Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
3 September
PHYSICISTS BOYCOTT ISRAELI SETTLEMENT
On this day in 2018, a physics workshop at Ariel University on “Inflation, Alternatives and Gravitational Waves” opened with six of the eleven invited speakers having confirmed their withdrawal. Palestinian academics had urged speakers to withdraw from the workshop. The university is built on occupied Palestinian land in the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel. The apartheid wall was built to annex Ariel to Israel, and was declared illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice.
الفيزيائيون يقاطعوا مؤتمرا إسرائيليا في الأراضي المحتلة
3 سبتمبر
في هذا اليوم من عام 2018، افتتحت ورشة عمل في الفيزياء في جامعة آرييل حول "تمدد الكون والبدائل وموجات الجاذبية" مع تأكيد ستة من المتحدثين الأحد عشر المدعوين انسحابهم. كان الأكاديميون الفلسطينيون قد حثوا المتحدثين على الانسحاب من ورشة العمل. بنيت جامعة آرييل على أرض فلسطينية محتلة في مستوطنة أريئيل الإسرائيلية غير الشرعية. تم بناء جدار الفصل العنصري لضم مستوطنة أرييل إلى إسرائيل، وأعلنته محكمة العدل الدولية غير قانوني في عام 2004.
Top Academics and Scientists Oppose Conference in Israeli Settlement
In an open letter, 15 of the world’s top academics and science professionals wrote that holding a three-day science convention in West Bank would be an outright violation of international law.
“The settlements are illegal under international law and have been denounced by the international court of justice and numerous UN resolutions...Human Rights Watch has noted that Ariel’s ‘development is inseparable from a history of continuous dispossession of Palestinians from their land and restrictions on their freedom of movement...In 2012, more than 1,200 Israeli faculty members signed a petition opposing the establishment of Ariel, describing it as an attempt to recruit the Israeli academia into the service of the occupation and settlement efforts.”
“We, the undersigned, believe that participating in any activities held in a settlement amounts to accepting the Israeli government’s policy of gradually annexing the occupied territories to Israel. We call upon our colleagues and the wider scientific community to consider these facts before engaging in any activities related to Ariel, and not to take part in any attempts to use science to normalize the occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
2-minute video - US encourages crimes and EU allows them
https://youtu.be/yH7XICFbFa0
Ariel settlement was founded in 1978 on land that was seized under the false pretext of imperative military needs and on land that was declared state land, including cultivated farmland of villages in the district and on rocky land the villagers used for grazing their flocks. The settlement's municipal area contains many enclaves of privately-owned Palestinian land, whose owners are not allowed access to them (see map).
The Separation Barrier built around Ariel created a wedge that separates seven villages north of it (Hares, Kifl Hares, Qira, Marda, Jamma'in, Zeita-Jamma'in, and Deir Istiya), which are home to some 25,000 Palestinians, from the district seat, Salfit (10,000 residents), where the villagers receive a variety of services.
Ariel's wastewater pollutes Salfit's central water-pumping facility. The flow of Ariel's waste has already damaged the flora and fauna in Wadi al-Matawi, between Salfit and Ariel. Israel prevents the building of a wastewater-treatment facility in the town of Salfit unless it agrees to treat Ariel wastewater as well.
During construction of the settler university, the site management continued the Israeli tradition of dumping waste, in this case the construction rubble, on Palestinian land: "West Bank university", Ariel University, part of one of the nastiest illegal settlements there is, which has long dumped its garbage on land that belongs to Palestinians and always has.
Tovlan landfill site, established in 1999, is a 33 hectare landfill located adjacent to the Jordan River on occupied Palestinian land, within a few kilometers of Palestinian farming communities in the Jordan Valley. It receives over 600,000 tons of solid waste on an annual basis from Israeli settlements. Contaminated air from the dump, as well as insects carrying bacteria from the site, are reported by Palestinians in the surrounding area to be linked to symptoms of nausea, shortness of breath and asthmatic conditions, and insect bites that cause severe skin irritations never experienced in previous years. Tovlan is mainly used as a dump for solid waste from Israeli municipalities and illegal settlements of Ariel, Ma'ale Efrayim, the Regional Council of Megilot, Biqat Hayarden and Shomron as well as the Barkan Industrial Park. Tovlan’s settlement sewage water plant generates electricity using extracted methane gas. The energy is used exclusively by the settlements whilst noxious smells and flies make the nearby impoverished Palestinian village of Abu Ajaj virtually uninhabitable, especially in summer.