New Israeli schemes in Gaza

by Fayez Abu Awn

MANY PALESTINIAN rooftops have recently been occupied by Israeli occupation troops - soldiers surrounded by sandbags and automatic machine guns. They have turned these rooftops into military encampments, all under the noses of their owners.

At first, Mohammed Abu Dahrouj, 37, and his wife did not pay any attention to the rustling of the Israeli soldiers around their house. Such noises had become a normal part of their everyday life. But after a few minutes, the noises increased, growing louder until they were clearly in the stairwell. Only then did Abu Dahrouj get up to see what was going on.

When he opened the door to his apartment, he was met with guns pointed straight at his chest. An Israeli officer ordered him to open the door so he could conduct a security search. The house directly overlooks the Magharqa area and the main street connecting Netzarim settlement with Martyrs' Junction.

Abu Dahrouj remembers that the soldiers then told him they would take over his roof for a few minutes. But, he says, they were back at six pm the next day with a squad of 12 soldiers who ordered him to open the door to his roof again, for a period, they said, of one or two hours. On the third day, their stay grew longer, from six in the evening to five the next morning.

But this was not the end. One night, about a month later, he heard unusually loud noises outside. He saw a group of soldiers, some hurriedly climbing up to the roof and others climbing down. When he opened the door to see what was going on, he was met by a soldier carrying a sandbag, who promptly told him that they had decided to take over the roof permanently - all day and all night.

"Throughout that entire month, the soldiers had used our living room to sit in and rest," he recalls. "But after they turned our roof into a military camp, they informed us that they no longer required this service."

Abu Dahrouj says he and his family live in constant fear for their lives. They are forced to live with heavily armed soldiers going up and down from their roof as they please, with no consideration for the constant fears of the family's children.

He says he has tried to stand in their way more than once, but [the soldiers] would always stop him by pointing their guns at him. So he remains quiet, in fear of his life and that of his three children.

Abu Dahrouj says he notified the appropriate parties in the Palestinian Authority of his and his family's daily suffering. He says the soldiers are using his house as a place from which to target or arrest any Palestinian who comes their way. But nobody has done anything, he maintains.

He says that leaving his house for any reason has become difficult. "Although they do not stop us from leaving or coming back, we still live in fear," he says. "Especially after dark, because we are afraid they will think we are not the owners of the house and shoot at us."

"So, we don't leave the house for long periods of time, even in the worst circumstances," he continues. "The most we stay out is one or two hours."

Abu Dahrouj says he wants international human rights organizations to pressure the occupation forces into evacuating their home so they may live in peace and safety.

Translated by Joharah Baker from Al Ayyam on February 11, 2001.  (c)Palestine Report
 

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Workers "lost in between"

by Hadeel Wahdan

EID SAFI is the father of five children, the oldest of them 13. He began his years working in construction inside Israel at the age of 23. Today, as a thirty-year-old man, this is his family's source of income.

"Since the beginning of the Intifada, I have been unemployed," Safi says, holding Reem, a year and a half and the youngest of his children, in his arms. "I sold my car and my wife's jewelry so I could feed my children. I don't know how I will live tomorrow."

Eid Safi is just one of tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers who depend on work inside Israel for their income and who have recently joined the ranks of the unemployed. Most have been banned from going to work because of the closure imposed on the Palestinian territories under the guise of Israeli security for almost five months. There are dozens of other workers who lost their jobs in Palestinian factories because their employers could no longer pay them.

As unemployment rates soar and the actual number of unemployed reaches 250,000, according to the most recent United Nations statistics, the Palestinian Authority appears helpless in solving or alleviating this problem. Meanwhile, accusations of corruption are flying fast between the Palestinian labor ministry and the labor union.

"They stole from us flat out," says Safi, as he produces a list of workers from Jalazoun camp, where he lives. "All these names did not appear in the lists of the ministry and union even though they are all names of regular workers who are still around. The same no doubt happened in every area, city and refugee camp. They even want to take part of our children's livelihood."

Saudi Arabia offered aid to Palestinian laborers in the sum of 20 million rials (about $5 million) to alleviate their suffering. The Palestinian Ministry of Labor was commissioned by Saudi Arabia to prepare a list of Palestinian laborers eligible for this assistance, estimated at a one-time disbursement of NIS 600 or $150 per laborer. The ministry would only grant this aid to those workers holding a valid Israeli work permit.

But no sooner had the money been distributed to laborers on the ministry list, those who were not on the list became angry - and suspicious. Safi was one of these workers. Even those who did get the relief complained that one payment was not enough.

From the start, the labor union expressed anger that it had not been consulted in the ministry's preparation of the list. Union head Rasem Bayari maintains that, "there are dangerous transgressions in the list of names because some of the people whose names are on the list are abroad and others are employed. Also, a number of the people on the list do not fit the conditions announced by the ministry."

Bayari rejects the idea that Palestinian workers employed in Israel should receive assistance, while West Bank and Gaza workers do not. But general director of operations at the labor ministry Saeed Mdallal said that those unemployed inside the Palestinian areas will receive assistance. He admits, however, that this depends on incoming funds. He blames the delay on stalled Arab financial assistance.

After the problems with the first distribution of funds, the labor union was included in making the payment to the second list of workers. Still the charges of dishonesty and lack of transparency persisted.

Now the laborers, speaking for themselves, say that clear standards were not used to specify which laborers should have priority. "The names of most local laborers," says Safi, "have only recently been registered in the labor union's branches. The union could not determine which laborer was eligible and which was not. Other skilled workers and shop owners registered their names in the union, while many names of local laborers did not show up in the union lists."

What were the mechanisms or standards by which the union distributed the aid? "Put simply, favoritism and personal connections are the standards followed in both the ministry list and the union list," he says bluntly and with surprising unrestraint.

"The laborers in need of assistance have their names taken off while the funds go to people with connections and who are not in need of this trivial amount, [an amount that] could support an entire family for someone else."

In spite of the fierce debate over the distribution of these funds, Palestinian labor minister Rafiq Al Natsheh says these complaints are minor. "There have been no more than 20 complaints from the 85,000 laborers granted assistance since the beginning of the Intifada."

The labor minister admitted to "some mistakes in the registration of these lists. Some were intended, such as employees registering relatives, and some were not intended." He confirmed that the ministry immediately halted the checks in the faulty cases. The minister says that the relative rarity of the mistakes "does not mean that we do not take the necessary measures against transgressions from employees from the general administration of operations in the ministry."

At the same time, he says that the major problems were found in the lists prepared by the union. "They distributed the allocations according to lists they prepared themselves without asking for our help. So, they are the ones responsible for this distribution. We are not responsible for any one else's mistakes."

Safi maintains his sad smile and quiet demeanor. But after the minister's statements and accusations between the ministry and the union, he has lost hope that he and his colleagues, whose names he carries in his pocket, will be added to the relief list which he says exists not for the workers but for "shop owners or engineers."

He ends with a famous Arabic saying: "Somewhere along the line, we got lost in between." -Published 14/2/01 ©Palestine Report
 

• Palestinian water resources are causing a backroom stir. On February 2 and 5, Gert de Bruijne, projects manager at the Palestinian Hydrology Group, presented a paper in Brussels and Rome sponsored by the Campaign for the Reform of the World Bank that detailed how Palestinian water resources were in danger of being squandered because of poor donor and local planning (see PR's June 21, 2000 feature). European Investment Bank representatives took the report very seriously as part of a policy of encouraging better bank disclosure, says de Bruijne, In the middle of his trip, he received word that the Hydrology Group had published a retraction of the paper in the local Al Quds newspaper. The Hydrology Group's executive director Ayman Rabi now says that the Group had requested to no avail that certain changes be made to the paper. De Bruijne categorically denies these charges. The offending parts, according to Rabi, are "accusations of the Water Authority, accusations of President Arafat."
• The Palestinian telecommunications company PalTel participated in the ARABCOM Congress in Lebanon. The trade fair included official delegations from most Arab countries, and representatives of Al Jazeera. AMETELCO, Ericsson Hewlett Packard Telecom, to name a few companies.
• Palestinian non-governmental organizations met this week in Morocco at a conference organized by the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies under the sponsorship of the Moroccan human rights minister (the only such minister in the Arab world). The conference covered Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians, as well as the human rights situation under the Palestinian Authority. "Historically, it is well-known that non-governmental organizations have played a large role in supporting the Palestinian cause," says Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Assad Abdel Rahman. "In fact, many of these organizations were formed for the sake of the Palestinian cause." -Published 14/2/01  (c)Palestine Report

 

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