Women's delegation on East J'lem evictions: Words not enough

Published yesterday (updated) 21/08/2009 21:38

 – Ma’an –

The international community must “suspend all military aid to Israel and suspend investment in settlements in the West Bank,” former EU parliament Vice President Luisa Morgantini said on Friday outside the homes of evicted East Jerusalem Palestinians.

“It’s not enough to call for a stop to the settlements. We need the international community to take concrete action,” she said.

Morgantini was part of a high-ranking international women’s coalition which called for the world to take action to reverse Israel’s forcible eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

The members of the tripartite International Women’s Commission (IWC) spoke alongside members of the now-homeless Ghawi and Hanoun families. They included the former foreign minister of Iceland, Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, Israeli peace advocates, and the Palestinian deputy minister of women’s affairs, Salwa Hdeib.

Israeli police forced more than fifty members of the two families from two buildings in the Shaikh Jarrah neighborhood into the street on 2 August, making way for Israeli settlers to take over the houses.

“We came here today to link the IWC’s long aim, which is to establish peace based on human rights and international law, to the call to stop all evictions,” said Morgantini in an interview with Ma’an shortly after a press conference on the sidewalk outside the Hanoun family home.

“Today was very important,” Morgantini said, “because it showed Palestinian, Israeli, and international women speaking with one voice.”

The IWC, a coalition of prominent Palestinian, Israeli, and International women, was set up during a meeting in Istanbul in 2005. Supported by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the organization is co-chaired by Finnish President Tarja Halonen and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Asked if Israel’s supporter-states are any closer to taking action to cut funding, Morgantini said there is still a long way to go, but stressed that the IWC is lobbying at the highest levels, including contacts with the international Quartet, the European Union, the Arab League. The IWC’s co-chairs have also sent a letter to US President Barack Obama, she said.

IWC delegate Maha Abu Dayyeh, the director of the Ramallah-based Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, explained that the IWC’s primary mission is a high-level lobbying effort. She said that since 2005 the group’s members have met with the foreign ministers of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and even former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon.

“We feel that there is resolution to the conflict aside from negotiating,” she said. “The aim is to end the occupation, not just to deal with one house here and one house there.”

Until the international community takes action, the Ghawi and Hanoun families are cooking their meals and spending their nights on the sidewalk near their former homes. In the Ghawi building, two settler families who originally moved into the building have since vacated. A private Israeli security contractor now guards the building, and a security camera has been installed. The building’s windows, smashed when Israeli police raided it on 2 August, remain unrepaired.

Maher Hanoun, a senior member of the evicted family, told Ma’an that they plan to continue a legal battle to return to their home. He said he has paid 7,500 Israeli shekels to open a new case in the Israeli Central Court in East Jerusalem. The petition, he said, contends that the original eviction orders applied only to some of the apartments in the multi-family houses. He said a hearing would likely be held Sunday or Monday.

“We don’t have any choice but the Israeli courts,” he said, “but we have to go forward.”