By Meredith Lee-Clark
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

JERUSALEM, Israel/West Bank – As the religious calendars of Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestants, and Jews converge this week, tensions are rife throughout the holy city of Jerusalem. Thousands of pilgrims from Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and the rest of the world have converged on this city to celebrate their holidays, though with a sense of unease permeating the celebrations.

A major source of the tension is the restrictions on Palestinian travel to and through Jerusalem. Israel “closes” Jerusalem to Palestinians during Jewish holidays. This year, the six days of Passover coincide with the celebration of Easter, which, this year, falls on the same Sunday for both Greek Orthodox and for Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians. As part of a protest on Palm Sunday, March 28, hundreds of Palestinians marched the five to ten miles from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to the Israeli checkpoint at Jerusalem, where several protestors were arrested for allegedly crossing into Israel illegally. Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, while Palestinians seek to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Usually, Palestinian Christians have an easier time gaining permits into Jerusalem during Christian holidays than do Palestinian Muslims during Muslim holidays, but there have been several incidents of violence in and around Jerusalem in recent weeks because of Israeli plans to build settlements in the predominantly and traditionally Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Palestinian Christians who applied for permits to enter Jerusalem during the Easter holiday were told they would not be allowed in. As of March 31, Israeli officials had announced that only international Christians would be allowed to enter Jerusalem.

Some Middle East observers have characterized the recent tensions between Israelis and Palestinians as a “cold Intifada,” referring to the two Palestinian uprisings that began in 1989 and 2001. Professor Yitzhak Reiter explains the significance of sites like Jerusalem in such conflicts:

“Holy places have become the symbol of the conflict,” said Reiter. “Ever space where someone can find some holy connection becomes part of the conflict.”

Reiter believes the low-scale violence of the “cold Intifada” will persist because Palestinians believe that the Israelis want to “Judaize” the Arab portions of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and that any proclaimed confidence-building measures by Israel are meant only to appease the United States.

For more information, please see:

World Magazine – O Jerusalem – 10 April 2010

The National – Christians Angry at Jerusalem Lockdown as Easter Clashes with Passover – 4 April 2010

SperoNews – Israeli Raid in Gaza Injures Three Children as Jerusalem Prepares for Easter – 3 April 2010

Ma’an News Agency – Palestinian Christians to be Barred from Jerusalem Old City – 31 March 2010

By Meredith Lee-Clark
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

AL-ARISH, Egypt – Egyptian border guards have been taking an increasingly hard line with migrants attempting to cross into the Palestinian Territories and Israel through the Egypt-Gaza border. On March 31, Human Rights Watch reported than Egyptian border guards had killed three migrants attempting to cross, bringing the total of migrants killed by Egyptian forces since the beginning of 2010 to twelve.

In its statement, Human Rights Watch added that many more migrants had been arrested and detained by the Egyptians. Most of the migrants are from southern Ethiopia or Sudan, many escaping the war-torn region of Darfur. After the migrants are detained by Egyptian authorities, most are sent back to their home regions, where they may be subject to further fighting or torture. This appears to be in violation of the United Nations’s international agreement on refugees.

“Egyptian guards have made the Sinai border a death zone for migrants trying to flee the country,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa Director for Human Rights Watch. “What’s more, the Egyptian government has not investigated even a single case of the sixty-nine killings of migrants by border guards since 2007.”

The Egyptian Coast Guard has also been active along the Gaza border in recent days. Three Palestinian fishermen from Gaza were arrested by the Egyptian Coast Guard on March 20, for allegedly trying to illegally enter into Egyptian territorial waters. The fishermen claimed they were having engine trouble and drifted into Egyptian waters. In similar incidents, Palestinian fishermen have been fined 1000 Egyptian pounds ($150 US) before being released back to Gaza.

It has become increasingly difficult to make a living as a fisherman in Gaza, as the Israeli blockade has shrunk the traditional fishing grounds to a mere few square miles off the Gaza coast. These once-abundant waters have become severely overfished as Gaza fishermen struggle to bring income and food to their families. Palestinian fishermen often come into conflict with both Israeli and Egyptian forces.

Finally, Egypt has recently bombed several of the smuggling tunnels going from Egypt into Gaza. While both Egypt and Israel claim that the tunnels are primarily used for transporting weapons, Gaza civilians also use the tunnels to obtain vital humanitarian supplies that cannot often pass through the Israeli blockade.

For more information, please see:

Human Rights Watch – Egypt: Guards Kill 3 Migrants on Border with Israel – 31 March 2010

Ma’an News Agency – Egyptian Guards Close 5 Smuggling Tunnels – 25 March 2010

Ma’an News Agency – Gaza Fishermen Detained by Egypt Coast Guard – 21 March 2010

By Brandon Kaufman
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

By Bobby Rajabi

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The committee in charge of vetting candidates in Iraq has found that six of the winning candidates in the March 7 general election should be disqualified for their alleged ties to the former Baath government. If the move by the panel is upheld, it would alter the election result, which resulted in former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiyya coalition winning by two seats. Iraqiyya, however, lacks to the seats to form a government.

Iraq’s Accountability and Justice Commission found that six of election winners were members of the Baath political party. This was the party of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and is banned under Iraqi law. The Committee, sometimes referred to as the De-Baathification Committee, was formed to prevent people associated with Hussein’s party from standing for elected office. Officials from the Committee, who chose to remain anonymous, told the Associated Press that of the six winners, four of them belonged to former Prime Minsters Allawi’s coalition.

Officials from the Justice and Accountability Committee told the AP that they had originally submitted fifty two names to barred from the standing in the election. However, according to the officials, Iraq’s Independent High Election Commission did not act on the recommendations of the committee. Six of the fifty two candidates subsequently went on the win their elections.

Allawi’s Iraqiyya bloc has rejected to moves of the Justice and Accountability Committee. Hamid al-Mutlaq, a winning candidate that is a member of Iraqiyya, insisted that “those six winning candidates have the approval of the election commission and this decision is a political one, not a legal one.” The Independent High Election Commission, despite ignoring the fifty two names referred to them by the Justice and Accountability Committee, ultimately barred close to fiver hundred candidates from standing for election.

The State of Law coalition leader, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is currently mounting a legal challenge to the election. Despite this challenge, both United Nations and United States envoys to Iraq have said the the March 7 election was credible.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Call to Bar Iraq Election Winners ‘Connected to Saddam’ – 31 March 2010

New York Times – Panel in Iraq Moves to Disqualify 52 Candidates – 29 March 2010

Associated Press – Iraq Panel Wants to Bar 4 Elected on Winning List – 29 March 2010

By Ahmad Shihadah

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

ADEN, Yemen – About 40 southern separatists escaped from a prison in Yemen after a guard lobbed a hand grenade to disperse an inmates’ protest at the facility, officials said Thursday.

The men escaped amid a melee that erupted when the grenade exploded in the prison in the southern town of Dali, the officials said. Authorities immediately imposed a curfew on the town and launched a manhunt to track down the escaped inmates.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the media, said four prisoners were wounded in the blast. The inmates were protesting their detention without trial.

Southerners in Yemen complain of neglect and discrimination by the north, and an increasingly vocal southern separatist movement has been coming to blows with the central government. The two parts of the country were separate nations before they united in 1990.

Yemen’s interior ministry on Thursday denied the police report that around 30 recently arrested prisoners had made a run for it after a bomb exploded outside a jail in the south of the country. “Information about prisoners fleeing is completely false,” the ministry said in a statement of an earlier police report that sympathizers of a southern secessionist movement had escaped from outside prison.

Also Thursday, police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in Dali and several other southern towns. The demonstrators were protesting the government’s ongoing crackdown against southern pro-secession activists.

Police officials said scores of protesters were detained. Pro-independence protests have multiplied in the south, especially on Thursdays, the start of the Muslim weekend, amid a worsening economic situation in Yemen and charges of discrimination in favor of northerners.

Elsewhere in Yemen’s south, an activist was shot dead and three others were injured when security forces dispersed a protest in the town of Radfan in Lahej province, the local official and media reports said.

Western countries and neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, fear al Qaeda is exploiting instability in Yemen to launch attacks in the region and beyond.

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Mass Escape From Yemen Jail After Blast – 1 April 2010

AP – 40 Activists Bust Out Of Yemen Prison After Blast – 1 April 2010

AFP – Yemen Denies Prisoners Fled After Bomb Blast – 1 April 2010

BBC – Prisoners Escape From Yemen Jail – 1 April 2010