to stop these policies, which he decried as criminal and futile.

(Description of Source: Bethlehem Ma’an News Agency in Arabic — Website of independent, leading Palestinian news agency; funded by the Dutch and Danish Foreign Ministries; URL: http://www.maannews.net/)”

The violence in Jerusalem comes on the heels of a major spat between the United States and Israel over last week’s humiliation of Vice President Joe Biden by the announcement of 1600 new households to be built on a part of the Palestinian West Bank that Israel high-handedly annexed to its district of Jerusalem. Fear that the Israelis will attempt to push the Palestinians altogether out of East Jerusalem lay behind some of the anxieties that provoked Tuesday’s demonstrations.

End/ (Not Continued)

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AFP – Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces across east Jerusalem on Tuesday in the worst rioting in years, as a senior Hamas leader called for a new “intifada” or uprising.

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Palestinians and Israeli security forces clash in the West Bank city of Hebron over Israeli plans for heritage sites.
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AFP – Israeli security forces on Friday clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians near Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound as authorities limited access to the flashpoint site sacred to Muslims and Jews.

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The Israeli human-rights group B’tselem today released its final report on the death toll in Gaza from the highly asymmetrical fighting of last December-January.

Their figures differ a little from those released yesterday by the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

PCHR put the complete death toll among Gazans at 1,419. B’tselem put it at 1,387. That’s a difference of 32 people. The difference could perhaps be explained by what they were counting: PCHR was counting the number of Palestinians “killed during the Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip”, while B’tselem was apparently counting Palestinians killed by the Israeli security forces.

B’tselem also counted the number of Israelis killed during the 22 days of fighting:

Palestinians killed 9 Israelis during the operation: 3 civilians and one member of the security forces by rockets fired into southern Israel, and 5 soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Another 4 soldiers were killed by friendly fire.

Given the intensity of combat operations, friendly fire deaths are not particularly surprising.

PCHR counted that 1,167 non-combatants were killed, along with 252 “resistance activists.” It specified that,

The non-combatants include civilians and civil police officers who were not involved in hostilities, [who are] protected persons of international humanitarian law. Investigations conducted by PCHR indicate that 918 civilians were killed… The civilian victims include 318 children… and 111 women.

B’tselem, by contrast, is not quite so sure how to characterize the conbatant/non-combatant status of the police killed. They write that of those killed,

773 did not take part in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over the age of 18. Of those killed, 330 took part in the hostilities, and 248 were Palestinian police officers, most of whom were killed in aerial bombings of police stations on the first day of the operation. For 36 people, B’Tselem could not determine whether they participated in the hostilities or not.

There is very little difference between these two reports regarding the numbers of women and children killed. The main differences are in how they distribute the adult male death among combatants and non-combatants.

The B’tselem report notes that this about the Israeli military’s claims about the Palestinian death toll:

Israel stated that 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation and that 60% of them were members of Hamas and other armed groups. According to the military, a total of 295 Palestinians who were “not involved” in the fighting were killed. As the military refused to provide B’Tselem its list of fatalities, a comparison of names was not possible. However, the blatant discrepancy between the numbers is intolerable. For example, the military claims that altogether 89 minors under the age of 16 died in the operation. However, B’Tselem visited homes and gathered death certificates, photos, and testimonies relating to all 252 children under 16, and has the details of 111 women over 16 killed.

Of course, definitions and methodology are very important in such documentation. B’tselem is counting 320 “minors”, meaning presumably under the age of 18, but only 252 “children under 16″. It is also very specific about the methodology it used to verify each claimed death of a minor.

I dare say that when we see the final report in English from PCHR, they too will be specific about the methodology they used. I have great respect for the careful work and documentary objectivity of the PCHR, which is Palestinian and operates under extremely difficult circumstances from its downtown Gaza headquarters. I would imagine that its researchers have the opportunity to do even more meticulous fieldwork than that done by B’tselem, which is based in Jerusalem and has faced many obstacles placed by the Israeli authorities in being able to get its research teams into Gaza.

I was just looking at this news article by AP’s Karin Laub today. It is built around B’tselem’s release of its report.

I really question why she gave such prominence to that report, while making only a fleeting reference to PCHR’s work and not even mentioning it by name? Is it because she is in based in Jerusalem, or because she is reluctant to give any credence to the work of a Palestinian organization?

Anyway, the big discrepancies are not between the reporting of B’tselem and PCHR, but rather those between the reporting of these human-rights groups and the Israeli military.

Especially as regards the numbers of deaths of minors.

Laub reported that,

The military said Wednesday that it believes B’Tselem’s findings are based on flawed research, including reliance on what it said are exaggerated death tolls by Palestinian human rights groups.

This is a serious libel.

Quite clearly, B’tselem has met that (quite evidently fabricated) “concern” by explicating the time-consuming and sometimes actually dangerous methodology it used in the case of reported deaths of minors.

And what “methodology” did the Israeli military use in its compilation of its numbers.

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