12 dec 2017
The Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza on Tuesday held the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the ongoing aggression on the Palestinian people.
During a press conference held in Gaza following a Palestinian factions meeting, the factions mourned the two Palestinian martyrs Hasan Nasrallah and Mustafa al-Sultan who were killed in an explosion while driving their motorbike in the northern Gaza Strip.
In a related context, the Palestinian factions affirmed that the US latest decision is a declaration of war on the Palestinian people.
Secretary General of al-Ahrar Movement, Khalid Abu Hilal, said, delivering the meetings' statement, that this decision does not change the historical, religious and legal facts that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine.
Abu Hilal emphasized that this US move is aimed at "obliterating the Palestinian cause", urging the Palestinian people to escalate their intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation.
The Palestinian factions hailed the Arab and Muslim masses for their stand against the US decision and asked the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization to withdraw their recognition of Israel, declare the failure of the Oslo era, and end security coordination with the Israeli occupation.
They called on the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to make decisions commensurate with the seriousness of the US move and boycott both Israel and the US economically and politically.
They also condemned the Bahraini delegation's visit to Israel and described it as a "stab in the back" that does not represent the peoples of the Arab and Muslim nations.
During a press conference held in Gaza following a Palestinian factions meeting, the factions mourned the two Palestinian martyrs Hasan Nasrallah and Mustafa al-Sultan who were killed in an explosion while driving their motorbike in the northern Gaza Strip.
In a related context, the Palestinian factions affirmed that the US latest decision is a declaration of war on the Palestinian people.
Secretary General of al-Ahrar Movement, Khalid Abu Hilal, said, delivering the meetings' statement, that this decision does not change the historical, religious and legal facts that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine.
Abu Hilal emphasized that this US move is aimed at "obliterating the Palestinian cause", urging the Palestinian people to escalate their intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation.
The Palestinian factions hailed the Arab and Muslim masses for their stand against the US decision and asked the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization to withdraw their recognition of Israel, declare the failure of the Oslo era, and end security coordination with the Israeli occupation.
They called on the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to make decisions commensurate with the seriousness of the US move and boycott both Israel and the US economically and politically.
They also condemned the Bahraini delegation's visit to Israel and described it as a "stab in the back" that does not represent the peoples of the Arab and Muslim nations.
1,795 Palestinians were injured in clashes that broke out in the West Bank, occupied Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip over the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The Palestinian Red Crescent crews also said that 121 Palestinians were shot and injured with live ammunition, 346 others suffered rubber bullet wounds, while 1,239 suffered breathing difficulty after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli forces during the confrontations.
Some 43 others suffered different bruises and injuries after being brutally beaten at the hands of Israeli soldiers, while nine Gazans were injured during Israeli airstrikes on the besieged Strip.
Violent clashes and mass demonstrations have been launched all over the occupied Palestinian territories in rejection of the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and its decision to move the US embassy there.
These confrontations followed calls by Hamas Movement and other Palestinian factions on the Palestinian people to take to the streets in protest at Trump’s move.
Report: “Israeli Soldiers Killed Four Palestinians, Injured 1778, Since Wednesday”
The Palestinian Health Ministry has reported that Israeli soldiers have killed four Palestinians, and injured 1178 others, since Monday evening, after the U.S. President Donald Trump made his illegal recognition of occupied Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel.
The Ministry stated that the soldiers have injured 1396 in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, adding that 33 Palestinians were shot with live fire, 323 with rubber-coated steel bullets, 998 suffered he effects of teargas inhalation, and 24 others were beaten up by the soldiers, suffered burns from Israeli fire, or were rammed by army jeeps.
Eighteen Palestinians were shot with gas bombs, while 83 Palestinians have been hospitalized, including 15 from Jerusalem.
In the Gaza Strip, the soldiers injured 382 Palestinians; 85 of them with live rounds, 14 with rubber-coated steel bullets, 235 suffered the effects of teargas inhalation, 21 were shot with gas bombs, 12 suffered burns in addition to cuts and bruises, and fifteen others were injured after the army bombarded several areas in the coastal region.
259 of the wounded Palestinians were moved to hospitals for treatment; some remained there due to moderate or serious wounds, including a six-month old infant.
The soldiers also killed four Palestinians, identified as Mohammad as-Safadi, 25, Mahmoud at-‘Atal, 29, Maher Atallah, 54, and Mahmoud al-Masri, 30.
It is worth mentioning that, on December 6, 2017, a Palestinian child, Mohammad Saleh Abu Haddaf, 4, died from serious wounds he suffered on August 8, 2014, when Israeli army drones fired missiles at his family’s home, and several nearby homes, in al-Qarara town, north of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
The missile, which struck the family home, killed three family members, identified as Mahmoud Khaled Abu Haddaf, 15, Suleiman Samir Abu Haddaf, 21, and Mahmoud Mohammad Abu Haddaf, 9, and injured at least six others, including Mohammad.
The Palestinian Red Crescent crews also said that 121 Palestinians were shot and injured with live ammunition, 346 others suffered rubber bullet wounds, while 1,239 suffered breathing difficulty after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli forces during the confrontations.
Some 43 others suffered different bruises and injuries after being brutally beaten at the hands of Israeli soldiers, while nine Gazans were injured during Israeli airstrikes on the besieged Strip.
Violent clashes and mass demonstrations have been launched all over the occupied Palestinian territories in rejection of the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and its decision to move the US embassy there.
These confrontations followed calls by Hamas Movement and other Palestinian factions on the Palestinian people to take to the streets in protest at Trump’s move.
Report: “Israeli Soldiers Killed Four Palestinians, Injured 1778, Since Wednesday”
The Palestinian Health Ministry has reported that Israeli soldiers have killed four Palestinians, and injured 1178 others, since Monday evening, after the U.S. President Donald Trump made his illegal recognition of occupied Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel.
The Ministry stated that the soldiers have injured 1396 in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, adding that 33 Palestinians were shot with live fire, 323 with rubber-coated steel bullets, 998 suffered he effects of teargas inhalation, and 24 others were beaten up by the soldiers, suffered burns from Israeli fire, or were rammed by army jeeps.
Eighteen Palestinians were shot with gas bombs, while 83 Palestinians have been hospitalized, including 15 from Jerusalem.
In the Gaza Strip, the soldiers injured 382 Palestinians; 85 of them with live rounds, 14 with rubber-coated steel bullets, 235 suffered the effects of teargas inhalation, 21 were shot with gas bombs, 12 suffered burns in addition to cuts and bruises, and fifteen others were injured after the army bombarded several areas in the coastal region.
259 of the wounded Palestinians were moved to hospitals for treatment; some remained there due to moderate or serious wounds, including a six-month old infant.
The soldiers also killed four Palestinians, identified as Mohammad as-Safadi, 25, Mahmoud at-‘Atal, 29, Maher Atallah, 54, and Mahmoud al-Masri, 30.
It is worth mentioning that, on December 6, 2017, a Palestinian child, Mohammad Saleh Abu Haddaf, 4, died from serious wounds he suffered on August 8, 2014, when Israeli army drones fired missiles at his family’s home, and several nearby homes, in al-Qarara town, north of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
The missile, which struck the family home, killed three family members, identified as Mahmoud Khaled Abu Haddaf, 15, Suleiman Samir Abu Haddaf, 21, and Mahmoud Mohammad Abu Haddaf, 9, and injured at least six others, including Mohammad.
Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has paid tribute to all Palestinian citizens at home and abroad and the world’s free people for rising up against US president Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
This came in a speech delivered by one of al-Qassam Brigades’ senior commanders during a memorial service held for martyr Mohamed al-Safadi in Gaza City.
Al-Qassam commander called on the Palestinian people in all occupied territories to continue their intifada (uprising) against the occupation until the liberation of their land.
“Today, we are facing a new round of conflict with the Zionist enemy, and our people have risen up anew at home and abroad to express their strong anger at the plots being hatched against Jerusalem,” the commander stated.
He also expressed his Brigades’ rejection of the US declaration over Jerusalem. “This stupid decision that was taken by the horned bull (Trump) against Jerusalem targets the faith of the Ummah, so it is no wonder that the world’s free people from the Muslim nation, Arabs, Turks and Westerner, have stood up against such unjust decision.”
This came in a speech delivered by one of al-Qassam Brigades’ senior commanders during a memorial service held for martyr Mohamed al-Safadi in Gaza City.
Al-Qassam commander called on the Palestinian people in all occupied territories to continue their intifada (uprising) against the occupation until the liberation of their land.
“Today, we are facing a new round of conflict with the Zionist enemy, and our people have risen up anew at home and abroad to express their strong anger at the plots being hatched against Jerusalem,” the commander stated.
He also expressed his Brigades’ rejection of the US declaration over Jerusalem. “This stupid decision that was taken by the horned bull (Trump) against Jerusalem targets the faith of the Ummah, so it is no wonder that the world’s free people from the Muslim nation, Arabs, Turks and Westerner, have stood up against such unjust decision.”
11 dec 2017
Al-Aqsa Mosque preacher and head of Jerusalem's Supreme Islamic Council, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, on Monday described the US president Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy there as a "declaration of war".
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Sabri asserted that the protests seen recently across the world against the US move indicate that Jerusalem "does not belong to Palestinians only but to all Muslims".
He went on to urge Palestinians and the people of Occupied Jerusalem to defend the holy city at all costs saying that "the US arrogance" will not achieve anything.
He added that there is no room now for negotiations or any kind of peace process because the US has already decided its position on Jerusalem contradicting itself and choosing war.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Sabri asserted that the protests seen recently across the world against the US move indicate that Jerusalem "does not belong to Palestinians only but to all Muslims".
He went on to urge Palestinians and the people of Occupied Jerusalem to defend the holy city at all costs saying that "the US arrogance" will not achieve anything.
He added that there is no room now for negotiations or any kind of peace process because the US has already decided its position on Jerusalem contradicting itself and choosing war.
A one million-person march is slated to be held across the blockaded Gaza Strip on Friday to protest U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
According to the National and Islamic Factions’ Follow-Up Committee, mass-demos will be held simultaneously in all Gaza provinces, from Rafah to Beit Hanun.
The committee called on the Palestinians to join the march right after Friday’s noon prayers, at around 12:30 a.m., and to raise the Palestinian flag.
The march comes as part of underway protest moves staged across the occupied Palestinian territories and overseas to speak out against Trump’s Wednesday declaration that Occupied Jerusalem is the capital of self-proclaimed Israeli state, overturning the U.S.-brokered peace process and signaling a green light for altering the long-held status quo in the city—home to Muslims’ third holiest site, al-Aqsa Mosque.
According to the National and Islamic Factions’ Follow-Up Committee, mass-demos will be held simultaneously in all Gaza provinces, from Rafah to Beit Hanun.
The committee called on the Palestinians to join the march right after Friday’s noon prayers, at around 12:30 a.m., and to raise the Palestinian flag.
The march comes as part of underway protest moves staged across the occupied Palestinian territories and overseas to speak out against Trump’s Wednesday declaration that Occupied Jerusalem is the capital of self-proclaimed Israeli state, overturning the U.S.-brokered peace process and signaling a green light for altering the long-held status quo in the city—home to Muslims’ third holiest site, al-Aqsa Mosque.
10 dec 2017
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AARON MATÉ: It’s The Real News. I’m Aaron Maté. The uproar continues over President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. At least one Palestinian has been killed and dozens have been wounded as Israeli forces crackdown on protests across occupied territories. Protests are also being held around the world and the UN Security Council has held an emergency session. Joining me is Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and professor at George Mason University. Welcome, Noura. As you see this response both in the territories and around the world, your thoughts today?
NOURA ERAKAT: So, two thoughts to start off with: one is that I just want to start by expressing some sort of emotional weight that Palestinians are feeling. This is an incredibly sad moment. In addition to feeling rage and righteous rage, there’s a lot of sadness and a |
heaviness around the fact that this announcement comes around Eid or Christmas for the Christians amongst us and really dampens the mood and the reality that we continue to live under a settler-colonial reality.
What President Trump has done is to mark the inevitable consolidation of Israel settler- colonial project that is intent on the elimination of Palestinians as a people and their containment as mere Arabs, as Bedouins, as individuals, as refugees, but not as a people who are deserving of their self-determination.Palestinians have been waging this struggle for self-determination ever since 1917 when British Empire decided that it would erase Palestinians as a people in order to make way for the establishment of a Jewish national home in their place. This was a colonial decision. It was a colonial erasure.
What Netanyahu has said recently in response to Trump is that Trump’s announcement about Jerusalem is the equivalent of the Balfour Declaration designating all of Palestine for Jewish settlement. We are seeing a continuity of this colonial process that continues to erase Palestinians, but we’re also seeing a continuity in US foreign policy that has steadily, steadily moved forward this project by adopting a dual process of speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
The United States, especially since 1967 under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration has simultaneously told Israel and the world that there will be no resolution, unilateral resolution imposed on the solution either by way of international law or external interference, that it will be completely negotiated resolution. At the same time, the United States has enabled Israel to expand its settler colonial holdings over Palestinian lands without regard to putative borders or otherwise in the form of unequivocal diplomatic aid shielding it from any kind of international censor at the United Nations, in the form of unequivocal military aid that has made Israel the most, the 11th most significant military power in the world but also the only nuclear power in the Middle East, and in the form of financial aid that has ensured Israel will stay afloat and have a remarkably powerful economy on the global scale.
These things together have immunized Israel from any kind of external pressure. Despite the international community insisting that there must be a solution and a just solution to the Palestinian condition, it has been able to act with impunity in order to continue its settler colonial project of erasure, to usher in an era of apartheid under the double-speak of the United States which has now ended as Trump has revealed, has removed the emperor’s clothes to reveal US foreign policy for what it is which is as an enabler for Israel’s project.
AARON MATÉ: Noura, I want to talk a bit about how we got here and the key role of Democrats in laying the groundwork for Trump. After all, just recently it came out that Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Party in the Senate had urged Trump to declare Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel. On this front, I want to go to two clips. They’re both, they’re of President Obama speaking at AIPAC in 2008 and four years later Chuck Schumer in 2012.
BARACK OBAMA: Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state with secure recognized defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.
CHUCK SCHUMER: Everyone knows the vast overwhelming majority of Democrats, Democrats have always been for Jerusalem being the unified capital of Israel. I’m one of the leading Democrats on Middle East policy. That’s been my position for a long time. This is a tempest in a teapot. The overwhelming Democratic position is just that.
AARON MATÉ: So, that’s Chuck Schumer in 2012; before that, Barack Obama in 2008. Noura, it’s been interesting to see the Democratic reaction to Trump’s decision. People have been criticizing him, but yet they’re in a tough position because they effectively support the exact policy that he’s carried out.
NOURA ERAKAT: Look, this is one of those issues where there’s really no daylight between Republicans and Democrats with a few very brave exceptions on this issue. This has been a bipartisan issue. It’s something that unites Congress rather than splits them, and is really, really unfortunate because it’s even. It’s moved Congress to act against its own American interests as was demonstrated when Netanyahu came to address Congress in order to undermine President Obama’s Iran Nuclear Agreement in a way where they actually showed more loyalty to what Israel needed in the region than to what the United States thought was necessary.This is not surprising. I think what should be pointed out for our audience, we are in a moment that has been defined by resistance to Trump as if what Trump is doing is unprecedented. In some cases, it might be more bold. It might be more bombastic, irresponsible, lacking and arrogant. But it isn’t necessarily a rupture especially on this issue.
The declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the consecration of five decades of US foreign policy on this issue. This is actually the pinnacle of an inevitable outcome of what the United States has been doing to shield Israel from any kind of international accountability.It is issued in the UN Security Council between 1967 and the present 43 vetoes in order to shield Israel from the application of international law that would stem its settlement enterprise and its project. It has done very little. It did nothing in order to stem the building of a wall on West Bank territory and to preserve the territorial integrity of the occupied territory. It has spoken out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, these are all administrations, Democratic and Republican alike. On the one hand, it said that settlements are counterproductive and that Israel must abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
On the other hand indeed, it has protected Israel and shielded it so that it can continue to get away with its practices on the ground.Lest we valorize President Obama on this issue even when in his last, one of his last acts in office, he actually oversaw an abstention in the Security Council and the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which affirmed the illegality of settlements and affirmed the territorial integrity of the territories. At the same time, he also promised Israel more military aid than any other administration, increasing US aid to Israel from 3.0 billion over 10 years to 3.8 billion over 10 years and an MOU that basically guarantees Israel $38 billion. Even in that moment of what appeared like a US shifting its policy was still speaking out of both sides of its mouth.
Responsibility for this however and for exposing the US’s double-speak and for pivoting us, pivoting Palestinian fate away from this disastrous US course is on the Palestinian leadership which has had opportunities over and over and over again to shift course to move away from the backwaters of bilateralism, to use international law, to use accountability mechanisms after repeated onslaughts on the Gaza Strip for example, to use the opportunity that 2334 represented to us, to use the ICJ decision in order to wage a global boycott divestment sanctions movement in order to place sanctions on Israel. And yet the Palestinian leadership in its undue faith has clung on to the idea that the US’ global superpower will deliver independence to it.That’s just, there’s no reason. They’ve had empirical evidence that devastates that possibility, and it’s not justified. Now this is another moment that is testing Palestinian leadership, and the saddest part about this moment is that Palestinians may be a part of consolidating Israel’s control rather than resisting it at this juncture.
AARON MATÉ: The ICJ decision, just to clarify for people who don’t know it, that’s in 2004 when the World Court ruled against the Israeli separation wall that cuts throughout the West Bank, separates more Palestinian territory from each other in order to keep Israeli control of the illegal settlement blocks. Let me ask you, Noura…
NOURA ERAKAT: Really quick, just to highlight for folks who are interested in that, the ICJ decision that said Israeli has the right to self-defense and every right to build a wall. It just said that it cannot build that wall in the West Bank territory and has to build it on the 1949 Armistice Line. The reason Israeli built that wall and 85% of its route into the West Bank was in a land grab scheme under the veneer of security. That was the issue. Let’s not confuse whether or not Israel has the right to build a wall. This was specifically about why Israel is building a wall, where it’s building the wall, and what pretext is it using to build it.
AARON MATÉ: Right. Given the Palestinian leadership, as you say, has been ineffective and some ways complicit in all of this and collaborating with Israel as a sort of surrogate police force inside the occupied territories, I’m wondering if you see any different signs now. We saw the top Palestinian negotiator say that the era of the peace process is over and it’s time for a struggle for a one-state. We saw Palestinian officials say that Vice President Mike Pence, the so-called defender of Christianity in the Middle East, tell Pence that he’s no longer welcome in the birthplace of Christianity in the Middle East, Bethlehem, when he comes to visit soon. Are we seeing a change of course already from Palestinian leadership?
NOURA ERAKAT: I hope so. That would be the right thing to do. If not know then I don’t know when. We have had repeated, repeated evidence that the United States is either unable or unwilling to change course in order to restrain its most significant ally in the Middle East and to actually act as a honest broker and it has any interest in Palestinian freedom. What the United States has been trying to give to Palestinians is autonomy and asking us to accept ghettoized sovereignty in the place of meaningful freedom.Unfortunately, we have, instead of resisting that plan, insisted that if we continue to work as, if we continue to be complicit and to work with the United States and to do everything that it’s asking for, that somehow the United States is going to change course and change its policy. That’s why we rescinded the 2009 Goldstone report from the Human Rights Council that was to hold Israel to account for its war crimes in the Gaza Strip after the first onslaught in 2008, 2009. That was why we’ve done very little with the ICJ decision.
That’s why the leadership hasn’t endorsed BDS.There have been some positive signs however, when Palestinians actually went to the ICC, notwithstanding US protests. There’s positive signs that the Palestinians, for example, have signed onto human rights treaties and are insisting that they are going to pursue some sort of alternative international course as we saw that they did during the UN General Assembly when they pursued their statehood bid.That said, Palestinian leadership is also speaking out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, it’s hedging its bets and still has faith in the United States. On the other hand, it keeps using these veiled threats and these small incremental steps that are moving away from the United States but never fully resisting it, never fully pivoting away from it.
It’s maintaining Palestinians in this holding position.The UN Security Council deliberations today are yet another indication of that when the discussion went back right to square one where they were talking about this doesn’t make negotiations impossible and that Palestinians and Israelis should still negotiate. Palestinians should negotiate but Palestinians need negotiating leverage and they have none when they are leaving this in the hands of the United States and not making it costly to Israel or the United States in the form of legitimacy in order to increase their negotiating leverage.We have failed to take advantage of that. We’ve failed to take advantage of that after the First Intifada.
This is an anniversary of it. It was the First Intifada that led us and ushered us into the peace process, and yet we relinquished and squandered that opportunity to enter into Oslo rather than taking advantage of the international community support for Palestinian freedom. We have grassroots support. That doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily going to prevail because, as we’ve seen, dictates of powerful states oftentimes have the last word, but it means we have a better chance that way than we do by continuing to pander to western states that aren’t necessarily invested in freedom and that have no kind of signal or urgency from Palestinian officialdom that they should change course and also punish Israel.
AARON MATÉ: Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and Assistant Professor at George Mason University. Thank you.
NOURA ERAKAT: Thank you for having me.
AARON MATÉ: Thank you for joining us on The Real News.
What President Trump has done is to mark the inevitable consolidation of Israel settler- colonial project that is intent on the elimination of Palestinians as a people and their containment as mere Arabs, as Bedouins, as individuals, as refugees, but not as a people who are deserving of their self-determination.Palestinians have been waging this struggle for self-determination ever since 1917 when British Empire decided that it would erase Palestinians as a people in order to make way for the establishment of a Jewish national home in their place. This was a colonial decision. It was a colonial erasure.
What Netanyahu has said recently in response to Trump is that Trump’s announcement about Jerusalem is the equivalent of the Balfour Declaration designating all of Palestine for Jewish settlement. We are seeing a continuity of this colonial process that continues to erase Palestinians, but we’re also seeing a continuity in US foreign policy that has steadily, steadily moved forward this project by adopting a dual process of speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
The United States, especially since 1967 under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration has simultaneously told Israel and the world that there will be no resolution, unilateral resolution imposed on the solution either by way of international law or external interference, that it will be completely negotiated resolution. At the same time, the United States has enabled Israel to expand its settler colonial holdings over Palestinian lands without regard to putative borders or otherwise in the form of unequivocal diplomatic aid shielding it from any kind of international censor at the United Nations, in the form of unequivocal military aid that has made Israel the most, the 11th most significant military power in the world but also the only nuclear power in the Middle East, and in the form of financial aid that has ensured Israel will stay afloat and have a remarkably powerful economy on the global scale.
These things together have immunized Israel from any kind of external pressure. Despite the international community insisting that there must be a solution and a just solution to the Palestinian condition, it has been able to act with impunity in order to continue its settler colonial project of erasure, to usher in an era of apartheid under the double-speak of the United States which has now ended as Trump has revealed, has removed the emperor’s clothes to reveal US foreign policy for what it is which is as an enabler for Israel’s project.
AARON MATÉ: Noura, I want to talk a bit about how we got here and the key role of Democrats in laying the groundwork for Trump. After all, just recently it came out that Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Party in the Senate had urged Trump to declare Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel. On this front, I want to go to two clips. They’re both, they’re of President Obama speaking at AIPAC in 2008 and four years later Chuck Schumer in 2012.
BARACK OBAMA: Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state with secure recognized defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.
CHUCK SCHUMER: Everyone knows the vast overwhelming majority of Democrats, Democrats have always been for Jerusalem being the unified capital of Israel. I’m one of the leading Democrats on Middle East policy. That’s been my position for a long time. This is a tempest in a teapot. The overwhelming Democratic position is just that.
AARON MATÉ: So, that’s Chuck Schumer in 2012; before that, Barack Obama in 2008. Noura, it’s been interesting to see the Democratic reaction to Trump’s decision. People have been criticizing him, but yet they’re in a tough position because they effectively support the exact policy that he’s carried out.
NOURA ERAKAT: Look, this is one of those issues where there’s really no daylight between Republicans and Democrats with a few very brave exceptions on this issue. This has been a bipartisan issue. It’s something that unites Congress rather than splits them, and is really, really unfortunate because it’s even. It’s moved Congress to act against its own American interests as was demonstrated when Netanyahu came to address Congress in order to undermine President Obama’s Iran Nuclear Agreement in a way where they actually showed more loyalty to what Israel needed in the region than to what the United States thought was necessary.This is not surprising. I think what should be pointed out for our audience, we are in a moment that has been defined by resistance to Trump as if what Trump is doing is unprecedented. In some cases, it might be more bold. It might be more bombastic, irresponsible, lacking and arrogant. But it isn’t necessarily a rupture especially on this issue.
The declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the consecration of five decades of US foreign policy on this issue. This is actually the pinnacle of an inevitable outcome of what the United States has been doing to shield Israel from any kind of international accountability.It is issued in the UN Security Council between 1967 and the present 43 vetoes in order to shield Israel from the application of international law that would stem its settlement enterprise and its project. It has done very little. It did nothing in order to stem the building of a wall on West Bank territory and to preserve the territorial integrity of the occupied territory. It has spoken out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, these are all administrations, Democratic and Republican alike. On the one hand, it said that settlements are counterproductive and that Israel must abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
On the other hand indeed, it has protected Israel and shielded it so that it can continue to get away with its practices on the ground.Lest we valorize President Obama on this issue even when in his last, one of his last acts in office, he actually oversaw an abstention in the Security Council and the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which affirmed the illegality of settlements and affirmed the territorial integrity of the territories. At the same time, he also promised Israel more military aid than any other administration, increasing US aid to Israel from 3.0 billion over 10 years to 3.8 billion over 10 years and an MOU that basically guarantees Israel $38 billion. Even in that moment of what appeared like a US shifting its policy was still speaking out of both sides of its mouth.
Responsibility for this however and for exposing the US’s double-speak and for pivoting us, pivoting Palestinian fate away from this disastrous US course is on the Palestinian leadership which has had opportunities over and over and over again to shift course to move away from the backwaters of bilateralism, to use international law, to use accountability mechanisms after repeated onslaughts on the Gaza Strip for example, to use the opportunity that 2334 represented to us, to use the ICJ decision in order to wage a global boycott divestment sanctions movement in order to place sanctions on Israel. And yet the Palestinian leadership in its undue faith has clung on to the idea that the US’ global superpower will deliver independence to it.That’s just, there’s no reason. They’ve had empirical evidence that devastates that possibility, and it’s not justified. Now this is another moment that is testing Palestinian leadership, and the saddest part about this moment is that Palestinians may be a part of consolidating Israel’s control rather than resisting it at this juncture.
AARON MATÉ: The ICJ decision, just to clarify for people who don’t know it, that’s in 2004 when the World Court ruled against the Israeli separation wall that cuts throughout the West Bank, separates more Palestinian territory from each other in order to keep Israeli control of the illegal settlement blocks. Let me ask you, Noura…
NOURA ERAKAT: Really quick, just to highlight for folks who are interested in that, the ICJ decision that said Israeli has the right to self-defense and every right to build a wall. It just said that it cannot build that wall in the West Bank territory and has to build it on the 1949 Armistice Line. The reason Israeli built that wall and 85% of its route into the West Bank was in a land grab scheme under the veneer of security. That was the issue. Let’s not confuse whether or not Israel has the right to build a wall. This was specifically about why Israel is building a wall, where it’s building the wall, and what pretext is it using to build it.
AARON MATÉ: Right. Given the Palestinian leadership, as you say, has been ineffective and some ways complicit in all of this and collaborating with Israel as a sort of surrogate police force inside the occupied territories, I’m wondering if you see any different signs now. We saw the top Palestinian negotiator say that the era of the peace process is over and it’s time for a struggle for a one-state. We saw Palestinian officials say that Vice President Mike Pence, the so-called defender of Christianity in the Middle East, tell Pence that he’s no longer welcome in the birthplace of Christianity in the Middle East, Bethlehem, when he comes to visit soon. Are we seeing a change of course already from Palestinian leadership?
NOURA ERAKAT: I hope so. That would be the right thing to do. If not know then I don’t know when. We have had repeated, repeated evidence that the United States is either unable or unwilling to change course in order to restrain its most significant ally in the Middle East and to actually act as a honest broker and it has any interest in Palestinian freedom. What the United States has been trying to give to Palestinians is autonomy and asking us to accept ghettoized sovereignty in the place of meaningful freedom.Unfortunately, we have, instead of resisting that plan, insisted that if we continue to work as, if we continue to be complicit and to work with the United States and to do everything that it’s asking for, that somehow the United States is going to change course and change its policy. That’s why we rescinded the 2009 Goldstone report from the Human Rights Council that was to hold Israel to account for its war crimes in the Gaza Strip after the first onslaught in 2008, 2009. That was why we’ve done very little with the ICJ decision.
That’s why the leadership hasn’t endorsed BDS.There have been some positive signs however, when Palestinians actually went to the ICC, notwithstanding US protests. There’s positive signs that the Palestinians, for example, have signed onto human rights treaties and are insisting that they are going to pursue some sort of alternative international course as we saw that they did during the UN General Assembly when they pursued their statehood bid.That said, Palestinian leadership is also speaking out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, it’s hedging its bets and still has faith in the United States. On the other hand, it keeps using these veiled threats and these small incremental steps that are moving away from the United States but never fully resisting it, never fully pivoting away from it.
It’s maintaining Palestinians in this holding position.The UN Security Council deliberations today are yet another indication of that when the discussion went back right to square one where they were talking about this doesn’t make negotiations impossible and that Palestinians and Israelis should still negotiate. Palestinians should negotiate but Palestinians need negotiating leverage and they have none when they are leaving this in the hands of the United States and not making it costly to Israel or the United States in the form of legitimacy in order to increase their negotiating leverage.We have failed to take advantage of that. We’ve failed to take advantage of that after the First Intifada.
This is an anniversary of it. It was the First Intifada that led us and ushered us into the peace process, and yet we relinquished and squandered that opportunity to enter into Oslo rather than taking advantage of the international community support for Palestinian freedom. We have grassroots support. That doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily going to prevail because, as we’ve seen, dictates of powerful states oftentimes have the last word, but it means we have a better chance that way than we do by continuing to pander to western states that aren’t necessarily invested in freedom and that have no kind of signal or urgency from Palestinian officialdom that they should change course and also punish Israel.
AARON MATÉ: Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and Assistant Professor at George Mason University. Thank you.
NOURA ERAKAT: Thank you for having me.
AARON MATÉ: Thank you for joining us on The Real News.
Malaysian Armed Forces (ATM) is ready to perform its duty towards the issue facing Jerusalem, Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Saturday.
“We have to be prepared for any possibilities.
The ATM has always been ready, waiting for instructions from the top leadership,” the Malaysian state news agency Bernama quoted Hussein as stating.
“Let us pray that this dispute would not lead to chaos,” Hussein added.
On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S.’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital and said the U.S. Embassy would relocate from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The dramatic shift in Washington’s Jerusalem policy triggered demonstrations in the occupied Palestinian territories, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq and Europe, among other countries.
“We have to be prepared for any possibilities.
The ATM has always been ready, waiting for instructions from the top leadership,” the Malaysian state news agency Bernama quoted Hussein as stating.
“Let us pray that this dispute would not lead to chaos,” Hussein added.
On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S.’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital and said the U.S. Embassy would relocate from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The dramatic shift in Washington’s Jerusalem policy triggered demonstrations in the occupied Palestinian territories, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq and Europe, among other countries.
9 dec 2017
The Hamas Movement has called on the Palestinian people and their resistance “to continue their blessed intifada (uprising) until all their just demands are met.”
In a press release on Friday, the Movement urged the Palestinians to unite behind the resistance, stressing that “their strength is in their unity.”
“The blessed intifada has started anew and cannot stop unless our people regain their rights fully, so we call upon our Arab and Muslim nations, and the world’s free people to support our people and expose the true image of the occupation state and its American ally,” Hamas stated.
In a press release on Friday, the Movement urged the Palestinians to unite behind the resistance, stressing that “their strength is in their unity.”
“The blessed intifada has started anew and cannot stop unless our people regain their rights fully, so we call upon our Arab and Muslim nations, and the world’s free people to support our people and expose the true image of the occupation state and its American ally,” Hamas stated.
The United Nations Security Council, on Friday, convened an emergency session, at the invitation of eight countries, to discuss US President Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally recognize occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
During the meeting, the council expressed “grave concern over the dangers of escalating violence,” just following the decision.
During the session, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nikolay Mladenov, in a video from Jerusalem, said that Palestinians are observing “three days of anger” from December 6 to 9. He warned of “religious extremism” and called on world leaders to “show wisdom” to restore calm to the region.
Jerusalem is the most complex issue in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he said, adding that Jerusalem is a symbol of Islamic, Christian and Jewish religions. He stressed that negotiations between the two parties is the means to determine the fate of the Holy City.
According to WAFA, the emergency meeting of the Security Council was held under the request of Egypt, Senegal, Uruguay, Bolivia, Sweden, France, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog said that Resolution 2334, adopted on December 23, 2016, affirms that the Security Council “will not recognize any changes in the borders of June 4, 1967, including Jerusalem, unless the two sides agree through negotiations.”
Egypt’s UN ambassador, Omar Abu al-Atta, said the US decision has alarmed the world and spiked fear of the consequences of unilateral decisions that violate international law and threaten the system of political relations.
He added that what the world is witnessing, today, is a test of the system and the rule of law, stressing that success will not be achieved, unless collective action within the framework of international law is taken.
Representatives of the member states of the UN Security Council – England, France, Italy, Bolivia, Uruguay, Senegal, China, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan and Russia – rejected the unilateral decision of the US administration, as it is seen to be a violation of international resolutions.
They called for abiding by these laws and the status quo in Jerusalem.
They said that the decision would fuel violence in the region, calling on all parties to exercise restraint and not to take any steps that would change the situation in the city. They praised the role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in protecting holy sites in Jerusalem.
They affirmed that their countries oppose the US step and will keep their embassies in Tel Aviv, and that there is no need for such decisions that would affect security in the region and in the world. They stressed that everyone should work to the effects of this decision and return the parties to the table of negotiations.
During the meeting, the council expressed “grave concern over the dangers of escalating violence,” just following the decision.
During the session, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nikolay Mladenov, in a video from Jerusalem, said that Palestinians are observing “three days of anger” from December 6 to 9. He warned of “religious extremism” and called on world leaders to “show wisdom” to restore calm to the region.
Jerusalem is the most complex issue in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he said, adding that Jerusalem is a symbol of Islamic, Christian and Jewish religions. He stressed that negotiations between the two parties is the means to determine the fate of the Holy City.
According to WAFA, the emergency meeting of the Security Council was held under the request of Egypt, Senegal, Uruguay, Bolivia, Sweden, France, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog said that Resolution 2334, adopted on December 23, 2016, affirms that the Security Council “will not recognize any changes in the borders of June 4, 1967, including Jerusalem, unless the two sides agree through negotiations.”
Egypt’s UN ambassador, Omar Abu al-Atta, said the US decision has alarmed the world and spiked fear of the consequences of unilateral decisions that violate international law and threaten the system of political relations.
He added that what the world is witnessing, today, is a test of the system and the rule of law, stressing that success will not be achieved, unless collective action within the framework of international law is taken.
Representatives of the member states of the UN Security Council – England, France, Italy, Bolivia, Uruguay, Senegal, China, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan and Russia – rejected the unilateral decision of the US administration, as it is seen to be a violation of international resolutions.
They called for abiding by these laws and the status quo in Jerusalem.
They said that the decision would fuel violence in the region, calling on all parties to exercise restraint and not to take any steps that would change the situation in the city. They praised the role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in protecting holy sites in Jerusalem.
They affirmed that their countries oppose the US step and will keep their embassies in Tel Aviv, and that there is no need for such decisions that would affect security in the region and in the world. They stressed that everyone should work to the effects of this decision and return the parties to the table of negotiations.