Israel Human Rights Violations of the Bedouin
Human rights is the right to be human. When we deny people democratic processes, a voice and support in speaking their truth we move towards dictatorship and we use our narratives to justify oppression. As I said in my previous blog there is ‘no enemy’ unless hate becomes your god. My allegiance is to love. I love all people no matter what they do or say. It is unconditional love. However, I will share with those I love perspectives of how they are seen. What goes around comes around is a universal expression. If you want peace you must be the change you wish to see. You cannot harm another.
I sat with a Bedouin in Egypt. This person bought me a tea. I just met him at Giza and he took me on a bus to a tea house. I sat on the back of the bus with no idea where I was going. I just was in a space of trust. All Egyptians on the bus, I the only white person. I was offered hospitality and was given a tea. We spoke of our lives. He was married with a wife and child. I was honoured by his kindness to me. I am so glad trust became my modus operandi. I knew the Bedouins were incredible survivors. They were nomadic desert people. They moved around as did many indigenous people. They roamed free. They know freedom.
It was sad to learn about Israel’s continual demolition of people’s homes in order to replace those homes with Israeli dwellings. Thus rendering vulnerable people homeless.
“What you resist persists, what you look at disappears” (look at the truth).
When one renders others homeless, homeless returns to self.
When one takes land, land is taken from the self.
When one violates human rights, those violations return to self
When one justifies violence others then justify violence against that one.
For the world is a mirror, what you see in your world is a reflection of yourself. Problems can only be solved from this focus.
Peace is the way, it is the way and the truth when you are prepared to look into your book and rewrite the script of a narrative that will never serve. Give away what you want. Only service to another brings to you what it is you truly desire. This is a universal law. Life is energy response. There is no enemy.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23397&LangID=E
Israel’s proposed demolition of Palestine village Khan al-Ahmar could result in war crime, warns UN rights expert
GENEVA/AMMAN (24 July 2018) – Israel must stop its planned demolition of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, near Jerusalem, and must be held to account if it proceeds as scheduled with its destruction, says a UN human rights expert.
“The very real threat to demolish Khan al-Ahmar further exacerbates the coercive environment in which the village community lives, and could force residents to leave their homes,” said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
“Forcing the transfer of a protected community would be a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and could amount to a war crime under the 1998 Rome Statute,” he warned.
Khan al-Ahmar is a village of 180 Bedouin Palestinians about 15 km northeast of Jerusalem, within Area C of the West Bank, as defined by the Oslo Accords. The village has repeatedly been denied building permits by Israel, and demolition equipment was moved to its outskirts earlier in July, after the Israeli Supreme Court denied petitions from the villagers.
The people living in Khan al-Ahmar are descendants of Bedouin communities expelled from the Negev by Israel in the 1950s. The communities resettled in the West Bank, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but they have since been under threat of forcible removal by Israel.
“I applaud the determined efforts of the Khan al-Ahmar residents to bring local and international attention to their plight. These people have practised largely peaceful civil resistance in a situation that is clearly unjust, and they have won support from many quarters for their determination,” said the UN expert.
Khan al-Ahmar is in an area between two large Israeli settlements, Ma’ale Adumim and Kfar Adumim, and an Israeli industrial zone called Mishor Adumim. Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations say the village lands are important to Israeli plans to build an urban bridge linking these settlements to Jerusalem.
“I commend the efforts by those in the international diplomatic and political community, and human rights campaigners, to oppose the destruction of Khan al-Ahmar,” said the Special Rapporteur.
“International pressure has often been the only source of restraint on Israel’s unlawful actions to expand its settlements, annex more Palestinian lands and strangle any future agreement based on justice, equality and human rights, and one that brings a complete end to the occupation,” he added.
However, the Special Rapporteur warned that international condemnation alone would be unlikely to end the current ominous trend in the occupied territory.
“Many more Palestinian communities in Area C are at risk in the near future of forcible transfer. Within the E1 area alone, there are 17 other Bedouin communities which face the same coercive environment, and the same fate as Khan al-Ahmar,” Mr. Lynk said.
“To be effective, the international community must be prepared to hold Israeli decision-makers legally and diplomatically accountable for their unlawful actions. They must demand that Israel halts all measures that could result in forcible transfer, enlist diplomatic and political support to end the systemic human rights abuses to which Palestinians in the occupied territory are subjected, and ensure the occupation is ended.”
ENDS
Mr. Michael Lynk was designated by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016 as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the then UN Commission on Human Rights. Professor Lynk is Associate Professor of Law at Western University in London, Ontario, where he teaches labour law, constitutional law and human rights law. Before becoming an academic, he practiced labour law and refugee law for a decade in Ottawa and Toronto. He also worked for the United Nations on human rights and refugee issues in Jerusalem.