Jerusalem 2011 Day 4

Jerusalem blog - Day 4 - Monday 11 July

08.00  MPs from Hadash come to the hotel to meet us this morning before the trip to Tel Aviv.  We will go there to meet NGOs and they will go for an important vote on one of the many hugely discriminatory laws that have been passed or introduced in the Knesset over the last period.

The early months of 2011 have seen a number of these laws passed affecting those living in Israel itself as well as those living in the occupied territories of Gaza, West Bank and Jerusalem and more are due to follow.  This theme is taken up by others we meet in Tel Aviv. The laws target the existence and operations of NGOs as well as the human rights of the Arab minority.

The Knesset vote today is likely to be postponed amid fears of an international backlash on the day the Quartet meets. Interestingly, those in the governing opposition proposing the postponement don't seem too worried about the content of the laws, just the timing.

It is not easy to describe how scary the use of these laws are, but the cumulative effect

of a number of them will be to:

- threaten the status of 'citizen' of Arab citizens in Israel and make it much more conditional

- restrict the ability of NGOs and elected representatives to represent anything other than the majority view

- allow for people and NGOs who support a boycott of Israeli goods, or even goods made in the illegal settlements, to be sued for compensation, without the complainant having to show they suffered any actual damages.

- hamper NGOs that give information to the likes of the international Goldstone Commission set up after the 2008 Israeli raid on Gaza

- push more and more for a declaration of loyalty to Israel as a 'Jewish state' ie only for Jews.

- remove any reference to the 'Nakba' or occupation from the curriculum and prevent Arabs who receive state funding from telling their version of what is happening in Palestine.

- hamper and harass organisations that seek EU and other international public funding. The prohibitively expensive requirements under this law will not apply to the private funding that flows in from abroad to fund illegal settlement activity.

As well as the laws that threaten citizenship rights and the right to political participation and freedom of expression, another set of new laws affects land rights and others attack the right to a fair trial.

10.30 In Tel Aviv, we meet with Physicians for Human Rights, with the Womens' Alliance for Peace and with the Mossawa Center, who work on behalf of the Arabs living within Israel, as well as another meeting with the Israeli Communist Party.

Physicians for Human Rights have around 2,000 members. As well as campaigning within Israel against privatisation and for the rights of migrants and asylum seekers they also campaign against physicians not reporting or opposing torture and violence during interrogation.

Their biggest project, however, is in the Occupied Territories where they carry out advocacy and direct medical aid. They could be very badly hit by new legislation against those who report what they have seen to any international investigation of war crimes.

Israeli and Palestinian women are working together in the Coalition of Women for Peace. One of their projects documents who is making a profit from the continued occupation of West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem and how this becomes a pressure on Israel NOT to reach a peaceful solution (http://www.blogger.com/www.whoprofits.org).  They will be particularly badly hit by the new law on those who are can be claimed to support boycott and divestment. Under this anti boycott law they could possibly be deprived of their status of NGO and their income would be taxed.  This would then make them ineligible under EU law for EU funding.

Not surprisingly they are petitioning the Israeli High Court to delay and then to challenge this law.

The Mossawa Center is an advocacy organisation that aims to promote the economic, social, cultural and political rights of the Palestinian citizens in Israel, who make up 20% of the population but who have been left behind in Israel's overall socio-economic development.

Following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, many Palestinians remained in Israel and were granted Israeli citizenship but face considerable discrimination. There are over 1.6 million Arab Palestinian citizens in Israel today and it is their status as citizens that is being targeted by the new laws.

The Mossawa Center works with marginalised groups such as women, youth, and the Bedouin communities of the Negev (Naqab) Desert, in the areas of land and housing, employment, education and infrastructure.

They tell us of huge transportation problems in and out of Arab villages.  Even where the are rail lines passing Arab villages, there are no plans to build a stop or station at those villages.

There are particular problems facing the 'unrecognised' Arab Bedouin villages in the Negev Desert in the South, where the Israeli government wants to move the populations to 'recognised areas' or townships.

The new legislation on organisations that seek EU and other international public funding will hit the work of the Mossawa Center and the need to toe the state line in order to get state funding prevents them from going that route either.

Again I am so impressed by the resilience of people who continue to work in spite of all the obstacles placed in their path.

The Israeli Communist party gives us another examples that suggest that the Netenyahu blocking of the peace process is not supported by all of the population. It is hard to know how much this is wishful thinking, but there are some hopeful signs.

 In spite of the pressure to conform and not to question the government line on the 'national question',  15,000 - 20,000 people,  from a wide spectrum of the population, including members and parliamentarians from Kadeema, took part in a demonstration in favour of recognition of a Palestinian State on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. And a letter was sent by a group of former diplomats and former senior military people to EU leaders asking them to recognise the Palestinian state.

13.00  These inspiring meetings in Tel Aviv bring us to the end of our visit and it is time to leave all the wonderful people we have met behind and to head to the airport, and back to Brussels, where we will highlight what we have seen.

At the airport we are stopped for a very short while. However our status as MEPs and the fact that one of our group carries a diplomatic passport means that we are treated well, spoken to very politely, with apologies for the short delay, and we are soon on our way.  We will fly back through Frankfurt again, reaching Brussels about 21.20.

21.30. It has now come full circle.  As we arrive back in Brussels the airport arrivals area is thronged with pro-Palestinian activists.  They are waiting to welcome home the last of the activists from Belgium who had been arrested in Israel and Palestine and who had then been deported back to Belgium.

One of the organisers tells us that some were quite badly treated, being kept 6 hours in a truck with no food or water and abused if they even asked for water

We give them our contact details and say we will raise this when they send us more information from those arriving back.

Among those waiting to welcome the deportees home are people who were themselves prevented from travelling on Friday.  I also recognise several who were on our flight to Tel Aviv on Friday, but who clearly never made it out of Ben Gurion airport.  There stopped and deported and now they are waiting to welcome the last of their friends home.

People at home tend to think of these people as protesters, yet there is another side to them as well as the important role of peaceful protest. Our delegation met many in Palestine who were waiting for some of these young people to arrive either to rebuild homes that had been demolished or to sit outside their houses to monitor and hopefully prevent evictions, demolitions or attacks by settlers.

From the bottom to the top of society in Palestine, the Palestinians just cannot understand how these young people who come to protect and help them can be treated so badly by the Israelis without even a whimper from their own governments in Europe