Beginning this month, as is the case every October, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza will begin issuing 16-year-olds their first identity cards. Each 16-year-old will take the photographs and documentation to his school, which will pass them on to the ministry. And, just as it has every year since the Palestinian Authority was established, the ministry will pass all the information on to Israel’s Interior Ministry. Despite Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian ministry still cannot issue identity cards unless Israeli clerks approve the applications.

Ever since Israel conquered the territories in 1967, all Palestinians have been registered with Israel’s Interior Ministry. Neither the PA’s establishment nor the Gaza disengagement changed this situation. According to Palestinian sources, the issue was not even raised during Israeli-Palestinian disengagement talks, and the Palestinians understood that this arrangement would continue.

Regarding the issuing of initial identity cards to those born in the territories or registering births and deaths, updating the Israeli computers is a purely technical matter. On other matters, however, the PA’s dependence on Israel is absolute. The PA, for instance, has no right to grant ‘citizenship’ to a Palestinian born abroad who wishes to live in Gaza or the West Bank. It also has no authority to reissue identity cards to the tens of thousands of Palestinians born in the territories who have lost their residency rights under Israel’s policy of stripping residency status from anyone who stays away from the territories for more than three years without visiting.

Moreover, there are tens of thousands of Palestinian couples in which one spouse was born abroad, and therefore is not considered a resident of the territories. But Israel retains sole authority to approve ‘family unifications’ for such couples—and for the last five years, the approval process has been frozen.

There are 54,000 Palestinians in the territories who entered legally, as tourists, on foreign passports, with the hope of eventually being granted citizenship pursuant to the Oslo Accords. If caught at an army checkpoint, they are liable to be deported, even if they have a spouse and children in the territories. Nor can they go abroad, even for emergencies, because, since they stayed here illegally after their visas expired, Israel would not allow them to return if they left their area.

The PA cannot act unilaterally and issue Palestinian identity cards to people without Israel’s consent, because the country’s control over the PA population registry is rooted in its control over the international border crossings and Palestinian movement within the West Bank: the minute an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint or border crossing checked such a card, he would discover that its holder does not appear in Israel’s computers, and treat the card as invalid.

Israel also controls changes of address, and since the intifada started, it has not approved a single change of address from Gaza to the West Bank. Therefore, thousands of Gazans currently living in the West Bank are considered illegal residents and, if caught at a roadblock, could be deported back to Gaza.

As long as Israel retains control over the Palestinian population registry, this is a sign—in Palestinian eyes, and probably in those of the world as well—that Israel’s occupation of Gaza continues even after the disengagement.
—Ha’aretz newspaper, Jerusalem

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According to a United Nations Rights Expert:
Pullout Diverted Attention from West Bank Expansion
This focus of attention on Gaza allowed Israel to continue expansion with almost no criticism.

A United Nations rights expert said the disengagement from the Gaza Strip has allowed the Jewish state to divert attention from its further expansion into East Jerusalem and other Palestinian territories. “This focus of attention on Gaza has allowed Israel to continue with the construction of the wall in Palestinian territory, the expansion of settlements and the de-Palestinization of Jerusalem with virtually no criticism,” South African lawyer John Dugard said in a report.

Dugard, who monitors the Palestinian territories for the UN Human Rights Commission, prepares his regular reports during visits to the region. However, he receives no cooperation from the Israeli government, which says his mandate is one-sided. Israel’s ambassador to the UN offices in Geneva immediately condemned the report as “distorted in its presentation, excessive in its political conclusions and a repetitive exercise in Israel-bashing.”

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has reaped diplomatic rewards for ending the country’s 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip. In the past month, Qatar, Pakistan, and Indonesia have held high-level public meetings with Israel—a rare event for Muslim countries—and foreign minister Silvan Sharon met recently with Jordan’s King Abdullah II for their first talks in months.

But Dugard said the cordial relations have disguised Israel’s drive to extend its West Bank settlements and its security barrier, which “is designed to be the border of the State of Israel.” He also criticized Israeli policies in East Jerusalem, where he said large settlements are being connected “in order to make the city more Jewish.”
—Associated Press

“It’s a first step to demilitarize the passages.”
Israel Sets International Border for Gaza

Israel declared its frontier with the Gaza Strip an international border last week, formally setting part of a boundary for the first time with an eventual Palestinian state. Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz called the measure “a first step to demilitarize the passages and to turn them into borders” between Israel and Gaza after Israel completed a military pullout from the territory on September 12. Four crossing points between Gaza and Israel have been turned into official border crossings. “For Israel this is now an international border,” he said.

Israelis and foreign nationals will now need a passport to move between Israel and all parts of Gaza, and will fill out border entry forms rather than military documents as they had before, Haddad said.

Palestinians, who dispute Israel’s efforts to retain control over Gaza’s key border crossings for now after declaring an end to 38 years of military rule there, dismissed the Israeli measure to set a border as premature. “I don’t think we can classify it legally as an international border now because Gaza is not free of occupation,” said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. “I think international borders will be agreed once we finish permanent status negotiations on borders.”

Palestinians are also unhappy that Israel, citing security needs, is keeping control over Gaza’s sea-lanes and air space.
—Reuters

The latest discovery includes a ritual bath, or mikveh,
from the period of the second Jewish Temple, destroyed in 70 CE.
New Archeological Finds Near Temple Site

A First-Temple period seal has been discovered amidst piles of rubble from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday, in what could prove to be an historic find. The small—less than one cm.—seal impression, or bulla, discovered by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay amidst piles of rubble from the Temple Mount, marks the first time that a written artifact was found from the Temple Mount dating back to the First Temple period, the time of King David and King Solomon.

The 2,600-year-old artifact, with three lines in ancient Hebrew, was discovered amidst piles of rubble discarded by the Islamic Waqf that Barkay and a team of young archaeologists and volunteers are sifting through on the grounds of a Jerusalem national park. The seal predates the destruction of the First Jewish temple in 586 BCE.

Also unveiled last week was an underground archaeological site near the Western Wall, nearly a decade after the opening of an exhibit in the same area sparked widespread Palestinian rioting. The latest discovery included a ritual bath, or mikveh, from the period of the second Jewish Temple, destroyed in 70 CE, and a wall that archaeologists said dates to the first Jewish Temple, destroyed in 586 BCE. The findings strengthen Jewish ties to the shrine which is also claimed by Muslims.

The new tourist center snakes underground, adjacent to the path of the Western Wall, the last remaining retaining wall of the Temple. When the center is opened in a few weeks, visitors will be presented with a sound and light show of Jewish biblical history, highlighting recent discoveries of artifacts and infrastructure dating back thousands of years, including one of the world’s oldest aqueducts.

Israel has been conducting archaeological digs near the Western Wall since it captured East Jerusalem and its Old City in the 1967 Six Day War. The digs infuriate Palestinians and the Islamic Trust [Waqf] that oversees the mosque complex that now sits on the mountain that once held the biblical temples.

Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the site is considered so holy that many observant Jews won’t go to the site for fear of defiling it. By Muslims it is referred to as Haram as-Sharif—Noble Sanctuary—the site is now home to the Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, revered by Muslims as the place where the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The shrine, which is adjacent to the Western Wall, is one of the most sensitive in the Mideast conflict, and has often been the catalyst of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capitals.
—The Associated Press

5,000 Students to be ‘Face to Face’ Next Year
Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews Meet for Fun and Understanding

Face to Face is a program in the community of Givat Haviva near Haifa that brings together Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli high school students for encounter activities, mediation, and dialogue sessions between the two sides. The encounter experiences last 2-3 days with an ‘ice-breaker’ session to start things off. The sessions are designed to break through barriers such as lack of trust and particular assumptions that each side has for the other.

Anyone even remotely aware of the conflict in this land will have some idea of the complexity of issues involved. What many are not aware of is the further dynamic of the status of Arab Israelis, or Palestinian citizens of Israel. Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis rarely meet under normal circumstances, and there are still issues of lack of trust, tension and even violence between the two groups. Communities of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis live side-by-side, but the populations have little contact with each other.

Prior to every session the Face to Face team meets with the students. The teams consist of one Palestinian Israeli and one Jewish Israeli, each a professional group facilitator. “There are some initial problems that we must deal with in order to make the students feel more comfortable,” says the director of the program. “Often the Palestinian Israeli students are concerned about how the Jewish Israeli children will accept them and the Jewish Israeli students are often afraid of staying with the Palestinian Israeli students. We have to introduce the students to each other and try to get them to feel more at ease around each other.”

The intention of the program is to get the students to start thinking beyond the stereotypes and to help them on the way to thinking through such issues for themselves. “We stress that the students cannot ignore the problem or the existence of the other side. The problems aren’t going away and the other side is not going to disappear.”
—For more information: http://www.givathaviva.org.il

New MCC Resources Published
The Burning Issues of Our Time

Timothy and Christi Seidel, Peace Development workers based in Bethlehem, report that MCC has just released a new documentary, Children of the Nakba. It studies the nakba or ‘catastrophe’ that led to the Palestinian refugee crisis in which 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and between 700,000 and 900,000 Palestinians were expelled from their lands.

Also available on the new DVD is the award-winning MCC documentary, The Dividing Wall. The documentary should soon be available in MCC’s Online Resource Catalog: http://www.thenovgroup.com/MCC/catalog/. For more information on these refugee issues, please visit two of MCC’s partners, the Badil Resource Center at http://www.badil.org, and the Zochrot Association at http://www.nakbainhebrew.org.

The July– September 2005 edition of the MCC Peace Office Newsletter titled Christian Zionism and Peace in the Holy Land is now available online. You may locate it at http://www.mcc.org/respub/pon/PON_2005-07-01.pdf.

The MCC discussion paper Peacebuilding in Palestine/ Israel: A Discussion Paper, intended to help facilitate a conversation in communities in North America about stewardship, divestment, and economic justice, is also online at http://www.mcc.org/papers.

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The Holy Land Trust
Nonviolence Conference in Bethlehem

During the month of December, Nonviolence International in conjunction with Holy Land Trust will be organizing an International Nonviolence Conference to be held at Bethlehem University, Palestine, from December 27th-30th. The conference is to bring together members of the global nonviolent community to discuss the past, present and future of nonviolence. This will also be a unique opportunity for the global community to learn first hand about nonviolent activism in Palestine. Attendees will also have the ability to add tour options both before and after the conference to allow them to travel and see Palestine.

For information and registration visit the conference website, http://www.celebratingnv.org/

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A Call for Morally Responsible Investment:
a Non-Violent Response to the Israeli Occupation

Who Should Attend This Conference?
If you are part of an organization that has been working for a just peace in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, you may be interested in joining us as we explore and dialogue about morally responsible investment as a non-violent response to the Israeli occupation. This conference is primarily designed for organizational representatives— international, national, regional, and local.

Structure of the Conference:
In addition to the program of over 15 internationally recognized speakers, the conference will include equal time for discussion and question periods, small group workshops, non-denominational theological reflection, and networking.

Vision:
We recognize the beginnings of a global movement on Morally Responsible Investment and related economic strategies to bring a just peace in Israel-Palestine. This will be the focus of much related peace work in the coming years. Thus Canadian Friends of Sabeel seeks to draw together those working for a just peace in Israel-Palestine to explore the emerging non-violent economic strategies to achieve this end.

Conference Program & Featured Speakers:

-Dr. Hanan Ashrawi: Internationally recognized spokesperson for peace and Palestinian rights, professor at Birzeit University, first Commissioner General for the Independent Palestinian Commission for Citizens’ Rights, and former member of the PA Cabinet.
-The Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek: SABEEL Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
-Dr. Jeff Halper: Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Jerusalem.
-Shamai Leibowitz: Israeli human rights attorney from Tel Aviv; member of Courage to Rufuse and Gush Shalo.

For program and complete list of speakers, see http://www.sabeel.ca

We welcome your letters about the articles we include,
or your suggestions on other topics you would like to read about.

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