Barcelona mayor Ada Colau announces that the European metropolis will put all institutional relations with Israel on hold. (Photo: Lyle Hausman, Supplied)
– 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 iswww.ramzybaroud.net
A succession of events starting in Barcelona, Spain, in February, and followed in Liège, Belgium, and Oslo, Norway, in April sent a strong message to Israel: The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is alive and well.
In Barcelona, the city’s Mayor canceled a twinning agreement with the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. The decision was not an impulsive one, although Ada Colau is well-known for her principled positions on many issues. It was, however, an outcome of a fully democratic process, initiated by a proposal submitted by left-wing parties at the city council.
A few weeks after the decision was made, specifically on February 8, a pro-Israeli legal organization known as The Lawfare Project, announced its intentions to file a lawsuit against Colau because she, supposedly, “acted beyond the scope of her authority”.
The Lawfare Project meant to communicate a message to other city councils in Spain, and the rest of Europe, that there will be serious legal repercussions to boycotting Israel. To the organization’s – and Israel’s – big surprise, however, other cities quickly advanced their own boycott procedures. They include the Belgian city of Liège and Norway’s capital city, Oslo.
Liège’s local leadership did not try to conceal the reasons behind their decision. The city council, it was reported, had decided to suspend relations with the Israeli authorities for running a regime “of apartheid, colonization and military occupation”. That move was backed by a majority vote at the council, proving once more that the pro-Palestinian moral stance was fully compliant with a democratic process.
Oslo is a particularly interesting case. It was there that the ‘peace process’ resulted in the Oslo Accords in 1993, which ultimately divided the Palestinians while giving Israel a political cover to continue with its illegal practices, while claiming that it has no peace partner.
But Oslo is no longer committed to the empty slogans of the past. In June 2022, the Norwegian government declared its intention of denying the label “Made in Israel” to goods produced in illegal Israeli Jewish settlements in Occupied Palestine.
Though Jewish settlements are illegal under international law, Europe did not mind doing business – in fact, lucrative business – with these colonies over the years. In November 2019, the European Court of Justice, however, resolved that all goods produced in “Israel-occupied areas” had to be labeled as such, so as not to mislead consumers. The Court’s decision was a watered-down version of what Palestinians had expected: a complete boycott, if not of Israel as a whole, at least of its illegal settlements.
However, the decision still served a purpose. It provided yet another legal base for boycott, thus empowering pro-Palestine civil society organizations, and reminding Israel that its influence in Europe is not as limitless as Tel Aviv wants to believe.
The most that Israel could do in response is to issue angry statements, along with haphazard accusations of anti-Semitism. In August 2022, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt requested a meeting with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, during the former’s visit to Israel. Lapid refused. Not only did such arrogance make a little difference in Norway’s stance on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but it also opened yet more margins for pro-Palestinian activists to be more proactive, leading to Oslo’s decision in April to ban imports of goods made in illegal settlements.
The BDS movement explained, on its website, the meaning of Oslo’s decision: “Norway’s capital … announced that it will not trade in goods and services produced in areas that are illegally occupied in violation of international law.” In practice, this means that Oslo’s “procurement policy will exclude companies that directly or indirectly contribute to Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise – a war crime under international law.”
Keeping these rapid developments in mind, The Lawfare Project would now have to expand its legal cases to include Liège, Oslo and an ever-growing list of city councils that are actively boycotting Israel. But, even then, there are no guarantees that the outcome of such litigations will serve Israel in any way. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true.
A case in point was the recent decision by the cities of Frankfurt and Munich in Germany to cancel music concerts of pro-Palestinian rock and roll legend, Roger Waters, as part of his ‘This is Not a Drill’ tour. Frankfurt justified its decision by branding Waters as “one of the world’s most well-known anti-Semites”. The bizarre and unfounded claim was rejected outright by a German civil court which, on April 24, ruled in favor of Waters.
Indeed, while a growing number of European cities are siding with Palestine, those who side with Israeli apartheid find it difficult to defend or even maintain their position, simply because the former predicate their stances on international law, while the latter on twisted and convenient interpretations of anti-Semitism.
What does all of this mean for the BDS movement?
In an article published in Foreign Policy magazine last May, Steven Cook reached a hasty conclusion that the BDS movement “has already lost”, because, according to his inference, efforts to boycott Israel have made no impact “in the halls of government”.
While BDS is a political movement that is subject to miscalculations and mistakes, it is also a grassroots campaign that labors to achieve political ends through incremental, measured changes. To succeed over time, such campaigns must first engage ordinary people on the street, activists at universities, in houses of worship, etc., all done through calculated, long-term strategies, themselves devised by local and national civil society collectives and organizations.
BDS continues to be a success story, and the latest critical decisions made in Spain, Belgium and Norway attest to the fact that grassroots efforts do pay dividends.
There is no denying that the road ahead is long and arduous. It will certainly have its twists, turns and, yes, occasional setbacks. But this is the nature of national liberation struggles. They often come at a high cost and great sacrifice. But, with popular resistance at home and growing international support and solidarity abroad, Palestinian freedom should, in fact, be possible.
A succession of events starting in Barcelona, Spain, in February, and followed in Liège, Belgium, and Oslo, Norway, in April sent a strong message to Israel: The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is alive and well.
In Barcelona, the city’s Mayor canceled a twinning agreement with the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. The decision was not an impulsive one, although Ada Colau is well-known for her principled positions on many issues. It was, however, an outcome of a fully democratic process initiated by a proposal submitted by left-wing parties at the city council.
A few weeks after the decision was made, specifically on February 8, a pro-Israeli legal organization known as The Lawfare Project, announced its intentions to file a lawsuit against Colau because she supposedly “acted beyond the scope of her authority.”
The Lawfare Project was meant to communicate a message to other city councils in Spain, and the rest of Europe, that there will be serious legal repercussions to boycotting Israel. To the organization’s – and Israel’s – big surprise, however, other cities quickly advanced their own boycott procedures. They include the Belgian city of Liège and Norway’s capital city, Oslo.
Liège’s local leadership did not try to conceal the reasons behind their decision. The city council, it was reported, had decided to suspend relations with the Israeli authorities for running a regime “of apartheid, colonization and military occupation.” That move was backed by a majority vote at the council, proving once more that the pro-Palestinian moral stance was fully compliant with a democratic process.
Oslo is a particularly interesting case. It was there that the ‘peace process’ resulted in the Oslo Accords in 1993, which ultimately divided the Palestinians while giving Israel a political cover to continue with its illegal practices while claiming that it has no peace partner.
But Oslo is no longer committed to the empty slogans of the past. In June 2022, the Norwegian government declared its intention to deny the label “Made in Israel” to goods produced in illegal Israeli Jewish settlements in Occupied Palestine.
Though Jewish settlements are illegal under international law, Europe did not mind doing business – in fact, lucrative business – with these colonies over the years. In November 2019, the European Court of Justice, however, resolved that all goods produced in “Israel-occupied areas” had to be labeled as such so as not to mislead consumers. The Court’s decision was a watered-down version of what Palestinians had expected: a complete boycott, if not of Israel as a whole, at least of its illegal settlements.
However, the decision still served a purpose. It provided yet another legal base for boycott, thus empowering pro-Palestine civil society organizations and reminding Israel that its influence in Europe is not as limitless as Tel Aviv wants to believe.
The most that Israel could do in response is to issue angry statements, along with haphazard accusations of anti-Semitism. In August 2022, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt requested a meeting with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid during the former’s visit to Israel. Lapid refused. Not only did such arrogance make a little difference in Norway’s stance on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but it also opened yet more margins for pro-Palestinian activists to be more proactive, leading to Oslo’s decision in April to ban imports of goods made in illegal settlements.
The BDS movement explained, on its website, the meaning of Oslo’s decision: “Norway’s capital … announced that it will not trade in goods and services produced in areas that are illegally occupied in violation of international law.” In practice, this means that Oslo’s “procurement policy will exclude companies that directly or indirectly contribute to Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise – a war crime under international law.”
Keeping these rapid developments in mind, The Lawfare Project would now have to expand its legal cases to include Liège, Oslo and an ever-growing list of city councils that are actively boycotting Israel. But, even then, there are no guarantees that the outcome of such litigations will serve Israel in any way. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true.
A case in point was the recent decision by the cities of Frankfurt and Munich in Germany to cancel music concerts of pro-Palestinian rock and roll legend Roger Waters as part of his ‘This is Not a Drill’ tour. Frankfurt justified its decision by branding Waters as “one of the world’s most well-known anti-Semites.” The bizarre and unfounded claim was rejected outright by a German civil court which, on April 24, ruled in favor of Waters.
Indeed, while a growing number of European cities are siding with Palestine, those who side with Israeli apartheid find it difficult to defend or even maintain their position simply because the former predicate their stances on international law, while the latter on twisted and convenient interpretations of anti-Semitism.
What does all of this mean for the BDS movement?
In an article published in Foreign Policy magazine last May, Steven Cook reached a hasty conclusion that the BDS movement “has already lost”, because, according to his inference, efforts to boycott Israel have made no impact “in the halls of government.”
While BDS is a political movement that is subject to miscalculations and mistakes, it is also a grassroots campaign that labors to achieve political ends through incremental, measured changes. To succeed over time, such campaigns must first engage ordinary people on the street, activists at universities, in houses of worship, etc., all done through calculated, long-term strategies, themselves devised by local and national civil society collectives and organizations.
BDS continues to be a success story, and the latest critical decisions made in Spain, Belgium and Norway attest to the fact that grassroots efforts do pay dividends.
There is no denying that the road ahead is long and arduous. It will certainly have its twists, turns and, yes, occasional setbacks. But this is the nature of national liberation struggles. They often come at a high cost and great sacrifice. But, with popular resistance at home and growing international support and solidarity abroad, Palestinian freedom should, in fact, be possible.
لندع لغيرنا أن يلبس القفازات في مقاربته لما يجري. ولسنا أصلاً في وارد التماثل مع إعلام العدو الذي صار، عقداً بعد عقد، أكثر ارتباطاً بالمؤسسة الحاكمة، وأكثر خضوعاً للرقابة العسكرية التي لم تعد تكتفي بمنع ما تعتبره تهديداً أمنياً، بل صارت تتصرف وفق منطق الرقيب الذي نعرفه نحن العرب جيداً. علماً أن العدو لم يجد بعد علاجاً لمعضلة النشر العشوائي على مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي، فتراه يتكل على «وطنية» الشعب الذي لا يورط بلاده في أزمة، في انتظار أن يصدر تشريع يجرم من يقول ما لا يجب قوله.
ما حصل أمس لم يكن مفاجئاً لكل من هو عارف أو منخرط في الصراع المفتوح بين محور المقاومة والعدو. فكرة القيام بعمليات ضد العدو انطلاقاً من لبنان، ليست مرتبطة بجدول أعمال من يعيشون على هامش الأحداث الجوهرية في المنطقة والعالم. وإسرائيل أكثر من يعرف الأمر ويعي خطورته. شكل القصف الذي استهدف نهاراً وليلاً مستوطنات العدو في الجليل الغربي أو في إصبع الجليل، ربما لم يكن في حسابات كثيرين، ومن بينهم جهات في كيان الاحتلال. لكن التوقيت كان متوقعاً في ظل لعبة الاختبار التي يقوم بها العدو من خلال عمليات الاستفزاز في القدس المحتلة. وأكثر ما يجعل بعض أركان العدو، وعواصم أجنبية ودولاً عربية، وقوى كثيرة في لبنان، لا يضعون في حساباتهم احتمال انخراط الساحة اللبنانية في الصراع، هم الذين لا يزالون يحسبون الأمور وفق مقاس ما يعرف بالضغط الداخلي على حزب الله نتيجة الأزمات القائمة في لبنان. حتى أن بعض أصحاب هذه النظرية، اعتبروا أن الاتفاق السعودي – الإيراني سيكون له تأثيره لجهة تجميد الجبهة اللبنانية، كما كان هناك من اعتبر أو قرأ تفاهم الترسيم البحري على أنه بوابة الهدوء المفتوح على الجبهة الشمالية لكيان الاحتلال.
ببساطة شديدة، ما قام عشية معركة سيف القدس وبعدها، أنهى مرحلة من التنسيق الموضعي بين القوى المنخرطة في مقاومة الاحتلال. وانطلق بعدها قطار كبير يصل عواصم بمدن ومحاور تغطي العالم العربي كله، وهو قطار مفتوح لمن هو قادر على تحمل المسؤولية وكلفة الانخراط في معركة كبيرة ستقود حتماً إلى المواجهة المنتظرة التي يراهن أهل الأرض على أنها ستنهي كيان الاحتلال تماماً.
قبل أربعة عقود، قال كثيرون، من قصيري النظر والممتنعين عن تحمل المسؤولية والمتخاذلين والمنخرطين في مشروع العدو، إن العصر الإسرائيلي ثبت نفسه بعد غزو بيروت عام 1982. بعدها بعقد، اعتبر هؤلاء أنفسهم، بعد التسوية مع قيادة منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية واتفاق أوسلو المشؤوم، أن لا جدوى من مقاومة الاحتلال. ورفضوا الإقرار بالنتائج التي تدحرجت من تحرير العام 1985 إلى انتفاضة العام 1987 وصولاً إلى صمود المقاومة في لبنان وفلسطين وانتصاراتها بين العامين 1992 و1997، وصولاً إلى تحرير العام 2000 في لبنان، والعام 2005 في غزة، وصمود العام 2006. مع ذلك، فإن الجميع بات يعرف أن المقاومة ليست فقط ذات جدوى فحسب، بل هي قادرة على حماية منجزاتها، وتتقدم خطوات كبيرة صوب الهدف الأكبر. وبالتالي، على من يعتقد أن الحديث عن التحرير الكامل لفلسطين ضرب من الجنون، أن يهدأ قليلاً ويعيد النظر في كل ما جرى خلال أربعة عقود، ليعرف أن الحلم ليس مستحيلاً.
ولأن الحلم ليس مستحيلاً، يجب توفير عناصر النجاح والقوة الكافية له، وهذا ما استوجب المساعي الهائلة التي حصلت في الأعوام الأخيرة نحو توحيد السياسات الاستراتيجية، السياسية والأمنية، في مواجهة العدو. وهو ما فتح الباب أمام ورشة ضخمة تعمل من دون توقف لترسيخ قواعد هذا التحالف. والأمر يرتبط أيضاً بالتجارب المباشرة، وهو ما يحصل من خلال المواجهات المفتوحة عسكرياً وأمنياً مع العدو في أكثر من ساحة.
وعليه، فإن فكرة توحيد الساحات والجبهات لم تعد شعاراً يعمل لتثبيت قواعده بصورة عملانية، بل صار إمكانية متاحة، والعدو هو أكثر جهة على وجه الكرة الأرضية تعرف حقيقة ما يجري. وكل نشاطه الأمني والاستخباراتي والتعاون السياسي القائم بينه وبين دول عربية وغربية، وكل أنشطته العدوانية، تعكس فهمه الدقيق لهذه الحقيقة. لكن، ثمة خطوات يقوم بها العدو تبدو خارج الحسابات المنطقية. والمقصود، هنا، ليس انتقاصاً من مهنية مؤسساته السياسية أو العسكرية أو الأمنية، لكنه يشعر أنه بات محشوراً في زاوية لا يمكنه التعامل معها بصمت أو بتقييد نفسه، ولذلك يصبح مضطراً لاجتراح حلول لأزمته، وغالباً ما يلجأ إلى القوة التي تمثل عنصراً مركزياً في بنائه العام، ويندفع إلى اعتداءات تفرض معادلات جديدة.
توحيد الساحات والجبهات لم يعد شعاراً يعمل لتثبيت قواعده بل صار إمكانية متاحة والعدو أكثر من يعرف حقيقة ما يجري
الحاصل منذ عامين حتى الآن، أن العدو يحاول كسر الحلقة التي تجمع قوى وعواصم محور المقاومة. لكنه يعرف أن الحسابات باتت تقيده في كثير من الساحات. وفي معركة «وحدة الساحات» التي خاضتها حركة الجهاد الإسلامي، كان العدو حريصاً على عدم القيام بأي عمل من شأنه جر حركة حماس إلى المواجهة. وكما فعل في «سيف القدس»، بأن تجنب أي خطوة غير محسوبة في الجبهة الشمالية لعدم فتح الباب أمام حزب الله للقيام بعمل كبير مساند للمقاومة في فلسطين، فهو يلجأ إلى خيارات العمل الأمني في ساحات مثل لبنان وإيران، لكنه يتكل على «عقدة قائمة» على الجبهة السورية، ما يتيح له توجيه ضربات تلو أخرى، لا تعطل برنامج محور المقاومة، وإن كانت تتسبب بإزعاج، وتتحول عنصر ضغط على القيادة السورية. ومع ذلك، لم يحقق العدو الأهداف التي يريدها.
عملياً، نحن أمام مستوى جديد من تشابك أذرع قوى المقاومة في المنطقة. ما حصل أمس، هو إشارة عملانية إلى أن الجبهة الشمالية، بقضها وقضيضها، مستعدة لخوض المعركة بكل ما تتطلبه إذا تجاوز العدو حدوداً معينة، سواء في القدس أو أمكنة أخرى. وهو لمس، طوال الساعات الماضية، أن الاستعداد لم يعد هذه المرة يقصر على ساحة. وهو أبدى خشيته، للمرة الأولى، من أن يشارك اليمن في الحرب، وأن يعمد أنصار الله إلى توجيه ضربات ذات طابع استراتيجي إذا تطلب الأمر، كما يعرف أن قادة حماس والجهاد الإسلامي في بيروت الآن، وسمع إسماعيل هنية وزياد النخالة يتحدثان عن جاهزية مقاتلي الحركتين في كل أماكن تواجدهم، وليس في الساحة الفلسطينية فحسب، كما يدرك أن حزب الله لن يقبل أي تهديد، وسمع ما قاله رئيس المجلس التنفيذي في حزب الله السيد هاشم صفي الدين من أن القدس ليست وحيدة في المعركة. وحتى الرسالة التي وصلت بطريقة ملتبسة حول احتمال لجوء العدو إلى اغتيال قياديين من حماس في لبنان، بعد تحميل الحركة المسؤولية عن القصف الصاروخي، فإن الجواب عليها كان باستعادة كلام الأمين العام لحزب الله السيد حسن نصرالله الذي سبق أن حذر من أن المساس بأي مقاوم على الأراضي اللبنانية، بمعزل عن جنسيته، ستعده المقاومة عدواناً مباشراً عليها، وسترد عليه بقسوة وبسرعة، وحتى إن قرر العدو توجيه ضربات موضعية ضد لبنان، فهو يعرف أن الموضعي هنا، يعني اللاشيء، أما إذا تعرض أمن سكان جنوب لبنان لأي نوع من الخطر، فسيكون هناك رد من جانب المقاومة…
منذ أسابيع، تلقى العدو كل ما يلزم من إشارات إلى أن الجبهة المواجهة له متأهبة لخوض أعنف المعارك، وعلى أكثر من ساحة، وبأكثر من مستوى، وما على العدو إلا النظر إلى أوضاعه الداخلية، وإلى حالة الانتفاضة القائمة أو الكامنة في فلسطين التاريخية، وفي جوارها الساخن، وبيده القرار: إما يستسلم للوقائع الجديدة، أو يسير إلى حتفه بقدميه!
Some readers were unimpressed when I excitedly shared the news on social media that Indonesia had refused to host the Israeli team as part of the Under-20 World Cup, scheduled from May 20 to June 11 in Indonesian cities.
Though any news related to Palestine and Israel often generates two sharply different kinds of responses, the latest act of Indonesian solidarity with the Palestinian people failed to impress even some pro-Palestine activists in the West. Their rationale had nothing to do with Palestine or Israel but the Indonesian government’s own human rights record.
This supposed dichotomy is as omnipresent as it is problematic. Some of the most genuine acts of solidarity with the Palestinians – or other oppressed nations in the Global South – tend to occur in other Southern nations and governments. But since the latter are frequently accused of poor human rights records by Western governments and West-based rights groups, these gestures of solidarity are often questioned as lacking substance.
Aside from the weaponization of human rights – and democracy – by Western governments, some of the concerns about human rights violations are worth a pause: can those who do not respect the rights of their own people be trusted to champion the rights of others?
THE LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS
Though intellectually intriguing, the argument, and the question, lack self-awareness, reek of entitlement, and reflect a poor understanding of history.
First, the lack of self-awareness. In the West, advocacy for Palestinian rights is predicated on reaching out, educating and lobbying some of the world’s most destructive colonial and neocolonial powers. This advocacy includes civil engagement with countries that have, for example, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, tormented Africa and continue to subjugate many nations in the Global South.
These Western governments were also the ones who either handed the deed of Palestine – Britain – to the Zionist movement or sustained Israel militarily, financially and politically for generations – the US and others.
Even though little tangible progress has been recorded regarding substantive political shifts away from Israel, we continue to engage with these governments with the hope that a change will come.
Rarely do Western activists make arguments similar to those made against Indonesia – or other Asian, African, Arab or Muslim countries. Personally, never once have I been reminded of the moral conflict of pursuing solidarity from Western governments that have long invested in the oppression of the Palestinian people.
THE ENTITLEMENT
Second, the entitlement. For many years and, particularly since the end of World War II, western governments endeavored to serve the roles of judge, jury and executioner. They drafted international law yet selectively implemented it. They passed the Human Rights Declaration yet selfishly determined who deserves this humanity. They launched wars in the name of defending others, yet left in their wake more death and mayhem than existed prior to these ‘humanitarian interventions.’
Some human rights activists in the West rarely appreciate that their influence is primarily derived from their very geographic position and, more importantly, citizenship. This is why Hannah Arendt rightly argued that individuals could only enjoy human rights once they obtain the right to be citizens of a nation-state. “Human rights lose all their significance as soon as an individual loses her political context,” she wrote in her seminal book, The Right to Have Rights.
Though some activists have paid a heavy price for their genuine solidarity with the Palestinian people, others understand solidarity in purely conceptual terms, without considering the numerous political obstacles and, sometimes, compromises an occupied nation faces.
A protest in Jakarta against Israeli participation in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Indonesia, March 20, 2023. Achmad Ibrahim | AP
The fact that Palestinian civil societies launched the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement in 2005, in that particular order, reflects the awareness among Palestinians that it will take more than individual acts of solidarity to end the Israeli occupation and to dismantle Israeli apartheid. Divestment means that companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation must sever their ties with Israel – even if some of these companies may have questionable practices.
The same logic applies to sanctions, which require a strong political will by governments to ostracize Tel Aviv until it ends its occupation, respects international law and treats Palestinians as equal citizens.
If having a perfect human rights record is a prerequisite for government support, not many countries, if any, will qualify. Oppressed people simply cannot be so entitled, as they do not have the privilege or the leverage to shape a perfectly harmonious global solidarity.
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY
Finally, the need for a better understanding of history. Before the signing of the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian leadership and Israel in 1993, the term ‘human rights’ was an important component of the Palestinian struggle. But it was neither the only nor the main driving force behind the Palestinian quest for freedom. For Palestinians, all aspects of Palestinian resistance, including the pursuit of human rights, were parts of a larger liberation strategy.
Oslo changed all of that. It shunned such terms as resistance and redefined the Palestinian struggle from that of liberation to human rights. As a result, the Palestinian Authority respected its assigned task, and many Palestinians played along simply because they felt they had no other alternative.
Yet, by elevating the human rights discourse, Palestinians were entrapped in entirely Western priorities. Their language, which, in the past, was consistent with revolutionary lessons of anti-colonial movements in the Middle East, Africa and the rest of the Global South, was rejigged to appeal to Western expectations.
This should not suggest that anti-colonial movements did not champion human rights discourses. On the contrary, such lessons were at the core of millions of people’s valiant struggles and sacrifices worldwide. But for them, human rights was not an isolated moral position nor a political stance to be used or manipulated to highlight the moral superiority of the West over the rest or to sanction poor countries, often for the sake of exacting political or economic concessions.
Palestinians care deeply about the human rights of other nations. They ought to because they have experienced firsthand what it means to be stripped of their rights and humanity. But, also, they are in no position, nor should they seek one that would allow them to condition solidarity from others on the West’s politicized human rights agendas.
The settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel is facing unprecedented pressure on at least three fronts: The burden of its own internal contradictions which is taking it on the path to civil war, armed and unarmed Palestinian resistance inside Palestine which is laying bare Zionism’s claim to provide a “land without a people” as a “safe haven” for colonizers, and BDS and awareness efforts in the West, dubbed “Israel’s greatest threat” by the Institute for National Security Studies.
The odds of these three pressure fronts increasing this year and in the coming years is real , and Israel is feeling the heat. How will it counter-attack? And how can a narrative that is solidly anchored in the One Democratic State solution protect our efforts and struggle?
Anticipating Israel’s Counter-Attack to BDS and Other Pro-Palestinian Efforts
When Herzl established the World Zionist Congress in 1897, he and all subsequent Zionist leaders realized that the main obstacle to achieving the goals of Zionism was what to do with local indigenous people of Palestine. The bride (Palestine) was indeed beautiful but she was married to another man (Palestinians), as said to be put succinctly by two visiting Zionists.
This was and remains the main challenge to making Palestine the Jewish state of Israel. In the 1920s, Ben Gurion created a public relations campaign that sought to brilliantly talk about splitting the country, portraying colonialists as peace agents while continuing to take land and displacing Palestinian refugees. This hasbara strategy slowly evolved into the paradigms we see today: Western leaders speak of a two-state “solution” while Zionist leaders continue to advance their colonial project. This delusion over 100 years allowed Israel time to grow its military might, its political power, and to leave Palestinians with access to only 8% of historical Palestine. Yet, this era is coming to an end and a new reality needs to be reckoned with.
Through amazing resilience and despite horrendous efforts to drive them out, half of the Palestinians still live in historic Palestine. Thus, a system of deepening apartheid was needed and developed to control them and even use them as indentured labor to build the Jewish state. Movements seeking real liberation were targeted and principled leaders were assassinated while other (autocratic) leaders were domesticated.
This latter phenomenon of mental colonization was a most troubling aspect of the evolution of the struggle. Out of ignorance or corruption, many Palestinians and other Arab leaders fed the delusion of a political settlement with Zionism even against the most compelling of data. Many Palestinian intellectuals wrote books warning that the trend only strengthens Zionism and colonialism. Indeed, the history of what happened since 1993 proved the warnings were right. Yet, those professing “pragmatism” continued because they had already been colonized mentally and reversal is rare. Many even deepened their ties to neo-liberal and neo-colonial structures. For example, the Palestinian capitalist class strengthened its relationships with its Israeli counterparts.
The trends seen over the past few decades are unmistakable: deepening Israeli hegemony over the Palestinian economy (captive market), more land confiscation, increased human rights violations, destruction of the environment, growth of Israeli colonial settlements, growth of corruption within the (Israel/US approved) leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and increased fascism and racism within Israeli society.
The tragedy is that this was foreseen by many of us and we warned that this is unsustainable. It is understandable that colonizers divide to conquer and that they fight democracy and human rights. Palestine will never be at peace or free without facing these realities and challenging hegemony. The increase in population and increase in access to social media makes it difficult for oppressors to control the narrative. It is becoming more and more difficult to sustain the delusions of so-called “liberal or left Zionists” or of “pragmatic Palestinians”.
Those who hijacked movements cannot also continue to tout the previous liberation struggle as their own. And on the Israeli side, the ascendance of lunatics like Ben Gvir and Smotrich within the apartheid regime should have been sufficient evidence of the failure of trying to accommodate political Zionism.
The attempt of the ultra-right to reshape the judiciary branch of the Zionist regime is an interesting example of the identitarian rift within the colonial society. But regardless of the outcome of this particular issue, this is only a harbinger of deeper issues to surface: Even if the ultra-right is pressured to compromise here, it will only gain strength and proceed to further demands. The recent pogrom in Huwwara forewarns increased attempts at finally “finishing the job Ben Gurion started in 1948”.
The above serves as an indicator of Israel’s possible counter-attack: Domesticating pro-Palestinian efforts by making them compatible with Zionism, as happened with Oslo.
This could take the form of mere “improvements” such as less oppression in the West Bank or less discrimination among Israeli citizens, whereupon it could be argued that Israel’s policies no longer meet the legal definition of occupation or apartheid. This is a moment of truth where we have a choice that is very simple: To identify Zionism’s politicization of identity and its endeavor to establish a state exclusive to Jews as the root cause of injustice and suffering in Palestine and the Middle East, and to put our boycotting and awareness-raising efforts in the context of a political vision that forms the fundamental antithesis to Zionism, that is, a vision that depoliticizes identity and proposes the transition to One Democratic State, from the river to the sea.
Publicly and explicitly rallying around the ODS solution as the objective prevents focusing on Israel’s actions and normalizing with its nature as a sectarian settler-colony, or turning the Palestinian liberation struggle into a mere moral or real estate issue that should be resolved by goodwill. It also prevents the infiltration of Palestinian or pro-Palestinian efforts by so-called “liberal” Zionists who criticize Israel’s practices but are keen on maintaining its existence as a state exclusive to Jews. Remaining focused on the central question of the “Jewish state” versus a “democratic state” further lays bare Zionism’s reality as a settler-colonial entity that can never be a democratizing or a liberating endeavor for Jews or any other.
It ensures we do not get side-tracked by hasbara ‘whataboutist’ tactics and thus giving space for oppression. Activists, allies and potential allies can rally around this call for a transition to democracy and human rights and close our ranks around a political project for genuine liberation and decolonization.
The ODS Initiative: An ODS Tool
Launched by Palestinians and allies, the One Democratic State Initiative describes itself as “a political endeavor that identifies Zionism’s politicization of identity and establishment of a Jewish state as the root cause of suffering and violence in Palestine, and that, accordingly, proposes the transition to a secular, democratic, non-identitarian state in Palestine as the only possible solution. The purpose of the Initiative is thus to mobilize individuals, entities and political parties, in Palestine and abroad, behind such an endeavor.”
The ODS Initiative thus aims at reaching a stage where the main issue, “A democratic state or a Jewish state?”, takes the front stage in the political discourse regarding the occupation and liberation of Palestine. To accomplish this, it is reaching out to Palestinian and pro-Palestinian individuals and groups, as well as to all willing to listen, by means of online campaigns and on-the-ground meetings.
Practical examples include the reporting of the Huwwara rampage and the Aqaba meeting, the commemoration of Baruch Goldstein’s massacre, the displaying of Palestinian art, or sharing of existing material such as Visual Palestine’s infographics, articles by Awad Abdelfattah or videos displaying Zionist racism, all in the context of an ODS solution.
The results so far have been a reach of close to 1.5 million persons, most of whom are in Palestine, over 100,000 of whom have interacted with us and thousands have signed up and shared their contact details as supporters of the One Democratic State solution.
The ODS Initiative has also particularly placed emphasis on reaching out to the several existing ODS movements in a bid to create a collaborative platform that would allow all to work together on specific campaigns and activities.
This includes, for example, putting ODSI sign-ups in contact with local ODS activists or groups, organizing joint events that put well-known ODS supporters in contact with interested ones, co-authoring articles such as this one, or collaboration for the purpose of making use of existing material, such as colonial activities documented by ARIJ.org, and environmental justice issues documented by studies by palestinenature.org, and presenting them in laymen’s terms in Arabic, English and Hebrew.
Would You Take Part?
The first step in any revolutionary endeavor is to build a solid narrative based on facts that challenges existing widespread hasbara/propaganda, that energizes existing activists and activates support for action including boycotts, divestments, and sanctions. Envisioning and working for a better future is certainly along the line of “lighting a candle is better than cursing the darkness.”
We urge Palestinian and pro-Palestinian political movements, media, activists, solidarity groups and celebrities to push forward the One Democratic State solution in their discourse regarding Palestine, its occupation and its liberation. We further invite all those willing to sign up as supporters of the ODS solution and/or to contact us to help build a decentralized yet organized network. The settler-colonial apartheid state will be dismantled, One Democratic State will be established in its stead, and Palestine will be free.
– Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University.
– Alain Alameddine is a member of Lebanese political party Citizens in a State and an activist in the One Democratic State Initiative. They contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
In the interview, Abu Hamza also touched on the general Palestinian situation and the increasing acts of resistance in the West Bank recently.
Abu Hamza said Al-Quds Brigades members will never forget the scene of then-Israeli Chief of Staff, Amnon Shahak, walking among the dead Israeli occupation soldiers at the Beit Lid junction crying
In an exclusive interview for Al Mayadeen Online, the military spokesperson for Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (PIJ), Abu Hamza, revealed the details of the Beit Lid operation in the occupied West Bank.
The Beit Lid operation was carried out on January 22, 1995, and led to the killing of approximately 24 Israeli occupation soldiers, in addition to dozens of injuries.
In the interview, Abu Hamza also touched on the general Palestinian situation and the increasing acts of resistance in the West Bank recently.
He also conveyed strong-worded messages to the Israeli occupation, through Al Mayadeen Online, on the 28th anniversary of the qualitative operation.
Beit Lid… a blow to the core of the “settlement” project
The military spokesperson for Al-Quds Brigades highlighted the political circumstances that preceded the operation, making the need for implementing a large and effective resistance act a dire necessity. The reason is that the Israeli occupation and its allies were making every effort to create and impose a new political reality on occupied Palestine, under the pretexts of making peace and reaching settlements, by trying to turn the ill-fated “Oslo Accords” a fait accompli that the Palestinian people have no other choice but to accept.
The Beit Lid operation came to foil this agreement, and through it, the Islamic Jihad Movement consolidated its adherence to resistance as the only option for the liberation of Palestine. The image was clear: Standing up against the scheme of the so-called “peace” even if it meant that the blood of freedom fighters will be spilled.
On the factors that led the movement to choose the Beit Lid junction in specific to carry out the double operation, Abu Hamza explained that it is an area where a large number of Israeli soldiers usually gather; the same soldiers who terrorize the Palestinian people, and considering that Al-Quds Brigades is committed to a doctrine that demands confronting whoever inflicts terror and evildoings upon the defenseless, proud, and steadfast people, the operation was inevitable.
Abu Hamza continued to say that the Beit Lid operation came out as an achievement at the security level as well, and not just military-wise, as it necessitated bypassing all [Israeli] fortifications, surveillance systems, barriers, and checkpoints, leading to the killing of approximately 24 soldiers and the wounding of dozens.
The military spokesperson recalled that the operation forced the criminal Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, to address the media and say that the members of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine want to kill Israeli soldiers, “so how do you want me to punish them; do I punish them with death? They’re not afraid of it.”
Abu Hamza also said Al-Quds Brigades members will never forget the scene of then-Israeli Chief of Staff, Amnon Shahak, walking among the dead Israeli occupation soldiers at the Beit Lid junction crying.
Palestinian resistance mindset… Creativity in infiltration
When asked about the personality of the leader who supervised the operation and how the two resistance members, Anwar Sukkar and Salah Shakir, were prepared for the operation, as well as getting them to the place where they were supposed to carry out the operation, Abu Hamza said, “We recall here the great leader Mahmoud Al-Khawaja, may Allah shower him with mercy,” who was the leader of ‘Qasam’ – PIJ military wing designation at the time – who supervised the operation himself, all the way from choosing the location until the execution of the operation.
The PIJ military spokesperson also recalled the engineer of the explosive devices, commander Mahmoud Al-Zatma, who oversaw the preparation and processing of the explosive packages carried by the martyrs, as well as martyred leaders Ammar Al-Araj and Ayman Al-Razaina.
Abu Hamza shed light on the role and credit of prisoner Abdul Halim Al-Balbeisi who brought the freedom fighters charged with carrying out the operation to the closest point to the Beit Lid junction.
He stressed that the Islamic Jihad Movement and its military wing dealt a mighty security blow to the occupation, manifested by the two resistance members succeeding in leaving the Gaza Strip, crossing the deployed military checkpoints, inspection and surveillance systems, and cameras, reaching the Beit Lid junction, and sacrificing themselves successively, in an act of unrivaled valor.
Today’s armed confrontations; an extension of yesterday’s modus operandi
Regarding Al-Quds Brigades’ view of the recent growing armed confrontations with the occupation in the West Bank, Abu Hamza explained that this revolutionary approach in the West Bank today is but an extension of these heroic operations and the battles that the Palestinian Resistance and Al-Quds Brigades fought in Jenin during the so-called Israeli “Operation Defensive Shield.”
Abu Hamza, through Al Mayadeen, affirmed that the Islamic Jihad Movement has not and will never abandon resistance, neither in the West Bank nor in the Gaza Strip.
Addressing the shameful paths of normalization pursued by some Arab regimes, and answering a question about whether it is possible for the PIJ to overlook such events, the military spokesperson drew his answer from the memory of the Beit Led operation, saying, “The Islamic Jihad Movement and Al-Quds Brigades thwarted all normalization attempts through our blessed operations and battles of Unity of the Battlefields, Seif Al-Quds, and Firm Structure (Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous), just as we previously foiled all attempts to obliterate the right of the Palestinian people through the course of making ‘settlements’.”
On Beit Lid anniversary… Palestine stands strong, free, and eternal homeland to Palestinians
The interviewer indicated that the Beit Lid operation left an everlasting impact to forever be remembered by the Israeli security establishment, revealing that the Israeli occupation built a monument for its soldiers killed at the site of the operation.
On this point, Abu Hamza said the PIJ codenamed the operation the “Double Missile”, considering that the first attack targeting Israeli soldiers was carried out by Anwar Sukkar at the intersection, followed by a second attack carried out by Salah Shakir after Israeli soldiers gathered at the first explosion site.
“Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, and it is a Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic land. We, in Al-Quds Brigades, can never settle for any Zionist presence on this blessed land, PIJ military spokesperson said, addressing the Israeli enemy.
Abu Hamza stressed that Al-Quds Brigades will work to mobilize all potentials and capabilities at the security, military, political, and public levels and direct them toward the course of liberating this Palestinian land.
Palestine: How did you prove the integration of the fronts?
عندما شكّل نتنياهو حكومته إثر الانتخابات الإسرائيلية الخامسة التي جرت في غضون سنتين وصفت تلك الحكومة بأنها الأكثر تطرفاً في تاريخ حكومات الكيان الصهيوني، خاصة أنّ أعضاءها يتبارون لفظاً وسلوكاً وأعمالاً لإيجاد وتنفيذ خطط تصفية القضية الفلسطينية والنيل من الفلسطينيين في وجودهم وأمنهم ومعيشتهم دون أن يُفسحوا بالمجال لتحقيق أيّ مقدار من حقوقهم، ومعظم الوزراء يتنافسون في ممارسة الوحشية والإجرام واغتصاب حقوق الفلسطينيين من غير وازع او رادع ذاتي او داخلي او إقليمي او دولي. فحكومة نتنياهو الحالية هي عصابة من اليمين المتطرف ومن المتوحّشين الذين لا يقيمون وزناً لحق او كرامة إنسانية.
لقد كان واضحاً منذ اليوم الأول لتشكيل تلك الحكومة انّ هذه الأخيرة اعتمدت «استراتيجية الرعب والقوة المفرطة» لحمل الفلسطينيين على الاستسلام دون أن ينالوا شيئاً من الفتات الذي وُعدوا به في اتفاقات أوسلو، وظنّت تلك الحكومة انّ الإفراط بالعنف والقتل والهدم سيحقق لـ «إسرائيل» ومن غير مقابل، الأمن الذي تدّعي أنه هدفها الاستراتيجي الأول نظراً لارتباطه الفاعل بوجودها واستقرارها واستمرارها.
لكن هذه الحكومة غفلت عن حقيقة كان يجب أن تتنبّه لها، وهي أنّ الشعب الفلسطيني الذي لم تنسِه العقود الثمانية المنصرمة، قضيته ولم يتنازل عن حقوقه رغم كلّ الضغوط، هو اليوم أشدّ تمسكاً بهذه الحقوق وأصلب إرادة وأمضى عزيمة على التصدي والمواجهة. وانّ «صفقة القرن» التي خطها ترامب ودخل فيها بعض العرب لتصفية القضية فشلت في تحقيق المبتغى بعد أن ووجهت بالرفض الفلسطيني المحتضن من قبل محور إقليمي قوي هو محور المقاومة الذي أفشل معظم خطط الصهاينة وأميركا معهم. لذلك كان منطقياً القول إنّ مزيداً من التطرف وممارسة الجرائم بحق الفلسطينيين لن يؤدّي الى الاستسلام بل على العكس تماماً سيؤدّي الى انفجار شعبي مقاوم يجهض آمال المتطرفين ويردّ على جرائمهم بما تستوجب.
وعلى المقلب الصهيوني اليهودي ظهر من الصهاينة من يرفض هذه الحكومة واستراتيجيتها بسبب خشية هؤلاء من ان تتسبّب هذه الحكومة باستفزاز الفلسطينيين ودفعهم لإعادة تزخيم المقاومة وإطلاق انتفاضة ثالثة تتقدّم في أساليبها ومفاعيلها على ما حصل في الانتفاضتين السابقتين، ولذلك خرجت المظاهرات الرافضة لحكومة نتنياهو في أكثر من مكان في فلسطين المحتلة تدعو لإسقاط هذه الحكومة.
لقد كان واضحاً لأصحاب المنطق السليم انّ هذه الحكومة وضعت فلسطين المحتلة والمنطقة أمام واحد من انفجارين او الاثنين معاً: انفجار شعبي فلسطيني مقاوم بكلّ ما أوتي او أتيح للفلسطينيين من قوة للحؤول دون نجاح هذه السلطة الصهيونية المجرمة في ضمّ ما تبقى من فلسطين والإجهاز على آمالهم باستعادة شيء من حقوقهم الوطنية، و/أو انفجار داخلي يتمثل بانفجار الحكومة من الداخل او انفجار صهيوني بوجهها لمنعها من فتح باب الشرّ على «إسرائيل»، وتهديد الكيان في أمنه ووجوده.
بيد أنّ هذه الحكومة لم تعر اهتماماً كما يبدو لتلك المخاوف والهواجس والتوقعات ولم تتأخر في إثبات عدوانيتها ونزعتها الوحشية والإجرامية ضدّ الفلسطينيين، إذ إنها ومن غير سبب مباشر او تبرير مقنع قامت باقتحام مدينة ومخيم جنين في عملية عسكرية وحشية يبدو أن حكومة نتنياهو شاءت منها ان تفتتح استراتيجية ما تسمّيه «الشدة والحزم» لا بل العنف المفرط الذي يزرع الرعب في نفوس الفلسطينيين لردعهم عن أيّ عمل يمسّ او ينتهك ما يسمّى «أمن إسرائيل»، وبالفعل نفذ الاقتحام بأقصى درجات الوحشية والعنف واستهدف الحجر والبشر معاً فهدمت المنازل وقتل وجرح او اعتقل فلسطينيون تجاوزوا في مجموعهم الـ 30 في أقلّ من 48 ساعة انسحبت بعدها قوات العدو مخلّفة وراءها الخسائر تلك وأهمّ منها ما خلّفته من النقمة والغضب الفلسطيني.
لقد ظنّت حكومة نتنياهو الشديدة التطرف أنها نجحت في افتتاح استراتيجية العنف والإجرام المفرط بحق الفلسطينيين، إلا انّ ظنّها خاب وانهار دفعة واحدة وبشكل مدوّ عندما نفذ شاب فلسطيني واحد مسلح بمسدس واحد فقط عملية بطولية انتقامية في شمال القدس المحتلة وعلى بعد أكثر من 100 كلم من جنين، حيث ارتكبت «إسرائيل» مجزرتها وجرائمها، فجاءت عملية البطل خيري علقم صاعقة مدمّرة لكلّ ما توخته «إسرائيل» من جريمتها في جنين. حيث إنّ مقاوماً واحداً استطاع ان يقتل او يجرح أكثر من ١٧ صهيونياً في أقل من 10 دقائق ولم يقوَ عليه أحد إلا بعد أن فرغت مخازن مسدسه من الذخيرة. لكن بعد أن أتمّ العملية البطولية بنجاح كلي مدوّ، العملية التي أحدثت زلزالاً في كيان الصهاينة وجعلتهم يشعرون بالعجز والهوان والذلّ أمام بطولة فلسطيني واحد قتل جدّه بيد صهيوني قبل ٢٥ عاماً أيّ قبل أن يولد بـ 4 سنوات فانتقم له ولشهداء جنين في عملية رسمت صورة بليغة تجهض مزاعم «إسرائيل» عندما قال ارباب الفكر فيها انّ «القضية الفلسطينية سيصفيها الزمن والوقت» حيث «إنّ الكبار يموتون، والصغار ينسون»، فإذا بالمشهد ينقلب خلافاً للظنّ، وانّ موت الكبير لم يترافق مع نسيان الصغير بل سيولد من الأصلاب وفي الأرحام الفلسطينية من هو أشدّ تمسكاً بالحقوق وأقوى مقاومة على استعادتها وأكثر عزيمة على الاستمرار في المواجهة حتى النصر.
لقد أكدت عملية البطل خيري علقم والتي تلتها عمليات أخرى في غضون 42 ساعة نفّذها أبطال آخرون منهم من لم يتجاوز الـ 13 ربيعاً، أكدت هذه العمليات حقائق هامة منها:\
اولا ـ عجز «إسرائيل» عن الوصول الى منظومة الأمن الوقائي الفاعل التي تحول دون تنفيذ مثل هذه العمليات النوعية الفريدة من نوعها، أو تحول دون النجاح في تنفيذها انْ وقعت، حيث تبيّن أنّ الشهيد «خيري» بطل فرد خطط وتجهز وتدرّب وأعدّ واستعدّ وقتل بمفرده وظهر أنه بمثابة «جيش في فرد» عصيّ عن الاكتشاف، عصيّ على المعالجة، وانّ عمليته تلك لا يمكن لأحد في الكون أن يكشفها او يمنعها او يفشلها.
ثانيا ـ فشل مبكر لسياسة حكومة نتنياهو القائمة على «العنف والإجرام المفرط»، أو لما تصحّ تسميته بـ «إرهاب الدولة» الذي تمارسه حكومة نتنياهو، فبدل أن يرتعب الفلسطينيون بعد مجزرة جنين حدث العكس حيث إنّ دماء شهداء جنين وأحجار منازلها شحذت الهمم ودفعت البطل خيري علقم الى الردّ السريع في أقل من 24 ساعة وقتل 9 صهاينة مقابل 9 فلسطينيين قتلهم الإجرام «الإسرائيلي» في جنين.
ثالثا ـ تأكيد وهن ما يُسمّى «أمن إسرائيل» الذي تدّعي حكومة نتنياهو أنه في رأس أولوياتها، ما يستتبع من تفشّي الشعور بالخوف لدى الصهاينة الذين ستتراجع ثقتهم بجيشهم وقواتهم الأمنية التي عجزت عن منع مثل هذه العمليات.
رابعا ـ التأكيد على أنّ الوقت لا يعمل لصالح «إسرائيل» وان مقولة «تصفية القضية بالموت والنسيان» مقولة غير واقعية، كما أنّ مقولة «فرض الاستسلام بالإجرام» مقولة عقيمة في ظلّ إرساء معادلة فلسطينية هامة مفادها «لا جريمة صهيونية بدون عقاب فلسطيني»، ما يعزز الردع الفلسطيني ويعطي زخماً للواقع الذي نشأ بعد معركة سيف القدس.
وبعد هذه الحقائق يبقى أن تستثمر النتائج بدءاً من الساحة الفلسطينية حيث يجب أن يلغى نهائياً التنسيق الأمني، وتتوحد الإرادة الفلسطينية حول المقاومة دون أيّ شأن آخر وتحتضن هذه الإرادة كما هو قائم من قبل محور المقاومة الذي تتحطّم على أسواره موجات العدوان بقيادة أميركية صهيونية.
Israeli soldiers harass Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank. (File photo: via ActiveStills.org)
– Fayha’ Shalash is a Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist. She graduated from Birzeit University in 2008 and she has been working as a reporter and broadcaster ever since. Her articles appeared in several online publications. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
It was a happy moment when Ayed Mazloom was told that he had two whole days to enter his land in the village of Al-Janyeh, near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
Mazloom prepared himself to ‘visit’ his own land located near the settlement of Telmon, which devoured most of the lands of Al-Janyeh village. After hours of waiting for an Israeli permission to enter, he was finally granted access.
“I wasn’t allowed to go there for more than a year, we couldn’t pick olives or plow the land, but we discovered that settlers were stealing the olive harvest from us”, Mazloom said.
After half an hour, a number of Israeli soldiers came and told him that he had to leave the land immediately, under the pretext that the time of his visit was over.
“I was shocked, I didn’t even have time to check the trees or take care of them,” he told The Palestine Chronicle.
“When the soldiers asked me to leave, they told me not to come back the next day because my visiting permit had expired”.
Mazloom’s family lost more than 500 acres after Israel confiscated and seized them due to their proximity to Jewish settlements, not to mention the land that was stolen to build these settlements.
Almost every day, Zubaida Muatan talks to her husband’s doctors about his condition. Abdul Baset Muatan, a 49-year-old prisoner from the city of Ramallah, has suffered from colon cancer for a few years. He was … Continue reading
The Israeli forces have confiscated hundreds of thousands of acres in the West Bank since 1967, in order to facilitate the construction of Israeli settlements and military sites.
“Those trees were planted by our ancestors. Since our childhood, we have been raised to take care of them, every day,” Mazloom said. “The land for us is as precious as our children, but the occupation prevents us from entering it and deprives us of this basic right.”
Hard Facts
In 1993, the Oslo agreement, which was signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), stipulated the division of the West Bank into three categories: the so-called Area ‘A’, under Palestinian control, Area ‘B’ under both Palestinian and Israeli control, and ‘C’, under exclusive Israeli control. The last category alone covers an area of approximately 60% of the total size of the West Bank, according to the Land Research Center.
Jamal Alamleh, the Director of the center, told The Palestine Chronicle that Israel does not only ban the Palestinians from using their own land but also demolishes any building constructed on this land, even if it is as simple as a tent. Palestinians are also prevented from digging water wells in their own land.
“Settlers were given free rein to carry out many assaults against Palestinians in Area ‘C’. The settlers are always fully protected by Israeli soldiers,” Alamleh said.
If any Palestinian files a complaint against the settlers, no one will hear him, but rather he will be treated as an aggressor on the ‘lands of the (Israeli) state’, according to Alamleh.
In 2020, an Israeli minister called for the re-registration of Palestinian lands located within Area ‘C’ under the names of settlers, to make it consistent with Israeli law. In practice, this means the de facto annexation of Palestinian areas, which is illegal under international law.
“If these calls are implemented, the Palestinians will become like intruders in their own land and, according to Israeli law, will be forced to leave (Area C) and relocate to Areas A and B, which are less than 40% of the total West Bank area.”
It Was a Treasure, Now It is Just a Dream
Four years ago, 60-year-old Abd al-Kareem Yousef was heading to his land when he was brutally beaten up by the guards of the Ariel settlement, in the northern occupied West Bank. He suffered numerous cuts and bruises.
“I was going to plant some trees but the guards of the nearby settlement stopped me and checked my ID card. They ordered me to go back but I refused, and when I told them that this is my land and I have the right to enter it, they started beating me up,” Yousef told The Palestine Chronicle.
Until now, Yousef cannot enter his own land in the village of Kfil Hares, near the city of Salfit.
The Ariel settlement block is continuously expanding at the expense of Palestinian lands.
Mazloom’s family lost more than 500 acres after Israel confiscated and seized them due to their proximity to Jewish settlements, not to mention the land that was stolen to build these settlements.
“I remember working in it with my father when I was a kid and now I’m forbidden from entering it.”
By confiscating his land, the farmer has lost a major part of the livelihood of his family of nine. Once, it was his treasure. Now it is a distant dream; sometimes a nightmare.
Year after year, privately-owned Palestinian land continues to shrink, almost always due to the constant expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, itself a blatant violation of international law. But nothing has been done to end Palestinian suffering or to bring the prolonged nightmare of Mazloom, Yousef and many others to an end.
هؤلاء الذين يضحّون بأنفسهم ليصنعوا تاريخ بلدانهم المشرّف ينتظرون على الأقلّ أن ننصفهم ونسجّل ونوثّق ما حدث وألّا نسمح للأعداء أن يصادروا حقيقة ما جرى.
مــعــارك السّرديّات
تشعر وأنت تقرأ مقال توماس فريدمان في جريدة نيويورك تايمز، بتاريخ 15/12/2022 أنّك كنت غائباً عن هذا العالم أو نائماً نومة أهل الكهف، وأنّ هذا المقال يفتح عينيك على كلّ ما يجب أن تعرفه عن آخر الأحداث في فلسطين، وإن كان عنوان مقاله: «ماذا في العالم يحدث في “إسرائيل”»؛ أي أنّه ومن العنوان لم يعترف بفلسطين ولا بالحقّ الفلسطينيّ، وكي يزيد ثقتك بأنّ هذا هو النصّ الوحيد الذي عليك أن تقرأه كي تفهم القصّة المعقّدة لما يجري في فلسطين المحتلّة، أضاف إلى العنوان المضلِّل عنواناً فرعياً، وهو أنّه تمّ تحديث هذا المقال كي يأخذ بعين الاعتبار تطوّرات الأخبار.
وقد نفى في بداية المقال إمكانية حلّ الدولتين، الذي أصبح شبه مستحيل، ولكن مخيلته جادت بحلول قد توهم غير المهتمّين حقيقةً والمتابعين للشأن الفلسطينيّ بدقّة بحرصه على حل هذه “المسألة” على أسس إنسانية وواقعيّة ولمصلحة الطرفين “المتخاصمين”، وبعض القواعد التي استند إليها للتوصّل إلى حلوله المقترحة المتخيَّلة هي أنّ المجتمعين الفلسطينيّ و”الإسرائيلي”، ورغم بعض الأحداث، قد عاشا في حالة من التوازن منذ اتفاقيات أوسلو عام 1993، والشكر يعود للاقتحامات “الإسرائيلية”، وعمل السلطة الفلسطينية، والنموّ الاقتصادي، ومجموعة كبيرة من المهادنات “وضبط النفس” التي قامت بها جميع الأطراف.
ولإعطاء روايته مصداقية، يشير إلى إحصائية «منظّمة بتسليم الإسرائيلية» أنّه في العام الماضي “مات 20 إسرائيلياً”، و”150” فلسطينياً في أحداث عنف. لقد أعلنت منظّمات حقوق الإنسان التابعة للأمم المتحدة ومهتمون كثر أنّ عام 2022 كان الأعنف الذي أعدمت فيه مخابرات وجنود الكيان الصهيونيّ رقماً قياسياً من المدنيين الفلسطينيين، وخاصّة الشباب والأطفال، والذي هو الأعلى منذ عقود. وأيضاً، وفي محاولة تضليلية أخرى، يعتبر الأقصى أيضاً مهمّاً للمسلمين، العبارة التي توحي أنّ أهميته الأولى هي للطرف الآخر، وأنّ الإرهابي العنصريّ بن غفير محقّ فيما يقوم به، مع أنّ جنوده العنصريين رفعوا شعار “طلقة واحدة يجب أن تقتل، من دون أسف، نحن أصحاب القرار”.
ثمّ يروي للقارئ كيف أنّ عدداً من الإسرائيليين اليساريين ذهبوا لدعم الفلسطينيين في مواجهة اليمين المتطرّف، الذي أصبح الجزّار بن غفير الإرهابي قائداً رسمياً له، وأنّ “القضاء” الصهيونيّ قد حكم على الجندي الذي قتل فلسطينياً بالسجن ثلاثة أشهر، ليقنع القارئ أنّ هذا الكيان يطبّق “القانون” وإلى ما هنالك من سرديات مضلّلة هدفها الأساس هو الدعاية لتغطية جرائم هذا الكيان الصهيوني العنصريّ، وتشوّيه أصول الحقّ الفلسطينيّ، وتبرير الجرائم التي تُرتكب بحقّ هذا الشعب يومياً من قبل قوات نظام الأبارثايد الصهيوني، والتي يجب أن يندى لها جبين أيّ إنسان، وهو يتفادى ذكر جرائم الأبارثايد الصهيوني في تدمير القرى الفلسطينية لمرّات من قبل قوّات الكيان العنصريّ، فيقول فريدمان إنّ المجتمعات “البدوية” والمدارس العامة في الجنوب قد عانت من بعض الإهمال.
السبب في أنني أتناول هذا المقال المسيء جداً للحقّ الفلسطيني والحقّ العربي، والمشوِّه لحقيقة الإجرام العنصري الذي يتمّ ارتكابه من قبل العصابات الصهيونية في الاستيلاء على الأرض، وقتل الشباب الفلسطيني بدم بارد، واقتطاع عقود من عمر شباب وشابات في الأسر، هو أنّ مثل هذه السرديات لا تهدف فقط إلى تشويه الحاضر في أذهان القرّاء، وإنما تهدف أيضاً إلى تثبيت سرديات تاريخية في أذهان الأجيال القادمة، فتكون مثل هذه المواد متاحة للباحثين والكتاب المهتمين بهذا الشأن، وتصبح المستند الذي يبنون عليه استنتاجاتهم البحثية، وينالون شهادات الماجستير والدكتوراه في إعدام آخر ليس فقط للشباب الفلسطينيّ، وإنما لحقّ أبنائهم في محاكمة القتلة واسترداد حقوقهم ولو بعد حين.
وكمثال قريب لم يمضِ عليه زمن، فقد تداول بعض القرّاء مؤخراً مقالاً نشرته مجلّة النيويورك تايمز عام 2016، وأفردت له مساحة كاملة بعنوان: «الأرض المتصدّعة: كيف تُمزّق العالم العربي». وتصدّر هذا النصّ مقدمة من قبل رئيس تحرير المجلة جيك سيلفرستون، أشار فيها إلى عدد المراسلين من دول مختلفة الذين ساهموا في إنتاج هذا النصّ، والمصوّرين، وحرصهم على أن يقولوا حقيقة ما حدث، واعتذارهم عن طول النصّ الذي تمّ تكريس عدد المجلة كاملاً له في 2016، ويركّز على حياة أناس من دول مختلفة، وكيف أنّ هذا الغزو الأميركي الغاشم للعراق قد غيّر حياة كثيرين، وأنهى حياة أكثر من مليون عراقي.
ومع أنّ البعض محقّ في القول، إنّهم على الأقلّ يعترفون بما فعلوه ولو بعد حين، ولكن لا بدّ من ذكر أمرين اثنين هنا: أولاً أنّ اعتراف مجلّة أميركية معادية للعرب ببعض من كارثة دمويّة غير مبرّرة حلّت ببلد غني عريق مثل العراق، لن يغنيَ أهله عن شيء، وخاصّة أنّ الاستهداف مستمرّ على المستوى السياسيّ، وأنّه من الممنوع على العراق حتى اليوم أن يتواءم مع جارته سوريا على سبيل المثال، أو أن يخرج من العباءة الطائفية التي خطّها بريمر لمستقبل العراق والعراقيين.
ولكن الأمر الآخر والأهمّ هو أين هي الرواية الدقيقة الكاملة لما حدث في العراق، والتي تمّ توثيقها من قبل مرجعيّة عربية تعلم علم اليقين أبعاد ما حلّ بالعراق، وتلقي ضوءاً على ما كان للعراق والشعب العراقيّ من خير وثروات وقوّة اقتصادية وفكرية. ولا شكّ أنّ تدمير هذه البنية كلّها لم يكن ضرورياً حتى لتغيير نظام سياسيّ، مع أنّ هذا ليس من مسؤولية الولايات المتحدة التي تذرّعت بذرائع كاذبة لغزو العراق، والذي لم يذكره مثل هذا الاستقصاء الذي لاقى المديح حتى من كتاب ومثقفين.
لقد اعتبروا أنّه دلالة على الإعلام الحرّ، وأنّ الآخرين يكتبون ويعترفون بأخطائهم ولكنَّ الولايات المتحدة اليوم، ومنذ غزو العراق، تنهب نفط العراق، وتمنع أيّ استقرار سياسي في العراق كي لا تعود ثروات هذا البلد ليد أبنائه، ولخدمة ورفاه شعبه. أي أنهم يذكرون بعض ما حدث من دون كشف الغطاء عن جوهر ومنطلق وهدف العملية برمّتها.
الاستنتاج من كلا البحثين اللذين تمّ الترويج لهما في بلداننا العربية هو أنّه لا يجوز ولا بأيّ شكل أو منطق أن تقرأ تاريخك بأقلام وأعين أعدائك، وأنّ من أول واجبات أصحاب القضية، أيّ قضية، ليس فقط أن يدافعوا عنها، وإنما أن يخطّوا سردياتها بأقلامهم هم، وأن يسجّلوا تاريخها للأجيال القادمة احتراماً وإنصافاً لمن ضحّوا من أجلها، وحرصاً على أن تأخذ الأجيال القادمة حقّها في الثّأر لآبائها وأجدادها، أو في تصويب المسار والسمعة والسردية التي قد يجود بها المؤمنون بخدمة أهدافهم الاستعمارية المعادية للعرب.
لقد ناضلت كلّ دولنا العربية لنيل استقلالها من المحتلّ الاستعماري لكنّها لم تولِ تسجيل الأحداث الأهمية التي تستحقّها وما زال هذا النقص قائماً في ثقافتنا، وهو نقص خطير يؤثّر ليس فقط على المرجعية المستقبلية، وإنما على المرجعية الراهنة، وحتى على سير المعارك إذا كان الصراع ما زال قائماً كما هو الحال في الشأن الفلسطيني وشؤون أخرى في الواقع العربي بحاجة ماسّة إلى تخصيص موارد لدعم إحقاق الحقوق إعلامياً وتاريخياً وفكرياً.
هؤلاء الذين يضحّون بأنفسهم ليصنعوا تاريخ بلدانهم المشرّف ينتظرون على الأقلّ أن ننصفهم ونسجّل ونوثّق ما حدث وألّا نسمح للأعداء أن يصادروا حقيقة ما جرى، ويسجّلوا الوثيقة التي تخدم أهدافهم، وتبخس نضالنا وتضحياتنا ودماء أبنائنا المؤمنين بأوطانهم والصادقين.
إن الآراء المذكورة في هذه المقالة لا تعبّر بالضرورة عن رأي الميادين وإنما تعبّر عن رأي صاحبها حصراً
Gaza’s Great March of Return. (Photo: Abdullah Aljamal, Palestine Chronicle)
The next Nakba Day will be officially commemorated by the United Nations General Assembly on May 15, 2023. The decision by the world’s largest democratic institution is significant, if not a game changer.
For nearly 75 years, the Palestinian Nakba, the ‘Catastrophe’ wrought by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1947-48, has served as the epicenter of the Palestinian tragedy as well as the collective Palestinian struggle for freedom.
Three decades ago, namely after the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian leadership in 1993, the Nakba practically ceased to exist as a relevant political variable. Palestinians were urged to move past that date, and to invest their energies and political capital in an alternative and more ‘practical’ goal, a return to the 1967 borders.
In June 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine – East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – igniting yet another wave of ethnic cleansing.
Based on these two dates, Western cheerleaders of Oslo divided Palestinians into two camps: the ‘extremists’ who insisted on the centrality of the 1948 Nakba, and the ‘moderates’ who agreed to shift the center of gravity of Palestinian history and politics to 1967.
Such historical revisionism impacted every aspect of the Palestinian struggle: it splintered Palestinians ideologically and politically; relegated the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees, which is enshrined in UN Resolution 194; spared Israel the legal and moral accountability of its violent establishment on the ruins of Palestine, and more.
Leading Palestinian Nakba historian, Salman Abu Sitta, explained in an interview a few years ago the difference between the so-called pragmatic politics of Oslo and the collective struggle of Palestinians as the difference between ‘aims’ and ‘rights’. Palestinians “don’t have ‘aims’ … (but) rights,” he said. “… These rights are inalienable, they represent the bottom red line beyond which no concession is possible. Because doing so will destroy their life.”
Indeed, shifting the historical centrality of the narrative away from the Nakba was equivalent to the very destruction of the lives of Palestinian refugees as it has been tragically apparent in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria in recent years.
While politicians from all relevant sides continued to bemoan the ‘stagnant’ or even ‘dead’ peace process – often blaming one another for that supposed calamity – a different kind of conflict was taking place. On the one hand, ordinary Palestinians along with their historians and intellectuals fought to reassert the importance of the Nakba, while Israelis continued to almost completely ignore the earth-shattering event, as if it is of no consequence to the equally tragic present.
Gaza’s ‘Great March of Return‘ (2018-2019) was possibly the most significant collective and sustainable Palestinian action that attempted to reorient the new generation around the starting date of the Palestinian tragedy.
Over 300 people, mostly from third or fourth post-Nakba generations, were killed by Israeli snipers at the Gaza fence for demanding their Right of Return. The bloody events of those years were enough to tell us that Palestinians have not forgotten the roots of their struggle, as it also illustrated Israel’s fear of Palestinian memory.
The work of Rosemary Sayigh on the exclusion of the Nakba from the trauma genre, and also that of Samah Sabawi, demonstrate, not only the complexity of the Nakba’s impact on the Palestinian collective awareness, but also the ongoing denial – if not erasure – of the Nakba from academic and historical discourses.
“The most significant traumatic event in Palestinian history is absent from the ‘trauma genre’,” Sabawi wrote in the recently-published volume, Our Vision for Liberation.
Sayigh argued that “the loss of recognition of (the Palestinian refugees’) rights to people- and state- hood created by the Nakba has led to an exceptional vulnerability to violence,” with Syria being the latest example.
Israel was always aware of this. When Israeli leaders agreed to the Oslo political paradigm, they understood that removing the Nakba from the political discourse of the Palestinian leadership constituted a major victory for the Israeli narrative.
Thanks to ordinary Palestinians, those who have held on to the keys and deeds to their original homes and land in historic Palestine, history is finally being rewritten, back to its original and accurate form.
By passing Resolution A/77/L.24, which declared May 15, 2023, as ‘Nakba Day’, the UNGA has corrected a historical wrong.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, rightly understood the UN’s decision as a major step towards the delegitimization of Israel as a military occupier of Palestine. “Try to imagine the international community commemorating your country’s Independence Day by calling it a disaster. What a disgrace,” he said.
Absent from Erdan’s remarks and other responses by the Israeli officials is the mere hint of political or even moral accountability for the ethnic cleansing of over 530 Palestinian towns and villages, and the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians, whose descendants are now numbered in millions of refugees.
Not only did Israel invest decades in canceling and erasing the Nakba, it also criminalized it by passing what is now known as the Nakba Law of 2011.
But the more Israel engages in this form of historical negationism, the harder Palestinians fight to reclaim their historical rights.
May 15, 2023, UN Nakba Day represents the triumph of the Palestinian narrative over that of Israeli negationists. This means that the blood spilled during Gaza’s March of Return was not in vain, as the Nakba and the Right of Return are now back at the center of the Palestinian story.
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.
أحيت «الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين« ذكرى انطلاقتها الخامسة والخمسين بمهرجان جماهيري حاشد، عصر اليوم، في ساحة الكتيبة غربي مدينة غزة.
وشارك في المهرجان، إلى جانب قادة «الجبهة الشعبية» وأنصارها، عدد من قادة وممثّلي «فصائل العمل الوطني والإسلامي» الفلسطينية، من بينهم حركتا «حماس» و«الجهاد الإسلامي».
وتضمّن الحفل الذي رفع شعار «انطلاقتنا مقاومة» جملة من الرسائل السياسية المهمة، إذ توسط منصة الحفل شعار يظهر خريطة فلسطين كاملة، في إشارة إلى اعتماد توصيات المؤتمر الوطني الثامن، الذي عقدته «الشعبية» في أيار الماضي، ولا سيما الموقف المتعلق بقبول الحلول المرحلية.
إلى جانب ذلك، رفع المشاركون في الحفل صوراً للشهيد القيادي في مجموعات «عرين الأسود» تامر كيلاني، في إشارة إلى حضور «الجبهة الشعبية» في ساحة الضفة.
وفي كلمة خلال المهرجان، قال نائب الأمين العام للجبهة جميل مزهر إن «رفع شعار انطلاقتنا مقاومة هو تأكيد على ثوابت الجبهة بأن لا قبلة لنا سوى فلسطين، كل فلسطين (…) وأن المهرجان فرصة لمكاشفة الجماهير حول كل القضايا الملحة».
وأضاف مزهر: «أزاحتْ الجبهةُ في هذا المؤتمر الخيارَ المرحليَّ عن الطاولةِ واعتبرتْهُ بوابةً للتنازلات، وعادتْ إلى خيارِها الاستراتيجيّ فلسطين كلّ فلسطين»، مؤكداً أن «لا حلولَ ولا تسوياتٍ ولا مفاوضات، فإمّا فلسطين وإما النارُ جيلًا بعدَ جيل».
بدوره، بيّن عضو المكتب السياسي للجبهة، محمد الغول، أن الأخيرة تمتلك موقفاً واضحاً من الاتفاقيات التي وقّعتها السلطة الفلسطينية في أوسلو عام 1993، إذ رفضت آنذاك كل الاتفاقيات، رغم أنها كانت قد قبلت حينها بحلّ الدولتين، بما يضمن حق العودة للاجئين.
ويرى الغول في حديث إلى «الأخبار»: «اليوم، وبعد انتهاء الظروف الدولية التي كانت تدعم وتدفع بحل الدولتين ومنها ثنائية القطب دولياً بين الاتحاد السوفياتي والولايات المتحدة، لم يعد هناك قيمة للتمسك بحلٍ ليس له غطاء دولي، ولا استعداد في الولايات المتحدة الأميركية ولا دولة الاحتلال للتقدم خطوة فيه (…) اليوم، نعيد الصراع إلى مربعه الأول، فلسطين كل فلسطين بدون أي حلول مرحلية ولا تكتيكية».
«الكفاح المسلّح» ولفت مزهر في خطابه أيضاً، إلى تمسك «الجبهة الشعبية» بخيار المقاومة المسلحة، بالقول إن «هزيمةَ هذا العدوّ لن تكونَ إلا بالكفاحِ المسلّح، وبحربِ الشعبِ الشاملة، فاليوم شعبُنا أقربُ من أيّ وقتٍ مضى لهذا». وأشار إلى «ضرورة توفيرِ الدعمِ والإسنادِ لمجموعاتِ المقاومة، وبما يُوسّعُ رقعةَ الاشتباكِ ونوعيّة المواجهة، وهذا يتطلّبُ منا ومن غيرنا تعزيزَ دعمِنا لحواضنِ المقاومة، وتعزيزَ أشكالِ الوحدةِ الميدانيّةِ سياسيًّا وكفاحيًّا (..) لتطويرِ وإدامةِ الاشتباك، والردِّ على عدوانِ الاحتلال.
ووجّه مزهر التحية إلى «كتائب الشهيد أبو علي مصطفى» وإلى «المقاتلينَ الأمميّينَ الذين امتشقوا السّلاحَ من أجلِ فلسطينَ الرفيقُ كزوموتو ورفاقُهُ الشهداء، المناضل جورج عبد الله المعتقلِ في السجونِ الفرنسيّة، والمقاتل ظافر الإيراني منفّذُ أوّلِ عمليّةٍ استشهاديّةٍ بالحزامِ الناسفِ في تاريخِ الثورةِ الفلسطينيّة، التي نفّذها في سينما (حين) في قلبِ عاصمةِ الكيان في ضاحيةِ يافا المحتلّة».
واعتبر الناشط في الجبهة، رامي سامر، في حديث إلى الأخبار أن «أهم رسالة تضمّنها المهرجان، كانت الاستجابة السياسية للتغير الذي طرأ على الظروف المحيطة بالقضية الفلسطينية، ففيما يتجه المحيط العربي إلى التطبيع، وتدوس إسرائيل ومن خلفها الولايات المتحدة حل الدولتين، وننتظر حكومة يمينية متطرفة، تقول الجبهة الشعبية إن الجنون الإسرائيلي يدفع إلى مزيد من المقاومة العنيفة المسلحة، وليس إلى الإذعان والتفريط».
وأضاف إنه «حتى رئيس السلطة محمود عباس يدرك اليوم عبث الرهان على المفاوضات، وعبث الحديث عن حل الدولتين، ويلوّح بالحديث عن العودة للدولة الواحدة. لذا المطلوب اليوم خطاب جامع، يقود إلى سياسات إجرائية يتحمل الجميع أكلافها في سبيل الانعتاق من الاحتلال».
وفي كلمة مصوّرة، قال الأمين العام لحركة «الجهاد الإسلامي» زياد النخالة: «نقف جميعًا بدون تردد، وبدون أوهام، لنقول إننا إذا أردنا حريتنا وتحرير وطننا علينا أن نكمل طريق الشهداء».
As the Religious Zionist Party forms part of Israel’s new government, fears arise of tensions over the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound leading to a new regional escalation. Israeli settler provocations at Jerusalem’s holy sites have a long history of causing civil unrest that runs counter to Washington’s foreign policy goals, which is why U.S.-based non-profits that finance Israeli extremists are all the more outrageous.
With far-right Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir pledging to fight for unfettered access to Al-Aqsa Mosque for extremist settlers, the conditions that could lead to an explosion of violence throughout occupied Palestine – and even regionally – are ripe. In May 2021, Israeli settler incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, combined with routine attacks on worshipers by Israeli police, caused a war to break out between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Once on the fringes of Israeli society, the extremist Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement have now entered the mainstream, with a leader of the second most powerful Israeli political party on their side. The temple mount group openly states on its website its intentions of destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as we know it today and building the Jewish “Third Temple” in its place – a virtual declaration of war against the Muslim world.
Although the extremist settlers who routinely storm the mosque are not necessarily close to achieving their end goal, they are hoping to see the new Israeli government grant them the full right to storm at will and perform religious rituals in Al-Aqsa. Such provocations could spark a round of tensions inside the Old City of Jerusalem and its surroundings, leading to a situation that the Secretary General of Lebanese Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed to challenge using a united resistance front, formed of a number of regional actors, including Yemen’s Ansar Allah.
THE ORIGINS OF THE AL-AQSA MOSQUE TENSIONS
Since the early days of the British Mandate period in Palestine, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and its surroundings have been central to both the Palestinian national struggle and to creating the grounds for greater conflict between Zionists and Palestinians.
The Zionist movement’s attempts to take over the Western (Wailing) Wall – attached to the outer walls of the Al-Aqsa site, have sparked a number of riots and clashes, culminating in the bloody 1929 al-Khalil (Hebron) uprising.
During the Ottoman Rule of Palestine, Chaim Weizmann, then head of the Zionist Organization, saw the Western Wall site as a prize to attain, initially in order to bring ultra-orthodox Jews into the Zionist camp. He attempted to purchase the site from the Islamic religious trust known as the Waqf. In Tom Segev’s book, “One Palestine, Complete,” he cites a letter written by Weizmann to his wife, where he described, “the minarets and the bell-towers and the domes rising to the sky are crying out that Jerusalem is not Jewish,” clearly indicating a need to change the city’s character.
According to Yehoshua Porath’s book, “The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1918-1929”, during tensions between Zionists and Palestinians in 1920s Jerusalem, the precedent was already set for Muslim fears over any change in the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites. Porath writes that the Palestinians understood Zionist attempts to change the status quo at the Western Wall site as a gradual attempt to take over the Haram al-Sharif (otherwise known as the Dome of the Rocks mosque), located in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
In reaction to Zionist attempts to attain more control in the Old City, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, created a large campaign to both refurbish the site and to signal to Muslims that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was under attack. This campaign ended up increasing the importance of the third-holiest site in the Islamic faith and in the Palestinian national struggle, combining the religious significance of al-Aqsa with the Palestinian fight for national liberation. The fact that Judaization attempts were being made by leaders of the Zionist movement, pre-dating the British Mandate rule itself, remains stored in the Palestinian collective consciousness until this day.
AL-AQSA UNDER THE LAW
The position that is maintained by the United Nations, despite Israel having passed its own legislation to annex Jerusalem in 1980, is that under international law, the territory is considered to be occupied. The international community “rejects the acquisition of territory by war and considers any changes on the ground illegal and invalid”, is the way the issue of Israel’s claims to sovereignty over the city it viewed by the UN. In addition to this, the status quo, as per Israel’s agreement with Jordan, is that the Jordanian Waqf has the right to maintain security inside the Al-Aqsa compound, whilst Israeli forces have the right to manage security on the Holy Site’s exterior.
Despite attempts to change it, Israeli law states that performing acts of religious worship inside the site is forbidden for Israeli Jewish citizens. Jewish Israelis are allowed to enter as tourists, as is the case for non-Muslim international travelers to the site. However, the Israeli police that operate security checks surrounding Al-Aqsa clearly do not abide by this precedent.
Israel has no right, under international law, to any of Jerusalem. One way that Tel Aviv could have been granted legitimacy in Jerusalem was through a potential peace deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), with no such deal having yet taken place. Between 1993 and 1995, both Israel and the PLO signed what was known as the Oslo Accords. Oslo gave birth to a semi-autonomous Palestinian governing body – the Palestinian Authority – in some limited areas of the West Bank and Gaza. The series of agreements between the PLO and the Israeli government was supposed to lead to a process by which a Palestinian State could be created.
Palestinian youth are handcuffed after protesting Israelis stroming Al-Aqsa Mosque, April 15, 2022. Ariel Schalit | AP
Although Israeli negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA), currently based out of the city of Ramallah, never resulted in a peace deal, the PA had only ever claimed for their state to include East Jerusalem. Under international law, without a viable Palestinian state – one that has its capital in East Jerusalem, Israel has no legal right to any part of the city.
Despite this, in 2000, then-Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, stormed the Al-Aqsa compound, causing a mass Palestinian revolt. Sharon’s move followed a march that had just taken place to commemorate the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres of around 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese civilians – massacres that Sharon played a central role in facilitating.
For Palestinians, it was the act of an Israeli politician storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque site that served as the straw that broke the camel’s back. The uprising across the Occupied Territories known as the Second Intifada began in September 2000 and continued officially until 2005.
ISRAEL’S GROWING ENCROACHMENT ON AL-AQSA
Over the past two years, the Israeli assaults on Palestinian worshipers inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound have been extremely pronounced, especially during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israeli riot police have repeatedly stormed the site, injuring hundreds of Palestinians and even killing a young man earlier this year. The war between Gaza and Israel in 2021 began as a result of tensions surrounding Al-Aqsa and the threat of an Israeli settler “death to Arabs” march penetrating the compound’s walls.
Leading up to the 2021 conflict, Israeli police had restricted access to the site for prayer during the month of Ramadan and even closed off the minarets at Al-Aqsa to prevent the call to prayer. In 2019, the Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Leon, pushed to install quiet speakers at the Mosque site, which indicates that the action performed by the Israeli police was likely not arbitrary and fits into a trend of extinguishing the Islamic presence in the city.
Going further back, in 2010, an Israeli terrorist attempted to detonate explosives in order to blow up the Al-Qibli Mosque inside the Al-Aqsa compound. This attack was followed by continued attempts by settlers to invade the area. 2015 however, was when the provocations began to take off in an unprecedented manner, with the number of Israeli settlers choosing to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque steadily increasing since that time.
According to Yaraeh – an organization that promotes settler incursions into Al-Aqsa – from August to October 2021, approximately 10,000 Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, representing a 35% increase from previous years. This October, Yaraeh proudly announced that almost 8,000 settlers stormed the site in one month – the highest on record and more than in the entirety of 2012
In 2021, Hagit Ofran, the director of Peace Now’s Settlement Watchdog, told +972 Magazine that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had been responsible for tensions at the al-Aqsa site, “so much so that it was the reason Netanyahu was no longer in touch with Jordan’s King Abdullah II”. Since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, Israel and Jordan have been bound by an agreement that maintains the “status quo” at the site, which involves Tel Aviv respecting the Hashemite King of Jordan’s symbolic custodianship over Al-Aqsa.
With Netanyahu returning to power, the Jordanian element to this story is particularly important. Netanyahu is backed by fanatical Israeli lawmakers who would like to see Palestinian citizens of Israel expelled from the country altogether. Although Jordan’s King Abdullah II is not likely to abandon his nation’s 1994 peace treaty with Tel Aviv, it is clear that during the Trump administration years, the Hashemite ruler had been isolated after taking a stance against the Netanyahu-Trump “Deal of the Century” model to end the Palestine-Israeli conflict. There are even reports that Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was involved in attempts to hatch a coup plot to overthrow the Jordanian monarch – one that was publicly quashed in April 2021. The Israeli role in the alleged U.S.-Saudi campaign to undermine Abdullah was said to have been part of an attempt to strip the Hashemites of their symbolic custodianship over Al-Aqsa.
Under the Biden administration’s combined efforts with the former Bennett-Lapid government of Israel, Amman had again grown closer to Tel Aviv and even signed a memorandum of understanding for a “water for clean energy” exchange agreement. However, with Netanyahu’s return to power and the current weakening of the Palestinian Authority, if tensions arise from the growing encroachment upon Al-Aqsa, Jordan’s ruler could again be undermined. The Jordanians and Palestinian Authority have already joined hands, sending a message to the U.S. and E.U. to demand that no change be made to the status quo at Al-Aqsa as the new Israeli government comes to power.
In addition to its plans for the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians in neighborhoods like Silwan, Israel is also demolishing Islamic burial sites in the Old City. The Israeli Supreme Court has also been complicit in rejecting appeals to prevent a cable car project in the Old City, which will economically impact local Palestinians, as well as destroy their heritage sites. Recently, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem has condemned the rising settler attacks on holy sites throughout the city, but his statements largely fell on deaf ears.
Given all the context noted above, it is fair to assume that another escalation is only around the corner and that due to the silence of the international community, the Palestinian people will be left to defend their holy sites on their own. When this happens, however, it is likely that much of the Western world, along with Israel, will act as if the Palestinians are being violent and unreasonable, and motivated purely by anti-Semitism.
U.S. FUNDING OF EXTREMIST TEMPLE MOUNT GROUPS
The Temple Mount movement, which explicitly expresses its desire to not only change the status quo at Al-Aqsa but to build the ‘third temple’ by destroying the Islamic Holy site there, is spearheaded by American-born Israelis. There has been significant financial as well as promotional support from U.S. citizens and organizations. Lately, prominent conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have themselves entered the site in the presence of extremist Temple Mount figures. Among both Christian and Jewish Americans, the issue has been of importance for starkly different religious reasons.
The Temple Institute, the most notable of a number of organizations that advocate changing the status quo at the Al-Aqsa compound and building the Jewish third temple, was revealed by a Haaretz news investigation to have been funded by a leading U.S. donor to Benjamin Netanyahu. The Temple Institute, founded in 1987 by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, received $96,000 from the U.S.-based One Israel Fund in 2012 and 2013 alone, with a number of other American organizations also contributing donations during that time. The 2015 Haaretz report uncovered that the financing of extremist Temple Mount groups comes from a large pool of tax-exempt charitable organizations that are based in the United States, ranging from New York and California to Texas.
According to the Temple Institute’s last publicly available financial report, for the years 2019 and 2020, the organization received over $2.9 million in funding. Around half came from the Israeli government, with the other half coming from donations. To contribute funds from the United States to the Temple Institute, donors can be directed from a website called America Gives, partnered with Israel Gives, a website from which you can directly aid to the Temple Institute. American Support for Israel, U.K. Gives and Canada Charity Partners are all set up to receive donations from outside of Israel.
American-born ex-Likud Party Knesset member, Yehuda Glick is a prominent figure in the Temple Mount movement and heads the Shalom Jerusalem Foundation. On the foundation’s official website, you can find a donation campaign that hopes to attract people who seek to “see the rebuilding of the Third Temple speedily in our time”. The foundation collects money through a tax-exempt charity based in New Jersey called the Jerusalem Friendship Alliance INC and collected more than $1.8 million in total revenue between 2011 and 2020.
The above-noted means of donating from the United States to the Temple Mount movement are but only a sample of a much larger pool of charitable organizations, through which American organizations and private persons can give money to a cause that runs counter to U.S. policy. Washington supposedly supports maintaining the status quo at Al-Aqsa.
FEARING A REPEAT IBRAHIMI MOSQUE MASSACRE SCENARIO
In 1994, after years of attempts by extremists to change the status quo at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron), the settlers were finally successful. On February 25, U.S.-born Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein entered the Ibrahimi Mosque with an automatic weapon, opening fire on Palestinian worshipers. The horrifying terrorist attack resulted in the murder of 29 people and the injury of 125 others, in what Palestinians claimed was a settler plot with indirect support from the Israeli military.
Shortly after the attack, Israel declared the old city of Al-Khalil a closed military zone, later seizing 60% of the Ibrahimi Mosque and turning it into a synagogue closed off to Palestinians. The attack was a resounding success for the Israeli terrorist, who had achieved his goal of making Palestinians pay for falling victim to his actions, and making the life of those living in the Old City miserable and subjected to constant checkpoint stops. Today, Al-Khalil’s Old City is one of the most disturbing areas to visit in all of Palestine, as settlers occupy homes that Palestinians have been expelled from, while simply visiting the Ibrahimi Mosque comes with a humiliating journey through a military checkpoint and a number of stops.
Although violent attempts to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound have not yet returned into the fold, the possibility of extremist attempts to use violence at the site is always a fear in the back of every Palestinian’s head. This fear is not unfounded, nor is it without historical precedent, as the Jewish Underground terrorist group had attempted just this back in the 1970s and 1980s; to not only blow up al-Aqsa Mosque but to detonate bombs on packed Palestinian civilian buses in East Jerusalem. Yehuda Etzion, a former member of the Jewish Underground who attempted to blow up Al-Aqsa in 1984, today still advocates building the third temple. Etzion continued to agitate, heading the Chai Vekayam movement that played a prominent role in promoting the Temple Mount movement in the early 2000s. The Jewish Underground is no longer operating, and many of its members were arrested for their violent attacks and plots. However, interestingly, the funding for this organization came primarily from within the United States.
The extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein, who was responsible for the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, was a protégé of the extremist Israeli political figure known as Meir Kahane, the founder of the infamous Kach movement, whose armed wing was the Jewish Defense League (JDL). The Kach movement was eventually outlawed in both Israel and the United States, with the JDL being designated a terrorist group for its violent antics. Today, former members of the Kach movement and those sympathetic to its cause, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, are now about to take cabinet positions in the new Israeli government.
Those who follow the beliefs of Meir Kahane, whose group carried out bombing attacks on U.S. soil, are called Kahanists. A 2019 Investigation conducted by The Nationrevealed that a web of non-profit American organizations was financing Kahanist groups affiliated with the Religious Zionism Party, which is poised to become the second most powerful Israeli political party under the new Netanyahu administration. An Intercept report in early November then followed up on The Nation’s findings and revealed that tens of millions of dollars had been donated to Israeli far-right groups affiliated with the Religious Zionism Party. Religious Zionism openly advocates for changing the status quo at Al-Aqsa. Its most prominent figures, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have both stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque this year.
The Biden administration has not changed Washington’s long-standing position of maintaining the status quo at al-Aqsa. However, its position of upholding “unwavering support” for Tel Aviv directly contradicts this position. The Israeli government, the recipient of $150 Billion in U.S. aid, directly finances the Temple Institute and other far-right organizations. Some of Israel’s most prominent political figures also support the idea of building the Jewish Third Temple and actively call for changing the status quo at Al-Aqsa.
Organizations that are the most prominent in promoting these ideas receive a large sum of their finances from U.S.-based tax-exempt organizations. If the U.S. government does not decide to put its foot down and make its support for Israel conditional, a major flare-up over the status of Al-Aqsa will be on its hands – an escalation that could cost Washington its relationship with Jordan and even leaderships in the wider Muslim world. The Al-Aqsa Mosque’s status is an issue that is close to the hearts of over 2 billion Muslims worldwide and attempts to destroy it will be tantamount to a declaration of Holy War, funded by tax-exempt U.S. organizations.
At a recent Istanbul conference that brought many Palestinian scholars and activists together to discuss the search for a common narrative on Palestine, a Palestinian member of the audience declared at the end of a brief, but fiery intervention, ‘we are not red Indians’.
The reference was a relatively old one. It was attributed to former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during an interview in his office in Ramallah where he was forcefully confined and surrounded, two years earlier, by the Israeli military that had re-invaded the populous Palestinian city. In the interview, the head of the PLO and president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) said that, despite Israel’s attempt at eradicating the Palestinian people, they remain steadfast. Israel had “failed to wipe us out,” Arafat said, adding, “we are not red Indians.”
Though Arafat’s intention was not to degrade or insult Native American communities, the statement, often taken out of context, hardly reflects the deep solidarity between Palestinians and national liberation struggles, including indigenous struggles around the world. Ironically, Arafat, more than any Palestinian leader, has forged ties with numerous communities in the Global South and in fact all over the world. A generation of activists had linked Arafat to their initial awareness, then involvement in Palestine solidarity movements.
What surprised me is that the comment on Palestinians not being ‘red Indians’ in Istanbul was quoted repeatedly and, occasionally, solicited applause from the audience, which only stopped when the convener of the conference, a well-regarded Palestinian professor, declared frustratingly, “they are neither ‘red’ nor Indian.” Indeed, they are not. Actually, they are the natural allies of the Palestinian people, like numerous indigenous communities, who have actively supported the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
The seemingly simple incident or poor choice of words, however, represents a much greater challenge facing Palestinians as they attempt to reanimate a new discourse on Palestinian liberation that is no longer hostage to the self-serving language of the PA elites in Ramallah.
For several years, a new generation of Palestinians has been fighting on two different fronts: against Israel’s military occupation and apartheid, on the one hand, and PA repression on the other. For this generation to succeed in reclaiming the struggle for justice, they must also reclaim a unifying discourse, not only to reconnect their own fragmented communities throughout historic Palestine, but also re-establish solidarity lines of communication across the globe.
I say ‘re-establish’, because Palestine was a common denominator among many national and indigenous struggles in the Global South. This was not a random outcome. Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, fierce wars of liberation were fought across continents, leading in most cases to the defeat of traditional colonial powers and, in some cases like Cuba, Vietnam and Algeria, to true decolonization. With Palestine being a compounded case of western imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism, the Palestinian cause was embraced by numerous national struggles. It was, and remains, a most raw example of western supported ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid, hypocrisy but also inspiring indigenous resistance.
PLO factions, intellectuals and activists were known and respected worldwide as ambassadors to the Palestinian cause. Three years following his assassination by the Israeli Mossad in a Beirut car bombing, Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani was awarded posthumously the Annual Lotus Prize for Literature by the Union of Asian and African Writers as a delineation of the common struggle between peoples of both continents. Not only has Palestine served as a physical connection between Asia and Africa, it has also served as an intellectual and solidarity connection.
Arab countries, which also fought their own painful but heroic national liberation wars, played a major role in the centrality of Palestine in the political discourses of African and Asian countries. Many non-Arab countries supported collective Arab causes, especially Palestine, at the United Nations, pushed for the isolation of Israel, backed Arab boycotts and even hosted PLO offices and fighters. When Arab governments began changing their political priorities, these nations, sadly but unsurprisingly, followed suit.
The massive geopolitical changes after the Cold War, in favor of the US-led Western camp, profoundly and negatively impacted Palestine’s relations with the Arab and the rest of the world. It also divided the Palestinians, localizing the Palestinian struggle in a process that seemed to be determined mostly by Israel alone. Gaza was placed under a permanent siege, the West Bank was splintered by numerous illegal Jewish settlements and military checkpoints, Jerusalem was swallowed whole and Palestinians in Israel became victims of a police state that defined itself primarily on racial grounds.
Abandoned by the world and their own leadership, oppressed by Israel and bewildered by remarkable events beyond their control, some Palestinians turned against one another. This was the age of factionalism. However, Palestinian factionalism is bigger than Fatah and Hamas, Ramallah and Gaza. Equally dangerous to the self-serving politics are the numerous provisional discourses that it espoused, neither governed by any collective strategy or an inclusive national narrative.
When the PLO was ousted from Lebanon following the Israeli invasion and deadly war, the nature of the Palestinian struggle transformed. Headquartered in Tunisia, the PLO was no longer able to present itself as a leader of a liberation movement in any practical sense. The Oslo Accords of 1993 resulted from this political exile and subsequent marginalization. It also accentuated an existing trend where an actual war of liberation turned into a corporate form of liberation, hunger for funds, false status and, worse, a negotiated surrender.
This much is now familiar and acknowledged by many Palestinians. Less discussed, however, is that nearly forty years of this process left Palestinians with a different political discourse than that which existed for decades prior to Oslo.
Undoubtedly, Palestinians are aware of the need for a new liberated language. This is not an easy task, nor is it a randomly generated process. The indoctrination that resulted from the Oslo culture, the factional language, the provincial political discourse of various Palestinian communities, left Palestinians with limited tools through which to express the priorities of the new era. Unity is not a political document. Neither is international solidarity. It is a process that is shaped by a language which should be spoken collectively, relentlessly and boldly. In this new language, Palestinians are Native Americans, not in their supposed propensity to be ‘wiped out’, but in their pride, resilience and continued quest for equality and justice.
The Palestinian Nakba began exactly 105 years ago with the release of a letter from then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to the leader of the Zionist movement in what became infamously called the Balfour Declaration.
The project to establish the Zionist entity was and still is based on a long-term joint program between the Zionist movement and some colonial powers, primarily Britain and the US
As someone who grew up and was raised in the city of Yafa after the occupation of eastern Palestine in the 1967 war – known as the Naksa – in the house of his late grandfather and under the auspices of a great educational figure such as my grandmother, known as Madame Khoury, who’s slogan “I’d rather die in my house in Yafa than become a refugee” became a mantra that engraved in our minds the effect of attachment to the land… and as someone who listened and read the successive enthusiastic political articles of his father, the political writer Naim Youssef Machool, about the Nakba, the land, agriculture and steadfastness, as well as the articles, plays, interviews, and lectures of his mother, writer and novelist Antoinette Adeeb El-Khoury, I thought that based on this extensive personal experience, I should support and base my claim, listed below, on journalistic observations from the 80s and 90s in Palestine in particular and on two decades of academic research on the Palestinian issue in Britain in particular, and present a contribution to an expanded project whose main idea I will briefly list below.
We say that it is widely accepted that the Nakba of the Palestinians took place chronologically under the British mandate between the partition plan and Resolution of 29/11/1947 and the 1949 armistice with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, although there was no agreement within the framework of an armistice or the like with the Palestinian people; whether those who were expelled from it or those who remained in their homeland.
Accordingly, the struggle involving the Palestinian people remains open: Zionist domination of Palestine and Palestinian resistance against the occupation.
This article, part of which was presented at the University of Freiburg in Germany in 2011 and the Bandung Conference in 2015 and 2022, argues that although the most catastrophic period of the Palestinian Nakba (lit. catastrophe) reached its peak between 1947 and 1949, the Nakba was neither the beginning nor the end of the Palestinian people’s catastrophe.
This article claims that the Nakba of the Palestinian people began exactly 105 years ago with the release of a letter from then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to the leader of the Rothschild Zionist movement in what became infamously known as the Balfour Declaration issued on 2/11/1917, which followed the occupation of Palestine by Britain that was involved in WWI, especially the occupation of Al-Quds by General Allenby in December 1917.
It also argues that the Nakba includes everything that has happened since then until now, but certainly, this catastrophe reached its peak between 1947 and 1949 – which witnessed the forced expulsion of half of the Palestinian people from their homeland and the destruction of the majority of Palestine’s cultural, commercial, and social structure – and is continuing deliberately according to a plan that has not stopped until achieving liberation and independence.
Apart from emotional slogans, the project to establish the Zionist entity was and still is based on a long-term joint program between the Zionist movement and some colonial powers, primarily Britain and the US. In addition, this article claims and warns that an attempt to implement a new chapter of the Nakba of the Palestinian people is very possible, including the expulsion of additional Palestinians from West and East Palestine because the goal is to seize Palestine as a whole and the Palestinian people are seen as an obstacle that must be eliminated to achieve this goal.
Since the peak of the Nakba between 1947 and 1949, Palestinians, whom I defined as the survivors of the Nakba – meaning those who were able to remain in their homeland and who were intended to be loggers and waterers, as per the Israeli occupation administration, for the ruling Zionist class and its Jewish Arab servants who were brought in from the Arab countries to colonize Palestine – consisted a “security problem” not only in Al-Jaleel, the Triangle Area, and Al-Naqab, but also in the Palestinian coastal cities, such as Akka in the north and Yafa in the south.
When late historian Dr. Constantin Zureik published the book The Meaning of the Nakba in 1948, a few months after the catastrophe and the peak of the Nakba, his description of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people was accurate – due to what he witnessed personally and through his professional academic tools – being coupled with a resounding catastrophic psychological trauma.
However, examining what has happened to the Palestinian people, during the past 105 years, requires a new definition or at least an updated definition of the Nakba that has prevailed so far. What happened since 1917 onward shows the numerous and ongoing chapters of the Nakba of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration till now, including the decision to partition Palestine in 1947 and the occupation of the second part of Palestine in 1967, the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987, the Oslo Accords and their offshoots between 1993 and 1994 and the second Palestinian Intifada that began in Al-Quds in 2000, as well as the killing of the first official Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, the repeated wars on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing aggression against the occupied West Bank and Al-Quds, in addition to a set of racist laws against the Palestinian people in western Palestine, specifically the so-called “National Law” of 2018, the continuous killing of the Palestinian people in occupied East Palestine and the arrest of more than a million Palestinian since the Naksa, including women, children and elderly, the expanding settlement that hasn’t stopped and the confiscation of lands, the so-called “Deal of the Century” and Netanyahu and Trump’s annexation scheme, which I called in a previous article the “third armed robbery,” and the economic and “military” occupation siege on the Gaza Strip by air, sea and land,
On December 16, 2016, exactly on the 99th anniversary of the issuance of the Balfour Letter, we launched the Palestine Initiative 100 to re-engage with the beginning of this catastrophe. We were determined to renew encouragement to open the Balfour file since the beginning of the Palestinian people’s Nakba in 1917 and held a publicity evening in London, the capital of the British Empire that issued the Balfour Letter to the Zionist movement. As part of holding Britain to its historical, legal, and moral responsibilities, we demanded three types of steps: apology, compensation, and correction. We believe that canceling any of these steps would be naive, incomplete, or deceptive.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
While the Arab Summit in Algeria affirmed its adherence to the so-called ‘Arab Peace Initiative’ as a final solution to the Palestinian issue, Israel’s response came quickly and resolutely with the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu and the anti-Arab religious Likud bloc.
In the 1 November legislative elections, Israelis voted in large numbers for the anti-Arab, racist, religious parties, which openly embrace a policy of killing and expelling Palestinians from all of occupied Palestine, and promote a solely Jewish-Zionist identity of the country.
The “Jewish Power” party, which won 15 seats, and is led by the two most racist figures in the short history of the Jewish state, Bezael H. Cherish and his deputy Itamar Ben Gvir, will be the backbone of Netanyahu’s coalition government.
The leader of this party, which will be the most prominent partner of the Arab monarchs who signed peace agreements with Israel, has called for killing Arabs, expelling them and wrapping the bodies of the martyrs in pigskin “in honor” of them.
Normalization the new norm
Nonetheless, it is likely that red carpets will be laid out for Ben Gvir and Netanyahu in Arab capitals, where they will enjoy Arab hospitality and drink from their gilded goblets. Indeed, there is no difference between the winning Israeli coalition and the defeated one (Lapid-Gantz).
Both converge on their mutual hostility and hatred of Arabs and Muslims. General Benny Gantz, the Israeli Minister of Defense in the previous government, used to boast that he was the Israeli who killed the largest number of Arabs – and this is true, as his government has killed 166 Palestinians since the beginning of this year.
There is a silver lining, however: This racist government will hasten Israel’s demise and lead to its inevitable end, not at the hands of the battered Arab armies, but at the hands of the Palestinian resistance and their regional allies, their missiles and drones.
There are three steps that the Netanyahu government and his extremist coalition may take upon assuming power:
First, a return to reviving the Trump-era ‘Deal of the Century,’ the annexation of the West Bank, and the deportation of most of its Palestinian residents to Jordan as an “alternative homeland.”
Second, the escalation of incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the consolidation of Jewish control over East Jerusalem, and the obliteration of its Arab and Islamic identity. The first step may be dividing it on the model of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, then demolishing it, and erecting the alleged “temple” on its ruins.
Third, the canceling or freezing of the maritime border demarcation agreement with Lebanon, similar to what happened to the Oslo Accords with Palestinians. Netanyahu announced his intent to do so openly in his election campaign.
This option appears especially likely given that extraction of gas and oil from the Karish field has already begun, while the Qana field, which was “partially” recognized as Lebanese, remains untouched, with no surveys or exploration conducted until this moment.
It is likely that the Lebanese gas fields will lay dormant for the foreseeable future. The same US mediators did not guarantee the implementation of even 1 per cent of the Oslo Accords, and they will most likely not guarantee the rights of the Lebanese people.
Renewed Palestinian armed resistance
But Netanyahu is set to assume control over a very different state of affairs, both domestically and internationally. For starters, Israel is facing an escalating internal conflict, and most importantly, a revived intifada in the form of West Bank armed resistance.
We cannot talk about West Bank resistance without discussing the phenomenon of The Lions’ Den whose political and military influence is expanding, while the Palestinian public’s embrace of the movement is growing. Not a day passes without witnessing a commando operation in various parts of the West Bank; in Nablus, Jenin and Hebron – later in Ramallah, and then in the pre-1948 occupied Palestinian territories.
Netanyahu may succeed in including one or two more Arab governments in the Abraham Accords, which was signed under his last premiership. However, such political acrobatics will have no value in light of the “awakening” of the Palestinian people and their return to armed resistance.
The returning Netanyahu will not forget the May 2021 battle of the “Sword of Jerusalem” that humiliated him, and its missiles that isolated the occupying state for more than 11 days, forcing millions of Israeli settler-colonizers into shelters and bunkers.
These missiles are still present and ready, along with hundreds of armed drones. Perhaps it is also worth reminding the incoming Israeli Prime Minister of how he ended an electoral meeting in the city of Ashdod (my ancestors’ hometown) and fled in terror from the 400 missiles launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement in retaliation for the assassination of its leader, Baha Abu al-Atta.
Just another day in the office?
The “Israel” to which Netanyahu returns is not the same Israel he left, and the world he knew when he was last in power, is not the same world today. His US supporter is mired in an unprecedented proxy war of attrition with Russia in Ukraine, where his co-religionist, Volodymyr Zelensky, has so far lost about a fifth of his country’s territory, and has plunged it into darkness and despair.
While Netanyahu is viewed as as being close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, that friendship had deepened before the Ukraine war. The situation has now changed dramatically, and he will be forced to choose between Washington and Moscow in an era of multipolarity.
As for the Lions’ Den, they have effectively changed all the equations and rules of engagement in occupied Palestine – and perhaps in the Arab world as well – and within this context will actually “welcome” the hardliner Netanyahu’s return to power.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The recent arrests came as a shock to Nablus locals, who took to the streets in order to protest the decision of the PA to target the Palestinian resistance.
Violent clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s security forces, this Monday, resulted in the death of a 53-year-old and represented a turning point in the relationship between the PA and the newly formed resistance factions inside the occupied West Bank.
On Monday evening the PA’s Preventative Security Service arrested two Palestinian resistance fighters wanted by “Israel”, Musab Shtayyeh and Ameed Tabila, in the city of Nablus. Musab Shtayyeh, the most prominent of the two, had evaded multiple Israeli arrest campaigns since June of last year. Shtayyeh also managed to escape an Israeli assassination attempt on July 24, which left three other Palestinian resistance fighters dead, after “Israel” had stormed the city of Nablus with hundreds of military personnel, including special forces units.
The arrests came as a shock to Nablus locals, who took to the streets in order to protest the decision of the PA to target the Palestinian resistance. In both Nablus and Jenin, the two locations where Palestinian armed groups have been the most active, armed fighters took to the streets to make announcements condemning the PA’s actions. Although the resistance forces in Nablus clearly stated that their guns were not aimed at anyone but the occupation, they stressed that their patience should not be tested.
It didn’t take long before young people took to the streets to burn tires in central Nablus and chanted in support of Shtayyeh and Tabila, to which the PA security forces responded with gunfire and tear gas. Palestinian resistance fighters also fired back towards the PA forces and it was later declared that a 53-year-old civilian had been shot and killed, the incident was blamed on the Palestinian Authority.
The images coming out of the West Bank have been striking; young men hurling stones at militarized vehicles, as Western-trained forces fire tear gas and bullets back, except this time the militarised force is not Israeli, it calls itself the Palestinian. To add insult to injury, it has emerged that the PA took the decision to carry out its arrest campaign based upon a request given by the Israeli occupation regime. Hussein al-Sheikh, the Secretary General of the PA’s executive committee, seems to be the source of the order given to carry out the arrests.
Right now, the PA has been put into its usual defensive mode, where it attempts to justify its actions and bids to convince Palestinians that its ‘Security coordination’ efforts are in the best interest of the Palestinian people, something that Palestinians see through. All of the explanations and excuses in the world will fail to cover up what took place this Monday. Just as was the case last year, when the PA’s security forces brutally beat the beloved activist, Nizar Banat, to death, after pulling him out of his home in front of his family. According to Amnesty International, it’s clear at this time that the PA failed to ensure accountability for the assassination of Nizar Banat and so it should come as no surprise that PA forces are sliding down a slippery slope into chaos.
Just as the United States and its NATO allies have failed to adjust their mindsets to the current era, so too has the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. We must recognise that we are now witnessing the era in which the expression of a new Palestinian generation is being felt; armed resistance factions are rising, an armed resistance populated – primarily – by young people between the ages of 18-25. When we break down what this means; it suggests that today’s resistance fighters in the West Bank were only small children when the Second Intifada was happening. The fighters in Jenin and Nablus today, fit into a trend that began emerging in the early to mid 80’s, when Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) cadres would organise themselves with modest means to fight the occupation.
The Palestinian resistance in the West Bank do not remember what it felt like to see the resistance crushed, during “Israel’s” brutal ‘operation defensive shield’ of 2002, they are not afraid and believe in victory. The biggest problem they now face however, began in 2002, following ‘operation defensive shield’; that is the CIA’s dismantling and reformation of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces. Nobody likes to talk about this, but it is true and cannot be disputed, at the behest of Israeli, EU and US interests, the PA’s security forces were transformed into a Western-Jordanian trained and equipped “anti-terrorism” task force, designed to do the heavy lifting for the Israeli occupation army.
Since the end of the Second Intifada, in 2007, we haven’t seen the energized armed struggle that we see today in the West Bank and so the PA’s forces have been capable of performing their duties, with little to no pushback. However, it has been way too long since the Oslo Agreements and the rhetoric of the Zionist entity has transitioned back to that which it maintained during the 1970’s, regarding Palestinian self governance. Palestinians don’t see any hope for change and the PA is not making any progress whatsoever towards achieving any form of Palestinian statehood. The Palestinian bourgeoisie of Ramallah are happy living in their imaginary fantasy world and the PA has now absorbed the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). There has been no national elections since 2006 and the non-economy of the West Bank, which is completely controlled by the Zionist entity and Jordanian regime, is getting worse for the poorest in society.
The PA is now beginning to face its worst nightmare, the ultimatum that we all knew was coming at some point; they can turn their guns on the Zionist entity, or they can turn their guns on the Palestinian resistance and face the end of their power as we know it. There is no more standing in the middle, attempting to please the West by collaborating with the Israeli occupation forces on “security coordination” and playing the game of condemning Zionist atrocities, whilst begging on their knees for peace. The next chapter is going to be violent, now it is on those within that Fatah Party leadership to decide where the PA is heading and what side of the violence they are going to be on, because asking for peace talks is not going to solve today’s issues.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
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)
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’sfull 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.
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..
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.”
Hezbollah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech at the end of the Arbaeen procession that headed towards the shrine of Sayyeda Khawal [AS] in Baalbek on September 17, 2022.
Sayyed Nasrallah began his speech by condoling Muslims on the Arbaeen of Imam Hussein [AS] and thanks the participants in the Arbaeen March who walked to the holy shrine of Imam Hussein daughter, Sayyeda Khawla in Baalbek.
In his speech, the Secretary General talked about the most important lessons of the Arbaeen saying, “Looking back at the stances of Imam al-Sajjad and Sayyeda Zeinab [AS] in Yazid’s palace, a believer could never show weakness or despair no matter how hard the calamities and the circumstances are.”
In the light of this, Sayyed Nasrallah highlighted that “The remembrance of Prophet Mohammad [PBUH] and his household is eternal until the Day of Resurrection.”
The Resistance Leader affirmed, “There is no place for humiliation, but rather for moving on based on the long history of faith in the future and the divine promise.”
Also, in his speech, His Eminence addressed the Iraqi people thanking them for their great generosity, hospitality, and love they have been showing for the visitors of Imam Hussein [AS].
“We must thank our brothers and sisters in Iraq, the authorities and the people, for their immense generosity, time, effort, and management of this grand event,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.
His Eminence highlighted that “The Arbaeen Walk in Iraq, in which 20 million visitors took part, is unprecedented in history on the level of the participating masses.”
“At least hundreds of thousands of those walked the road leading from Najaf to Karbala. Those visitors went there with their own money; states do not fund this ziyara. Those 20 million visitors are 20 million hearts beating in the love of Imam Hussein [AS]. The poor and the needy are the first we see there,” Sayyed Nasrallah clarified.
Elsewhere in his speech, the Hezbollah SG recalled the Sabra and Shatila Massacre which was carried out from the 16th of September, 1982, and until the 18th of the same month.
Sayyed Nasrallah explained, “The ‘Israeli’ enemy sponsored the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, but it was mainly perpetrated by certain Lebanese sides that are known and that were allied with ‘Israel’ militarily in the invasion of 1982.”
“The Sabra and Shatila Massacre could amount to the biggest and most heinous massacre that was committed in the history of the Arab-‘Israeli’ conflict,” the Resistance Leader added, remembering that “Around 1900 Lebanese martyrs and some 3000 Palestinian martyrs were the victims of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre.”
His Eminence said that the Sabra and Shatila Massacre remains “The most horrific to have been carried out by ‘Israel’s’ tools in Lebanon, and the ones responsible for it were never held accountable for it.”
Sayyed Nasrallah slammed those who have been sowing strife in Lebanon saying, “We’ve been hearing phrases comparing ‘our Lebanon’ and ‘your Lebanon’, telling us we do not belong to ‘their’ Lebanon. I tell them that the Sabra and Shatila Massacre is one of the faces of ‘their’ Lebanon! The liberation of the South is the face of our Lebanon!”
“The culture of death belongs to those who committed the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, while the culture of life belongs to those who liberated South Lebanon without even killing a chicken! They say the massacre was carried out to avenge Bachir Gemayel. They took revenge from who? From innocent civilians! Whereas during our fight, we did not even kill a chicken! Who are the ones of a death culture?!” the Hezbollah SG exclaimed.
Elsewhere in his speech, Sayyed Nasrallah said, “The American guarantees neither protected the Lebanese and the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila nor elsewhere. Anyone who trusts the Americans in this sense is offering their men, women, children, and even the unborn to be slaughtered.”
The Resistance chief hailed the Palestinian youths, particularly those in the occupied West Bank, for their active presence in the field of resistance.
“The enemy now is frightened by the resistance of the West Bank as it is fighting its young generation,” His Eminence said.
Relatedly, Sayyed Nasrallah praised Hamas’ latest statement on resuming ties with Syria as a respected choice, saying, “Palestine’s priority lies in fighting the ‘Israeli’ enemy and the confrontation with the ‘Israeli’ enemy will prevail all stances as per the statement issued by Hamas.”
His Eminence went on to say, “The Syrian leadership and people will remain the true supported of the Palestinian people and are bearing the sacrifices for their sake,” adding, “Resistance, and not begging, is the sole way to reclaim the rights.”
Regarding the extraction of gas from the Karish platform, Sayyed Nasrallah highlighted that “Lebanon is in front of a golden opportunity that might not be repeated, which is extracting gas to solve its crisis.”
“We sent a powerful message warning that the enemy not to extract from the Karish field until Lebanon is given its rights, as this would be crossing a red line,” the Resistance Leader said.
“We offered the negotiations a true opportunity in which Lebanon extracts gas and we were not after any trouble,” His Eminence explained, saying, “We are not part of the maritime border demarcation negotiations, but our eyes are on Karish, as are our missiles.”
Sayyed Nasrallah went on to say, “I believe that the ‘Israelis’, the Americans, and others have enough info for them to know that the Resistance is very serious in its warnings, and that we don’t fear any confrontation if it was forced upon us.”
Another issue His Eminence addressed during his speech was the UNIFIL’s mandate in Lebanon.
“The most recent development regarding the UNIFIL is an act of aggression and a violation of the Lebanese sovereignty; it reflects the absence of the aging state and the one behind this ‘Israeli’ trap is either ignorant or traitor,” Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out.
His Eminence added, “The latest decision regarding the UNIFIL would have exposed Lebanon to grave dangers, but the stance of the Lebanese state was a good one.”
Concerning the issue of the government formation, Sayyed Nasrallah said that hopes are high, warning that the country must not enter a presidential void.
“Everybody should offer compromises so that electing a president would take place in its due constitutional time,” the Resistance chief said, saying, “Threats are futile and we support calls for agreeing on a president with meetings being held away from tensions and vetoes.”
Sayyed Nasrallah focused on the issue that “The President of the Republic must enjoy a wide popular and political base to assume his legal and constitutional duties.”
In his comments about the events surrounding the banking sector, the Hezbollah Secretary General said, “Dealing with the security level is insufficient and officials must form a crisis and emergency cell to finds real solutions.”
The Resistance leader summed up his address by stressing the importance of the popular support base that the coming president should have in order to be able to fulfill his duties adequately.
“No matter how hard the difficulties in Lebanon and the region are, we will definitely emerge victorious and our people will be able to enforce their will,” Sayyed Nasrallah concluded.
Related Videos
Lebanon | Large crowds walked to Baalbek to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Imam Hussein
The resistance in the West Bank confuses the leaders of the Zionist enemy… The repercussions of the heroic Jalameh operation
Shanghai Organization .. Will it turn into an alliance after the Samarkand Summit?
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, US President Bill Clinton, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat at the signing of the Oslo Accord. (Photo: Vince Musi, via Wikimedia Commons)
Palestinian resistance movements called on Wednesday for a total withdrawal from the Oslo Accords and an end to ‘security coordination’ between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli occupation security services, Quds Press reported.
Speaking on behalf of the movements, senior Islamic Jihad official Nafeth Azzam said that Oslo gave “legitimacy” to the Israeli occupation and illegal Jewish settlements.
Israeli occupation has detained more than 135,000 Palestinians including 20,000 minors and 2,500 women since the signing of the Oslo Accords. pic.twitter.com/XiAZj0yi0G
Azzam made his comments during a conference in Gaza to mark the anniversary of the Oslo Accords. He also issued a warning about the normalization of Arab states with Israel.
“This path is doomed to fail. The Palestinians have surprised the world with their rejection of Oslo and their rejection of the normalization of ties between the occupation and Arab nations.”
The Palestinian resistance, he pointed out, broke the security equation of the Israeli occupation and forced it to leave the Gaza Strip seventeen years ago.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 