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Israeli military’s blunders, brazen lies, failures sum up 110 days of war on Gaza

By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | January 23, 2024

Since the beginning of the Israeli regime’s ground operation against Gaza in late October, the regime forces have been met with fierce resistance by Palestinian fighters, prompting military experts to predict that Israeli troops would not find it easy to meet any of their objectives.

Nearly three months into the ground assault, these military analysts have been proven correct.

In the latest, at least 24 Israeli troops were declared killed in less than 24 hours on Tuesday, laying bare the fragility of what many have described as the “TikTok occupation army.”

The Israeli regime has not met a single objective. Instead, it has attempted to cover up its losses, committed egregious war crimes resulting in a genocide case against it at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and spent nearly $246 million per day on sustaining its genocidal war on Gaza.

The Tel Aviv regime, which has launched a Western-focused campaign to have the hundred-some Israeli captives held by Hamas released, has not been able to secure the release of any of them so far.

In fact, the one opportunity Israeli forces had to secure their release, they instead shot them. Coupled with this embarrassment was the retreat of Israeli troops, including the infamous Golani brigade.

Facing pressure from the inevitability of military, political, and economic disaster, Zionist officials have been contradicting each other at every corner, smacking of frustration from their losses.

For example, an Israeli war minister admits that “Hamas is far from being defeated in Gaza,” while another spokesperson says that Hamas has been completely dismantled in the north.

These contradictory statements usher in more public distrust as to what is really happening on the battlefield. They also expose the dilemma the regime is facing in the face of indomitable resistance.

The Israeli regime is notorious for brazenly lying and covering up its losses while inflating its “successes.” So in order to find the truth, we must observe the battlefield itself.

Just over a week after Israeli forces announced the “dismantlement” of Hamas in the north, a barrage of 50 rockets launched from northern Gaza by the movement’s armed wing Qassam Brigades hit buildings in surrounding settlements in the occupied Gaza envelope.

The operations of Qassam Brigades are giving jitters to Israeli settlers still in the area, as Zionist forces again failed to ensure their safety, especially after downplaying the existence of threats in north Gaza.

Furthermore, thousands of Zionist settlers from the Gaza Envelope who flocked out of the occupied territories in the wake of the Al-Aqsa Storm (Al-Aqsa Flood) operation have yet to return home.

As one former settler told Israel’s Channel 13 recently, it is “not only due to the threat of rockets … no one knows if the Palestinians from Gaza can reach us. No one knows where their tunnels extend to.”

“I have been living in Sderot for years, and I cannot count the times they told us that Hamas is deterred,” he was quoted as saying, laying bare the hollow rhetoric of the Israeli military.

Meanwhile, the Al-Qassam Brigades and other resistance factions remain strong. This is through demonstrable proof – over 100 days after the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm (Al-Aqsa Flood), the resistance groups are able to launch rockets as far as Tel Aviv at will.

Al-Qassam Brigades routinely (nearly daily) upload videos of their fighters confronting Zionist tanks and personnel head-on and at point-blank range, posting the destruction of Israeli forces for the world to see.

Where just a few days ago Israeli military officials announced the withdrawal of Israeli forces to give them time to lick their wounds and regroup, the political pressure amassed on the Netanyahu regime has now forced some brigades from the Israeli regime back into Northern Gaza, where they continue to be met with fierce resistance.

Clearly, the claim of Hamas’ dismantlement has been proven false.

Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, says that Al Qassam is “smashing the Israeli army and will continue to do so,” and that Hamas “will not submit to the conditions of the occupation.”

Israel now faces the same resistance but with worn-out soldiers and less numbers.

Though thousands of soldiers still fight in Gaza, it is nowhere near as much quantity as it was just under a month ago. Thousands have backed out under “strategic withdrawal” while thousands more suffer injury and permanent disability.

To dilute the success of Palestinian resistance, the Israeli occupation has ordered hospitals not to cover the losses from Gaza. A spokesman declares that the order violates “press freedom, but claims that the logic behind the new procedure is the desire to maintain the dignity of the injured and their families.”

To date, Hamas has claimed the destruction of thousands of troops and over one thousand vehicles

The same battlefield ferocity cannot be said of Israeli forces. Resorting to aerial bombardments that only slaughter innocent civilians, the Israeli military has yet to claim a categorical battlefield win, instead filming themselves bullying and assaulting civilians and destroying their homes and neighborhoods.

The statements and videos from Al Qassam are not just demonstrations of Hamas’ battlefield skills. They also serve as a weapon against the Zionist entity itself, forcing Israeli settlers to reckon with the fact that the Israeli military cannot protect them, as they cannot even protect themselves.

Tamer Eidam, a settler and “head of the Sdot Negev regional council” has reported that the Netanyahu regime is going as far as bribing settlers to return to the Gaza envelope, without “removing the security threat.” The feelings among settlers are also the same in north-occupied Palestine, fearing Hezbollah strikes and lack of Israeli military protection.

Netanyahu insists on the return of settlers to the Gaza envelope while simultaneously asserting that the aggression on Gaza could last until 2025, as Western media and Israeli outlets report.

Meanwhile, sirens ring nearly daily due to incoming rockets from the besieged Gaza Strip.

Here lies the turbulent political landscape. Netanyahu and his officials are in direct contradiction with the assessment of the military, and within themselves, resulting in no certainty for their troops or their settlers.

Where Netanyahu promises safety and security, Al Qassam responds with barrages of rockets. And where the regime’s military affairs minister Yoav Gallant promises the elimination of Hamas, worn-out Israeli troops are met with ambushes and fierce resistance.

The scenes and reports of Israeli military withdrawal in Gaza succinctly underscore the fate of the Netanyahu regime.

The regime, which was already unpopular amongst settlers and routinely being protested against, now faces more heat from its own settlers, as facts surface from October 7 proving the usage of the infamous “Hannibal Directive.”

The directive was created to ensure civilians and soldiers are not captured by enemy fighters in order to force the Israeli regime into hostage negotiations. The directive purportedly says the capturing of any civilians or soldiers should be stopped by any means necessary – including killing them.

New details have emerged that Israeli forces not only deliberately opened fire on settlers and their own soldiers at the “Nova Festival,” but also within Israeli settlements, indiscriminately killing hundreds of Israelis.

The Tel Aviv regime lays the blame for these deaths on Hamas while destroying evidence that would tie the deaths to its own forces.

This directive comes into direct contradiction with the public occupation demand to free Israeli captives

Culminating failures of the security apparatuses of the occupation have resulted in heated war cabinet meetings that have resulted in further division within Israeli leadership, to the point of Netanyahu even demanding lie detector tests.

Zionist reports say that ministers have stormed out of meetings, or even turned meetings into nasty shouting matches where little “progress” was made.

The regime is torn between two demands: first, the demand for the return of Israeli captives with the restoration of settlements, and second, the destruction of Palestinian resistance.

Pursuing the latter risks the failure of the former as Israeli bombs have killed captives, and pursuing the former concedes defeat to the day one objective of “eliminating Hamas.”

The Zionist regime believes it can save face by conducting a flagrant genocide in front of the world. But this is a severe miscalculation. It has only brought them to the ICJ in the Hague and launched a worldwide campaign in support of Palestinian resistance. Through this horrific crime, they have crossed the point of no return.

Furthermore, other allies of the Palestinian cause – including Yemen, Hezbollah, and Iraqi resistance groups, now exert pressure on American forces in the region, with the potential to escalate into a regional war.

Hamas and the Palestinian resistance have put the Israeli occupation into a box. The very stability of the occupation is falling apart, as public distrust of the Netanyahu regime and the occupation forces itself flourishes.

While protests grow and ministers argue amongst themselves, Al Qassam taunts the occupation with rockets and videos of destroyed Merkava tanks.

Hence, the Zionist regime must reckon with the inevitability of its crushing defeat.

Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.

January 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Settlers refuse return to Gaza envelope: ‘Hamas not yet deterred’

The Cradle | January 19, 2024

Hebrew media reported on 19 January that tens of thousands of evacuated settlers from the Gaza envelope are refusing to return to their homes. 

A former resident of the Sderot settlement, located less than a mile from Gaza, told Israel’s Channel 13 in an interview that settlers “will not return to Sderot in the current situation.”

This is “not only due to the threat of rockets … no one knows if the Palestinians from Gaza can reach us. No one knows where their tunnels extend to,” the settler said. 

“I have been living in Sderot for years, and I cannot count the times they told us that Hamas is deterred.” 

Sderot is one of the Gaza envelope settlements that was stormed by resistance fighters during the outbreak of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October. Rockets struck the settlement at the onset of the attack, as Palestinian fighters made their way in. 

The Hamas fighters seized the Sderot police station, taking around 30 of its force as captives. The fighters then waged a 20-hour battle with Israeli troops in which all of the policemen were killed. The Israeli military then destroyed the station, bringing it down on top of those inside.

Since being evacuated in October, Sderot and other Gaza envelope settlements have continued to be hit by rocket attacks launched by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. 

According to Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli government is facing great difficulty in convincing the residents of the Gaza envelope settlements to return to their homes. 

Last month, Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported that Tel Aviv was offering financial grants to those willing to return to the settlements located between four and seven kilometers from the Gaza border. 

A meeting was held between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the council chiefs of the Gaza envelope settlements on 16 January, according to a Channel 12 report. 

The council chiefs reportedly demanded that “the process of returning … be delayed or extended until the summer and the start of the new school year, and for the state to continue to fund their stay in temporary accommodation until then,” The Times of Israel said. 

Netanyahu also reportedly told the council chiefs during the meeting that the war could potentially continue until 2025. 

“Netanyahu said he accepted their request, promised that financial assistance to residents would be applicable then as well, and instructed the relevant officials to draw up the necessary framework.” 

Meanwhile, Hamas’ Qassam Brigades and other groups in Gaza are nowhere near defeat, continuing to engage the Israeli army in fierce clashes and deadly ambushes across the entirety of the Gaza Strip, including in north Gaza, where Israel has announced a scale-back of operations. 

The scale-back came as Israeli officials were boasting that Hamas has been “dismantled” in the north. Despite this, the fighters have been able to fire large rocket barrages at Israel from northern Gaza.

Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, reporting on 19 January, cited sources in the Palestinian resistance who said that the Israeli ground operation has achieved nothing – particularly in the north. The report added that in the north, Hamas has been able to replenish its supplies and rebuild its ranks. 

And just as the Israeli settlers of the Gaza envelope refuse to return to their homes, so too do the settlers of northern Israel, where hundreds of thousands have also been displaced by Hezbollah’s operations on the Lebanese border. 

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK’s chief rabbi gives his blessing to war crimes in Gaza

By Jonathan Cook | January 11, 2024

Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, spoke at a public event at a synagogue last Sunday to extol the “outstanding” performance of the Israeli military in Gaza. He did so days before South Africa argues its case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague – starting today – that Israel is committing genocide in the enclave.

Whether Israel is eventually found to be perpetrating genocide may prove more a political decision than a legal verdict, given the pressures on the 15 judges from their respective national leaderships.

But it is indisputable that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. It is known to have killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and seriously wounded tens of thousands more. It has driven from their homes the overwhelming majority of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million – that is, Israel has ethnically cleansed them.

Israel has repeatedly bombed the “safe zones” to which it has ordered civilians to flee, as well as critical infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and bakeries. It has imposed a “complete siege” that is denying food, aid and medicine, leading to mass starvation and the spread of lethal disease.

Video footage has shown Israeli soldiers in Gaza gleefully smashing up shops; stripping Palestinian men and boys to their underwear; and shooting civilians, including women, in the street as they carrying white flags. Soldiers even executed three of Israel’s hostages trying to escape captivity and surrender with an SOS sign.

Yet Britain’s chief rabbi, the face of Judaism in the UK, has raised his voice to call all of this “the most outstanding possible thing”. He has gone further: he has described the troops committing these crimes “our heroic soldiers” and revealed that his own son, Danny, is assisting with the attack on Gaza in the Israeli military. He has said he is “immensely proud” of him.

Mirvis could have chosen a form of weaselly words of the kind Israel’s apologists more typically deploy. He could have argued that the Israeli military was carrying out its task in Gaza as best as it could in near-impossible circumstances. That the Palestinians killed in Gaza were unfortunate collateral damage as the Israeli military sought to eradicate Hamas.

But he didn’t. He called the undoubted war crimes being carried out over the past three months “the most outstanding thing”.

There are several points to note about his remarks:

1. For any public figure, Jewish or otherwise, to call atrocities committed by the foreign power of Israel “outstanding” reflects a worldview that utterly dehumanises Palestinians and is ready to incite war crimes against them. Even were the Hague court not to rule that genocide is taking place, Mirvis has clearly incited to crimes against humanity.

2. As the effective head of British Judaism, Mirvis is giving religious sanction to the carrying out of war crimes. Many of the soldiers in Gaza – a significant proportion of them religious – will now have reason to believe that the crimes they and their army have been committing over the past three months are blessed, that their mission is divinely ordained. In short, Mirvis has implied that killing Palestinians is God’s work.

3. In referring to “our heroic soldiers”, Mirvis has conflated the Jewish people with Israel. Those soldiers are not British soldiers. They are not Jewish soldiers. They are Israeli soldiers. Were you or I to do this – to suggest Jews are behind the atrocities being committed in Gaza, not a foreign national army – we would rightly be called antisemites. And for good reason. Because when you confuse the identifiers “Jewish” and “Israeli”, you tar all Jews everywhere, including in the UK, with the crimes being committed by Israel against Palestinians. You make all Jews responsible for atrocities. And you thereby make them the target of antisemitic hate crimes by those who fall for this malicious conflation. So in other words, Mirvis now has not only Palestinian blood on his hands but potentially Jewish blood too. His words may inspire attacks on Jews.

4. There is something deeply ugly – maybe sinister would be a better word – that Mirvis’ religious incitement to crimes against humanity (and very likely genocide) is viewed as entirely unremarkable by our establishment media and politicians. And yet a slogan calling for equality between Palestinians and Israelis is systematically misrepresented by these same actors to suggest it is somehow genocidal. “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free” is a demand to end Israel’s unified system of apartheid across both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, a system that assigns Israeli Jews and Palestinians entirely different rights. Reversing that can be viewed as genocidal only if you imagine that Israelis will fight to the death to stop Palestinians gaining equal rights. It reveals far more about the mindset of those who believe the slogan is genocidal than any evil intent of those chanting what is a call for liberation. That mindset is on full display in the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza, cheered on by Jewish leaders like Mirvis.

5. Britain has a Prevent strategy whose official aim is “to reduce the threat to the UK from terrorism by stopping people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”. In practice, the strategy is the British state’s attempt to stigmatise the Muslim community as a pool of potential terrorism recruits, surveill their community organisations, and weaken legal protections against arrest and conviction. The stated concern is that Muslims are being “radicalised” by extremist imams in their mosques – rather than by the extreme events they see, such as genocide unfolding in Gaza.

Mirvis has shown beyond doubt that extremist preachers are to be found not just in mosques but in synagogues too. If the government is really using Prevent to end support for terrorism, it needs to apply the strategy even-handedly. Killing and seriously wounding some 100,000 Palestinians – roughly one in every 20th person in Gaza – and making almost of all the population homeless, destitute and starving surely ranks as state-organised terrorism, whether or not the court eventually rules it amounts to genocide.

The context is that for many years Mirvis chose to study and live in Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements, where Jewish extremists regularly terrorise Palestinian communities to drive them off their land. He raised at least one of his children to choose to serve in an army terrorising and ethnically cleansing Palestinians in Gaza. Mirvis considers the soldiers committing war crimes to be “our heroes”.

In 2017 Mirvis endorsed the fanatical Jewish settlers – Israel’s equivalent of white supremacists – on their annual march through the occupied Old City of Jerusalem. Every year on that march, most of the participants are recorded waving masses of Israeli flags at Palestinians who live there and chanting “Death to the Arabs”. One Israeli newspaper columnist describes the Jerusalem Day march as a “religious carnival of hatred”. But Mirvis celebrates it.

A further point. Despite the fact that, judged by any reasonable standard, Mirvis is an extremist and holds views that should be repellent to any decent person, he is held in high esteem by the British establishment, including its media.

One can understand why. In late 2019, days before the UK general election, Mirvis publicly accused the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, of being unfit for high office because he supposedly indulged and promoted antisemism in the Labour party. The British establishment had spent years cultivating this evidence-free smear.

Mirvis argued that “the very soul of our nation is at stake” in Britain’s election. He thereby effectively called on British Jews and the British public to vote for the government.

It was an unprecedented act of electoral interference that was reported reverentially by the British media. Both the fact that Mirvis sought to influence the vote with a deception and that the establishment media colluded with him in doing so should have been shocking, even at the time. But Mirvis’ latest remarks provide additional context. Because it is Rabbi Mirvis – not the antisemites – who is quite happy to flaunt his dual loyality. Those soldiers are apparently “ours”.

So the question is this: which nation was Mirvis actually referring to when he warned shortly before the 2019 election that “the very soul of our nation is at stake”? The British nation whose religious Jews he supposedly represents, or the Israeli nation that is currently ethnically cleansing and murdering Palestinian men, women and children?

Mirvis, it seems, just gave us his answer.

January 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel settlers destroy drinking water network, trees in southern Hebron

MEMO | November 15, 2023

Israeli settlers, with the protection of occupation forces, yesterday destroyed water networks in Khirbet Al-Tha’la and released their sheep into the lands of the residents in Khirbet Qawawis in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, a Palestinian official who specialises in settlement activity said.

The coordinator of the Popular and National Committees Against the Wall and Settlements in southern Hebron, Rateb Al-Jabour, added that settlers from the illegal settlements of Mitzpeh Yair and Avigayil released their sheep to graze on the farmers’ fields and destroyed their trees in Khirbet Qawawis. They also destroyed the fences and barbed wire surrounding the land.

Furthermore, they destroyed more than 20 almond trees owned by the residents Jabreen Musa Al-Na’ameneh and the sons of Ismael Salman Al-Na’ameneh.

Israeli soldiers also raided the village of Beit Amra, west of the town of Yatta, south of Hebron, and searched the homes of several residents belonging to the Da’is and Rashid families, and tampered with their contents.

He said residents confronted the settlers who were attempting to pave a settlement road near a settlement late on Monday night.

November 15, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Finance Minister Demands Security Zones Around Illegal West Bank Settlements

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute  | November 9, 2023

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism party in the ruling right-wing coalition, demanded Tel Aviv impose security zones around illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank on Monday. The letter Smotrich has sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant includes an insistence that Palestinians be kept away during the ongoing olive harvest season.

This follows a pattern of occupying forces and settlers exploiting the war on Gaza as an opportunity to further cut Palestinian towns, cities, and villages off from each other via more military checkpoints, cement blocks, iron gates, and earth mounds.

“I demand that a written directive be issued immediately by the political echelon to the Israel Forces to create those wide security zones around the settlements and roads and to prevent Arabs from approaching them… including for the olive harvest,” Smotrich’s letter reads.

Murders of Palestinians by settlers and soldiers alike in the West Bank are concurrently soaring while apartheid Israel concurrently wages its unprecedented bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip, killing thousands of civilians and children.

At least 175 Palestinians have been killed, and thousands injured, in the West Bank since the October 7th Hamas attack on southern Israel. According to UNICEF, dozens of children have been killed and injured in the West Bank during the past month.

On October 28th, Bilal Mohammad Saleh, the 40-year-old wild herbs vendor, was shot in the chest by a settler and murdered in front of his wife, children, and other relatives while the Israeli military stood by and watched.

Bilal and his family were harvesting olives on land he inherited from his father, just less than a dozen miles south of Nablus, in the village of al-Sawiya. The village is encircled by Jewish-only colonies, or illegal settlements, Palestinian residents are only able to build and work on five percent of the 12,000 dunums that they own.

The area has been terrorized for years by the settlers. Nihad Arar, the village council head, told Al Jazeera, “[They] cut down our trees, burn our farms, steal our olives, and are known to assault Palestinians inside their homes and on their own property.”

As the war on Gaza rages, settler attacks and murders on Palestinians, including those working their olive groves during the prime harvest month of October have significantly escalated.

Mohammed Wadi, whose father and brother were shot dead by settlers during a funeral procession for three Palestinian olive growers killed by settlers a day earlier, told Reuters that although the settlers used to aim low at Palestinians in the past, “[n]ow, they shoot to kill.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that, since the October 7th Hamas attack and the war on Gaza began, settler attacks on Palestinians have more than doubled.

For Palestinians, prior to this month, this year was already one of the deadliest on record. Before the end of September, more than 220 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces, including over three dozen children. That figure included 187 people who were murdered in the occupied territories and another 37 killed – mostly amidst a smaller bombing campaign – in the Gaza Strip.

In March, Smotrich proclaimed that there is “no such thing as a Palestinian people.” His party, along with National Security Minister Itmar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party, support massive settlement expansion and ultimately the complete annexation of the West Bank. Additionally, Smotrich has endorsed illegal collective punishment policies and called for “wiping out” the entire Palestinian village of Huwwara earlier this year.

With Smotrich at the helm, approving new settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes, the Netanyahu coalition has set records for illegal settlement construction this year.

As Mondoweiss explains, “Smotrich holds sway over two ministries — the first is the Finance Ministry, for which he is directly responsible given his role as Finance Minister, and the other is a new position in the Defense Ministry, essentially making him the governor of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and most crucially making him responsible for settlement in the West Bank.”

Ben-Gvir announced last month that Tel Aviv would purchase and distribute 10,000 assault rifles to Israeli citizens including within the West Bank’s illegal settlements. According to Axios, the US State Department is set to approve a $34 million sale of 24,000 M-16 semiautomatic and automatic rifles after reportedly receiving assurances from Tel Aviv that the weapons will not be provided to settlers.

It is not at all clear if Ben-Gvir will hold to that promise, as he has personally distributed hundreds of rifles to settlers in recent weeks.

November 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Finance Minister calls for ban on Palestinians harvesting olives in occupied West Bank

MEMO | November 6, 2023

Israel’s extreme far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Galant to prohibit Palestinians in the West Bank from harvesting their olive crop. According to Smotrich, Israel needs to establish “sterile security zones” with no Palestinian presence around settlements and settler-only roads. The aim is to prevent Palestinian farmers from having access to their olive groves in the occupied territory.

The Zionist fanatic also criticised what he called, without a hint of irony, “the continued neglect of the security of the settlers in Judea and Samaria” and claimed that security has been undermined severely since the 7 October attack in the south of the occupation state.

“The concept of security must be shaken, emphasising the need to create sterile security zones around the settlements and roads and to prevent Arabs [sic] from entering them, including for harvesting,” said Smotrich. “The writing is on the wall and I am not ready to be a part of it. I will not agree to additional blood under my watch due to insistence on maintaining distorted perceptions.”

While the world’s attention has focused on the Israeli bombardment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, illegal Jewish settlers have been attacking Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank. Most attacks take place while the armed settlers are protected by the Israeli army. All of Israel’s settlements and the settlers who live in them are illegal under international law.

According to the Palestinian Authority-affiliated Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, since 7 October settlers have carried out at least 280 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, utilising terrorist tactics against the indigenous population and their farms and properties.

The Israeli army has also killed 151 Palestinians in the occupied territory in the same period, and arrested 2,080 others. The death toll in Gaza has now passed the 10,000 mark. Most of those killed were children and women.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

The other mass displacement: while eyes are on Gaza, settlers advance on West Bank herders

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs | November 1, 2023

Shortly after armed Israeli settlers threatened to kill them if they did not leave, 24 Palestinian households totaling 141 people, half of whom are children, were displaced from Khirbat Zanuta in the southern West Bank.

On 28 October 2023, the families dismantled about 50 residential and animal structures and vacated the area with their 5,000 livestock. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has previously documented settler attacks in this community, most recently on 12, 21 and 26 October. About two thirds of the families that comprised this community are now displaced.

“On 26 October, settlers attacked us, destroying our homes, water tanks, solar panels, and cars,” said 43-year-old Abu Khaled from Khirbet Zanuta. “I felt the presence of death so tangibly as if I saw it with my own eyes. I was torn between staying in or leaving the place I love, where I belong, where I may die. On 28 October, I made the hardest decision in my life: to leave Zanuta and leave everything behind, as memories. I did this to protect my children.”

These experiences are not unique to Khirbat Zanuta. In 15 herding communities across the West Bank, at least 98 households comprising 828 people, including 313 children, have been displaced amid settler violence or increased movement restrictions since 7 October. Since then, Israeli settler violence has increased significantly, from an already high average of three incidents per day thus far in 2023 to a current average of seven per day.

In this period, OCHA has recorded 171 settler attacks against Palestinians, resulting in Palestinian casualties (26 incidents), damage to Palestinian properties (115 incidents), or both (30 incidents). Cases of harassment, trespass, and intimidation are not included in these statistics when they do not result in damage or casualties, although they too increase the pressure on Palestinians to leave.

On 9 October, 40 people were displaced from the herding community of Al Ganoub. Armed Israeli settlers had raided the community, threatening residents at gunpoint, saying they would kill them if they did not leave within an hour. Abu Jamal, 75, is one of those who were displaced. “Settlers set fire to our tent and stole my goats,” he told us. “They destroyed everything that had kept me here.” Another residential structure was also set on fire during this incident.Since 7 October, access restrictions, typically imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities, have intensified throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. These are particularly severe in areas near illegal Israeli settlements and in the ‘Seam Zone,’ the Palestinian area isolated by Israel’s 712-kilometre-long illegal Separation Wall in the West Bank. Settlers too have imposed movement restrictions, blocking access roads to Palestinian communities. Such measures have limited Palestinians’ access to essential services and livelihoods. In some cases, settlers have also damaged water resources relied upon by herding communities, depriving them of a fundamental human necessity. Palestinian herding communities are often highly dependent on humanitarian assistance, including health and education services. However, since restrictions intensified, many of the services have had to stop.

On 12 October, eight households, comprising 51 people, were displaced from Shihda WaHamlan herding community in Nablus, after settlers threatened them at gunpoint, saying they would kill them and set their tents on fire during the night. One of the family members, 52-year-old Abu Ismail, stated: “I had no choice but to leave everything behind to protect my children.” More than one in every three settler-related incidents since 7 October has involved settlers using firearms to threaten Palestinians, including by opening fire. In almost half the cases, Israeli forces accompanied or actively supported the attackers. Many of the latter incidents were followed by confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians, where three Palestinians were killed, and dozens injured. Eight Palestinians were killed by settlers directly, as of the end of October. Damage or destruction was caused to 24 residential structures, 40 structures used for farming, 67 vehicles and more than 400 trees and saplings. Settlements are illegal under international humanitarian law and, compounded by settler violence, they have for many years resulted in increased risks and heightened humanitarian needs among Palestinians.

At the same time, concerns are high over families who have remained and continue to endure attacks by settlers. Mohamad Abu Seif (Abu Khalid), 90, has been living with his family in the herding community of Ein Shibli for over 40 years. While they have remained, they are exposed to repetitive threats and harassment by settlers. “They prevent us from grazing our sheep,” he told us.

He and his family are among five Palestinian households, comprising 33 people, who remain in this community. All of them are at risk of displacement as grazing areas diminish by the actions of Israeli settlers. Eight families, comprising 51 people, have already left this area since 7 October. While Abu Khalid is still there, he and his family have no assurances that they would be able to remain for much longer.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Evacuation on Israel’s northern border begins

The Cradle | October 20, 2023

Israel has begun evacuating the settlement of Kiryat Shmona, the military said on 20 October, coming as part of previously announced plans to empty out the settlements on the northern Israeli border with Lebanon. 

“The National Emergency Authority (NAE) in the Ministry of Defense and the IDF announce the activation of a plan to evacuate the residents of Kiryat Shmona to state-funded guest houses,” the Israeli army said. 

“The implementation of the program was approved by the Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant. The Northern Command informed the mayor of the decision a short time ago,” the statement added. 

Kiryat Shmona has around 22,000 settlers residing in it.

Four days ago, Tel Aviv announced plans to evacuate around two dozen settlements on the border with Lebanon over fears that a new front could open up against it. Intense crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah continues to escalate, with the resistance group having carried out numerous successful strikes against Israeli forces since 7 October.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said during a meeting with his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, on 19 October that “Israel is not interested in another military operation in the north, but it will know how to deal on any front in order to protect its citizens.” 

Following the announcement on Friday, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said that evacuating Kiryat Shmona, which lies around five kilometers south of Israel’s border with Lebanon, “allows the expansion of operational work against Hezbollah.”

The exchange of fire between Israeli forces and the Lebanese resistance has been a daily occurrence since the start of Israel’s ongoing war against the Gaza Strip. 

Hezbollah announced on Friday that it targeted several sites in two Israeli-occupied Lebanese border areas, the Shebaa Farms and the Kfar Shuba hills.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army continued its shelling of Lebanese border villages. It also announced targeting Hezbollah’s infrastructure the night before. 

On 19 October, a barrage of rockets was fired from Lebanon into the northern Israeli settlements, damaging a building and causing injuries in Kiryat Shmona. 

Israeli media said the rocket attack on Kiryat Shmona “appeared to be the most serious assault on the city since 2006,” when Hezbollah defeated Israeli forces after a 33-day war. 

It remains unclear who launched the rockets, as Palestinian groups also operate in the south of Lebanon, and have fired rockets towards Israel’s north since the fighting erupted.

The tense border situation has raised concerns that Hezbollah may fully enter the war between the Gaza resistance and Israel. Observers believe that a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip and an Israeli attempt to dismantle the resistance completely may instigate the full involvement of the Lebanese resistance and the rest of the Resistance Axis.

October 20, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

West Bank: Jewish settlers vandalise Palestinian school threatened with demolition

Ras al-Tin, a Palestinian Bedouin school located east of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, following an attack by Israeli settlers, on August 13, 2023. (Wafa news agency)
MEMO | August 14, 2023

Jewish settlers stormed a Palestinian school in the central occupied West Bank on Sunday, breaking windows and vandalising fixtures and fittings, Wafa has reported. Ras Al-Tin School to the east of Ramallah is threatened with demolition by the Israeli occupation army.

The school is located in a Palestinian Bedouin community on land belonging to the villages of Kafr Malik, Khirbet Abu Falah and Al-Mughayer. It was built in 2020, and is part of the Palestinian Tahaddi School Group.

According to Wafa, in October 2020 the Israeli authorities decided to demolish the school, on the pretext that it is located in an area under full Israeli control, and construction is prohibited for any reason, even for education purposes.

Jewish settlers also stormed the Tahaddi school in the Wadi Al-Siq Bedouin community on Sunday. They too smashed its windows and vandalised its contents.

There are currently 18 Tahaddi schools in the occupied West Bank built by the Palestinian Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission with international support. They are in so-called Area C, in which Israel prevents construction on the pretext of a lack of building permits, which are almost impossible to obtain.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the settler attacks on the two schools. It described them as part of the “serious escalation of settler attacks and their targeting of Palestinian educational institutions, especially those located in areas classified as ‘C’ that are threatened with seizure. These attacks fall within the framework of the occupation state’s attempts to isolate, Judaise and annex the West Bank, and to fight all forms of the Palestinian national and humanitarian presence in those areas targeted by settlement.”

The ministry said that it holds the Israeli government fully responsible for the results of the settler attacks. “We call upon the US administration, the international community and the relevant UN organisations, particularly UNESCO, to shoulder their responsibilities in providing protection for educational institutions.”

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel greenlights settler attacks on Palestinians: Army official

The Cradle | August 6, 2023

Israeli military official, Reserve Colonel Kobi Merom, said on 5 August that settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are greenlit by the government and its ministers, according to Hebrew media. 

“What we have seen in recent weeks are dozens of terrorist operations [by settlers] against Palestinian villages, without resulting in arrests,” the general said. 

These attacks are “greenlit” and supported by government ministers, Merom added, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and others. 

“Minister Smotrich allows the establishment of illegal outposts. Amid the state of collapse that we are spiraling down toward … I am not surprised by the armed incident that took place yesterday in Burqa.”

The colonel was referring to the killing of a 19-year-old Palestinian, Qusai Jamal Matan, by extremist settlers east of Ramallah on 4 August. 

Armed Israeli settlers had stormed the village of Burqa that day, sparking clashes with residents of the area. Matan was “shot dead by settlers” during the clashes. That same day, an 18-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops in a military raid on a camp east of Tulkarem. 

In response to the settler killing of Matan, Palestinian resistance fighter Kamel Abu Bakr shot and killed an Israeli policeman in Tel Aviv on 5 August, before being killed himself. 

“If the prime minister … does not stop this matter and put his foot down at the cabinet table, we are heading toward complete chaos on the ground,” the Israeli colonel warned. 

According to the UN, around 600 settler attacks against Palestinians have been recorded since the start of 2023. 

Settler violence has always been common in the occupied West Bank, but has surged significantly since Israel’s current government came to power. 

Following a resistance operation in February, which killed two Israelis, settlers launched a massive assault on Nablus’ village of Huwara – laying waste to the town and resulting in numerous casualties. 

Following the attack, Smotrich called for the village of Huwara to be “wiped out.” 

Later in June, another shooting in the Eli settlement prompted settlers to launch a five-day rampage across the West Bank. The rampage occurred with the approval of the Israeli military. 

August 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Christianity’s Survival in Israel Is Under Attack

Extremist government headed by Netanyahu promotes de facto ethnic cleansing

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 4, 2023

Israel’s new government is still taking shape, but some of the policy changes being promoted are so Jewish-centric that they will inevitably impact disproportionately on minority disadvantaged communities like the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. The government itself is already being described in the press as the “most extremist or right wing in Israel’s history,” though what exactly that means is left to the perception of the reader. Several government ministers have even at times been excoriated for some of their extreme views inclusive of encouraging homicidal genocide or even the complete removal of all non-Jews by force from the country and occupied territories.

The Joe Biden Administration, in which nearly half of all senior appointments are Jews, as well as nearly everyone who deals with foreign policy, is doing its part to comply with traditional White House submission to Israel’s perceived interests. Israel is in the driving seat, and Biden knows it, declaring himself to be personally a Zionist. Much has been made of the fact that Biden has not invited Netanyahu to the White House to congratulate him on his latest electoral victory over concerns relating to the proposed judiciary changes and increasing settlement expansion, but it is clear that Israel and America’s Jewish Lobby are fully in control of both the White House and Congress.

Israel has certainly morphed into a nice place if one likes to feel racially and morally superior while shooting Arab children. This move of the Israeli government rightwards is reflected in a shift in popular sentiment. A recent poll by Israel Democracy Institute revealed that a record-high 62% of Israeli Jews place themselves on the right wing of the political map. The shift is best appreciated by examining the profiles of several of Netanyahu’s new ministers. The one most often cited is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party. Ben-Gvir, who calls for deporting Arabs, has been charged with crimes 50 times, and convicted on eight occasions, including once for involvement in a Jewish terrorist group. Ben-Gvir is notorious for his provocations directed against Palestinian Muslims and Christians, which have included marches of armed settlers flaunting Israeli flags through Arab quarters of cities and towns. To cap the irony, though he is a persistent law violator he has been the National Security Minister since November 2022, which gives him authority over the police. He is currently seeking to have the Knesset pass legislation explicitly conferring legal immunity on all Israeli soldiers for any and all killings of Palestinians and also pressed the parliament to institute a formal, judicially administered death penalty for “terrorists”, which would mean any Palestinian who physically resists the Israeli occupation.

Another extremist politician who has obtained a major ministry in the Netanyahu government is Bezalel Yoel Smotrich who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. He has recently completed a controversial trip to the United States where he met with American Zionist leaders. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, and lives in an illegal settlement in a house within the Israeli occupied West Bank that was also built doubly illegally outside the settlement proper. Smotrich supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, and even denies the existence of the Palestinian people. He has now been granted authority over settlement development and support on the West Bank.

Though Israel’s internal enemies, such as they are, are frequently characterized as Muslims, the dwindling ancient Christian community in Israel and what remains of Palestine has also been under increasing pressure as Israel becomes less multi-cultural and more a state designed only to accommodate Jews. Increasing illegal settlement growth in largely Christian areas has also threatened the survival of many Christian villages and towns. Nevertheless, Israel remains a home to 185,000 Christian Palestinians, most of whom reside in Nazareth, Haifa and Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of people of partial or full Christian ancestry, some of whom are married to Jews, live in Israel as well. Beyond that, there are many Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, institutions, holy places and cemeteries in Israel.

Several months ago, the head of the Roman Catholic church in Israel, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said that Christians have faced difficult challenges since the formation of Netanyahu’s far right-wing government last December. According to Pizzaballa, his government has emboldened ultra-nationalist religious activists, many of whom are armed settlers, and some of whom have harassed male and female members of the clergy and vandalized religious property. Pizzaballa observed how “The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new. These people feel they are protected … the cultural and political atmosphere can now justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians.” A colleague, Francesco Patton, the Custodian of the Holy Land, elaborated how “We are horrified and hurt in the wake of the many incidents of violence and hatred that have taken place recently against the Catholic community in Israel.” He described the desecration of a Lutheran cemetery, the vandalizing of a Maronite prayer room, urination on holy sites, destruction of sacred images and the spraying of “death to Christians” on church property, all taking place shortly after the new government was installed. He also noted “the responsibility of the leaders, of those who have power,” adding that the Israeli police routinely failed to investigate such incidents after the churches reported them.

To determine if the claims of increased violence and hate crimes directed against Christians were true, on June 26th the liberal leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz sent one of its journalists dressed as a priest into downtown Jerusalem. Within five minutes, the journalist Yossi Eli “was derided and spat at, including by a child and a soldier… A bit later a man mocked [him] in Hebrew, saying, ‘Forgive me father for I have sinned.’ Then an 8-year-old spat at [him], as did [another] soldier when a group of troops passed by later.”

Given what is going on on-the-ground, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has called for an investigation into the role that Israeli-US dual national settlers are currently playing in the recent wave of violence directed against both Christian and Muslim Palestinian towns and villages. ADC Executive Director Abed Ayoub has said that “We have strong reason to believe that American citizens are among the key perpetrators of the most recent brutal and violent attacks.” Since June 21st, armed Israeli settler mobs have been terrorizing Palestinian villages in the West Bank on a nearly daily basis. They have destroyed homes, burned vehicles, and killed at least one Palestinian. For decades US Citizens have moved to Israeli settlements, which they use as bases for regularly engaging in violence against Palestinians, all with impunity, as the Israeli police and army provide the Arabs with no protection and instead often protect the settlers. Many of these US Citizens also take advantage of American charitable and non-profit tax laws to fund illegal settlements and initiate violence against Palestinians.

In another major incident, five weeks ago dozens of Israeli extremists, primarily Orthodox Jews, disrupted a Christian prayer event for pilgrims near the Western Wall. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh King and leading Rabbi Avi Thau led the protesters. Denouncing the Christians as “missionaries” trying to convert Jews, the extremists spat at and cursed the pilgrims, many of whom were ironically normally strongly pro-Israel evangelical Christians from the US. Deputy Mayor King said that Christians should enjoy freedom of worship “only inside their churches.”

According to Protecting Holy Land Christians, an organization established by Christian groups to raise awareness of threats their religion, 2022 was “one of the worst years for Christians in Jerusalem to date.” The organization reported spitting attacks, vandalism, and property theft as mechanisms of erasure. And there are other accounts of how Christians have been subjected to increasing persecution. A recent report details how Palestinians have been targeted by what it calls settler-colonialism, which is a series of measures intended to destroy their communities and drive them from their land. It identifies seven policies that Israel uses against Palestinians throughout the whole of Mandatory Palestine (1948 Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem) and also to punish those in exile: “denial of residency; land confiscation and denial of use; discriminatory planning; denial of access to natural resources and services; imposition of a permit regime; fragmentation, segregation and isolation; denial of reparations; and suppression of resistance.” The report concludes “Whether these policies are considered separately or taken together, they amount to forced population transfer, a grave breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).”

To cite only one example of how it works, the venerable Armenian Christian community has been the victim of a controversial land sale in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City Armenian Quarter that is being developed as a luxury resort which will effectively destroy a neighborhood that has existed for seven hundred years. The Australian-Israeli developer who obtained the land apparently did so through a shady deal with a bribed community official that circumvented local zoning and property sale regulations. The religious leadership of the Armenian community, which numbers less than 1,000, fears that the resort will force many families, already suffering under Israel’s rule, to depart.

Recently, these essentially genocidal measures have included the outright theft of their historic buildings and land by the government, and denial of other rights, including refusal to permit gatherings of the faithful at the existing churches on major holidays like Christmas and Easter. There have also been many physical attacks on individual Christians carried out by extremist Jews as well as desecration of Christian religious sites and destruction or defacement of Christian relics and statuary. A conference in Jerusalem held last Friday to address the issue of increased violence against Christians attracted a number of diplomats, scholars and representatives of religious groups, but it was boycotted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The US Embassy also did not send a representative or observer, indicating clearly that it was not interested in the plight of Christians in Israel, or rather that it did not even want to admit that there was a problem.

So there you have it. The new Israeli government is not very interested in human rights for anyone who is not a Conservative or Orthodox Jew. It is, in fact, essentially hostile to all Palestinians and foreigners, be they Muslim, Christian or even irreligious. They denigrate such people as what Germans in the 1930s would have referred to as “untermenschen” meaning subhumans, a word then used to describe Jews, ironically enough. That the United States ignores all of Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations is disgraceful, but par for the course as American Jews who are advocates for Israel have corrupted and taken firm control of the political process. And do not think for a second that Israel’s leaders give one damn about the United States and its people. Recall for a moment how former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referred to Americans in a discussion with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” And more recently Netanyahu said “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” That is what they really think of us.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

July 4, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Permanent Apartheid in Palestine: This is why Israel wants to reactivate E1 Plan

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 12, 2023

The Israeli government is at it again, actively discussing the construction of thousands of illegal settlement units as part of a massive settlement expansion scheme known as E1.

Though Israeli construction in the East Jerusalem area has supposedly been halted under international pressure, the Israeli government has found ways to keep the plan alive.

It did so through constant expansion of the various settlements in the name of ‘natural expansion’, confiscation of Palestinian land and the ruthless yet routine demolition of Palestinian homes.

But why does Washington, Israel’s main defender and benefactor, oppose, at least verbally, the construction in E1, while turning a blind eye to illegal construction throughout the West Bank?

The answer lies in the fact that E1 will further expand the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, minimise any Palestinian demographic presence in the city (from the current 42 per cent to about 20 per cent), and prejudice any political solution that includes East Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem is a Palestinian city, occupied by Israel during the June 1967 war. It is recognized by the United Nations and international law as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel should have neither legal rights nor jurisdiction there.

Washington, which rarely cares about the rights of Palestinians, is concerned that, without East Jerusalem as part of the political equation, any discussion of a ‘two-state solution’ will become forever obsolete.

In other words, the US is more worried about the political, not territorial consequences of the Israeli decision. Indeed, the US’s entire political program in Palestine and Israel is situated within the two-state solution template. Without it, Washington’s role would cease to serve any purpose.

This is precisely why US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, criticized Israeli settlements during his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on 5 June.

Though he covered the habitual US commitment to Israel’s security, describing it as “non-negotiable” and “ironclad”, he also warned against “any move toward annexation of the West Bank … disruption of the historic status quo at holy sites (and) the continuing demolitions of homes.”

These steps, and more, will “damage prospects for two states”, the cornerstone of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Israel, on the other hand, is neither interested in a two-state, one-state nor any ‘solution’ to its military occupation and apartheid in Palestine. Instead, Tel Aviv is working towards a specific end, a formula of permanent domination, one that would satisfy its quest for ‘security’, demographic superiority and ‘defensible’ borders.

It matters little that Israel’s vision for its own border lines is largely inconsistent with international law. All that matters to the current, in fact, all Israeli governments, are the ‘national interests’ of the country’s Jewish population, whose future has been linked to the crushing of political aspirations and civil rights of the country’s native Arab, Palestinian inhabitants.

Jerusalem’s particular significance stems from two factors: one, its historical, spiritual, economic and administrative centrality to all Palestinians and, two, the fact that it has been the Holy Grail of Israel’s settler colonialism in Palestine for the last 75 years.

A quick look at the map of Occupied East Jerusalem is enough to explain Israel’s ultimate motive in the Palestinian city: Maximum land with an absolute Jewish majority.

For this to take place, much work has to be done, namely ensuring the territorial continuity between the massive illegal Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem.

Israel’s motives are not a secret. A long report by the Zionist Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs champions and illustrates Tel Aviv’s objectives in detail. The report warns against allowing “security and urban discontinuity between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, or the reversion of Jerusalem to a border-town status … that would preclude the city’s eastward development.”

The reference to ‘eastward development’ is particularly dangerous, as many illegal Jewish settlements have purposely been planted in various parts of the West Bank, all the way to the Jordan Valley for the sole purpose of linking them all up, thus dividing the West Bank into two main regions, south and north.

Considering the current administration and ‘security’ divisions of the Occupied West Bank, a major territorial division will deny Palestinians any sense of physical continuity, let alone statehood. In other words, apartheid will become permanent and, from Israel’s perspective, also sustainable.

As for the westward expansion, connecting Ma’ale Adumim to the so-called “metropolitan Jerusalem” through construction in E1 will help Israel resolve a fundamental component of its expansionist strategy. According to the Zionist Jerusalem Centre, such a merger will “incorporate both settlement and security as two vital, complementary components of Israel’s national interest.”

And, wherever there is Israeli construction in Occupied Palestine, there is always the destruction of Palestinian properties and confiscation of land.

According to the European Union Office in Palestine, in 2022, 28,208 illegal settlement units “were advanced” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, compared to 22,030 in 2021. A higher number is expected in 2023.

As for Palestinian home demolition, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) paints a grim picture: in the first quarter of 2023 alone, 290 Palestinian structures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank were demolished or seized. This represents an increase of 46 per cent, compared to the same period of the previous year.

East Jerusalem has had a major share of this destruction, specifically 95 homes and other structures between 1 January and 28 March, according to the World Council of Churches. The outcome has been the displacement of 149 Palestinians. Among them, 88 children have been rendered homeless.

The price of Israel’s major plans in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank is not just humanitarian. It is essentially political, aimed at cutting off Palestinian communities from one another, isolating Jerusalem completely, and ensuring a Jewish demographic majority for generations to come.

Though Secretary Blinken tries to emphasise the danger of such actions to the two-state solution, the real danger lies in the fact that such measures threaten the very fabric of Palestinian society and the political future of the Palestinian people.

Israel’s quest to reactivate its E1 plan requires not just mere condemnation, but tangible and decisive action, especially as Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government is more unhinged than ever before.

June 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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