South Sudan: the state that fell apart in a week | World news | The Guardian

Tracking the rising of the Antichrist in North Africa.

ANTICHRIST - KING OF THE NORTH, KING OF THE SOUTH - THREE HORNS CUT OFF - ONE SHALL REIGN OVER ALL

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South Sudan: the state that fell apart in a week | World news | The Guardian

South Sudan: the state that fell apart in a week

The first western journalist into South Sudan reports from Juba on the brutal and sudden descent into civil war

• Daniel Howden in Juba
• The Guardian, Monday 23 December 2013 15.00 EST

A young cattle herder from the Dinka tribe carries his AK 47 rifle near Rumbek, capital of the Lakes State in central South Sudan. Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

A week ago, Simon K, a 20-year-old student living in the capital of South Sudan, was arrested by men in military uniforms. He was asked a question that has taken on deadly importance in the world's newest country in the past seven days: incholdi – "What is your name?" in Dinka, the language of the country's president and its largest ethnic group.

Those who, like Simon, were unable to answer, risked being identified as Nuer, the ethnic group of the former vice-president now leading the armed opposition and facing the brunt of what insiders are describing as the world's newest civil war.

Simon K was taken to a police station in the Gudele market district of Juba, where he was marched past several dead bodies and locked in a room with other young men, all Nuer. "We counted ourselves and found we were 252," he told the Guardian. "Then they put guns in through the windows and started to shoot us."

The massacre continued for two days with soldiers returning at intervals to shoot again if they saw any sign of life. Simon was one of 12 men to survive the assault by covering themselves in the bodies of the dead and dying.

A displaced family from South Sudan's Nuer tribe, who fled their home in fear of ethnic killing by the Dinka-led government, erects a makeshift shelter inside the United Nations Mission in Sudan facility in Jabel. Photograph: James Akena/Reuters

Simon spoke from inside the UN compound that has become an emergency sanctuary to the remaining Nuer in the capital. Sitting on a filthy mattress by the side of a dirt road, with bandages covering bullet wounds in his stomach and legs, he recalled: "It was horrible, because to survive I had to cover myself with the bodies of dead people, and during the two days, the bodies started to smell really bad."

In the space of seven desperate days, the UN base has been transformed from a logistics hub for an aid operation into a squalid sanctuary for more than 10,000 people. Amid the confusion of bodies and belongings, a handmade sign hangs from the rolls of razor wire. "The lord is our best defender," it reads.

But there is no sign here of the lord's defence, as the country that gained independence in 2011 with huge international fanfare and support has come apart in the space of a week.

The latest violence began after a fight between Dinka and Nuer soldiers in the presidential guard on 15 December, igniting a simmering political power struggle in South Sudan's ruling party and sparking widespread ethnic killings.

Juba resident Gatluak Kual, who has bullet wounds in both arms and a prosthetic foot from the 20-year battle that split Sudan and created an independent south two years ago under President Salva Kiir, says the country is once more at war.

United Nations Mission in Sudan personnel guard South Sudanese people displaced by fighting in Jabel, on the outskirts of Juba, the South Sudan capital. Photograph: James Akena/Reuters

"Everyone here has lost someone [in the last week]," he said, gesturing out over the multitude with the finger he broke five days ago disarming a Dinka militiaman who was trying to kill him. "We have seen our daughters, our brothers, our mothers killed simply because they are Nuer. To me this is already a civil war."

The reverberations of the wave of targeted killings that began in the fledgling capital are being felt throughout the country, where they have sparked revenge attacks and copycat atrocities. Generals who have mutinied have seized the capital of South Sudan's largest state, Jonglei, and its main oil-producing area, Unity State. Former vice-president Riek Machar threw his support behind the armed opposition and is now its de facto leader. On Sunday a full-scale tank battle was being fought between opposing factions in the South's army in the far western reaches of oil-rich, swampy Upper Nile.

"It would have been difficult one week ago to imagine that things would unravel to this extent," said the UN's head of humanitarian affairs in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer.

The fighting has already claimed thousands, if not tens of thousands, of civilian lives. Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese have fled into the bush or returned to home villages, according to the UN. The official death toll of 500, which corresponds with the number of dead in a single Juba hospital six days ago, is being dismissed by experts. A veteran aid worker, who has been assessing the scale and nature of the killings from sources nationwide, said the real figure was "in the tens of thousands".

On Monday, Machar claimed his forces had gained control of all the major oil fields in Unity and Upper Nile states. The information minister, Michael Makuei, told Reuters this was "wishful thinking".

In Juba, Gatwech T remembers how, last Tuesday, he ran for his life when soldiers attacked his home area of Hai Referendum. Some of the men outran the younger ones, who were caught by men in uniform. "They caught the boys and I stopped to watch. They counted them and there were 21 boys, as young as him," he said, pointing at a 15-year-old. "They tied their hands behind their backs and killed them."

Yien K, 28, was at home last Monday evening at around 10pm in the Jabarona area on the outskirts of the capital when he heard shooting. As it came closer he decided to hide at his brother's home. There were five of them inside the simple structure: his brother, his brother's wife, one-year-old niece and another six-year-old girl, a cousin. Yien recalls the moment just after midnight when the tracks of a tank ripped through the walls and crushed the one-year-old. "The tanks came and ran over the house," he said. "The men escaped but the woman and girls were killed."

Unlike some of Juba's neighbourhoods, which have divided along ethnic lines, Jabarona is a mixed area and Yien believes the tank operators had guides showing them where Nuer people were living.

In neighbourhoods such as Mangaten, Hai Referendum, Area 107 and Eden City, it is now easy to tell where the Nuer community lived. Halfway down the main market street of Mangaten, a dust-blown complex of tin-shack shops and rickety stalls, the bustle and activity stops. Most businesses have been ransacked, their rough shelves stripped of everything; stalls have been burned to the ground. Crossing into Hai Referendum, one of the highest density settlements in Juba, is now a ghost town of abandoned houses.

On Saturday, a few laid-back looters could be seen loading a meagre haul of plastic chairs, pots and foam mattresses on to three-wheelers. In some houses nearby plates of food were left behind, clothes have been scattered where people fled. Only broken plastic chairs, empty tubs of milk powder and smashed fans lie in the dirt.

UN peacekeepers distribute boxes of food to displaced people in South Sudan. Photograph: Anna Adhikari/AFP/Getty Images

Crossing the boundary into Eden City, the atmosphere changed. Plainclothes soldiers, one of them with a plastic-handled kitchen knife in the pocket of his shorts and a machete visible under his football shirt stopped and questioned any outsiders. Only 20 metres away was the charred corpse of a man lying with his legs splayed outside the looted Eden Sports bar.

Nearby, a nervous family had returned to their mud hut home, known as a tukul, to visit Moses' aged mother who is too ill to make the journey to the UN base less than a mile away. He was determined to leave before nightfall, when a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed by the government begins. "The army is coming at night," he said. "You hear the guns going tuk-tuk-tuk."

Rose, who emerged from the tukul where Moses' mother is bed-ridden, said: "Everybody has been running because of war. We're also running."

South Sudan's government, which has received billions of dollars in foreign aid and is home to the largest UN peacekeeping operation in the world outside the Democratic Republic of Congo, continues to insist that massacres in Juba have not happened. The president, whose guards sparked the first fighting on 15 December, has assured the South Sudanese that his forces will protect civilians.

Philip Aguer, a spokesman for the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the civil war guerrilla force that is now the national army, denied any orchestrated attacks had taken place. He said he was unaware of the slaughter at Mangaten police station and blamed any deaths on "criminal elements" who had exploited the chance to loot and kill afforded by the crisis. "Even though some of these criminals are wearing army uniforms does not necessarily mean they are part of the army," he said. He denied any national army soldiers were involved: "No SPLA soldiers are involved in this criminal activity."

With regard to those carrying out the atrocities, he added: "We are ready to arrest them and take them to court."

But this description of rogue elements does not tally with the account of Riek W, who was until Saturday a serving member of the presidential guard, known to Jubans as the "Tigers".

A three-year veteran of the multi-ethnic unit that was meant to bind the diverse communities of what had been southern Sudan, he was not openly known as a Nuer to many of his colleagues and does not bear the traditional "Gaar" scarring that many Nuer men have on their faces.

Now in hiding in the UN base, he described how fighting between Dinka and Nuer members of the Tigers last Sunday night had spilled over into attacks on civilian Nuers all over the city.

"They took people who were not soldiers and tied their hands and shot them. I saw this with my own eyes, I was there wearing the same uniform as them."

Young men from the Dinka community, many of them with no military training, were given uniforms and guns from various armouries around the capital, including one located at President Kiir's own compound, known as J1, he says.

"It is soldiers who are doing this and militia from Dinka boys who have been given guns from the Tigers," he said.

Riek W said that his Dinka colleagues could not act without the authority of their commander and that they were "the same soldiers that are killing people at night".

Riek W, who decided to abandon his post in the president's compound at the weekend as he feared for his life and was horrified at the murder of civilians, said that the scale of the killings was being covered up. " They… are using the curfew to remove the bodies," he said.

He described how he had seen "large trucks" full of bodies, some of which were taken to grave sites dug with bulldozers, while others had been dumped in the river Nile at two points: one near the Bilpam barracks and one at Juba bridge. These reports have been corroborated by fishermen who have seen the bodies up on the river bank. "The numbers they are saying are completely wrong, people have been killed everywhere," Riek W said.

The Nuer who have survived in Juba, numbering 20,000, are now crammed into the city's two UN bases. Their fate is matched by another 14,000 civilians from other ethnic groups sheltering with the UN in South Sudan's other main towns.

Many of the Nuer crowded into the main UN mission base in Juba said they were sure the peacekeepers would protect them despite the evacuation over the weekend of all non-critical UN staff.

Not everyone feels safe, though. Wearing a dusty pinstriped suit jacket and apologising for not having showered in six days, 51-year-old Peter Bey was unsure. He has watched in recent days as one evacuation flight after another has taken foreign nationals to safety from the airport on the other side of the fence. "We see from history that the UN has left people behind before in Rwanda," he said. "They put their own people on helicopters and left the people who died."

U.S. Raids in Libya and Somalia Strike Terror Targets - NYTimes.com

ANTICHRIST - KING OF THE NORTH, KING OF THE SOUTH - THREE HORNS CUT OFF - ONE SHALL REIGN OVER ALL

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Deadly Clashes Erupt in Egypt - NYTimes.com

Deadly Clashes Erupt in Egypt

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 6, 2013

CAIRO — Clashes erupted across much of Egypt on Sunday between security forces and supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, leaving 28 people dead, as rival crowds of supporters of the military and backers of Mr. Morsi poured into streets to commemorate a major holiday.

The clashes took place 40 years to the day that Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal

at the start of the nation’s last war with Israel. The day has since been declared a national holiday. The military-backed government had wanted the day to be a tribute to the armed forces, whose chief ousted Mr. Morsi in a coup on July 3.

But demonstrations across Cairo and much of the country by Mr. Morsi’s supporters marred the festivities. They and security forces fought pitched battles in the streets of Cairo, some of which now resemble combat zones, with small fires burning, black smoke rising and the sound of gunshots piercing air thick with tear gas.

In some cases, the pro-Morsi demonstrators were set upon by supporters of the military. The authorities said they had arrested 335 Morsi supporters nationwide.

The clashes were the last chapter in the turmoil roiling the country since the ouster in February 2011 of the country’s longtime ruler, Hosni Mubarak, and are certain to set back efforts by the government to revive the economy, especially the vital tourism sector, and bring order to the streets of Cairo, where crime and lawlessness have been rife.

The scene of the fighting contrasted with a carnival-like mood in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, where thousands of supporters of the military waved Egyptian flags, blew whistles and carried posters of the army chief, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sissi. Adding to the festivities, a military band in green jackets and off-white pants played, and men spun in whirling dervish-style dances.

Thousands of Morsi backers meanwhile held marches around the city, shouting slogans against General Sissi as some headed toward Tahrir Square in hopes of forcing their way into the sprawling plaza.

At central locations including a southern entrance to the square, the police fired into the air and lobbed tear gas to push back several pro-Morsi marchers as they approached. Some of the dead however suffered gunshot wounds to the head and chest and the pro-Morsi demonstrators were also lobbing firebombs and firing birdshot at the police.

Violence was also reported in southern Egypt, where one Morsi supporter was killed in the town of Dalga. The police opened fire on a march by Islamists after some of the protesters fired birdshot at the police, according to the provincial security chief, Osama Metwali.

U.S. Raids in Libya and Somalia Strike Terror Targets - NYTimes.com

U.S. Raids in Libya and Somalia Strike Terror Targets

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, NICHOLAS KULISH and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: October 5, 2013 

CAIRO — American commandos carried out raids on Saturday in two far-flung African countries in a powerful flex of military muscle aimed at capturing fugitive terrorist suspects. American troops assisted by F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents seized a suspected leader of Al Qaeda on the streets of Tripoli, Libya, while Navy SEALs raided the seaside villa of a militant leader in a predawn firefight on the coast of Somalia.

In Tripoli, American forces captured a Libyan militant who had been indicted in 2000 for his role in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The militant, born Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai and known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas al-Liby, had a $5 million bounty on his head; his capture at dawn ended a 15-year manhunt.

In Somalia, the Navy SEAL team emerged before sunrise from the Indian Ocean and exchanged gunfire with militants at the home of a senior leader of the Shabab, the Somali militant group. The raid was planned more than a week ago, officials said, after a massacre by the Shabab at a Nairobi shopping mall that killed more than 60 people two weeks ago.

The SEAL team was forced to withdraw before it could confirm that it had killed the Shabab leader, a senior American security official said. Officials declined to identify the target.

Officials said the timing of the two raids was coincidental. But occurring on the same day, they underscored the rise of northern Africa as a haven for international terrorists. Libya has collapsed into the control of a patchwork of militias since the ouster of the Qaddafi government in 2011. Somalia, the birthplace of the Shabab, has lacked an effective central government for more than two decades.

With President Obama locked in a standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for a policy reversal in Syria, the raids could fuel accusations among his critics that the administration was eager for a showy foreign policy victory.

Abu Anas, the Libyan Qaeda leader, was considered a major prize, and officials said he was alive in United States custody. While the details about his capture were sketchy, an American official said Saturday night that he appeared to have been taken peacefully and that he was “no longer in Libya.”

His capture was the latest blow to what remains of the original Qaeda organization after a 12-year American campaign to capture or kill its leadership, including the killing two years ago of its founder, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan.

Despite his presence in Libya, Abu Anas was not believed to have played any role in the 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, senior officials briefed on that investigation have said, but he may have sought to build networks connecting what remains of the Qaeda organization to like-minded militants in Libya.

His brother, Nabih, told The Associated Press that just after dawn prayers, three vehicles full of armed men had approached Abu Anas’s home and surrounded him as he parked his car. The men smashed his window, seized his gun and sped away with him, the brother said.

A senior American official said the Libyan government had been apprised of the operation and provided assistance, but it was unclear in what capacity. An assistant to the prime minister of the Libyan transitional government said the government had been unaware of any operation or of Abu Anas’s capture. Asked if American forces had ever conducted raids inside Libya or collaborated with Libyan forces, Mehmoud Abu Bahia, assistant to the defense minister, replied, “Absolutely not.”

Disclosure of the raid is likely to inflame anxieties among many Libyans about their national sovereignty, putting a new strain on the transitional government’s fragile authority. Many Libyan Islamists already accuse their interim prime Minister, Ali Zeidan, who previously lived in Geneva as part of the exiled opposition to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, of collaborating too closely with the West.

Abu Anas, 49, was born in Tripoli and joined Bin Laden’s organization as early as the early 1990s, when it was based in Sudan. He later moved to Britain, where he was granted political asylum as a Libyan dissident. United States prosecutors in New York charged him in a 2000 indictment with helping to conduct “visual and photographic surveillance” of the United States Embassy in Nairobi in 1993 and again in 1995. Prosecutors said in the indictment that Abu Anas had discussed with another senior Qaeda figure the idea of attacking an American target in retaliation for the United States peacekeeping operation in Somalia.

After the 1998 bombing, the British police raided his apartment and found an 18-chapter terrorist training manual. Written in Arabic and titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants,” it included advice on car bombing, torture, sabotage and disguise.

Since the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi, Tripoli has slid steadily into lawlessness, with no strong central government or police presence. It has become a safe haven for militants seeking to avoid detection elsewhere, and United States government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information, have acknowledged in recent months that Abu Anas and other wanted terrorists had been seen moving freely around the capital.

(Page 2 of 2)

The operation to capture Abu Anas was several weeks in the making, a United States official said, and President Obama was regularly briefed as the suspect was tracked in Tripoli. Mr. Obama had to approve the capture. He had often promised there would be “no boots on the ground” in Libya when the United States intervened there in March 2011, so the decision to send in Special Operations forces was a risky one.

Note this:

Palestine Cry: Europa & Palestine News « Europa & Middle East News

Next is the crushing of any sovereignty of the land that the book of Daniel meant by Ethiopia. The Communist rule of dictator 1974 - 1991 Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia (yet another Army Officer), was only an interim balkanization of modern North Eastern Africa. The land meant by Ethiopia (Cush in the Bible) in the Book of Daniel covers present day Southern Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Present day Ethiopia still has a central power to all of this. The Antichrist of Israel will seek its utter destruction and will topple it completely.

American officials said they would want to question Abu Anas for several weeks. But they did not dispute that New York, where an indictment is pending against him, was most likely his ultimate destination. Mr. Obama has been loath to add to the prisoner count at the American military facility at Guantánamo Bay, and there is precedent for delivering those suspected of terrorism to New York if they are under indictment there.

The operation will do nothing to quell the continuing questions about the events in Benghazi 13 months ago that led to the deaths of four Americans. But officials say the operation was a product of the decision after Benghazi to bolster the counterterrorism effort in Libya, especially as Tripoli became a safe haven for Qaeda leadership.

The capture of Abu Anas also coincided with a fierce gunfight that killed 15 Libyan soldiers at a checkpoint in a neighborhood southeast of Tripoli, near the traditional home of Abu Anas’s clan.

A spokesman for the Libyan Army general staff, Col. Ali Sheikhi, said five cars full of armed men in masks pulled up at the army checkpoint at 6:15 a.m. and opened fire at point-blank range. It was not clear if the assault at the checkpoint was related to the capture of Abu Anas or his removal from Libya.

The raid in Somalia was the most significant raid by American troops in that lawless country since commandoskilled Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Qaeda mastermind, near the same coastal town four years ago. The town, Baraawe, a small port south of Mogadishu, is known as a gathering place for the Shabab’s foreign fighters.

Witnesses described a firefight lasting over an hour, with helicopters called in for air support. A senior Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “The attack was carried out by the American forces, and the Somali government was pre-informed about the attack.”

A spokesman for the Shabab said that one of their fighters had been killed in an exchange of gunfire but that the group had beaten back the assault. American officials initially reported that they had seized the Shabab leader, but later backed off that account.

A United States official said that no Americans had been killed or wounded and that the Americans “disengaged after inflicting some Shabab casualties.”

“We are not in a position to identify those casualties,” the official said.

The F.B.I. sent dozens of agents to Nairobi after the siege of the Westgate shopping mall to help the Kenyan authorities with the investigation. United States officials fear that the Shabab could attempt a similar attack on American soil, perhaps employing Somali-American recruits.

A witness in Baraawe said the house was known as a place where senior foreign commanders stayed. He could not say whether they were there when the attack began, but he said 12 well-trained Shabab fighters scheduled for a mission abroad were staying there at the time of the assault.

It was not clear what role if any the target of the American assault had played in the attack on the Nairobi mall.One United States official said it was still unclear whether any Americans had been involved in the Westgate siege, though several Kenyan officials said they now believed that there had been as few as four attackers — far fewer than the 10 to 15 the government had previously reported.

A spokesman for the Kenyan military said Saturday that it had identified four of the attackers from surveillance footage as Abu Baara al-Sudani, Omar Nabhan, Khattab al-Kene and a man known only as Umayr.

The spokesman, Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, said none of the militants had escaped the mall. “They’re all dead,” he said.

The footage, broadcast on Kenyan television on Friday night, showed four attackers moving about the mall with cool nonchalance.

At least one of the four men, Mr. Nabhan, was Kenyan, officials said, and believed to be a younger relative of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the Qaeda operative killed four years ago near Baraawe, the site of Saturday’s raid.

The elder Mr. Nabhan was a suspect in the bombing of an Israeli hotel on the Kenyan coast in 2002 and the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Matt Bryden, a former head of the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, said the tactics used in the Westgate attack were similar to those used by the Shabab in a number of operations in Somalia this year. But he also said that local help had been needed to pull off an attack on that scale, and that several of the men identified as taking part in the attack had been connected to the group’s Kenyan affiliate, known as Al Hijra.

“We should certainly expect Al Hijra and Al Shabab to try again,” Mr. Bryden said. “And we should expect them to have the capacity to do so.”

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo; Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya; and Eric Schmitt from San Francisco. Reporting was contributed by Suliman Ali Zway and Carlotta Gall from Tripoli, Libya; Michael S. Schmidt and David E. Sanger from Washington; Josh Kron from Mombasa, Kenya; and Mohammed Ibrahim from Mogadishu, Somalia.

Europa & Palestine News « Europa & Middle East News: Letter from a Political Negotiator to the International Community

The maps tell true story israel


Europa & Palestine News « Europa & Middle East News: Letter from a Political Negotiator to the International Community

Letter from a Political Negotiator to the International Community

رسالة من الدكتور عريقات تتحدث حول تدهور حالة الفلسطينيين ما بين سبتمبر 2011 – 2012
This is the first time that I post a anything received from Dr. Saeb Erekat, the so-called Chief Negotiator. I post it despite of my distrust and distance to him and what he does for several reasons, among them:

• The lack trust towards him because he never told the Palestinians honestly what he is doing through his secret and known contacts with and US and the Israeli government of the occupation
• His close proximity to USA and Israel and the American insistence that he be the ONLY Palestinian negotiator during the last two decades
• The sum of disasters that he brought us Palestinians through his activities, among them signing the agreements since Oslo until today without calling for the necessary referendums before putting his signature under such disadvantageous “agreements”
• The opulent and aristocratic decadency that he and his extended family afford themselves while they live in Jericho, Abu Dis and other Palestinian towns in the middle of the oppressed and ruinated Palestinians for whom it is normally hard to find a piece of bread for themselves and their families

Despite all my criticism against him and his activities, I been receiving more or less meaningful messages from him in the past. I think that publishing this last one is in the interest of the Palestinian people.
Below is the latest message that I received on Sep. 26 2012 from Dr. Erekat, where he talks openly about a set of facts after 45 years of Israeli zionist occupation, and specifically the changes of the facts on the ground due to the occupation between Sept. 2011 and Sept. 2012, specifically after President Abbas gave his previous speech at the United Nations requesting that the General Assembly States recognize Palestine as a state and full member of the UN. That request was rejected due to pressure from the US and the international zionist community, which supports the israeli occupation of Palestine and prolonging the colonial expansion of the zionist state.

The deterioration of the Palestine Situation – Palestine Liberation Organization – Negotiations Affairs Department – September 2012. (See the letter as PDF September 2011- September 2012).
September 2011- September 2012 – After 45 years of Israeli occupation, the daily reality in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem (OPT), continues to deteriorate to the point where the two-state solution is almost inconceivable. The statistics below bear witness to the fact that Israel has no interest in meaningful negotiations. A non-violent and diplomatic way to protect Palestinian inalienable rights and to save the prospects of justice and peace is for Palestine to apply for membership in the most multilateral organization in the world, the United Nations.
Ahead of President Abbas’ speech in the UN General Assembly, we have collected some of the key figures regarding Israeli occupation and colonization policies within the Occupied Palestinian Territory between the last UNGA General Debate and today. The status quo is clearly untenable.
Between the 2011 and 2012 speeches of President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN:
… the Israeli settler population living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem (OPT), grew by over 20,000 settlers. There are over half a million settlers living in the OPT today.
… Israel planned, in different stages (tendering, approvals), at least 11,096 housing units and hotel rooms for settlements in and around Occupied East Jerusalem. The new housing units, if approved, would house around 44,000 new Israeli settlers.
… 991 separate incidents of terrorist acts by Israeli settlers living illegally in the OPT were recorded, including shootings, physical assaults, arson attacks, murder of livestock, and the destruction of property and vehicles. At least 60 of these attacks were against Christian and Muslim religious institutions.
… Israeli forces demolished approximately 510 Palestinian structures in Area C, displacing close to 770 Palestinians.
In 2011, following the Quartet Statement of September 23:

•  November 17: the Israeli authorities published tenders for 2,190 housing units in settlements in four different locations in the West Bank. Out of the new tenders, 40 are in Ma’ale Adumim, 277 in Ariel and 277 in Efrat.
• November 27: the Israeli Ministry of Defense approved settlement construction plans for 238 housing units in Shilo settlement north east of Ramallah (aiming to separate Nablus from Ramallah).
• December 12: the Israeli Ministry of Defense approved the establishment of a new, permanent settlement near Efrat in the Bethlehem area (aiming to separate Bethlehem from Hebron).

… the UN reported that a record number of Palestinians were displaced as a result of home demolitions in 2011. More than 1,000 Palestinians in the OPT (including East Jerusalem) lost their homes, double the number from the previous year and the highest number since 2005.
… 560 Palestinian-owned structures, including 200 residential structures and 46 rainwater collection cisterns and pools, were demolished by the Israeli authorities. (ICHAD)
… the Israeli authorities demolished over 200 Palestinian-owned structures in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea area, displacing around 430 people and affecting the livelihoods of another 1,200 Palestinians. (OCHA)

• Israel demolished 46 Palestinian rainwater-harvesting cisterns, preventing Palestinians from even collecting rainwater, and 25 Palestinian wells primarily used for agricultural and residential use. The situation did not change during 2012.
• During the olive harvest, about 42% of applications submitted for permits to access Palestinian orchards in the areas behind the illegal wall were rejected. (OCHA)

 The situation today:

•  Since 2007, incidents of settler attacks against Palestinians have risen by an alarming 315%.
•  The UN reports that more than 250,000 Palestinians remain at risk of settler violence, 76,000 of whom are deemed to be at high risk.
•  Over the past four decades, the residency of 14,084 Palestinians has been revoked, directly impacting more than 20% of Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem. These residents are no longer permitted to live or work in their city. Of all the revocations that have been carried out from 1967 until today, about half have occurred since 2006.
•   The Israeli “Mayor” of the so-called “Jerusalem municipality” has proposed depriving Palestinian Jerusalemites east of the illegal wall of their Jerusalem IDs. If successful, this proposal would affect an estimated 80,000 of 361,000 Palestinians and would be the largest act of deportation and de-population of the City since the beginning of the occupation.
•   The Israeli military has destroyed over 3,300 Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem since 1967.
•   Because of Israeli restrictions, at least 160,000 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem have no suitable or legal connection to water networks.
•   Israel continues to restrict Palestinians’ basic right to worship freely. This includes barring most Palestinians from accessing the Al Aqsa Mosque Compound and allowing only West Bank residents above 40 years of age to enter East Jerusalem and access the compound. 77.4% of Palestinians in the OPT are under the age of 30.
•   At Easter, Israel’s policies against Jerusalem are also prominent: While Christians from all over the world take part in Easter ceremonies in occupied East Jerusalem, indigenous many Palestinian Christians are prevented from worshipping in Jerusalem. Those who are granted access are forced to apply through a discriminatory permit regime, followed by humiliation at checkpoints on their way to worship.
•   Over 60% of the West Bank is considered Area C, where Israel retains extensive control, including over security, planning and zoning.
•   Water consumption dips to 20 liters/capita/day (l/c/d) in communities without water infrastructure, one fifth of the World Health Organization’s recommendation.
•   Communities depending on tankered water pay up to 400% more for every liter than those connected to the water network.
•   The Jordan Valley makes up 28.5% of the West Bank and is home to almost 60,000 Palestinians. There are 37 Israeli settlements in the area, with a population of 9,500 settlers in contravention of international law. 94% of the land is effectively off limits to Palestinians.
•  The Israeli settlers living in the Jordan valley consume the equivalent of one-third of the entire amount of water made available to all 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. (B’Tselem).
•   Approximately 18% of the West Bank has been designated as a closed military zone for training, or “firing zone”; this is roughly the same amount of the West Bank under full Palestinian authority.
•  The planned expansion area of the around 135 Israeli settlements in the OPT is 9 times larger than their built-up area. (B’Tselem).
•   Over 3,000 demolition orders are outstanding throughout the OPT, including 18 targeting schools.
•   In 2010, the estimated total cost of occupation to the Palestinian economy was $6.9 billion, a staggering 84.9% of GDP.
•   70% of Palestinians are refugees most of whom have been waiting 64 years for the recognition and implementation of their rights.
•   There is ongoing construction in ALL settlements within the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Israel’s actions make it patently clear that there is currently no prospect for meaningful negotiations. If the international community truly wants to resolve this conflict then the culture of impunity granted to Israel must come to an end. The Palestinian application to the United Nations is an effort to legitimize Palestine in the international arena and is a way to salvage the two-state solution. Self-determination is our sovereign right; international recognition is the legal and moral responsibility of the international community. All those who endorse the two-state solution along the 1967 borders, and wish to see a meaningful and peaceful resolution to this conflict, should vote in favour of admitting Palestine at the United Nations.

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• Abbass (Steve)

  September 28th, 2012 at 15:11:16

  They have done it to themselves, there really is only one solution, and that is ONE state for all. The Jewish state has ensured its own demise with this greed and arrogant stupidity. The demographic bomb will get them no matter what they do now. For all their Zionist murderous and brutal ways, they can’t expel or kill Palestinians faster than they can increase their numbers.
• Steve

  October 1st, 2012 at 07:13:41

  More than anyone might know depends on whether the New World Order ZioNazi transnational machine goes after Syria to the end and then Iran or goes after Ethiopia-Yemen. If they in fact betray the heavy Rabbinic element in Iran and go the way of full and complete conquest of Syria and Iran, then it is more of the same that has occurred since the absurd British and their absurd Freemasonic one square mile city (London) decided a century ago to promise a group of foreign Zionists that they could unlawfully and immorally invade and occupy Palestine.
  If they go after Yemen and Ethiopia and close off the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea and thereby the Suez Canal, then it is most ominous. It means that they are following the steps laid out in the Book of Daniel for the Antichrist and doing so on purpose (there it tells of conquering first Egypt – i.e regime change and then Libya, i.e. regime change again, and then Ethiopia) and furthermore risking the most extreme chance of real nuclear war if they choke East West trade that way in connection with any other foul plan they have in mind. If that happens beware of the worst coming to pass. Kissinger and other Zionists have mimicked for a very long time ancient prophecies of evil and medieval power mongering hegemonies in their pursuit of insane power.
  Pray they don’t get their desire.
  Steve
• #PALESTINE NEWS | Sept 27, 2012 | Occupied Palestine | فلسطين

  September 28th, 2012 at 08:22:00

  [...] Letter from a Political Negotiator to the International Community ~ by @KawtherSalam http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2012/09/27/letter-from-a-political-negotiator-to-the-international-commu… [...]
• #PALESTINE NEWS | Sept 28, 2012 | Occupied Palestine | فلسطين

  September 30th, 2012 at 09:20:30

  [...] Letter from a Political Negotiator to the International Community ~ by @KawtherSalam http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2012/09/27/letter-from-a-political-negotiator-to-the-international-commu… [...]

Update:

Palestine Cry: Ethiopia Scoop - Ethiopia Online: Massive al-Qaida plot foiled in Yemen
 
Palestine Cry: Ethiopian News Media: Yemen says al-Qaeda targeted oil port



Yemen Post

	In Sanaa, the fears and worries of ordinary citizens were not from Al-Qaeda, but from the US drones that were roaming the skies of the Yemeni capital for the first time.
Hakim Almasmari  Publisher & Editor in Chief

http://yemenpost.net/Detail123456789.aspx?SubID=3956

POLITICS
Last updated: 01:47:14 AM GMT(+03) Sunday, 28, August, 2011
Al-Qaeda Timeline in Modern Yemen History
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* 1992 December - Bombers hit hotel in Aden formerly used by US marines - first known al-Qaeda attack in Yemen. 2000 October - Suicide attack on destroyer USS Cole in Aden. Bomb attack on British embassy in Sanaa. 2002 October - French tanker Limburg damaged by bomb-laden boat in port of Ash-Shir. 2007 July - 8 Spanish tourists, 2 local drivers killed by car bomb at historic site in Maarib. 2008 January - Two Belgians, their guide and driver shot dead in attack in Wadi Hadramout. 2008 March - Policeman, student killed in attempted bombing of US embassy. 2008 September - 16 killed in double car bombing outside US embassy. 2009 January - Saudi and Yemeni al-Qaeda branches announce merger to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  2009 March - 4 South Korean tourists killed by suicide bomber in Shibam. 2009 August - AQAP bomber dies in failed bid to kill Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.  2009 December - 'Underwear bomber' Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tries to down Detroit-bound US airliner in plot claimed by AQAP. 2010 January - London conference on extremism in Yemen.  2010 April - Attempted suicide bomb attack on convoy of British envoy Tim Torlot in Sanaa. 2010 June - Attack on Aden security complex. 10 security officers said killed. 2010 July - 11 security forces killed in 2 separate attacks in Shabwa province. Al-Qaeda attackers hit South Yemen security offices in 2 coordinated attacks. 2010 October - Rocket attack targets British embassy car 2010 October - Parcel bombs, thought to have been made by al-Qaeda and dispatched in Yemen, found on US-bound cargo planes
*
Source: Yemen Post/BBC

LOCAL
Last updated: 07:11:54 PM GMT(+03) Wednesday, 21, August, 2013
Yemen Southern Movement supports Egyptian's coup
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Yemen Post Staff Ali Salem al-Baidh, former President of South Yemen and high ranking leader of al-Harak (Southern Secessionist Movement) joined the long list of supporters of the Egyptian military in its crackdown of the Muslim Brotherhood. On Tuesday the veteran politician told United Press International "the position of the people of the south will remain supportive and an advocate for the actions taken by the Egyptian government to establish security and stability because Egypt's security and territorial integrity of the security of southern Yemen." He added, "The Arab people in South Yemen [reference to the southern provinces of Yemen] stands with the popular will of the people of Egypt. There are thousands of people from the South which everyday are demonstrating their support toward Egypt." Al-Baidh expressed hopes that Egypt interim government will be able to soon restore peace and stability throughout the country. His comments came amid more reports that Haraki militants in the southern seaport of Aden have staged mass demonstrations in condemnation of the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab political movement which is organized in Yemen under the banner of al-Islah. One of Yemen's most popular and prominent political group, al-Islah account within its ranks powerful figures such Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and Sheikh Abdel-Mageed al-Zindani. Such a direct critic and antagonistic stance against al-Islah could potentially lead to sever political disruption at a time when Yemen, which is now weeks away from announcing the result of its National Dialogue Conference needs stability. Political analysts have argued that al-Baidh' support of the Egyptian military aims to generate international support to its cause as Haraki militants are pushing for the creation of an independent southern state. Yemen Post Staff
*
Source: Yemen Post Newspaper