Is Americans for Peace Now my favorite organization in Israel/Palestine? Nope.
Am I addicted to my iPhone? Yes indeed.
Well, that said, here's a very unique iPhone app...
Americans for Peace Now iPhone application 'Facts on the Ground.'
Photo by: Haaretz
West Bank settlements can now be tracked on your iPhone
Want to know what's happening in the West Bank settlements in real time? In addition to 'Sudoku' and 'Street Fighter,' iPhone owners will now be able to install the "Facts on the Ground" application, which monitors the expansion of settlements in Judea and Samaria, created by Americans for Peace Now.
"This new app shows the unfiltered realities that settlements create on the ground of the West Bank. While people are entitled to their opinions on this divisive issue, there is only one set of facts, and our app makes these facts available in unprecedented clarity and detail," said Debra DeLee, APN’s President and CEO.
APN intends to update the map regularly with new information, including the establishment of outposts and their dismantlement, and violent incidents on the part of Palestinians and settlers. Their intention is to turn the app into a "comprehensive real-time view of what is happening on the ground in the West Bank."
Check here for a preview of the app & a nasty review or two.
My initial reactions, its not a bad start; as far as I can tell the smaller Palestinian villages aren't named just yet, which should be done, as they are more often than not in direct contact with the settlements. But, we'll see how the app develops.
It would also be great if Zochrot could make one of destroyed/depopulated villages from 1948, that would really complete the picture of pre/post 1967 Zionist colonial acquisitions.
Learning the Nakba is an important step for Jews living in Israel. It often reflects a genuine interest to know and understand. But learning is not enough. The Nakba is not the story of another people that took place somewhere else — it is a story that we, as Israeli Jews, are responsible for. Learning, without taking responsibility, is to me not enough.
What do I mean by taking responsibility? I mean the acknowledgment and deep understanding of the tragedy that took place, and taking responsibility of our part in this tragedy. Acknowledging the personal and collective right of return for every refugee that was expelled, and hoping for the implementation of this right, either by returning the lands, paying compensation or implementing actual return. These make learning the Nakba a viable stepping stone to reconciliation.
This position is complicated for Israeli Jews. It is hard for us to give up the image of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, an image that would be endangered should we choose to allow the right of return. Allowing the right of return will change the demographic balance in Israel and the Israeli state would not continue to exist in its current form. I believe that in this new state life would be better for both Palestinians and Israelis living in this land.
Here's another report on it;
Phone app monitors Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories
The app allows users to look at different layers and overlays. It uses a Google Earth-type format to display map, satellite, hybrid or terrain images. It divides the West Bank into areas A, B and C under the 1993 Oslo accords, in which the Palestinian Authority and Israelis exercise different levels of control.
It also shows how Israel's West Bank barrier relates to the pre-1967 border, which the Palestinians say must be the basis for a long-term peace settlement. Some 300,000 Israelis live in 120 officially recognised settlements in the West Bank, a further 192,000 in settlements in East Jerusalem, and there are 100 unauthorised outposts in the West Bank that are not officially recognised by Israel.
The app's users can zoom in on dense clusters of settlements around Jerusalem and in Hebron, and single out large-scale maps of individual settlements complete with historical and population data.
And, in conclusion, a few articles and items of interest;
Israel’s foreign minister demands Arabs be stripped of citizenship
Israel’s foreign minister demanded yesterday that some of Israel’s Arab citizens be stripped of their citizenship and transferred to a future Palestinian state.
In comments that infuriated Arab Israeli legislators, Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, said the country’s borders should be redrawn to exclude any Israeli Arab who does not recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Israel’s Arab minority makes up about one-fifth of the country’s population.
"Whoever claims that he is fighting against Zionism should go over to become citizens of the Palestinian Authority," Mr Lieberman, whose party is the second-biggest in the governing coalition, told reporters before the weekly cabinet meeting.
Contesting Past and Present at Silwan
Joel Beinin
September 17, 2010
(Joel Beinin is professor of Middle East history at Stanford University and a contributing editor of Middle East Report. He filed this article from Jerusalem.)
Intense direct confrontation with the authority of the Israeli state is a considered strategy, according to one of the influential behind-the-scenes organizers of the Jewish participation in the protests in Sheikh Jarrah. It is designed to produce "a transition from protest to struggle.... We are there to struggle in a subversive way." The protest organizers are consciously striving to create a conflict between the many "left Zionists" among whom it has become fashionable to attend the weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah -- people like prestigious Hebrew University professors Menachem Brinker, Moshe Halbertal, Avishai Margalit and Zeev Sternhell, novelist David Grossman, and former speaker of the Knessset Avraham Burg, who typically function as a loyal opposition -- and the Israeli state apparatus. But the young organizers are not concerned with ideology as such.
Some call themselves Zionists; some do not. Some are secular; some are modern Orthodox or formerly observant but respectful of religion. As such, the new protest generation has a very different social makeup than the mostly older and resolutely secularist "left Zionists" of Peace Now, the nearly defunct Meretz party and the Labor Party. The protests are animated by social networks that have been formed over the last decade in struggles against Israel’s separation barrier and efforts to protect the Palestinians of the south Hebron hills from the depredations of violent, radical settlers. The Arab and Jewish protesters regard the creeping Judaization of East Jerusalem -- which is now most aggressive in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah -- as a mortal threat to Palestinian-Israeli peace. Rather than ideology, the glue that binds the Jewish protesters together and the Jews and the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan to each other is moral outrage over blatant injustice and discriminatory application of Israeli law.
However many states there may or may not be on the horizon in Israel and Palestine, the new generation of Israeli protesters see themselves as building a culture of peace and living together with Arabs in opposition to the segregationist version of peace -- "us here, them there" -- long promoted by the "left Zionist" peace camp. This approach to peace remains marginal in Israeli society, although it has many Palestinian proponents, even among those who remain committed to a two-state solution. It is surely more hopeful than the diplomatic exercise now underway.