‘Turning Israelis Into Settlers After Death’: Israel to Build Cemetery In Ecological ‘Hotspot’ in Palestine

Aakash Hassan, a 25-year-old independent journalist from the conflict-torn Indian administered Kashmir region, was slated to travel to Sri Lanka for a reporting assignment earlier this year. As Hassan was about to board a flight at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, Indian immigration authorities stopped him. Hassan was provided no reason for the travel ban. However, his boarding pass was stamped with a message: “Stopped without prejudice.”

Although Indian authorities maintain silence about their decision, Akash is sure of what led to this: “It is because of the kind of journalism I practice.”

Arbitrary travel bans against journalists and activists critical of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are trending in India. This is particularly the case for journalists from the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The BJP-led government revoked in 2019 the Muslim-majority Kashmir territory’s autonomous status, resulting in the arrest of activists, academics and journalists.

However, the Indian government has provided no explanation for recent travel bans. Meanwhile, immigration officials have yet to respond to this reporter’s inquiries. Plus, not a single journalist this reporter is acquainted with has been able to obtain the government’s comment on this issue.

“I don’t know what kind of crime I have committed, for which there is a travel ban on me. Stopping us [journalists] from traveling is not only an attack on our personal liberty, but also [on] our fundamental rights,” Hassan told Toward Freedom. “The government should at least provide a reason as to why our freedom to travel is curtailed.”

BJP-Led India’s Flight Bans

Hassan’s is not an isolated case.

Last month, journalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo was also barred from flying to the United States to receive a prestigious award. She had won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for documenting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. This was the second time in six months she was not allowed to travel outside the country.

In a similar vein, Aakar Patel, a vocal critic of India’s current right-wing regime who once led Amnesty International’s work in the country, was stopped from flying to the United States in April.

Experts based out of the region say that the Indian government is getting increasingly intolerant towards its criticism and dissenting voices are being crushed through intimidation, arbitrary detentions and now travel bans.

“In today’s India, which, if you’re not a propagandist, then you risk being arrested or banned. You risk your funding or sources being cut off,” Kavita Krishnan, a prominent human rights activist and an opposition voice based in India, told Toward Freedom.

Shrinking Freedoms

Punitive actions against critics and journalists have led India to slide down all the major human-rights and freedom indices in the past few years.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF)’s latest “World Press Freedom Rankings” rated India 150th on a list of 180 countries, slipping eight positions since last year.

“The violence against journalists, the politically partisan media and the concentration of media ownership all demonstrate that press freedom is in crisis in ‘the world’s largest democracy,’” RSF noted in its report.

India also ranked 119th out of 165 jurisdictions in the 2021 Human Freedom Index. Its “media self-censorship” score was 3.2 out of 10.

Plus, with a score of 66, the country was listed as “partly free” by the Freedom House’s Global Freedom Score.

The Freedom House mentioned in its report:

“Authorities have used security, defamation, sedition, and hate speech laws, as well as contempt-of-court charges, to quiet critical voices in the media. Hindu nationalist campaigns aimed at discouraging forms of expression deemed ‘anti-national’ have exacerbated self-censorship.”

“The problem with this regime is that they consider that universal standards of democracy, human rights, press freedom don’t apply to them,” Krishnan added.

“They don’t care about violating the rights of people, as they believe themselves to be invincible.”

Intimidation, Arrests and Harassment

For Jenni Rowena, the wife of 55-year-old professor Hany Babu, life has turned miserable ever since his arrest in July 2020. For more than two years, Babu—a vocal BJP critic—has been denied bail, as the Indian government, along with several other prominent academics and activists, have accused him of conspiring against the country and plotting the assassination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Everyone knows Babu’s political position. He has been a scholar working for the marginalized and minorities. They are targeting him for his work. You’re not supposed to do anything that questions the government or society or any institution,” Rowena told Toward Freedom. “Cases against him have been fabricated, so as to prolong his trials and keep him in prison.”

Pawan Khera, the national spokesperson of India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, said the country seems to be under an “undeclared” emergency.

“Forget dissent, even questioning the government for its mistakes can land you in trouble,” Khera said in an exclusive interview with Toward Freedom. “This government is known to be misusing [central] agencies whenever anybody goes against them.”

India had officially declared a 21-month period of emergency in 1975, leading to the suspension of civil liberties and media censorship.

“You can see the reflections of the emergency period,” said Shabnam Hashmi, a veteran human-rights activist, “but, even then, there was not so much hatred in India and people of this country were united. See, they all came together—forgetting about their differences with each other—and fought. But, now, the people are polarized.”

Journalists Self-Censor

Quratulain Rehbar, a freelance journalist who has critically reported about the Indian government’s policies from the Kashmir valley, said it is almost impossible to publish stories that don’t toe the state narrative.

“I have been subjected to various forms of harassment by authorities and security forces,” Rehbar told Toward Freedom. Many of her colleagues from the region—like Sajid Gul, Fahad Shah and Aasif Sultan—languish in jails across the country under criminal and terrorism charges because the government recently invoked draconian anti-terrorism laws against journalists and activists. For example, the 1967 Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act lets the government detain a person for several months without bail.

“In such an atmosphere, I had to take a stand to not write too [many] critical pieces against the government because that would easily put me in trouble,” Rehbar said in a dejected tone. “Now, I am [censoring] myself, like many other colleagues.”

Activists like Hashmi assert India is moving toward “total fascism.”

“But if this government is not defeated, then we could be seeing times like in Afghanistan, Pakistan or in Nazi Germany,” said Hashmi, who is based out of New Delhi. “Almost everything and every institution is penetrated by extreme right-wing ideologues, who do not believe in democracy. So, the future seems very dark for the country.”

Hanan Zaffar is documentary filmmaker and journalist based in South Asia. His work has appeared in Al Jazeera, DW News, Channel 4, Business Insider, TRT World, Newsweek, Newlines Magazine and other media publications. Find him on Twitter at @HananZaffar.

Jyoti Thakur is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. She covers the environment and human rights.

More than 10.3 million acres of primary tropical forests—spanning about the size of Belgium—went up in flames in 2020. A new coalition claims it will mobilize $1 billion to thwart global climate change’s increasingly devastating forest fires. But scientists and other experts have raised doubts about this new program corporations and governments have kicked off.

Primary tropical forests are untouched by human development. More than 1 billion people live in and depend on the world’s tropical forests, and nearly 300 million people live in lands targeted for tropical forest restoration, according to Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a non-governmental organization. Meanwhile, RRI’s data shows over 900 million people live in the biodiverse areas of low- and middle-income countries.

The new coalition is called “Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance”—or LEAF—and it is expected to become “the single largest private-sector investment to protect tropical forests.” At the Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22, multinational corporations entered into a coalition with the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway. The list of corporations includes Airbnb, Amazon, Bayer, Boston Consulting Group, GlaxoSmithKline, McKinsey & Company, Nestle, Salesforce and Unilever.

Experts have raised this coalitional strategy could further marginalize communities dwelling in tropical forests across the developing world. They also have questioned the effectiveness of strategies that aim to raise funding to halt deforestation.

For example, Forrest Fleischman, an assistant professor of forest resources at the University of Minnesota, says the success of the LEAF coalition will depend “not on their ability to mobilize money from wealthy companies, but in their ability to negotiate complicated political arrangements which may involve challenging the powers that be, including states and private companies.

 

How Has Carbon Finance Worked?

Political and economic conditions create opportunities for power plays in carbon finance, i.e. the funding provided for carbon sequestration programs like forest restoration. In most cases, governments, corporations and aid organizations have immense discretionary power regarding carbon finance. That is why experts say Indigenous and other forest-dependent peoples should have primary decision-making power over monetary allocations, as well as the power to choose projects.

Not involving such communities can erode their rights. For example, consider how afforestation programs in India have been carried out on lands used for agricultural purposes by Indigenous and forest-dwelling communities.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, former United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, says forest conservation programs like LEAF “cannot work if the rights of Indigenous communities are not protected and the flow of money only leads to violence and conflicts” because of struggles over land rights. More specifically, she highlights a need to ensure land rights of forest-dwelling communities are recognized and that these communities play an active role in designing the LEAF program, as well as receive a fair share of the resources LEAF aims to gather.

Indigenous communities, such as the Yurok tribe in what is known as northern California, the Suquamish tribe in what is known as the Seattle, Washington area, as well as the U.S.-based Indigenous Environmental Network, could not be reached for comment, as of press time.  

Fleischman also emphasizes LEAF’s aim ought to be to “transform the economic and political conditions surrounding forests, rather than just setting up conservation areas and providing payments to people.”

As for effectiveness, past efforts offer lessons.

“In Brazil, deforestation is a major source of emissions. So, it is important to have [internationally mobilized] resources to fight the climate crisis. But, at the same time, we worry when we hear about new funds to support forests because we have seen how the Amazon Fund has been used,” says Maureen Santos, policy officer at Federation of Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance in Rio de Janeiro.

Santos adds President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has failed to use the fund as a climate change tool. Deforestation rates in the Amazon have surged under Bolsonaro.

The Amazon Fund is a REDD+ initiative the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognizes. “REDD” stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The aim here is to provide economic incentives for forest conservation. But reports have pointed to high deforestation rates in the Amazon basin, even after the Amazon Fund was fully operationalized.

Pays to note a leading partner at LEAF is the United States, which is the biggest historical emitter of CO2. “Initiatives like LEAF have to be followed up with stronger initiatives to reduce emissions, because even if you save all the forests in the world, you cannot solve the climate crisis until you stop emissions,” Santos adds.

 

Recognizing Land Rights and Asymmetrical Power

A recent paper that analyzed what happened with the Yurok tribe, who occupy the redwood forest of northern California in the United States. The tribe obtained funding to enable carbon sequestration on ancestral territory. This is different than what is known as the “Indian model,” which includes large-scale plantation drives by the government under the Paris Agreement and other forest conservation, afforestation and reforestation efforts funded by international agencies like the World Bank.

The paper highlights when land managers and users possess enforceable rights, like in the case of the Yurok tribe, “power is balanced, accountability is clear, authorities represent the interests of the broader user community and carbon storage aligns with local interests.”

In India, the report found, forest carbon finance is controlled by state governments who “do not share benefits of carbon finance with the rural forest-dependent people whose actions play a major role in determining the outcomes of these programs.”

Communities dependent on forests also lacked countervailing power because their rights to forest land are not recognized.

One of the key findings of the paper is mobilizing money is not enough to ensure forest protection. This is because a wide variety of influences impact forest conservation, many of which are not directly related to financial incentives. Fleischman, the lead author of the paper says, “We’ve long recognised that insecure land tenure is a major driver of forest loss, however it is not clear how giving a country or state money leads to securing land tenure for poor or marginalized people.”

Financial investment, including ones that aim to promote forest conservation, do not work out well. This occurs, Fleischman explains, in cases where financial investments in land end up undermining secure land tenure, which then leads to land degradation. When land values increase, owing to interest from international funding agencies, power actors like companies, states and NGOs are incentivized to control land-based revenue by grabbing land for themselves. This process forcibly takes away the land rights of rural and Indigenous people.

The problems that arise from not recognizing land titles extends to Brazil, too.

Santos adds the first priority ought to be to ensure community land rights are recognized, and environmental regulations and oversight mechanisms are strong enough to assess the success and failures of proposals like LEAF.

Organizations that monitor land use, such as Land Conflict Watch and Vasundhara in India, as well as Amazon Watch, could not be reached for comment.

 

The Path Ahead

“Substantial investment in the recognition of Indigenous and community land rights is a prerequisite to the global climate agenda,” concluded a study published in June by Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). The authors looked at 31 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which hold 70 percent of the world’s tropical forests to highlight risks in developing carbon markets without first settling the land rights of Indigenous communities.

Bryson Ogden, associate director for strategic analysis & global engagement at Rights and Resources Group—the secretariat for RRI—notes “serious power imbalances” in the geographies where the LEAF Coalition plans to operate. He adds power imbalances between companies and governments on the one hand, and rural communities on the other, “often exacerbated by insecure land tenure, have driven land-grabs and violations in the past, and more recently, hindered efforts to eliminate supply chain-driven deforestation.”

In response to concerns about power asymmetries and land rights, Emergent Media, administrative coordinator of LEAF Coalition, told Toward Freedom that LEAF participants recognize Indigenous peoples and local communities are “essential stakeholders in the design and implementation” of plans to reduce deforestation and maintain forest cover in the jurisdictions where they live.

Emergent Media noted safeguards have been drawn up to ensure protection and respect of land-tenure rights and effective stakeholder participation. They also added these safeguards are based on the Cancun Safeguards drafted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

But doubts still remain. Nothing is concrete in either publicly available documents about the coalition, nor in its statement that Indigenous and local people are directly involved in the design and evaluation of projects. Fleischman pointed out it seems like the coalition is treating Indigenous and forest-dependent people “as secondary people who need to be protected in projects designed and financed by others, as opposed to directly empowering those people to make decisions about their lands.”

The kind of economic and political changes that are needed to “ensure [forest] conservation when it conflicts with the profits of companies and the interests of national governments” are left lacking, Fleischman says.

Ogden of RRI suggests a just way to achieve emission-reduction aims would be to scale-up the legal recognition of customary land and resource rights of forest communities—including the carbon stored therein—across proposed accounting areas; develop operational feedback and grievance redress mechanisms; and adequately involve affected constituencies in the design of benefit sharing plans. 

The question remains of whether the $1 billion LEAF proposes to raise is enough to conserve tropical forests around the world. 

“To the extent that money can address conservation challenges, the quantity of money may need to be much larger to make a real dent. In other words, if money is what matters, the money may need to be roughly equivalent to the potential profits to be made by clearing forests to grow soybeans or palm oil,” Fleischman says.

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.

Correction: The Jerusalem mayor’s first name was incorrect in an earlier version. The Israel Land Fund replied to the reporter’s inquiry a week after publication to confirm King is no longer involved with the organization in an official capacity.

EAST JERUSALEM, Palestine—Once a mainstream headline, the protests at Sheikh Jarrah are now considered old news. But the threat of displacement still looms over the East Jerusalem neighborhood as new settler building projects could demolish existing homes and leave residents homeless within months.

Under the guise of urban renewal, the Israel Land Fund (ILF), a settler organization Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King leads, has initiated three building projects for Sheikh Jarrah. They are intended to double the number of settlers.

Construction is set to begin as early as next year and includes approximately 20 housing units plus an office building. If implemented, the housing-unit plans call for razing current residential buildings and evicting six Palestinian families in the Um Haroun section of Sheikh Jarrah. The six-story office building is designated for an empty plot at Sheikh Jarrah’s entrance. ILF did not respond to requests for comment.

The building plans were frozen for years until 2017, when U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration declared Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. embassy to the city. By 2019, all three projects received final approval from the Jerusalem District Planning Committee.

Building permits haven’t been issued yet, but actions recently have been taken to obtain the permits at Jerusalem’s planning and licensing department. Building permit requests can be processed within weeks or months.

Settlers and the State Working Hand in Hand

Um Haroun is home to 40 Palestinian families. Settler groups, collaborating for years with the Israeli government, have put them at risk of forced expulsion.

“Arieh King is using his power as deputy mayor to bypass this settler plan,” Palestinian resident Mahmoud Al-Hajj told Toward Freedom.

Like the rest of the families in Um Haroun, he’s descended from Palestinians driven from their homes in West Jerusalem and throughout Palestine as the state of Israel was being established in 1948. Al-Hajj’s family originally came from what is now the Old City of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. The Jordanian government gave these homes in Um Haroun to the Palestinian refugees. But today, Israel’s Absentees’ Property Law allows Jews to reclaim these buildings. The legislation permits Jews to return to family properties lost during the violence of 1948, but it doesn’t apply the same standard to Palestinians who were displaced.

According to Al-Hajj, prior to 1948, the properties in Um Haroun were owned by three Palestinian families and rented out to Jews. In that regard, Al-Hajj claims, settler organizations like the ILF are now seeking out the descendants of previous Jewish tenants and urging them to retake these properties.

Additionally, under a 2018 government decision, Israeli authorities recently completed registering land rights to alleged Jewish owners without Palestinian residents’ knowledge. The registration prerequisite in obtaining building permits—The areas in question in Um Haroun are now registered as being owned by Israeli company, Beit Urim, and U.S.-based company, Debraly. Chaim Silberstein, founder and chairman of settler organization, Keep Jerusalem, is listed as Debraly’s representative in the building permit request’s file.

Silberstein has been active in attempts to steal land from Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, including trying to seize a yard belonging to the Salem family in Um Haroun. According to Al-Hajj, Silberstein tried in 2005 to use the Absentees’ Property Law to evict Al-Hajj from his home. However, the court ruled against Silberstein, citing Al-Hajj’s family’s status as protected tenants. Under Israeli law, they are allowed to remain in the home for three generations. Al-Hajj, now 55, is a third-generation tenant. Silberstein did not respond to press inquiries.

Yet, as Aviv Tatarsky, researcher with Israeli nonprofit Ir Amim, explained, the Al-Hajj family’s protected tenancy can become null if building owners wish to implement urban renewal projects. That is what settler plans in Um Haroun are considered.

‘There’s No Protection for Us’

The threat of eviction and home demolitions aren’t the only problems plaguing Sheikh Jarrah. Last month, Israeli parliament member and potentially the next public security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, brandished a gun when Palestinians with rocks confronted him and a group of stone-throwing settlers.

“[Israel] practices all types of pressure to bypass this plan through sending court orders, through not allowing us to renovate our houses,” Al-Hajj said. “But the second part of the pressure is arresting our children.”

More than 20 Palestinians were injured in October’s settler assault, including Muhammad Zahran, who suffered head injuries. While two Israelis were arrested for the alleged attack against Zahran, 15 Palestinians were arrested for the October clashes, according to Al-Hajj. Israeli police did not verify the number of people arrested, but they said all who were detained were Israelis holding Israeli IDs. However, reports indicate both Palestinians and Jews were arrested, as seen here and here.

“There’s no protection for us, neither from courts or police,” Al-Hajj said.

As former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to return to power and form Israel’s most right-wing coalition in its history, Al-Hajj sees no difference between the politicians leading now and in the past.

“It doesn’t matter if it was an extreme right-wing government or not. We look at it as it’s going to be the same policies against Palestinians, and especially Sheikh Jarrah,” Al-Hajj said. “What else would we have other than being expelled from our houses?”

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based freelance journalist reporting on Palestine and the Israeli occupation. You can follow her on Twitter at @jess_buxbaum.