Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestine (Weekly Update 23 February- 01 March 2023)

March 2, 2023

Violation of right to life and bodily integrity:

Three Palestinian civilians were shot dead: two by Israeli Occupation Forces and one by Israeli settlers. Also, a member of Palestinian armed groups succumbed to his pervious injury. Moreover, 16 Palestinians, including 3 children, a woman, and a journalist, were injured, while dozens of others suffocated in IOF attacks in eastern Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 23 February 2023, Mohammed Nabil al-Sabbah (30), from Jenin refugee camp, died at An-Najah Hospiral in Nablus, succumbing to a live bullet injury in the abdomen.  Al-Sabbah who was a member of Palestinian armed groups, was wounded on 12 February 2023 during IOF incursion into the camp.

On 24 February 2023, medical sources at al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron declared the death of Mohammed Isma’il Mohammed Jawabreh (21), a Palestinian police officer from Al-Arroub refugee camp, succumbing to a live bullet injury in the back of his head.  IOF opened fire at him at around 14:00 a day before from a distance of 30 meters while He was with 3 persons on his house roof during clashes that broke out in the camp.

On 26 February 2023, Sameh al-Aqtash (37) was killed after being shot with a live bullet in his abdomen by Israeli settlers during a widescale attack on Za’tara village as part of a series of retaliatory attacks on southern Nablus’s villages. (Details available in PCHR’s press release).

On 01 March 2023, Mahmoud Jamal Hamdan (22) died few hours after being arrested and injured by IOF fire during the latter’s incursion into ‘Aqabat Jaber refugee camp in Jericho. Also, a Palestinian was shot and another was ran over in addition to 5 others arrested, including 3 brothers and son of one of the latter. According to PCHR’s investigations, an Israeli Special Force sneaked into ‘Aqabat Jaber refugee camp and cordoned off a house belonging to Shalloun family. Afterwards, Israeli backups arrived shooting and firing teargas canisters as well as threatening to bomb the house. Meanwhile, IOF opened fire at Mahmoud Hamdan while driving his motorcycle out of a nearby wood carpentry shop, wounding him with a live bullet in his abdomen. A Palestine Red Crescent Society medical crew arrived and tried to give him first aid, but IOF arrested him and took him to an unknown destination. Later in the evening, Hamdan’s death was announced. During their withdrawal from the camp, IOF detained a young man and his child and used them as human shields during their raid into the house. IOF also pulled a civilian Hyundai Tucson car to the middle of the street and broke its windows.

Meanwhile, those injured were victims of IOF excessive use of force during their incursions into the Palestinian cities and villages, or suppression of peaceful protests organized by Palestinian civilians, and they were as follows:

On 23 February 2023, a Palestinian was shot with  a live bullet in his foot during clashes with IOF near a observation point established at the entrance to Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron.

On the same day, a woman was shot with a live bullet in her lower limbs by IOF at the entrance to “Ma’ale Adumim” settlement, which is established on occupied East Jerusalem’s lands, under the pretext that she tried to carry out a stabbing attack. IOF arrested the injured woman and took her to an Israeli hospital in West Jerusalem.

On 24 February 2023, two Palestinians, including a child, were shot with rubber-coated bullets, and others suffocated due to teargas inhalation during IOF’s suppression of Kafr Qaddoum weekly protest in northern Qalqilya.

On the same day, 4 Palestinians were directly hit with teargas canisters, and others suffocated due to teargas inhalation during clashes with IOF that accompanied the latter’s suppression of a peaceful protest near Bab al-Zawiyia in Hebron, where IOF established an observation point and a military checkpoint particularly at the entrance to al-Shuhada closed street. The peaceful protest was organized to commemorate the 29^th anniversary of al-Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, which was committed by an Israeli settler at the time.

Also, two Palestinians, including a journalist, were directly hit with teargas canisters, and others suffocated due to teargas inhalation after IOF targeted dozens of protestors gathered ten meters away from the barbed wire fence in eastern Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis,  against the IOF’s escalating violations in the West Bank.  

On the same day, a 14-year-old child was hit with a teargas canister by IOF during the latter’s suppression of protestors gathered near the border fence, northeast of Jabalia. As a result, the child sustained brain laceration and was referred to al-Shifa Medical Complex, where his health condition was deemed critical.

On 26 February 2023, a Palestinian was hit with a live bullet in his foot in clashes with IOF during their incursion into Teqoa village in Bethlehem. Before withdrawing, IOF arrested a child after they raided his house.

On the same day, two Palestinians were shot with live and rubber bullets after IOF opened fire at persons for approaching the border fence, northeast of Jabalia refugee camp.

In the Gaza Strip, 8 IOF shootings were reported on agricultural lands in eastern Gaza Strip, and 4 shootings were reported on fishing boats off the Western Gaza shores.

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So far in 2023, IOF attacks have killed 66 Palestinians, including 35 civilians; 11 of them were children and a woman, while the rest were members of the Palestinian armed groups, including 2 children, 5 killed by settlers, and one died in Israeli prisons. Meanwhile, 302 Palestinians, including 42 children, 2 women, and 8 journalists, were injured.

Land razing, demolitions, and notices

IOF displaced 4 families of 20, including 12 children and 4 women, after demolishing 5 houses; 4 of them were self-demolished by their owners. Also, IOF demolished 11 facilities and confiscated two vehicles in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 23 February 2023, IOF demolished 11 facilities, including commercial barracks and vegetable stalls, at the entrance to Jalamah village, north of Jenin.  

On 25 February 2023, IOF confiscated a Burqin and Kafr ad-Dik municipal garbage truck, west of Salfit. They also detained the driver and two workers, threatening them not to put the garbage in that area again, under the pretext that the area is classified as Area “C”.

On the same day, IOF confiscated an excavator working in Qarawat Bani Hassan village lands, under the pretext of working in Area C.

On 26 February 2023, IOF forced a Palestinian to implement the Israeli occupation municipal order and self-demolish his 100-sqm house in Silwan village in occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext of unlicensed construction, rendering a family of 8, including a woman and 6 children, homeless.

On 27 February 2023, IOF notified to demolish a 120-sqm house sheltering a family of 6, including 4 children, as well as a house concrete slab in eastern Yatta city in Hebron.

On 28 February 2023, IOF forced a Palestinian to self-demolish two small houses built on an area of 120 square meters in Beit Hanina village in occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext of unlicensed construction. As a result, the Palestinian and his wife have become homeless.

On the same day, IOF forced a Palestinian to implement the Israeli occupation municipal order and self-demolish his 30-sqm house in Ras al-‘Amoud neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext of unlicensed construction. As a result, a family of 5, including a woman and 3 children, was displaced.

Also, IOF demolished parts of a 120-sqm house in Jabel Mukaber village in occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext of unlicensed construction. As a result, a family of 4, including a woman and 2 children, were displaced.

Moreover, IOF demolished the remaining parts of two under-construction houses belonging to 2 brothers in’ Issawiya village, northeast of occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext of unlicensed construction. The owners of the two houses were forced to self-demolish their houses 2 weeks ago. Also, IOF handed them a fine of 100,00 shekels for demolition costs and for the Israeli municipality staff and vehicles.

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Since the beginning of 2023, IOF have made 52 families homeless, a total of 315 persons, including 64 women and 142 children. This was the outcome of IOF demolition of 54 houses; 16 were forcibly self-demolished by their owners and 6 were demolished on grounds of collective punishment. IOF also demolished 53 other civilian objects, razed other property, and delivered dozens of notices of demolition and cease-construction in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Settler-attacks and retaliatory acts:

A Palestinian was killed, and two others were injured by Israeli settlers’ fire in at least 100 attacks carried out by settlers under IOF’s protection. Most of those attacks mainly targeted Huwara village and Nablus’s southern villages, where Israeli settlers burned dozens of houses and vehicles, as part of retaliatory acts. Details are as follows:

On 23 February 2023, two Palestinians were injured: one with a live bullet in his abdomen and the other with a live bullet in his left thigh after Israeli settlers, from “Esh Kodesh” settlement outpost established on Nablus village’s lands, opened fire at them during their attack on the outskirts of Qusra village.  The settlers also threw stones and opened fire at Palestinians and their houses at them.

On 25 February 2023, Israeli settlers, from “al-Ras” settlement outpost established on Salfit village’s lands, attacked a group of Palestinian farmers in the nearby lands and forced them to leave after opening fire in the air. The settlers also damaged a vehicle belonging to the farmers.

On 26 February 2023, hundreds of Israeli settlers conducted widescale violence and retaliatory acts under the protection of IOF in several villages in Nablus. As a result, a Palestinian was killed and another was wounded with bullets, while dozens of houses, facilities and vehicles were set ablaze. ( Details available in PCHR’s press release.)

On the same day, settlers set a poultry farm ablaze in Salfit, completely burning it and killing 2500 chicks. Also, the settlers set a vehicle ablaze at the entrance to Yasuf village, east of Salfit, and completely burned it.

Also, two Palestinians were beaten by Israeli settlers who threw stones at Palestinian vehicles and burned one of them in al-Mo’arajat area, north of Jericho.

On the same day, 3 Palestinians sustained bruises after Israeli settlers attacked their vehicles in the outskirts of Jibiya village, north of Ramallah. Also, Israeli settlers threw stones at Palestinian vehicles and houses in Sinjil and Al-Mughayyir villages and near Umm Safa village in Ramallah.

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Since the beginning of the year, settlers have conducted at least 139 attacks against Palestinian civilians and their property. As a result, 5 Palestinians were killed and dozens of others were injured; most of them after being beaten and thrown with stones/ Also, dozens of houses, vehicles and civilian facilities were set ablaze.

IOF incursions and arrests of Palestinian civilians:

 IOF carried out 184 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Those incursions included raids and searches of civilian houses and facilities and establishment of checkpoints. During those incursions, at least 50 Palestinians were arrested, including 8 children. In the Gaza Strip, on 25 February 2023, IOF arrested 4 children while trying to infiltrate through the border fence adjacent to Um al-Nasser village and released them the next day. Also, IOF conducted 3 limited incursions in northern Beit Hanoun on 26 February 2033, in northeastern Jabalia on 28 February 2023, and in eastern Khan Yunis on 01 March 2023.

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So far in 2023, IOF conducted 1,765 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, during which 891 Palestinians were arrested, including 16 women and 119 children. Also, IOF arrested 12 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip; 6 were fishermen and 6 were trying to infiltrate into Israel. IOF also conducted 5 incursions.

Israeli closure and restrictions on freedom of movement:

Israeli occupation maintains its illegal and inhuman 15-year closure on the Gaza Strip. Details available in PCHR’s monthly-update in the Gaza crossings.

In the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, IOF continue to impose restrictions on the freedom of movement. On top of its 110 permanent checkpoints, IOF established 126 temporary military checkpoints in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, and arrested 2 Palestinians at those checkpoints.

Since 26 February 2023, IOF have imposed a cordon on Huwara village in Nablus, place cement cubes on the main street, impede the movement of individuals and vehicles, and prevent the shops’ owners from opening.  This cordon is part of the collective punishment measures following the killing of 2 settlers in a shooting attack near the village.

Since 27 February 2023, IOF have imposed a tight cordon on Jericho following the killing of an Israeli settler in a shooting attack  near the city. IOF closed all checkpoints, main and sub-streets leading to the city and established more military checkpoints, impeding the movement of individuals and vehicles and searching them.

This week, IOF closed military checkpoints in Jerusalem and Bethlehem several times and reopened them later.

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So far in 2023, IOF established 1074 temporary military checkpoints and arrested 50 Palestinians at those checkpoints.

Israeli Settlers Attack on Huwara Town Recalls Haganah Massacres against Palestinians in Past Century: Video

March 1, 2023

Mohammad Salami

As tensions among the Israeli political parties escalate, the disintegrated initiatives of the Zionist settlers who attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara indicate that the decision-making in the occupation entity has left the zone of alleged rationalization as decided by Tel Aviv officials.

The irrational tendency of the Zionists is expected to lead them to retrieve their primitive policies which served the establishment of the usurping entity at the expense of the Palestinian and Arab blood as well as rights.

Haganah was the militia primarily responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages during the Nakba in 1947-49. Huge number of Palestinians were killed in the context of horrible massacres that occurred in numerous villages and towns, including Deir Yassin.

Ruins of homes left empty from the deir yassin massacre, 1986. (Photo: deiryassinremembered.org)

The main Zionist target of the massacres was dispossessing the Palestinians of their land, property and identity. This aim was reiterated by the Zionist settlers who attacked Huwara town on Sunday, February 26.

Moreover, the methods and tools used in order to reach this target have been also similar as they include murdering, burning and expelling locals and real owners.

The following video shows the terrorist attack of the Zionist settlers on Huwara town. The video, posted by Euronews, displays how the Zionists burnt the Palestinians’ properties and the aftermath of the attack.

The following videograph exposes the horrible extent of the Israeli attack on Huwara:

The judicial reforms are expected to turn the ruling system in the Zionist entity into dictatorship, according to Zionist reports. This would reinforce the Israeli tendency to commit more massacres against the Palestinians to the extent of causing a new Nakba as some settlers told reporters.

However, the Palestinian resistance will not allow the Zionists to torture the Palestinians again. Its missiles are ready to be fired from Gaza, and youths are available to stab the settlers across the occupied territories. Thus, the Israeli schemes are doomed to failure, and the occupation entity is certainly heading into demise.

Source: Al-Manar English Website

Judaizing Jerusalem: Israel’s ‘demographic’ plan to ethnically cleanse the Holy City

The most right-wing government in Israel’s history is committed to advancing the Judaization of Jerusalem, including demolishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and diminishing the Arab demographic in Al-Quds.

February 21 2023

By The Cradle’s Palestine Correspondent

Jerusalem has been a sticking point in attempts to find a political solution between Palestinians and their occupiers ever since the onset of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet, the situation involving the Holy City and its Al-Aqsa Mosque has reached a critical turning point since the recent ascension of ultra-right-wing Zionist parties to power in Israel.

On 3 January, Itamar Ben Gvir, the head of the Otzma Yehudit party, fulfilled his election promises by storming the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque under official Israeli security cover. In doing so, the extremist minister of national security became the first official figure to take such a step since former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s similar action in 2000, which triggered the Second Intifada (also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada).

Storming Al-Aqsa, a calculated move

Many political analysts agree that Ben Gvir’s storming of the mosque – which was coordinated by the Israeli police and General Security Agency (Shin Bet), and with the prior knowledge of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – signals the new government’s policy towards the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa.

They say that the most right-wing and extreme government in the history of Israel is in the process of strengthening illegal settlements and changing the historical status of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Analyst Ayman al-Rafati tells The Cradle that the storming of the mosque’s courtyard, as well as the prevention of Jordanian Ambassador Ghassan al-Majali from entering the mosque in mid-January, have two implications:

“The first is an attempt to break psychological deterrence that was established after the Battle of Sayf al-Quds (Sword of Jerusalem) in 2021, which erupted due to practices like this; The second is to reduce the margin of Jordanian guardianship over Al-Aqsa.”

The occupation authorities also seek to replicate the Ibrahimi Mosque experience in the West-Bank city of Hebron (Al-Khalil) by dividing Al-Aqsa in time and space between Muslims and Jews.

Israel hopes that the storming of the mosque will pass over without any significant backlash from the occupied-West Bank and Jerusalem, from the resistance fighters of Gaza, or from the Israeli left and center parties who raise concerns about its potential impact on state security and stability.

However, the actions of Ben Gvir and the Israeli police, while dangerous, do not align with the aspirations of the Jewish Temple group extremists who seek to build a structure on the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Judaizing Al-Aqsa

On the day Ben Gvir assumed office as minister of national security, Aviad Fisoli, the attorney for the new Sanhedrin council (the central rabbinical institution of extremist Temple settler groups) sent a letter to the Israeli police commissioner in Jerusalem requesting an audience with the minister to inform him of their demands and to determine the level of support they could expect from the government and police.

The letter stipulated 11 demands, all of which would lead to the division of Al-Aqsa Mosque. These include:

1. Extending the hours in which the extremists could storm the mosque;
2. Allowing them to perform prayers and religious rituals inside the mosque;
3. Opening the mosque to raids throughout the week; Allowing “sacred tools” into the mosque, including Torah scrolls, the Ark of the Covenant, trumpets, and plant and animal offerings;
4. Establishing a Jewish synagogue inside Al-Aqsa Mosque;
5. Ending police escorting of extremists;
6. Allowing storming from all doors, not just the Mughrabi Gate controlled by the occupation authorities since 1967;
7. Not barring the mosque from intruders during Islamic events;
8. Declaring “equal rights” for all religions at Al-Aqsa;
9. Cancelling the policy of ejecting Jews from the mosque;
10. Opening the door of the synagogue in the historical Tanziah school – which overlooks the Al-Aqsa grounds – and is currently controlled by the Israeli Ministry of Security, to all Jews.

In April 2022, the temple group extremists began a campaign to obtain permission for performing the Passover sacrifice in Al-Aqsa.

The “Returning to the Temple Mount” movement, led by an extremist Jewish settler named Raphael Morris, sent a message to Ben Gvir in early January, asking for his help in facilitating the slaughter of the “Passover offering” in the courtyards of the mosque.

In their letter, the group stated that the formation of a real right-wing government “is a golden opportunity to return the crown to its former glory and to renew the Passover sacrifice for the first time in about two thousand years.” They believe that this act “will be recorded in the pages of history as the beginning of the building of the third Temple.”

‘Development:’ a pretext for demographic engineering

On the ground in Jerusalem, the settlers’ ambitions are being matched by ongoing state-sponsored excavations and the construction of roads and bridges. Mahmoud Abu Arqoub, a Palestinian guard stationed at Al-Aqsa Mosque, reveals to The Cradle that the Israeli police are preventing Jerusalemites and “Mourabitoun” (guards tasked with protecting Islamic holy sites from hostile non-believers) from restoring the dilapidated parts of the mosque.

Meanwhile, multiple projects are being implemented to accommodate the increasing number of settlers who storm the mosque.

According to the Palestine Information Center “Maata,” last year, around 55,000 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque, compared to 34,000 in 2021. Abu Arqoub also noted that in 2022, the Israeli government initiated a project to expand the wooden Mughrabi Bridge that connects Mughrabi Gate to Al-Buraq Square, which is used by settlers and “tourists” to enter the mosque courtyards.

Adnan al-Husseini, the head of the Jerusalem Affairs Department in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), believes that the bridge expansion project aims to increase the number of settler intrusions and paves the way for the implementation of a large settlement project by facilitating access for motorized vehicles.

Abu Arqoub predicts that “major unrest may break out in the month of Ramadan (next March) around the Damascus Gate. The occupation is imposing more restrictions on this region in preparation for its Judaization and annexation.”

Under the guise of developing the transportation network, the Israelis are racing against time to seize more land from Jerusalemites. In mid-January, the local planning and construction committee in the Jerusalem municipality approved plans to build a light-rail transit track connecting east and west Jerusalem.

They claim that the project is part of the “modern transportation revolution in Jerusalem to ease traffic congestion.” However, Jerusalemite researcher Nevine Najeeb posits that the track, set to be completed in 2028, will provide an excuse for the occupation municipality to seize more land and properties belonging to Jerusalemites. As Najeeb explains to The Cradle:

“In the future, the occupation municipality will demand the demolition of homes that Jerusalemites have owned for hundreds of years because they stand in the way of the train, or to strengthen security measures around its track. This scenario was previously implemented by the occupation in the town of Shuafat nine years ago, when dozens were forced to leave their homes under the same pretext.”

In parallel, the occupation authorities and temple groups continue to excavate tunnels beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque. On 10 January, sources in Jerusalem revealed the discovery of a new tunnel that penetrates the wall of the Old City, four meters wide, extending from the town of Silwan to a point near the Mughrabi Gate.

“The goal of the tunnels is to provide conditions for the demolition of Al-Aqsa Mosque as a result of natural factors, such as an earthquake, in order to avoid a comprehensive confrontation with the occupying power,” Najeeb explains.

‘Strangers in Jerusalem’

The most dangerous Israeli development, however, is the implementation of the “Greater Jerusalem” plan, which seeks to change the demographic balance in the Holy City in favor of the Jewish population, as revealed by the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem (ARIJ).

In a report published in late 2022, the institute indicated that Israel had begun adding four large settlement blocs – Givat Ze’ev, Ma’aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, and Psagot – to Jerusalem. This move is expected to decrease the percentage of Palestinians in the city’s population from 37 percent to 21 percent.

In a press release, ARIJ director Jad Isaac stated that in 2022, the Israeli government approved several settlement projects, including the construction of 4,900 settlement units in Jerusalem, 9,000 units in the Atarot area north of the city, and the “Silicon Valley” settlement project spanning over 710,000 square meters in the Wadi al-Jouz neighborhood.

Additionally, there are plans to transform the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and Silwan town into mixed neighborhoods by increasing the number of settlers residing there and issuing orders to evict Palestinians or demolish their homes.

In 2022, ARIJ documented 138 cases of house demolitions and 273 settler encroachments on the lands of Jerusalemites. Furthermore, the Israeli occupation authorities initiated the “Land Settlement and Registration” project to seize more property, which may result in 80 percent of the land being registered as “absentee property,” making Palestinians “strangers in Jerusalem,” as noted by Isaac.

The existential threat to Al-Quds

Palestinians in the city are facing systematic alienation, with the occupation authorities attempting to prevent Palestinian schools from teaching the Palestinian curriculum. Last year, two schools had their licenses revoked under the pretext of teaching curricula that allegedly included “incitement against the Israeli state and army.”

Approximately 45,500 students in Jerusalem, attending 146 schools affiliated with the Palestinian education system, are at risk of being forced to study the Israeli curriculum, according to the Faisal Husseini Foundation.

Since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, all Israeli governments, both right and left, have pursued projects to Judaize the city. However, the current Israeli government, described by Israelis themselves as the most right-wing in Israel’s history, poses a greater threat to the city.

There is an unprecedented opportunity for right-wing groups to Judaize the city and demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Such a step is likely to ignite another conflict that may escalate into a major regional war, as leaders of resistance movements in Palestine, Lebanon, and elsewhere have repeatedly warned.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

«إسرائيل» ولعنة الفلسطينيين: سقوط الوهم وبداية الأفول!

السبت 18 شباط 2023

د. عدنان منصور

لم تستطع الحروب ولا العقود التي أعقبت قيام الكيان «الإسرائيلي» عام 1948، أن تمحو من ذاكرة الفلسطينيين والعرب حقيقة دامغة، وهي أنّ الكيان المحتلّ، تأسّس بفعل عامل القوة، والدعم الخارجي، وفرض الأمر الواقع بتواطؤ قوى دولية، أتاح للحركة الصهيونية وتنظيماتها الإرهابية أن تنشئ دولتها على أرض فلسطين بعد مجازر رهيبة ارتكبتها، وقيامها بتطهير عرقي للفلسطينيين، كي تكون فلسطين مقدمة لتحقيق حلم الصهاينة في إنشاء «إسرائيل الكبرى».

لقد تعاطى الصهاينة مع فلسطين على أنها أرض بلا شعب، لشعب بلا أرض، لذا أرادوا تفريغ فلسطين من سكانها، لتصبح خالية لهم، ومن ثم فرض الأمر الواقع «الإسرائيلي» عليها، ليمحوا بعد ذلك الوجود الفلسطيني برمته.

كانت العمليات الإرهابية تعكس نهج وعقيدة وسلوك القادة الصهاينة وعصاباتهم المسلحة، كي يختزلوا شعباً بأكمله، من خلال عمليات تطهير عرقي واسعة النطاق، قامت بها التنظيمات الارهابية الهجانا، وشتيرن، والارغون، أعوام1947 ، و1948، و1949، أدّت الى تمشيط وتدمير المدن والقرى الفلسطينية، التي بلغ عددها وفقاً لمصادر المؤرّخ الإسرائيلي بني موريس ودراسة إسرائيل شاحاك بين 350 و383 قرية ومدينة. علماً انّ عدداً من الباحثين العرب، مثل عبد الجواد صالح ووليد مصطفى أحصوا 472 قرية ومدينة مدمّرة، فيما سلمان أبو ستة، وبعد دراسات وإحصاءات عميقة موثقة قام بها، تعتبر من أهمّ الأبحاث في هذا المجال، أكد على أنّ عدد القرى والمدن المدمرّة بلغ 566 قرية ومدينة.

لقد ظنّ الصهاينة في ذلك الوقت، انّ القوة وحدها تستطيع أن تجعل منهم دولة. وانّ «قوة التقدّم في تاريخ العالم هي للسيف»، «نحن نحارب إذن نحن نكون»، ولولا النصر في دير ياسين، لما كانت دولة إسرائيل»! (مناحيم بيغين رئيس وزراء إسرائيل الأسبق، وزعيم عصابة الارغون الإرهابية قبل إعلان دولة «إسرائيل»)
لقد روّج أقطاب الحركة الصهيونية، وعلى رأسهم ثيودور هرتزل، وإسراييل زانجويل ، لفكرة شوّهت تاريخ فلسطين وواقعها العربي، معتبرين أنها أرض بلا شعب، لشعب بلا أرض، هذا الادّعاء الوهم، لقيَ في ما بعد رواجاً في الأدبيات السياسية للقادة «الإسرائيليين»، ما دفع برئيسة وزراء «إسرائيل» في 8 آذار 1969 لتقول: «كيف يمكن لنا إعادة الأراضي المحتلة؟!

ليس هناك من أحد نعيدها إليه! وبعد حرب حزيران1967، واحتلال الضفة الغربية، صرحت غولدا مائير يوم 15 حزيران 1969 كلّ وقاحة قائلة: «لا يوجد شيء اسمه الفلسطينيون. لم يكن هناك في فلسطين من فلسطينيين حتى يقال إننا طردناهم، وأخذنا البلاد منهم. إذ لم يكن لهؤلاء من وجود».

كان بن غوريون يريد أرضاً خالية من الفلسطينيين، كي يقيم كيانه عليها.لذلك لم يشأ عام 1948 أن يتوسع في ضمّ المزيد من الأراضي رغم مواجهته معارضة عنيفة داخل الكنيست، واتهامه بالتخاذل في عدم ضمّه الضفة الغربية، وذلك خشية وخوف بن غوريون من الديموغرافيا الفلسطينية حيث كان ردّه: «إنه لمن الأفضل تحقيق الدولة اليهودية من دون أرض إسرائيل كلها، بدلاً من أرض «إسرائيل» كلها من دون دولة يهودية.»

كان بن غوريون يدرك جيداً العامل الديموغرافي وخطورته على مستقبل الدولة اليهودية، خاصة أنّ تعداد العرب الفلسطينيين سيفوق مستقبلاً تعداد اليهود. وانّ إقامة دولة ديمقراطية على كامل التراب الفلسطيني، يترتب عنه:

أ ـ إما إشراك الفلسطينيين في الحكم بشكل فاعل ومؤثر بسبب نسبة عددهم الى «الإسرائيليين»، وهذا ما أراد بن غوريون تجنبه، ولو لوقت، تاركاً المجال للأجيال اليهودية القادمة، أن تأخذ المبادرة في تمدّد الاحتلال.
ب ـ وإما طرد الفلسطينيين على الفور. وهذا ما تمّ تنفيذه من خلال خمس موجات عسكرية قامت بها المنظمات الإرهابية «الإسرائيلية»، وفي ما بعد الجيش الذي تشكل من هذه المنظمات التي انضوت تحت لوائه. موجات التطهير العرقي الخمس، وثقها بني موريس في كتابه: «نشأة اللاجئين الفلسطينيين». موجات بدأت من شهر كانون الأول 1947، وصولاً الى شهر تموز 1949، أسفرت عن ارتكاب مجازر رهيبة، وتطهير المدن والقرى، وإفراغها من سكانها.

عقيدة الاحتلال، والتطهير العرقي، وضمّ المزيد من الأراضي عبر عنها موشي ديان بعد حرب حزيران 1967 قائلا: «إن الجيل الماضي أنشأ دولة «إسرائيل»، والجيل الحاضر أحرز ما أحرزه في حرب 1967… فعلى الجيل القادم أن يأخذ المبادرة وينطلق عبر الحدود.»!

بهذا المنطق العدواني التوسعي، أراد «الإسرائيليون» أن يختزلوا وجود الشعب الفلسطيني، وينزعوا تاريخه وحاضره، هويته وعقيدته، جذوره وحضارته، ثقافته وانتماءه. لذلك كان استخدام القوة العسكرية واللجوء الى العمليات الإرهابية غاية «إسرائيل»، لانتزاع فلسطين من ذاكرة الجيل الثاني والثالث الفلسطيني. في الوقت الذي ـ باعتقادهم الوهم ـ سيترسخ فيه «الوجود الإسرائيلي» أكثر فأكثر مع الجيل الثاني والثالث الإسرائيليين وما بعدهما !

لم يكن أمام «إسرائيل» إلا استخدام كافة وسائل القتل والإرهاب، والتخويف لإخضاع المقاومة الفلسطينية. إرهاب وقتل ترسخ في عقول العديد من «الإسرائيليين»، منهم ارمون سوفير الأكاديمي في جامعة حيفا الذي أدلى يوم 10 أيار 2004 بحديث الى صحيفة «جيروزالم بوست» جاء فيه: «فيما لو أردنا ان نبقى على قيد الحياة، يتوجّب علينا ان نقتل ونقتل ونقتل. إن لم نقتل في كلّ وقت وفي كل يوم، سينتهي وجودنا

سياسة القتل والحروب العنصرية الإسرائيلية، واستحضار المحرقة، وجعلها سلوكاً ملازماً للإسرائيليين، أثارها رئيس الكنيست الأسبق أبراهام بورغ في كتابه: بقوله: «إنّ حضور الموت الذي لا يتوقف في حياتنا، المرتبط بحروب «إسرائيل»، لا يؤدّي إلا الى الإكثار من المجازر والدمار والإبادة التي يتلقاها شعبنا. لهذا فإنّ الأموات في هذا البلد لا يرقدون أبداً في سلام. انهم دائماً نشطون، دائماً حاضرون، دائماً ملازمون لوجودنا التعيس، والمحرقة، والحروب، والموت واستحضار للذاكرة الأبدية. لقد ربحنا كلّ الحروب، ومع ذالك نحتفظ بشعور عميق بالخسارة… إنّ الحرب لم تعد استثناء بل أصبحت قانوناً. طريقة عيشنا طريقة حرب مقابل الجميع، أعداء وأصدقاء على السواء.

أمام هذه الحقيقة المحزنة، اننا على يقين أنّ «الإسرائيليين» لا يفهمون إلا لغة القوة. هذه العقلية التي تعكس بداية العنجهية الإسرائيلية في وجه الهزائم العربية، أصبحت المبرّر لأفعال عديدة، ومفاهيم سياسية غير مقبول بها في عالم عادل…»

بعد خمسة وسبعين عاماً من احتلال «إسرائيل» لفلسطين، ورغم امتلاكها ترسانة نووية، وعسكرية تجعل منها واحدة من أكبر القوى العسكرية الضاربة في الشرق الأوسط، بموازنة عسكرية تبلغ 14 مليار دولار، يضاف اليها مساعدة عسكرية سنوية بقيمة 3.5 مليار دولار تقدّمها الولايات المتحدة لها، لم تستطع «إسرائيل» أن تطفئ شعلة المقاومة، ولا ان تلغي حقائق التاريخ، أو تروّض الشعب الفلسطيني، أو تلغي وجوده، وتقضي على إرادته في مقاومة الاحتلال. كما لم تستطع أن توفر لمستوطنيها الأمن والاستقرار، والثقة بمستقبل لن يكون بالتأكيد، إلا لأصحاب الأرض والحقّ، بعد أن قلب المقاومون الفلسطينيون المقاييس، والمعادلات العسكرية والديموغرافية، والعقائدية التي بنى عليها قادة المنظمات الصهيونية منذ تأسيس دولتهم وحتى اليوم.

حساب الوهم «الإسرائيلي» لم يكن في موضعه. فالتآكل بدأ يتفاعل، والانقسام الداخلي، والتمييز العنصري ينخر بشدة المجتمع «الإسرائيلي» في الوقت الذي قلب فيه الجيل الثاني والثالث الفلسطيني المقاييس، وأطاح بالنظريات، والسياسات، والخطط، والحلول المفخخة، التي رسمتها دولة الاحتلال مع حلفائها وعرابيها بحق الفلسطينيين.
منذ 75 عاماً، وأرحام أمهات فلسطين تنجب المقاومين أصحاب الأرض الذين لم يحسب أقطاب الصهاينة حسابهم. هم المقاومون الحقيقيون البواسل. هم هوية فلسطين ووجدانها، ماضيها وحاضرها ومستقبلها. هم الذين سيجعلون العالم كله يشهد على تحرير أرضهم من الغزاة عاجلاً أم آجلاً.

انّ شعباً عظيماً، ومقاومة عنيدة لا نظير لها في العالم كله، فيها خيري علقم، وقوافل الشهداء، حاضرة في كلّ الساحات، تقول بصوت عال للكيان المحتلّ، انّ فلسطين ليست لشذاذ الآفاق، وإنما لشعب متجذر فيها، وها أنا هذا الشعب. المنازلة بيننا لن تتوقف، والإرادة الأقوى هي التي ستنتصر لا محال! إرادة قوافل شهداء الجيل الثاني والثالث الأكثر تعلقاً وثباتاً وإيماناً بفلسطين وشعبها. هو الجيل الثائر الذي يرفع منسوب مقاومته يوماً بعد يوم، والمُصرّ على تبديد الوهم الإسرائيلي، وتصحيح مسار التاريخ.
بعد مضيّ 75 عاماً على الاحتلال، هل لا زال قادة «إسرائيل» الجدد مقتنعين انّ فلسطين كانت أرضاً بلا شعب، لشعب بلا أرض؟! الجواب عند المقاومين الذين عاهدوا الله والأمة على تطهيرها من الاحتلال الصهيوني، في يوم سيسأل فيه الفلسطينيون: ما إسرائيل وما جبل صهيون، كما سأل قوم من قبل، ما عاد وما ثمود…؟

*وزير الخارجية والمغتربين الأسبق

Biden ‘sleepwalking into disaster’: Experts

January 21, 2023 

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

US President Joe Biden could go down in history for allowing his failed policies to trigger a world war, experts say.

US President Joe Biden, January 19, 2022 (Getty Images)

US President Joe Biden’s policies toward Russia, China, and Iran, among other countries, have the US on the verge of disaster as he begins the second half of his first term, experts told Sputnik.
 
Biden reached the midpoint of his presidency earlier today, a period in which the White House has claimed economic successes while critics have slammed him for record-high inflation, the border crisis, and a foreign policy that has escalated tensions with both Russia and China.
 
“I think he’s done better than some of us expected, but he’s still sleepwalking into disaster,” political commentator and US constitutional historian Dan Lazare told Sputnik. 
 
Like all US presidents, Biden was the victim of forces beyond his control, Lazare cautioned. He said that Biden entered the White House promising to be a big-spending FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and thus succeeded in pushing through his $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan less than two months after taking office. However, it backfired due to mounting inflationary pressures, which it undoubtedly helped aggravate.
 
Lazare acknowledged that the “rapid and humiliating Taliban conquest of Afghanistan” in July 2021, during Biden’s first year in office, was a disaster that nearly everyone in Washington contributed to over the previous 40 years.
 
“Instead of fiddling while Rome burned, he flipped burgers while Kabul collapsed. The result was the worst foreign-policy setback since Vietnam from an imperial point of view,” he said. 
 
The Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed in November 2022, put new strains on the Atlantic Alliance, according to Lazare. “[The act] has left Europeans unnerved due to its outrageously protectionist industrial policies,” he added.

Dangers of Ukraine

The Biden administration announced on Thursday another $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine, bringing the total to around $27.5 billion since Biden took office. According to Lazare, the United States is on the verge of a world war.
 
He stressed that Biden looks pretty good “shepherding one military aid package after another through Congress,” warning that the longer the conflict goes on the more apparent it becomes that NATO’s “aggressively expansionist policies are leading to another 1914.”
 
Lazare predicted that Biden’s failure to pursue any serious means of resolving the conflict would exacerbate it, adding that “just as the Entente more or less maneuvered Austro-Hungary into going to war against crazy little Serbia, the Atlantic Alliance maneuvered Russia into going to war against Ukraine by engaging in actions that were increasingly provocative and confrontational,” he said. 
 
Biden risks going down in history alongside disastrous UK leader Herbert Henry Asquith, who led his country into a disastrous world war with Germany in 1914, according to Lazare.

Read next: Poll: Biden receives ‘failing grade’ in leadership and management

“I think history will, thus, end up looking at Biden the same way it looks at Asquith, the UK prime minister who thought he could get away with playing with fire in the Balkans. Once again, short-sighted imperial ambitions are plunging the world into catastrophe,” he said. 
 
Lazare believed that despite all this, the US media had covered Biden sympathetically so far in contrast to their unrelenting attacks on his predecessor. He added that Joe Biden may be a “B- president so far, but I’m sure his report card will be bristling with F’s before too long.”

Feckless mediocrity 

Retired Ambassador Chas Freeman, who served as the Democratic Clinton administration’s assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, noted that the Foreign Policy had assembled 20 analysts who had nothing but praise for Biden’s diplomatic performance.
 
Freeman told Sputnik that no oriental potentate employing praise singers could ask for more, but the Biden administration didn’t produce a ‘foreign policy for the middle class’, only one for what he described as feckless mediocrity.”
 
He added that Biden has also recklessly sparked conflict and crises with major superpowers. 
 
“Biden and his team have catalyzed and subsequently escalated a dangerous proxy war between the United States, Western Europe, and Russia in Ukraine [and] escalated tensions with China amidst rising concern about the possibility of a war over the status of Taiwan,” Freeman said. 
 
He also abandoned diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons development, which has brought Russia, China, and Iran together, according to Freeman.
 
Furthermore, Biden has increased protectionism and rejected the World Trade Organization’s “rules-based order,” causing friction with US allies in both Europe and Asia, he claims.
 
According to Freeman, Biden’s erratic policies had also resulted in a visible reduction in US influence in the Middle East, including a rift with Saudi Arabia and a failure to counter the replacement of apartheid in “Israel” with renewed ethnic cleansing.

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It Has Always Been a ‘Religious War’: On Ben Gvir and the Adaptability of Zionism

January 18, 2023

Israeli forces arrest Palestinian protesting Jewish settler violence at Al-Aqsa. (Photo: via ActiveStills.org)

By Ramzy Baroud

In a self-congratulatory article published in the Atlantic in 2017, Yossi Klein Halevi describes Israeli behavior at the just-conquered holy Muslim shrines in Occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 as “an astonishing moment of religious restraint”.

“The Jewish people had just returned to its holiest site, from which it had been denied access for centuries, only to effectively yield sovereignty at its moment of triumph,” Halevi wrote with a lingering sense of pride, as if the world owes Israel a ton of gratitude in the way it conducted itself during one of the most egregious acts of violence in the modern history of the Middle East.

Halevi’s pompous discourse on Israel’s heightened sense of morality – compared to, according to his own analysis, the lack of Arab appreciation of Israel’s overtures and refusal to engage in peace talks – is not in any way unique. His is the same language recycled umpteen times by all Zionists, even by those who advocated for a Jewish state before it was established on the ruins of destroyed and ethnically cleansed Palestine.

From its nascent beginnings, the Zionist discourse was purposely confusing – disarranging history when necessary, and fabricating it when convenient. Though the resultant narrative on Israel’s inception and continuation as an exclusively Jewish state may appear confounding to honest readers of history, for Israel’s supporters – and certainly for the Zionists themselves – Israel, as an idea, makes perfect sense.

When Israel’s new National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir raided al-Aqsa Mosque on January 3 to re-introduce himself to Jewish extremists as the new face of Israeli politics, he was also taking the first steps in correcting, in his own perception, a historical injustice.

Like Halevi, and, in fact, most of Israel’s political classes, let alone mainstream intellectuals, Ben Gvir believes in the significance of Jerusalem and its holy shrines to the very future of their Jewish state. However, despite the general agreement on the power of the religious narrative in Israel, there are also marked differences.

What Halevi was bragging about in his piece in the Atlantic is this: soon after soldiers raised the Israeli flag, garnished with the Star of David, atop the Dome of the Rock they were ordered to take it down. They did so, supposedly, at the behest of then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, quoted in the piece as saying to the army unit commander: “Do you want to set the Middle East on fire?”

Eventually, Israel conquered all of Jerusalem. Since then, it has also done everything in its power to ethnically cleanse the city’s Palestinian Muslim and Christian inhabitants to ensure an absolute Jewish majority. What is taking place in Sheikh Jarrah and other Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem is but a continuation of this old, sad episode.

However, the Haram al-Sharif Compound – where Al-Aqsa Mosque, Dome of the Rock and other Muslim shrines are located – was nominally administered by the Islamic Waqf authorities. By doing so, Israel managed to enforce the inaccurate notion that religious freedom is still respected in Jerusalem even after Israel’s so-called ‘unification’ of the city, which will remain, according to Israel’s official discourse, the “united, eternal capital of the Jewish people”.

The reality on the ground, however, has been largely dictated by the Ben-Gvirs of Israel who, for decades, have labored to erase the Muslim and Christian history, identity and, at times, even their ancient graveyards from the Occupied city. Al-Haram Al-Sharif is hardly a religious oasis for Muslims but the site of daily clashes, whereby Israeli soldiers and Jewish extremists routinely storm the holy shrines, leaving behind broken bones, blood and tears.

Despite American support of Israel, the international community has never accepted Israel’s version of falsified history. Though the Jewish spiritual connection to the city is always acknowledged – in fact, it has been respected by Arabs and Muslims since Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab entered the city in 638 – Israel has been reminded by the United Nations, time and again, regarding the illegality of its Occupation and all related actions it carried out in the city since June of 1967.

But Ben Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit Party. like all of Israel’s major political forces, care little for international law, authentic history or Palestinians’ rights. However, their main point of contention regarding the proper course of action in Al-Aqsa is mostly internal. There are those who want to speed up the process of fully claiming Al-Aqsa as a Jewish site, and those who believe that such a move is untimely and, for now, unstrategic.

The former group, however, is winning the debate. Long marginalized at the periphery of Israeli politics, Israel’s religious parties are now inching closer to the center, which is affecting Israel’s priorities on how best to defeat the Palestinians.

Typical analyses attribute the rise of Israel’s religious constituencies to the desperation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is arguably using the likes of Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Aryeh Deri to stay in office. However, this assessment does not tell the whole story, as the power of religious parties has long preceded Netanyahu’s political and legal woes. The Zionist discourse has, itself, been shifting towards religious Zionism; this can be easily observed in the growing religious sentiment in Israel’s judicial system, among the rank and file of the army, in the Knesset (Parliament) and, more recently, in the government itself.

These ideological shifts have even led some to argue that Ben-Gvir and his supporters are angling for a ‘religious war’. But is Ben-Gvir the one introducing religious war to the Zionist discourse?

In truth, early Zionists have never tried to mask the religious identity of their colonial project. “Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine,” the Basel Program, adopted by the First Zionist Congress in 1897, stated. Little has changed since then. Israel is “the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu said in March 2019.

So, if Israel’s founding ideology, political discourse, Jewish Nation State Law, every war, illegal settlement, bypass road and even the very Israeli flag and national anthem were all directly linked or appealed to religion and religious sentiments, then it is safe to argue that Israel has been engaged in a religious war against Palestinians since its inception.

The Zionists, whether ‘political Zionists’ like Theodore Hertzl or ‘Spiritual Zionists’ like Ahad Ha’am’ – and now Netanyahu and Ben Gvir – have all used the Jewish religion to achieve the same end, colonizing all historic Palestine and ethnically cleansing its native population. Sadly, major part of this sinister mission has been achieved, though Palestinians continue to resist with the same ferocity of their ancestors.

The historic truth is that Ben-Gvir’s behavior is only a natural outcome of Zionist thinking, formulated over a century ago. Indeed, for Zionists – religious, secular or, even atheists – the war has always been or, more accurately, had to be, a religious one.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

في ذكرى انتفاضة الحجارة: حتمية الانفجار واعتباطيّة الحل السلمي

 السبت 10 كانون الأول 2022

مصعب بشير

كان اندلاع الانتفاضة الشعبية الفلسطينية الأولى، المعروفة بانتفاضة الحجارة، أمراً طبيعياً من حيث حتمية حدوثه في سياقٍ أخذت فيه عربدة النظام الاستعماري الصهيوني بُعداً جديداً؛ فقد ثبت فشل المساعي الإسرائيلية لاحتواء سكان المناطق التي احتُلَّت في حرب حزيران/ يونيو 1967، من خلال استخدامهم كأيد عاملة رخيصة في قطاعات البناء والزراعة والصناعة الخفيفة. كان النظام الصهيوني يعي تماماً أن التكلفة المنخفضة لقوة عمل سكان الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة، ستعني تحسّناً نوعياً لسكان «المناطق»، وهو مصطلح ورثته إسرائيل من حقبة الاستعمار البريطاني الذي قسّم فلسطين إلى مناطق عسكرية خلال ثورة 1936، ولا تزال إسرائيل تستخدمه لوصف الضفة والقطاع نظراً إلى خضوعهما للحكم العسكري -خرجت غزة من التسمية بعد إعادة إسرائيل لانتشار قواتها عام 2005.

فشل استراتيجية المضطهِدين أمام صيرورة المضطهَدين
كانت إسرائيل تعوّل على أن التحسّن الاقتصادي لسكان الضفة والقطاع، إضافة إلى تخريبها المنهجي لقطاع التعليم سيحقق ما أراده ديفيد بن غوريون بأن «يموت الكبار وينسى الصغار». لكن بن غوريون ومن جاء بعده غفلوا عن أن تلك المقولة منطقية في سياق غير سياق الاستعمار والطرد، أي إنها منطقية في حالة طبيعية -لا وجود فيها لعوامل تهديد وجودية كالاستعمار الصهيوني- لا في حالة غير طبيعية كحالة دولة إسرائيل التي قامت وتقوم على التطهير العرقي والاستعلائية العنصرية والتنكيل بالشعب الأصلاني بوتائر مختلفة، وكلها ممارسات يومية ضد من تبقّى من الشعب الفلسطيني في فلسطين.

لقد أدى الارتفاع النوعي لدخل أكثر من مئة ألف أسرة فلسطينية في الضفة والقطاع إلى تحسّن ملموس في ظروف المعيشة وإنعاش لحياة الفلسطينيين هناك -وأغلبهم لاجئون داخل وطنهم- كما أدى احتكاكهم بسوق العمل الإسرائيلي الذي ينهل من أحدث التقنيات الغربية، ويشارك في إنتاج بعضها، إلى نقل معرفة وآلات حديثة امتزجت مع ما حمله الأصلانيون الفلسطينيون من معرفة مما قبل النكبة، فأخذ ذلك اتجاهاً نحو صناعة فلسطينية -على نحو جنيني؛ إذ ظهرت ورش ومعامل في قطاع غزة والضفة الغربية كانت إمّا جزءاً من شبكات قيمة تابعة لشركات رأسمالية كبرى، أو كيانات مستقلة، ففي غزة ومخيم جباليا كانت تصنع ملابس لعلامات كـ Levi’s و Lee، وأيضاً ثلاجات العرض للمحال التجارية، وفي الخليل ازدهرت على نحو أكبر صناعة الأحذية -المعروفة بها تاريخياً- إضافة إلى معامل للصناعات الغذائية في غزة ونابلس ورام الله والخليل. وقد أدى ذلك إلى بروز طبقة عاملة فلسطينية شكلت قرابة 38% من سكان الضفة والقطاع، وكان ثلثها عاملاً في الاقتصاد الإسرائيلي.

كانت إسرائيل تعوّل على أن التحسّن الاقتصادي لسكان الضفة والقطاع، إضافة إلى تخريبها المنهجي لقطاع التعليم سيحقق ما أراده ديفيد بن غوريون

لكن الفلسطينيين استمروا في الحديث عن نكبتهم شفهياً، على الرغم من أن المدارس كانت تعتمد في قطاع غزة منهاجاً مصرياً وفي الضفة الغربية آخر أردنياً، كما ظل اللاجئون يشيدون بيوتاً تراوحت بين الجيد والفخم بعد أن تحسّنت أحوالهم المادية عام 1980من القرن الماضي، لكن داخل المخيمات وحولها، فقد كانوا -ولا يزالون- متشبّثين بالمخيم ويعتبرونه مرحلة ما قبل العودة، وأن أي مكان غيره سيعني اللاعودة. تزامن ذلك كله مع جهود صهيونية مسعورة لمسح أي مظهر من مظاهر الهوية الوطنية الفلسطينية، ومنع الفلسطينيين من الاستقلال اقتصادياً عن إسرائيل -التي أرادت لهم تحسناً يُنسيهم ماضيهم، مع أن يظلوا تابعين لاقتصادها، إذ تناسب تحسّن الأحوال الاقتصادية طردياً مع تعاظم الروح الوطنية. يُضاف إلى ذلك أن إسرائيل شعرت بنشوة بعد أن هزمت منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية عسكرياً إثر اجتياح بيروت عام 1982 فصار تنمّر العسكريين الإسرائيليين على الأهالي جزءاً من الحياة اليومية.

1987 تجلّى «هرم ماسلو»…
لا مخطط من أي فصيل!
كثيراً ما تردّد الفصائل الفلسطينية، الوطنية منها والإسلامية، أنها خطّطت للانتفاضة، أو أن نضالاتها تسبّبت في تأجيج نار الكفاح في صدور أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني. لكن ذلك منافٍ للواقع تماماً مثلما تُفيد روايات من عاصر تلك الفترة، وواقع الحال اقتصادياً وسياسياً. ففي حين أشبع فيه الفلسطينيون جوعهم واكتسوا من بعد برد وسكنوا بيوتاً من بعد خيام، وفي وقت لم تكفّ فيه إسرائيل عن حرمانهم من العودة إلى ديارهم، بل ومنعتهم من أن يكونوا أنفسهم -فلسطينيين أبناء هده الأرض التي سميت عنوة إسرائيل- لا بل تمادت في غيِّها بعد أن كسرت شوكة منظمة التحرير التي رؤوا فيها ممثلهم الشرعي والوحيد، وصارت تنغّص عليهم عيشهم بعد أن صار بإمكانهم كسبه من دون الركون إليها، صارت الثورة والخروج على المحتل أمران تحدثهما به النفس طوال الوقت.

قد يبدو تناقضاً أن إسرائيل -التي من مصلحتها أن يتحسن حال الفلسطينيين اقتصادياً- راحت تغلق المعامل، وتضع أنف مخابراتها في شؤون الناس. لكن ذلك من التناقضات المتأصلة في كيان استعماري كإسرائيل، فهي تخشى استقلال التابع، وتخشى ألا تكون لها سيطرة على صياغة وعيه، فتوافرت الظروف الموجبة للانفجار.

(عبد الرحمن المزين)

تفيد نظرية عالم النفس أبراهام ماسلو بأن الإنسان يأخذ في السعي إلى تلبية حاجاته المعنوية والمادية الآجلة، بعد أن يلبي حاجاته المادية العاجلة. لذلك تفرّغ من بقي من الفلسطينيين داخل وطنهم للانبراء للاحتلال. ورُبّ سائل يسأل: أوليس أحرى بالجياع المشردين أن ينقضُّوا على من نكبهم وشرّدهم؟ والجواب: بلى، غير أن وجود فصائل مسلحة وممثل سياسي هو منظمة التحرير، ودول عربية في الخلفية وحول إسرائيل، جعل الفلسطيني داخل فلسطين ينتظر الفرج ممن هم نظرياً أقوى منه. وعندما اتضح أنه لم يبق في «الميدان إلا حميدان» كما يقول المثل الشعبي الفلسطيني، لم يتأخر حميدان عن القِراع. لذا لا يمكن فهم اندلاع الانتفاضة الشعبية الأولى في حدثٍ عنيفٍ محليٍ هنا أو هناك.

الثورة السائبة تُعلِّم السرقة!

كان أبناء الشعب من عمّال وفلاحين وطلبة ومثقفين، رجالاً ونساءً من مختلف الشرائح وقود الانتفاضة، فقدّموا الشهيد والسجين والجريح، والمطارد، والمنفي. لكن لم يكن لكل هؤلاء حزبهم بالمعنى الاجتماعي الاقتصادي، إذ لم تكن معركة الوعي مربوحةً، كما أن الفصائل اليسارية التي طرحت نفسها ممثلة للكادحين كانت عقيمة تنظيمياً وفكرياً ومصابةً بنيوياً بأمراض اليمين. أمّا اليمين الذي قاده ياسر عرفات، فقد أفسد حالةَ التنظيم الشعبي -التي نسَّقت الإضرابات ونظمت التعليم والتآزر المجتمعي- بالمال الذي كان يُغدق بغير حساب من مكتب المنظمة في عمَّان على كل من هبّ ودبّ، لا سيما على الزُّعران والبلطجيّة الذين أثاروا الفوضى وعملوا على تصفية الكوادر الفتحاويّة القليلة التي عارضت التسوية السلمية من مدريد حتى أوسلو. أمّا الفصائل الإسلامية -وخاصة «حماس»- فكانت تغرّد في وادٍ من التهيؤات المخلوطة بالمراهقة النضالية وفهم بدائي سطحي للدين. لذلك كان من مصلحة منظمة التحرير ورئيس أكبر فصائلها «فتح» وزبانيته أن توقع اتفاق أوسلو الذي تنازل عن ثوابت القضية الفلسطينية مقابل «حلّ سلمي» جلب له بساطاً أحمر وأموالاً غربية. لقد كان حلاً للطبقة الطفيلية التي لا تهمها العودة والخلاص من الصهيونية، على حساب الطبقات الكادحة التي يهمّها ذلك. لذلك فإنه ما لم يكن لجماهير كادحي الشعب الفلسطيني في كل مكان، حزبها هي، فإن كل انتفاضة ستُسرق مثلما سُرقت انتفاضة الحجارة. ذلك هو الدرس المُرّ الذي يجب أن يعى كي نحتفل يوماً ما بالتحرير، لا الذكرى.

من ملف : الانتفاضة الأولى: «أراه طالعاً من حجر»

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• الإهمال الطبي للأسرى: «الرعاية القاتلة» على متن «البوسطة»
• وليد دقة… انتصارنا على كل عجز

Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces are Defending their Future from Ukrainian Shelling and Fascism

November 24, 2022 

Eva Bartlett

*The author with Pyatnashka commanders at outpost near Avdeevka, Donetsk People’s Republic. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

Published Nov 19, 2022, Covert Action [See the comments section, some apologists for the West’s war on Syria have resurfaced…]

Smeared, stigmatized, and lied about in Western media propaganda, the mostly Russian-speaking people of the Donbass region were being slaughtered by the thousands in a brutal war of “ethnic cleansing” launched against them by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, which the U.S. installed after the CIA overthrew Ukraine’s legally elected president in a 2014 coup.

Although the Donbass people had been pleading for Russian military aid to defend them against the increasingly murderous military assaults by the Ukraine government forces, which killed more than 14,000 of their people, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to intervene. Instead, he tried to broker a peace agreement between the warring parties.

But the U.S. and Britain secretly colluded to sabotage peace negotiations, persuading president Zelenksy to ignore the Minsk III peace agreement that the Ukraine government had previously signed, and which had been countersigned by Russia, France and Germany.

Realizing that the U.S. and its NATO allies would never permit peace negotiations to succeed, Putin finally sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. Russian troops went in to support and reinforce the outnumbered and outgunned Donbass Forces who had been defending their land against attacks by the Kyiv government for nearly eight years.

Voices From the Frontlines of Former Eastern Ukraine Republics

In the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in October, I went to a frontline outpost 70 meters from Ukrainian forces in Avdeevka (north and west of Donetsk), according to the Donbas commanders I spoke with there. [Watch our interview here]

To reach that position, I went with two other journalists to a meeting point with two commanders of Pyatnashka—volunteer fighters, including Abkhazi, Slovak, Russian, Ossetian and other nationalities, including locals from Donbas.

From there, they drove us to a point as far as they could drive before walking the rest of the way, several minutes through brush and trenches, eventually coming to their sandbagged wood and cement fortified outpost.

It has changed hands over the years, Ukrainian forces sometimes occupying it, Donbas forces now controlling it.

*“Vydra,” a unit commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

One soldier, a unit commander who goes by the call sign “Vydra” (Otter), was formerly a miner from the DPR who had been living in Russia with his family. In 2014, he returned to the Donbas to defend his mother and relatives still there. He spoke of the outpost.

“We dug and built this with our hands. Several times over the years, the Ukrainians have taken these positions. We pushed them back, they stormed us…Well, we have been fighting each other for eight years.”

There, artillery fire is the biggest danger they face. “You can hide from a sniper, but not from artillery, and they’re using large caliber.”

His living quarters is a dank, cramped, room with a tiny improvised bed, with another small room and bed for others at the outpost.

A sign reads: “If shelling occurs, go to the shelter.” The kind of sign you see all over Donetsk and cities of the Donbas, due to Ukraine’s incessant shelling of civilian, residential areas. In a frontline outpost where incoming artillery is the norm, the sign is slightly absurd, clearly a joke.

An Orthodox icon sits atop the sign. Ukrainian nationalists hang and spray Nazi graffiti and slogans of death; these fighters revere their faith.

A poster, with the DPR flag, reads: “We have never known defeat, and it’s clear that this has been decided from above. Donbas has never been forced to its knees, and no one will ever be allowed to.”

The only things decorating the space are tins of tuna and canned meat, instant noodles, and washing powder. Their existence is bare minimum, nothing glamorous about it; they volunteer because, as they told me, this is their land and they will protect it.

Perhaps surprising to some, when Vydra was asked whether he hates Ukrainians, he replied emphatically no, he has friends and relatives in Ukraine.

“We have no hatred for Ukraine. We hate those nationalists who came to power. But ordinary Ukrainians? Why? Many of us speak Ukrainian. We understand them, they understand us. Many of them speak Russian.

I’ve been involved in sports a lot of time, wrestling. So, I’ve got a lot of friends in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kirovograd, Odessa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Transcarpathia.

I have relatives in western Ukraine, and we still communicate. Yes, they say one thing on the street, but when we talk to each other, they say, ‘Well, you have to, because the SBU is listening.’

Ukraine shouts about democracy, then puts people in handcuffs for no reason. My aunt got in trouble because they found my photo on her Skype.

And I’m on the Myrotvorets [kill list] website.” [As is the author, see this article.]

He spoke of Ukraine’s shelling from 2014, when the people of the Donbass were unarmed and not expecting to be bombed by their own country.

“When the artillery hit the city of Yenakievo, east of Gorlovka, we were defenseless. We went with hunting rifles and torches to fight them. Most of the weapons we had later were captured from them. We had to go to the battlefield without weapons in order to get the weapons.”

When asked if he was concerned that Ukrainian forces might take Donetsk he replied no, of course not, they didn’t succeed in 2014, they won’t now.

When asked whether he had a message for soldiers of the Ukrainian army, Vydra replied without hesitating, “Go home! We’ve been saying that since 2014: Go home. Unequivocally, we don’t want them here, but we don’t want to kill them. I’m not speaking about nationalists, I’m speaking about Ukrainian soldiers, who are drafted or forcefully employed in the Ukrainian army. Guys, go home, either surrender or go. This is our land. We’re not leaving, we’re not going anywhere.”

I asked how he felt to be treated and described as sub-human, to be called dehumanizing names, a part of the Ukrainian nationalists’ brainwashing propaganda. As I wrote previously:

“Ukrainian nationalists openly declare they view Russians as sub-human. School books teach this warped ideology. Videos show the extent of this mentality: Teaching children not only to also hate Russians and see them as not humans, but also brainwashing them to believe killing Donbas residents is acceptable. The Ukrainian government itself funds neo-Nazi-run indoctrination camps for youths.”

“It’s offensive,” Vydra said, “We are saddened: There are sick people. We need to heal them, slowly.”

I asked whether he thought friendship between Ukrainians and Russians would be possible.

“It will take years for any friendship. Take Chechnya, one region of Russia, it was at war. But slowly, slowly…We must all live together. We are one people.” Indeed, now Chechen fighters are one of the most effective forces fighting alongside Donbas and Russian soldiers to liberate Donbas areas from Ukrainian forces.

He opened a zippered trousers pocket and proudly brandished a small plastic sleeve containing children’s drawings, also containing icons of saints and Christ, and prayers…

“This is very personal, it’s like my guardian angel. I put it in plastic, I don’t even keep my ID in plastic. I’ve been carrying this one in my pocket since February. I’ve been in all sorts of hot spots. A child drew this, we receive letters from children. It’s very nice to look at them when it’s hard and we are under fire.”

He read one letter:

“We are waiting for you. Thank you for risking your lives to defend Donbas. Yulia and Ira.”

“I don’t even know who are Yulia and Ira,” he said smiling.

Showing the icons, he said, “This is Saint Ushakov, our great commander. This is Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Protector. This Abkhazi icon was given to me by the guys. This is a prayer book. And here is a prayer,” he said of one page prayer.

“These words are to support when times are very hard. When there is heavy shelling, it can go on for hours. So, while you’re sitting there, you can read this.

Especially for the younger guys, 22, 23 years old, just finished college. This is new to them.”

Commanders Speak of Geopolitical Reasons for Ukraine’s War

Outside, sitting in front of an Orthodox banner and a collection of collected munitions—including Western ones—two platoon commanders, “Kabar” and “Kamaz,” spoke of the bigger geopolitical picture. [See video]

“America is running the show here,” Kabar said. “It builds foreign policy on the basis of how its domestic policy is built, which is through conflicts with external countries. They are accustomed to proving their power to their people through terrorism around the world, inciting fires in Syria, in the east. They played the card of radical Islam there.

And now they are playing the card of fascism. They do not see themselves on the other side of good. They need wars, blood, cruelty, and they signed Europe up for this.

However, they’ve missed one point: Russia, since the days of the Soviet Union, has never retreated in large scale wars. They took Europe and pushed it to slaughter Russia, and they put Russia in such a position that it must secure its national interests. Europe needs to understand this, to pay attention to history, to stop being led by the United States.”

“Kabar,” a commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

When asked about his feeling regarding Ukrainians, “Kabar” replied similarly to Vydra.

“We don’t blame the whole Ukrainian people. Ukrainians are our friends, they are our relatives. They’ve been struck by evil, and it’s not their fault, ordinary people are not to blame for this. We will liberate them from fascism, we’ll show them brotherhood, and we’ll make friends.

This is a good opportunity for us to defeat evil. God has honored us with this right to fight evil.”

Kamaz, when asked why he is fighting, replied that this is his homeland, he was born here, and that he has a son who he doesn’t want to inherit Ukraine’s war on the Donbas.

“I myself am Greek by nationality. Ukrainians are Slavs, they are our brothers, their grandfathers fought together shoulder to shoulder with our grandfathers against Nazism and fascism. We are here to finish it, so that our children live a normal happy life. We are fighting for the future.”

He spoke of America’s continuous need for war.

“We’ve seen it in Syria and Yugoslavia, where they destroyed everything and then set everything up their own way, so the people must submit, almost like slaves.”

I asked whether he thought peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible.

“Yes, possibly, why not? But at the moment, the President of Ukraine said there will be no negotiations.

Negotiations are possible, but I think not with this president. When he comes to his senses, he will not be able to negotiate, because he took a lot of money.”

Before leaving the outpost, we chatted a bit with the commanders. A puppy sought the attention of a young soldier. Another puppy ran around our feet. The outpost commanders and soldiers take care of the dogs. Their presence added a somewhat surreal touch to the scene: an outpost which is routinely shelled, where life can cease to exist at any moment, and these happy, well-cared for puppies running around like dogs anywhere.

Western Media Inverted Reality, Lauding Nazis and Demonizing Defenders

While many in the West think that this conflict started in February 2022, those following events since 2014 are aware that, following the Maidan coup and Odessa massacre, and the rise of fascism in Ukraine against the Ukrainian people, the Donbas republics wanted to distance themselves from Ukraine’s Nazis and fascism.

The sacrifices which the people of the Donbas republics have endured, particularly those fighting to protect their families and loved ones, have been and continue to be immense.

Just as the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army were maligned, so too have Donbas forces have been maligned by Western media, though both are defending their homelands from terrorist forces trained and funded by the West. Terrorists given the freedom to commit endless atrocities against Donbas civilians.

These defenders, many living in dank trench conditions didn’t choose war, they responded to it, to protect their loved ones and their future. In spite of more than eight years of being warred upon by Ukraine, they retain their humanity.

Israel’s Relentless War against the Children of Palestine

November 17, 2022

The funeral of 5-year-old Alaa Qaddum, killed by an Israeli airstrike in besieged Gaza. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Ilan Pappe

“Mankind owes to the child the best it has to give.” Preamble, UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959)

More than half of the population living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are below 18; in fact, one can confidently say that half of the people of the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip are children. Anyone who wages a war against these two territories, through house demolition, arrests without trial, shoot-to-kill policy, and humiliation, is waging war against children.

At times, whole military brigades of the Israeli army, accompanied by elite units, border police, and police chase a boy and, in most cases, kill him or at best arrest him.

If there is anything that changed in the last few years in what finally the United Nations was willing to call the colonization of Palestine, it is the intensification of the Israeli shoot-to-kill policy. And although so many of us understand that the new Israeli government will not change the policies the previous governments pursued, one can expect further brutalization in the war against the children of Palestine.

As I write this column, the news has reached us of the murder by Israeli soldiers of Fulla Rasmi Abd al-Aziz al-Musalamah. She was on her way to celebrating her 16^th birthday. She was with others in a car near Beitunia, when the soldiers, without any reason, opened fire on the car and killed her. Needless to say, the Israeli newspaper reporting the “incident” blamed the driver and did not even bother to mention her name.

The killing of children is not a new aspect of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. By April 1948, the military leadership of the Zionist forces began to strategize more clearly its policy towards any population that would be left in the villages they occupied during the 1948 ethnic cleansing. One of its clear guidelines was to either kill or send to a prison camp, at the discretion of the commander on the spot, “men at a fighting age”. The command clearly defines what is meant by men: anyone above the age of ten.

Very much like any destructive Israeli policy since the massive expulsion and killings of 1948, a new method of incremental piecemeal action and policy became the norm. It is a very deceptive policy as whomever you want to alert is faced with a killing of one or two persons every now and then, and the dots are not easily connected to produce a damming indictment. This was true in the early 1950s, but of course, since then, the numbers are massive and this incremental killing is far more visible.

In November 1950, the Israeli army shot dead three children, ages 8, 10 and 12, from the village of Yalo, while in 1952, the Israeli commando murdered 4 children, ranging from ages 6 to 14, in Beit Jalla. A year later, among the five shepherds the Israeli killed in February 1953, one was a 13-year-old boy from al-Burg.

The incremental infanticide at times is replaced by a more intensive killing of children. During the First Intifada, according to the association of Israeli and Palestinian physicians for human rights, every two weeks, a child under six was shot in the head by the Israeli army.

During the Second Intifada, 600 Palestinian children were killed. Among them, are the 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura, the 14-year-old Fairs Odeh, and the 11-year-old Khalil al-Mughrabi. Five thousand children were wounded. In 2007, the Israeli air force killed 8 children of the Shehadeh family in Gaza.

In the first wave of attack on Gaza in 2008, more than 300 children died, and another 30 in 2012. And the highest death recorded in 2014, with more than 550 children. Put differently, since 2000, 2,250 Palestinian children were killed by the Israeli army and security forces. This is equivalent to the killing of nearly 45,000 children in Britain by a military or police force since 2000.

Why is it so important to record these grim and horrifying data and define clearly its legal and moral significance? For a few reasons. First, the fact that only here, in an alternative media outlet, you will be aware of these atrocities, is an indication of the hypocrisy of the Western media and political elite when it comes to Palestine, compared to the compassion shown towards children in the Ukraine or Iran.

Secondly, these figures accentuate the existential threat Zionism and Israel still pose to the Palestinian people and their future. It is not only land that Israel covets; it is intent on continuing the destruction of the people themselves.

But most important than all is the infuriating exemption of Palestine from the international discussion of the mass killing in general and that of children in particular. Take for example the international definition of mass killing. It is defined as:

“The deliberate actions of armed groups, including but not limited to state security forces…that result in the death of at least 1000 non-combatant civilians targeted as part of a specific group over a period of one year or less.”

In the First and Second Intifada, in 2009 and in 2014, the number of Palestinians killed by Israel exceeded by far one thousand. Nowhere in the UN or another human organization recording mass killings worldwide, do the Palestinians appear as a case study.

The game is not of numbers of course, but much more about the ideology that facilitates such mass killing; a kind of inhumanity only possible if the humans you target are dehumanized. An ideology that leads in many cases to genocidal policies. The definition of genocide according to article 2 of the UN charter on Genocide includes mass killing, bodily and mental harm, and physical desertion as indicators of such policies.

The report of the special representative of the Secretary-General in October 2009 and updated in November 2013, lists six grave violations of international human right law regarding children’s rights in armed conflict. There is no armed conflict in Palestine and yet, three of these grave violations occur daily in the colonized West Bank and occasionally, in massive numbers, in besieged Gaza Strip.

Killing and maiming of children, attacks against schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access. Some of the Israeli policies enacted during the siege on Gaza, in terms of denial of food, energy, and above all medical help, create a criterion by itself that should have been added to this document.

In August this year, UN Human Rights Chief, Michelle Bachelet, expressed alarm at the high number of Palestinians, including children, killed and injured in the occupied Palestinian territory since the beginning of 2022. She was referring to the killing of 37 children from the beginning of the year until that August and was particularly horrified by the killing of 19 children in one week. She stated:

“Inflicting hurt on any child during the course of conflict is deeply disturbing, and the killing and maiming of so many children this year is unconscionable.”

As a father myself, I would have used a stronger word than “unconscionable”. But I will be content with it if the Israeli mass killing of Palestinian children will not be denied anymore or marginalized and will appear as an urgent topic in the venues where the international community discusses the gravest violations of human rights in our time, and act upon it.

– Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

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Israeli Human Rights Violations in Palestine (Weekly Update 10 – 16 November 2022)

 November 17, 2022

Violation of right to life and bodily integrity:

A Palestinian girl was killed and six Palestinians, including a child and an international solidarity activist, were wounded, while dozens of others suffocated in Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacks in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 14 November 2022, IOF killed Fulla Rasmi ‘Abdul al-‘Aziz Masalmah (16) and wounded Anas Suliman Hassounah (26) with a live bullet in his left shoulder and then arrested him. This incident occurred after IOF opened fire at a Hyundai cat with a yellow registration plate driven by Hassounah with the girl sitting next to him in the Schools neighborhood in central Beitunia village, west of Ramallah, where IOF patrolled the area. IOF claimed that the car mentioned above tried to run over Israeli soldiers and the driver did not obey the soldiers’ orders to stop, so they opened fire at the car, wounding the girl in her back with a live bullet that settled in her chest. There was no eyewitness in the area at the time of the incident, as it took place at dawn, but footages published on social medica showed IOF opening fire at the vehicle from behind.

Meanwhile, those injured were victims of excessive use of force that accompanied IOF incursions into cities and villages, or suppression of peaceful protests organized by Palestinian civilians, and they were as follows:

On 11 November 2022, three Palestinians and an international solidarity activist were shot with rubber-coated metal bullets during IOF’s suppression of Kafr Qaddoum weekly protest in northern Qalqilya.

On the same day, dozens of Palestinians suffocated due to teargas inhalation and sustained wounds by stun grenade shrapnel during clashes with IOF near Bab al-Zawiyia area in Hebron.

On 14 November 2022, three Palestinians, including 2 children, sustained fractures and bruises when IOF attacked Palestinians, who were harvesting olive trees in their agricultural land in Dura in Hebron. Also, IOF fired teargas canisters and stun grenades at the Palestinians after the latter uprooted olive seedlings planted by a settler in their land.

On14 November 2022, a 14-year-old child was shot with a bullet in his right leg during clashes with IOF, who established a temporary military checkpoint at the northern entrance to Teqoa village, east of Bethlehem.

In the Gaza Strip, 3 shootings were reported on agricultural lands in the eastern Gaza Strip, and 5 shootings were reported on fishing boats off the western Gaza shore, mostly in northern Gaza Strip.

”

So far in 2022, IOF attacks killed 165 Palestinians, including 111 civilians: 34 children, 8 women, 2 Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers and the rest were activists; 17 of them were assassinated. Also, hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children, were wounded in IOF’s attacks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Moreover, 5 Palestinian detainees, including a woman, died in the Israeli prisons.

Land razing, demolitions, and notices

IOF demolished two agricultural houses, forced a Palestinian to self-demolish his house, and confiscated agricultural equipment and a generator in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 11 November 2022, IOF forced a Palestinian to self-demolish his 70-sqm house sheltering a family of 4 persons, including a woman and 2 children, in Beit Safafa village in occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext of unlicensed construction.

On 13 November 2022, IOF demolished two agricultural dwellings built of tin plates and steel and solar panels, displacing two families of 9 persons, including 2 women and 5 children, under the pretext of unlicensed construction.

On the same day, Israeli Administration and Organization officers, under IOF’s protection, confiscated tin plates, steel pillars and a generator belonging to a Palestinian, who intended to build a tinplated barrack for his livestock in Yatta city in Hebron. 

”

Since the beginning of 2022, Israeli occupation forces made 131 families homeless, a total of 767 persons, including 151 women and 343 children. This was the outcome of IOF demolition of 147 houses and many residential and agricultural tents. IOF also demolished 93 other civilian economic objects, leveled vacant areas of land, and delivered dozens of notices of demolition, cease-construction, and evacuation.

Settler-attacks on Palestinian civilians and their properties:

Israeli settlers conducted 4 attacks on Palestinians’ vehicles in different areas in the West Bank. Details are as follows:

On 14 November 2022, Israeli settlers moved into Haris village in Salfit, north of the West Bank, and burned four vehicles belonging to the villagers.

On 15 November 2022, Israeli settlers attacked and set fire to a vehicle belonging to a Palestinian who was in his way back from ‘Attil village in northern Tulkarm to Nablus.

On the same day, Israeli settlers intercepted a bus for a women’s trip in Hebron and prevented it from moving for few hours, enticing fear among the passengers.

On 16 November 2022, Israeli settlers threw stones at four vehicles near Ramin village, east of Tulkarm, breaking their windows. On the same day, Israeli settlers damaged a vehicle belonging to a Palestinian doctor near Jit village in Qalqilya.

”

Since the beginning of the year, settlers conducted at least 236 attacks. In two of the attacks, 2 Palestinians were killed.

IOF incursions and arrests of Palestinian civilians:

IOF carried out 35 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Those incursions included raids and searches of civilian houses and facilities and establishment of checkpoints. During those incursions, 62 Palestinians were arrested.

”

So far in 2022, IOF conducted 7,748 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, during which 4,393 Palestinians were arrested, including 421 children and 43 women. IOF also conducted 33 limited incursions into eastern Gaza Strip and arrested 95 Palestinians, including 58 fishermen, 32 infiltrators, and 5 travelers via Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing.

Israeli collective punishment and closure policy and restrictions on freedom of movement:

Meanwhile, IOF maintain its illegal and inhuman 15-year closure on the Gaza Strip. Details available in PCHR’s monthly-update in the Gaza crossings.

On 11 November 2022, IOF closed the entrances to Beit Ummar village in Hebron following clashes erupted between IOF and Palestinians, where IOF used live bullets and stun grenades.

”

So far in 2022, IOF established at least 4000 temporary military checkpoints and arrested 183 Palestinians at those checkpoints

How it Feels to Visit an Apartheid Country

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

An advertisement alongside the separation wall in East Jerusalem. Here the wall divides a Palestinian neighbourhood so as to limit the numbers of Palestinians in official Jerusalem. Photo by Philip Weiss.

Philip Weiss

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° 

Racial profiling in Israel is rampant. Abuse and invective are normal. This is the daily machinery of separating Jews from Arabs

Every time I visit Israel and Palestine I come home so struck by the injustice that I say to myself, Well you are a writer, you should be able, in 1,000 words or so, to convey the enormity of what you have seen so that the system falls apart like a house of cards for an American reader. This is my latest effort to do just that.

The main impression I had on this visit, is the feeling of Separation. I was bowled over by how separate the Israeli Jews are from the Palestinians, and the huge efforts undertaken to prevent mixing of cultures. When you go through the airport or West Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, you feel like you are in a city in Eastern Europe. I saw no men in the airport in traditional Arab dress. I saw a few women wearing the hijab. You don’t see many Arabic signs. You don’t see displays of Arab crafts or furnishings, you don’t see the sights and smells of Arab markets or street life. No, the Zionists brought their own society to the Middle East.

All the time you are here you reflect that you are plunk in the middle of the “Arab world.” Not long ago, the culture here was largely Muslim. A few decades ago, you could catch a bus from Jerusalem to Damascus, or Beirut, or Cairo, or Amman or Baghdad. Now you can’t do any of that. Jerusalem has been declared the “eternal capital of the Jewish people,” and there are high walls topped by concertina wire to separate it from the Arab masses. A historic Palestinian neighbourhood was bulldozed so that Jews could sanctify the Western Wall, ala the Vatican. And even liberal Zionists idealize this separation. The late novelist Amos Oz said that Jews and Palestinians need a “divorce” and separate houses, and he is a hero to J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

Israel really has established an outpost of civilization, as it conceives these matters, in a very traditional colonial mindset.

Any time you cross over into that other world, you must go through militarized checkpoints, and the culture is entirely different. The roads are narrower, the signs are mostly in Arabic. Many people wear traditional dress, and the street life strikes this foreigner as Arab.

The amazing thing about Israel is that it has pulled off colonization in an anti-colonial era. But I am not trying to analyze it, just to convey the feeling. It feels weird and unfair that the Zionists have imposed this order, and they understand this. They know it’s unfair, and so there are guns everywhere and the voters have lately elevated a racist fascist, Itamar Ben-Gvir, because Israelis know that Palestinians don’t like being a subject people, so they must preserve the order through brute force and power politics. You see the brute force all around. All the young soldiers on the buses or in the roads with their guns dangling at their sides. They’re not here for the Syrians or the Egyptians or the Jordanians, or Iraqis, Israel’s enemies of old. No, they’re here for the Palestinians on the other side of those concrete walls, because Palestinians resist the whole idea of a “Jewish state.”

As you would too if it were established in your city.

The racial profiling is rampant before your eyes. I sauntered through Damascus Gate at midnight. The young Palestinian just behind me got stopped by soldiers demanding his ID card.

Of course, Israelis speak of what a bad neighbourhood they live in. The only answer to that propaganda is that if you throw people out of their houses and off their land and live there for 75 years without any gesture to make things right, no you just keep on taking their property, I promise you—you will live in a bad neighbourhood.

Here is a simple proof of the unfairness. Every day Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories use money on which is imprinted the portraits of men who directed their ethnic cleansing and massacres. They travel inside Israel on roads named after these men too. I found this unsettling and embarrassing, being a witness to such humiliation. In talking to Palestinians in Haifa, I caught the name Ben-Gurion Avenue in my throat—I was afraid the mere utterance would damage their dignity.

I often thought about the promotion back in the U.S. of the “startup nation,” with its biotech and cyber industries that are said to help the world. The miraculous startup nation justifies its presence with its material advantages and Nobel Prizes (one Nobelist came to a shiva I attended in Jerusalem) as if that makes its rule acceptable to Palestinians. But of course it doesn’t. They have fewer or no rights, and it is rubbed in their faces all the time. There is something crude and dispiriting about this; you don’t perpetuate apartheid without consequences to all concerned. The journalist Tom Dallal shared with me this photo of riding a train with a soldier who pointed his gun between his legs the whole time without regarding it as rude or unusual.

When a Palestinian in Ramallah asked if it was offensive to American Jewish visitors to compare Israeli soldiers to Nazis, my colleague Scott Roth shook his head and said the Holocaust is pertinent. “You can’t build a society on trauma. They built Israeli society on trauma.”

Roth says that Israel brings out the worst in people. He wandered into the King David Hotel lobby one morning and saw a group of American visitors looking at the famous signatures set in tiles in the floor, and one began jumping up and down on Obama’s signature, laughing as she called out expletives. This kind of abuse and invective is normal here. Just look at the picture Itamar Ben-Gvir posted recently of the Palestinian politician Ahmad Tibi wheeling a suitcase in Ben Gurion airport. “Great news. Leave and don’t come back” (Michael Koplow’s translation).

You feel that crudeness and the tension. A Palestinian friend told me that when he visited New York recently he experienced visceral shock in a restaurant when he heard a loud Israeli conversation at a nearby table. “There is a word in Arabic that means to feel electrocuted—batkahrab,” he said. “These are the same voices that when I usually hear them, they are shouting at me that I have done something wrong.” Yes, young soldiers, barking at my friend, an architect in his 40s.

You feel the tragedy of it. You observe that Palestinians are human beings just like anyone with aspirations and dreams and pride and dignity, and yet you see them being put down before your eyes and having to bear it to survive. I keep thinking of a girl of 20 or 21 with earphones and fashionable clothing getting off the bus at Qalandiya checkpoint with her bag over her arm, that said, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. She reminded me of me and my friends at her age, showing off our taste. But she has no freedom of movement, and no political rights.

That’s my overwhelming sense of this visit. People not very different from me are persecuted at every turn. Many international human rights organizations have now laid out the apartheid argument in systematic legal analyses. I can only tell you about the feeling of it: Everywhere you go these Arab people are to be separated from the Jewish state and their culture erased. The shame I felt as a Jewish person is unquantifiable, and is the reason I will keep doing this work. Jewish values meant one thing when I was raised—“That which is obnoxious to you don’t do to another person,” in Hillel’s words. Or as Americans say, the Golden Rule. That value is trashed everywhere I went in Israel and Palestine.

It can’t last. When you see an unfair arrangement balanced totally on massive military and financial advantage and power politics, but unbearable to the subjugated people, history tells you it can’t last. Even the State Department acknowledges this when they say “the status quo is unsustainable.” When and how it falls who can say. But it can’t last.

---

Philip Weiss is senior editor of Mondoweiss.net and founded the site in 2005.

This article originally appeared on Mondoweiss.net.

US Ned Price Slams Ben-Gvir’s ‘Abhorrent’ Attendance at Meir Kahane’s Memorial

November 11, 2022

Ned Price slammed Itamar Ben Gvir for attending Meir Kahane’s memorial. (Image: The Palestine Chronicle)

US State Department spokesman Ned Price has slammed Israeli Knesset Member Itamar Ben Gvir for attending the annual memorial of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Middle East Monitor reported.

The American-born ultra-nationalist Israeli politician openly advocated expelling all Palestinians from historic Palestine between the river and the sea.

Kahane founded the Kach party which was later outlawed. He inspired the likes of Rabbi Baruch Goldstein who, in 1994, killed 29 Muslim worshippers at the Israeli-occupied Ibrahimi Mosque and wounded more than 125.

A former member of the Kach movement, Ben Gvir and the coalition of ultranationalist parties have emerged as the main power broker in Israel following last week’s election, winning 14 seats. The 46-year-old is expected to also be given an important ministerial position.

Denouncing Ben Gvir’s attendance at the annual Kahane memorial, Price said: “Celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent. We are concerned by the use of Kahana’s legacy and rhetoric by extremist and violent right-wing activists.”​

“There is no other word for it – it is abhorrent. And we remain concerned, as we’ve said before, by the legacy of Kahane Chai and the continued use of rhetoric among violent right-wing extremists.”

(MEMO, PC, SOCIAL)

• Israeli President Says ‘Entire World is Worried’ about Far-Right Politician Ben-Gvir

Israeli Human Rights Violations in Palestine(Weekly Update 27 October-02 November 2022)

03,11. 2022

Violation of right to life and bodily integrity:

Eleventh Palestinians, including 3 children and 2 paramedics, were wounded, and dozens of others suffocated in Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacks in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, those injured were victims of excessive use of force that accompanied incursion into the Palestinian cities and villages, or suppression of peaceful protests organized by Palestinian civilians, and they were as follows:

On 28 October 2022, a 22-year-old Palestinian was hit with a stun grenade during IOF’s incursion into Kafr al-Labad village in Tulkarm. Also, a child was shot with a rubber bullet during clashes with IOF following the latter’s suppression of Kafr Qaddoum weekly protest in northern Qalqilya.

On 29 October 2022, a 19-year-old Palestinian was shot with a live bullet in his foot during clashes with IOF in al-Arroub refugee camp in Hebron. Also, a 22-year-old paramedic sustained live bullet shrapnel wound in his shoulder after IOF opened fire at an ambulance belonging to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) near “Givat Havot” settlement outpost in eastern Hebron after an injury was reported in the area to PRCS. It turned out later that a Palestinian was killed after carrying out a shooting that killed an Israeli settler and injured others.

On 30 October 2022, a 17-year-old child  and a 18-year-old young man were shot with rubber bullets after IOF opened fire and fired teargas canisters at Palestinians gathered near the annexation wall, west of Tulkarm. Also, a Palestinian was injured with a live bullet in his thigh during clashes with IOF near military checkpoint (300), north of Bethlehem.

On 31 October 2022, a paramedic (33) sustained live bullet shrapnel wound after a PRCS ambulance driven by him was targeted during clashes and an exchange of fire between members of Palestinian armed groups and IOF following the latter’s incursion into Jenin and its refugee camp. Before their withdrawal, IOF arrested a Palestinian from Jenin refugee camp.

On the same day, a Palestinian was shot with a rubber bullet after IOF opened fire at him during his attempt along with a Palestinian woman to prevent IOF from arresting her daughter at a military checkpoint established at the entrance to the closed al-Shuhada Street in Central Hebron. 

On 01 November 2022, a child was wounded with a live bullet in his foot and other Palestinians suffocated during clashes with IOF at the entrance to al-Arroub refugee camp in Hebron.

On 02 November 2022, a 39-year-old Palestinian was shot with 4 live bullets after IOF opened fire at his vehicle near Muthalath al-Kharsa intersection in Hebron. IOF claimed that he tried to carry out a vehicle-ramming attack.

In the Gaza Strip, 5 shootings were reported on agricultural lands in eastern Gaza Strip, and 7 shootings were reported on fishing boats off the western Gaza shores, mostly in northern Gaza Strip.

”

So far in 2022, IOF attacks killed 158 Palestinians, including 106 civilians: 32 children, 8 women, 2 Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers and the rest were activists; 17 of them were assassinated. Also, hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children, were wounded in IOF’s attacks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Moreover, 5 Palestinian detainees, including a woman, died in the Israeli prisons.

Land razing, demolitions, and notices

IOF demolished 9 houses, rendering 31 Palestinians, including 8 women and 13 children, homeless. Also, IOF demolished a water well and seized 616 dunums in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 27 October 2022, IOF handed 2 civilians 2 notices to cease construction works in their houses in Al-Mughayyir village, east of Ramallah, under the pretext of being in area classified as Area (C).

On 28 October 2022, implementing an Israeli municipal order, IOF forced a Palestinian to self-demolished his under-construction house in Al-Tur village in occupied East Jerusalem under the pretext of unlicensed construction. It should be noted that the house’s owner lives in a 50-sqaure-meter house along with his parents, wife and three children.

On 29 October 2022, implementing an Israeli municipal order, IOF forced 2 Palestinians to self-demolished their houses on Salah al-Deen Street and in Shu’fat neighborhood under the pretext of unlicensed construction, rendering two families of 12 persons, including 4 children and 3 women, homeless.

On 31 October 2022, IOF demolished an under-construction house comprised of 3 floors, a water well and a 100-meter-long concrete wall in al-Baq’a area in Hebron.

On 31 October 2022, IOF issued a military order to seize about 616 dunums from Qaryut, As-Sawiya and Al-Lubban_ash-Sharqiya villages in Nablus, in order to expand “Eli” settlement, which is established in on lands of these villages.

On 02 November 2022, IOF demolished four houses in Al-Walaja village, northwest of Bethlehem, under the pretext of unlicensed construction, rendering 2 families of 12 persons, including 6 children and 3 women, homeless.

On the same day, IOF demolished an uninhabited house comprised of two floors in Jalbun village in Jenin under the pretext of illegal construction in Area C, rendering a family of 5 persons, including 3 children, homeless.

”

Since the beginning of 2022, Israeli occupation forces made 127 families homeless, a total of 748 persons, including 146 women and 339 children. This was the outcome of IOF demolition of 139 houses and many residential and agricultural tents. IOF also demolished 93 other civilian economic objects, leveled vacant areas of land and delivered dozens of notices of demolition, cease-construction, and evacuation.

Settler-attacks on Palestinian civilians and their properties:

On 27 October 2022, Israeli settlers threw stones and obstructed the movement of Palestinians’ vehicles near the western entrance to Haris village in Salfit and near the entrance to Kafr Laqif village in Qalqilya, causing material damage to a vehicle.

On 28 October 2022, an Israeli settler prevented Palestinian Kafl Haris village’s farmers from passing through the dirt street located near the electricity room established opposite to “Ariel” settlement in Salfit. Also, Israeli settlers threw stones and obstructed the movement of vehicles passing on the Bypass Road between Bruqin village and Kafr ad-Dik village in Salfit.  

On 29 October 2022, Israeli settlers threw stones and obstructed the movement of Palestinian vehicles near the western entrance to Kafr ad-Dik village, west of Salfit. In the evening, Israeli settlers, from “Kiryat Arba” settlement in Hebron, threw stones and opened fire at Palestinian houses in al-Ras area and in al-Jaber neighborhood, east of the city in addition to breaking windows of several vehicles. This came following a shooting carried out by a Palestinian that led to killing the attacker and an Israeli settler as well as the injury of others in the nearby area. Israeli settlers’ attack recurred in the evening and was followed by IOF’s raid into a house and arrest of one of its residents.

”

Since the beginning of the year, settlers conducted at least 224 attacks. In two of the attacks, 2 Palestinians were killed.

IOF incursions and arrests of Palestinian civilians:

IOF carried out 184 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Those incursions included raids and searches of civilian houses and facilities and establishment of checkpoints. During those incursions, 74 Palestinians were arrested, including 7 children and 4 women.

In the Gaza Strip, on 01 November 2022, Israeli naval forces arrested 4 fishermen while sailing off the Gaza shore and confiscated two fishing boats where the 4 fishermen were on board. (Details are available in this press release)

 

”

So far in 2022, IOF conducted 7523 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, during which 4250 Palestinians were arrested, including 421 children and 43 women. IOF also conducted 33 limited incursions into eastern Gaza Strip and arrested 95 Palestinians, including 58 fishermen, 32 infiltrators, and 5 travelers via Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing.

 

Israeli collective punishment and closure policy and restrictions on freedom of movement:

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation maintains its illegal and inhuman 15-year closure on the Gaza Strip. Details available in PCHR’s monthly-update in the Gaza crossings.

In the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, IOF continue to impose restrictions on the freedom of movement. On top of its 108 permanent checkpoints, IOF established 99 temporary military checkpoints in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, and arrested 9 Palestinians at those checkpoints.

since 11 October 2022, IOF have imposed collective punishment measures on Nablus and its three camps: Balata, Ein Beit al-Maa’ and Askar, and its cities and villages, including closing entrances and checkpoints. These measures affected the daily life of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

On 29 October 2022, IOF closed the entrances leading to Qizoun area in eastern Hebron, where there is a house that IOF intend to demolish as part of the collective punishment policy. Also, IOF closed all the entrances leading to Hebron and connecting with the Bypass Road (60) and prevented Palestinian vehicles from entering or exiting until next day noon.

On the same day, IOF closed Road (60) in Bethlehem to vehicles’ movement and closed the two metal detector gates established at the entrances to Tekoa and Husan villages

On 01 November 2022, the Israeli authorities announced the closure of the Gaza Strip and West Bank’s crossings, except for urgent and exceptional humanitarian cases, upon the approval of the competent authorities under the pretext of the Israeli elections.

”

So far in 2022, IOF established at least 3,866 temporary military checkpoints and arrested 177 Palestinians at those checkpoints

SHOCKING DETAILS OF ZIONIST BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AGAINST PALESTINIANS EXPOSED

OCTOBER 28TH, 2022

By Kit Klarenberg

Source

Academics Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University and Benjamin Z. Kedar of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have produced an extraordinary paper based on a welter of archival material, exposing in disturbing detail the hitherto obfuscated dimensions of an operation by Zionist forces to use chemical and biological weapons against both invading Arab armies and local civilians during the 1948 war.

That brutal conflict created the state of Israel, and led to permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, known as the “Nakba” – Arabic for disaster, catastrophe, or cataclysm.

Morris and Kedar offer a highly granular timeline of events, starting in the initial months of that year, as Britain prepared to evacuate Mandatory Palestine on May 15. In the lead up to that date, Zionist settlers were very much on the defensive, with militias “continuously” attacking their enclaves and convoys, with the support of neighboring armies, due to their joint rejection of UN Resolution 181, passed in November 1947, which proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.

With Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan all having expressed an intention to invade Palestine when Britain left – and having been actively encouraged in this regard by British intelligence – Zionist guerrillas began mounting an offensive, not merely to neutralize Arab fighters, but capture territory, destroying houses and civilian infrastructure along the way, to prevent displaced residents from returning.

In order to augment the latter component of this effort, ensure Zionist seizure of Arab villages and towns was permanent, facilitate easier conquest of further areas, and hinder the progress of advancing Arab armies, these militias began poisoning wells with bacteria to create local epidemics of typhoid, dysentery, malaria and other diseases, in direct violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which strictly prohibits “the use of bacteriological methods of warfare.”

As we shall see, the Zionists were suitably emboldened by the clandestine operation’s success that they eventually attempted to expand their poisoning campaign to invading Arab armies’ home soil.

“STATE OF EXTREME DISTRESS”

The code name of the biological warfare operation, “Cast Thy Bread” was a reference to Ecclesiastes 11:1, which directs Jews to “cast thy bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.”

The prospect of using biological weapons against the “enemy” had been percolating among the Zionist movement for some time, come the 1948 war. Three years earlier, immediately after the end of the war in Europe, Crimea-born Jewish partisan leader and poet Abba Kovner had, after reaching Palestine, hatched a plot to mass-poison Nazis, to avenge the Holocaust.

Kovner intended to either infect waterworks in German cities, or poison thousands of SS officers detained in Allied prisoner of war camps with a fatal disease. Having procured poison from two academics at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, he travelled to Europe to enact the plans, but was arrested by British security officials en-route, right after dumping his deadly cargo in the sea, and aborting his mission.

Abba Kovner, center, poses in Lithuania in July 1944, before he made is way to the Ein Ha-Horesh settlement in Palestine. Source | Yad Vashem

The former strategy resurfaced in Zionist consciousness as the prospect of a war of independence loomed, and became formalized with the creation of HEMED by Haganah, the primary Jewish paramilitary organization in Mandatory Palestine 1920 – 1948. HEMED’s three components – titled A to C – dealt with chemical and biological defense and warfare, and nuclear research.

On April 1, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, a leading figure in the Zionist movement who is regarded as the primary founder of the state of Israel, and served as its first Prime Minister, met with a senior representative of Haganah to “discuss the development of science and speeding up its application in warfare.”

Two weeks later, bacteria that would induce typhoid and dysentery among those who consumed it was distributed to Haganah operatives across Palestine. Before war even broke out on May 15, it had been used to poison water sources in Arab-held areas, the West Bank city of Jericho being the first documented instance. This was done in order to “undermine Palestinian staying power in still inhabited sites and to sow hindrances along the prospective routes of advance of invading Arab armies.”

That Zionist militants did not expect areas earmarked for Palestinians under the UN’s partition plan to remain Arab-inhabited in the event of victory in the looming war is strongly underlined by their targeting of many of these villages and towns in advance.

A vital aqueduct in Kabri that was the primary if not sole source of water for many nearby Palestinian settlements was poisoned on May 15. The paper’s authors call it “the most serious and potent use” of biological weapons during the entire 1948 War.

The historic northern city of Acre, designated part of a future Arab state by the UN, was one of the areas dependent on the aqueduct for water. The morale of its inhabitants is said by Morris and Kedar to have been “already shaky” at this juncture, due to Haganah’s recent conquest of the Arab parts of nearby Haifa, the region’s capital, and resultant flight of most of its population, many of whom took up residence in Acre.

Haifa’s capture by Zionists – achieved despite protection from British forces – cut off Acre not only from Haifa but neighboring Lebanon, and the prospect of Britain’s departure contributed to “plummeting” spirits among the population. The outbreak of a typhus epidemic, courtesy of Operation Cast Thy Bread, left Acre “in a state of extreme distress,” the city’s mayor reported on May 3. No one had the slightest clue that it had been deliberately created, for precisely this reason.

‘WHAT WAS THE POINT?’

Morris and Kedar assert that despite the widespread campaign of biological warfare engaged in by Zionist militias across Palestine, there were comparatively few reported casualties as a result – although dozens of Palestinians, and some British soldiers, are confirmed to have been killed – and the progress of invading Arab armies was barely halted due to disease outbreaks among soldiers.

“The apparent ineffectiveness…and problems in producing and transporting the weaponised bacteria may well have curbed enthusiasm for the campaign among Israeli defence executives. What was the point?” the pair speculates.

Such conjecture is somewhat bizarre, given so many of their findings, and private communications between Haganah operatives cited elsewhere in the paper, make abundantly clear the strategy was highly valued, and proved pivotal in the permanent capture of many Arab villages, towns, and cities.

Take for instance the aforementioned Acre. One day into the war, Zionist forces attacked the city, and delivered an ultimatum: unless inhabitants capitulated, “we will destroy you to the last man and utterly.” The next night, local notables duly signed an instrument of surrender, and three-quarters of the Arab population – 13,510 out of 17,395 – were displaced in a proverbial pen stroke.

The Arab village of As Sumeiriya, on the outskirts of Acre, lay in ruins after being leveled by a demolition team in May 1948. Frank Noel | AP

Accordingly, the academics refer to a previously unpublished June 1948 report from Hanagah intelligence unit Shai, which attributed the speed and ease with which Acre fell into Zionist hands in part to the epidemic they had earlier unleashed. The city was far from unique in this regard – outbreaks of typhus, and “panic induced by rumours of the spread of the disease” was determined to be “an exacerbating factor in the evacuation” of several areas.

Hindsight can on occasion mislead, but it was not retrospective pattern recognition that led Zionist militants to eagerly expand the poisoning campaign as the war unfolded. Between June and August 1948, two pseudonymous Hanagah operatives exchanged a series of cables while the bitter battle for Jerusalem raged. One became increasingly angry at the lack of progress, imploring the other, “immediately stop your neglect of Jerusalem and take care to send Bread here [emphasis added].”

Then, on September 26, “an important Zionist executive” proposed to Ben-Gurion a wide-ranging blitz of “harassment by all means,” not only in target areas of Palestine, but also belligerent Arab countries. This counter-offensive was intended to reverse the Egyptian Army’s capture of UN-mandated Jewish territory, seize some or even all the West Bank for settlement, and prevent the return of displaced Palestinian to areas partially or wholly in Zionist control.

The utility of biological warfare in achieving those objectives was obvious, and cables initiating the literally toxic process were fired off from the highest levels of Hanagah to its assorted militias the same day. Cairo’s water supplies were a major stated destination. Plans to that effect were evidently being explored in advance elsewhere as well.

On September 21, a Hanagah operative hiding in Beirut reported to headquarters on possible targets for sabotage operations in Lebanon, including “bridges, railway tracks, water and electricity sources.”

Lebanon remained in the crosshairs for some time, even as the war neared its completion, and Zionist victory was all but assured. In January 1949, two months before the country and Israel signed an armistice agreement ending the war between them, Hanagah again tasked operatives with investigating “water sources [and] central reservoirs,” in Beirut, and “supplying maps of water pipelines” in major Lebanese and Syrian towns.

“IT’S A TRICK…”

Clearly, then, there was very obviously a “point” to the poisoning program from the perspective of Ben-Gurion et al.

The connivance allowed the Zionists to efficaciously seize Palestinian territory, evicting Arabs from lands they had inhabited for centuries and deterring them from coming back, without firing a shot. Neither their victims – nor the international community – had no idea that the community-threatening epidemics seizing much of the region were man-made, rather than naturally occurring, either.

While it is clear from the paper certain individual militants were horrified by Cast Thy Bread and sought to curtail its operation, the relative lack of casualties cannot be chalked down to humanitarian concerns. Senior Zionists knew well the dire effects those infected by the bacteria suffered, not least because several of their own operatives contracted typhus themselves after accidentally drinking bottles containing it, believing the contents to be “gazoz”, a popular carbonated drink in the Middle East then and now.

Instead, Cast Thy Bread helped conceal the settlers’ long-term objectives of annexing land far in excess of that which had been proposed under the UN partition plan, including Palestinian territory and portions of neighboring Arab countries. Clandestine use of low death rate biological weapons meant a mass purge of civilians from these areas would appear to be voluntary and self-initiated, and could be secured without the need for large-scale massacres, or local residents being evicted at gunpoint en masse.

Ben-Gurion spelled out the Zionists’ true territorial ambitions in October 1937, following publication of Britain’s Peel Commission findings, which first advocated partitioning Palestine between Arabs and Jews. He supported the proposal, “because this increase in possession is of consequence not only in itself, but because through it we increase our strength, and every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole.”

Such honesty is vanishingly rare. Obscuring at all times the genocidal character of Zionism, which underpins and is absolutely fundamental to the colonial ideology, has been of the utmost importance to all its adherents ever since its inception. It is an ever-increasingly difficult facade to maintain, as the days of employing covert techniques to purge Israel and the territories it illegally occupies of Arabs are largely over. Instead, the slow-burn annihilation of Palestinians is conducted overwhelmingly in broad daylight.

As former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters found out to their immense personal, professional and political cost, the primary means by which Israel shields its systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from public scrutiny and condemnation today is via bogus accusations of anti-Semitism against detractors. Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli Education Minister and winner of the Israel Prize, explained to Democracy Now! in 2002:

It’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in [the U.S.] people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic…It’s very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and to bring up the Holocaust, and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that is to justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”

The material collated by Morris and Kedar suggests this is a long-established “trick”. On May 27, 1948, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a cable to the UN Secretary General, revealing that the previous day his country’s soldiers had captured two “Zionist agents” who were attempting to contaminate springs “from which the Egyptian troops at Gaza draw their water supply,” and had “dropped typhoid and dysentery germs into the wells lying to the east of that town.”

Acre Aqueduct was poisoned by typhoid injected by Zionists in May 1948. Source | Palestine Land Society

The cable, intercepted by Hanagan, was read out at a UN Security Council meeting later that day by Syria’s representative. In response, Major Aubrey Eban, designated representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (Israel had not yet been internationally recognized and was not a member state at that time), offered a vicious riposte.

He charged that the Egyptian and Syrian governments had “chosen to associate themselves with the most depraved tradition of medieval anti-Semitic incitement – the charge that Jews had poisoned Christian wells.”

“The Security Council, we are convinced, will not wish to become a tribunal for recitations from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion offered from the words of Dr. Goebbels. We hope that the Security Council will be interested not in this contemptible incitement, but in the reality of [Arab] bombs and shells falling on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv at this moment,” he added furiously.

Such an intervention may account for why, after initial press interest in the two diplomats’ caustic war of words, Cast Thy Bread remained successfully buried for almost seven-and-a-half decades subsequently, despite opaque references to the monstrous machination appearing in several autobiographies of Zionist leaders and militants from the time, and a 2003 academic article.

Indeed, the operation was so secret that even Israeli government censors were apparently unaware of its existence, so allowed numerous highly incriminating papers referencing the operation’s codename to pass by them unexpurgated, straight into the publicly accessible archives of the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Reinforcing the significance of Operation Cast Thy Bread, and the eager Zionist embrace of its grisly constituent techniques, HEMED’s biological warfare division became the formally civilian Institute for Biological Research in Nes Ziona, a town in central Israel, after the 1948 War ended. Its first director was former Haganah officer Alexander Keynan, who was intimately involved in the planning and execution of “Bread”.

Little is known about the extent or nature of Israeli biological weapons research or development today. The Institute for Biological Research has remained largely hidden from public view ever since launch, not least due to extensive security measures blocking outsider access. British investigative journalist Gordon Thomas has described a site over which no aircraft are allowed to fly, and scientists toil in laboratories deep underground creating “bottled agents of death.”

Nonetheless, it may be significant that modern Israel is one of very, very few countries in the world that is neither a signatory to the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention nor the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Could another “Cast Thy Bread” be in the literal and proverbial pipeline? At the very least, we have no reason to think it won’t be. If such a campaign was to be waged now, it would likely escape public detection even more effectively than last time.

A striking aspect of Palestinian writing about the 1948 War, identified by Morris and Kedar, is an almost total lack of reference to epidemic outbreaks at the time at all. Surviving victims of the Nakba today who contracted typhoid at the time, or had friends and relatives who did, now face the renewed indignity of learning, 74 years after the fact, they were deliberately poisoned.

Israeli Human Rights Violations in Palestine (Weekly Update 20– 26 October 2022)

October 27, 2022

Violation of right to life and bodily integrity:

7 Palestinians, including 5 civilians, were killed in addition to a child who succumbed to his injury, and 44 others were wounded, including 14 children, while dozens of others suffocated in the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacks in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 20 October 2022, Mohammad Fadi Nuri (16) succumbed to a live bullet injury in the abdomen during IOF’s incursion into Al-Bireh city on 28 September 2022.

On 21 October 2022, Salah al-Breiki (19) was killed, and 3 others were wounded by IOF’s fire during the latter’s incursion into Jenin. IOF withdrew after they had arrested a Palestinian from a house they cordoned off. Details available in PCHR’s press release.

On 22 October 2022, Rabi ‘Arafa Rabi (32), from Qalqilya, was shot in the head with a live bullet after IOF opened fire at a vehicle traveling him and other workers near the Israeli gate (109), south of Qalqilya. IOF claimed that the soldiers opened fire at the vehicle after the latter tried to run over an Israeli soldier at the checkpoint.

On 25 October 2022, 5 Palestinians, including 3 civilians, were killed and 20 others, mostly civilians, including 3 children, were wounded by IOF fire in Nablus and Ramallah in the West Bank. Among those killed, four, including 2 civilians, were killed in a military operation conducted by IOF in Nablus’s Old City while the fifth person was killed due to excessive use of force in Ramallah during clashes with IOF. Details available in PCHR’s press release.

Meanwhile, those injured were victims of excessive use of force that accompanied IOF incursions into cities and villages, or suppression of peaceful protests organized by Palestinian civilians, and they were as follows:

On 20 October 2022, 5 Palestinian, including 4 children, were injured: one of them in serious condition, during clashes with IOF in Sa’ir village, on al-Shuhada street, and at the entrance to Beit Ummar in Hebron. Also, 4 Palestinians were injured during confrontations with IOF in Biddu village and between the entrance to al-Ram village and Abu Al-Shaheed roundabout near Qalandia checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Moreover, two children were wounded with 2 live bullets during IOF clashes near the military checkpoint (300), north of Bethlehem. Meanwhile, 2 Palestinians were wounded with rubber bullets; others suffocated; and a Palestinian was arrested during confrontations with IOF near al-Mahkamah checkpoint at the northern entrance to al-Bireh city.

On 21 October 2022, a child was wounded with a rubber bullet during clashes with IOF in Bethlehem.

On 22 October 2022, IOF arrested a child after directly opening fire at him and seriously wounding him in a football field in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, taking him to an Israeli hospital.  IOF claimed that they went after the child after he carried out a stabbing attack in the French Hill area. Later on, IOF raided the child’s family house and arrested his father and brother.

On 25 October 2022, 2 Palestinians, including a child, were wounded with 2 live bullets during clashes with IOF at the northern entrance to ‘Azzun village, east of Qalqilya. On the same day, the IOF arrested 2 children after one of them was shot in clashes with IOF at the entrance to the closed al-Shuhada Street in Hebron. Also, a Palestinian was wounded after IOF opened fire at him near the annexation wall, west of Hebron.

In the Gaza Strip, 10 IOF shootings were reported on fishing boats off Western Gaza shore, mostly in northern Gaza Strip, and one of the shootings caused damage to a lighting boat. Also, 3 other shootings were reported on agricultural lands in the eastern Gaza Strip. (Fishermen were also arrested late on Wednesday. Details available in PCHR’s press release).

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So far in 2022, IOF attacks killed 153 Palestinians, including 106 civilians: 32 children, 8 women, 2 Palestinians killed by Israeli settler and the rest were activists; 17 of them were assassinated in IOF’s attacks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Moreover, 5 Palestinian detainees, including a woman, died in the Israeli prisons.

Land razing, demolitions, and notices

IOF demolished 3 houses, rendering 2 families of 15, including 2 women and 8 children, homeless, and confiscated 5 agricultural tents after dismantling them in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 20 October 2022, IOF demolished an under-construction house in Hebron under the pretext of unlicensed construction. It should be noted that This is the third time for the house to be demolished.

On 10 October 2022, IOF forced a Palestinian to self-demolish his house in Jabal Mukabber in occupied East Jerusalem under the pretext of unlicensed construction, displacing a family of 7, including a woman and 3 children.

On 25 October 2022, IOF demolished an under-construction house, north of Bani Na’im village in Hebron, to which a family of 8, including 5 children, intended to move to. After the demolition, clashes erupted in the area where IOF assaulted and arrested a Palestinian. On the same day, IOF confiscated 5 agricultural tents after dismantling them, south of Susiya village in Hebron.

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Since the beginning of 2022, IOF made 121 families homeless, a total of 717 persons, including 136 women and 326 children. This was the outcome of IOF demolition of 130 houses and many residential and agricultural tents. IOF also demolished 92 other civilian and economic objects, leveled vacant areas of land and delivered hundreds of notices of demolition, cease-construction, and evacuation.

Settler-attacks

The settlers escalated their attacks simultaneously with the olive harvest season in the West Bank. Details as follows:

On 20 October 2022, Israeli settlers set fire to a vehicle and uprooted about 80 olive and almond seedlings in Al-Mughir village, east of Ramallah. In the evening, settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles near (al-Mahkamah) checkpoint in al-Bireh city, causing damage to 3 vehicles. They also attacked a house in Salfit with stones.

On 21 October 2022, settlers, protected by IOF, attacked farmers who were harvesting olives in Tulkarm and Salfit.

On 22 October 2022, settlers, protected by IOF, attacked farmers who were harvesting olives in Salfit and conducted riots by gathering on roads and blocking vehicles’ movement on those roads as well as throwing stones at them in Qalqilya.

On 23 October 2022, settlers, protected by IOF, broke into Tekoa, Minya and Dar Nahla villages in Bethlehem, threw stones at Palestinian houses and properties, and broke vehicles’ windows. Also, they attacked famers while harvesting olives in Tulkarm.

On 24 October 2022, settlers, protected by IOF, attacked carried out attacks on farmers and conducted riots on roads in Salfit.

On 25 October 2022, settlers attacked farmers who were harvesting olives in Turmusa’ya village in Ramallah. Meanwhile, settlers set fire to 2 vehicles, including one belonging to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Committee.  Also, settlers carried out street riots in Salfit.

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Since the beginning of the year, settlers conducted at least 218 attacks. In two of the attacks, 2 Palestinians were killed.

IOF incursions and arrests of Palestinian civilians:

IOF carried out 203 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Those incursions included raids and searches of civilian houses and facilities and establishment of checkpoints. During those incursions, 84 Palestinians were arrested, including 26 children, and a woman. In the Gaza Strip, on 26 October 2022, Israeli navy forces arrested 5 fishermen and confiscated their boat after it was intercepted off the northern Gaza Strip. Details available in PCHR’s press release.

”

So far in 2022, IOF conducted 7339 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, during which 4176 Palestinians were arrested, including 414 children and 39 women. IOF also conducted 33 limited incursions into eastern Gaza Strip and arrested 91 Palestinians, including 54 fishermen, 32 infiltrators, and 5 travelers via Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing.

Israeli collective punishment and closure policy and restrictions on freedom of movement:

The Israeli occupation maintains its illegal and inhuman 15-year closure on the Gaza Strip. Details available in PCHR’s monthly-update in the Gaza crossings.

In the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, IOF continue to impose restrictions on the freedom of movement. On top of its 108 permanent checkpoints, IOF established 84 temporary military checkpoints in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, and arrested 3 Palestinians at those checkpoints.

On 20 October 2022, IOF closed the iron gate established at the western entrance to Husan village.

On 20 October 2022, IOF closed most of the sub-roads in Hawara village, southeast of Nablus until 25 October 2022 with sand berms to obstruct the movement of Palestinians on the main street, as part of IOF’s collective punishment policy.

On 23 October 2022, The Israeli authorities closed the entrance to Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron, the entrance to ‘Arroub refugee camp, north of Hebron, and the entrance to ‘Abod village, northwest of Ramallah, with iron gates.

On 24 October 2022, IOF closed the iron gate at the northern entrance to Tekoa village.

On 25 October 2022, IOF closed the gate established at the main entrance to Nabi Saleh village, detained the vehicles of passersby and confiscated their vehicle keys. The following iron gates were also closed in these areas: the gate on Wadi Al-Delb Road near Ras Karkar village, the entrance to Kafr Ni’ma village, and the entrance to Rantis village, west of Ramallah.

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So far in 2022, IOF established 3767 temporary military checkpoints and arrested 168 Palestinians at those checkpoints

Palestinians Organize Rally in Support of Palestinian Resistance in West Bank (PHOTOS)

October 25, 2022

PFLP organized a rally in support of Palestinian Resistance in West Bank (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine organized a rally in Gaza in support of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. 

A member of the Political Bureau of the Democratic Front in the Gaza Strip, Saleh Nasser, affirmed that the Palestinian people chose the path of resistance in all its forms against the Israeli occupation.

“Our people are subjected to collective punishments, abuse, cold-blooded executions, arrests and demolition of homes in all cities of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Nasser said. 

“This is an open war that escalates daily in the worst forms of persecution and fascist racism, as well as in the implementation of policies aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, in flagrant violation of international and humanitarian law.”

Meanwhile, organized by the PFLP, a symbolic funeral was held in Gaza on Monday to mourn Tamer Kilani, one of the leaders of the Nablus-based resistance group Lions’ Den.

Thousands participated in the funeral, which was organized by the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the PFLP.

Another influential member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Ras, said that organizing the funeral in Gaza “is a confirmation that we are one people and that our destiny is one.”

Al-Ras stressed that “the path of resistance is a path towards unity against the occupation.”

Tamer Kilani was killed on Sunday when an explosive device exploded in the Old City of Nablus. 

The following day, five other Palestinians, including top Lions’ Den commander Wadee Al Hawah, were also killed in Nablus, and a sixth Palestinian in Ramallah.

(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

• Hamas Leader Hails Resistance by Lions’ Den Fighters Killed in West Bank
• IN PHOTOS: Palestinians in Gaza Launch General Strike in Solidarity with Nablus
• Diplomatic Delegation Visits Besieged West Bank City of Nablus
• ‘If the Dead Could Speak’: Visiting a Gaza Family Living in a Graveyard (PHOTOS)

Israeli Human Rights Violations in Palestine (Weekly Update 13 – 19 October 2022)

20.10. 2022

Violation of right to life and bodily integrity:

Three Palestinians, including a civilian, were killed and 23 others, including 6 children and 2 paramedics, were wounded, while dozens of others suffocated in Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 14 October 2022, two members of Palestinian armed groups were killed and four other Palestinians, including two paramedics, were wounded in clashes and confrontations with IOF during the latter’s incursion into Jenin refugee camp, where they cordoned off a house, arrested one of its residents and later withdrew.

On 15 October 2022, a Palestinian succumbed to wounds he sustained by IOF fire the day before their incursion into the entrance to Qarawat Bani Hassan village, west of Salfit, while four other Palestinians, including a child and a teenager, were wounded. (Details are available in this press release).

Meanwhile, those injured were victims of excessive use of force that accompanied IOF suppression of cities and villages and suppression of peaceful protests organized by Palestinian civilians and they were as follows:

On 13 October 2022, a number of students suffocated after IOF fired teargas canisters near al-Qisariyia Mixed School in Gaza Valley village (Juhor al-Deek), southeast of Gaza, that is located 1000 meters away from the border fence., forcing the school administration to evacuate.  In the evening, a teenager was shot with a live bullet in his hand in clashes with IOF during their incursion into Nablus to secure Israeli settlers’ raid into Joseph’s Tomb. Also, dozens of Palestinians, suffocated, including 3 children had severe suffocation, and six others were arrested during clashes with IOF in Silwan village in occupied East Jerusalem. Moreover, a child was shot with a live bullet in his foot during clashes with IOF at the entrance to Al-Arroub refugee camp following the funeral of Osama ‘Adawi, who was killed by IOF’s fire the day before. (Details are available in this press release).  Also, a child was shot with a live bullet in his foot during clashes with IOF at the entrance to the closed al-Shuhada Street in Hebron.

On 14 October 2022, three Palestinians, including a child, were shot with rubber-coated bullets in clashes with IOF after the latter’s suppression of Kafr Qaddoum weekly protest in northern Qalqilya.  On the same day, a child was shot with a rubber-coated bullet during clashes with IOF near the annexation wall gate on the road connecting Beit Duqqu village with Beit Ijza village in occupied East Jerusalem. Additionally, two Palestinians were shot with two bullets and two others were arrested in clashes with IOF who were protecting Israeli settlers while carrying out attacks in Huwara village in Nablus.  Also, three Palestinians, including a child, were wounded and another one was arrested during clashes with IOF at the entrance to the closed al-Shuhada street in Hebron.

On 15 October 2022, IOF arrested a Palestinian after opening fire at him and wounding him under the pretext of throwing stones at IOF near the northern entrance to Yatta in Hebron. Also, IOF arrested a Palestinian after opening fire at him and wounding him when he tried to approach the annexation wall, southwest of As-Samu village in Hebron.

On 18 October 2022, IOF arrested a teenager after opening fire at him and wounding him under the pretext of throwing a Molotov Cocktail at the intersection of Al-Majdal village in Nablus.

In the Gaza Strip, 7 shootings were reported on agricultural lands in eastern Gaza Strip, and 6 others were reported on fishing boats off the western Gaza shores.

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So far in 2022, IOF attacks killed 144 Palestinians, including 100 civilians: 27 children, 8 women, 2 Palestinians killed by Israeli settler and the rest were activists; 15 of them were assassinated. Also, hundreds of Palestinians were wounded in IOF’s attacks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank while 4 Palestinian detainees, including a woman, died in the Israeli prisons.

Land razing, demolitions, and notices

On 13 October 2022, IOF forced a Palestinian to self-demolish his house in Sur Baher village under the pretext of unlicensed construction, rendering him, his wife and daughter homeless.

”

Since the beginning of 2022, Israeli occupation forces made 119 families homeless, a total of 702 persons, including 136 women and 318 children. This was the outcome of IOF demolition of 127 houses and several residential tents. IOF also demolished 92 other civilian economic objects, leveled vacant areas of land, and delivered dozens of notices of demolition, cease-construction, and evacuation.

Settler-attacks on Palestinian civilians and their properties:

Many Palestinians sustained bruises, an Israeli solidarity activist sustained wounds and Palestinian property sustained severe damage in 9 attacks conducted by Israeli settlers under IOF’s protection, including continuous attacks on Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Details are as follows:

On 13 October 2022, five Palestinians sustained bruises after Israeli settlers attacked shops and vehicles in Huwara village in Nablus, causing damage to two vehicles. On the same day, Israeli settlers attacked agricultural lands in al-Montar area in Nablus and cut the branches of 120 olive trees. In the evening, Israeli settlers set a restaurant and a truck ablaze during their attack in Huwara village. Also, under IOF’s protection, dozens of Israeli settlers; some of them were masked, accompanied with the Extremist Israeli Member of Knesset (MK), Itamar Ben Gvir, stormed Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. They raided residential houses, assaulted their residents and damaged their property. Meanwhile, IOF suppressed Palestinians, who tried to confront the settlers, instead of providing protection for the neighborhood’s residents, and dispersed them after firing a barrage of teargas canisters, pumping skunk water at them and arresting and assaulting 9 Palestinians. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society stated that its crews treated 20 Palestinians who were beaten and thrown with stones while 5 of them were evacuated to hospital.

On 14 October 2022, Palestinians found that Israeli settlers cut 12 old olive trees, north of Qaryut village in Nablus. In the evening, Israeli settlers raided Huwara village and attacked shops on the main street amid clashes with Palestinians. On the same day, Israeli settlers, under IOF’s protection, threw an incendiary at the Awarif Secondary School Principal’s room in Urif village Nablus, setting it ablaze. Also, they smashed the glass of 20 solar cells on the school roof. Moreover, dozens of Israeli settlers, under IOF’s protection, raided al-Sumod building in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, where they broke the windows of several vehicles parked in front of the building and beat and pushed its residents.  As a result, dozens of the neighborhood’s residents gathered in front of the building entrance to confront the setters’ attacks. During which, IOF fired sound bombs at the neighborhood’s residents, forcibly suppressed and attacked them, and arrested seven of them, including a child.

On 15 October 2022, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians’ vehicles passing by Omar Abu Laila roundabout (Ariel), north of Salfit. As a result, windows of some vehicles were broken.  

On 19 October 2022, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers and volunteers with knives, sticks and batons when they tried to reach an agricultural land near “Ma’ale Amos” settlement in Kisan village, east of Bethlehem. As a result, an Israeli solidarity activist sustained wounds and fractures.

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Since the beginning of the year, settlers conducted at least 203 attacks. In two of the attacks, 2 Palestinians were killed.

IOF incursions and arrests of Palestinian civilians:

IOF carried out 239 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Those incursions included raids and searches of civilian houses and facilities and establishment of checkpoints. During those incursions, 110 Palestinians were arrested, including 15 children, 2 women and a paramedic. During this week, IOF blew up the doors of three houses in Ramallah, maltreated their residents and seized money from them.  In occupied East Jerusalem, IOF conducted a widescale arrest campaign, whether during their incursion into Shu’fat refugee camp or in settlers’ attacks in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Also, IOF arrested a PRSC paramedic after stopping an ambulance driven by him at Za’tara military checkpoint.

”

So far in 2022, IOF conducted 7,136 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, during which 4092 Palestinians were arrested, including 388 children and 38 women. IOF also conducted 33 limited incursions into eastern Gaza Strip and arrested 86 Palestinians, including 49 fishermen, 32 infiltrators, and 5 travelers via Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing.

Israeli collective punishment and closure policy and restrictions on freedom of movement:

Israeli occupation maintains its illegal and inhuman 15-year closure on the Gaza Strip. Details available in PCHR’s monthly-update in the Gaza crossings.

Israeli authorities announced crossings with the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be closed from Sunday noon, 16 October 2022, to Tuesday midnight, 18 October 2022, for Jewish Holidays.

On 17 October 2022, a patient namely Akram Ahmad Mohammad Al-Sultan (62), from the northern Gaza Strip, died after he was denied travel for treatment at Al-Muttala’ Hospital in occupied Jerusalem. Thus, since the beginning of this year, the number of deaths among patients denied travel for treatment abroad has risen to 8, including 3 children. ( More details are available in this press release).

In the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, IOF continue to impose restrictions on the freedom of movement. On top of its 108 permanent checkpoints, IOF established 156 temporary military checkpoints in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem arrested 5 Palestinians at those checkpoints.

Since 11 October 2022, IOF continue to impose a siege and a closure on Nablus and its three camps: Balata, ‘Ein Beit el Ma and Askar, including the closure of entrances and checkpoints and blocking some roads with sand berms and cement cubes, as part of collective punishment measures against tens of thousands of Palestinians. The siege was imposed following a shooting attack against IOF stationed near “Shavei Shomron” settlement, northwest of Nablus, that killed an Israeli soldier. Due to the closure of checkpoints, the city’s residents need 3-4 hours to enter or exit the city, as they use dirt and bypass roads. 

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So far in 2022, IOF established at least 3683 temporary military checkpoints and arrested 165 Palestinians at those checkpoints

The Israeli occupation’s master plan against Palestinian Christians

19 Oct 2022

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Makram Khoury-Machool 

Shadi Khoury is a case among so many Palestinian children that are being harassed, tortured, and imprisoned for no reason other than being Palestinian.

The Israeli occupation’s master plan against Palestinian Christians

Five months ago, one of the most brutal killings of a human being took place; a crime was committed by the members of the Israeli occupation forces against the female journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian Christian. Two weeks before her assassination, during Easter, the occupation limited, separated, and violently prevented Palestinian Christians in particular from performing their acts of worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the old city of Al-Quds; the holiest of Christian sites that is beyond imagination. 

Holy Christian sites, clergymen, and laymen Christians are being attacked, harassed, and arrested. Categorizing them into “sects” and not as a Nation, the occupation, and for at least seven decades, has craftily been implementing the divide and rule policy (between Christians and Muslims) aiming at ‘gently’ and indirectly emptying Palestine from its original Palestinian Christian community in particular in Eastern Palestine occupied in 1967 and chiefly from East Jerusalem. 

Despite targeting many Palestinian Christian figures including assassinations, the Israeli occupation spread the most vicious propaganda, claiming (chiefly amongst ignorant segments in the West) that it is “protecting” Christians in the Holy Land. 

The criminal lie that the Israeli occupation “protects” Palestinian Christians was smashed yet again in the early hours of October 18, 2022, when Israeli occupation elements, in a group of 12 persons consisting of “soldiers” and Shabak (Secret services), conducted a dawn-raid at the house of Palestinian Christian Maestro Souheil Khoury after breaking the gate at the entrance of the compound where the whole family lives, to arrest his son Shadi Khoury, a sixteen-year-old child, a pupil at the Quakers “Friends School” in Ramallah. They beat him so hard until he was bleeding and dragged him across the room and along the path on the way out of the house barefoot and blindfolded, not allowing the parents to see where the blood was coming from.  Shadi was taken to the interrogation section in the notorious Maskobiyeh “Moscovan” Israeli secret police compound in which they interrogate mainly Palestinian residents of occupied Al-Quds. 

Shadi’s grandmother Samia, 89, told us that Shadi is being “interrogated” without the presence of either his parents or a lawyer; “a tactic used systematically to terrorize children into submission, and ultimately using their own words to incriminate them.”

Shadi is a case among so many Palestinian children that are being harassed, tortured, and imprisoned for no reason other than being a Palestinian seeking to live in dignity and freedom in their own country. 

Back in July 2020, the Israeli occupation arrested Shadi’s parents (Souheil and Rania Elias). Rania is the director of the Jebus Cultural Center (Jebus is an ancient name of Al-Quds, given by the Jebusites, the ones who first built the city) and her husband Souheil Khoury is the director of the National Conservatory.

The arrest of Shadi is not a random act; rather, it was “perfectly” calculated. The occupation is working diligently to separate Palestinian cultural organizations (especially those based in Al-Quds) from their international financiers. The easiest thing the occupation can do is describe the Palestinian people as “terrorists” and “murderers”, thus reincarnating the Euro-Western anti-Semitic past, triggering Western guilt and preventing the latter from sympathizing with the Palestinian victim. The West would “prefer” to settle its problems “with its own victim” first because it can always be extorted with such accusations. 

The new “regulations” of finance imposed by the EU in early 2020 go well in line with the policies, practices, and decisions of the occupation in October 2021 against Palestinian NGOs and are yet another testament to this kind of pressure policy that can lead to ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in their own home.

This is why the occupation invents ties and fabricates links between “terrorism” and culture, forming fierce campaigns led by Zionist lobbies in the media, demanding an end to what it calls the indirect “financing of Palestinian terrorism,” which constitutes a burden for the backers and financiers of any cultural activity.

Through this dirty game, the occupation attempts to don the robe of the “classy, music-connoisseur intellectual,” the defender of the bastion of civilization against the barbarians.

The occupation has understood that culture, with its many building blocks, is a (political) power that goes hand in hand in the fight alongside another kind of political power (the military), and this is what the occupation dreads. The occupation would love nothing else than to have the Palestinians remain within the confines of military power (the occupation in the “legitimate” uniform of its soldiers – against the “terrorist” Palestinian without an official uniform) because it is easy to attack this kind of power and promote a negative image of the Palestinians. The occupation has invested billions of dollars across the decades in crystallizing this image in order to weaken the other forms of power in the Palestinian’s possession.

Although the occupation reiterates in all international events and before donor states always that Palestinians (in ’67 occupied Palestine) teach their children to be “anti-Semitic” and anti-“Israel”, including in their educational programs (the last time was in a hostile question against Palestine in the UK Parliament in July 2020), with the aim of targeting the backers of Palestine’s educational institutions, the persecution in occupied eastern Al-Quds takes on a different form.

The Israeli occupation hasn’t stopped (since the expulsion of half of the Palestinian people back in 1948) using violent “solutions” against Palestinians, not even sparing cultural leaders, such as poets and writers including the grand uncle of Shadi Khoury the late poet and writer Kamal Butros Nasser in April 1973. In Palestine, cultural counter-hegemony is considered an “act of terror”, whereas the “moralists” of the West call for arming Ukrainians to defend their country against the Russians. Stop looking for “double standards” and start looking for hidden intentional brutality unless we choose to establish yet another mental health global hospital to treat “Western” hypocrites. If we do, we won’t be asking the EU for funding.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

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The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People – Book Review

September 22, 2022 

The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People, by  Walter Russell Mead. (Photo: Book Cover)

By Jim Miles

(The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People.  Walter Russell Mead.  Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2022.)

In today’s world, a clear understanding of the relationship between the US and Israel is important – this is not the work to clear it up. Walter Mead’s hypothesis is that Israel does not control US governance, but that many other forces have shaped the relationship. With that, he is correct and in an overly long convoluted manner he is able to make that sort of clear. “The Arc of the Covenant,” for the arguments presented could have been well worked in half of its almost six hundred pages.

Instead, the book is a mix of theology, sociology, geopolitics, domestic politics, history, and biographical analysis of – mostly – various presidents of the US It really succeeds with none of them. It contains far too much theorizing and conjecture, discusses at length beliefs and morals, and has far too many unanswered rhetorical questions (okay, rhetorical questions really seek no answer, but there are far too many of them). The reader will not come away with a good understanding of Israel as the vast majority of the discussion is centered on US political maneuvering.

To his credit Mead is quite critical of many US failures around the world but mostly in the Middle East. Unfortunately that comes from a perspective, unstated but implied, that the US is the indispensable nation and acts with good intentions because of its moral strength and liberal beliefs. He does use “exceptionalism” frequently, implied or directly, giving support to the thought that Mead, without stating it directly, is a firm believer in the US being the world’s global policeman, “by the courageous use of necessary force.”

Omissions

There are far too many problems with the arguments presented in this work to counter them here, but it is what is missing that makes the arguments so weak.

While he discusses “national interests” and the ability of the US to use force to maintain peace (a lot of an oxymoron) he never discusses the US as an empire. Certainly the evil Russians and Chinese, and before World War I the Germans, Russian, and Ottomans were all the cause of that war as contending empires. British, French, Dutch, and other European empires are mentioned in passing, but he does not accept, or will not articulate, that the US is the largest empire the world has seen – militarily and economically, the two going hand in glove.

The massive 750 military bases around the world, mostly surrounding Russia and China, and that ability to use the global reserve currency, the petro-dollar (never mentioned in the book although oil is continually mentioned as a strategic value) and its associated institutions (WTO, BIS, World Bank, SWIFT et al) to impose destructive sanctions on countries that do not abide by its wishes is the modern form of imperialism.

He reiterates several times the US role in decolonization without recognition that it was the US that denied Vietnam its fair and democratic elections, denied Korea the right to vote for its post war government, created the CIA with its initial successes overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala in 1953. He admits US errors in Iraq, Libya, and – well not quite Syria, it was the “brutal” Russians that destroyed Syria, even while US forces remain in large parts of the country to this day. There is no mention of Operation Gladio, the occupation of Japan and Germany that continues today, nor the seemingly endless list of interventions to overthrow unfriendly regimes either through economic or military power.

Israel

When it comes to discussing Israel there are equally large omissions. A reasonable essay on Herzl’s machinations is given, but after that, he generally uses only passing mention of Israel’s settlements and the wall as the main components of Palestinian strife. He accepts that some people think of Israel as a “colonial-settler” enterprise but dismisses that thought as being on the radical left and of little importance.

He dismisses the idea that Israel is a racist (actually he never mentions that with Israel) and an apartheid state. The book is recent enough that the author is surely aware of the major institutional labels of Israel as apartheid, including Israel’s own B’etselem.

Nor does he get into the details of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people as an ongoing process. The many discriminatory laws and policies, house destructions, the imprisonment, and the torture as an everyday occurrence of Palestinian life are never considered.

At the same time, Mead does not create a coherent history of Israel. In his concluding remarks Mead states, “….for both Israelis and Palestinians, two peoples whose fates have become intertwined in ways that neither side wanted or foresaw.” This is absolutely not true, as Jabotinsky, Herzl, Weismann, Ben Gurion and others – including most of the British political establishment – knew that depositing Jewish immigrants on land owned by Palestinians was a source of major problems as obviously the Palestinians recognized it as well.

He continues with “their private quarrel must be fought out in the glare of global publicity.” That at least is good news, as the balance of power, out of sight of global publicity, hugely puts Israel in a dominating position.

Finally he concludes “I have tried to shine a useful light on the relationship between the ways Americans think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it.” Mission not accomplished as per the errors and omissions mentioned above among many others.

Current Events

“The Arc of a Covenant” was published shortly before the Russian invasion in Ukraine to prevent the ongoing shelling of the Donbas people by Ukrainian forces. Since then, it is clearly demonstrated that the “prime directive” (p. 13) of the US empire is the destruction of the Russian state and the containment of the power of China.

We are entering a new era where “the ways American think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it” are clearly global dominance through financial and military means. All the purported values and morals are worthless when the true history of US imperial adventures are understood.

– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles.  His interest in this topic stems originally from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.

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Battle of Naalan mountain: one town’s fight against the full might of the Israeli settler project

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022 

The small town of Mazraa Qabaliya in the northern West Bank is fighting the Israeli military and armed settlers to protect a resource that is both revered and essential to their community — Naalan mountain.

JAAFAR LADADWEH, 55 AND YOUSEF ALI LOOKING AT THE SETTLEMENTS ACROSS FROM NAALAN, SEPTEMBER 2022. (PHOTO: MARIAM BARGHOUTI/MONDOWEISS)

Source

By Mariam Barghouti

On October 26, 2018, the small town of Mazraa Qabaliya just 11 km northwest of Ramallah witnessed a brutal assault by Israeli settlers and their military vanguard. 

As Palestinian men gathered for Friday prayers under a cluster of brown and green leadtrees, they were met with teargas from the Israeli military in tandem with an organized attack by armed Israeli settlers. Youth responded by hurling stones back at the settlers and soldiers.

“It was a bloodbath that day,” Jaafar Ladadweh, 55, recalled to Mondoweiss almost four years later on the same Naalan mountaintop where two men were fatally shot.

Two Palestinians from the village were shot — Othman Ahmad Ladadweh, 33, was hit in the thigh and died that Friday evening, while Mohammad Ibrahim Shreiteh, 28, was shot in the head, succumbing to his wounds almost two weeks later, on November 10, 2018. More than a dozen were injured with live bullets while dozens more were injured with teargas and rubber bullets.

THE VIEW FROM NAALAN MOUNTAIN OVERLOOKING ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS IN THE NORTH OF THE WEST BANK. (PHOTO: MARIAM BARGHOUTI/MONDOWEISS)

Guardians of the mountain: ‘we must keep the light on’

The confrontations in Naalan would intensify in 2018. Protests were being held in tandem with the Great March of Return in Gaza, where Palestinians marched every Friday in the thousands to protest the Gaza siege and its population of 2 million people. 

Like the Israeli military response to Palestinian unarmed protest in Gaza, the youth and residents of Mazraa were met with lethal force — mostly live ammunition. 

Four years later, the sunset from the top of Naalan mountain is calm and the air is crisp, with a breeze reminiscent of Ramallah’s windy evenings. The contrast of the dying colors of orange, red, yellow, and purple blue with a darker sky and almost yellow full moon commands appreciation. 

Under September’s full harvest moon, a group of 11 men gather on plastic chairs and wooden benches they have set up over the years, to revive the mountain and maintain it.

“We all take turns making sure there is electricity extended and that the lights on this mountain are on at all times, to make sure there is a sign of life here” Ahmad Obeid, 62, says with a smile. 

Eager and passionate about sharing their story of successfully holding on to their homes, Obeid points at one of the flickering lights hanging from a treehouse they had built months ago to encourage visitors to come and help protect the mountain from settler takeover.

“We must keep the light on,” Obeid said, his tone passionate. “We must keep the light on here on the mountain at all times. Once it’s off, know that something is wrong, that there has been an attack,” he said to Mondoweiss. 

POSTER WITH THE IMAGES OF TWO MARTYRS KILLED DURING MILITARY AND SETTLER ATTACKS ON OCTOBER 26, 2018, HANGING IN THE COMMUNITY OFFICE AT THE TOP OF NAALAN MOUNTAIN. MOHAMMAD SHREITEH, 28, ON THE LEFT, AND OTHMAN LADADWEH, 33, ON THE RIGHT. (PHOTO: MARIAM BARGHOUTI/MONDOWEISS)

Abandoned by parties and actors that are supposedly responsible, including the Palestinian Authority (PA), the mountain was nurtured and developed through the power of community initiatives and youth volunteers. 

Through collective conversations, the village of Mazraa Qabaliya organized itself into committees to renovate, preserve, and document the archeological artifacts that sprawl across and inside the mountain. 

“When we pray here, you would find settlers coming to also pray,” Ali Shreiteh, 54, told Mondoweiss. Shreiteh had been documenting the historical significance and archeological richness that is hidden across the mountain top, from Roman wells to centuries-old antiques. 

Over the past four years, organized settler visits and attacks on the site in coordination with Israeli army have intensified. These visits seek to establish a presence on the land, which in turn would create a justification for the annexation and forcible takeover of Palestinian lands by judicial decree. 

Yet, these sinister practices do not occur in isolation. They are embedded in, and enforced through, broader Israeli policies denying Palestinians ability to use their resources and lands for growth and building of healthy and unified communities.

ISRAELI FORCES ARREST AN UNARMED PALESTINIAN DURING CONFRONTATIONS IN 2018. (PHOTO: MOHAMMAD SHREITEH)

Greenlighting ethnic cleansing in Area B

Naalan mountain is located in Mazraa Qabaliya, a town known for its agricultural produce and capacity for sustainable water infrastructure. 

Mazraa Qabaliya and its Naalan mountain are also categorized as “Area B” under the Oslo Accords, which places them under the civic and administrative control of the PA and military control of Israeli army. This power vacuum, combined with the lack of foreign support, has meant that the town residents have had to take it upon themselves to counter the continuous impunity for armed Israeli aggressions and organized settler crimes.

Since the growth of settlement expansion to Areas B in 2017, added to the peak in settler violence in 2018, the townspeople have directed their efforts to ensure that Naalan mountain remains vibrant and accessible to Palestinians. This has largely only been possible through constant confrontation whereby Palestinians must face armed settlers and soldiers with either their voice, their bodies, or the hurling of stones — a crime punishable by up to 10 years under Israeli military regulations.

“They want to take this mountain by any means, even if it is fabricating a historical association with it,” Yousef Ali, 45, told Mondoweiss. 

NAALAN MOUNTAIN, 2018 (PHOTO: MOHAMMAD SHREITEH)

ccording to the Oslo Accords, settlers expanding to Area B are not only in violation of international law, but also Israeli law. The clandestine manner in which Israel takes over lands has been well-documented, but with little repercussions. In 2018, former US president Barack Obama was reportedly “shocked” at the systemic nature of Israeli settlements and their fragmentation of Palestinians from one another. 

This settler expansion has been devastating to Palestinian farmers. Already economically deprived of more than 63% of the most fertile and grazing land as well as agricultural resources in Area C, farmers in Mazraa Qabaliya and the rest of Area B are restricted by Israeli veto power over building and constructing water wells and drilling into reservoirs or springs.  

The wells around the Naalan mountain top could provide the community with the resources that would allow for sustainability and income generation in the face of the economic depression plaguing Palestinian communities.  In fact, the families and communities near Naalan have renovated some old wells, but the energies of the townspeople continue to be occupied mainly with surviving and confronting Israeli efforts to takeover their lands for the purpose of expanding illegal settlements.

In this way, not only are settlements furthering Israeli theft and abuse of natural resources, but are also impeding Palestinian capacities to develop what resources they have.

ISRAELI SETTLERS MARCHING WITH MILITARY PROTECTION ON NAALAN MOUNTAIN. (PHOTO: SHREITEHPHOTO)

In contrast, illegal Israeli settlers are not only provided with Israeli court-ordered military force as protection, but also governmental financial support from the “Settlement Division” of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) to help link agricultural and natural resource networks with a growing physical settler infrastructure..

In June and July of this year, the WZO declared plans to invest additional $ 8.5 million USD in connecting and legitimizing illegal outposts in the West Bank, a policy pushed forward by former Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet. And not only are settlements expanding but they are even creeping towards Area B of the West Bank also in violation of the Oslo Accords.

What this adds up to is that Palestinian communities lack nearly any form of financial, legal, emotional, or logistical support in their efforts to defend their land while Israeli settlers are provided with international impunity, constant and growing economic funding, as well as protection from its military, one of the most advanced in the world. 

Call for solidarity

With what little remains, Palestinian towns and villages are constantly attempting to salvage what they have been able to hold onto in the face of a increasingly emboldened settler population, which maintains a strong hold on military power and international public opinion.

As Palestinian communities attempt to safeguard their communities from settler attacks, they are calling on supporters to join them in ensuring that Palestinian lands remain alive with Palestinian lives. “Just come be with us, build with us, bring nothing but will and joy,” Ladadweh says as the evening fades into darkness, as an LED lightbulb flickers behind him. 

In that moment, words from earlier in the evening seemed to hang in the air and resonate with the 11 men firmly planted at the top of Naalan mountain: “the light must stay on.”