More than Chutzpah Behind the Bulldozers

 

 HOW IT WAS

A historic London pub has been demolished by a developer's bulldozers, without planning permission, and without warning to people in neighbouring properties or any precautions for their safety. Even the landlady was not told.

Now people are watching to see what action Westminster council takes, and demanding the company responsible are compelled to make good what they have destroyed or that the site is taken off them and used for social housing -and a new pub or social club.

 "Passers by stared in amazement as two bulldozers tore into Carlton Tavern in Carlton Vale, destroying its shell and all its contents including a wide screen television, darts trophies, pictures, and a pint glass left on a table.

No safety precautions had been put in place resulting in concerns about security of nearby buildings and if the utilities had been switched off prior.

Patsy Lord, the pub’s landlady, rushed to the scene from her home in Maida Vale after she was alerted to the demolition and told she needed to move her son’s car. After opening for business on Monday and hosting an Easter quiz, she was told the pub would be closed for an ‘inventory'."

Local councillor Tom Crockett said: “Neither the council, my fellow councillors nor local residents had any notice of this demolition which I saw with my own eyes being conducted without any obvious safety precautions such as hoardings, barriers or formal traffic controls. All took place as children on school holidays played outside and unsuspecting traffic went past through clouds of smoke and dust.

(This might well have included asbestos dust - RP)

“The demolition clearly took place under a cloak of secrecy; neither the locals nor the landlady knew. Televisions remained on the walls and the bar appeared fully stocked.

“We are urging officers to take the strongest action open to them. I have personally taken the time to ensure that photographic and film evidence has been collated and passed to officers for referral to the Health and Safety Executive whom I urge to consider bringing prosecutions.”

A Westminster council spokesperson told Londonist: “Westminster City Council’s Planning Enforcement Team received a report that the Carlton Tavern was in the process of being demolished. A planning inspector of the planning enforcement team visited the site immediately following receipt of the report and noted at 2.30pm that the building had indeed been substantially demolished with only one side wall remaining
This is truly outrageous behaviour which has to be dealt with properly. "

 In the past we have remarked on the mystery fires which destroyed some derelict pubs when owners were waiting for planning permission.  But in this case the company neither took its time waiting nor resorted to subterfuge. It is possible one reason for its hurry was that a preservation order on the building was expected, so the bulldozers were ordered in first.

Councillor Rita Begum, Maida Vale ward for Labour, said: "It was a shock. I have never seen anything like it in my entire life. "I went past just the other day and there were people drinking inside the pub - there was no warning whatsoever.

"They were going to confirm it as a listed building on Wednesday. I think the developers found out it was going to be a listed building and that's why the destroyed it.

Planning permission was sought in June 2014 on behalf of CLTX Ltd by Kieran Rafferty, of KR Planning, who describes himself on Twitter as an "independent planning consultant helping people deal with the anchors on society". 


As for the chances of even Tory Westminster council having to take tough action, this may not be easy.  The company which had applied to build flats on the site  is C. L. T. X., based in Tel  Aviv.

As one commentator says, "The only director of C.L.T.X. Ltd is Ori Calif, born 1977 (Director ID: 915883939) Registered address and Trading Address in London is 21 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3HH. Other registered address for Calif is 8 Shaul Hamelech Blvd, Tel Aviv, Israel 64733. Any lawsuit will be an issue since the company is only worth £942 and has £1,458 Cash It has £5,917 Assets with £4,975 Liabilities. I suppose jail would suffice!!"

This has brought some wry allusions to Israeli house demolitions, and we could also refer to the use of planning regulations to order them.  But more to the point, we must wonder how a company based so far away, and with such modest assets, could find its way among the big boys of the London property market and propose to build a block of flats, with apparently less cash than you would normally need to pay a deposit or raise a mortgage to buy a flat in London?

It must take chutzpah, sure, but surely also require good contacts. My guess, as a mere amateur with no business experience or proper knowledge of these matters, is that this company must have backing. And if they were tipped off that the building was about to be listed, so that they decided to send in the bulldozers right away, that sounds like they or their advisors had a useful contact in Westminster council's planning office.  Only saying....

 


 
http://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/news/heritage/shock_as_historic_pub_in_kilburn_is_demolished_with_no_warning_and_without_permission_1_4027231

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/developer-demolishes-historic-london-pub/8681094.article

http://londonist.com/2015/04/shock-as-historic-pub-demolished-without-permission.php

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/11525262/Bulldozers-level-historic-pub-the-day-before-it-is-due-to-be-listed.html

http://www.endole.co.uk/company/07578871/cltx-ltd 

• C.L.T.X. limited - incorporated 25 March 2011. Companies House has a proposal to strike off, perhaps due the non delivery of their 31 March 2014 accounts which were due 31 December 2014. Registered office 21 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3HH. One director - a Mr Ori Calif of 8 Shaul Hamelech Blvd, Tel Aviv, Israel 64733. C.L.T.X. has a subsidiary Ye Old White Bear Limited - again registered at 21 Bedford Square (this is probably their accountant's office). Ye Old White Bear was founded on 11 June 2013, no accounts or company return ever made so there is again a Companies House proposal to strike off. Our old friend Ori Calif is the sole director, but this time his address is given as 28 Kensington Park Gardens, Notting Hill W11 2QS and his occupation given as lawyer. There is a law firm called Ori Calif & Co registered at 8 Shaul Hamelech Blvd which claims a special focus on international taxation and real estate. Don't know if it is connected but there is a pub called The Old White Bear in Hampstead which was supposedly saved from being developed into a 6 bedroom house last year, but apparently has yet to re-open as a pub.-         'Wolfie Smith'

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/carlton-tavern-in-carlton-way-kilburn-is-demolished-with-no-warning-and-without-permission.333913/

Artists for rights of Workers on the Island of Happiness

GUGGENHEIM ABU DHABI as it's meant to look. Maybe
Wonders of the Ancient World were built by slaves,
but can we accept 21st Century versions of slavery?


“Artists should not be asked to exhibit their work in buildings built on the backs of exploited workers. Those working with bricks and mortar deserve the same kind of respect as those working with cameras and brushes.”
-Walid Raad, Lebanese-born New York artist, one of leaders of Guggenheim boycott.

'The British Museum did not respond to our letter expressing in detail our concerns about the exploitation of construction workers in the UAE, which we sent in response to reports that the museum would establish a presence in Abu Dhabi.'
- Human Rights Watch 2009 report on workers in Abu Dhabi

• 

SOME of the world's biggest, most costly and prestigious buildings go up cemented with the blood, sweat and tears of poor, exploited and ill-treated workers, often forced to live in awful conditions. Some people admire these wonders of the modern world, whether or not they can step into the luxury,in these millionaires' playgrounds, without worrying where the wealth they embody comes from, or how it is obtained, and from whom.

But now more than 130 artists, many of them well-known figures in Middle East art, say they will have nothing to do with an $800 million Guggenheim museum being built in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, unless the contracts respect workers' rights, and improve conditions.

The new Guggenheim, designed by Frank Gehry, is to be the centerpiece of a development called Saadiyat Island that includes a half-billion-dollar branch of the Louvre Museum designed by Jean Nouvel, a national museum designed by Norman Foster, luxury resorts, golf clubs, marinas and acres of private villas.

The way migrant workers are exploited and ill-treated are far from unique to the Emirates, though they stand out against such opulence, and because of the numbers involved. Some of the worst rip-off starts before the workers leave their own country. Many of the workers in the Emirates are from poor countries like Bangla Desh, attracted by the Gulf's oil wealth, and desperately hoping to work their way out from poverty and debt. It can be a trap in which they end up worse off. They have to pay huge fees upfront to the labour agencies, if they live in remote villages they may have to pay middlemen to even reach the agencies, and have to borrow from family members, sell any land they have, or borrow from money-lenders charging exorbitent interest. When they arrive in Abu Dhabi they can find that the good jobs and attractive wages they were promised by the agencies are a fiction, and so they are trapped, working twelve hours a day in the desert sun, and struggling to pay their debts.

The emirate of Abu Dhabi covers 70 per cent of the UAE land area and controls 94 per cent of the country's oil reserves; the UAE, in turn, has eight per cent of the world's proven crude oil reserves and five per cent of its natural gas. In 2006, the Ministry of Economy placed Abu Dhabi's population at 33 per cent of the UAE total, a figure of up to 1.85 million people in 2007. The ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is also the president of the UAE; he succeeded his father, Sheikh Zayed, to both positions in 2004.

The emirates vary in their conditions. Abu Dhabi, for instance, requires construction companies to provide health insurance to all employees, whereas Dubai mandated specialized bodies to protect workers' rights. It is not clear how many foreign workers live in the UAE or in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The UAE Ministry of Labor states that there were 3.1 million foreign workers in the country in 2007. However, the figure may be higher: as interviews with foreign embassy officials suggests that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh alone account for up to 2.95 million UAE residents. Construction workers also come from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, and elsewhere, and the large population of foreign domestic workers in the UAE comes from the Philippines, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and other countries.

Extrapolating from official figures, a minimum of roughly 900,000 migrant construction workers live in the UAE, although actual numbers may be higher. By law, construction workers are not allowed to bring their families to the UAE. All residents of labor camps in the UAE are male. The average "cycle" of a foreign construction worker in the UAE is "four to five years," according to a senior advisor to the Ministry of Labor.

The government of Abu Dhabi is developing Saadiyat Island as part of an overall attempt to diversify the economy from oil and gas. The desert kingdom has imported sand to raise the island above sea level. Saadiyat Island is wholly administered by the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA). In 2005, Sheikh Khalifa established the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), to manage the development of the ADTA's assets. Saadiyat will have hotels, marinas, two golf courses, museums, a university campus, a performing arts centre., and private villas.

Its name in Arabic means "happiness". How happy will it be for the workers?

When Human Rights Watch looked into this a couple of year ago it found:

• "Foreign construction workers in the UAE are subject to a sponsorship (or kafala) system that places them in a highly dependent relationship to their employers. In conjunction with prohibitions (de facto or de jure) against unions, collective bargaining and striking, the sponsorship system grants employers an extraordinary degree of control over foreign workers, placing the workers at severe risk of exploitation".

• "A foreign worker's legal ability to enter, live and work in the UAE depends on a single employer. UAE laws make it extremely difficult for workers to escape from this dependency after entering the UAE or beginning employment. If a foreign construction worker in the UAE quits, his employer will request the Ministry of Labor to cancel his labor card; a foreign worker who remains in the UAE more than two months after his labour card is cancelled will be fined. The employer will then take the worker's passport to the Ministry of Interior, which upon being shown the cancelled labor card will cancel the foreign worker's visa, stamp his passport with a six month ban on returning to the UAE, and arrange for his deportation to his home country.
• "...workers suffer other forms of abuse, such as overcrowded, unsanitary and dangerous housing, which continues to be a severe problem. According to news reports, the economic recession has led to an escalation in overcrowding and other poor treatment of workers at labor camps. The Ministry of Labor's chief inspector said that some companies, to cut costs, have added as much as 40 percent to the population of their labor camps (without increasing space for accommodation), and have cut workers' meals from three a day to one. Some more can be gleaned about workers accomodation from headlines "400 labour camps risk closure for violations," The National, August 29, 2008, http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080828/... "Chickenpox spread like wildfire at labor accommodations," Gulf News, June 6, 2008, http://www.gulfnews.com/Nation/Health/10218831.html, accessed March 16, 2008; Anthony Richardson, Praveen Menon and Greg Aris, "Early morning fire kills 11 men in Dubai," The National, August 26, 2008.


• Companies require workers to sign new contracts upon arrival in the UAE. These contracts are based on a Ministry of Labor model contract, written in Arabic and English. Most workers interviewed said they did not understand these languages, and that they signed their contracts without receiving any explanation of the contractual terms. No construction workers we interviewed had copies of their UAE work contracts. Workers sign these contracts in a coercive atmosphere. Some workers said companies threatened to deport them if they refused to sign. The driver for a road-building crew on Saadiyat Island said that a labour supply agency had promised him and 30 other men from Andra Pradesh jobs with a basic salary of 700 dirhams ($190) in the UAE; when they arrived and the Al Jaber company told them to sign contracts for a basic salary of 350 dirhams ($95), "We refused to sign anything. But after a month we all signed, because they were going to send us back."
• 
  
• Because workers have already paid large fees to manpower agencies, they are not in a position to bargain over these contracts. Many workers interviewed said that their employers instructed them to sign UAE work contracts quickly and under pressure. An Abu Dhabi National Hotels employee said he had to sign his contract immediately after he arrived in the UAE: "they made us sign them on the bus on the way from Dubai airport at four in the morning."

Illiterate workers are asked for a finger-print. Some workers said they were asked to sign or fingerprint blank sheets of paper, and told the company would fill in the contract later.


• "In some cases, the degree of control employers exert over migrant workers amounts to forced labor. Several employees of Abu Dhabi National Hotels Compass (ADNH) on Saadiyat Island told Human Rights Watch they wanted to quit their various jobs, but that their employer had threatened to fine them before returning their passports if they quit before completing two years' service".

In 2006, Human Rights Watch noted that the absence of labor unions and of independent workers' rights NGOs "has produced a situation where the government and the business sector are the sole entities deciding on labor-related issues." This has remained the case today. Workers were afraid to unionize or strike due to threats they would be fired and deported – threats backed up by laws that do not protect the right to organize and that forbid strikes, in violation of international labor laws.

None of the workers interviewed were members of trade unions. Most workers said they would be fired and deported if they unionized. Some workers said company officers explicitly threatened them if they were to join or form unions. An Al Habtoor employee, who said he had been assigned to work on a Leighton project on Saadiyat (the companies announced a joint venture in 2007), said that when he first arrived in the UAE, "The foreman told us all when we first got here not to try to form any groups because they'd cancel our visas."

Workers also said that company officials threatened them with deportation if they went on strike. A construction worker from Pakistan, who had been working on Saadiyat Island for five months without a holiday for Al Habtoor, said that "people from the company told us that if we went on strike our visas would be terminated."


Nevertheless tens of thousands of migrant workers in the UAE have gone on strike to protest low wages or poor treatment; authorities reportedly deported thousands and banned them from returning. In February 2007, a Dubai court sentenced 45 Indian construction workers to six-month jail terms, followed by deportation orders, for violence during a strike. In October, according to news reports, "thousands of construction workers in Dubai's Jebel Ali free-trade zone smashed police cars and blocked traffic. Within weeks, about 40,000 migrants in Dubai had staged strikes to demand pay raises, including for work building Burj Dubai, the world's tallest skyscraper."

UAE law does not protect the right to form or organize a union, or collective bargaining. The federal labor law is silent on the issue of strikes, but allows employers to dismiss workers without notice who are absent from work "without a valid reason" for seven consecutive or 20 non-consecutive days in one year.


According to the International Trade Union Confederation, the legislative committee of the UAE Ministry of Justice approved a bill allowing the formation of trade unions in the private sector in October 2004. In May 2006, the minister of labor indicated that the government would enact a law permitting trade union activities by the end of the year. As reported in Building Towers, Cheating Workers, Human Rights Watch asked for but did not receive details of the proposed legislation. There has been no further news on the proposal.

All workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they feared that they would be fired and deported if they used official channels to complain about abuses. One worker, who said that a labor supply agency in Pakistan had tricked him to come to the UAE with false promises of high wages, told Human Rights Watch that he chose not to ask the Pakistani embassy for help because "I'm afraid the next day my name would appear in the company records and I'd be terminated." A mason from India who worked for Al Habtoor on Saadiyat Island said he had still not been paid for his work on a previous job, but that "If we complain the camp boss will tell the head office we're lying and making problems. One year ago when I came back from my leave, one guy got fired for complaining. Now we're afraid."

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will cost £200 million to build, its most expensive museum. Other institutions involved in the Saadiyat Island project include the Louvre, the University of New York, and the British Museum, which is assisting in setting up a new Sheikh Zayyad National Museum. As part of a 10-year contract, the British Museum will lend some of its treasures to the venue and help it set up and curate exhibitions. The museum’s galleries will be based on a number of themes, one promoting “the story of oil”.

The British Museum may be hoping its undisclosed annual fee could help fund a £135m extension in London as government spending for the arts faces cuts. It's involvement in Abu Dhabi has government backing.

Human Rights Watch says it met with members of the Guggenheim Foundation in April 2008 and with consultants to the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim project in February 2009. It was told that the Guggenheim had raised Human Rights Watch's reporting on abuses against migrant construction workers to TDIC. But there was nothing in the contract about human rights or labour conditions.

The previous year it had contacted New York University, who did not respond until; with our concerns in September 2007; NYU did not respond until 2009, when officials finally met Human Rights Watch on April 10. University officials at the meeting stated that they had not sought any specific contractual guarantees of workers' rights protections from the Abu Dhabi Executive Affairs Authority (EAA), their development partner, because construction of the campus had not yet begun; there was a "commitment on both our parts to make sure NYU is a model of best practices in Abu Dhabi"; and "we believe them [the EAA] that labor issues are a top priority for them and that they have room to improve."

NYU has published a list of eleven "labor values," which state that the NYU project will comply with UAE laws but which are often vague and do not address the fundamental concerns that HRW raised. For example, the first "value" states that, "As a floor, workers providing services to NYU Abu Dhabi will be paid wages and benefits which comply with all applicable UAE laws and regulations and which provide for their essential needs and living standards." There is no minimum wage in the UAE.

The body responsible for the Louvre was more forthcoming. But the "British Museum, which according to media reports will establish an unspecified presence in Abu Dhabi, had not responded to a letter Human Rights Watch sent on March 9, 2009 as of April 20". Perhaps I'll find out more about that.

The statement which 135 artists have signed says:

"We, the undersigned, are writing to demand that the Guggenheim Foundation obtain contractual guarantees that will protect the rights of workers employed in the construction and maintenance of its new branch museum in Abu Dhabi.

"Human rights violations are currently occurring on Saadiyat Island, the location of the new museum. In two extensive reports on the UAE, Human Rights Watch has documented a cycle of abuse that leaves migrant workers deeply indebted, poorly paid, and unable to defend their rights or even quit their jobs. The UAE authorities responsible for developing the island have failed to tackle the root causes of abuse: unlawful recruiting fees, broken promises of wages, and a sponsorship system that gives employers virtually unlimited power over workers.

These violations, which threaten to sully the Guggenheim’s reputation, present a serious, moral challenge to those who may be asked to work with the museum. No one should be asked to exhibit or perform in a building that has been constructed and maintained on the backs of exploited employees".

There is an international petition which so far seems mainly confined to professional artists. But as well as encouraging them in this principled stand for workers rights to be respected, maybe the trade union movement can get involved. And besides the Guggenheim initiative which appears to have been started appropriately in the 'States, we should see whether leverage could be applied on the British Museum connection.

Guggenheim campaign:
http://gulflabor.wordpress.com/

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/gulflabor/

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Artists+boycott+Guggenheim+Abu+Dhabi+project/23383


Human Rights Watch report:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/83110/section/4


British Museum in the Gulf:
http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/2011/02/18/british-museum-helps-grow-a-local-institution-on-saadiyat-island/

http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2009/07/british_museumabu_dhabi_connec.html

http://www.eturbonews.com/10585/british-museum-help-launch-zayed-national-museum-abu-dhabi

Something stirs..."No one should be denied getting an education"

ANOTHER kind of "boycott". Students may be a little late for lectures today,
if they can get in at all. Israeli troops slap a temporary roadblock outside Bir Zeit University and check IDs.

IT may be a coincidence, but on the same day British college lecturers at their union conference in Bournemouth were voting for a resolution that could lead to a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, a group of well-known Israeli writers and academics were putting their names to a letter to the Israeli government, demanding that it grants Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip permission to travel to institutions of higher education in the West Bank.

It may not be much - neither they nor Israel's Western backers question Israel's power to say who can enter or leave, or travel between, the truncated Palestinian territories. Or even inside them, as when Palestinians have been prevented from reaching hospitals, travelling to work or college, even going to bathe in the Dead Sea. But it is the first time such an esteemed group -including university presidents - has got behind such a demand.

In a joint letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, they called on Israel to lift its sweeping ban on the travel of Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza so students could pursue their education."Blocking access to higher education for Palestinian students from Gaza who choose to study in the West Bank casts a dark shadow over Israel's image as a state which respects and supports the principle of academic freedom and the right to education," the letter states.

The appeal was signed by authors Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, and the presidents of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University, Haifa University and the Haifa Technion.

The Defense Ministry said it hadn't received the letter and had no immediate comment. In the past, the ministry has said it would be time-consuming and impractical to check each Gazan wanting to apply. The Israeli military tightened its travel restrictions after the elected Hamas-led Palestinian government took office last year.

West Bank universities have far higher standards than those in Gaza, and offer programs that are not available there, such as occupational therapy, physical therapy and health administration, said Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, an Israeli group that initiated the appeal. The group has challenged the travel restrictions in a petition to the Supreme Court. The case is scheduled to be heard in July.

Bashi said her group is demanding that Israel do away with the blanket travel ban on Palestinian students and evaluate each case individually."These are students who asking to study a profession that is not available in Gaza," she said. "No one should be denied getting an education."

This item from Associated Press was passed on to me by an Israeli academic living in Britain who has been among those arguing for an institutional boycott He adds: "Note that this is the first time Israeli universities have made a demand of this sort. The boycott is having a welcome effect.
Note also the Bar-Ilan University -- a hotbed of religious Zionist fanaticism -- is not among the signatories of this demand".

Another academic initiative I heard about yesterday is from Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace(FIPP), which is an international network of academics with Palestinians and Israelis among its members, committed to demanding an end to Israeli occupation so a just peace can be achieved. It comes after Israeli forces detained some 40 leading Palestinians, including MPs and academics. (Note -when Palestinians or Lebanese fighters take an armed Israeli prisoner on their soil they are said to have "kidnapped" the person; whereas Israeli forces can "arrest" elected leaders of a government, while our media keeps telling us it is down to the Palestinians to negotiate, and recognise, Israel.).

The FIPP have sent this
Open Letter to Israeli Education Minister Yael Tamir

From: FFIPP – Faculty For Israeli-Palestinian Peace

To: Prof Yael Tamir, Minister of Education
Cc: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz,
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni

In the recent spate of seizures carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces, Dr.Nassereddine Shaer, (Minister of Education and Higher Education (Palestine) Dean of Faculty of Islamic Law, An-Najah National University (Palestine)) was abducted, along with over 30 others, some of whom are elected Palestinian representatives and government Ministers.

This practice of the Israeli authorities is illegal under international law. More so, it goes against any attempt to promote a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As academics – Israeli, Palestinian, and International – we view this act as one more destructive step in the Israeli policy of obstruction of the right to education and academic freedom in Palestine.

It is in line with the ongoing policy of the Israeli military authorities to deny access to Palestinian students and academics to venues of study or research. Abducting the Minister of Education at this time, when final preparations are underway for 80,000 high school students to take the general high-school examination, is a major blow to the educational system in Palestine. It is, in fact, a blatant act of persecution which we vigorously oppose.

As academics we have an obligation to guard and promote critical thinking, personal morality and human solidarity. We are witness now to the intensification of human suffering which has spiraled into a grave crisis. You –an academic, a professor of philosophy and education, and Minister of Education– are a party to actions which are devastating for the Palestinian society, its cultural and educational subsistence, and its very existence. You must speak up and act!

Release the Palestinian Minister of Education and all those who have been unlawfully detained.


“Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act.”
- Albert Einstein

Last night I heard that Professor Avraham Oz of Haifa University had added his name to this protest. He is one of a number of Israeli academics who do consistently challenge their governments' oppressive policies and deserve our recognition and support.

I was hoping to give more information on the backing the FIPP letter had received, but was unable to access the websites of either FIPP-UK or Jews for Justice for Palestinians, who work with them, today. Perhaps they are being worked on to update with news of the campaign. I should hate to get paranoid about interference on the web, though it has been known to happen!

(During an earlier row about boycotts etc. AOL appeared to be blocking some e-mails, and this in turn led to university servers rejecting them. With the help of Professor Moshe Machover I found that they were systematically blocking anything containing the web address of Gush Shalom in Israel. Because this was being done automatically a way was found round it).

Anyway, the international web address for Faculty for Israel-Palestinian Peace is:http://www.ffipp.org/

The UK one - though at present seemingly inaccessible is: http://www.ffipp-uk.org/

And while I am at it, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, which also could not be found today is normally http://www.jfjfp.org/

Gush Shalom is http://gush-shalom.org/



Design for Living, not for Oppressing!

ANOTHER group of professionals who can make a difference to what is happening in Israel/Palestine are the architects and planners. Israel is notorious for using planning regulations to prevent Palestinians building their homes, and order demolitions, and Israeli architects do play an important part in designing new settlements that carve up Palestinian land.

Abe Hayeem is a retired architect who is making it his business to focus attention on these issues. He was a founder of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, who have launched an international petition on the settlements issue. Last week Abe, who is Jewish, was able to speak about this on the Islamic Channel's TV news programme. It is a very good interview and the news programme itself is very informative. You may still be able to see it if you go to http://www.islamchannel.tv/News/#and click on the top item no 1 under Islam Channel News that says News-30-05-07

Destruction of Bedouin Villages

BEDOUIN demonstrate
in Be'ersheva
over demolition
orders,
September 2005.
photo credit Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages.

“Where will my children sleep tonight, in this terrible cold?” cried the mother of ten.

TWO reports from Israel on how the Zionist state is treating Negev Bedouin:

Large police forces deployed to destroy an entire Bedouin village north of Be’er Sheba 21 houses were demolished, leaving 500 people homeless.

“The mother was crying out and her throat got dry. I wanted to give her some water, but the police had spilled all the water in the village on the ground” says Nori al-Okbi, head of the Beduin Rights Defence Association. “At 11 a.m. I got an urgent call from the Talalka Tribe, they cried on the phone: ‘Help! Help! They are destroying the whole village!’ I ran to my car and got there in a quarter of an hour..

I arrived at the horrible scene, hundreds of police protesting the bulldozers which destroy house after house. I saw this mother of ten crying: ‘What will I do now? My children will come back from school and find they have no home. Where will they sleep in the cold night?” She ran crying after the bulldozers, but the police commander continued with chilling efficiency to deploy his man and defend the destroyers. I my view, the destruction of a whole village and making five hundred people homeless is like cold-blooded murder. This is a brutal act against helpless civilians, who suffer severe racial discrimination by the Government of Israel, just because they belong to a minority ” says Al Okbi.

Nuri al-Okbi says that he saw a group of young people in yellow vests, who were removing the villagers’ belongings from the destroyed houses. “They were Hebrew-speaking young men, apparently of the age to be conscripts, but wearing civilian clothes. Is the army now ‘lending ‘ the police some conscripts, for participation in a dirty war against the Beduin citizens of Israel in the Negev? And if they were not conscripts, who were these young men, and where did they come from? I asked some Knesset Members to take this up with the Ministry of Defence”.

The Talalka live on their immemorial land, where they lived for many generations, long before the state of Israel was created. They have lodged an official appeal to recognise their ownership over 10,000 dunums (2500 acres). The appeal is still far from being finally decided, but the state authorities do not wait but try to create facts on the ground - to expel the Talaka from their land and lock them in an overcrowded concentration township, where no sources of livelihood. They do not yield, though the destroyers come again and again to destroy their homes, and every time the devastation is more total” says al Okbi.

“In the name of the Talaka and of all the Negev Beduin, who are discriminated against and persecuted solely because of their origin, I call upon the Prime Minster and his ministers: stop this evil and cruel policy against us, stop the destruction of the Arab citizens’ homes. Start regarding us, too, as equal citizens of the state of Israel!


That was a few days ago, as reported in a despatch via the Israeli peace bloc Gush Shalom. Terrible as it is, it is not an isolated case. Here is a report from the pre-Christmas period from the Council of Unrecognised Villages:

The Government of Israel Demolished an Entire Bedouin Village Today in the Israeli Negev

Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages.December 6, 2006

At 5:00am hundreds of policepeople accompanied six bulldozers and demolished 17 homes and 3 animal shacks in the village of Twail Abu-Jarwal. The entire village is demolished. People are sitting by the piles of tin that were their modest dwellings and wondering what to do, where to go… even their family cannot host them, as no one has a house standing…

This is the fourth time this year that the government demolished this village. This time they got it `right` – no house is left standing… But the villagers have nowhere to go to. They lived on the outskirts of the Bedouin town of Laqia, the old folk paid for plots of land to build homes in the 1970s, they still hold on the receipt, hoping someday to receive the plots. For the last 30 years they have been living on land belonging to others, in shacks, the housing becoming ever more crowded, until there was no room left for another baby.

They turned to the government for a solution – the option for joining the rest of the residents of Laqia, in a regular house, on a regular plot of land. But the authorities had no options for them. The owners of the land on which they were living requested that they leave – 30 years is enough. So eventually they left back to their own ancestral land – only a couple of miles south of Laqia – by the old ruined school, by their old cemetery. The adult sons built their old mother a modest brick home. The rest built tin shacks. A year ago the government came and destroyed several houses – including the brick home.

Some of the people of Twail Abu Jarwal rebuilt, some moved into more crowded homes with their adult siblings. The government came nine months later and demolished 7 more homes. Again, some rebuilt their shacks, some moved in with family. The government came back last month and just to harass, uprooted fences, holding the sheep. And now they came in order to make sure the work is complete.

Israel`s Minister of Interior, Roni Bar-On, two days ago was invited to give answers to the Internal Affairs Committee in the Knesset, as to what solutions the government is advancing in order to solve the issue of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, and why the government is demolishing homes while these people have no `legal` options for building homes. Bar-On claimed that everything is just fine, he is doing all he can to deal with this issue, but a criminal must be punished, and therefore all the `illegal` Bedouin homes in the Negev must be demolished.

He claimed that as far as he is concerned, there are not enough demolitions in the Negev. And now he has proved that he is a man of his word – 17 homes demolished in one foul swoop. Of the 150,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Negev, over 50% live in villages that the government as policy has left `unrecognized` , meaning that there are no options for building permits, as well as running water, electricity, roads, sewer systems and trash removal, additionally there are very minimal education and health facilities. This policy`s aim is to force the Bedouins off their ancestral lands and to concentrate the Bedouins in urban townships, regardless of their wishes or their culture.

However, there are also no options for living in the concentration towns the government has built, as there are no available plots of land for homes, as in the case of the families of the Twail abu-Jarwal village. Therefore the government can `legally` demolish the homes of 80,000 members of this community, while they cannot build one `legal` home.

In December, members of Al Okbi tribe invited supporters to join them in sowing crops. "On Saturday, December 16, 2006, Jews and Arabs joined together to undertake traditional Bedouin sowing of the lands that belong to the Al Okbi tribe in the Negev. During the sowing, three people were arrested and a confrontation developed with the police that tried to stop the activity.
Approximately 100 activists arrived in the morning to the Al Arakib region (located five kilometers south of Rahat) to help sow the fields of the Al Okbi tribe. The aim was to sow 200 dunam of wheat which would help financially support members of the tribe. As soon as the activity began, the police tried stopping the planters and three activists were forcibly arrested and brought for investigation to Rahat".
http://bustan.org/2006/12/arrests_and_confrontation_with.html

Israel's clearances of Bedouin are being spurred on by foreign capital and ambitions to develop minerals (particularly oil shale) and industry in the Negev, as well as expanding settlements and military bases.
See for instance, on American money:
http://bustan.org/2006/10/bustan_article_news_from_withi.html
and on oil shale:
http://bustan.org/2006/11/analysis_israel_sees_shale_rep.html


REMEMBER the way our media treated the removal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza strip? Night by night the BBC brought us pictures of weeping settlers struggling with soldiers - and not a thought for those whose land they had settled, nor a mention that they were being provided with compensation and alternative homes and settlements. What a perfomance!
The other day I was remarking to someone how the BBC had failed to give the slightest coverage to events such as Bil'in, in the West Bank, where troops and border police attacked Palestinians and Israelis demonstrating against the Israeli 'Apartheid Wall'. My friend thought perhaps coverage was hindered by restrictions on the reporters and film crews. But see, for instance:
http://www.awalls.org/bilin_mass_demonstration_attacked_eight_injured
and:
http://www.awalls.org/the_shooting_of_lymor_goldstine

Newsmen and photographers have been casualties. But if the corporate media don't wish to expose their own staff, why not run some of material shot by brave local filmers and activists?

Campaigners did manage to get a BBC radio team in to look at what was happening in the Negev.
http://bustan.org/2006/11/bustan_brings_bbc_the_world_to.html
So who knows, maybe TV news coverage will catch up.

CONSIDER:

The mass evictions of Negev Bedouin are not taking place under military rule in occupied territory but within the Israeli state, where the Bedouin are supposedly citizens with equal rights! Yet the Israeli state refuses to recognise their villages and the Minister of the Interior can call them "criminals" simply for being where they are. A campaign called "Enough" is being launched this month in London to say that Israel's 40 year long occupation of territory seized in 1967 must be brought to an end. Quite right too. But even if the Zionists are finally persuaded to withdraw from the Occupied Territories -and it will take more than talk - the treatment of the Bedouin within the pre-1967 borders reminds us that withdrawal will not be enough. Not if we believe that human beings are entitled to be treated as such.

If you believe what you hear on the news, Condeleeza Rice has been out there helping Israel re-open efforts for "peace". US warships heading for the Gulf suggest a different interpretation. But if the Israeli government did want peace it could begin by making peace with some of its own citizens.

Some sources for more information:

Arab Human Rights Association, factsheet:
http://www.arabhra.org/factsheets/factsheet3.htm

BUSTAN, a partnership of Jewish and Arab eco-builders, architects, academics, and farmers promoting social and environmental justice and fair allocation of resources in Israel/Palestine.
http://bustan.org/

The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages was created in 1997 as the representative body for the residents of the 45 Bedouin unrecognized villages in the Israeli Negev. Hussein al-Rafaia is the elected head of the RCUV. For more information, please contact Yeela Raanan, 054 7487005, or via email at yallylivnat@gmail.com, Civil Society Activities Coordinator, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages.

Profession against Occupation

CATALOGUE OF OPPRESSION deemed too "political"

AS leaders of the "civilised", "democratic" world meet to admonish Palestinians under occupation for voting the wrong way, and threaten their children will suffer worse deprivation and suffering unless their leaders fall into line, two other meetings in London will confront the realities of occupation.

Horrific events like bombings naturally make headline news. Television viewers in Britain were treated each teatime to the melodrama of the Israeli government's removal of Gaza settlers (now queuing for handsome compensation). So far as I'm aware the joint peaceful demonstrations by Palestinians and Israeli peaceniks at Bil'in have not yet made our TV screens. Palestinians lighting a Chanuka menorah beyond the fence? Not news, it seems. Hamas flags alongside Gush Shalom, peaceful villagers and Tel Aviv anarchists together facing tear gas? Not news.
"Nation shall speak peace unto nation," says the inscription over the BBC world broadcasting centre, Bush House. But when they do, it won't be on telly. Maybe they should make the sign read "George W. Bush House" these days.

But I digress.

What very rarely makes the news or even gets much documentary coverage is the day to day reality of occupation: land grabbing, humiliation at checkpoints, house demolitions, the use of planning, the Wall, and strategically-placed settlements to dominate the land and people. The European Union and British government suppressed their own official Report on East Jerusalem.
(Fortunately, alerted by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, some 40 organisations defied the ban and published the supressed report on their websites - see
http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/documents/eu_jerusalem_report.pdf)

Let's hear Jeff Halper, of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions(ICAHD):

"Restrictions of Palestinian use of their own land and policies of restricting Palestinian housing through zoning, permits and demolition of "illegal" houses are the mechanisms by which Israel maintains its artificial domination over the city. In 1967, the 70 km2 (70,000 dunums) labeled "East Jerusalem" were added to the 38 km2 of "West" Jerusalem, tripling the size of the city. Almost immediately Israel expropriated 35% of Palestinian land in order to build massive housing complexes (Ramat Eshkol, French Hill, Ramot, Rekhes Shu'afat, Pisgat Ze'ev, Neveh Yaakov, East Talpiot, Har Homa and Gilo, not to mention large areas in the Old City), exclusively for Jews. Indeed, while about 85,000 housing units have been built for Jews since 1967 in East Jerusalem, only 9,000 housing units have been approved for Palestinians, and all of those built with private funds rather than by government companies or with government subsidies. What's more, another 54% of Palestinian land has been declared "open green space," making it illegal for Palestinians to build on it. This means that only 11% of East Jerusalem land (just 7% of the total municipal area) is available to the third of the population that is Palestinian. Palestinian housing today is inadequate, over-crowded and confined to small parts of the city; the Municipality itself admits that 25,000 units of housing are lacking in the Arab sector; yet 2000 demolition orders are outstanding, affecting some 6000 families. Israel's policy in the eastern part of the "united" city is clear: to confine Palestinians to constricted ghettos (encouraging those who desire a better life to leave the country altogether); to ensure Israeli domination through the massive construction of an "inner ring" of settlements in the eastern part of the city; and to prevent a meaningful Palestinian political presence in the city
http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=4

Architects and planners are in the front line of this:
"They want to say that architecture has nothing to do with politics, but architects and planners have always been the executive arms of the Israeli state, erasing the old cartography and trying to create their own on top of it."
Eyal Weizman, one of the creators ofA Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture

At the end of July 2002, in the same week that an Israeli US-made F16 dropped 1,000 pounds of laser-guided explosives on the Al-Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City, a different kind of explosion shook the supposedly quiet world of architecture. The catalogue for an entry by the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) to the World Congress of Architecture in Berlin was suppressed by the leadership of the architects association. They said the ideas in the catalogue were "not architecture" and that it would damage Israel's image abroad by presenting "an anti-Israeli, one-sided presentation."

Created by Israeli architects Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, the catalogue, A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture , detailed how Israeli architecture and urban planning had been involved in the take-over of Palestinian land, from 1948 when the state was established to the settlements now dominating the hillsides of the West Bank. In a foreword note, Weizman and Segal said they would show how "the mundane elements of planning and architecture have been conscripted as tactical tools in the Israeli state-strategy."

Weizman and Segal had been chosen by the IAUA to prepare its official entry in the Berlin congress, but when the catalogue appeared, IAUA president Uri Zerubavel, and 15 out of 20 council members, moved to suppress it; they confiscated most of the 5,000 copies and pulled the exhibition out of Berlin. Uri Zerubavel himself has refused offers to design Israeli settlements in the West Bank, for "private political reasons", but he drew back from advertising this issue for an international exhibition.

Weizman and Segal managed to rescue about 850 copies of A Civilian Occupation, and the publisher, Babel Publications, decided to publish and distribute it internationally. One of the architectural editors for Babel noted that the catalog typified a "moral dilemma facing all architects." "Some who work for big corporations or large real estate operators create things just as monstrous as the architecture of the occupied territories," he said. "The catalog makes us think about the political dimension of all architecture."
(the book was published in the UK by Verso, see:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/s-titles/segal_weizman_occupation.shtml

Jeff Halper, who has taught at Haifa and Ben Gurion Universities, describes himself as a "engaged anthropologist", and is co-ordinatoor the ICAHD. He is speaking at St.Mary's College in Twickenham on Friday February 17, 5-7.30pm, on "A New Apartheid Regime or Peace? Israel/Palestine after the March 2006 Election". Dr Nur Masalha, from Galilee, will be in the chair. It's in lecture theatre G7, St Mary's College Waldegrave Road, Twickenham TW1 4SX

How to reach St Mary's College? For directions by car and public Transport, see www.smuc.ac.uk/about/location.html

But before this, a group of professionals concerned with their responsibility are meeting in London tomorrow evening, Thursday, February 2, to launch Architects and Planners for Justice'. The idea and invitations have come from Abe Hayeem, an Indian-born Jewish peace activist and professional architect, and Orna Neuman, an Israeli designer.

The meeting is at the offices of the Richard Rogers Partnership, Thames Wharf, Rainville Road, W6., from 7-9pm . Robert Bevan, author of "The Destruction of Memory -Architecture at War", will be introducing the issues that the book highlights, and there'll be time for questions and discussion.

If any architects, planners or others interested want to come, or get in touch, you can RSVP
abe.hayeem@btinternet.com