Leaders of civil rights organizations rushed to the CSR auditorium and criticized the government’s plan to give 15,000 acres of land to China for investment purposes.
“Government must expose the China-Sri Lanka agreement on mega project in Hambantota,” said Chameera Perera, co-convener of Left Circle.
Addressing the press conference held at CSR on Dec. 20, Perera said that government must aware the agreement to the citizens before they signing.
“Government sources reported that they are going sign that agreement on January 7th 2017.”
He added, “Government do not have a right to sign such agreement without aware the citizens according to the January 8th agreement with the nation.”
Co-convener of Left Centre revealed such agreement signed by Rajapakse regime.
“Mahainda Rajapaksa government sighed such agreement with China such as Colombo Port City Project without aware the citizens of the country. It made many problems to the country,” he said.
“There are no lands for farmers in the country. But the government going to give 15,000 acres of land to China,” said Chamara Nakandala, convener of Parapuraka Balaya.
He added, “This kind of deal not was in January 8th promises which given to the nation.”
“Government is not serious about future of farmers. But they give lands to multi- national companies,” said Francis Rajan, convener of Praja Abhilasha.
Meanwhile, former President Mahainda Rajapakse also criticized the government decision on handover 15,000 acres of land to China and said that he was against giving out such a large extent of land.
Talking to Lanka News Web, Herman Kumara, director of National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSO) said that there is no clear function what the government plan is, because this is not a transparent process.
“This is just like Mahinda Rajapakse did. Because government is trying to hide everything from the people, from the civil organizations and they are going to do what they want.”
He added, “So, this is clearly non-transparent and unethical process. This is not a democratic process. So if the government handover 15,000 acres of land to China or other country that’s going to be a disaster of the country, of the people, people who are living in the land. So, we say this is an unethical because you are government which proposes promise good governance not necessary a dictatorial government Mahinda did. So, we say as civil organizations, this is not a way you should perform. You should totally for opposite and say what you are going to the people and what you are going to do with lands.”
Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media Ministry Secretary Nimal Bopage yesterday reiterated his firm refusal to sign the document pertaining to the leasing of 58 vehicles to be given to MPs.
Responding to a question by journalists at a press conference in the ministry auditorium, the Secretary was adamant that he could not give his assent to the move unless all the issues concerning it were resolved. The Cabinet has approved to provide 58 vehicles on lease to MPs to monitor development projects of the Government. The Secretary pointed out the tender procedure in that regard had been started by the Finance Ministry even before Cabinet approval.
“The current Parliament has only 45 months left where as the vehicles are to be taken for 60 months for a monthly lease of Rs.590,000. With the addition of VAT and NBT this amount will be Rs.700,000. If we are to settle the lease within 45 installments, it would be Rs.900,000. Even after paying this sum, the Government does not get the ownership of the vehicles,” he stated. He said this move did not receive approval from the Technical Evaluation Committee and Cabinet appointed Procurement Committee, adding that even the President made an observation that the monthly lease was too much.
Asked whether the Government would go ahead with the move by getting the document signed by the Finance Ministry Secretary, Bopage said, “Once rejected by one Secretary, I do not think another Secretary will be willing to sign the same document”.
The Secretary said during the Cabinet Sub-committee on Economic Management, he was asked to “sign or resign,”but added that he could so far resist the pressure and survive without doing either. “The normal procedure is that a Secretary endorses the decision once approved by the Cabinet, but in this case I have my reasons not to do so,” he said.
The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption ( CIABOC ) has been charged in the Supreme Court for condoning a serious act organized state sponsored corruption involving a large number of MPs who had made huge profits of over 25 million rupees by selling their tax-free permits to motor car importers in the open market.
In the Writ application filed in the Supreme Court (SC/Writs/07/2016) against CIABOC, the Public Interest Rights Activist and a Lawyer Nagananda Kodituwakku argues that it had failed to perform the duty vested in it to conduct a credible investigation and prosecute those MPs who have sold their permits, despite first hand direct evidence of selling permits was made available to the CIABOC by him, demonstrating the selling of the MP tax free permits to third parties who had imported luxury vehicles and registered the vehicles in their name at the RMV despite they were not entitled to use the tax free privilege only afforded to the MPs only.
The Petitioner lawyer argues that those who hold office in the Legislature and the Executive have themselves acknowledged their obligations to the People and their duty to preserve people’s rights and privileges, so that the dignity and freedom of the citizens would be assured and a Just, Social, Economic and Cultural Order attained. But their conduct concerning the selling of permits demonstrates patent violation of their Constitutional obligations to the people, effectively nullifying the equality, fundamental rights and the doctrine of Democratic Governance enshrined in the Constitution.
Former Chairman of SLTB Shashi Dilum Welgama has been remanded by Acting Colombo Additional Magistrate Rukmani Liyanarachchi on a charge of cheating the SLTB of a sum of Rs. 120 million.
He was arrested by the FCID and was produced before the Acting Colombo Additional Magistrate yesterday (20th) and was remanded till tomorrow (22nd).
The Managing Director of Nandana Auto Private Limited, L. Nandana Perera whose firm had supplied equipment to the SLTB during Mahinda Rajapaksa regime was also arrested and remanded along with Shashi Welagadera.
Sshahsi Dilum Welagedera is a brother of former Minister of Transport during Mahinda Rajapaksa regime Kumara Welgama.
December 21, 2016 Customs officers on Wednesday seized a haul of foreign cigarettes, believed to be worth around Rs.75 million, illegally imported to the country. A spokesperson said the haul was brought to the country from China and further investigations are being carried out.
COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government has said that it is investigating a former navy sailor, Wijemuni Vijitha Rohana de Silva, for suspected involvement in a plot to kill Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on January 26, 2017.
Incidentally, Rohana de Silva had attempted to assassinate India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in July 1987, after the latter “imposed” the controversial Indo-Sri Lanka Accord on Sri Lanka and deployed the Indian Peace Keeping Force to implement the accord.
On Tuesday, Sri Lanka’s Information and Parliamentary Affairs Ministry Secretary, Nimal Bopage, said that authorities could not ignore a claim made by Rohana de Silva on Facebook that President Sirisena would be killed on January 26, 2017.
Over the past five months, Rohana de Silva had been carrying on a sustained campaign against President Sirisena, Bopage added.
“This man claims to be an astrologer and he is predicting that the President will be killed by January 26,” Bopage told reporters in Colombo.
“We have alerted the police to carry out a criminal investigation because we suspect this to be part of a wider plot to assassinate the President.”
Sri Lankan politicians have immense faith in astrology. Many have their own seers whose predictions are considered more important than the advice of senior aides.
Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had called a snap election nearly two years ahead of schedule on the advice of his personal astrologer – but only to lose to Sirisena.
Sirisena had ridiculed Rajapaksa for going by the words of an astrologer and declared that he is not a believer in astrology.
However, Sirisena knows that Sri Lankans believe in astrology and if an astrologer predicts that he will be killed on January 26 next year, people will tend to believe in it. Hence the action against Rohana de Silva.
Rohana de Silva, who was part of the naval guard of honor given to Rajiv Gandhi at the Sri Lankan Presidential mansion, had taken a swipe at the Indian leader’s head with his rifle butt, but only managed to graze his neck. The Indian Prime Minister ducked and escaped serious injury as Sri Lankan and Indian security men pounced on the naval rating and pinned him down. Though arrested, tried and sentenced, Rohna de Silva was pardoned by President R.Premadasa. In court, top lawyers of Sri Lanka had appeared for him and tried to justify his conduct.
The settlers have won again. The Israeli government has surrendered again.
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last time, the strongest political pressure group in Israel, the one that has terrorised Israeli governments for ages now, blackmailing successive administrations and terrifying even the military’sechelons, has once again proved how potent it remains.
Far from waning, its strength grows continually in confrontations with the most nationalist and religious right-wing government in the country’s history, opposed by the feeblest leftist bloc ever, while Israeli public opinion remains totally indifferent.
Young Israeli settlers in the settlement of Amona in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on 18 December 2016 (AFP)
This time it’s about Amona, an illegal settlement, but let us not be led astray by the settlers’ deceit. The issue is not just Amona; it’s much broader.
How Amona was settled - and unsettled
The Amona settlement was created in 1995 as an "archaeological" site, a familiar settler deception. Next to the "archaeological site", a large water tank was put up by Mekorot, Israel’s national water authority. Within a year, three residential trailers were already in place. A decade later, in 2005, 30 families were living there on 400 stolen dunams (100 acres) of private Palestinian land.
The Amona deal will lead to the whitewashing of all illegal settlements built on private Palestinian land, a disaster for generations to come
This, in brief, is the history of many of the settlements in the occupied territories. The Israeli government never approved the establishment of Amona, for which there was never proper planning, no delineation of the area of its jurisdiction and no explicit government decision countenancing any of it.
Yet the Israeli authorities invested countless resources there to pave an access road and to provide electricity and water and other infrastructure, as if Amona had government approval and everything was legal.
In the report on the settlement outposts compiled at the request of then prime minister Ariel Sharon by attorney Talia Sasson, a former senior state prosecutor, still the most comprehensive documentation on the outposts, Amona is listed as an unapproved outpost and therefore illegal. The list includes another approximately 50 such outposts officially designated as illegal.
That, too, is a deceit perpetrated by Israeli governments, as will be explained below. We should bear in mind that all the settlements are equally illegal.
In 2006, following lawsuits by human rights organisations, Israel’s High Court of Justice ordered the demolition of six buildings in Amona built on land that had been proved to be privately owned by Palestinians. The evacuation was violent, pitting thousands of settlers in a physical confrontation with the military and the police. The land, of course, was not returned to its owners, not even when the evacuation and demolition were completed.
In 2006, houses slated for demolition in the Amona settlement (AFP)
About two years ago, in another suit at the High Court of Justice, the court ruled that all 40 of the buildings at Amona must be evacuated, deeming it proven that the buildings had all been built on privately owned Palestinian land.
During the two years that followed, the government and the settlers found all manner of pretexts for delaying its implementation. For two years nothing was done, until the court recently instructed that next weekend was the final deadline for evacuating Amona.
The government now had a problem: it quickly began promoting a new and amazingly broader "arrangements law" that would whitewash all the settlements built on private land, but Amona would still have to be evacuated to avoid further undermining of the rule of law and the High Court’s authority.
Placate and evacuate
Emotions have been running high during the past few weeks in Israel as the evacuation looms. The settlers are experts at emotional blackmail through the manipulation of the Israeli media which, always attuned to ratings, tends to cooperate; the pending evacuation morphed into a national issue. As the evacuation date approached, the settlers ratcheted up their threats of violent opposition, and hundreds of youth from other settlements thronged Amona, ostensibly to defend it with their bodies.
Netanyahu behaved exactly like the so-called Price Tag extremists who perpetrate vandalism or violence against Palestinians whenever the government tries in any way to restrict their freedom of action
For Bibi Netanyahu, a violent evacuation is a political and media disaster. Thus, it was clear that he would do anything to placate the settlers. They knew it, and exploited it in their usual cynical manner. At a low point during the negotiations, the prime minister announced that he had instructed his minister of internal security to begin demolishing illegally constructed buildingsin areas where Arabs livein Israel, as a kind of bribe to appease the settlers.
In so doing, Netanyahu behaved exactly like the so-called Price Tag extremists who perpetrate vandalism or violence against Palestinians whenever the government tries in any way to restrict their freedom of action.
Israeli housing minister Yoav Galant visits Amona on 18 December 2016 (AFP)
In the context of the prime minister’s already routine incitement against Palestinian citizens of Israel, this promise of demolitionsin towns and neighbourhoods where Arabs livemight even be carried out, although it wasn’t part of the agreement reached with the Amona settlers. Demolishing Arab homes is popular with Netanyahu’s political base and the opportunity may be too tempting to relinquish.
The settlers naturally reached a last-minute agreement with Netanyahu, who was called to his office in the middle of the night. Under the agreed terms, the settlers will receive substitute land, with more buildings. Above all, every family evacuated will receive a huge sum as compensation.
In a country where the provision of medicines for patients runs to 500 million shekels ($130m) a year, the government decided to distribute no less than 140 million shekels ($36m) as compensation to 40 settler families, who had gone to live in a place they knew from the outset was built on stolen land, land that did not belong to them. They’ve now received substitute buildings on the same mountain where Amona stood.
Palestinians stand next to rubble after their home was demolished by Jerusalem municipality workers in the mostly Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of al-Tur in September 2016 (AFP)
There’s no other constituency in Israel that would have received such consideration. The only advantage of this agreement is that it bluntly exposed the settlers’ true face as people motivated by greed not solely for land, but also for money. To paraphrase Bernard Shaw, the principle has already been established, now we’re just haggling over the price.
Needless to say, the Palestinian owners were not given their land back after the evacuation, due to the proximity of the new Amona. Meanwhile, there are also Palestinians claiming ownership of the land at the new location.
Precedent setting
This farce could have been entertaining, if only it weren’t so sad. If it included values like the right to property, equality, proper enforcement, and obedience to international law. If it hadn’t been proved yet again that Israeli settlers can do just as they please because they’re the lords of the land.
Now Israel will declare officially that in the territories it occupies, there is a different law, under which settlers are permitted almost anything, including the theft of land, without hindrance
But the outcome of the Amona agreement won’t end with the outrageous compensation and the no less outrageous establishment of the new Amona. The Amona agreement will lead to a comprehensive policy of whitewashing the outposts and the settlements that were built on private land. Now it’s not just a disaster for Palestinians for generations to come, but also for Israelis.
Now Israel will declare officially that in the territories it occupies there is a different law, under which settlers are permitted almost anything, including the theft of land, without hindrance. In the best case scenarios, the owners who are robbed of their land will be compensated by Israel from state coffers, at the expense of the government’s health budget or welfare budget. Israelis, mostly apathetic, will accept that, too.
It’s hard to believe how the silent majority in Israel this week accepted the Amona compensation agreement, which prompted an immediate reduction in the government’s budgets for social welfare, health and education, and not a word of protest heard.
Artificial distinctions
Most prominent in this picture are the Amona lies. There is no difference whatever between Amona and other settlements in the occupied territories. Branding Amona "an illegal outpost" is how the government and the media whitewash the rest of the settlements as if they, unlike the outposts, were legal. They are not. Not a single one of them.
To distinguish between "state land", where Israel may settle and seize land, and privately owned land, ostensibly a more complicated question, is to make an artificial and manipulative distinction
There is no country in the world that acknowledges the settlements as legitimate and not a single international jurist, apart from propagandists for Israel, which does not view every Israeli settlement as a severe infringement of the Geneva Accords prohibiting settlement of a country’s citizens in territory it militarily occupies.
Likewise, to distinguish between "state land", where Israel may settle and seize land, and privately owned land, ostensibly a more complicated question, is to make an artificial and manipulative distinction. When Israel talks about state land, it means land belonging to the state of Israel. But the state of Israel is not the reigning power in the occupied territories that Israel has not yet had the nerve to annex.
The settlers, whose leadership is even more devious and cynical than the Israeli political norm, based its threatening show of force on the notion that they must threaten Israeli society to the greatest degree possible in response to every anticipated evacuation of a single apartment terrace in a settlement, however small, in order to wipe off the agenda the possibility of a real evacuation at some future time.
That’s the Amona balance sheet: the settlers won with a knockout. Israeli society is prostrate before them, indirectly no less plundered than are the Palestinians, the settlers’ direct victims.
- Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper's deputy editor. He was awarded the 2015 Olof Palme human rights prize and was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Photo: Young Israeli settlers gather in the settlement outpost of Amona, which was established in 1997 and built on private Palestinian land, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on 18 December 2016 (AFP)
But Fatah’s seventh general conference also papered over some serious cracks in the movement – cracks that have ruptured violently in the lawless alleys of the West Bank’s refugee camps, and that the conference did nothing to address.
Foremost among those is the struggle between supporters of the exiled former Gaza security chief Muhammad Dahlan – who were not invited to the five-day Ramallah parley – and Abbas loyalists.
Gunmen seen as affiliated to Dahlan and loyal to local power-brokers have been locked in an escalating series of running battles with PA security forces. Both sides have seen several casualties, amid accusations of extrajudicial killings and a lethal beating in PA custody.
Nowhere has this violence been more deadly than in Nablus. Long a crucible of political unrest, the northern West Bank city has also been the scene of some dozen fatalities in internecine Palestinian violence this year. The last casualty was a woman killed in crossfire in the Old City in November. And armed fighters, would-be peacemakers and beleaguered refugees all described a city lurching towards civil war.
City of internecine war
Balata is the largest and most febrile West Bank refugee camp. Some 30,000 Palestinians share just 2 square km of land, and unemployment is rife. Its narrow alleyways are plastered with martyr posters commemorating men slain fighting the Israeli occupation.
They still ring regularly with gunfire, but only some of that is directed at Israeli soldiers: here, members of armed groups also regularly engage Palestinian security forces, and criminals shoot at other criminals.
At the time of writing, gunmen blamed for a fatal shooting were hiding out in Balata, while a local youth was recently shot dead there by unknown assailants.
Primary school teacher Hanan, 42, cares for 50 children in the camp. She did not want to give her full name for this article. “They are all exhausted,” she said. “But it’s nothing new here. Most pupils already have psychological problems.”
Heavy-handed violence against Palestinians by an authority perceived as an Israeli puppet regime curdles latent resentment. And Dahlan, himself born in a Gaza refugee camp, is said to buy the support of Balata residents with donations and through charities and retains it in collusion with local Fatah leaders.
“The Israelis are our enemies, it’s natural for them to attack us,” said Mariam, 33, who works as a secretary in the camp’s cultural center and also didn’t want to divulge her last name. “But for the PA to do so? This is the worst thing we face.”
Poisonous “security coordination”
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were formed during the second intifada to fight Israel. Identifying as the armed wing of Fatah, they once reportedly received up to $50,000 monthly in PA funding when Yasser Arafat, the late Fatah leader, was still alive.
Yet the absorption into PA security forces – which maintain close coordination with the Israeli army – was resisted in some cities, and members of Fatah-affiliated armed groups still dominate Nablus refugee camps. And since Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in 2014, the Brigades have made an open return to armed conflict.
Samer, a 30-year-old Brigades fighter, sat in the front room of a house belonging to Thaer Qandil, a Brigades commander in the Nablus-area al-Askar refugee camp. The night before, Israeli forces had arrested Qandil following a four-hour standoff, and the whitewashed walls of his apartment were pockmarked with bullet holes.
“Ordinary people can’t defend themselves against the Israelis or the PA,” Samer, who did not want his full name used, said. “They have no weapons.” Still, he was happy to show off smartphone slideshows of himself and his friends posing with guns in the very room he was sitting in.
“The Israelis and the PA are together,” said Samer. “They’re one thing.” As an example, he pointed out that the previous night’s raid showed how Israeli soldiers could freely enter areas of purported PA control.
Indeed, under the security coordination arrangement between the PA and Israel, Palestinian forces,
including uniformed police, have to stand down when the Israeli military is operating in their areas. Palestinian security forces, meanwhile, have also apprehended hundreds of suspects believed to be planning attacks on Israeli targets.
It is a deeply unpopular policy among Palestinians that fuels discontent with the PA, yet one Abbas has publically defended time and again, even calling it “sacred.”
Tired of violence
Samer has already spent time in Israeli and Palestinian custody. “Let’s say I have had problems with the PA,” he said, cracking a smile. “They beat me when I was under arrest, and they killed my brother.”
He named the dead “brother” as Qassam, a brother in arms rather than by blood: “He was unarmed – it was heartless. And my other brothers are in their prisons.”
But popular sentiment is not entirely with the militants operating outside the PA. The raucous Nablus market has long sheltered such fugitives, and on occasion been a no-go area for government forces. But for some, the recent death of a civilian woman was a red line crossed.
In August, two Palestinian policemen were killed trying to make arrests in Nablus. Two men accused of being members of Fatah-affiliated armed groups were subsequently shot dead, and the man reputedly the commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Nablus, Ahmad Halawa, was beaten to death in police custody.
Thousands attended his funeral, and PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah has promised an independent investigation into his death.
Then, during a subsequent PA operation in the Old City, Hilda Bassam al-Asta was caught by a stray bullet as she cowered indoors during clashes, and the official autopsy, at least, blamed militiamen. Three shooters fled to Balata in a hijacked taxi, and the PA are currently a visible – if nervous – presence in the inner city.
“The militias say they are true Fatah, but they are criminals,” said Hassanain Mubaraka, a street trader who works around the market. “They have no interest in peace.”
Fighters in the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades rally in support of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Balata refugee camp on 1 March 2016.Nedal EshtayahAPA images
Spotless bar a flip-flop floating in the swimming pool, the gated compound of former Nablus mayor Ghassan al-Shakaa is a far cry from the dirty alleys of Balata. But in June, Ghassan’s luxurious mansion was also raked with bullets. Despite the attack, the 74-year-old aligns himself as a go-between linking Fatah leaders and dissident factions.
“Fatah don’t know how to talk with people in the camps,” he said. “And people in the camps are not ready to work for anyone.”
But Old City activist and filmmaker Mustafa Azizi believes dissidents have nothing to gain from reconciliation.
“Fatah is ended now,” he said. “If you show you’re strong enough to control Nablus, you can be the next Abbas.”
The PA abandoned Nablus, Azizi added disdainfully. “They abandoned the West Bank. The money, the [nongovernmental organizations], the big companies: everything’s in Ramallah.”
Dahlan in the shadows
It is true the de facto capital of the West Bank is a privileged enclave where Fatah officials and hip youngsters with Jerusalem IDs can sip cocktails and forget about the occupation.
But Ramallah, too, has its refugee camps. In the streets of al-Amari camp, tattered strings of Fatah pennants tangle with fresh, canary-colored replacements. On 22 October, PA security forces shot at demonstrators protesting the arrest of a local Fatah leader, the popular Jihad Tummaleh, who had tried to convene a conference calling for reconciliation between Abbas and Dahlan.
Like Dahlan, Tummaleh was then expelled from Fatah.
In this precarious security environment, the Fatah general conference was touted as a chance to settle factional differences. But Ahmad Abdulrahman, a member of the camp’s popular committee, says the conference itself led to the violent crackdown in al-Amari.
The Sixth General Conference in 2009 meeting saw 2,500 delegates invited, but for 2016 this figure was slashed to 1,400. Unsurprisingly, it is dissenters and Dahlan supporters who were cut.
“If there were 2,500 people attending they would change everything,” said Abdulrahman. “They would change Abbas.”
Though whether they would change him for Dahlan is another matter.
Dahlan, born in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, was a local leader in the first intifada when he was arrested by Israel. He emerged after Oslo as a key Fatah security leader in Gaza, becoming head of the Preventive Security Services there, before being appointed by the first Palestinian Authority government with a prime minister (Abbas) as minister of state for security.
In that capacity, he was effectively the head of a 20,000-strong security personnel. He established a fearsome reputation for torturing Hamas detainees, even as his calls for anti-corruption reform won support among Palestinians in Gaza and preferment from Abbas.
After Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006, Dahlan allegedly received American money and arms for an abortive anti-Hamas coup. Once ousted from Gaza, he relocated to the West Bank but was then accused of embezzling $18 million during his time of influence in Gaza, a case that has just been re-opened.
Yet he retains a base of support in Gaza and the refugee camps, which is one reason Abbas came to view him as a volatile potential challenger for Palestinian leadership. In 2011, Abbas threw his one-time ally out of the Fatah movement, even implicating him in Yasser Arafat’s death.
Dahlan now lives in Abu Dhabi and is understood to enjoy the support of the so-called Arab quartet, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. That did him little good in Fatah. Despite Arab interventions, Abbas refused to budge, and Dahlan was not invited to the 2016 general conference.
Simmering discontent
“Dahlan is past,” said Jibril Rajoub, who was Dahlan’s counterpart in the West Bank when Dahlan headed security forces in Gaza.
Rajoub came in a strong second after the perennially popular but imprisoned Marwan Barghouti in elections to the ruling Central Committee at the Fatah conference, and is now seen as another possible successor to Abbas, with whom he keeps good relations.
Perhaps he’s right. While two-thirds of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza wanted Abbas out in a March poll, only 4 percent picked Dahlan as successor.
Imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti consistently polls best among potential successors, in March securing the support of 33 percent of respondents, while 24 percent backed Hamas’ Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh.
To ordinary people in al-Amari, the wave of violent factional squabbling is not seen as anything new. “It’s an empty cycle,” said Iyad Abbas, 29, a paint shop employee who made it very clear the president was no relation of his.
But political bodies external to Fatah are capitalizing on the party’s infighting. “This was always a Fatah camp, but Hamas is stronger now,” said Abdulrahman of the popular committee. “And organizations like Islamic Jihad are getting stronger in the streets.”
And Israel is widely seen – from the plush front rooms of uptown Nablus to the stricken streets of Balata – as the main beneficiary of this internecine fighting.
“Seeing your own people fight, this makes you sick,” said Azizi, the filmmaker. “We are fighting each other for nothing – for an illusion called authority.”
Some compare the situation in the West Bank now to the period before the first intifada.
“It was the same in the first Intifada,” said Muhammad, 43, a resident of al-Amari camp who declined to give his full name. “The violence began in Balata and in Gaza, but soon it spread across the West Bank, like a ball of ice picking up snow.”
This time around, though, it is the Palestinians’ own ailing authority that is in the crosshairs.
Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist currently working in occupied Palestine. He regularly reports for The Independent and writes for VICE, Dazed and activist media, as well as publishing poetry and fiction. Twitter: @hashtagbroom. Website: mattbroomfield.contently.com
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo — It began a little before midnight, a few whistles blown by people standing on dimly lit porches in Congo’s sprawling riverside capital. By the turn of the hour, the protesters’ ranks had swelled to several thousand, some of them rattling pots and pans in a brave act of civil disobedience as President Joseph Kabila’s second — and what was supposed to be his final — mandate expired.
If there was ever any doubt about the true source of Kabila’s power, it has been erased over the last few days:Police and military units have deployed to cities across the country in an unprecedented show of force. For months, the opposition has threatened to stage mass protests on Dec. 19, but with a ban on public demonstrations, road blocks, and the intimidating presence of the army, few dared to come out on Monday. Students at the University of Kinshasa were barred from leaving the campus by trucks full of soldiers, and a peaceful demonstration in Goma, a city in the east, was immediately repressed.
But it’s not just that Kabila has overwhelmed the opposition with physical force. The main opposition coalition, Le Rassemblement, weakened its own position by failing to articulate a clear message to its supporters on the eve of the Dec. 19 deadline. “We’re still waiting to hear Étienne Tshisekedi speak on the radio,” said Pathy Kalonji, an unemployed law graduate, referring to the leader of the main opposition party. “Today the city’s streets are quiet. We were waiting for directives but they never came.”
In September, huge protests against electoral delays turned violent and more than 50 people were killed in Kinshasa. Fearing a similar scenario, the international community pressured the opposition to call for calm, arguing that its leaders would bear most of the responsibility if more people were killed. “It really has caught the leadership by surprise — diplomats have even mentioned the International Criminal Court,” said an opposition leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Of course Tshisekedi cannot tell people not to stay home. That would undermine our position, so there was a decision to remain silent.”
Still, hundreds of people across the country turned out to protest on Tuesday. They built barricades in the streets overnight, and small groups of demonstrators tried to gather to protest in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, the capital of Congo’s mineral-rich Katanga Province. But they were quickly dispersed by police and military forces using tear gas and in some cases live ammunition. More than 100 people have been arrested nationwide, and at least 22 people were killed in Kinshasa alone, according to the United Nations. People also protested in subtler ways, like blowing whistles and wearing red, a reference to the “red card” used by soccer referees.
But Tuesday’s muted demonstrations were a far cry from the mass uprising the opposition had threatened, suggesting that Kabila may have survived the most immediate threat to his rule. “Street protest is the only leverage the opposition had left, and that’s a very bad sign in terms of the democratic process. If there is no pressure in the streets, then Kabila is basically going to shrug,” said Jason Stearns, who directs the Congo Research Group at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
In recent months, the opposition has seen its space to maneuver shrink rapidly, largely because of its own uncompromising and unrealistic strategy. This stubbornness was evident as far back as 2011, when Tshisekedi declared himself the winner of the presidential election even before the ballots had been counted. When the official tally revealed Kabila to be the winner, Tshisekedi refused to acknowledge the results and declared himself president. Observers said the elections had been fraudulent, but Tshisekedi’s preposterous pre-results statement had already discredited his claim.
Since the 2011 elections, the opposition’s stance has grown ever more radical, and obstructionist. A dispute over the composition of the electoral commission predictably became gridlocked, and when the commission argued — conveniently for Kabila — that updating the voter rolls would take until July 2017, months after the planned presidential election date in November 2016, the Rassemblement refused to participate in a national dialogue mediated by the African Union. Only a fringe of the opposition agreed to take part, and a deal was reached in October to form a transition government until elections can be held, ostensibly in 2018.
Marginalized by its own refusal to take part in the national dialogue, and with only a few weeks to go before the end of Kabila’s mandate, the Rassemblement finally agreed to sit down for talks mediated by the Catholic Church in a last-ditch effort to find a solution. “That’s three months lost because the Rassemblement felt it didn’t have the guarantees necessary,” said Stearns, noting that the national dialogue began on Sept. 1 and the Church-mediated talks began on Dec. 12. “It’s not like they got any guarantees ahead of these talks. Nothing has changed in terms of what Kabila has promised them.”
On Saturday, the talks were suspended before an agreement was reached, and Monseigneur Marcel Utembi, the archbishop leading them, announced that they wouldn’t resume until Wednesday, a full day after the end of Kabila’s constitutionally mandated term. On Monday, minutes before midnight, the new transitional government was announced in accordance with the October deal, further eroding the credibility of the talks.
With the successful repression of street protests, it will be extremely difficult for the Rassemblement to gain the upper hand now. Every indication suggests that Kabila’s strategy for remaining in power consists of doing nothing. With the unwitting help of the Rassemblement, he has managed to divide and rule the opposition, and is now beginning his new unofficial term with the faux legitimacy of a transition government. The talks with the Rassemblement can easily be dragged out for months, buying him more time to figure out a strategy to remain in power on his own terms.
In many ways, what is playing out now is the real end of Congo’s democratic transition, which began at the conclusion of a bloody, decades-long war in 2003. That’s not to suggest Kabila has succeeded at consolidating his own authority. Unlike other leaders in the region who have defied or removed term limits to remain in power, Kabila doesn’t fully control Congo, a country the size of Western Europe. If protests don’t threaten his rule in the short term, armed groups will in the medium to long term.
In recent months, recruitment and militia activity has picked up across the country, from North and South Kivu in the east, to Kasaï, the central province from which Tshisekedi hails. There, a militia has been fighting the Congolese army since July, and briefly invaded the provincial capital, Tshikapa, in early December. At least 30 people died in the attack, adding to the 49 killed during a similar attack in September, when the militia took control of a nearby airport. In total, several hundred people have been killed, but exact numbers are hard to come by since authorities are trying to downplay the scale of the crisis.
“Some of these armed groups’ leaders have been explicit in saying that they don’t think Kabila is legitimate after the 19th, and therefore the army and the police are no longer legitimate, so they are going to take security in their own hands,” said Ida Sawyer, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch focusing on Congo. “And within the security forces themselves, it’s not clear whether all of the security forces will remain loyal to Kabila after the 19th. Some have already indicated that there are strong frustrations among the security forces and we could see fractions there as well.”
Estimated deaths caused by the Second Congo War, which lasted from 1998 to 2003, range from 1 to 5 million. As Kabila’s legitimacy crumbles with the end of his mandate, much more than a democratic transition is at stake in Congo.
- Dec 21, 2016
Young Israeli settlers in the settlement of Amona in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on 18 December 2016 (AFP)
In 2006, houses slated for demolition in the Amona settlement (AFP)
Israeli housing minister Yoav Galant visits Amona on 18 December 2016 (AFP)
Palestinians stand next to rubble after their home was demolished by Jerusalem municipality workers in the mostly Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of al-Tur in September 2016 (AFP)
