-Caveat Lector-
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From: International Justice Watch Discussion List
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On Behalf Of Thomas Keenan
Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2002 8:28 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Palestinians Say Israeli Aim Was to Destroy Framework
Serge Schmemann had an important story Tuesday in the Times which seems to
have passed largely unremarked. Among the other casualties of the Israeli
assault on the West Bank was most of the *information* produced over the
years since Oslo by the Palestinian Authority. A senior Palestinian
official called it an "administrative massacre." Everyone recalls the
outrageous stripping of Kosovar identity documents by the MUP and VJ in
1999; it seems that the IDF has chosen to work the other side of the data
street, skipping the individuals and going directly to the source.
[A]n abridged tour showed signs of a systematic effort by the
Israeli Army to strip institutions of the Palestinian Authority of
as much data as possible, with some apparent pillaging on the
side. Officials at afflicted ministries and institutions said
money was missing, as well as laptop computers, RAM modules,
pocket organizers, video players and other items.
"What they are doing, and what is not being noticed enough, is
that they are destroying all the records, all the archives, all
the files, of the Palestinian Authority," said Yasir Abed Rabbo,
the Palestinian minister of information. "This is an
administrative massacre, and this will lead to chaos."
An Israeli military officer said the reason for seizing documents
from the ministries was the same as for seizing them from Yasir
Arafat's compound in Ramallah, namely, "to see what's going on
there."
"That's the idea," the officer said. "A lot of these places turn
up unexpected things, by accident. Documents have a very important
value."
But the officer said it was not Israel's intention to have the
Palestinian Authority collapse.
Officials of the various international organizations that have
been trying to build Palestinian institutions for self-rule said
the damage to Palestinian records and data was a very high price
to pay for the possibility of finding some incriminating
information. They said the Israelis seemed not to have made a
distinction between the political leadership and the civil
service.
Thomas Keenan
Human Rights Project
Bard College
=============================
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/middleeast/16RAMA.html
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Palestinians Say Israeli Aim Was to Destroy Framework
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
RAMALLAH, West Bank, April 15 -- In one room of the Palestinian Ministry
of Education, the litter of papers, glass, paper clips and periodicals was
ankle-deep. The filing cabinets had been ransacked, and some toppled.
Personal computers sat on the desks, their hard drives ripped out.
In another room, the Israeli soldiers had blasted open the safe. The
explosion brought down the suspended ceiling there and in adjoining rooms,
leaving a mess. Dr. Naim Abu Hommos, the deputy minister of education,
said the safe had been used to keep all school test records since 1960.
All were gone, he said, along with 40,000 shekels -- about $8,500 -- that
had been kept there for petty cash.
That was the Ministry of Education. The neighboring Palestinian
Legislative Council meeting hall was torn apart, and officials said the
video archives of its sessions were gone. At the Ministry of Agriculture,
the door had been blasted open by an explosion that also took out all the
windows, and a neighbor said Israeli soldiers had filled two armored
personnel carriers with boxes, presumably of records. It was the same at
the Ministry of Industry.
At the Ministry of Health, visitors were blocked today by Israeli soldiers
packing duffel bags and boxes of food into two armored personnel carriers.
They had apparently stayed in the building, perhaps using it as a position
for observation and sniping. An officer said the visitors could come back
in an hour, but today's five-hour lifting of the curfew had almost run
out.
Similar reports came from all across Ramallah -- offices in ruins, files
and hard drives gone. The Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Central Bureau of
Statistics, the Ministry of Finance, the Land Registry, the municipal
administration buildings of Ramallah and neighboring Al-Bireh, including
its library, had all been raided.
Many private institutions had been similarly invaded. The windows of the
elegant Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center were smashed, the records of the
Palestinian Insurance Company were gone, and there were many more
examples.
With only a few hours to circulate in the streets while the Israeli Army
lifted the curfew on a city still under siege, and with Israeli tanks or
barriers forcing many unexpected and inexplicable detours, a quick
inspection tour by officials of the World Bank and the United Nations
could give no more than a preliminary overview of the damage and the
losses.
But even an abridged tour showed signs of a systematic effort by the
Israeli Army to strip institutions of the Palestinian Authority of as much
data as possible, with some apparent pillaging on the side. Officials at
afflicted ministries and institutions said money was missing, as well as
laptop computers, RAM modules, pocket organizers, video players and other
items.
"What they are doing, and what is not being noticed enough, is that they
are destroying all the records, all the archives, all the files, of the
Palestinian Authority," said Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of
information. "This is an administrative massacre, and this will lead to
chaos."
An Israeli military officer said the reason for seizing documents from the
ministries was the same as for seizing them from Yasir Arafat's compound
in Ramallah, namely, "to see what's going on there."
"That's the idea," the officer said. "A lot of these places turn up
unexpected things, by accident. Documents have a very important value."
But the officer said it was not Israel's intention to have the Palestinian
Authority collapse.
Officials of the various international organizations that have been trying
to build Palestinian institutions for self-rule said the damage to
Palestinian records and data was a very high price to pay for the
possibility of finding some incriminating information. They said the
Israelis seemed not to have made a distinction between the political
leadership and the civil service.
Nigel Roberts, the World Bank country director for the Palestinian areas,
who toured Ramallah today for a preliminary assessment of the damage, said
the Israeli actions represented a serious setback for international
donors. "What is ironic here is that the donors have been building these
institutions, inter alia, at the request of the state of Israel," he said.
The damage to the ministries is only a fraction of the destruction up and
down the West Bank from the Israeli incursion. But in contrast to the
physical damage, the loss of data could create long-term complications. At
the Finance Ministry, officials said all payroll data for the Palestinian
Authority seemed to be gone, so paying salaries, benefits and insurance to
teachers, hospital workers, civil servants and police officers would pose
a serious problem.
Salah Soubani, director of the information department at the Ministry of
Education, said the Israelis had searched the ministry twice. He said that
in the first raid, tanks and armored personnel carriers smashed through
the iron gate, and that the soldiers made him open doors in case of booby
traps.
He said he tried to argue that the ministry served children, that it was
protected by Unesco. "The soldier just smiled and told me to go outside,"
he said. "I waited six hours in the rain."
Dr. Hommos, the deputy minister of education, said the immediate priority
was reopening schools, many of which had been used by the Israeli Army for
barracks or temporary detention facilities. "I think we have to raise the
question of giving Palestinian children the right to go back to school,"
he said, adding that with curfews and restrictions through the West Bank,
it would not be easy.
"This is the Israeli people searching for peace," he said sadly. "This is
how you put peace in our minds, and in our children?"
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