29 july 2019
The National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements said in his latest weekly report , that the Israeli occupation authorities continue the policy of ethnic cleansing and demolishing houses of Palestinians, especially in Jerusalem and its surroundings, ignoring all warnings issued by the UN, international groups and human rights organizations covered by the high court, demolished 100 apartments in Wadi Al-Homs being close to the Annexation Wall.
Worth mentioning here that the ICJ legal opinion issued on July 9th, 2004 affirmed that Israel violates the International Law and called for the removal of the wall as well as repairing damages of official and public institutions and departments, including village and municipal councils.
The buildings in question that were demolished owned by Ghaleb Abu Hadwan, Ali Hamadeh, Na’im Muslim, Ala ‘Amira, Akram Zawahra, Bilal Al-Kiswani, Rafat Obaidat, Jafar Abu Humaid, Tariq Al-ahamid and Moh’d Idris Abu Tair.
It should be noted that this area, which has been demolished by the Israeli occupation authorities fall within the areas A, taking into account that the buildings have obtained all the necessary permits, with an area estimated by 300 donums.
On the other hand, the demolition was met with widespread condemnation by humanitarian officials, Jamie McGoldrick, UNRWA Director of West Bank, Gwyn Lewis and the head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, James Henin, they asserted that Israel’s actions violated international humanitarian law, and that the policy pursued by Israel in the destruction of Palestinian property is not in line with the obligations imposed by international humanitarian law, especially the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949.
With the endless US support for the occupation government and the settlers, the USA prevented an attempt by Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa to issue a statement from the UN Security Council condemning the demolition of Palestinian homes.
On the other hand, the National Bureau welcomed McGoldrick, Lewis, Henin, Lenk and EU missions stances, which condemned the policy of demolishing Palestinian homes, and called on Israel to respect its obligations considering it as the occupying power.
The international community called on the ICC to invite General Prosecutor, Fatu Bensuda to refer the crimes of the demolition of Palestinian homes and crimes of ethnic cleansing to the judicial branch of the court as well as opening an immediate investigation. Within the same context, it warned Israel of demolishing Al-Khan Al-Ahmar village before the Knesset elections, which will be held on Sep. 17th.
Last week, the settler movement” Regaim” published large ads in the newspapers, under the headline “State of Terror Behind the Curve,” claiming that the Palestinians built 28651 new buildings in area C, which is under Israeli control according to Oslo Accord. The “Regaim” movement is calling on ministers and Knesset members to begin working immediately to prevent the establishment of a terrorists state.
Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman said that Al-Khan Al-Ahmmar is “an indication of Palestinian Authority’s control of the state’s land. On July 10, Netanyahu stated that Israel under his leadership will not repeat the mistakes of the past. “
Since 2017, the Israeli occupation authorities have facilitated the construction of about 16 new settlement outposts scattered throughout the West Bank, from the southern Hebron hills to the northern Jordan Valley, in the Gush Etzion settlement blocs between Bethlehem and Hebron, and from Matei Binyamin from Jerusalem to Ariel settlement on Salfit lands. Construction is being carried out on land that the occupation considered as “state land”, although decisions have been issued to demolish some of them, but not implemented.
The Peace Now Movement conducted a survey of 16 settlement outposts, noting that since 2012, 31 new illegal outposts have been established, including 21 farms that occupy large areas for grazing cattles. Fifteen outposts were also legitimized and turned into settlements or neighborhoods in existing settlements. In the meantime, the occupation authorities are legitimizing 35 settlement outposts.
Within the context of supporting the Israeli judiciary in general and the settlers in particular, the Judge of the Israeli Lod Court attempted to put pressure on the Israeli Attorney General’s Office to amend the indictment against a settler involved in the burning and murder of Dawabsha family in Duma, Nablus, at the end of July 2015.
Worth mentioning here that the ICJ legal opinion issued on July 9th, 2004 affirmed that Israel violates the International Law and called for the removal of the wall as well as repairing damages of official and public institutions and departments, including village and municipal councils.
The buildings in question that were demolished owned by Ghaleb Abu Hadwan, Ali Hamadeh, Na’im Muslim, Ala ‘Amira, Akram Zawahra, Bilal Al-Kiswani, Rafat Obaidat, Jafar Abu Humaid, Tariq Al-ahamid and Moh’d Idris Abu Tair.
It should be noted that this area, which has been demolished by the Israeli occupation authorities fall within the areas A, taking into account that the buildings have obtained all the necessary permits, with an area estimated by 300 donums.
On the other hand, the demolition was met with widespread condemnation by humanitarian officials, Jamie McGoldrick, UNRWA Director of West Bank, Gwyn Lewis and the head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, James Henin, they asserted that Israel’s actions violated international humanitarian law, and that the policy pursued by Israel in the destruction of Palestinian property is not in line with the obligations imposed by international humanitarian law, especially the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949.
With the endless US support for the occupation government and the settlers, the USA prevented an attempt by Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa to issue a statement from the UN Security Council condemning the demolition of Palestinian homes.
On the other hand, the National Bureau welcomed McGoldrick, Lewis, Henin, Lenk and EU missions stances, which condemned the policy of demolishing Palestinian homes, and called on Israel to respect its obligations considering it as the occupying power.
The international community called on the ICC to invite General Prosecutor, Fatu Bensuda to refer the crimes of the demolition of Palestinian homes and crimes of ethnic cleansing to the judicial branch of the court as well as opening an immediate investigation. Within the same context, it warned Israel of demolishing Al-Khan Al-Ahmar village before the Knesset elections, which will be held on Sep. 17th.
Last week, the settler movement” Regaim” published large ads in the newspapers, under the headline “State of Terror Behind the Curve,” claiming that the Palestinians built 28651 new buildings in area C, which is under Israeli control according to Oslo Accord. The “Regaim” movement is calling on ministers and Knesset members to begin working immediately to prevent the establishment of a terrorists state.
Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman said that Al-Khan Al-Ahmmar is “an indication of Palestinian Authority’s control of the state’s land. On July 10, Netanyahu stated that Israel under his leadership will not repeat the mistakes of the past. “
Since 2017, the Israeli occupation authorities have facilitated the construction of about 16 new settlement outposts scattered throughout the West Bank, from the southern Hebron hills to the northern Jordan Valley, in the Gush Etzion settlement blocs between Bethlehem and Hebron, and from Matei Binyamin from Jerusalem to Ariel settlement on Salfit lands. Construction is being carried out on land that the occupation considered as “state land”, although decisions have been issued to demolish some of them, but not implemented.
The Peace Now Movement conducted a survey of 16 settlement outposts, noting that since 2012, 31 new illegal outposts have been established, including 21 farms that occupy large areas for grazing cattles. Fifteen outposts were also legitimized and turned into settlements or neighborhoods in existing settlements. In the meantime, the occupation authorities are legitimizing 35 settlement outposts.
Within the context of supporting the Israeli judiciary in general and the settlers in particular, the Judge of the Israeli Lod Court attempted to put pressure on the Israeli Attorney General’s Office to amend the indictment against a settler involved in the burning and murder of Dawabsha family in Duma, Nablus, at the end of July 2015.
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The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) issued a report on the violations of media freedoms in Palestine during the first half of this year 2019.
The report pointed to the high number of violations that affected the media freedoms in Palestine during the first half of 2019, where “MADA” monitored and documented a total of 330 attacks compared to 277 attacks were monitored during the same period of 2018, a total increase of 53 attacks or 19%. The Israeli occupation forces and authorities committed 150 attacks (45% of the total attacks), and 115 attacks were committed by various Palestinian sides (35% of the total attacks. Most of the Palestinian attacks took place in the Gaza Strip, and 65 |
violations were committed by Facebook company, which closed pages and accounts for Palestinian journalists and writers in the West Bank and Gaza under the pretext of fighting “incitement to violence and terrorism” (20% of all attacks monitored and documented in the first half of 2019).
Despite the relative decline in the number of Israeli attacks compared to the first half of 2018, the number of Israeli attacks monitored in the first six months of the year 2019 still exceeds the average number of Israeli attacks in the past eight years.
The Israeli attacks were divided into 91 attacks in the West Bank including the occupied city of Jerusalem, and 59 attacks in the Gaza Strip. 55 of the total Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip were considered serious, because most injuries were physical injuries with live bullets and direct gas bombs, in addition to the destruction of the headquarters of two media institutions in the Gaza Strip.
The total number of physical attacks committed by the occupation army against journalists in the West Bank and Gaza was 88, constituting 59% of the total Israeli attacks, while four types of serious attacks (physical injuries, arrests, destruction of institutions and the use of journalists as human shields) reached 72% of all Israeli attacks monitored.
Regarding the Palestinian violations, there was a significant increase during the first half of 2019 compared with the same period of the previous year (increased by 67%). This was due to a large increase in the number of attacks monitored in the Gaza Strip, while a significant reduction in the number of violations in the West Bank has been observed.
A total of 27 Palestinian violations were monitored in the West Bank in the first half of 2019, with a total of 88 violations by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the same period.
The number of arrests and detentions topped the list of Palestinian violations, reaching 37 cases, noting that 16 journalists who were arrested and detained were tortured or ill-treated while in detention (15 of them in Gaza and one in the West Bank), Which is considered unprecedented for the Palestinians.
Despite the relative decline in the number of Israeli attacks compared to the first half of 2018, the number of Israeli attacks monitored in the first six months of the year 2019 still exceeds the average number of Israeli attacks in the past eight years.
The Israeli attacks were divided into 91 attacks in the West Bank including the occupied city of Jerusalem, and 59 attacks in the Gaza Strip. 55 of the total Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip were considered serious, because most injuries were physical injuries with live bullets and direct gas bombs, in addition to the destruction of the headquarters of two media institutions in the Gaza Strip.
The total number of physical attacks committed by the occupation army against journalists in the West Bank and Gaza was 88, constituting 59% of the total Israeli attacks, while four types of serious attacks (physical injuries, arrests, destruction of institutions and the use of journalists as human shields) reached 72% of all Israeli attacks monitored.
Regarding the Palestinian violations, there was a significant increase during the first half of 2019 compared with the same period of the previous year (increased by 67%). This was due to a large increase in the number of attacks monitored in the Gaza Strip, while a significant reduction in the number of violations in the West Bank has been observed.
A total of 27 Palestinian violations were monitored in the West Bank in the first half of 2019, with a total of 88 violations by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the same period.
The number of arrests and detentions topped the list of Palestinian violations, reaching 37 cases, noting that 16 journalists who were arrested and detained were tortured or ill-treated while in detention (15 of them in Gaza and one in the West Bank), Which is considered unprecedented for the Palestinians.
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A new report by the group ‘Forensic Architecture’ has found that widespread pesticide contamination from Israel into Gaza has occurred over decades, severely impacting the food grown in Gaza.
The full report follows below: Staging the terrain Over three decades, in tandem with the Madrid and Oslo negotiation processes, the occupied Gaza Strip has been slowly isolated from the rest of Palestine and the outside world, and subjected to repeated Israeli military incursions. These incursions intensified from September 2003 to the fall of 2014, during which Israel launched at least 24 separate military operations targeting Gaza, giving shape to its surrounding borders today. |
The borders around Gaza—one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth—continue to be hardened and heightened into a sophisticated system of under- and overground fences, forts, and surveillance technologies. Part of this system has been the production of an enforced and expanding military no-go area—or ‘buffer zone’—on the Palestinian side of the border.
Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential lands by the Israel military along the eastern border of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides.
This ongoing practice has not only destroyed entire swaths of formerly arable land along the border fence, but also crops and farmlands hundreds of metres deep into Palestinian territory, resulting in the loss of livelihoods for Gazan farmers.
Tractors flattening land for the ‘buffer zone’ in eastern Gaza, in 2018. (Shourideh C. Molavi and Ain Media Gaza)Working closely with the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Tel Aviv-based Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Haifa, Forensic Architecture examined the environmental and legal implications of the Israeli practice of aerial spraying of herbicides along the Gaza border.
(Read the press release from Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement here.)
To this end, our investigation sought to answer the following questions: how do airborne herbicides travel into Gaza? How far into Gaza does it enter?
What is the concentration of the herbicide that drifts into Gaza? And what is the damage to the farmland on the Gazan side of the border?
Weaponising the wind
Our analysis of several first-hand videos, collected in the field, reveals that aerial spraying by commercial crop-dusters flying on the Israeli side of the border mobilises the wind to carry the chemicals into the Gaza Strip, at damaging concentrations.
The videos support the testimonies of farmers that, prior to spraying, the Israeli military uses the smoke from a burning tire to confirm the westerly direction of the wind, thereby carrying the herbicides from Israel into Gaza.
Our investigation shows that each spray leaves behind a unique destructive signature. No two aerial sprays will have the same effect, nor can their damage be reasonably predicted by the army, since the location where the toxic chemicals land, and their respective concentrations, depend heavily on the direction and speed of the wind relative to the flight path of the aircraft.
This practice weaponises herbicide spraying as a belligerent act, designed to ‘enable optimal and continuous security operations’.
Farm warfare
In November 2016, in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by the NGO Gisha, the Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed that aerial herbicides are sprayed along the width of the perimeter of Gaza. Aerial spraying is conducted between the Erez crossing in the north and Kerem Shalom in the south, over an estimated area of 12,000 dunums (12 square kilometres).
The Israeli government’s response to an FOI request filed by the NGO Gisha. (Gisha)Following the advice of a contracted civilian agronomist, Israeli military spraying is conducted during key harvest periods, targeting spring and summer crops. Working with the private Israeli civilian aviation firm Chim-Nir (כימ-ניר), the army’s destruction of vegetation along the eastern perimeter is carried out in a continuous manner, using two aircrafts simultaneously, each equipped with a GPS system to enable precision.
The Ministry of Defense also confirmed that the Israeli military sprays a combination of three herbicides: Glyphosate, Oxyfluorfen (Oxygal) and Diuron (Diurex).
Glyphosate, formulated as ‘Roundup’, is the most widely-used herbicide in the world, leaving traces in soil, foodstuffs, air, and water, as well as human urine. Roundup is the flagship product of the Monsanto Company, a leading agricultural chemicals business that previously produced herbicides and defoliants used by the US military in Vietnam.
In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s Cancer Research Agency classified glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’. Since then, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency have ruled it safe for use, although a number of European environmental groups have opposed this ruling.
Oxyfluorfen, formulated as ‘Oxygal’, is manufactured by the Israeli company Tapazol Chemical Works Ltd, and suppresses the growth of certain broad-leaf and grassy weeds. According to the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by Tapazol, Oxygal can cause ‘severe irritation’ upon contact with skin or eyes, and must be ‘kept out of water supplies and sewers’.
The Ministry claimed that it is ‘not carrying out any aerial spraying over the area of the Gaza Strip… [but] only over the territory of the State of Israel along the security barrier’. Citing Israel’s Plant Protection Law, 5716-1956, the Ministry claimed that its spraying practices along the Gaza border are identical to aerial spraying carried out in other Israeli-controlled areas.
However, wind direction is a key factor that determines the movement of aerial herbicides from the purportedly-targeted area, and when effective drift control techniques are not applied, the Israeli army cannot mitigate the reach of those chemicals into Gazan farmland.
Plant scientists have noted that under similar environmental conditions, and with all sprayers adjusted properly, herbicide drift is ‘generally greater from aerial application than from ground application’; the use of ground-based field crop sprayers through tractors reduces the likelihood of extensive drift.
The Israeli military has confirmed that it sprayed aerial herbicides at least thirty times in along the border with Gaza in the period from November 2014 to December 2018. The spring of 2019 season was the first spring season during which the military has not conducted aerial spraying in the past four years.
To date, no Palestinian farmers have ever been compensated for damages to their crops.
Tracking a single spraying
On 5 April 2017, standing on the Gazan side of the border area near Khan Younes, a fieldworker with the NGO Gisha recorded a video of an Israeli crop-dusters spraying herbicides.
Palestinian farmers in the area reported concerns that their crops would be damaged as a result of this spraying, once it was carried by the wind, considering that crops had already been harmed in a previous round of spraying that took place only months prior. Further, most of the crops in the area had been recently sown, making them particularly susceptible to damage from herbicide spraying.
To determine the unique destructive signature of this spraying event, we threaded together evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, the testimony of civilians living and working in the area, and the nature of the environmental elements mobilised in the event.
We identified the plane spraying herbicides along the eastern border of Gaza as a Model S2R-T34 Turbo Thrush.
Using the GPS location of the videographer as recorded on their smartphone, we were able to establish the camera’s cone of vision by comparing the dimensions of visible landmarks, such as a watchtower. Through a process of camera calibration we found the location of the plane and used motion-tracking to model its path, in time and space, as it sprayed.
Our analysis revealed that before each spray, the plane dives to roughly 20m altitude to get closer to the ground. Each spray goes on for a duration of 2–5 seconds, covering the area to be fumigated by travelling back and forth in linear paths.
For the spraying that took place on 5 April 2017, we were able to identify six such spraying paths during the course of the two videos. All six of the sprayings were conducted on the Israeli side, close to the eastern border of Gaza.
Drift analysis
With the assistance of a fluid dynamics expert, Dr Salvador Navarro-Martinez, we sought to determine the extent and concentration of herbicide drift.
To this end, each spray event was simulated using our flight path reconstruction, the local topology, the injector systems fixed to the plane, and meteorological conditions at the time of spraying. We then collected key variables such as wind direction and speed, droplet distribution, and ground chemical deposition to determine the extent of the drift.
The results showed that as the wind moves across the path of the herbicide spray, it carries chemicals westward that are then deposited onto Gazan farmland. The simulation indicates that for the spraying on 5 April, harmful concentrations of herbicide drift reached in excess of 300m into Gaza. This confirms that Palestinian crops could have been harmed as a result of herbicide drift.
Satellite imagery analysis
Analysis of satellite imagery corroborates the findings of our drift simulation. We compared satellite imagery 5 days after the spraying, and 15 days after the spraying, to reveal visual indicators for the presence and health of vegetation. When the two analyses are overlaid with one another, vegetation degradation becomes visible across much of the same area potentially affected by herbicide drift.
These findings suggest that herbicides carried by winds during and after the Israeli military spraying on 5 April contributed to the degradation of vegetation on the Gazan side of the border, in Khan Younes. We believe that these findings are largely generalisable, since similar vegetation degradation is also visible in other areas in Gaza which are close to the border and in the vicinity of known Israeli target areas for aerial herbicide spraying.
Ground truth
Following another confirmed spraying flight by the Israeli military on 9 and 10 January 2018, also in the Khan Younes area, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture actively surveyed dozens of farms that had reported crop damage. Gazan farmers living hundreds of metres away from the border reported damage to crops totaling 250 acres following the January spraying.
Three days after another spraying in December 2018, we gathered similar samples of leaves that exhibited characteristic damage from a contact herbicide.
Leafy crops sampled from two locations along the border with Israel in East Gaza and Juhor ad Dik, hundreds of metres into Gaza, revealed visible damage from fungal pathogens, insect feeding, and possible herbicide drift carried by the wind into Gaza. Corroborating human testimony on the ground, leaves of plants along the Israel-Gaza border function like sensors, recording memories of environmental violence.
Aerial spraying: Less control, unpredictable damage
When analysing the elements of a single spraying event on 5 April 2017, the testimonies of farmers, satellite imagery, and drift analysis we have gathered all confirm that agricultural lands more than 300m from Gaza’s eastern border experienced damage, and with concentrations of herbicides above the recommended amounts for drift, according to the European Union.
Evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, civilian testimony, and the environmental elements mobilized in the spraying event all correspond to show that the Israeli practice of aerial fumigation at times when the wind is blowing into Gaza causes damage to farmland hundreds of metres inside the besieged strip.
This confirms that as a practice for the clearing of vegetation, aerial spraying causes indiscriminate damage: the effects are less readily controllable, and the extent of damage to Palestinian farmland per spray is largely unpredictable. As such, the Israeli military cannot guarantee the reach of the chemicals it sprays by air, nor ensure that those chemicals remain proportionate to the declared objective of improving visibility for security operations.
Israeli military authorities continue to reject calls to end the practice of aerial herbicide spraying along the border with the Gaza Strip. Israel does not coordinate or share the proposed timing of planned operations with the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, the International Committee of the Red Cross, or with Gazan farmers, a practice which could mitigate some of the harm to those farmers’ property, and possibly to the surrounding environment as well.
Damage to land, health and livelihoods
The inability to control both the effects and reach of this ongoing military practice along the eastern border enacts a heavy price on Gaza’s farming community and the broader civilian population.
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that between 2014 and 2018, herbicide spraying damaged upwards of 13,000 dunams of farmland in Gaza. The NGO Al-Mezan has further warned [pdf] that, in addition to crop damage, the long-term consumption by livestock of plants affected by the sprayed chemicals has negative effects that may harm the health of humans who then consume meat from those livestock.
In the context of an ongoing Israeli blockade—with restrictions on the movement of people and goods into Gaza, and diminishing possibilities for farmers to cultivate land, maintain livelihoods, raise livestock, and to fish—the agricultural lands along Gaza’s eastern border are an important part of the food security of its population.
Eruptive violence
Along with the regular bulldozing and flattening of residential and farm land, aerial herbicide spraying is one part of a slow process of ‘desertification’, that has transformed a once lush and agriculturally active border zone into parched ground, cleared of vegetation.
These practices have provided the Israeli military with visibility along the eastern border of Gaza—a visibility that has also left Palestinian civilians, including farmers, youth and families, further exposed to Israeli fire from hundreds of metres away.
The slow violence of spatial degradation through the mobilisation of environmental elements thus accelerates into an eruptive violence.
Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential lands by the Israel military along the eastern border of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides.
This ongoing practice has not only destroyed entire swaths of formerly arable land along the border fence, but also crops and farmlands hundreds of metres deep into Palestinian territory, resulting in the loss of livelihoods for Gazan farmers.
Tractors flattening land for the ‘buffer zone’ in eastern Gaza, in 2018. (Shourideh C. Molavi and Ain Media Gaza)Working closely with the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Tel Aviv-based Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Haifa, Forensic Architecture examined the environmental and legal implications of the Israeli practice of aerial spraying of herbicides along the Gaza border.
(Read the press release from Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement here.)
To this end, our investigation sought to answer the following questions: how do airborne herbicides travel into Gaza? How far into Gaza does it enter?
What is the concentration of the herbicide that drifts into Gaza? And what is the damage to the farmland on the Gazan side of the border?
Weaponising the wind
Our analysis of several first-hand videos, collected in the field, reveals that aerial spraying by commercial crop-dusters flying on the Israeli side of the border mobilises the wind to carry the chemicals into the Gaza Strip, at damaging concentrations.
The videos support the testimonies of farmers that, prior to spraying, the Israeli military uses the smoke from a burning tire to confirm the westerly direction of the wind, thereby carrying the herbicides from Israel into Gaza.
Our investigation shows that each spray leaves behind a unique destructive signature. No two aerial sprays will have the same effect, nor can their damage be reasonably predicted by the army, since the location where the toxic chemicals land, and their respective concentrations, depend heavily on the direction and speed of the wind relative to the flight path of the aircraft.
This practice weaponises herbicide spraying as a belligerent act, designed to ‘enable optimal and continuous security operations’.
Farm warfare
In November 2016, in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by the NGO Gisha, the Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed that aerial herbicides are sprayed along the width of the perimeter of Gaza. Aerial spraying is conducted between the Erez crossing in the north and Kerem Shalom in the south, over an estimated area of 12,000 dunums (12 square kilometres).
The Israeli government’s response to an FOI request filed by the NGO Gisha. (Gisha)Following the advice of a contracted civilian agronomist, Israeli military spraying is conducted during key harvest periods, targeting spring and summer crops. Working with the private Israeli civilian aviation firm Chim-Nir (כימ-ניר), the army’s destruction of vegetation along the eastern perimeter is carried out in a continuous manner, using two aircrafts simultaneously, each equipped with a GPS system to enable precision.
The Ministry of Defense also confirmed that the Israeli military sprays a combination of three herbicides: Glyphosate, Oxyfluorfen (Oxygal) and Diuron (Diurex).
Glyphosate, formulated as ‘Roundup’, is the most widely-used herbicide in the world, leaving traces in soil, foodstuffs, air, and water, as well as human urine. Roundup is the flagship product of the Monsanto Company, a leading agricultural chemicals business that previously produced herbicides and defoliants used by the US military in Vietnam.
In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s Cancer Research Agency classified glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’. Since then, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency have ruled it safe for use, although a number of European environmental groups have opposed this ruling.
Oxyfluorfen, formulated as ‘Oxygal’, is manufactured by the Israeli company Tapazol Chemical Works Ltd, and suppresses the growth of certain broad-leaf and grassy weeds. According to the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by Tapazol, Oxygal can cause ‘severe irritation’ upon contact with skin or eyes, and must be ‘kept out of water supplies and sewers’.
The Ministry claimed that it is ‘not carrying out any aerial spraying over the area of the Gaza Strip… [but] only over the territory of the State of Israel along the security barrier’. Citing Israel’s Plant Protection Law, 5716-1956, the Ministry claimed that its spraying practices along the Gaza border are identical to aerial spraying carried out in other Israeli-controlled areas.
However, wind direction is a key factor that determines the movement of aerial herbicides from the purportedly-targeted area, and when effective drift control techniques are not applied, the Israeli army cannot mitigate the reach of those chemicals into Gazan farmland.
Plant scientists have noted that under similar environmental conditions, and with all sprayers adjusted properly, herbicide drift is ‘generally greater from aerial application than from ground application’; the use of ground-based field crop sprayers through tractors reduces the likelihood of extensive drift.
The Israeli military has confirmed that it sprayed aerial herbicides at least thirty times in along the border with Gaza in the period from November 2014 to December 2018. The spring of 2019 season was the first spring season during which the military has not conducted aerial spraying in the past four years.
To date, no Palestinian farmers have ever been compensated for damages to their crops.
Tracking a single spraying
On 5 April 2017, standing on the Gazan side of the border area near Khan Younes, a fieldworker with the NGO Gisha recorded a video of an Israeli crop-dusters spraying herbicides.
Palestinian farmers in the area reported concerns that their crops would be damaged as a result of this spraying, once it was carried by the wind, considering that crops had already been harmed in a previous round of spraying that took place only months prior. Further, most of the crops in the area had been recently sown, making them particularly susceptible to damage from herbicide spraying.
To determine the unique destructive signature of this spraying event, we threaded together evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, the testimony of civilians living and working in the area, and the nature of the environmental elements mobilised in the event.
We identified the plane spraying herbicides along the eastern border of Gaza as a Model S2R-T34 Turbo Thrush.
Using the GPS location of the videographer as recorded on their smartphone, we were able to establish the camera’s cone of vision by comparing the dimensions of visible landmarks, such as a watchtower. Through a process of camera calibration we found the location of the plane and used motion-tracking to model its path, in time and space, as it sprayed.
Our analysis revealed that before each spray, the plane dives to roughly 20m altitude to get closer to the ground. Each spray goes on for a duration of 2–5 seconds, covering the area to be fumigated by travelling back and forth in linear paths.
For the spraying that took place on 5 April 2017, we were able to identify six such spraying paths during the course of the two videos. All six of the sprayings were conducted on the Israeli side, close to the eastern border of Gaza.
Drift analysis
With the assistance of a fluid dynamics expert, Dr Salvador Navarro-Martinez, we sought to determine the extent and concentration of herbicide drift.
To this end, each spray event was simulated using our flight path reconstruction, the local topology, the injector systems fixed to the plane, and meteorological conditions at the time of spraying. We then collected key variables such as wind direction and speed, droplet distribution, and ground chemical deposition to determine the extent of the drift.
The results showed that as the wind moves across the path of the herbicide spray, it carries chemicals westward that are then deposited onto Gazan farmland. The simulation indicates that for the spraying on 5 April, harmful concentrations of herbicide drift reached in excess of 300m into Gaza. This confirms that Palestinian crops could have been harmed as a result of herbicide drift.
Satellite imagery analysis
Analysis of satellite imagery corroborates the findings of our drift simulation. We compared satellite imagery 5 days after the spraying, and 15 days after the spraying, to reveal visual indicators for the presence and health of vegetation. When the two analyses are overlaid with one another, vegetation degradation becomes visible across much of the same area potentially affected by herbicide drift.
These findings suggest that herbicides carried by winds during and after the Israeli military spraying on 5 April contributed to the degradation of vegetation on the Gazan side of the border, in Khan Younes. We believe that these findings are largely generalisable, since similar vegetation degradation is also visible in other areas in Gaza which are close to the border and in the vicinity of known Israeli target areas for aerial herbicide spraying.
Ground truth
Following another confirmed spraying flight by the Israeli military on 9 and 10 January 2018, also in the Khan Younes area, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture actively surveyed dozens of farms that had reported crop damage. Gazan farmers living hundreds of metres away from the border reported damage to crops totaling 250 acres following the January spraying.
Three days after another spraying in December 2018, we gathered similar samples of leaves that exhibited characteristic damage from a contact herbicide.
Leafy crops sampled from two locations along the border with Israel in East Gaza and Juhor ad Dik, hundreds of metres into Gaza, revealed visible damage from fungal pathogens, insect feeding, and possible herbicide drift carried by the wind into Gaza. Corroborating human testimony on the ground, leaves of plants along the Israel-Gaza border function like sensors, recording memories of environmental violence.
Aerial spraying: Less control, unpredictable damage
When analysing the elements of a single spraying event on 5 April 2017, the testimonies of farmers, satellite imagery, and drift analysis we have gathered all confirm that agricultural lands more than 300m from Gaza’s eastern border experienced damage, and with concentrations of herbicides above the recommended amounts for drift, according to the European Union.
Evidence derived from vegetation on the ground, civilian testimony, and the environmental elements mobilized in the spraying event all correspond to show that the Israeli practice of aerial fumigation at times when the wind is blowing into Gaza causes damage to farmland hundreds of metres inside the besieged strip.
This confirms that as a practice for the clearing of vegetation, aerial spraying causes indiscriminate damage: the effects are less readily controllable, and the extent of damage to Palestinian farmland per spray is largely unpredictable. As such, the Israeli military cannot guarantee the reach of the chemicals it sprays by air, nor ensure that those chemicals remain proportionate to the declared objective of improving visibility for security operations.
Israeli military authorities continue to reject calls to end the practice of aerial herbicide spraying along the border with the Gaza Strip. Israel does not coordinate or share the proposed timing of planned operations with the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, the International Committee of the Red Cross, or with Gazan farmers, a practice which could mitigate some of the harm to those farmers’ property, and possibly to the surrounding environment as well.
Damage to land, health and livelihoods
The inability to control both the effects and reach of this ongoing military practice along the eastern border enacts a heavy price on Gaza’s farming community and the broader civilian population.
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that between 2014 and 2018, herbicide spraying damaged upwards of 13,000 dunams of farmland in Gaza. The NGO Al-Mezan has further warned [pdf] that, in addition to crop damage, the long-term consumption by livestock of plants affected by the sprayed chemicals has negative effects that may harm the health of humans who then consume meat from those livestock.
In the context of an ongoing Israeli blockade—with restrictions on the movement of people and goods into Gaza, and diminishing possibilities for farmers to cultivate land, maintain livelihoods, raise livestock, and to fish—the agricultural lands along Gaza’s eastern border are an important part of the food security of its population.
Eruptive violence
Along with the regular bulldozing and flattening of residential and farm land, aerial herbicide spraying is one part of a slow process of ‘desertification’, that has transformed a once lush and agriculturally active border zone into parched ground, cleared of vegetation.
These practices have provided the Israeli military with visibility along the eastern border of Gaza—a visibility that has also left Palestinian civilians, including farmers, youth and families, further exposed to Israeli fire from hundreds of metres away.
The slow violence of spatial degradation through the mobilisation of environmental elements thus accelerates into an eruptive violence.
Israel’s unlawful open-fire policy during the demonstrations along the Gaza perimeter fence – which were upheld by the Supreme Court – have so far resulted in hundreds of Palestinian deaths and thousands of injuries.
Official sources now admit that they were well aware that people were being killed when even the State did not claim that this is justified.
Despite this, no-one has taken action to amend the open-fire regulations. Instead, the military continued with its trial-and-error approach, ignoring the fact that human lives were at stake: people whose lives have been taken, and families who have been permanently devastated.
Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency reports that on 22 July, 2019, it emerged that the officials were fully aware, at every stage, of the gulf between their declarations and reality.
Carmela Menashe, a reporter for Kan News, reported that the military has now decided to change the open-fire regulations for snipers “after it emerged that firing at the lower limbs above the knee led, in most cases, to death, despite the fact that this was not the objective.
Going forward, soldiers have been briefed to shoot below the knee and then at the ankle.” A senior officer at the military’s Counter-Terrorism School stated that the snipers’ objective “is not to kill but to injure, and accordingly one of the lessons learned related to the direction toward which they fire…
At first, we told them to shoot at the leg. We saw that this can result in fatalities, so we told them to shoot below the knee, then we fine-tuned the regulations to shooting at the ankle.”
The decision to change the regulations only now, after more than a year during which they led to the deaths of at least 206 Palestinians, including 37 minors, and the injury of thousands, in no way suggests that the military attaches great value to human life.
On the contrary, it shows that the military consciously chose not to regard those standing on the other side of the fence as humans. In its naivety, the High Court of Justice approved this practice. Both the military and the courts bear the responsibility for this criminal policy.
Background
In March of 2018, thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip began demonstrating along the fence that separates Gaza from Israel, demanding an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip and the implementation of the right of return. From the outset, following the announcement of the first demonstration, Israel portrayed the protests as an existential threat to the state and regarded the participants as dangerous terrorists.
As a result of this approach, the military implemented lethal open-fire regulations from the first day of the protests: regulations that are patently unlawful and immoral.
As part of this policy, the military permitted the use of live fire against demonstrators on the other side of the fence and posed no danger to anyone, certainly not the armed and well-protected security forces stationed at a considerable distance from them.
B’Tselem urged soldiers to refuse to obey these regulations and to refrain from shooting at unarmed protestors.
The regulation were legally challenged at the High Court of Justice. In its response to the petition, the State defended the regulations, declaring that “there can be no doubt regarding their legality.”
The State emphasized that the regulations were approved by the Military Advocate General and the Attorney General, and that they permit live fire “solely in order to address violent disturbances that present a clear and present danger to IDF forces or to Israeli civilians.”
The State added that “the rules permit precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace.”
The State further added that “there is an orderly process in place for operational debriefing and implementation of lessons learned; ” that “forces have been provided with clarifications and highlights designed to further limit, insofar as possible, the scope of injuries;” and that incidents involving fatalities have been referred for “review by the General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessments which investigates exceptional incidents.”
The Court accepted this position verbatim and made no attempt to challenge it. Supreme Court Vice President, Justice Hanan Melcer, held that the regulations permit live fire solely when “there is an immediate, clear and present danger to IDF forces or Israeli civilians,” and allow only “precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace, with the goal of eliminating the anticipated imminent danger.”
Supreme Court President Esther Hayut concurred with Justice Melcer, similarly accepting each and every one of the State’s claims regarding the great caution the military exercises in the use of life fire, “in order to minimize as far as possible the potential harm to uninvolved civilians who participate in [the demonstrations].”
In the months since the beginning of the demonstrations, a gap between the State’s claims and the horrifying outcomes of the actual implementation of the unlawful open-fire regulations approved by the High Court grew wider. To date, the military has killed at least 206 Palestinian demonstrators using live fire, 37 of whom were minors under the age of 18.
According to figures published by OCHA, more than 7,800 Palestinians have been injured by live fire. According to the World Health Organization, physicians have had to perform amputations in 139 cases – 30 of which involved minors and 121 involved the lower limbs. Moreover, 24 people have been left paralyzed as the result of spinal injuries.
Human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, as well as various media outlets, reported these outcomes in real time.
Despite this, officials refused to change the open-fire regulations, persistently repeating that the regulations are legal and proportionate, and that they permit live fire only as a last resort, in the absence of any other alternative.
Official sources now admit that they were well aware that people were being killed when even the State did not claim that this is justified.
Despite this, no-one has taken action to amend the open-fire regulations. Instead, the military continued with its trial-and-error approach, ignoring the fact that human lives were at stake: people whose lives have been taken, and families who have been permanently devastated.
Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency reports that on 22 July, 2019, it emerged that the officials were fully aware, at every stage, of the gulf between their declarations and reality.
Carmela Menashe, a reporter for Kan News, reported that the military has now decided to change the open-fire regulations for snipers “after it emerged that firing at the lower limbs above the knee led, in most cases, to death, despite the fact that this was not the objective.
Going forward, soldiers have been briefed to shoot below the knee and then at the ankle.” A senior officer at the military’s Counter-Terrorism School stated that the snipers’ objective “is not to kill but to injure, and accordingly one of the lessons learned related to the direction toward which they fire…
At first, we told them to shoot at the leg. We saw that this can result in fatalities, so we told them to shoot below the knee, then we fine-tuned the regulations to shooting at the ankle.”
The decision to change the regulations only now, after more than a year during which they led to the deaths of at least 206 Palestinians, including 37 minors, and the injury of thousands, in no way suggests that the military attaches great value to human life.
On the contrary, it shows that the military consciously chose not to regard those standing on the other side of the fence as humans. In its naivety, the High Court of Justice approved this practice. Both the military and the courts bear the responsibility for this criminal policy.
Background
In March of 2018, thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip began demonstrating along the fence that separates Gaza from Israel, demanding an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip and the implementation of the right of return. From the outset, following the announcement of the first demonstration, Israel portrayed the protests as an existential threat to the state and regarded the participants as dangerous terrorists.
As a result of this approach, the military implemented lethal open-fire regulations from the first day of the protests: regulations that are patently unlawful and immoral.
As part of this policy, the military permitted the use of live fire against demonstrators on the other side of the fence and posed no danger to anyone, certainly not the armed and well-protected security forces stationed at a considerable distance from them.
B’Tselem urged soldiers to refuse to obey these regulations and to refrain from shooting at unarmed protestors.
The regulation were legally challenged at the High Court of Justice. In its response to the petition, the State defended the regulations, declaring that “there can be no doubt regarding their legality.”
The State emphasized that the regulations were approved by the Military Advocate General and the Attorney General, and that they permit live fire “solely in order to address violent disturbances that present a clear and present danger to IDF forces or to Israeli civilians.”
The State added that “the rules permit precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace.”
The State further added that “there is an orderly process in place for operational debriefing and implementation of lessons learned; ” that “forces have been provided with clarifications and highlights designed to further limit, insofar as possible, the scope of injuries;” and that incidents involving fatalities have been referred for “review by the General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessments which investigates exceptional incidents.”
The Court accepted this position verbatim and made no attempt to challenge it. Supreme Court Vice President, Justice Hanan Melcer, held that the regulations permit live fire solely when “there is an immediate, clear and present danger to IDF forces or Israeli civilians,” and allow only “precise fire at the legs of a main rioter or main instigator in order to eliminate the danger from the violence disturbance of the peace, with the goal of eliminating the anticipated imminent danger.”
Supreme Court President Esther Hayut concurred with Justice Melcer, similarly accepting each and every one of the State’s claims regarding the great caution the military exercises in the use of life fire, “in order to minimize as far as possible the potential harm to uninvolved civilians who participate in [the demonstrations].”
In the months since the beginning of the demonstrations, a gap between the State’s claims and the horrifying outcomes of the actual implementation of the unlawful open-fire regulations approved by the High Court grew wider. To date, the military has killed at least 206 Palestinian demonstrators using live fire, 37 of whom were minors under the age of 18.
According to figures published by OCHA, more than 7,800 Palestinians have been injured by live fire. According to the World Health Organization, physicians have had to perform amputations in 139 cases – 30 of which involved minors and 121 involved the lower limbs. Moreover, 24 people have been left paralyzed as the result of spinal injuries.
Human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, as well as various media outlets, reported these outcomes in real time.
Despite this, officials refused to change the open-fire regulations, persistently repeating that the regulations are legal and proportionate, and that they permit live fire only as a last resort, in the absence of any other alternative.
28 july 2019
Palestinian children hold posters of Mohammed Halabi, the Gaza director of World Vision, during a 2016 protest in Rafah to support him
In recent years, a crackdown by Israeli authorities on human rights NGOs – particularly those focused on Palestinian rights – has caused considerable concern internationally, attracting attention in both the media and at the governmental level.
Yet, perhaps the most egregious case of Israel’s targeting of the humanitarian sector has been taking place over the last three years with almost zero coverage.
In June 2016, Israeli authorities arrested Mohammed Halabi at the Gaza Strip’s Erez crossing. Halabi, a father of five, was working as the Gaza director for the international humanitarian NGO World Vision, and was returning from a meeting in Jerusalem at the time of his arrest.
Alarm bells ringing
Seven weeks later, Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, announced with much fanfare spectacular charges against Halabi – namely, that he had used his role to redirect tens of millions in World Vision funds to Hamas, as part of a decade-long conspiracy to infiltrate the charity.
Incredibly, however, three years on, there has been no conviction. The trial has seen some 120 court sessions, in what has been described by the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs as “one of the longest trials” ever. Halabi maintains his innocence.
Alarm bells should have been ringing from the start – in particular, due to the appalling conditions Halabi has been subjected to, and the ongoing denial of his right to due process. After his detention, the World Vision staffer was held for three weeks without access to a lawyer (the maximum such period in non-“security” cases is 48 hours).
Halabi, his family, and lawyers have provided multiple and credible accounts of torture at the hands of Shin Bet interrogators – indeed, even “several witnesses the prosecution has presented to court have also accused Israeli intelligence officers of torturing them during interrogation”.
Local and global human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have long recorded the routine use of torture by Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, as documented by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Halabi’s lawyer was only given access “to all previously undisclosed evidence one year and a half after the start of the trial” and “permitted to start examining defence witnesses 24 months into the trial”.
In addition, Halabi reportedly “never receives accurate translations of the court proceedings”, and Israel has also refused to allow his lawyer “to visit Gaza and meet witnesses who could bolster his case” or to grant permits for witnesses to come and testify in court.
Judicial farce
Extraordinarily, in March 2017, the judge himself urged Halabi to accept a plea deal, on the grounds that Palestinian suspects in “security” cases are almost always convicted: “You’ve read the numbers and the statistics,” the judge told him. “You know how these issues are handled.”
But it’s not just the judicial farce that undermines the case against Halabi; it is also the matter of the evidence, or lack thereof. After World Vision pointed out that the amount of money allegedly diverted to Hamas exceeded the NGO’s total budget, an Israeli government spokesperson said the exact figures were irrelevant.
In recent years, a crackdown by Israeli authorities on human rights NGOs – particularly those focused on Palestinian rights – has caused considerable concern internationally, attracting attention in both the media and at the governmental level.
Yet, perhaps the most egregious case of Israel’s targeting of the humanitarian sector has been taking place over the last three years with almost zero coverage.
In June 2016, Israeli authorities arrested Mohammed Halabi at the Gaza Strip’s Erez crossing. Halabi, a father of five, was working as the Gaza director for the international humanitarian NGO World Vision, and was returning from a meeting in Jerusalem at the time of his arrest.
Alarm bells ringing
Seven weeks later, Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, announced with much fanfare spectacular charges against Halabi – namely, that he had used his role to redirect tens of millions in World Vision funds to Hamas, as part of a decade-long conspiracy to infiltrate the charity.
Incredibly, however, three years on, there has been no conviction. The trial has seen some 120 court sessions, in what has been described by the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs as “one of the longest trials” ever. Halabi maintains his innocence.
Alarm bells should have been ringing from the start – in particular, due to the appalling conditions Halabi has been subjected to, and the ongoing denial of his right to due process. After his detention, the World Vision staffer was held for three weeks without access to a lawyer (the maximum such period in non-“security” cases is 48 hours).
Halabi, his family, and lawyers have provided multiple and credible accounts of torture at the hands of Shin Bet interrogators – indeed, even “several witnesses the prosecution has presented to court have also accused Israeli intelligence officers of torturing them during interrogation”.
Local and global human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have long recorded the routine use of torture by Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, as documented by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Halabi’s lawyer was only given access “to all previously undisclosed evidence one year and a half after the start of the trial” and “permitted to start examining defence witnesses 24 months into the trial”.
In addition, Halabi reportedly “never receives accurate translations of the court proceedings”, and Israel has also refused to allow his lawyer “to visit Gaza and meet witnesses who could bolster his case” or to grant permits for witnesses to come and testify in court.
Judicial farce
Extraordinarily, in March 2017, the judge himself urged Halabi to accept a plea deal, on the grounds that Palestinian suspects in “security” cases are almost always convicted: “You’ve read the numbers and the statistics,” the judge told him. “You know how these issues are handled.”
But it’s not just the judicial farce that undermines the case against Halabi; it is also the matter of the evidence, or lack thereof. After World Vision pointed out that the amount of money allegedly diverted to Hamas exceeded the NGO’s total budget, an Israeli government spokesperson said the exact figures were irrelevant.
Halabi appears in an Israeli court in Beersheva in August 2016
In August 2016, “Western diplomats” told Haaretz that they had not received any intelligence or evidence about Halabi. The following year, an Australian government investigation “found no evidence taxpayer money was misused by the World Vision NGO in the Gaza Strip”.
World Vision, which initiated two separate inquiries – carried out by Deloitte for World Vision International, and Ernst and Young for World Vision Australia – reiterated as recently as May that it had still not seen “any evidence” to support the Israeli authorities’ allegations.
Comments by multiple sources – including World Vision, Israeli media, and Halabi’s family – suggest a key role might have been played by an ex-World Vision employee who “bore a grudge” after being fired by Halabi. Having left Gaza, the individual is allegedly “now acting as a witness in the Israeli case”.
Confession under torture
In the immediate aftermath of the indictments being announced, a senior Israeli official declared that “the evidence is the confession of the detainee”. This “confession” was obtained from Halabi when he had no legal representation and was subject to torture – and one that he subsequently retracted.
So, what is going on here?
The 2016 indictments were headline news internationally, and Israeli officials went to great efforts to publicise the allegations among journalists and diplomats.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan claimed the indictments proved substantial links between aid groups and “terrorist” organisations, adding for good measure: “I imagine that in the World Vision organisation, which is very anti-Israeli, they turned a blind eye.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry focused on “spread[ing] the news …among liberal and religious groups who support World Vision”, and the ministry’s then-director, Dore Gold, wrote to foreign ministries around the world, baldly asserting that Halabi “is actually a major figure in the Hamas terrorist organisation”.
Even as the court case drags on, Israel and its supporters have repeated the accusations against Halabi as fact, as part of a broader agenda. A recent publication [pdf] by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, for example, cites the unproven allegations as proof of “international relief organisations” having ties with Hamas. NGO Monitor, a serial harasser of civil society groups, states on its website that Halabi was “revealed … to be a Hamas terrorist”.
Disturbing silenceIncreasing attention is being paid to the deteriorating atmosphere for human rights groups at the hands of Israeli authorities; even a UK minister recently acknowledged reports of “pressure exerted against NGOs, particularly those critical of Israel’s conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories”.
But while examples such as the ongoing efforts to deport Human Rights Watch official Omar Shakir – and to a lesser extent, legislative and financial steps targeting NGOs – have elicited international criticism, there is a disturbing silence over the Halabi case.
The nightmare experienced by Halabi and his family exposes the routine violence and corruption of Israel’s Shin Bet and judicial system, and the relationship between the two. It has also highlighted the deference offered to that system by Israel’s Western allies, and the inability to see – or call out – a politicised stitch-up dressed up as “counter-terrorism”.
In 2016, Israeli rights groups slammed authorities for using Halabi’s indictment to attack “humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip as a whole”. For NGOs in Gaza, Halabi’s case prompts the question – could we be next? As Israel seeks to shrink the humanitarian space, intimidation works.
Whatever the result of an utterly discredited legal process, Halabi’s case is now a litmus test for Western governments, and their willingness to push back against Israel’s assault on civil society.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Ben White
Ben White is the author of ‘Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide’ and ‘Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy’. He is a writer for Middle East Monitor, and his articles have been published by Al Jazeera, al-Araby, Huffington Post, The Electronic Intifada, The Guardian, and more.
In August 2016, “Western diplomats” told Haaretz that they had not received any intelligence or evidence about Halabi. The following year, an Australian government investigation “found no evidence taxpayer money was misused by the World Vision NGO in the Gaza Strip”.
World Vision, which initiated two separate inquiries – carried out by Deloitte for World Vision International, and Ernst and Young for World Vision Australia – reiterated as recently as May that it had still not seen “any evidence” to support the Israeli authorities’ allegations.
Comments by multiple sources – including World Vision, Israeli media, and Halabi’s family – suggest a key role might have been played by an ex-World Vision employee who “bore a grudge” after being fired by Halabi. Having left Gaza, the individual is allegedly “now acting as a witness in the Israeli case”.
Confession under torture
In the immediate aftermath of the indictments being announced, a senior Israeli official declared that “the evidence is the confession of the detainee”. This “confession” was obtained from Halabi when he had no legal representation and was subject to torture – and one that he subsequently retracted.
So, what is going on here?
The 2016 indictments were headline news internationally, and Israeli officials went to great efforts to publicise the allegations among journalists and diplomats.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan claimed the indictments proved substantial links between aid groups and “terrorist” organisations, adding for good measure: “I imagine that in the World Vision organisation, which is very anti-Israeli, they turned a blind eye.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry focused on “spread[ing] the news …among liberal and religious groups who support World Vision”, and the ministry’s then-director, Dore Gold, wrote to foreign ministries around the world, baldly asserting that Halabi “is actually a major figure in the Hamas terrorist organisation”.
Even as the court case drags on, Israel and its supporters have repeated the accusations against Halabi as fact, as part of a broader agenda. A recent publication [pdf] by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, for example, cites the unproven allegations as proof of “international relief organisations” having ties with Hamas. NGO Monitor, a serial harasser of civil society groups, states on its website that Halabi was “revealed … to be a Hamas terrorist”.
Disturbing silenceIncreasing attention is being paid to the deteriorating atmosphere for human rights groups at the hands of Israeli authorities; even a UK minister recently acknowledged reports of “pressure exerted against NGOs, particularly those critical of Israel’s conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories”.
But while examples such as the ongoing efforts to deport Human Rights Watch official Omar Shakir – and to a lesser extent, legislative and financial steps targeting NGOs – have elicited international criticism, there is a disturbing silence over the Halabi case.
The nightmare experienced by Halabi and his family exposes the routine violence and corruption of Israel’s Shin Bet and judicial system, and the relationship between the two. It has also highlighted the deference offered to that system by Israel’s Western allies, and the inability to see – or call out – a politicised stitch-up dressed up as “counter-terrorism”.
In 2016, Israeli rights groups slammed authorities for using Halabi’s indictment to attack “humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip as a whole”. For NGOs in Gaza, Halabi’s case prompts the question – could we be next? As Israel seeks to shrink the humanitarian space, intimidation works.
Whatever the result of an utterly discredited legal process, Halabi’s case is now a litmus test for Western governments, and their willingness to push back against Israel’s assault on civil society.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Ben White
Ben White is the author of ‘Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide’ and ‘Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy’. He is a writer for Middle East Monitor, and his articles have been published by Al Jazeera, al-Araby, Huffington Post, The Electronic Intifada, The Guardian, and more.
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A New York-based author and commentator says acts of infanticide by the Saudi and Israeli regimes continue because they have the support of the United States government.
Riyadh and Tel Aviv have been designated respectively the first and second regimes on a United Nations (UN) list of international child killers. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently submitted the list — the annual Children and Armed Conflict Report — to the UN Security Council, where the US is a permanent member. Author and commentator Naseer al-Omari told Press TV’s The Debate program on Saturday that, owing to Washington’s support for the two |
regimes, “not much” had happened as a result of the UN’s successive condemnations of the acts of bloodshed by Riyadh and Tel Aviv.
The Saudis have even “executed more people and enlisted children in war” as US President Donald Trump’s administration would increase its support for them in the aftermath of every UN measure.
According to the UN list, over the past year, the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen killed 729 children, while Israel killed 57 kids and injured more than 2,600 across the occupied Palestinian territories.
Most recently, Trump vetoed a congressional move against American arms sales to Saudi Arabia last Wednesday, “allowing the Saudi to have more weapons,” Omari said.
“Make no mistake about it, the Saudi regime and the Israelis are protected by the Trump administration,” he said.
Michael Lane, the North Carolina-based founder of the American Institute for Foreign Policy think tank, who was also a guest on the show, acknowledged that “it’s horrific and it’s grotesque” for any regime’s name to make the UN list.
Asked why the UN measures had failed to stop Riyadh and Tel Aviv’s infanticide, he said, “The United Nations is not the most effective organization in the world.”
He also alleged that the Saudis “are actively taking steps to reduce that number.”
The Saudis have even “executed more people and enlisted children in war” as US President Donald Trump’s administration would increase its support for them in the aftermath of every UN measure.
According to the UN list, over the past year, the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen killed 729 children, while Israel killed 57 kids and injured more than 2,600 across the occupied Palestinian territories.
Most recently, Trump vetoed a congressional move against American arms sales to Saudi Arabia last Wednesday, “allowing the Saudi to have more weapons,” Omari said.
“Make no mistake about it, the Saudi regime and the Israelis are protected by the Trump administration,” he said.
Michael Lane, the North Carolina-based founder of the American Institute for Foreign Policy think tank, who was also a guest on the show, acknowledged that “it’s horrific and it’s grotesque” for any regime’s name to make the UN list.
Asked why the UN measures had failed to stop Riyadh and Tel Aviv’s infanticide, he said, “The United Nations is not the most effective organization in the world.”
He also alleged that the Saudis “are actively taking steps to reduce that number.”
Middle East Eye quotes Yousef Munayyer, USCPR executive director, in an article covering the responses of Palestinian advocates to H. Res. 246, a non-binding resolution that condemns BDS and is intended to chill speech for Palestinian rights. H. Res. 246 passed the House of Representatives on July 23, with 398 votes for the resolution, 17 against, and 17 abstentions.
Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), rebuked US lawmakers for passing the resolution “as Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and their soldiers laugh & pose with civilian homes they destroyed”.
Munayyer was referring to the Israeli destruction of nearly a dozen buildings in the Palestinian village of Sur Bahir earlier this week. Those demolitions were widely condemned, with rights groups accusing Israel of committing a war crime.
“What they don’t get is, this is precisely why civil society boycotts continue to grow; the abject failure of govt to hold Israel accountable,” Munayyer wrote on Twitter.
Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), rebuked US lawmakers for passing the resolution “as Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and their soldiers laugh & pose with civilian homes they destroyed”.
Munayyer was referring to the Israeli destruction of nearly a dozen buildings in the Palestinian village of Sur Bahir earlier this week. Those demolitions were widely condemned, with rights groups accusing Israel of committing a war crime.
“What they don’t get is, this is precisely why civil society boycotts continue to grow; the abject failure of govt to hold Israel accountable,” Munayyer wrote on Twitter.
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