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The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) has
announced this it has met with the head of a Palestinian lobby group
close to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. According to the ICHAD
announcement, an ICHAD team met with Arafat Shoukri in Brussels:
In Brussels, the ICAHD team also met with key people and
organizations. They held a briefing for the European External Action
Service, Catherine Ashton’s team, met with several member state
delegations, with Arafat Shoukri, Chair of the European Campaign to End
the Siege on Gaza and others. In London, Jeff spoke at the National
Lobby of Parliament for Palestine organized by the Palestine Solidarity
Campaign and met with a number of parliament members and activists.
Guided by Linda, Jeff also met with potential funders and campaign
partners in the everlasting challenge of making ICAHD a more effective
organization. In particular ICAHD seeks funds for its Beit Arabiya
program. Finally, Jeff left for Warsaw. In ICAHD’s contacts with the
EU, it was suggested that much more advocacy and lobbying on the
Palestine issue had to be done in Eastern Europe, which is far more
pro-American and thus pro-Israel than Western Europe (the Czech Republic
was the only member of the EU to vote against the General Assembly
resolution to recognize a Palestinian state). Jeff has been to Poland
and the Czech Republic several times, his trip organized by
Polish-Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. While in Poland Jeff spoke in
the Parliament for the second time, this time to the Commission of
Justice and Human Rights, organized by the Polish-Palestinian
Parliamentarian Group. Jeff also met with Polish activists and spoke
in a high school in the Polish city of Tarnow, together with Omar Faris,
one of the leaders of the Palestinian community of Poland.
(Palestinians initially came to Poland as students during the Communist
era, and about 500 have stayed.) Originally the meeting was to take
place last June, but event was cancelled due to the intervention of the
Israeli embassy in Poland, who pressured the school’s administration to
cancel it. The Embassy’s interference met with harsh criticism from the
Polish media, as well as from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
who issued a statement about the impropriety of Israel intervening in
internal Polish affairs. When they heard that Jeff was coming to the
country the students again organized and, supported by a courageous
Principal, the presentation was held. The meeting was attended by over
130 students and teachers. Oliwia and Adam, two students from the
Tarnów school, reported: ‘We made an effort to organize the meeting for
the second time to succinctly present to our fellow students and
teachers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In our opinion, the key to
achieving understanding and empathy among people is to explain to them
what the problem is. That’s why we decided to invite Jeff Halper and
Omar Faris to present to us.’
The ICHAD website
describes the organization as follows:
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) is a human
rights and peace organization established in 1997 to end Israel’s
Occupation over the Palestinians. ICAHD takes as its main focus, as its
vehicle for resistance, Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and within Israel proper. ICAHD
was awarded UN Economic and Social Council Special Consultative Status
in 2010.
Dr. Arafat Shoukri is the head of both the Council for European
Palestinian Relations (CEPR) in Brussels and the Palestine Return Centre
(PRC) in the U.K. The PRC has strong ties to the global Muslim
Brotherhood and two PRC directors are also directors of the Muslim
Association of Britain (MAB), generally regarded as part of the UK.
Muslim Brotherhood. The PRC is also listed as an affiliate of the Muslim
Council of Britain (MCB) dominated by UK. Muslim Brotherhood groups.
PRC activities are frequently promoted by the MAB, MCB, and other U.K
Brotherhood organizations. PRC director Ghassan Four is also a Trustee
of INTERPAL, a key member of the
Union of Good and part of the Muslim Brotherhood Hamas fund-raising
network .
PRC director Zaher Birawi is a Trustee of Education Aid for Palestine
(EAP), also a part of the Union of Good. Mr. Birawi is also head of
programming for Al-Hiwar
TV which
frequently features MB/Hamas individuals and organizations and was
founded by Azzam Al-Tamimi, a U.K Muslim Brotherhood leader and close to
Hamas. An Israeli web site, known to be close to Israeli military
intelligence, has
reported that
Mr. Birawi, along with another PRC Trustee are “past Hamas operatives
who found refuge in Britain in the early nineties.” Dr. Shoukri is also
the chairman of the European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG)
which was the main organizer of the unsuccessful Second Gaza Flotilla
and which operates from the same address and has the same telephone as
the
PRC. The CEPR appears to operate largely as a lobbying group at the EU and has accompanied EU lawmakers on trips to Gaza.
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