This week's postings at JfJfP.com


January 31, 2016
Sarah Benton

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This week, January 25-31, 2016 the absence of major political developments in Israel or Palestine creates a space for a number of articles which are often sidelined.

The extra restrictions and violent punishments imposed on young Palestinian women by brothers and cousins is, sadly, a familiar topic. Now various Palestinian women’s NGOs and initiatives have grown to begin the heavy lifting of challenging this proprietorial view of women.
“Men give themselves the right to treat women as their own property.”

SAWA is a well-established group that runs helplines for women and children to report domestic violence. It is so common, says one group, that many women see the practice from the point of the male aggressor and don’t complain. SAWA themed one of its conferences ‘the Stockholm syndrome’ (where the victim identifies with her captor).
Stockhold syndrome in Palestinian women

An essential means of shifting this common violence from the realm of common sense habit to a vital public issue is for more women to write the news about the issues they want made public. There are several such initiatives in Gaza:
Palestinian women want to make the news

In an article from last summer, a year after Operation Protective Edge, Hajer Naili says all the indices of the maltreatment of women, from early marriage to family violence, have worsened. However, it does not seem to have a lot of evidence for the assertion.
Gaza fault-lines worsened by war

Stabbing of Israelis by Palestinians is continuing though no recent figures are available. Netanyahu’s response has been to blame every possible entity as ‘the inciter’. This week it’s Ban Ki-Moon, UN secretary general:
Telling the truth incites terrorism
(This posting includes the speech by Ban Ki-Moon which so enraged the PM).

If he was hoping to launch more punitive measures, he – and the more right-wing cries for revenge – have been opposed by both the military and the IDF’s organisation for managing the oPt, COGAT. Like Ban Ki-Moon, senior IDF officers can comprehend the desperation of Palestinian youth and counsel easing restrictions, not tightening them.
Military bulwark against far-right wish to crush ‘inciters’

However, security forces seem to raise no objection when the Occupation is extended and Palestinian life made more fragmented. The latest land grab by Israel – part of the northern Jordan Valley, just below Jericho – is feasible because the IDF will enforce it and the government will ignore the many international complaints. (The headline says ‘largest seizure of Palestinian land since 2014’ which is a bit misleading as the 2014 grab was the largest for 30 years.)
Israel plans largest seizure of Palestinian land since 2014

The International Business Times chose to cover the same story but illustrated it with many photographs of the alley from its rocky outcrops in the north to the wide pastures below. It is at the moment an expanse of space and freedom for the largely Beouin inhabitants. But not if Israel has its way and constructs more and more settlements on the land it seizes.
Life in the Jordan Valley in pictures

The US was among the many countries whch condemned this land appropriation.

‘The United States said it was strongly opposed to any moves that accelerate settlement expansion.
“We believe they’re fundamentally incompatible with a two-state solution and call into question, frankly, the Israeli government’s commitment to a two-state solution,” Deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday.’ Reuters

And perhaps that encouraged Obama to remind Israel that US Customs had long insisted that goods made in and exported from Gaza and the West Bank should be properly labelled as such, not passed off with a ‘Made in Israel’ tag.
US also demands truthful labels

This is a response from the administration. Americans, especially Christians and Jews, retain their liking of visiting Israel – but not in enough numbers to compensate for the great fall-off in tourism from other countries.
Tourism to Israel drops for 2nd year

Somebody who as an adolescent felt great love for Israel and visited as soon as she was old enough is American Jew Liz Rose. She writes a growing-up story of discovering both Israel and sexuality at Jewish summer camp so Israel was always imbued with eroticism for her. What other emotions go into people’s feelings about Israel?
The irresistible coming together of Zionism and first sex

Israel has to import much of what it needs – not just people (only the right sort) but also oil and other mineral fuels (19 percent of total imports); uncut diamonds and other precious metals and stones (15 percent); mechanical machinery and appliances (11 percent); electrical machinery and electronics (10 percent) and vehicles and their parts (7 percent).

To get in oil, a pipeline has been built from Ashkelon to Eilat. The company running it is Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC) which was created in 1968 as a joint venture with Iran. Its affairs are entirely secret by government decree – it’s a matter of ‘national security’. Unfortunately for EAPC, the pipeline ruptured 2 years ago and now the wadis of southern Israel are filled with glutinous black oil with a particularly devastating effect on the Evrona Nature Reserve. Who knew? Well, now more of us thanks to the FT’s John Reed.
Damaging leaks from the secret oil pipeline

And much more besides.

 

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