Posts By: icahduk

Israel is fond of presenting itself as a liberal Western democracy, in fact the only democracy in the Middle East. What defines a democracy, however, is the rule of law, and this is routinely denied to millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control these past 47 years and counting. Israel’s policy of home demolitions –… Read more »

By Jeff Halper November 23, 2005 Until November 10, my prognosis of the progress of apartheid in Israel/Palestine was right on track. Sharon was on a tight time-table. With a stable government that would last until the elections in November 2006, he would move quickly to nail down the last elements of his life’s work:… Read more »

Less than two weeks after losing another friend and comrade, Juliano Mer-Khamis, I now have to mourn and remember my fellow Free Gaza shipmate Vittorio (Vik) Arrigoni, who was brutally murdered last night by religious extremists in Gaza (and who actually resembled Juliano, physically, in his buoyant personality and in his insistence on “being there”… Read more »

Jeff Halper “Punitive” demolitions, which have become a trademark of Israel’s latest round of repression against the Palestinians of the Occupied Territory, are not only a pointless lashing out against defenseless families, but are downright counterproductive, even by Israel’s own standards. Since 1967 the Israeli authorities have demolished some 46,000 Palestinian homes in the OPT,… Read more »

Aug. 12, 2009 Jeff Halper , THE JERUSALEM POST The article entitled Spain funds ‘summer camp’ for foreign volunteers to rebuild demolished illegal Palestinian homes, which merited the front page of The Jerusalem Post (August 10), would seem somewhat of a non-story. After all, Israel and the US funded NGOs assisting Jews in the Soviet… Read more »

Since 1967, 24,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territories. Many were demolished in military operations, simply for being in the way or tanks or artillery fire (4000 homes were destroyed in the 2008 invasion of Gaza, almost all as “collateral damage”). Others are destroyed as acts of “deterrence,” collective punishment against families… Read more »

Prof. Jeff Halper At this very moment (Friday, May 14), Israel army bulldozers are razing dozens of homes in the Rafah refugee camp in retaliation for the deaths of five Israeli soldiers. Prime Minister Sharon and Defense Minister Mofaz last night authorized the army to demolish hundreds of Palestinian houses at Rafah, on the Gaza… Read more »

ICAHD staff 21 November 2005 Yesterday, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD) received information that the Israeli government was planning on demolishing houses in Anata, Beit Hanina and Silwan. Although the demolition of Palestinian homes was supposed to end with the first phase of the Road Map, Israel insists disingenuously that we are only… Read more »

By Jeff Halper 26 March 2006 As the new Hamas government is sworn into power in the Palestinian Authority, we might ask: What would bring a people, the most secular of Arab populations with little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote Hamas? Mere protest at Fatah ineffectualness in negotiations and internal corruption doesn’t go far… Read more »

By Jeff Halper   Here is the question: If Israelis truly crave peace and security—“the right to be normal,” as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it recently—then why haven’t they exhausted each and every opportunity for resolving the conflict? Why do Israelis continually elect governments that aggressively pursue settlement expansion and military confrontations with the… Read more »