The UN disregard for Palestinians’ right of return colludes with Israeli violence
Thousands of internally displaced Palestinians take part in the March of Return [File photo]
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 29, 2018
The Palestinian “Great March of Return” has exposed the frailty of Israel’s fabricated narratives, yet once again the international community prefers to speak about “sides” in the conflict. As the planned march draws nearer, the Jerusalem Post reported that UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, has urged “all sides to exercise restraint and to take the necessary steps to avoid a violent escalation.”
Palestinians have already insisted repeatedly that the march is a form of non-violent protest stemming from a legitimate right to go back to the land from which the nascent Israeli state drove them out at gunpoint. Nevertheless, the Times of Israel reported yesterday that more than 100 snipers have been deployed along the border with the Gaza Strip “to deal with a Palestinian march expected to begin on Friday…” Officers will “authorise them to open fire if… Israeli lives are in danger.” Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot clarified this further: “The orders are to use a lot of force.”
Israeli media outlets have supported the state’s premeditated violence by framing the Palestinian protest as a violent act even before it has taken place, and thus justified in advance what they deem to be a necessarily violent response. However, they are not alone in promoting narratives of denial with regard to Israel’s colonial violence. The UN’s absence of any assertiveness when it comes to holding Israel accountable for its crimes is becoming a core component of the colonial entity’s ability to act with total impunity. Nowhere is this more evident than in its patronising attitude towards the Palestinian right of return.
Israel National News published an op-ed earlier this week which described the planned protest as the “latest innovation” with the immediate objective of Palestinians participating in the march “to get killed themselves”, simply in order to “delegitimise Israel”. The op-ed provides the most dissociated overviews of the Nakba, which the author describes as “the date in 1948 on which Ben Gurion declared the state of Israel and five Arab states invaded it.” Needless to say, the article also seeks to disavow the displacement, dispossession and ethnic cleansing which transformed Palestinians into perpetual refugees.
Israel’s widespread denial of the Palestinian right of return necessitates this manipulation of the indigenous population’s history. It also allows Eizenkot to justify targeting Palestinians with sniper fire for “marching into our territory.” Yet the international community’s refusal to support the perfectly legitimate right of return speaks volumes about the UN’s collusion with Israel. It is also proof that the UN never intended that the right should ever be implemented, even though it was made a condition of Israel’s membership of the international organisation. The only possibility lies in the hands of the Palestinian people, who have the power to move away, at least intellectually, from the impositions disguised as UN resolutions.
The Palestinian Great March of Return should thus prompt some thinking. Despite seeking to abide by UN resolutions, Palestinians have found themselves tethered to cycles of dispossession, which shows that the international agenda is deeply flawed and corrupted. The international response to this non-violent protest has not singled out Israeli plans to murder Palestinians at the border of their own land for condemnation; rather, the UN has chosen a discourse which insists on equivalence between the protagonists when it is clear to all and sundry that there is none. A colonial power with one of the best-equipped armed forces in the world — including nuclear weapons — is imposing its will on a colonised population which seeks to return to its own land and reverse the permanent refugee status which has become synonymous with the Palestinians.
Since Israel and the UN have already chosen their violent narratives, we are justified in asking why the latter’s intent is to maintain the political coercion that created the Palestinian refugee problem in the first place and face its own accountability for the transformation of the legitimate right to return into a dangerous game with limited options. The Palestinians, meanwhile, can either submit and stay permanently displaced, or stand up for their rights and be killed by acts of premeditated violence by Israel, with which the UN is colluding.
Israel army to use live ammo to disperse border rallies
MEMO | March 28, 2018
The Israeli army will use live ammunition to disperse planned Friday rallies in the Gaza Strip, according to Israel’s army chief-of-staff.
“We are reinforcing the barriers [along the Gaza-Israel border] while large numbers of [Israeli] soldiers will be stationed in the area to prevent infiltration attempts,” Israeli Army Chief-of-Staff Gadi Eizenkot said Wednesday.
Soldiers have received permission to open fire on protesters “if Israeli security infrastructure comes under threat,” Eizenkot told Israeli daily Maariv.
“Last year, hundreds were injured after they tried to destroy parts of the [border] fence,” he said. “We will not stand for this.”
Speaking to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Eizenkot said the Israeli army had deployed more than 100 sharpshooters in advance of Friday’s planned rallies.
“If lives are in jeopardy, [soldiers will have] permission to open fire,” he said.
Eizenkot made the remarks only two days before planned demonstrations during which Gazan protesters hope to converge en masse on the Gaza Strip’s 45-kilometer eastern border with Israel.
Dubbed the “Great Return March”, the event is intended to pressure Israel to lift its decade-long siege of the Gaza Strip and reaffirm the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes in historical Palestine.
Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has groaned under a crippling Israeli/Egyptian blockade that has gutted its economy and deprived its more than two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.
Return March organizers: Israel’s terrorism will not intimidate us
Palestine Information Center – March 28, 2018
GAZA – National committee for the March of Return, during a press conference held near the Great March of Return’s tent east of Gaza city which was targeted by Israeli gunfire on Wednesday morning, said that Israel will not succeed in terrorizing the Palestinian people.
The committee affirmed that preparations for the Great March of Return are ongoing, calling on the world nations to support this popular movement.
Head of the committee Khalid al-Batsh said that the Great March of Return is a purely peaceful event and that Palestinians are entitled to demand their right of return which is guaranteed by international law.
The PIC reporter said that the Israeli tanks stationed near Gaza’s eastern border fence fired two missiles on Wednesday morning at two sites east of al-Zaitoun neighborhood in Gaza city. No injuries were reported.
Member of the committee Ismail Ridwan warned the Israeli occupation against using violence against the protesters participating in the Great March of Return.
The Islamic Jihad leader Ahmad al-Modallal said that the Israeli occupation is in a state of confusion and trying to thwart this popular movement by various means. He continued to say that Israel will never be able to break the Palestinian will or kill the Palestinian dream of return.
The coordinating committee of the Great March of Return in February announced its intention to launch popular mass demonstrations toward the Palestinian territories occupied since 1948 in demand of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return.
Israel readies extra troops, snipers and drones, for Palestinian ‘March of Return’
Courtesy: defenseindustrydaily.com
MEMO | March 27, 2018
Israeli authorities are preparing extra troops, snipers and drones ahead of the Palestinians’ planned “March of Return”, a six-week long series of actions beginning this Friday with Land Day protests.
According to the Times of Israel, Israeli occupation forces are “gearing up” for protests expected to take place along the Gaza Strip’s perimeter fence, “putting additional units on alert out of concerns that large numbers of Palestinians might try to break through the barrier and rush into Israel”.
The majority of Palestinians in the occupied and blockaded Gaza Strip are from nearby communities ethnically cleansed by Israel in the 1948 Nakba.
Land Day, which takes place annually on 30 March, marks the Israeli government’s appropriation of land from Palestinian citizens in 1976, and the bloody repression of protests against the seizure. The March of Return initiative is intended to continue until 15 May, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.
Citing a “military source”, the Times of Israel reported that in preparation for the expected protests, “additional army battalions, Border Police units, and dozens of snipers will be deployed along the Gaza border on Friday, in order to keep demonstrators from crossing”.
In addition, “police officers will be stationed a bit farther back, in order to keep back any Palestinians who breach the first line of defence”, while “additional teams of IDF soldiers will also patrol the Israeli communities closest to the border”.
Israeli forces are also likely to “deploy drones that can drop tear gas on protesters on the Gaza side of the border, a technique that the Border Police tested earlier this month.”
In regular protests since December, Israeli occupation forces have used lethal violence against Palestinian demonstrators, killing a number of unarmed protesters and injuring hundreds more.
Israeli forces pound Beit Lahia in Gaza Strip following false Iron Dome alert
Press TV – March 25, 2018
Israeli forces have pounded the Palestinian town of Beit Lahia after dozens of rocket sirens sounded in southern Israel following light artillery fire from a drill carried out by Hamas’ military arm in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Iron Dome missile system was activated several times late Sunday evening as a result of the artillery fire from the Hamas’ maneuver.
There were no immediate reports on the possible casualties from the attack.
Israeli media reported multiple interceptions launched from Ashkelon following a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza. But the Israeli army later confirmed no rockets had been fired into Israel. It said the Iron dome anti-missile system was activated after heavy machine gun shooting in the Gaza strip.
The Israeli military frequently bombs the Gaza Strip, with civilians being the main target of such attacks.
Israel has also launched several wars on the Palestinian coastal sliver, the last of which began in early July 2014. The military aggression, which ended on August 26, 2014, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians. Over 11,100 others were also wounded in the war.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
The Israeli regime denies about 1.8 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs with proper wages as well as adequate healthcare and education.
The Blood of Gaza Will Be on the Hands of Mahmoud Abbas in Israel’s Next Attack
By Robert Inlakesh | American Herald Tribune | March 20, 2018
‘Palestinian President’ Mahmoud Abbas, has announced his plans to collectively punish the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, justifying his decision by accusing Hamas of something he has no evidence for.
Yesterday at a press meeting, held in Ramallah (Occupied West Bank), Mahmoud Abbas – President of the ‘Palestinian Authority’ (PA) – lashed out at Hamas, announcing his plans to increase the suffering in the Gaza Strip.
Mahmoud Abbas, who like Israel, illegally occupies his position in the West Bank, has accused Hamas of orchestrating the attempted assassination of Rami Hamdallah. Rami Hamdallah is the current Prime Minister of the ‘Palestinian Authority’.
On the 13th of March, the Palestinian PM’s convoy was attacked, shortly after passing the Beit Hanoun/Erez crossing (Gaza/Israel border). The attack left 9 members of Hamdallah’s security personnel injured, he survived with no injuries.
Almost within minutes of the attack taking place, allegations were mounted by PA members, against Hamas. No consideration was given to the possibility of an Israeli attack. This attack was carried out so close to border with the occupying power, yet somehow there is absolutely no suspicion on the part of the PA.
Adding to the fire, yesterday, Mahmoud Abbas indicated his belief, that Hamas was behind the assassination attempt. Abbas offered no evidence to support this allegation, an allegation which has been condemned by Palestinian factions, such as the PLFP and Islamic Jihad.
The true colors of Mahmoud Abbas begin to shine…
The PA president, who accuses Hamas of the assassination attempt, does not punish Hamas, instead he decides to tighten the grip around the throat of Gaza’s civilian population.
Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would “take national, legal and financial measures” against the Gaza Strip, in response to Hamas. But make no mistake, Abbas is not punishing Hamas, he is collectively punishing Gaza.
Hamas officials will not suffer from the treacherous decisions of Abbas. No Hamas official will lose their access to food, nor their access to clean water.
No Hamas officials are going to die as a result of this PA decision, the dead will be of the civilian population, 52% of which are children!
It was an integral part of the ‘Unity Deal’, signed between Hamas and Fatah parties, that the PA help the humanitarian situation in Gaza, this part of the deal was promised last September. Since the highly anticipated signing of the ‘Unity Deal’, there have been next to no efforts from the PA to help Gaza. The situation in the Gaza Strip has gotten so much worse, since the deal, that Gaza is in a declared state of emergency.
Not only does Abbas understand the situation, on the ground, in Gaza, he helped Israel create it. Just last year, the Palestinian authority – prior the ‘Unity Deal’ – stopped paying for the import of diesel fuel into the besieged Strip. The PA even reduced the salaries of its members in Gaza, this reduction ranged from 30-70 percent of the individual’s wages, placing many below the poverty line.
Mahmoud Abbas is doing the work of Israel
The situation in Gaza has deteriorated significantly, to the point now, of complete collapse. Another conflict between Hamas and the Israeli Regime seems highly likely, with Israel having much incentive to now launch a large scale attack.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of the Israeli regime, is currently under corruption investigation and is even losing support to further right-wing parties. Israel has also just privatized and centralized, most of their weapons manufacturing companies to Elbit Systems, meaning the demand for using weapons in Gaza is high. There is also nothing Israelis like more, than to see Gazans suffer and any excuse to launch an attack will win praise from the country’s population.
The PA’s Mahmoud Abbas, has been looking to steal the Gaza Strip from Hamas, hoping to have already achieved this aim by now. Frustration has been expressed from the PA, after going to Egypt several times, in an attempt to push Hamas to hand control of the besieged strip over. Hamas has resisted this, including the PLO call – on the 28th of Feb this year – to deploy 3000 PA policemen, from Ramallah to Gaza, in order to take over the strip militarily.
During the past 3 months, municipalities in Gaza have been forced to take an approximate, 30% pay cut, from their employees. Gaza has now also come to a 50% unemployment rate. Gaza’s population of 2 million, are now 80% below the poverty line, 96% of the water in Gaza is also unfit for human consumption.
The actions of Mahmoud Abbas, will mean the further collapse of social services, as well as all other aspects of life, in Gaza. Instead of solving any disputes like men, Abbas and his traitorous PA, punish the population of Gaza, waiting for war or revolution, anything but freedom.
If a confrontation between Hamas and Israel is to take place, Abbas and his PA will once again, most likely, hide and use the assassination attempt, as an excuse not to act against Israel.
The two state delusion, is gone, Israel won’t have it, nor will the US.
Mahmoud Abbas understands that his actions in the UN and with the International community, will not bring peace, instead he tries to squeeze every bit of power and money he can, out of a false dream. Instead of bringing the people together, the “President” of the PA, for now, divides his people, collectively punishes Gaza, watches the West Bank disappear and runs security forces for Israel’s illegal occupation.
To the people of Gaza, Mahmoud Abbas continues to declare himself, no friend and no representative.
Hamas denounces Abbas’s accusations regarding Gaza explosion
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum
Palestine Information Center – March 13, 2018
GAZA – The Hamas movement on Tuesday slammed the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s statements in which he held Hamas responsible for the explosion that targeted the Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Gaza.
The Movement stressed that what happened was a crime and an attempt to harm the reconciliation.
Hamas’s spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a press statement that his Movement strongly condemns the attack on Hamdallah’s convoy in Gaza, affirming that this crime is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the reconciliation efforts and harm Gaza’s security.
Barhoum slammed the “ready accusations” made by Abbas and called on Gaza’s Ministry of Interior to open an urgent investigation into the crime to hold its perpetrators accountable.
Hamdallah’s convoy was targeted by a blast shortly after it arrived in the Gaza Strip through Beit Hanoun (Erez) checkpoint. No injuries were reported.
Gaza’s Ministry of Interior said that Hamdallah resumed his mission scheduled for Tuesday and affirmed that security services are investigating the incident.
Sderot, ‘Bomb Shelter Capital of the World’, Not As Heroic As Israel Claims
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald tribune | March 12, 2108
CBN News has run a story with the headline “Israel Takes Diplomats on Tour along Gaza Border”, in which deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, tells them it’s her duty to let them “see the real challenges on the ground”.
Sderot, which has become known as ‘the bomb shelter capital of the world’, is a compulsory stop on these propaganda tours. Being only a mile from the Gaza Strip residents have little time to take cover, though very few have been killed by Gaza’s erratic garden-shed missiles.
The story of brave Sderot is told ad nauseam to brainwash the media and their own people besides the coachloads of gullible foreign politicians and tourists. The Israeli authorities have studiously counted and broadcast the number of home-made Qassam projectiles, claiming that more than 15,000 “terrorist” rockets have “rained down” on Sderot since the Israeli occupier pulled its citizens and troops out of the Gaza Strip in 2005 saying they were making a concession of territory designed to bring peace. Of course, it didn’t. Why?
For several reasons. Israel’s “concession” was the handing back of territory that didn’t belong to them in the first place. Furthermore the pull-out on the ground has still left Israel occupying Gaza’s territorial waters and airspace, and in control of all land crossings – including the one into Egypt. The Zionist regime has thus maintained a vicious blockade on the tiny coastal enclave for the last 10 years. Hotovely and her regime colleagues, who preach non-stop about Israel’s right to self-defence, fail to understand that the Palestinians have the same right and are entitled to mount an armed resistance against their illegal occupier.
What Israelis never admit to is how many missiles, bombs, shells, mortar rounds and other high-tech ordnance launched by their F-16s, helicopter gunships, drones, tanks and navy gunboats have slammed into crowded Gaza, causing horrendous slaughter and reducing homes and vital infrastructure (much of it paid for by EU and American taxpayers) to rubble.
And there’s another little fact that Hotovely is careful not to mention. Sderot is built on the lands of a Palestinian Arab village called Najd, which was ethnically cleansed by Jewish terrorists in May 1948 before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine. The 600+ villagers, all Muslim, were forced to flee for their lives. Britain, the mandated government, was on watch while this and many other atrocities were committed by rampaging Jewish militia.
Arabs owned over 90 percent of the land in Najd and, according to UN Resolution 194 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they are entitled to return home. But, as we have come to expect, Israel refuses to recognize the rights of others and will not allow them back. Anyway, what is there for them to return to? The 82 homes there were bulldozed. Najd was one of 418 Palestinian villages and towns ethnically cleansed and wiped off the map by Zionist Jews. Its inhabitants became refugees in Gaza and their families are probably still living in camps there.
The irony is that some of them may be manning the rocket launchers….
When Barak Obama visited Sderot he spouted the well-worn mantra backing Israel’s right to protect its citizens from rocket attacks. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.” Well said, Obama. But let’s hope you wouldn’t be so stupid or arrogant as to live on land you stole from your neighbor at gun-point.
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By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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