20 sept 2013
Far-fetched Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations began earlier this month. But in parallel process for my family, long-time residents of occupied East Jerusalem, we have been sent into exile by the same Israeli authorities that claim they want to establish peace.
Our infraction? We had the temerity to live outside of our homeland for several years and the naivety to think we could return to Palestine for a summer vacation. Israel, however, allows such certainty only for Jewish residents of Jerusalem and not for the Palestinians whose land it occupied in 1967 – and certainly not for those Palestinians exiled in 1948.
It’s as though a Native American went to study in Europe and was expelled if she returned for a visit or to re-establish her life in the United States. Imagine your agony if you traveled abroad for several years and then were told by an (occupying) government that your right to return home had been forfeited while people of a different religion were allowed to make similar long-term trips or immigrate after never living there at all.
The double standard is obvious and should be addressed by Secretary of State John Kerry. Instead, Prime Minister Netanyahu inveighs against alleged Palestinian incitement when Mohammed Assaf sings of the Palestinian desire to return to homes and land from which over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled in 1948.
My family’s personal experience with this miscarriage of justice came in July. Just days into our vacation, the Israeli Ministry of Interior (MoI) presented us documents expelling us from our country, leaving us to face statelessness and exile. We are now in France, appealing our case, still in sharp pain, indignant about this injustice, and fearful for our future.
Our attorney hopes to convince MoI to reverse its decision on revoking our “permanent resident” status in East Jerusalem, where my husband was raised and my children were born. Should the MoI insist on its decision, two of our three children would end up stateless and passport-less. This will also mean that our family will not be able to live in, or possibly visit, our homeland again.
Israel imposed the “permanent resident” status on the Palestinians in East Jerusalem when it occupied and illegally, unilaterally annexed the city in June 1967 – thus not observing its obligations as an occupying power with regards to the provisions of international law, according to which Palestinian East Jerusalemites are not merely “residents” but are also “protected persons” who are entitled to continue living in their country. Over 14,000 Palestinians have been expelled since 1967.
My husband’s roots run deep in Jerusalem. His ancestral family (Mahshi) has lived in the city for centuries. It is still recognized by the Greek Orthodox Church as one of 13 prominent families within its congregation in Jerusalem. On important occasions, like Holy Fire Saturday, the family is called upon to carry a banner in front of the Patriarch in processions through the city streets.
My husband grew up in the Old City and was living there when Israel occupied it. Until 1994, he was involved in joint Israeli-Palestinian activities to realize a two-state solution and a just and lasting peace based on UN resolutions. He contributed to Palestinian statehood through the development of educational institutions and was a member of the team which established the first Palestinian Ministry of Education. His work was recognized by many, including France, which decorated him with the “Palmes Academiques” in 1993 and granted him French nationality in 2010. In 2001, he was offered a job at UNESCO where he presently holds a senior management position.
In 2001, our three children and I joined my husband in Paris, where we still reside. Triggered by the fact that my husband was granted French nationality, Israel expelled our family based on its policy of “center of life,” which it consistently applies to Palestinian Jerusalemites living and working outside the city, thus rendering them stateless. Israel thereby denies us our human right to travel, pursue our professional development and careers, and return to our country. Needless to say, Jerusalem’s Jewish residents have no such fears. It’s discrimination at its clearest.
My own roots also run deep in Jerusalem. The families of my paternal and maternal grandmothers are two of the 13 Greek Orthodox families mentioned previously. Many of my years were spent struggling for gender equality in Palestinian society. In 1994, I established the executive offices of the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee, a coalition of women’s organizations which was effective in reversing a number of discriminatory regulations against women.
How ironic it is that despite my life’s work on women’s and human rights, I am presently subjected to the violation of my basic rights as a person and a woman: my human right to leave and return to my country, a right secured by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13.2) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel has signed (Articles 12.2 and 12.4). This covenant also stipulates that all persons lawfully within the territory of a State shall have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose their place of residence. My children, who are pursuing their studies, are also denied their human right to a nationality and the choice to return to their country.
We hope that Israel will demonstrate its seriousness in the ongoing negotiations through halting its inhumane policies which threaten Palestinians’ existence and enjoyment of basic human rights. Like all the peoples of the world, we have the right to go back to our home and country. We yearn to continue to work for peace, to live in our homeland and retire in peace. But Israel’s willingness to talk peace while at the same time exiling vulnerable Palestinians speaks volumes about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s intention to secure as much land with as few Palestinians as possible.
This article was originally posted on Mondoweiss.
Our infraction? We had the temerity to live outside of our homeland for several years and the naivety to think we could return to Palestine for a summer vacation. Israel, however, allows such certainty only for Jewish residents of Jerusalem and not for the Palestinians whose land it occupied in 1967 – and certainly not for those Palestinians exiled in 1948.
It’s as though a Native American went to study in Europe and was expelled if she returned for a visit or to re-establish her life in the United States. Imagine your agony if you traveled abroad for several years and then were told by an (occupying) government that your right to return home had been forfeited while people of a different religion were allowed to make similar long-term trips or immigrate after never living there at all.
The double standard is obvious and should be addressed by Secretary of State John Kerry. Instead, Prime Minister Netanyahu inveighs against alleged Palestinian incitement when Mohammed Assaf sings of the Palestinian desire to return to homes and land from which over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled in 1948.
My family’s personal experience with this miscarriage of justice came in July. Just days into our vacation, the Israeli Ministry of Interior (MoI) presented us documents expelling us from our country, leaving us to face statelessness and exile. We are now in France, appealing our case, still in sharp pain, indignant about this injustice, and fearful for our future.
Our attorney hopes to convince MoI to reverse its decision on revoking our “permanent resident” status in East Jerusalem, where my husband was raised and my children were born. Should the MoI insist on its decision, two of our three children would end up stateless and passport-less. This will also mean that our family will not be able to live in, or possibly visit, our homeland again.
Israel imposed the “permanent resident” status on the Palestinians in East Jerusalem when it occupied and illegally, unilaterally annexed the city in June 1967 – thus not observing its obligations as an occupying power with regards to the provisions of international law, according to which Palestinian East Jerusalemites are not merely “residents” but are also “protected persons” who are entitled to continue living in their country. Over 14,000 Palestinians have been expelled since 1967.
My husband’s roots run deep in Jerusalem. His ancestral family (Mahshi) has lived in the city for centuries. It is still recognized by the Greek Orthodox Church as one of 13 prominent families within its congregation in Jerusalem. On important occasions, like Holy Fire Saturday, the family is called upon to carry a banner in front of the Patriarch in processions through the city streets.
My husband grew up in the Old City and was living there when Israel occupied it. Until 1994, he was involved in joint Israeli-Palestinian activities to realize a two-state solution and a just and lasting peace based on UN resolutions. He contributed to Palestinian statehood through the development of educational institutions and was a member of the team which established the first Palestinian Ministry of Education. His work was recognized by many, including France, which decorated him with the “Palmes Academiques” in 1993 and granted him French nationality in 2010. In 2001, he was offered a job at UNESCO where he presently holds a senior management position.
In 2001, our three children and I joined my husband in Paris, where we still reside. Triggered by the fact that my husband was granted French nationality, Israel expelled our family based on its policy of “center of life,” which it consistently applies to Palestinian Jerusalemites living and working outside the city, thus rendering them stateless. Israel thereby denies us our human right to travel, pursue our professional development and careers, and return to our country. Needless to say, Jerusalem’s Jewish residents have no such fears. It’s discrimination at its clearest.
My own roots also run deep in Jerusalem. The families of my paternal and maternal grandmothers are two of the 13 Greek Orthodox families mentioned previously. Many of my years were spent struggling for gender equality in Palestinian society. In 1994, I established the executive offices of the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee, a coalition of women’s organizations which was effective in reversing a number of discriminatory regulations against women.
How ironic it is that despite my life’s work on women’s and human rights, I am presently subjected to the violation of my basic rights as a person and a woman: my human right to leave and return to my country, a right secured by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13.2) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel has signed (Articles 12.2 and 12.4). This covenant also stipulates that all persons lawfully within the territory of a State shall have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose their place of residence. My children, who are pursuing their studies, are also denied their human right to a nationality and the choice to return to their country.
We hope that Israel will demonstrate its seriousness in the ongoing negotiations through halting its inhumane policies which threaten Palestinians’ existence and enjoyment of basic human rights. Like all the peoples of the world, we have the right to go back to our home and country. We yearn to continue to work for peace, to live in our homeland and retire in peace. But Israel’s willingness to talk peace while at the same time exiling vulnerable Palestinians speaks volumes about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s intention to secure as much land with as few Palestinians as possible.
This article was originally posted on Mondoweiss.
6 june 2013
By Khalid Amayreh
Forty-seven years ago this time, Israel occupied the rest of Palestine, including East Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque. The loss of Palestine to Zionist Jews was undoubtedly a clarion defeat for secular Arab Nationalism, especially the atheistic Baathist regime and the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser. It was also a resounding defeat for the entire Arab order as it exposed its moral, political and ideological bankruptcy. .
For example, Ibrahim Khalas, a high-ranking Baathist official in Syria wrote an article in the Syria army's magazine, Jayshul Shaab (the People's Army" shortly before the outbreak of the 1967 war under the title "The new socialist Arab.": Khalas wrote:
والطريق الوحيدة لتشييد حضارة العرب وبناء المجتمع العربي، هي: خلق الإنسان الاشتراكي العربي الجديد، الذي يؤمن أن الله والأديان والإقطاع والرأسمال والاستعمار والمتخمين وكل القيم ـ التي سادت المجتمع السابق ـ ليست إلا دُمىً محنطة في متاحف التاريخ.
The translation: The only way to build the Arab civilization and Arab society is the creation of the new Arab socialist human being who believes that Allah, religions, Feudalism, capitalism and colonialism As well as the Bourgeoisies and all other values that prevailed in the old society are mere mummies in the museums of history.
Needless to say, this is the type of people the Arabs had expected to liberate Palestine from Zionism, people utterly deprived of all virtues, morality and religious beliefs.
This is also the same "socialist Arabs" that have murdered more than a hundred thousand Syrians and utterly destroyed Syria under the false rubric of resistance to Zionism and imperialism, when their real goal is the creation of another Israel, a sectarian Shiite-Alawite Israel in the Arab world.
Predictably, the "Baathist socialist soldiers" and those who worshipped Gamal Abdul Nasser on the southern front were the first to flee the battle field, with their "tails between their legs."
In fact, news of the fall of the Golan Heights was announces on Damascus radio hours before the actual seizure by the Israeli army of the strategic plateau, suggesting that the Syrian "socialist" army handed the Golan to Israel on a silver platter without any semblance of fighting or resistance. As to the rhetorical overindulgence, it is an entirely different matter.
In Egypt, where the infamous commentator Ahmed Said congratulated the fish of the sea for the plenty of food it was going to enjoy rather soon, an allusion to the thousands of Israeli Jews Nasser was going to throw into the sea, the paramount thing was loyalty to the leader, not loyalty to the country or the umma. Anyone showing the slightest opposition to the Zaim (leader) was more than Just an agent of Zionism, imperialism and the forces of treason and reaction. He was vermin, a scum, a fly or germ that ought to be crushed.
Cursing Muhammed or even the creator Himself was a far less a public offense than criticizing Nasser. God was in heavens, Nasser was on earth.!!
Thus, sycophancy and hypocrisy to Nasser was the shortest way to reaching the helm of power.
In truth, the general scene in all Arab capitals then was that of entire countries and states revolving around the leader, who we were told was the greatest ever since the Prophet Muhammed, or Omar Ibn al-Khattab or Salahuddin al-Ayyoubi.
Hence, if we subject the general state of affair in the Arab world to meticulous analysis, we are inevitably affronted with a striking mess permeating through every aspect of Arab politics and culture. This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the 1967 defeat was a natural and inevitable conclusion of events preceding the fifth of June, 1967.
Perhaps, the Arabs forgot the simple fact that there was no special relationship between them and the Almighty and that the laws of nature applied to them as well as to other people.
The Almighty simply wouldn't favor the Arabs even though the Prophet was an Arab. This timeless law was applied in 1967 and it will be applied every time there is a war between us and our enemies as long as our state of affair remains unchanged.
Yes, certainly Allah gives victory to those who follow the path of truth and justice and morality if they prepare themselves well and lead a virtuous life. But if the Arabs insist on excluding or ousting God and Islam from the formula of the confrontation with Israel, then they would have to acquire military, political, technological and economic parity with Israel. In other words, they would have to have another America and another Europe at their disposal. Otherwise they should shut up and indulge in soul searching to examine the reasons for their monumental defeat.
I am saying this because, Arabs, by and large, have not learned the right lessons from what happened in 1967. They are yet to follow the path that would take them to victory.
But the road to victory doesn't go through the moral decadence inundating much of the Arab world. Does Prince Walid ibn Talal, to give just one example, think that his numerous Satellite TV stations emitting pornography, promiscuity and vice around the clock will liberate the Aqsa Mosque or take us closer to victory?
There is only one chance the Arabs can restore their glory and dignity: it is the road of Islam, the road of Muhammed, the road of Omar and Ali and Salahuddin. This means that we must abandon once and for all the roads taken by Godless secular Arab nationalism, the road of Nasserism as well as the roads of liberalism and all other isms as these roads will only take us to hell and disaster.
Meanwhile, we must reassert our constants regarding the evil brat called Israel. The existence of this racist, Satanic and criminal entity will always be unacceptable.
But in order to predispose ourselves to defeating the iniquitous entity, we must do all that we can to reinstitute the political authority of Islam and do away with the historical anomaly, known as the territorial nation- state.
Muslims are supposed to be one Umma, not 65 ummas, each of which has its own leadership, army, economy, strategic goals and alliances.
Allah commands Muslims to hold fast to the robe of God. Unfortunately most Muslim states seem to read the divine command as "hold fast to the robe of Satan rather than the robe of God."
Forty-seven years ago this time, Israel occupied the rest of Palestine, including East Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque. The loss of Palestine to Zionist Jews was undoubtedly a clarion defeat for secular Arab Nationalism, especially the atheistic Baathist regime and the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser. It was also a resounding defeat for the entire Arab order as it exposed its moral, political and ideological bankruptcy. .
For example, Ibrahim Khalas, a high-ranking Baathist official in Syria wrote an article in the Syria army's magazine, Jayshul Shaab (the People's Army" shortly before the outbreak of the 1967 war under the title "The new socialist Arab.": Khalas wrote:
والطريق الوحيدة لتشييد حضارة العرب وبناء المجتمع العربي، هي: خلق الإنسان الاشتراكي العربي الجديد، الذي يؤمن أن الله والأديان والإقطاع والرأسمال والاستعمار والمتخمين وكل القيم ـ التي سادت المجتمع السابق ـ ليست إلا دُمىً محنطة في متاحف التاريخ.
The translation: The only way to build the Arab civilization and Arab society is the creation of the new Arab socialist human being who believes that Allah, religions, Feudalism, capitalism and colonialism As well as the Bourgeoisies and all other values that prevailed in the old society are mere mummies in the museums of history.
Needless to say, this is the type of people the Arabs had expected to liberate Palestine from Zionism, people utterly deprived of all virtues, morality and religious beliefs.
This is also the same "socialist Arabs" that have murdered more than a hundred thousand Syrians and utterly destroyed Syria under the false rubric of resistance to Zionism and imperialism, when their real goal is the creation of another Israel, a sectarian Shiite-Alawite Israel in the Arab world.
Predictably, the "Baathist socialist soldiers" and those who worshipped Gamal Abdul Nasser on the southern front were the first to flee the battle field, with their "tails between their legs."
In fact, news of the fall of the Golan Heights was announces on Damascus radio hours before the actual seizure by the Israeli army of the strategic plateau, suggesting that the Syrian "socialist" army handed the Golan to Israel on a silver platter without any semblance of fighting or resistance. As to the rhetorical overindulgence, it is an entirely different matter.
In Egypt, where the infamous commentator Ahmed Said congratulated the fish of the sea for the plenty of food it was going to enjoy rather soon, an allusion to the thousands of Israeli Jews Nasser was going to throw into the sea, the paramount thing was loyalty to the leader, not loyalty to the country or the umma. Anyone showing the slightest opposition to the Zaim (leader) was more than Just an agent of Zionism, imperialism and the forces of treason and reaction. He was vermin, a scum, a fly or germ that ought to be crushed.
Cursing Muhammed or even the creator Himself was a far less a public offense than criticizing Nasser. God was in heavens, Nasser was on earth.!!
Thus, sycophancy and hypocrisy to Nasser was the shortest way to reaching the helm of power.
In truth, the general scene in all Arab capitals then was that of entire countries and states revolving around the leader, who we were told was the greatest ever since the Prophet Muhammed, or Omar Ibn al-Khattab or Salahuddin al-Ayyoubi.
Hence, if we subject the general state of affair in the Arab world to meticulous analysis, we are inevitably affronted with a striking mess permeating through every aspect of Arab politics and culture. This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the 1967 defeat was a natural and inevitable conclusion of events preceding the fifth of June, 1967.
Perhaps, the Arabs forgot the simple fact that there was no special relationship between them and the Almighty and that the laws of nature applied to them as well as to other people.
The Almighty simply wouldn't favor the Arabs even though the Prophet was an Arab. This timeless law was applied in 1967 and it will be applied every time there is a war between us and our enemies as long as our state of affair remains unchanged.
Yes, certainly Allah gives victory to those who follow the path of truth and justice and morality if they prepare themselves well and lead a virtuous life. But if the Arabs insist on excluding or ousting God and Islam from the formula of the confrontation with Israel, then they would have to acquire military, political, technological and economic parity with Israel. In other words, they would have to have another America and another Europe at their disposal. Otherwise they should shut up and indulge in soul searching to examine the reasons for their monumental defeat.
I am saying this because, Arabs, by and large, have not learned the right lessons from what happened in 1967. They are yet to follow the path that would take them to victory.
But the road to victory doesn't go through the moral decadence inundating much of the Arab world. Does Prince Walid ibn Talal, to give just one example, think that his numerous Satellite TV stations emitting pornography, promiscuity and vice around the clock will liberate the Aqsa Mosque or take us closer to victory?
There is only one chance the Arabs can restore their glory and dignity: it is the road of Islam, the road of Muhammed, the road of Omar and Ali and Salahuddin. This means that we must abandon once and for all the roads taken by Godless secular Arab nationalism, the road of Nasserism as well as the roads of liberalism and all other isms as these roads will only take us to hell and disaster.
Meanwhile, we must reassert our constants regarding the evil brat called Israel. The existence of this racist, Satanic and criminal entity will always be unacceptable.
But in order to predispose ourselves to defeating the iniquitous entity, we must do all that we can to reinstitute the political authority of Islam and do away with the historical anomaly, known as the territorial nation- state.
Muslims are supposed to be one Umma, not 65 ummas, each of which has its own leadership, army, economy, strategic goals and alliances.
Allah commands Muslims to hold fast to the robe of God. Unfortunately most Muslim states seem to read the divine command as "hold fast to the robe of Satan rather than the robe of God."
5 june 2013
A member of the Ghaith family stands among the rubble of his house after it was demolished by Israeli authorities in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of At Tur on April 29, 2013.
Since Israel occupied the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it has continued to engage in legal acrobatics to confiscate Palestinian homes and land. In doing so, the state is actively erasing its internationally recognized border – the Green Line.
One thing has become abundantly clear about Israeli policy when it comes to land: first it acts, only later giving its legal stamp of approval. This is essentially how the state was first established and built itself up, and is the story of how all settlements are born to this day in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Make your presence known on a piece of land for long enough, get a trailer, set up a makeshift synagogue, wait until the state provides electricity and water and it is only a matter of time before it is recognized, de facto or officially. The chances that a court will order that an outpost-turned-settlement be removed are very slim (and even slimmer that the state will enforce such a legal decision), as is evident from the half-a-million settlers who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem today, and the 100 or so outposts that are considered illegal even under Israeli law.
Does it really matter, therefore, what the courts, the attorney general or the High Court of Justice have to say about it, one way or another. For on the one hand, they are committed to the ethics of law, but on the other hand, are bodies that serve a state which prioritizes Jewish rights in every aspect of life.
Israel’s High Court recently asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to explain his stance on the state’s confiscation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem. His answer was that it is a-okay. The 1950 Absentee Property Law was designed to give the state the legal tools to confiscate Palestinian refugees’ property. The refugees, from the 1948 war, were literally “absent” from their homes at the time – a very fitting criteria considering it was a time of war, during which people fled and were forced out.
The way Israel uses the law is kind of like stealing someone’s seat if they get up for a second to go to the bathroom. The state takes advantage of a vulnerable moment in time to claim something as their own – forever. It’s not that Israel has any more of a legal right to that seat, it just seized the opportunity and then decided to build a legal framework to justify it. Israel’s obvious political ambitions in East Jerusalem make the legal aspect of such confiscation totally arbitrary in nature. Does it matter whether or not it is deemed legal or not? The fact is Israel is taking over more and more Palestinian land, for use by Jews.
This is why two former attorneys general ruled that the law specifically cannot be applied in East Jerusalem. In the eastern half of the city, which was a contiguous part of the West Bank until 1967, the lines between modern day Greater Jerusalem and the West Bank are arbitrary. Many Palestinians who were living in the West Bank and owned property in East Jerusalem could not be present to maintain their ownership. (For details on the history of this law and its application, read Ir Amim’s comprehensive report).[PDF]
But despite these legal opinions, given in 1968 and in 2005, and the 1970 amendment to the law limiting its application in East Jerusalem, the legal confiscation goes on. A large portion of today’s Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and the Muslim Quarter of the Old City was made possible over the last 30 years through the Absentee Property Law.
So, as far as I’m concerned, the attorney general’s kosher certification of the continued confiscation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem is just a formality Israel needs in order to continue acting as it wishes. The policy is just as arbitrary as was Israel’s decision to annex 70 square kilometers of the West Bank into Jerusalem two weeks after the Six-Day War in 1967, a decision that no other state in the world recognizes as legal to this day.
Today, Palestinians mark the consequences of the Six-Day War, in which Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem. By erasing any trace of the pre-1967 borders through such legal theater surrounding the confiscation of Palestinian land, Israel’s government is pushing Palestinians to focus their national struggle on one year: 1948 — the Nakba. This focus has brought about a shift toward liberating all of mandatory Palestine, instead of only those territories occupied 46 years ago today.
Since Israel occupied the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it has continued to engage in legal acrobatics to confiscate Palestinian homes and land. In doing so, the state is actively erasing its internationally recognized border – the Green Line.
One thing has become abundantly clear about Israeli policy when it comes to land: first it acts, only later giving its legal stamp of approval. This is essentially how the state was first established and built itself up, and is the story of how all settlements are born to this day in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Make your presence known on a piece of land for long enough, get a trailer, set up a makeshift synagogue, wait until the state provides electricity and water and it is only a matter of time before it is recognized, de facto or officially. The chances that a court will order that an outpost-turned-settlement be removed are very slim (and even slimmer that the state will enforce such a legal decision), as is evident from the half-a-million settlers who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem today, and the 100 or so outposts that are considered illegal even under Israeli law.
Does it really matter, therefore, what the courts, the attorney general or the High Court of Justice have to say about it, one way or another. For on the one hand, they are committed to the ethics of law, but on the other hand, are bodies that serve a state which prioritizes Jewish rights in every aspect of life.
Israel’s High Court recently asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to explain his stance on the state’s confiscation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem. His answer was that it is a-okay. The 1950 Absentee Property Law was designed to give the state the legal tools to confiscate Palestinian refugees’ property. The refugees, from the 1948 war, were literally “absent” from their homes at the time – a very fitting criteria considering it was a time of war, during which people fled and were forced out.
The way Israel uses the law is kind of like stealing someone’s seat if they get up for a second to go to the bathroom. The state takes advantage of a vulnerable moment in time to claim something as their own – forever. It’s not that Israel has any more of a legal right to that seat, it just seized the opportunity and then decided to build a legal framework to justify it. Israel’s obvious political ambitions in East Jerusalem make the legal aspect of such confiscation totally arbitrary in nature. Does it matter whether or not it is deemed legal or not? The fact is Israel is taking over more and more Palestinian land, for use by Jews.
This is why two former attorneys general ruled that the law specifically cannot be applied in East Jerusalem. In the eastern half of the city, which was a contiguous part of the West Bank until 1967, the lines between modern day Greater Jerusalem and the West Bank are arbitrary. Many Palestinians who were living in the West Bank and owned property in East Jerusalem could not be present to maintain their ownership. (For details on the history of this law and its application, read Ir Amim’s comprehensive report).[PDF]
But despite these legal opinions, given in 1968 and in 2005, and the 1970 amendment to the law limiting its application in East Jerusalem, the legal confiscation goes on. A large portion of today’s Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and the Muslim Quarter of the Old City was made possible over the last 30 years through the Absentee Property Law.
So, as far as I’m concerned, the attorney general’s kosher certification of the continued confiscation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem is just a formality Israel needs in order to continue acting as it wishes. The policy is just as arbitrary as was Israel’s decision to annex 70 square kilometers of the West Bank into Jerusalem two weeks after the Six-Day War in 1967, a decision that no other state in the world recognizes as legal to this day.
Today, Palestinians mark the consequences of the Six-Day War, in which Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem. By erasing any trace of the pre-1967 borders through such legal theater surrounding the confiscation of Palestinian land, Israel’s government is pushing Palestinians to focus their national struggle on one year: 1948 — the Nakba. This focus has brought about a shift toward liberating all of mandatory Palestine, instead of only those territories occupied 46 years ago today.
4 june 2013
On Tuesday 4th June, 2013, at 7:30 PM, AICafe invite you for a discussion about Al Naksa with Salah Abed Rabbo.
5 June is Al Naksa (the setback), the day on which Palestinians commemorate the displacement and dispossession which occurred during and following Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territory in the June 1967 war.
The Palestinian national movement has prioritised ending Israel's 1967 occupation, the impacts of which are all encompassing and include the poltical, cultural, social and economic spheres of life. Understanding Al Naksa, the setback which occurred following the 1967 Middle East war, is crucial for understanding contemporary Palestinian politics and life in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan.
What is the importance of Al Naksa in Palestinian daily life, resistance and memory? How does Al Naksa interact link with Al Nakba, the catastrophe of the 1948 Middle East war? Why does understanding Al Naksa enable us to better advocate for Palestinian rights and justice?
Saleh Abed Rabbo was born in the Bethlehem-area village of Walaje but now lives in the Deheishe refugee camp. Abed Rabbo was arrested in 1967 and imprisoned for three years for his participation in resistance against the Israeli occupation of that year. In 1998 Israel placed him in administrative detention. Abed Rabbo researches and publishes widely about modern Arabic literature. He was secretary of the first refugee conference which took place in Bethlehem in 1996.
Please join us for this important event!
The AIC is a joint Palestinian-Israeli activist organization engaged in dissemination of information, political advocacy and grassroots activism. The AICafè is a political and cultural café open on Tuesday and Saturday night from 7pm until 10pm. It is located in the Alternative Information Center in Beit Sahour, close to Suq Sha'ab (follow the sign to Jadal Center ). We have a small library with novels, political books and magazines. We also have a number of films in DVD copies and AIC publications which critically analyze both the Palestinian and Israeli societies as well as the conflict itself.
5 June is Al Naksa (the setback), the day on which Palestinians commemorate the displacement and dispossession which occurred during and following Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territory in the June 1967 war.
The Palestinian national movement has prioritised ending Israel's 1967 occupation, the impacts of which are all encompassing and include the poltical, cultural, social and economic spheres of life. Understanding Al Naksa, the setback which occurred following the 1967 Middle East war, is crucial for understanding contemporary Palestinian politics and life in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan.
What is the importance of Al Naksa in Palestinian daily life, resistance and memory? How does Al Naksa interact link with Al Nakba, the catastrophe of the 1948 Middle East war? Why does understanding Al Naksa enable us to better advocate for Palestinian rights and justice?
Saleh Abed Rabbo was born in the Bethlehem-area village of Walaje but now lives in the Deheishe refugee camp. Abed Rabbo was arrested in 1967 and imprisoned for three years for his participation in resistance against the Israeli occupation of that year. In 1998 Israel placed him in administrative detention. Abed Rabbo researches and publishes widely about modern Arabic literature. He was secretary of the first refugee conference which took place in Bethlehem in 1996.
Please join us for this important event!
The AIC is a joint Palestinian-Israeli activist organization engaged in dissemination of information, political advocacy and grassroots activism. The AICafè is a political and cultural café open on Tuesday and Saturday night from 7pm until 10pm. It is located in the Alternative Information Center in Beit Sahour, close to Suq Sha'ab (follow the sign to Jadal Center ). We have a small library with novels, political books and magazines. We also have a number of films in DVD copies and AIC publications which critically analyze both the Palestinian and Israeli societies as well as the conflict itself.
19 may 2013
Forced Removal: Hours after conquering East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, Israeli authorities demolished the Arab Mughrabi neighborhood in the shadow of the Western Wall. Those who once lived there still mourn the loss of their homes.
'Unification' of Jerusalem Forced Our Arabs From Mughrabi
Many Israelis marked the 46th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification, as they see it, with the fanfare that has become a staple of Jerusalem Day, the holiday first declared by the government in 1968 to mark the historic event. The May 8 celebration, which Israel’s chief rabbinate has also declared a religious holiday, was punctuated by performances, including the annual “march of the flags,” a large procession by nationalist Jewish youth through the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
“We are celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem, the nullification of the border,” Jerusalem Deputy Mayor David Hadari told the Forward. “It was previously impossible to reach the Western Wall, but it was liberated and the Temple Mount is in our hands.”
In his comments, Hadari recalled the divided city that existed before the June 1967 Six Day War, when Israel took control of the city’s Eastern sector, ruled until then by Jordan and populated exclusively by Arabs. Today, Hadari noted, Jewish neighborhoods are expanding all over this sector.
But not everyone thinks there is cause to rejoice. The festivities cut out the Palestinians, who make up 39% of Jerusalem’s population. Unlike the city’s Jewish residents, Arab Jerusalemites face logistical and legal barriers to moving into the city’s other, Jewish sector. And many cannot find housing in their own sector of the city due to planning policies that have been labeled discriminatory by civil rights groups.
“They celebrate and we cry,“ said Mohammed Ibrahim Mawalid, 85, a resident of the Old City. “They celebrate the liberation of Jerusalem as they view it. But we remember the disasters.”
One of the disasters that still haunts Mawalid is a mass demolition that eradicated his old Palestinian neighborhood. It was carried out at Judaism’s holiest site on the last day of the Six Day War and the first day of the ceasefire. It was just a few days after David Rubinger shot his iconic picture of young awestruck Israeli soldiers standing before the ancient stones at the Western Wall just after having taken over the area.
The soldiers then were standing in the Mughrabi Quarter, which encompassed most of what is today the long, wide plaza in front of the Western Wall. Its destruction is an event either unknown or repressed by most Israelis and Jews who visit the Kotel. It is deleted from public discourse about the Old City. But for some Palestinians it is still a sore wound.
Mawalid’s home once stood in this area, along with 135 other buildings, including three mosques and two zawiyas, or pilgrim hospices. Palestinian historians say that some of the Mughrabi Quarter buildings were more than seven centuries old, dating back to the time of Saladin’s son, al-Afdal. But Israeli bulldozers erased them June 10 and June 11, on the orders of Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, to enable large numbers of worshippers to come to the Western Wall for Shavuot prayers the following week. Now, not even a plaque marks the site. It is as if the Mughrabi Quarter never existed.
“We still feel the pain,” Mawalid said.
Today, Mawalid is a frail man whose son works in employee recruitment for the California state government in Sacramento. He has other children in Oman and Morocco. But in 1967, Mawalid held the post of mutawalli, the Jordanian government official responsible for the Islamic properties in the quarter. This provided modest earnings. He also supervised a cafeteria at the offices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Mawalid moved to the Mughrabi Quarter in 1949 after fleeing the village of Bir Ma’in (on the site of what is now the Israeli town of Modi’in) during the Arab-Israeli war a year earlier. He says he had to leave the village because of Israeli artillery bombardments.
In the Mughrabi Quarter, Mawalid’s seven-room house, about 100 meters from the Western Wall, was home to 15 people, including his mother, brothers, wife and children. The house was white stone and about 250 years old, he said.
According to Mawalid, some 1,500 people lived in the Mughrabi Quarter, though other estimates put the total at around 600. Many, like Mawalid, were originally of Moroccan ancestry. After the demolition, the refugees dispersed to other locales in the Jerusalem area and to Jordan and Morocco.
On the night of June 10,1967 — just as Israel was consolidating its seemingly miraculous victory over Egypt, Jordan, Syria and other Arab armies — Israeli bulldozers began demolishing the Palestinian houses closest to the Western Wall. “We thought they were going to make a road, to broaden a road to the Western Wall,“ Mawalid said. He did not at first imagine that his entire neighborhood would be razed.
One person died during the demolition. Rasmiya Abu Aghayl, a woman in her 50s, was killed when a bulldozer demolished her house while she was still in it.
Lieutenant Col. Ya’akov Salman, the deputy military governor who commanded the demolition, told the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz that Palestinian residents initially refused to depart. Salman ordered an officer to begin the demolitions nevertheless
“The order to evacuate the neighborhood was one of the hardest in my life,” he said, according to the book “Accidental Empire,” by Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg, which cites the May 1999 interview by Salman. “When you order, ‘Fire!’ [in battle], you’re an automaton. Here you had to give an order knowing you are likely to hurt innocent people.”
In a letter dated March 5, 1968 to the secretary-general of the United Nations, Israel’s U.N. representative, Yosef Tekoah said Israel destroyed the Mughrabi Quarter because it was a “slum.” Responding to a complaint from Jordan about the quarter’s leveling, Tekoah assured the UN that the “unfortunate inhabitants” of the quarter had been resettled in “respectable conditions.”
Mawalid recalled that the quarter’s population included both wealthy and poor people.
Mawalid and his brothers, mother, wife and children fled to the Bab Al-Silsila (Chain Gate) area of the old city. “My wife, Halima, carried makluba she had cooked with us,” he recalled, referring to a Palestinian dish of meat, rice and fried vegetables. “It was the only thing we were able to take.
“At Bab Al-Silsila I met a friend, Ibrahim Habib, who asked me, ‘Where are you going to go?’ He said, ‘Come to me,’ and he gave us two rooms.”
Mawalid said the refugee families were offered $200 to $300 in compensation by Israeli authorities for their losses.
Mawalid believes that transforming what was his house and the Mughrabi neighborhood into an expanded plaza for Jewish prayer at the Western Wall was “unjust” and a “usurpation.”
But, he is not seeking to turn back the clock. Mawalid says he does not dream of the reconstruction of the Mughrabi neighborhood. “This is impossible,” he said. “It’s a holy place for the Jews, and they are dreaming of it for hundreds of years and they achieved their dream.”
Rather, he would like to see the Jerusalem municipality build housing for the refugees of the quarter. According to Mawalid, during the early 1970s the municipality offered to build housing for those from the quarter, but the designated location was on land that had been expropriated from other Palestinians. “There is no way we could take land that was taken from other Palestinians,” he said.
Amir Cheshin, who served as adviser on East Jerusalem to Mayor Teddy Kollek during the 1980s, says he knows of no such housing offer. The Mughrabi Quarter residents, he said, “certainly should be given alternative housing as was done for residents of Yamit [in the Sinai Peninsula] and Gush Katif [in Gaza]”
But Cheshin backed the decision to demolish the quarter. “In retrospect, it was a smart act. Otherwise, the Kotel would have remained a miserable alley. If they didn’t do it [in the war’s immediate aftermath], they wouldn’t have been able to do it later.”
Hadari, the deputy mayor, flatly rejected Mawalid’s idea of providing housing. “Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people,” he said. “We won’t accept any claim of this sort. Just as my parents, who left Morocco in 1948, didn’t get anything for their house, they won’t get anything, either.”
In fact, while Jewish residents of several Arab countries were expelled and lost their property without compensation after Israel’s founding, this was not the case in Morocco, which is still home to an estimated 5,000 Jews. Michael Fischbach’s book, “Jewish Property Claims against Arab Countries,” notes that Jews in Morocco largely did not suffer large scale property loss upon emigration and adds that those who left after the 1948 war were free to dispose of their property.
Nazmi Jubeh, a historian at Birzeit University, in the West Bank, considers the demolition “an absolute act of violence against people and their houses and habitat. These are people who in a few hours lost everything. We lost an eight-centuries-long tradition of North Africans and Andalusians in Jerusalem that was an important element of historic Jerusalem.”
Contact Ben Lynfield at feedback@forward,com
This article was modified on May 31 to reflect that it originally mischaracterized as purely legal — instead of partly legal and partly logistical — the difficulty of Arab Jerusalemites in the city’s Eastern Sector moving to the city’s Jewish Western Sector. Until 2008, the 293,0000 Arab residents of the city’s Eastern Sector, of which Israel gained control in the 1967 Six Day War, were barred as non-citizens from buying property in the Western Sector by the Israel Land Authority, which controlled almost all that sector’s land. (A few thousand East Jerusalem Arabs who opted to take Israeli citizenship were exempt from this prohibition.) A 2008 ILA regulation removed this de jure bar by permitting Israeli residents — which the government says includes Arab East Jerusalemites — as well as citizens, to buy ILA-held property. But few have done so, because of powerful de facto barriers, according to demographic experts on the city. More than 190,000 Jews, meanwhile, have bought property in the city’s Eastern Sector.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/176820/palestinians-mourn-neighborhood-razed-by-israel-in/#ixzz2VzhACwWW
'Unification' of Jerusalem Forced Our Arabs From Mughrabi
Many Israelis marked the 46th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification, as they see it, with the fanfare that has become a staple of Jerusalem Day, the holiday first declared by the government in 1968 to mark the historic event. The May 8 celebration, which Israel’s chief rabbinate has also declared a religious holiday, was punctuated by performances, including the annual “march of the flags,” a large procession by nationalist Jewish youth through the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
“We are celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem, the nullification of the border,” Jerusalem Deputy Mayor David Hadari told the Forward. “It was previously impossible to reach the Western Wall, but it was liberated and the Temple Mount is in our hands.”
In his comments, Hadari recalled the divided city that existed before the June 1967 Six Day War, when Israel took control of the city’s Eastern sector, ruled until then by Jordan and populated exclusively by Arabs. Today, Hadari noted, Jewish neighborhoods are expanding all over this sector.
But not everyone thinks there is cause to rejoice. The festivities cut out the Palestinians, who make up 39% of Jerusalem’s population. Unlike the city’s Jewish residents, Arab Jerusalemites face logistical and legal barriers to moving into the city’s other, Jewish sector. And many cannot find housing in their own sector of the city due to planning policies that have been labeled discriminatory by civil rights groups.
“They celebrate and we cry,“ said Mohammed Ibrahim Mawalid, 85, a resident of the Old City. “They celebrate the liberation of Jerusalem as they view it. But we remember the disasters.”
One of the disasters that still haunts Mawalid is a mass demolition that eradicated his old Palestinian neighborhood. It was carried out at Judaism’s holiest site on the last day of the Six Day War and the first day of the ceasefire. It was just a few days after David Rubinger shot his iconic picture of young awestruck Israeli soldiers standing before the ancient stones at the Western Wall just after having taken over the area.
The soldiers then were standing in the Mughrabi Quarter, which encompassed most of what is today the long, wide plaza in front of the Western Wall. Its destruction is an event either unknown or repressed by most Israelis and Jews who visit the Kotel. It is deleted from public discourse about the Old City. But for some Palestinians it is still a sore wound.
Mawalid’s home once stood in this area, along with 135 other buildings, including three mosques and two zawiyas, or pilgrim hospices. Palestinian historians say that some of the Mughrabi Quarter buildings were more than seven centuries old, dating back to the time of Saladin’s son, al-Afdal. But Israeli bulldozers erased them June 10 and June 11, on the orders of Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, to enable large numbers of worshippers to come to the Western Wall for Shavuot prayers the following week. Now, not even a plaque marks the site. It is as if the Mughrabi Quarter never existed.
“We still feel the pain,” Mawalid said.
Today, Mawalid is a frail man whose son works in employee recruitment for the California state government in Sacramento. He has other children in Oman and Morocco. But in 1967, Mawalid held the post of mutawalli, the Jordanian government official responsible for the Islamic properties in the quarter. This provided modest earnings. He also supervised a cafeteria at the offices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Mawalid moved to the Mughrabi Quarter in 1949 after fleeing the village of Bir Ma’in (on the site of what is now the Israeli town of Modi’in) during the Arab-Israeli war a year earlier. He says he had to leave the village because of Israeli artillery bombardments.
In the Mughrabi Quarter, Mawalid’s seven-room house, about 100 meters from the Western Wall, was home to 15 people, including his mother, brothers, wife and children. The house was white stone and about 250 years old, he said.
According to Mawalid, some 1,500 people lived in the Mughrabi Quarter, though other estimates put the total at around 600. Many, like Mawalid, were originally of Moroccan ancestry. After the demolition, the refugees dispersed to other locales in the Jerusalem area and to Jordan and Morocco.
On the night of June 10,1967 — just as Israel was consolidating its seemingly miraculous victory over Egypt, Jordan, Syria and other Arab armies — Israeli bulldozers began demolishing the Palestinian houses closest to the Western Wall. “We thought they were going to make a road, to broaden a road to the Western Wall,“ Mawalid said. He did not at first imagine that his entire neighborhood would be razed.
One person died during the demolition. Rasmiya Abu Aghayl, a woman in her 50s, was killed when a bulldozer demolished her house while she was still in it.
Lieutenant Col. Ya’akov Salman, the deputy military governor who commanded the demolition, told the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz that Palestinian residents initially refused to depart. Salman ordered an officer to begin the demolitions nevertheless
“The order to evacuate the neighborhood was one of the hardest in my life,” he said, according to the book “Accidental Empire,” by Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg, which cites the May 1999 interview by Salman. “When you order, ‘Fire!’ [in battle], you’re an automaton. Here you had to give an order knowing you are likely to hurt innocent people.”
In a letter dated March 5, 1968 to the secretary-general of the United Nations, Israel’s U.N. representative, Yosef Tekoah said Israel destroyed the Mughrabi Quarter because it was a “slum.” Responding to a complaint from Jordan about the quarter’s leveling, Tekoah assured the UN that the “unfortunate inhabitants” of the quarter had been resettled in “respectable conditions.”
Mawalid recalled that the quarter’s population included both wealthy and poor people.
Mawalid and his brothers, mother, wife and children fled to the Bab Al-Silsila (Chain Gate) area of the old city. “My wife, Halima, carried makluba she had cooked with us,” he recalled, referring to a Palestinian dish of meat, rice and fried vegetables. “It was the only thing we were able to take.
“At Bab Al-Silsila I met a friend, Ibrahim Habib, who asked me, ‘Where are you going to go?’ He said, ‘Come to me,’ and he gave us two rooms.”
Mawalid said the refugee families were offered $200 to $300 in compensation by Israeli authorities for their losses.
Mawalid believes that transforming what was his house and the Mughrabi neighborhood into an expanded plaza for Jewish prayer at the Western Wall was “unjust” and a “usurpation.”
But, he is not seeking to turn back the clock. Mawalid says he does not dream of the reconstruction of the Mughrabi neighborhood. “This is impossible,” he said. “It’s a holy place for the Jews, and they are dreaming of it for hundreds of years and they achieved their dream.”
Rather, he would like to see the Jerusalem municipality build housing for the refugees of the quarter. According to Mawalid, during the early 1970s the municipality offered to build housing for those from the quarter, but the designated location was on land that had been expropriated from other Palestinians. “There is no way we could take land that was taken from other Palestinians,” he said.
Amir Cheshin, who served as adviser on East Jerusalem to Mayor Teddy Kollek during the 1980s, says he knows of no such housing offer. The Mughrabi Quarter residents, he said, “certainly should be given alternative housing as was done for residents of Yamit [in the Sinai Peninsula] and Gush Katif [in Gaza]”
But Cheshin backed the decision to demolish the quarter. “In retrospect, it was a smart act. Otherwise, the Kotel would have remained a miserable alley. If they didn’t do it [in the war’s immediate aftermath], they wouldn’t have been able to do it later.”
Hadari, the deputy mayor, flatly rejected Mawalid’s idea of providing housing. “Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people,” he said. “We won’t accept any claim of this sort. Just as my parents, who left Morocco in 1948, didn’t get anything for their house, they won’t get anything, either.”
In fact, while Jewish residents of several Arab countries were expelled and lost their property without compensation after Israel’s founding, this was not the case in Morocco, which is still home to an estimated 5,000 Jews. Michael Fischbach’s book, “Jewish Property Claims against Arab Countries,” notes that Jews in Morocco largely did not suffer large scale property loss upon emigration and adds that those who left after the 1948 war were free to dispose of their property.
Nazmi Jubeh, a historian at Birzeit University, in the West Bank, considers the demolition “an absolute act of violence against people and their houses and habitat. These are people who in a few hours lost everything. We lost an eight-centuries-long tradition of North Africans and Andalusians in Jerusalem that was an important element of historic Jerusalem.”
Contact Ben Lynfield at feedback@forward,com
This article was modified on May 31 to reflect that it originally mischaracterized as purely legal — instead of partly legal and partly logistical — the difficulty of Arab Jerusalemites in the city’s Eastern Sector moving to the city’s Jewish Western Sector. Until 2008, the 293,0000 Arab residents of the city’s Eastern Sector, of which Israel gained control in the 1967 Six Day War, were barred as non-citizens from buying property in the Western Sector by the Israel Land Authority, which controlled almost all that sector’s land. (A few thousand East Jerusalem Arabs who opted to take Israeli citizenship were exempt from this prohibition.) A 2008 ILA regulation removed this de jure bar by permitting Israeli residents — which the government says includes Arab East Jerusalemites — as well as citizens, to buy ILA-held property. But few have done so, because of powerful de facto barriers, according to demographic experts on the city. More than 190,000 Jews, meanwhile, have bought property in the city’s Eastern Sector.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/176820/palestinians-mourn-neighborhood-razed-by-israel-in/#ixzz2VzhACwWW
