Bethlehem to be encircled in steel
as ‘security
fence’ snakes its way around holy city
By Justin Huggler
Bethlehem, Dec. 20— “We’re not celebrating
Christmas this year,” says Yaqub Kasis, a member of Bethlehem’s
dwindling community of Palestinian Christians.
It should be a time of celebration for the city where Christ was born.
Unlike last year, this Christmas there are no Israeli soldiers in
Bethlehem’s streets and the tanks have gone. “This Christmas
is quieter than before,” Kasis says. “But it’s worse.
It’s worse because of the wall.”
Israel’s “security fence” has arrived in Bethlehem.
It snakes through the suburbs, close to the old stone houses. But
the term “fence” is misleading. The section built in Bethlehem
is made up of a triple layer concrete wall and two metal fences, one
equipped with electronic sensors. The space between the two fences
is patrolled by Israeli army jeeps. Israel is building hundreds of
miles of fence across the West Bank. The pilgrims who travel to Bethlehem
for Christmas this year will find that the city of Christ’s birth
is being walled off. Fears are growing that the city may soon be surrounded.
The Israeli army says that the wall will not encircle the city --one
quarter will remain open to the West Bank, it says.
But the Palestinian group Arij, which monitors Israeli construction
in the West Bank, claims that the Israelis are planning to close the
last quarter with two bypass roads. One road has already been completed
near the north-eastern edge of the city and is cut off by its own
protective fence. The Israelis say the new roads will be open to Palestinians,
but Dr. Jad Isaac, the head of Arij, says that even if they are, they
will separate Bethlehem from its farmland and prevent expansion. “They
are turning Bethlehem into a ghetto,” he says.
It is a fate which has already befallen the Palestinian cities of
Qalqilya and Tulkarem further north in the West Bank. Qalqilya is
surrounded by a concrete wall complete with pillboxes from which Israeli
soldiers look down on the city. The only way in and out is through
Israeli army checkpoints.
Israel says the wall will stop suicide bombers crossing from the West
Bank into Israel. “If that were true, why don’t they build
it on the Green Line?” says Dr. Isaac. The Israeli government
refuses to build the fence on the Green Line, the internationally
recognized border between the West Bank and Israel. Instead, it cuts
many miles into the West Bank, so that Jewish settlements can be included
on the “Israeli” side.
International observers, including President George Bush’s National
Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, claim that Israel is attempting
to establish a new de facto border. Last week, the Israeli Deputy
Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said he wanted Israel to withdraw unilaterally
from part of the West Bank and set its own borders. In an ultimatum
to the Palestinians on Thursday, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister,
warned he would embark on a “unilateral separation” plan
within months if the Palestinians failed to arrest the gunmen and
the suicide bombers as part of a negotiated peace. “If you look
at the map you can see what Olmert is saying,” says Dr. Isaac.
“They are saying that a Palestinian state will be limited to
40 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, crammed into separate
cantons.”
Palestinians who live outside the planned route of the fence face
an uncertain future. Where the fence has been completed, the Israeli
army has ordered that only Palestinians with permits can live between
the fence and the Green Line. These permits will be issued at the
discretion of the Israeli army. But the order exempts not only Israeli
citizens but anyone of Jewish origin.
The situation is just as bleak for those inside the fence. The Israeli
army wants to demolish Kasis’s home in Beit Sahour, a suburb
of Bethlehem with a large Christian population, to make way for the
fence. “If they demolish it, I will live on the rubble,”
says Kasis. “I have nowhere else to take my children.”
Kasis used to work in Israel, but since the Israeli military closures
that have been imposed during the intifada, he has been unemployed.
Kasis lives on land that was given free for new housing by the Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He invested his savings in the
cooperative that built his home. The fence will increase Bethlehem’s
economic problems. Workers will no longer be able to cross illegally
into Israel in search of jobs.
Those living near the fence will not be the only ones to suffer, Dr.
Isaac said. The land either side of the proposed route was set aside
for the city’s future development. If Bethlehem is completely
enclosed, he says, the population will become increasingly crammed
in as it continues to grow. Bethlehem could come to resemble the already
fenced Gaza Strip, where the cities cannot expand and the population
density is 4,500 people per square kilometer — one of the world’s
most crowded places.
The fence has accelerated another of Bethlehem’s problems: The
Palestinians are leaving. Many feel that their future in the city
is stark and are applying for visas for America or Europe. Kasis has
two relatives who have already left. Several of his friends have left
too. It seems everyone in Beit Sahour knows someone who has left.
They say as many as 1,000 families have left Beit Sahour since the
intifada began in September 2000.
George Ibrahim, a Christian who is preparing to leave for Sweden,
said: “I don’t want to leave. I don’t support leaving.
I am doing it in spite of myself. When I look at my children, I think,
‘I don’t have the right to make them suffer this life.’”
It is easier for Palestinian Christians to get visas and work permits
than Muslims. Many have relatives in Europe and the US, and tend to
be more highly educated and better qualified than Muslims. Bethlehem’s
Christian population is, therefore, in danger of disappearing.
Kasis said: “Can you imagine Bethlehem without Christians? The
Church of the Nativity without Christians?” He looks from his
balcony to where the route of the fence is being prepared. “That’s
why they are doing this,” he said. “To make us leave.”
Source: Independent (UK)
CAFTA negotiations wrap up
By Liz Allen
Dec. 22 (AGR)-- The governments of the United States,
El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua have completed
negotiations on a US-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
The last round of negotiations that began in January of 2002
were held in Washington Dec. 7-12.
Costa Rica was part of the trade talks until they withdrew from
talks on Dec. 16, citing concern over what would happen to telecommunications
and insurance industries, and agricultural and textile sectors.
The plan is based on NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)
and is aimed at eliminating trade barriers between the involved
countries. The actual draft of the plan will not be released
to the public until January, but it is likely that the act will
include the Chapter 11 investor rights provision of NAFTA, which
allows foreign corporations to sue national governments for
laws and regulations that have caused a loss in actual or potential
profits.
An example of this is in Mexico, where the federal government
was forced to pay the US Metalclad corporation $16 million in
damages, and the state San Luis Potosi had to accept a toxic
waste dump run by the company.
A fact sheet on CAFTA released by the US Office of the Press
Secretary, reported that in 2000 the United States exported
$8.8 billion to Central America and that Canada and Mexico have
also been pursuing their own trade agreements with the countries
in the region, wanting to support Central American reforms that
“promote privitization, competition, and open markets.”
CAFTA has received criticism from labor organizations, environmentalists
and the people who live in the countries themselves. Much of
the criticism is similar to critiques of NAFTA, in that NAFTA
has caused a decrease of jobs in the US and worsened labor and
environmental conditions in the involved countries.
Hardest hit would be the agricultural industry. With CAFTA,
all trade barriers on imported agricultural products would be
removed, putting farmers in Central American countries, where
over half the population lives on less than two dollars a day,
at a disadvantage to crops grown by subsidized farmers in the
US. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
since NAFTA was implemented in 1994, Mexican workers have lost
1.4 million jobs in the sector where one-fifth of all Mexicans
work.
While trade talks were happening in Washington, demonstrations
were held. Across Central America, marches and actions have
been held. In El Salvador marches against the prospect of privitizing
the public health care system have drawn 100,000 people. The
AFL-CIO and many rights and church groups have come out in opposition
to the deal, which is still waiting for approval in Congress.
Chris Slevin of Public Citizen said in a phone interview that
he did not believe that Congress would approve of the plan due
to the fact that there is, “not a lot of accountability
for labor conditions that are terrible.”
CAFTA is a key part of instating a free trade area that includes
all the countries in the western hemisphere, except Cuba. US
Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, stated, “CAFTA will
give Americans better access to affordable goods and promote
U.S. exports and jobs, even as it advances Central America’s
prospects for development. This FTA will reinforce free-market
reforms in the region. The growth stimulated by trade and the
openness of an agreement will help deepen democracy, the rule
of law, and sustainable development. This agreement will further
the regional integration that the Central Americans themselves
have begun and complement our vital work on the Free Trade Area
of the Americas.”
There have been recent reports of increased repression in the
Central American countries effected by the trade agreements,
including an increase and government initiated violence and
union–busting.
Gustavo Castro Soto of CEPAC a policy analysis organization
in Chiapas, Mexico, describes mitarization and economic plans
as going hand in hand.
He also says the US push for privatization in poorer countries
hypocritical: “If poor countries want to survive, then
they are hurting the market, inhibiting competition. In the
South it is bad to have susbsidies, in the North it is a necessity.
If a poor country controls gas or water as a public good then
it is a demon, communism, bad for free trade… Free trade
is a lie.”
The plan also provides the economic framework for Plan Puebla
Panama [PPP], a mega development project that helps to open
the South borders, essentially building electricity and development
projects in the southern part of Mexico.
In Chiapas, PPP is building a highway that runs from Panama
to the city of Puebla. Chiapas has more lakes than any other
state in Mexico, and part of the infastructure deal is to dam
the lakes for electricity for new factories, effectively flooding
huge amounts of indigenous land and displacing thousands of
people. Also, a factor in PPP is controlling oil in the region.
In a critique of CAFTA’s lack of pro-environment initiatives,
John Audley of the Carnegie Institute and former trade policy
coordinator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, writes
that CAFTA needs to include funding for environmental improvement.
“The US is developing a bad habit of making commitments
to enhance environmental protection without including any new
resources,” he wrote.
For example, three free trade agreements – US-Jordan, US–Chile,
US-Singapore – include parallel commitments to provide
technical assistance and establish a cooperative trade and environment
agenda, yet none of these commitments includes new funds.”
Videos prove guards abused 9/11 prisoners
By Julian Borger
Washington, DC, Dec. 20— Videos recorded inside a
New York jail show Arab and Asian detainees, who were picked up
in a sweep of immigrants in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks,
being slammed and bounced off the prison walls by guards, according
to an official US government report.
After viewing more than 300 of the videos recorded by cameras
placed around the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn,
justice department investigators have published a long list of
cases of physical and verbal abuse.
Across the country, more than 1,200 people, mostly Arabs and Asians,
were detained on immigration violations after the 2001 explosions
and held while they were investigated for possible links with
terrorist groups. None was ever charged with terrorist-related
crimes.
The tapes show detainees being escorted to and from their cells
and assaulted in the corridors along the way.
“We observed officers escort detainees down a hall at a brisk
pace and ram them into a wall without slowing down before impact,”
the report by the justice department’s office of the inspector-general
said of two videotaped cases.
“In another incident, we saw staff members forcefully ram
a second detainee into two walls while he was being escorted from
the recreation deck to a segregation cell.”
Still pictures from the videos, released with the report, show
detainees being thrust against walls by guards.
The investigators reported that the detainees in each case appeared
to have done nothing to warrant rough treatment; they had, in
fact, been entirely compliant with their captors. The report found
evidence on the tapes — discovered in a prison storeroom
in August this year — to support detainees’ allegations
that they were routinely abused verbally.
The tapes also confirmed allegations that the guards twisted detainees’
arms while they were cuffed behind their backs, and that they
sometimes over-tightened leg and arm restraints and stepped on
chains connected to shackles in a way that increased the pain
inflicted by them.
The report found no evidence that detainees were “brutally
beaten”, but added: “We determined that the way these
MDC officers handled some detainees was in many respects unprofessional,
inappropriate and in violation of [bureau of prisons] policy.”
The inspector-general said that the tapes disproved the “blanket
denials of mistreatment” made by MDC officials in interviews
with investigators.
“We found many officers lacked credibility and candor regarding
their descriptions of what occurred in the MDC, which calls into
question their categorical denials of any instances of abuse,”
the report found. It recommended that disciplinary measures should
be taken against some of the guards involved.
Nancy Chang, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights,
a pressure group that is pursuing a lawsuit over the treatment
of the detainees, welcomed the report: “These detainees were
targeted based on their religion and ethnicity alone, and the
emotionally charged atmosphere following the tragedy of September
11 cannot serve as an excuse for this brutality.”
The justice department issued a statement saying that the “intense
emotional atmosphere” following the terrorist attacks could
not excuse the “abhorrent behavior” of the guards.
The prisons’ bureau made no comment.
The government’s response to Sept. 11 is under particular
scrutiny in the courts at present. The supreme court has agreed
to hear arguments from British and other inmates in Guantanamo
Bay that they are being illegally held and should have access
to the US judicial system to make their case.
Their case received a boost on Thursday from a lower court, which
ruled that the policy of holding foreign detainees in the prison
camp in a US-run enclave in south-eastern Cuba without providing
the rights and protections normally offered by American justice
was unconstitutional and a violation of international law.
Ken Hurwitz, of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said the
ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court would serve as a
counter-balance to an earlier judgment in the government’s
favor by a Washington-based court when the Supreme Court comes
to weigh up the case in the spring.
Source: Guardian (UK)
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