- Home
- Hansard & Papers
- Legislative Council
- 11 June 2002
Bethlehem Peace Centre
Printing Tips |
Print selected text
| Full Day Hansard Transcript
« Prior Item |
Item 50 of 51
| Next Item »
Page: 2968
The Hon. RICHARD JONES [10.29 p.m.]: Two years ago I went with a parliamentary delegation to Egypt, Palestine, Israel and Jordan and met with a number of leading Palestinians. We met with the Egyptian Foreign Minister and with members of Likud, Shimon Peres and others. We met with probably the whole of the Palestine Government except for Yasser Arafat, who was in Washington at the time. Some of the people we met then are now dead. I am really shocked by what has happened to Palestine since we were there. We had real hope for peace and a separate Palestinian state. I have been reading reports from the Palestinian Delegation that have been coming through in my email. Two or three of these reports have been coming through every day. One was a press release from the Bethlehem Peace Centre. The press release details the extensive damage and destruction left behind by the Israeli occupation forces during their 38-day occupation of Bethlehem. According to the centre's report:
… the traces of what must have transpired inside the Bethlehem Peace Center between 2 April and 10 May 2002 speaks of unimaginable arrogance, violence, insolence and a total disrespect for civil society and human dignity.
The email continues:
The director of the Bethlehem Peace Center entered the premises of the Bethlehem Peace Center the evening of Friday 10 May, while the Israeli occupation soldiers were still evacuating the town from the back of the building. Within the hour, diplomats of the Swedish Consulate General in Jerusalem joined him. "What we encountered was a scene of utter devastation, inexplicable and inexcusable even under the circumstances of a military occupation. This is certainly not the hallmark of a civilized army", he expressed.
The Bethlehem Peace Centre, which had been a gift from Sweden to Bethlehem and is dedicated to the promotion of peace, democracy, religious tolerance and cultural diversity, was coated in a mixture of dirt, wine, urine, eggs, rotting food, spilt coffee and tea from wall to wall, room to room and floor to floor. The centre reported that the bathrooms had faeces and vomit in the toilets, on the floors and on the walls. The report added that the centre's furniture was rearranged to meet the needs of the Israeli military administration, with not a single desk or chair remaining in its original place. Doors and drawers were forced open, a number of them having been blasted with dynamite. Hundreds of keys were strewn throughout the building, including under various toilet seats. All cash boxes were compromised. Moreover, the centre reported at least seven computers and printers, fax machines, a heavy-duty photocopier, all the telephones in the building, a laminator, two scanners, a video projector, a DVD, a VCR, two televisions, two slide projectors, two sound mixers, CD players, microphones and a digital camera were stolen by the Israeli occupation forces. Many official files and scores of personal items, including private family photographs, were also taken.
The report concluded that the defilement of the Bethlehem Peace Centre proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the destruction of Palestinian civil society and the looting were not only tolerated by the military but were orchestrated by the Israeli occupation army at the highest level and were, indeed, one of the objectives of Operation Defensive Shield. I have received a number of reports about the enormous damage done by the Israeli army and the gratuitous damage done to the infrastructure of Palestine. One report came from a teacher of sociology at the Bir Zeit University, Zuhair Sabbagh, who gave a long report about the destruction of parts of Ramallah. He stated:
Electricity, telephone and traffic pylons were knocked down and crushed. Debris, rubble, trees and crushed cars were everywhere. Israeli bulldozers dug out and cut water pipes. Ramallah was simply devastated.
We tried to buy some food, but food stores were almost empty. We could not find bread or milk. So we went to the vegetable market, to find that only a few old vegetables were on sale. While shopping, I learned that many stores, supermarkets, cultural centers, educational institutes, television and radio stations, and banks were ransacked and vandalized by Israeli troops. This proved violence was directed at the economy and culture of indigenous Palestinians.
He referred to a time when three tanks and two troop carriers came to his apartment building. He described a scene in which his 10-year-old daughter, Orjuwana, went to collect her dearest dolls and a teddy bear as the troops came in. He states:
A moment later, she went back to her room and brought with her a children's book in Hebrew. She displayed the book between teddy bear and the two dolls. When I asked why she had brought the Hebrew book, she innocently said: "I don't want the soldiers to take away my dolls and teddy bear. When the soldiers enter our apartment, they will see the book and will not take my dolls and teddy bear.
He refers also to the soldiers dynamiting the multilock doors of the apartments one by one and terrifying the inhabitants, although the soldiers could have entered without having done so. He also refers to the gratuitous destruction of building after building in Ramallah. As I said earlier, some of the people we met are now dead, but one person we met was Marwan Barghouti, who, at the time the report was written, was a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and had been tortured and detained for over 35 days. The report also states that 5,000 people, including female prisoners, have not been spared from torture. What the Israeli Army is doing is outrageous. The world should not sit by and watch it happen.
Last modified 05/12/2007 16:38:27 : Update this page