9 may 2019
On the 71st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the Palestinian Forum of Britain calls on all Palestinians - within Palestine and in the diaspora, the Arab and Muslim nations and all those who believe in the sanctity of Freedom around the world, to stand in unity and solidarity against the present attempt to annihilate our cause.
For over a century, the Palestinian people have successfully confronted dozens of plots and campaigns to kill the Palestinian cause, and will succeed too in defeating this latest one.
71 years on from the Palestinian Nakba, it has become public knowledge that the US administration has finalized the details to end the Palestinian cause, in what is known as the ‘Deal of the Century’ which, according to numerous official US sources, will be announced after the month of Ramadan. Regardless of whether the plan will be announced in its final version, or whether it will represent a phase within a gradual plan, this constitutes a great threat to the Palestinian cause unless the world’s free people agree on a stand to confront and defeat it.
From the excerpts that have been leaked along with previous decisions related to Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, it is clear that the Palestinian people are being told to accept the legitimacy of Zionist occupation over all of Palestine, in what resembles a mere commercial transaction from which Palestinians get the right to live in exchange for relinquishing their rights, their lands and their holy sites.
Therefore, the Palestinian Forum of Britain calls on the all those who support the right of every Palestinian to return to their homes, who reject Trump’s plans and policies, and who empathized with the Palestinian babies killed by the latest Israeli missiles including Saba Abu Arrar, along with scores of innocent civilians, to attend the demonstration held in commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba. This demonstration which will be held on Saturday 11th of May will sound out an unequivocal condemnation of Trump’s policies and a resounding support for rights of the Palestinian people, regardless of the 71 years of a horrific Israeli occupation.
The PFB also renews its calls on the British government to issue an apology to the Palestinian people for its historic crime which manifested in the infamous Balfour Declaration, and to support its efforts to see Palestinians attain their freedom and right to return to their rightful homes and lands.
PFB prays for those who paid with their lives defending Palestine over a hundred years, salutes the countless detainees who spent their youth and best years locked up inside Israeli prison cells and declares its solidarity with all those who resist attempts and confront plots to eliminate the Palestinian cause.
For over a century, the Palestinian people have successfully confronted dozens of plots and campaigns to kill the Palestinian cause, and will succeed too in defeating this latest one.
71 years on from the Palestinian Nakba, it has become public knowledge that the US administration has finalized the details to end the Palestinian cause, in what is known as the ‘Deal of the Century’ which, according to numerous official US sources, will be announced after the month of Ramadan. Regardless of whether the plan will be announced in its final version, or whether it will represent a phase within a gradual plan, this constitutes a great threat to the Palestinian cause unless the world’s free people agree on a stand to confront and defeat it.
From the excerpts that have been leaked along with previous decisions related to Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, it is clear that the Palestinian people are being told to accept the legitimacy of Zionist occupation over all of Palestine, in what resembles a mere commercial transaction from which Palestinians get the right to live in exchange for relinquishing their rights, their lands and their holy sites.
Therefore, the Palestinian Forum of Britain calls on the all those who support the right of every Palestinian to return to their homes, who reject Trump’s plans and policies, and who empathized with the Palestinian babies killed by the latest Israeli missiles including Saba Abu Arrar, along with scores of innocent civilians, to attend the demonstration held in commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba. This demonstration which will be held on Saturday 11th of May will sound out an unequivocal condemnation of Trump’s policies and a resounding support for rights of the Palestinian people, regardless of the 71 years of a horrific Israeli occupation.
The PFB also renews its calls on the British government to issue an apology to the Palestinian people for its historic crime which manifested in the infamous Balfour Declaration, and to support its efforts to see Palestinians attain their freedom and right to return to their rightful homes and lands.
PFB prays for those who paid with their lives defending Palestine over a hundred years, salutes the countless detainees who spent their youth and best years locked up inside Israeli prison cells and declares its solidarity with all those who resist attempts and confront plots to eliminate the Palestinian cause.
Israeli forces sealed off a major and vital road connecting the northwest villages of the central occupied West Bank city of Ramallah and the town of Birzeit, on Thursday, in addition to imposing a general closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Local sources told Ma'an that Israeli forces closed the metal gate, that is set up at the entrance of the village of Nabi Saleh, which residents of several Ramallah-area villages usually use to travel to Ramallah and other towns nearby, forcing them to look for alternative roads.
Sources pointed out that Israeli forces imposed this closure, in order to allow Israeli settlers to hold celebrations near the illegal Israeli settlement of Halamish, which was built on Palestinian lands, marking the 71st anniversary of the establishment of Israel, which is also known as the 1948 Nakba or “catastrophe” to the Palestinians.
Palestinians commemorate the Nakba or “catastrophe,” which is when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was created.
Israeli authorities also imposed a general closure, including sealing off all border crossings across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, for the entire day on the occasion of Israel’s independence.
Such restrictions effects the livelihoods of the tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Debilitating poverty and lack of employment drive many workers in the occupied West Bank to enter Israel in search of work. Israel's imposition of closures on the Palestinian territory has severely affected the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who depend on entering Israel, or its illegal settlements, for employment opportunities.
Meanwhile, the majority of the more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are sealed inside the coastal enclave due to a decade long military blockade imposed by Israel and upheld by Egypt on the southern border.
Local sources told Ma'an that Israeli forces closed the metal gate, that is set up at the entrance of the village of Nabi Saleh, which residents of several Ramallah-area villages usually use to travel to Ramallah and other towns nearby, forcing them to look for alternative roads.
Sources pointed out that Israeli forces imposed this closure, in order to allow Israeli settlers to hold celebrations near the illegal Israeli settlement of Halamish, which was built on Palestinian lands, marking the 71st anniversary of the establishment of Israel, which is also known as the 1948 Nakba or “catastrophe” to the Palestinians.
Palestinians commemorate the Nakba or “catastrophe,” which is when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was created.
Israeli authorities also imposed a general closure, including sealing off all border crossings across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, for the entire day on the occasion of Israel’s independence.
Such restrictions effects the livelihoods of the tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Debilitating poverty and lack of employment drive many workers in the occupied West Bank to enter Israel in search of work. Israel's imposition of closures on the Palestinian territory has severely affected the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who depend on entering Israel, or its illegal settlements, for employment opportunities.
Meanwhile, the majority of the more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are sealed inside the coastal enclave due to a decade long military blockade imposed by Israel and upheld by Egypt on the southern border.
“As Israel celebrates Independence Day, the US and European Union are complicit in the whitewash of war crimes against Palestinian civilians,” according to a statement by ActionAid International, on Thursday.
The statement stated, “Today, 9 May, as Israel celebrates Independence Day, latest figures totaling damages incurred during airstrikes earlier this week show Israeli warplanes killed 27 Palestinians in two days and injured 154 more, including three women, two of them pregnant, and two babies.
130 houses were completely destroyed, with 700 more partially damaged. 780 Palestinians are now displaced as a result of this recent escalation of targeted attacks against civilians, 44% of whom are children. One mosque, four medical facilities, five media houses and ten civil institutions were also damaged or destroyed.”
“Deliberately targeting journalists, health workers, women, children and infants is a war crime. The recent UN Commission of Inquiry report has already established that the killing of unarmed civilians during weekly demonstrations at the border over the last year likely constitutes war crimes.”
“While Israel prepares numerous festivities for both today’s Independence Day and next week’s Eurovision Song Contest, world leaders continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s unlawful occupation, protracted blockade and persistent breaches of international law.”
Both the US and EU have publicly supported Israel’s right to ‘defend itself’ this week, demonstrating dangerous bias and deliberate obfuscation in their positions on the war:
• Federica Mogherini, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief, called for "indiscriminate rocket attacks" from Gaza to stop, but failed to call on Israel to stop its aggression towards civilians in Gaza.
• United States President Trump weighed in on Twitter, "Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens” following the weekends’ response by Palestinian groups to the airstrikes, before the latest ceasefire kicked in on Monday.
The statement added, Ibrahim Ibraigheth, ActionAid Palestine’s Country Director, said, “Mr. Netanyahu is currently negotiating the formation of a new government following last month's election, so now is the time for world leaders to make sure the new Government of Israel respects international law. War crimes, including the targeted killing of women, children, journalists and health workers cannot continue in broad daylight, unremarked on by countries which claim to represent freedom and justice.”
“The catastrophic living conditions in the Gaza Strip are unbearable. The Israeli blockade of health and sanitation supplies constitutes punishment policy and also clearly violates international law. The UN must step up and hold Israel to account for its flagrant violation of global agreements, otherwise hopes for this latest truce to hold are probably naive.”
In the recent Commission of Inquiry by UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk in March 2019, on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) , Israel was found to be in non-compliance with more than 40 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and more than 100 resolutions of the General Assembly.
As an occupying power, Israel is accountable and must respect and uphold the rights of Palestinian people, including the right to freedom of movement, decent life, protection, education, work and self-determination.
Yet ActionAid has once again had to pause its programs in Gaza, because of the danger of airstrikes targeting civilian infrastructure. The charity enables life-saving services to reach the worst affected communities in Gaza, where 97% of water is undrinkable and tainted by raw sewage, unfit for humans. Israel controls the flow of fuel and supplies needed in Gaza to make the water safe.
Ibraigheth continued, “ActionAid supports partners, living and working in Gaza, by providing diesel to help pump clean water and ensure sewage can be treated. Being forced to stop this work is incredibly dangerous and could spell an outbreak of deadly diseases such as cholera.”
“While Israel celebrates Independence and the world tunes into Eurovision, we’ll continue assisting Palestinian communities, despite conditions being dire and unnecessarily dangerous,” Ibraigheth stressed.
Israel’s blockade policy and targeting of civilians destroys lives and prevents progress. Hence, ActionAid called on the European Union and all signatories of UN Geneva Convention to apply all possible diplomatic pressure on Israel to fulfill its commitments under international law.
The statement stated, “Today, 9 May, as Israel celebrates Independence Day, latest figures totaling damages incurred during airstrikes earlier this week show Israeli warplanes killed 27 Palestinians in two days and injured 154 more, including three women, two of them pregnant, and two babies.
130 houses were completely destroyed, with 700 more partially damaged. 780 Palestinians are now displaced as a result of this recent escalation of targeted attacks against civilians, 44% of whom are children. One mosque, four medical facilities, five media houses and ten civil institutions were also damaged or destroyed.”
“Deliberately targeting journalists, health workers, women, children and infants is a war crime. The recent UN Commission of Inquiry report has already established that the killing of unarmed civilians during weekly demonstrations at the border over the last year likely constitutes war crimes.”
“While Israel prepares numerous festivities for both today’s Independence Day and next week’s Eurovision Song Contest, world leaders continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s unlawful occupation, protracted blockade and persistent breaches of international law.”
Both the US and EU have publicly supported Israel’s right to ‘defend itself’ this week, demonstrating dangerous bias and deliberate obfuscation in their positions on the war:
• Federica Mogherini, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief, called for "indiscriminate rocket attacks" from Gaza to stop, but failed to call on Israel to stop its aggression towards civilians in Gaza.
• United States President Trump weighed in on Twitter, "Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens” following the weekends’ response by Palestinian groups to the airstrikes, before the latest ceasefire kicked in on Monday.
The statement added, Ibrahim Ibraigheth, ActionAid Palestine’s Country Director, said, “Mr. Netanyahu is currently negotiating the formation of a new government following last month's election, so now is the time for world leaders to make sure the new Government of Israel respects international law. War crimes, including the targeted killing of women, children, journalists and health workers cannot continue in broad daylight, unremarked on by countries which claim to represent freedom and justice.”
“The catastrophic living conditions in the Gaza Strip are unbearable. The Israeli blockade of health and sanitation supplies constitutes punishment policy and also clearly violates international law. The UN must step up and hold Israel to account for its flagrant violation of global agreements, otherwise hopes for this latest truce to hold are probably naive.”
In the recent Commission of Inquiry by UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk in March 2019, on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) , Israel was found to be in non-compliance with more than 40 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and more than 100 resolutions of the General Assembly.
As an occupying power, Israel is accountable and must respect and uphold the rights of Palestinian people, including the right to freedom of movement, decent life, protection, education, work and self-determination.
Yet ActionAid has once again had to pause its programs in Gaza, because of the danger of airstrikes targeting civilian infrastructure. The charity enables life-saving services to reach the worst affected communities in Gaza, where 97% of water is undrinkable and tainted by raw sewage, unfit for humans. Israel controls the flow of fuel and supplies needed in Gaza to make the water safe.
Ibraigheth continued, “ActionAid supports partners, living and working in Gaza, by providing diesel to help pump clean water and ensure sewage can be treated. Being forced to stop this work is incredibly dangerous and could spell an outbreak of deadly diseases such as cholera.”
“While Israel celebrates Independence and the world tunes into Eurovision, we’ll continue assisting Palestinian communities, despite conditions being dire and unnecessarily dangerous,” Ibraigheth stressed.
Israel’s blockade policy and targeting of civilians destroys lives and prevents progress. Hence, ActionAid called on the European Union and all signatories of UN Geneva Convention to apply all possible diplomatic pressure on Israel to fulfill its commitments under international law.
5 apr 2019
Palestinian Presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks regarding the Gaza Strip as revealing the magnitude of the conspiracy of the so-called “Deal of the Century,” on Thursday.
Abu Rudeineh said in a statement that Netanyahu’s remarks saying “one option is turning Gaza over to another country” and that he talked to many Arab leaders, however, none of them agreed to the proposition, “indicates the magnitude of the conspiracy of the deal of the century, which, if implemented, will be as much a conspiracy against the Arab countries as it is against Palestine.”
He noted, “President Mahmoud Abbas has constantly warned against this, hence his refusal to relinquish Jerusalem, which is the cornerstone that will safeguard the Palestinian and Arab national interests.”
Abu Rudeineh went on to call on the Hamas movement “to fully fathom what is being planned for it to be part of the so-called ‘Deal of the Century,’ which would result in the Judaization of Jerusalem, the liquidation of the Palestinian identity and relinquishing freedom and independence.”
He reaffirmed Abbas’s and the Palestinian leadership’s position that there will not be a state in Gaza nor a state without Gaza, and no state without East Jerusalem.
Abu Rudeineh stressed that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) will continue to protect the national constants until the flag of Palestine is raised in East Jerusalem and its holy places, and achieving freedom and independence based on United Nations resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.
Abu Rudeineh said in a statement that Netanyahu’s remarks saying “one option is turning Gaza over to another country” and that he talked to many Arab leaders, however, none of them agreed to the proposition, “indicates the magnitude of the conspiracy of the deal of the century, which, if implemented, will be as much a conspiracy against the Arab countries as it is against Palestine.”
He noted, “President Mahmoud Abbas has constantly warned against this, hence his refusal to relinquish Jerusalem, which is the cornerstone that will safeguard the Palestinian and Arab national interests.”
Abu Rudeineh went on to call on the Hamas movement “to fully fathom what is being planned for it to be part of the so-called ‘Deal of the Century,’ which would result in the Judaization of Jerusalem, the liquidation of the Palestinian identity and relinquishing freedom and independence.”
He reaffirmed Abbas’s and the Palestinian leadership’s position that there will not be a state in Gaza nor a state without Gaza, and no state without East Jerusalem.
Abu Rudeineh stressed that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) will continue to protect the national constants until the flag of Palestine is raised in East Jerusalem and its holy places, and achieving freedom and independence based on United Nations resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.
The United States President Donald Trump is most likely to reveal his Middle East peace plan, known as the “Deal of the Century,” on the 71st anniversary of Nakba, on Thursday.
According to Al-Khaleej Online news outlet, the US administration told Arab and Gulf officials that the peace plan would be revealed on May 15th on “Nakba day,” when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba or “catastrophe,” when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was created.
On Nakba day, Israel also celebrates its Independence Day.
The news outlet also cited unnamed sources saying that the US administration informed senior Saudi, Emirati, Egyptian, and Jordanian officials about the date of the announcement.
Sources mentioned that the US administration already completed the plan and secured the funds needed to implement its economic policies.
Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and son-in-law of the United States President Donald Trump, previously said the US administration would to present the plan following the Israeli legislative election on April 9th.
Kushner stated that both the Israelis and the Palestinians would have to make compromises.
Following the alleged reveal of the “Deal of the Century,” mass protests across the occupied West Bank are expected to take place.
It is noteworthy that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been boycotting the US administration since December 2017 when US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and then moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018.
Following recent tensions and the US Trump administration's undeniable support for Israel has prompted the Palestinians to cut communication with the US and declared it unfit to be a mediator during the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
According to Al-Khaleej Online news outlet, the US administration told Arab and Gulf officials that the peace plan would be revealed on May 15th on “Nakba day,” when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba or “catastrophe,” when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was created.
On Nakba day, Israel also celebrates its Independence Day.
The news outlet also cited unnamed sources saying that the US administration informed senior Saudi, Emirati, Egyptian, and Jordanian officials about the date of the announcement.
Sources mentioned that the US administration already completed the plan and secured the funds needed to implement its economic policies.
Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and son-in-law of the United States President Donald Trump, previously said the US administration would to present the plan following the Israeli legislative election on April 9th.
Kushner stated that both the Israelis and the Palestinians would have to make compromises.
Following the alleged reveal of the “Deal of the Century,” mass protests across the occupied West Bank are expected to take place.
It is noteworthy that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been boycotting the US administration since December 2017 when US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and then moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018.
Following recent tensions and the US Trump administration's undeniable support for Israel has prompted the Palestinians to cut communication with the US and declared it unfit to be a mediator during the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
2 apr 2019
By Jonathan Cook
The 350,000 Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are caught between a rock and hard place, as Israel works ever harder to remove them from the holy city in which they were born, analysts and residents warn.
That process, they say, has only accelerated in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, effectively endorsing the city as Israel’s exclusive capital.
“Israel wants Palestinians in Jerusalem to understand that they are trapped, that they are being strangled, in the hope they will conclude that life is better outside the city,” said Amneh Badran, a politics professor at Jerusalem’s Al Quds university.
Since Israel seized the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 and then illegally annexed it in 1981, it has intentionally left the status of its Palestinian population unresolved.
Israeli officials have made Palestinians there “permanent residents,” though, in practice, their residency is easily revoked. According to Israel’s own figures, more than 14,500 Palestinians have been expelled from the city of their birth since 1967, often compelling their families to join them in exile.
Further, Israel finished its concrete wall slicing through East Jerusalem three years ago, cutting some 140,000 Palestinian residents off from the rest of the city.
A raft of well-documented policies – including house demolitions, a chronic shortage of classrooms, lack of public services, municipal underfunding, land seizures, home evictions by Jewish settlers, denial of family unification, and police and settler violence – have intensified over the years.
At the same time, Israel has denied the Palestinian Authority, a supposed government-in-waiting in the West Bank, any role in East Jerusalem, leaving the city’s Palestinians even more isolated and weak.
All of these factors are designed to pressure Palestinians to leave, usually to areas outside the wall or to nearby West Bank cities like Ramallah or Bethlehem.
“In Jerusalem, Israel’s overriding aim is at its most transparent: to take control of the land but without its Palestinian inhabitants,” said Daoud Alg’ol, a researcher on Jerusalem.
Like others, Mr Alg’ol noted that Israel had stepped up its ‘Judaization’ policies in Jerusalem since the US relocated its embassy. “Israel is working more quickly, more confidently and more intensively because it believes Trump has given his blessing,” he said.
Demographic concerns dominated Israel’s thinking from the moment it occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and subordinated it to the control of Jewish officials in West Jerusalem – in what Israel termed its newly “united capital”.
City boundaries were expanded eastwards to attach additional Palestinian lands to Jerusalem and then fill in the empty spaces with a ring of large Jewish settlements, said Aviv Tartasky, a researcher with Ir Amim, an organization that campaigns for equal rights in Jerusalem.
The goal, he added, was to shore up a permanent three-quarters Jewish majority – to ensure Palestinians could not stake a claim to the city and to allay Israeli fears that one day the Palestinians might gain control of the municipality through elections.
Israel has nonetheless faced a shrinking Jewish majority because of higher Palestinian birth rates. Today, Palestinians comprise about 40 per cent of the total population of this artificially enlarged Jerusalem.
Israel has therefore been aggressively pursuing a twin-pronged approach, according to analysts.
On one side, wide-ranging discriminatory policies – that harm Palestinians and favor Jewish settlers – have been designed to erode Palestinians’ connection to Jerusalem, encouraging them to leave. And, on the other, revocation of residency rights and the gradual redrawing of municipal boundaries have forcibly placed Palestinians outside the city – in what some experts term a “silent transfer” or administrative ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s efforts to disconnect Palestinians from Jerusalem are most visibly expressed in the change of Arabic script on road signs. The city’s Arabic name, Al Quds (the Holy), has been gradually replaced by the Israeli name, Urshalim, transliterated into Arabic.
The lack of services and municipal funding and high unemployment mean that three-quarters of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live below the poverty line. That compares to only 15 per cent for Israeli Jews nationally.
Despite these abysmal figures, the municipality has provided four social services offices in the city for Palestinians, compared to 19 for Israeli Jews.
Only half of Palestinian residents are provided with access to the water grid. There are similar deficiencies in postal services, road infrastructure, pavements and cultural centers.
Meanwhile, human rights groups have noted that East Jerusalem lacks at least 2,000 classrooms for Palestinian children, and that the condition of 43 per cent of existing rooms is inadequate. A third of pupils fail to complete basic schooling.
But the biggest pressure on Palestinian residents has been inflicted through grossly discriminatory planning rules, said Mr Tartasky.
In the areas outside the wall, Palestinians have been abandoned by the municipality – and receive no services or policing at all.
Israel’s long-term aim, said Mr Tartasky, had been exposed in a leak of private comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015. He had proposed revoking the residency of the 140,000 Palestinians outside the wall.
“At the moment, the government is discussing putting these residents under the responsibility of the army,” Mr Tartasky said.
That would make them equivalent to Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank and sever their last connections to Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, on the inner side of the wall, Palestinian neighborhoods have been tightly constrained, with much of the land declared either “scenic areas” or national parks, in which construction is illegal, or reserved for Jewish settlements. The inevitable result has been extreme overcrowding.
In addition, Israel has denied most Palestinian neighborhoods’ masterplans, making it all but impossible to get building permits.
“The advantage for Israel is that planning regulations don’t look brutal – in fact, they can be presented as simple law enforcement,” said Mr Tartasky. “But if you have no place to live in Jerusalem, in the end you’ll have to move out of the city.”
An estimated 20,000 houses – about 40 per cent of the city’s Palestinian housing stock – are illegal and under threat of demolition. More than 800 homes, some housing several families, have been razed since 2004.
As well as the large purpose-built Jewish settlements located on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, several thousand extremist settlers have taken over properties inside Palestinian neighborhoods, often with the backing of the Israeli courts.
Mr Tartasky noted that Israel has been accelerating legal efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes over the past year, with close to 200 families in and around the Old City currently facing court battles.
When settlers move in following such evictions, Ms Badran said, the character of the Palestinian neighborhoods rapidly changes.
“The settlers arrive, and then so do the police, the army, private security guards and municipal inspectors. The settlers have a machine behind them whose role is to make life as uncomfortable as possible for Palestinians. The message is: ‘You either accept your subjugation or leave’.”
In Silwan, where settler groups have established a touristic archaeological park in the midst of a densely populated Palestinian community just outside the Old City walls, life has been especially tough.
Mr Alg’ol, who lives in Silwan, noted that fortified settler compounds had been established throughout the area, many dozens more Palestinian families were facing evictions, excavations were taking place under Palestinian homes, closed-circuit TV watched residents 24 hours a day, and the security services were a constant presence. Many hundreds of children had been arrested in recent years, usually accused of stone throwing.
Israel’s newest move is the announcement of a cable car to bring tourists from West Jerusalem through Palestinian neighborhoods like Silwan to the holy sites of the Old City.
Mr Tartasky said touristic initiatives had become another planning weapon against Palestinians. “These projects, from the cable car to a series of promenades, are ways to connect one settlement to the next, bisecting Palestinian space. They strengthen the settlements and break apart Palestinian neighborhoods.”
Mr Alg’ol’s family was one of many in Silwan that had been told their lands were being confiscated for the cable car and a new police station.
“They want to turn our community into an archaeological Disneyland,” he said. “And we are in the way. They plan to keep going until we are all removed.”
- Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth-based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism
The 350,000 Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are caught between a rock and hard place, as Israel works ever harder to remove them from the holy city in which they were born, analysts and residents warn.
That process, they say, has only accelerated in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, effectively endorsing the city as Israel’s exclusive capital.
“Israel wants Palestinians in Jerusalem to understand that they are trapped, that they are being strangled, in the hope they will conclude that life is better outside the city,” said Amneh Badran, a politics professor at Jerusalem’s Al Quds university.
Since Israel seized the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 and then illegally annexed it in 1981, it has intentionally left the status of its Palestinian population unresolved.
Israeli officials have made Palestinians there “permanent residents,” though, in practice, their residency is easily revoked. According to Israel’s own figures, more than 14,500 Palestinians have been expelled from the city of their birth since 1967, often compelling their families to join them in exile.
Further, Israel finished its concrete wall slicing through East Jerusalem three years ago, cutting some 140,000 Palestinian residents off from the rest of the city.
A raft of well-documented policies – including house demolitions, a chronic shortage of classrooms, lack of public services, municipal underfunding, land seizures, home evictions by Jewish settlers, denial of family unification, and police and settler violence – have intensified over the years.
At the same time, Israel has denied the Palestinian Authority, a supposed government-in-waiting in the West Bank, any role in East Jerusalem, leaving the city’s Palestinians even more isolated and weak.
All of these factors are designed to pressure Palestinians to leave, usually to areas outside the wall or to nearby West Bank cities like Ramallah or Bethlehem.
“In Jerusalem, Israel’s overriding aim is at its most transparent: to take control of the land but without its Palestinian inhabitants,” said Daoud Alg’ol, a researcher on Jerusalem.
Like others, Mr Alg’ol noted that Israel had stepped up its ‘Judaization’ policies in Jerusalem since the US relocated its embassy. “Israel is working more quickly, more confidently and more intensively because it believes Trump has given his blessing,” he said.
Demographic concerns dominated Israel’s thinking from the moment it occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and subordinated it to the control of Jewish officials in West Jerusalem – in what Israel termed its newly “united capital”.
City boundaries were expanded eastwards to attach additional Palestinian lands to Jerusalem and then fill in the empty spaces with a ring of large Jewish settlements, said Aviv Tartasky, a researcher with Ir Amim, an organization that campaigns for equal rights in Jerusalem.
The goal, he added, was to shore up a permanent three-quarters Jewish majority – to ensure Palestinians could not stake a claim to the city and to allay Israeli fears that one day the Palestinians might gain control of the municipality through elections.
Israel has nonetheless faced a shrinking Jewish majority because of higher Palestinian birth rates. Today, Palestinians comprise about 40 per cent of the total population of this artificially enlarged Jerusalem.
Israel has therefore been aggressively pursuing a twin-pronged approach, according to analysts.
On one side, wide-ranging discriminatory policies – that harm Palestinians and favor Jewish settlers – have been designed to erode Palestinians’ connection to Jerusalem, encouraging them to leave. And, on the other, revocation of residency rights and the gradual redrawing of municipal boundaries have forcibly placed Palestinians outside the city – in what some experts term a “silent transfer” or administrative ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s efforts to disconnect Palestinians from Jerusalem are most visibly expressed in the change of Arabic script on road signs. The city’s Arabic name, Al Quds (the Holy), has been gradually replaced by the Israeli name, Urshalim, transliterated into Arabic.
The lack of services and municipal funding and high unemployment mean that three-quarters of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live below the poverty line. That compares to only 15 per cent for Israeli Jews nationally.
Despite these abysmal figures, the municipality has provided four social services offices in the city for Palestinians, compared to 19 for Israeli Jews.
Only half of Palestinian residents are provided with access to the water grid. There are similar deficiencies in postal services, road infrastructure, pavements and cultural centers.
Meanwhile, human rights groups have noted that East Jerusalem lacks at least 2,000 classrooms for Palestinian children, and that the condition of 43 per cent of existing rooms is inadequate. A third of pupils fail to complete basic schooling.
But the biggest pressure on Palestinian residents has been inflicted through grossly discriminatory planning rules, said Mr Tartasky.
In the areas outside the wall, Palestinians have been abandoned by the municipality – and receive no services or policing at all.
Israel’s long-term aim, said Mr Tartasky, had been exposed in a leak of private comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015. He had proposed revoking the residency of the 140,000 Palestinians outside the wall.
“At the moment, the government is discussing putting these residents under the responsibility of the army,” Mr Tartasky said.
That would make them equivalent to Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank and sever their last connections to Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, on the inner side of the wall, Palestinian neighborhoods have been tightly constrained, with much of the land declared either “scenic areas” or national parks, in which construction is illegal, or reserved for Jewish settlements. The inevitable result has been extreme overcrowding.
In addition, Israel has denied most Palestinian neighborhoods’ masterplans, making it all but impossible to get building permits.
“The advantage for Israel is that planning regulations don’t look brutal – in fact, they can be presented as simple law enforcement,” said Mr Tartasky. “But if you have no place to live in Jerusalem, in the end you’ll have to move out of the city.”
An estimated 20,000 houses – about 40 per cent of the city’s Palestinian housing stock – are illegal and under threat of demolition. More than 800 homes, some housing several families, have been razed since 2004.
As well as the large purpose-built Jewish settlements located on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, several thousand extremist settlers have taken over properties inside Palestinian neighborhoods, often with the backing of the Israeli courts.
Mr Tartasky noted that Israel has been accelerating legal efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes over the past year, with close to 200 families in and around the Old City currently facing court battles.
When settlers move in following such evictions, Ms Badran said, the character of the Palestinian neighborhoods rapidly changes.
“The settlers arrive, and then so do the police, the army, private security guards and municipal inspectors. The settlers have a machine behind them whose role is to make life as uncomfortable as possible for Palestinians. The message is: ‘You either accept your subjugation or leave’.”
In Silwan, where settler groups have established a touristic archaeological park in the midst of a densely populated Palestinian community just outside the Old City walls, life has been especially tough.
Mr Alg’ol, who lives in Silwan, noted that fortified settler compounds had been established throughout the area, many dozens more Palestinian families were facing evictions, excavations were taking place under Palestinian homes, closed-circuit TV watched residents 24 hours a day, and the security services were a constant presence. Many hundreds of children had been arrested in recent years, usually accused of stone throwing.
Israel’s newest move is the announcement of a cable car to bring tourists from West Jerusalem through Palestinian neighborhoods like Silwan to the holy sites of the Old City.
Mr Tartasky said touristic initiatives had become another planning weapon against Palestinians. “These projects, from the cable car to a series of promenades, are ways to connect one settlement to the next, bisecting Palestinian space. They strengthen the settlements and break apart Palestinian neighborhoods.”
Mr Alg’ol’s family was one of many in Silwan that had been told their lands were being confiscated for the cable car and a new police station.
“They want to turn our community into an archaeological Disneyland,” he said. “And we are in the way. They plan to keep going until we are all removed.”
- Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth-based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism
21 feb 2019
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is urging supporters and friends of Palestine and the prisoners to take action by signing the online petition against racism at San Francisco State University (SFSU).
The University is a frequent site of struggle in which Palestinian students and faculty, as well as other marginalized communities, have been attacked by Zionist campaigns that have met with little serious response from SFSU administrators.
Departments like AMED (Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas) studies have been underfunded and unsupported by the University, even in violation of signed agreements.
Most recently, the university issued a document listing “religious holidays” that may be observed by students and other members of the University community.
Shockingly, “Israel Independence Day” was included on this list despite the fact that it is not a religious holiday and – much more significantly – is essentially a celebration of the Nakba, the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinian refugees from their homes and lands by armed Zionist settler colonial forces.
Today numbering in the millions, Palestinian refugees have been denied their right to return for over 71 years.
Adding insult to injury, the list also omitted major significant Muslim holidays, including Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, despite the fact that they are widely recognized by members of the SFSU community as well as nearly 2 billion Muslims around the world.
Action links and full disclosure at Samidoun.
The University is a frequent site of struggle in which Palestinian students and faculty, as well as other marginalized communities, have been attacked by Zionist campaigns that have met with little serious response from SFSU administrators.
Departments like AMED (Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas) studies have been underfunded and unsupported by the University, even in violation of signed agreements.
Most recently, the university issued a document listing “religious holidays” that may be observed by students and other members of the University community.
Shockingly, “Israel Independence Day” was included on this list despite the fact that it is not a religious holiday and – much more significantly – is essentially a celebration of the Nakba, the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinian refugees from their homes and lands by armed Zionist settler colonial forces.
Today numbering in the millions, Palestinian refugees have been denied their right to return for over 71 years.
Adding insult to injury, the list also omitted major significant Muslim holidays, including Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, despite the fact that they are widely recognized by members of the SFSU community as well as nearly 2 billion Muslims around the world.
Action links and full disclosure at Samidoun.
Page: 2 - 1