The fact that Israel chooses to base its nursing sector on migrant workers and turn the patients into employers does not mean that migrant workers must pay the price. That is, unless one listens to the rulings of the High Court of Justice. Those who do not appear before the High Court of Justice may mistakenly believe that legal proceedings are conducted there. The sides make claims, at length, and prove their statements. The judges press them, requesting additional evidence. While we inherited the High Court of Justice from the British, this is no House of Lords. Legal proceedings are…

According to Guy, an Israeli Ta'ayush activist and documentarian of occupation in the South Hebron Hills area of the West Bank - there has been an increase in incidents over the last month in which Israel Defense Forces soldiers have been preventing him and other Israelis from filming what goes on. In this 7-minute video, edited together from footage taken just over the last few weeks, between February 23 and March 9, IDF soldiers - as well as high-ranking officers - are seen blocking camera lenses over and over by shoving their own smart phones in front of them. This…

With East Jerusalem back in headlines, and despite a court order delaying the pending demolitions, police arrived in the neighborhood of A-Tur set to oversee the destruction of three homes. By Moriel Rothman Early Tuesday morning, scores of heavily armed, black-clad Israeli police officers arrived in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of A-Tur to oversee the demolition of three Palestinian houses. Some were mounted on horseback, others held muzzled dogs on short leashes. The owners of the houses were ordered to move their belongings outside. In an ensuing scuffle, at least two residents of the neighborhood were injured by the police,…

There is no possibility that Israel's Civil Administration will fairly and properly plan for Palestinians in Area C if they are not at the table when their fate is decided. By Rabbi Arik Ascherman Last Thursday, the bulldozers demolished Beit Arabiya, for the sixth time. On Wednesday, two homes were demolished in Dirat, a village that is appealing with Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) to the High Court against discriminatory planning in Area C. Additional homes and structures were demolished over the past week in Al-Waya, A-Tur, Ein al Hilwe, Ibziq, Nabi Samuel, Hares and more. The only crime of…

After only 70 days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's mega-coalition shrank back to 66 members of Knesset yesterday. Kadima, the Knesset's biggest party, decided to leave the government over the failure to reach an agreement on national draft reform. A few takeaways: 1.    The entire maneuver that resulted in the national unity government was a mistake by the prime minister, who had been about to announce elections on September 4, and win them easily. Currently, elections are scheduled to take place in October 2013, but common wisdom says they will happen six to nine months from now, in the winter or spring…

By Nasser Nawaj'ah I am Nasser Nawaj'ah. I am 30 years old. My mother gave birth to me in a cave in Susya El-Kadis. You know of Susya as a Jewish settlement in the South Hebron Hills, but Susya is first of all a Palestinian village that existed before the establishment of the State of Israel. I was named after my grandfather, who was still alive at the time. In 1948, he was displaced from his village near Arad, now in southern Israel. When they were expelled, my father was just a little boy and my grandfather carried him in…

Recent rejection by the Israeli High Court of the final petitions against Israel's Citizenship Law – which denies status in Israel to Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens – was described as a "watershed" ruling. Watershed indeed, but how exactly? By Hagai El-Ad Justice Asher Grunis, the Israeli supreme court judge who will become the court's next president in February, kept his opinion sufficiently brief for the bluntness-and-brevity to stick between the lines. He opted to air his opinion in the court's recent decision to reject the petitions against Israel's Citizenship Law, with the following succinct quote: "Human rights are not…

Palestinian citizens cannot be expected to serve an institution that protects the Jewish identity of the state. If Israel prohibits its Palestinian citizens from participating in elections, it would cease to function as a democracy, and it would lose its case against claims of apartheid. By Fady Khoury The media reported this week that MK Moshe Matalon (Yisrael Beiteinu) has introduced a new bill prohibiting citizens who have not completed military, national or civil service from being elected to the Knesset. This bill joins an array of several other bills proposed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, which condition…

According to the 2003 law, Arab citizens of Israel who marry Palestinians will have to emigrate in order to live with their spouses. Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi famously said that "Israel is indeed a Jewish-democratic state: it is democratic for Jews and Jewish for all the rest." This rings truer than ever after Israel's High Court of Justice rejected yesterday (again) the petitions against the Citizenship Law, one of the first measures to make racial discrimination against the Arab minority not just common practice, but part of Israel's legal codex. The High Court rejected the petitions against the Citizenship Law…