Early this month, during the Israeli occupation army’s offensive on the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp, BBC News anchor Anjana Gadgil interviewed former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and asked him whether the occupation forces “are happy to kill children” in Jenin.
Gadgil’s questions during the interview were direct and clear to the degree that shocked Bennett, who refused to give her an answer and tried to persuade her that all the Palestinians being attacked, killed, wounded or displaced during the offensive were legitimate targets.
When Gadgil told him that four of the Palestinians killed in Jenin were minors, identified by the UN as children, Bennett argued that the Palestinian children killed in Jenin were terrorists.
He explains that a terrorist is identified as someone who holds a rifle and shoots and murders people, claiming that the people of Jenin were armed and attacking occupation forces who had stormed their city and homes.
If this is Bennett’s definition of what a terrorist is, is he willing to apply that to Israelis and Palestinians alike?
The founders of Bennett’s rogue state did exactly what he described: They held rifles, broke into Palestinian homes and killed men, women, children and even the disabled. They stabbed pregnant Palestinian women before killing them, killing their unborn children.
After the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights and Sinai in 1967, my mother told me, the Israeli occupation forces broke the doors of the Palestinian homes, rushed inside and took every male before gathering them in Gaza Square, executing them and burying them in mass graves without even telling their relatives that they had been killed.
Would Bennett apply his definition to those militias and soldiers? There are hundreds of such untold atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation forces that my relatives and neighbours witnessed. Will Bennett define those Israeli soldiers as terrorists?
During the First Palestinian Intifada, which started in 1987, the then-Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the Israeli occupation forces to break the hands of Palestinian children in order to stop the intifada. Many witnessed the horrific scenes of Palestinian children dragged out of their homes, harshly beaten and having their hands broken by the Israeli occupation forces. Bennett, are these soldiers terrorists?
Then, during the Second Intifada, we all witnessed as Muhammad Al Durrah and his father were repeatedly shot until they were motionless while they were unarmed and trying to take shelter. Were these soldiers terrorists?
Israeli soldiers went on to strike Palestinian gatherings with missiles, killing and maiming civilians in every attack under the pretext of targeting terrorists. This occurred repeatedly during the Second Intifada and many of those killed were women and children.
The same happened when late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon supervised the assassination of quadriplegic Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin as he returned from the dawn prayer at the mosque. Some ten civilians were killed in the strike. Are the soldiers who killed them terrorists?
Last month, an Israeli soldier who was holding his rifle shot Palestinian toddler, Muhammad Al-Tamimi, in the head while he was sitting in a car with his 40-year-old father in front of their home. Will Bennett define that killer as a terrorist?
Of course not, because he is an Israeli soldier.
There are many such examples, many within the public domain and many more which remain etched in Palestinian memory. Time and again, Palestinian victims are accused of being terrorists and blamed for their own deaths, while the occupation is not held to account for its murderous actions. This will not stop until action is taken against this barbarous aggressor, the world cannot continue to remain silent as thousands more lives are lost.
This is the perfect opportunity for Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to exit the stage. But he will not.
Abbas’ brief visit to the devastated Jenin refugee camp in the northern Occupied West Bank on 12 July demonstrated the absurdity and danger of the PA and its 87-year-old leader.
As he walked, Abbas struggled to keep his balance, in what was promoted as a ‘solidarity’ visit to the camp.
Thousands of frustrated Jenin residents took to the streets, hardly chanting Abbas’ name. Some looked on with disappointment; others asked where the President’s forces were when Israel invaded the camp, killing 12, wounding and arresting hundreds more.
The BBCreported on a “huge armed deployment” to secure Abbas’ visit, where “PA security forces joined a thousand-strong unit of Mr. Abbas’ elite presidential guard”. Their only job was to “clear a path” for Abbas into the camp.
On the initial and most deadly first day of the Israeli invasion of Jenin, Israeli media, citing military sources, said that 1,000 Israeli soldiers were taking part in the military operation.
Yet, it took more Palestinian soldiers to secure Abbas’ brief visit to Jenin.
Indeed, where were those well-dressed and equipped PA soldiers when Jenin was fighting and dying alone? And why does Abbas need to be protected from his own people?
To address these questions, it is important to examine recent contexts, three significant dates in particular:
On 5 July, Israel ended its military operation in Jenin.
On 9 July, despite protests by some of his security cabinet members, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that Israel would do its utmost to prevent the collapse of the PA. He stated outright that the PA “works for us”.
And, finally, on 12 July, Abbas visited Jenin with a stern message to Palestinian Resistance groups.
These three dates are directly related: Israel’s failed raid on Jenin has heightened the significance of the PA in Israel’s eyes. Abbas visited Jenin to reassure Israel that his Authority is up for the task.
To live up to Israel’s expectations and to ensure its survival, the PA is willing to clash directly with Palestinians who refuse to toe the line.
“There will be one Authority and one security force,” Abbas declared angrily, only days following the burial of Jenin’s victims. “Anyone who seeks to undermine its unity and security will face the consequences,” he added, further promising that “Any hand that reaches out to harm the people and their stability shall be cut off.”
The hand in reference is not that of Israel, but any Palestinian who resists Israel.
Abbas knows that Palestinians outright despise him and his Authority. Just days earlier, Fatah party deputy Chairman, Mahmoud Aloul, was removed from Jenin by angry crowds.
The crowds chanted in unison, “get out”, to Aloul and two other PA officials.
They did, but Abbas returned to the same scene. He was flown in a Jordanian military helicopter. Waiting for him, below, was a small PA army that had taken over the streets and the high buildings – or whatever remained of them – in the destroyed camp.
All of this happened through logistical arrangements with the Israeli military.
But why is Netanyahu keen on the PA’s survival?
Netanyahu wants the PA to survive simply because he does not want the Israeli occupation administration and military to be fully responsible for the welfare of Palestinians in the West Bank and the security of the illegal settlers.
Despite its near complete failure, the Oslo Accords succeeded in one thing: it provided Israel with a Palestinian force whose main mission is to assist the Israeli occupation in its quest to maintain total control over the West Bank.
Abbas’ trip to Jenin was intended to reassure Tel Aviv that the PA is still committed to its obligations to Israel.
Another message was sent to US President Joe Biden, who has, in a recent interview, cast doubts on the PA’s ‘credibility’. “The PA is losing its credibility,” Biden told CNN, and that has “created a vacuum for extremism.”
The message to Washington was that the hands of the so-called ‘extremists’ will be “cut off”, and that there will be “consequences” for those who defy the PA’s will.
Abbas seemed to speak, not only on behalf of his Authority but that of Tel Aviv and Washington as well.
Even ordinary Palestinians understand this to be the case; in fact, they always have. The only difference now is that they feel strong and emboldened by a new generation of Resistance which has succeeded in reclaiming a degree of Palestinian unity, amid factional politics and PA corruption.
The PA is now seen by most Palestinians as the obstacle in the face of full unity. That position is fully fathomable. While Israel was ramping up its deadly operations in Jenin and Nablus, the PA police was arresting Palestinian activists, angering Resistance groups in the West Bank and Gaza.
If this continues, a civil war in the West Bank is a real possibility, especially as Abbas’ potential successors are equally distrusted, even by Fatah’s own rank and file. These men were also in Jenin, standing shoulder to shoulder behind Abbas as he was frantically trying to lay out the new rules.
This time around, Palestinians are unlikely to listen. For the Resistance, the stakes are too high to back down now. For the PA, losing the West Bank means losing billions of dollars of Western financial handouts.
A clash between the Resistance and their popular support, on the one hand, and the West-Israel-backed PA forces, on the other, will prove very costly for Palestinians.
Yet, for Tel Aviv, it is a win-win. This is why Netanyahu is anxious to help Abbas keep his job, at least long enough to ensure that the post-Abbas transition goes through efficiently.
Palestinians must find a way to block such designs, preserve Palestinian blood and restructure their leadership, so that it represents them, not the interests of the Israeli occupation.
The Israeli military’s deadly raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank fits into the parameters of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, legal experts argue.
Susan Akram, a clinical professor at Boston University’s School of Law, said the raid, which killed at least 12 Palestinians and wounded dozens more, clearly amounts to a war crime for a number of reasons, including intentionally attacking a civilian population and attacking medical units.
“The Geneva Conventions include as war crimes during occupation, willful killings, willfully causing great suffering to an occupied population and extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity,” Akram said during a webinar hosted earlier this week by the Arab Center Washington, DC.
There’s no doubt, she declared, that what Israel carried out in Jenin constitutes a war crime.
Daniel Levy of the US/Middle East Project and journalist Dalia Hatuqa, the other panelists on the webinar, also agreed that Israel’s actions in the West Bank amount to a war crime.
Akram said the narrative used by Israel that the raids on Jenin and other Palestinian cities like Nablus are an attempt to root out resistance groups does not stop its actions from being illegal under international law.
Pointing out that the West Bank is an occupied territory, she said, “Israel’s attacks on an occupied population are criminal in and of themselves because occupation law forbids the occupier to use military attacks against civilian targets in the territory it occupies.”
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), some 900 Palestinian houses were damaged and many of them became uninhabitable in the wake of the Israeli military’s raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
Adnan Abu Hasna, the spokesman for the UN agency, said on Tuesday that his fellow colleagues are still documenting the damage caused inside the camp during the onslaught.
The UNRWA’s priority is to help restore some sense of normality by resuming its services like education, healthcare and sanitation, he added.
“The other urgent priority is to provide cash assistance to families who were displaced from their homes, and help them pay for rent and rehabilitate their residences,” Abu Hasna noted.
Last week, a group of UN experts said Israel’s military raids targeting the Jenin refugee camp “may prima facie constitute a war crime.”
“Israeli forces’ operations in the occupied West Bank, killing and seriously injuring the occupied population, destroying their homes and infrastructure, and arbitrarily displacing thousands, amount to egregious violations of international law and standards on the use of force and may constitute a war crime,” the experts said in a statement.
Safi Ahmad Mohammad Jawabra, 11, was shot by Israeli forces in the head above his left eye with a rubber-coated metal bullet around 10 a.m. on May 29, 2022 at the entrance to Al-Arroub refugee camp, near Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Safi was walking home from school after completing his final exam in math when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head unexpectedly and without warning. While running away, another group of Israeli soldiers around 50 meters (164 feet) away fired tear gas canisters in front of Safi.
The Hadash-Ta’al list’s Chairman, Ayman Odeh, was forced out of the Knesset plenary last week during a vote on the Counterterrorism Law after condemning the Israeli attack on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin.
He said: “People killed in Jenin. People wounded in Tel Aviv. A killed soldier. All of their blood is because of your damned occupation. Occupation blinds you. Power blinds you. You are not only acting like occupiers, you are acting like idiots.”
His speech came just days after Israel concluded its largest military operation in Jenin in more than 20 years. At least 12 Palestinians were killed, including four children, and more than 140 were injured in the offensive, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The raid also left a massive trail of destruction across the West Bank city, with dozens of homes, vehicles, shops and utility lines destroyed.
“Every action has a reaction. These are the rules of nature,” added Odeh. “There’s a reaction to the occupation, so there will be resistance. Resisting against occupation is legal. Occupation is illegal. Long live the Jenin! Long live the Palestinian people! Long live their resistance! Shame on you! Take me down! But the Palestinian people will continue to fight!”
In response, Almog Cohen from the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party, shouted: “The blood of those murdered is on your hands; go to Gaza. The more terrorists we kill, the better.”
It all came amidst the approval of the Counterterrorism Law, which specifies that anybody who expresses support for “terrorists” may face up to five years in prison.
Religious Zionist Party MK Zvi Sukkot introduced the bill “to stop the probability test that is required today due to the seriousness of expressing solidarity or sympathy for an act of terror or its perpetrators.”
Following MK Odeh’s criticism against the Israeli invasion of Jenin, Sukkot appealed to the Ethics Committee of the Knesset, Israel Police, and the Attorney General to open an investigation against the MK for expressing his support for the residents of Jenin.
Palestinian Authority (PA) forces arrested journalist Aqil Awawdeh on 13 July after he refuted a statement from PA officials claiming there are no political arrests in the occupied West Bank.
“There is no case of arrest on the basis of political affiliation in the West Bank, and all that is being circulated about its existence are baseless rumors,” the PA statement released on Thursday reads.
Moments later, Awawdeh took to social media to refute this claim, highlighting that students and journalists are arrested regularly for supporting the resistance.
Hours after posting this video, PA troops took Awawdeh from his workplace in Ramallah under charges of “insulting the security services and leaders of Fatah.” Officials have yet to issue a statement on his arrest.
At least 54 political prisoners are currently being held in PA prisons, as the PA regularly hands over detainees directly to the Israeli army, Resistance News Network reported via Telegram.
Two years ago, Awawdeh was severely beaten inside a police station after covering a protest against the PA.
As discontent with PA rule in the occupied West Bank continues to grow exponentially, officials have maintained their grip on power by violently silencing dissent and crushing popular mobilizations.
In June 2021, Palestinian activist Nizar Banat was beaten to death by PA troops for accusing the PA of corruption and criticizing Ramallah’s security cooperation with the Israeli military. Last December, Banat’s family took the case to the International Criminal Court, accusing the PA of alleged war crimes and torture.
Last month, the repressive tactics of the PA once again made headlines following the violent arrest of student leader Abdul Majeed Hassan from his home in Ramallah.
“From the scene of the arrest, we thought that the kidnappers were Israeli undercover units since they have arrested many university students in this brutal way. Beating, dragging, undressing, and screaming were all Israeli means of arrest, but unfortunately, they were mimicked by the Palestinian security services against Abdul Majeed,” Ibrahim Bani Odeh told Middle East Eye about Hassan’s arrest.
A delegation of the United Nations has expressed shock at the level of destruction left as a result of Israel’s largest operation in Jenin in two decades.
Officials from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) visited the Jenin refugee camp on Sunday.
“The destruction I saw was shocking. Some houses were completely burned down; cars had been crushed against walls; roads were damaged. The UNRWA health center was destroyed. But more than the physical damage, I saw the trauma in the eyes of camp residents who had witnessed the violence. I heard them speak about their exhaustion and fear,” said Leni Stenseth, the UNRWA deputy commissioner-general.
The two-day deadly Israeli onslaught of July 3 was the fiercest of its kind in over 20 years, according to UNRWA, which is tasked with assisting Palestine refugees.
Twelve Palestinians, including four children, were killed. 140 were injured. Virtually 900 houses were damaged. Many are now uninhabitable. Also, at least 3,500 Palestinians were forced from homes. The UNRWA health center was so badly damaged it can no longer be used.
Some parents said children are too scared to go out.
“Children were shaken and shocked… many of them are too afraid to leave their homes. In one classroom we visited, students shared with us that just 10 days ago, they had buried a classmate who was killed in an incursion,” said Adam Bouloukos, the director of UNRWA West Bank.
“It is very hard for children to walk to school as the main roads are still unusable. When trying to find alternative ways to school, some younger children lost their way. We truly feared for their safety due to the risk of unexploded ordinance. A priority now is to provide mental and psychosocial support to help children cope with their fear and anxiety.”
Bouloukos said the refugee camp, home to nearly 24,000 people, now has no access to electricity and water. “The camp is now partially without access to electricity and water.”
“Nearly eight kilometers of water piping and three kilometers of sewage lines were destroyed due to the use of heavy machinery that ripped up large sections of the roads.”
Joe Biden administration’s frantic bid to convince Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with the Israeli regime has proved an exercise in futility, especially in the wake of the diplomacy drive sweeping the Persian Gulf region.
Despite high-profile visits by US officials to the Arab kingdom in recent months, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting with Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman in Jeddah last month, the US has failed to get any assurances from its Arab ally on the question of Israel normalization.
Blinken’s visit to Saudi Arabia in early June ended without any result, despite the statement before the high-stakes tour that normalization of Saudi-Israel relations was one of the top priorities of the US government.
The US Secretary of State not only failed to get any assurance from the Saudis on that front but had to concede some crucial ground on significant regional issues.
In a joint conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan before leaving Saudi Arabia, Blinken reiterated his government’s resolve to work for Israel-Saudi normalization, visibly unhappy and frustrated.
However, bin Farhan put a flea in Blinken’s ear, saying that “normalization of ties with Israel will have limited benefit without a pathway to peace for the Palestinians.”
The US Secretary of State’s visit to Saudi Arabia came on the heels of a separate visit by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to the Arabian country in May, who also failed to convince the Saudis to compromise with the Israeli regime.
The outcome of both of the visits was similar to the outcome of President Joe Biden’s visit to the kingdom last year when he failed to convince bin Salman to increase oil production to ease global prices, in the face of sanctions against Russia.
Biden’s efforts failed when the Saudis announced in October that they were cutting oil production, a move that blindsided American officials and strengthened the growing speculations that West Asia is no longer toeing the US line.
In an article published in Responsible Statecraft magazine, Daniel Larison hurled criticism at US efforts on brokering normalization in West Asia and said it remains a “long shot” and that “there is no compelling reason for the US to make this the focus of its diplomatic efforts in the region.”
He said a deal with the Saudis would come at America’s expense, as the Saudi price for normalization has been reported to include a US security commitment to Saudis and Washington’s support for the kingdom’s nuclear program, noting that the price would be heavy.
Meanwhile, even if Biden’s cabinet contends with the security guarantees to Saudi Arabia, a new nuclear deal with Riyadh would face another hurdle in a sharply divided US Congress, where some prominent members of Biden’s party would likely vote against it.
“The last thing that the US needs is another security commitment in a region where it has already wasted thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in unnecessary wars. A security guarantee to the Saudis would almost certainly encourage their government to engage in more reckless and provocative behavior,” a New York Times report said.
In an article published in The Hill, Jon Hoffman said increased security commitments by the US would “further solidify US support for the underlying sources of regional instability within the Middle East.”
In another article in The National Interest, Hoffman wrote that the Abraham Accords – which involved a series of joint normalization statements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain and were later expanded to include Morocco and Sudan — “continue to represent a top-down regional order destined to yield instability, not peace.”
The normalization agreements supported by former US president Donald Trump and hectic efforts by the current administration are all designed to ignore the Palestinians and give the Israeli regime a free pass to carry out criminal activities in the occupied territories.
A report in the Mondoweissnews website described the chances of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal brokered by the US as “microscopically thin” in the near future.
It is worth mentioning that Saudi Arabia seems to be reluctant toward a normalization act with Israel and is taking a cautious approach to any public steps that could be seen as a normalization act.
Axios news agency cited Israeli officials and Western diplomats with direct knowledge of the issue saying that Saudi Arabia has so far not signed a document committing to allow Israel to attend the upcoming UNESCO meeting in September, signaling the kingdom’s reluctance to allow the Israeli regime’s representatives to visit the kingdom for the first time.
At a critical time, when Biden is seeking re-election, the US government has been left embarrassed by Saudi Arabia’s bolstering of ties with Iran and Syria, and its further gravitation toward China.
The Biden administration’s push for Saudi-Israeli normalization reflects a misreading of domestic and international politics as the new world order minus the US takes shape.
Saudi-Iran rapprochement, mediated by China, and other similar developments, showing the integration in West Asia, have all strengthened the multi-polar world, defying US hegemony.
Under this new ‘systematic order’, the US influence is waning and a new ‘village-like order’ is fast emerging, where several regional coalitions maintain the balance of power in the world.
Reza Javadi is a Ph.D. Candidate in British Studies at the University of Tehran.
The Palestinian Presidency urged the US, on Thursday, to retract plans to build its embassy in Jerusalem because it will be built on Palestinian “private property”, Anadolu Agency reports.
The statement was in response to Israeli approval plans submitted by the US to build the embassy on lands the statement said were confiscated from Palestinian owners by Israel in 1948.
It described the move as “illegal” and “a violation of international law” because it will be built “on private property confiscated in 1948 from Palestinian owners, some of whom are holders of US citizenship”.
The Presidency said moving ahead with building the embassy “gives legitimacy to racist Israeli laws such as the absentee property law designed to legitimise the theft of Palestinian property”.
It added that the move is a “joint American-Israeli blow to any remaining hopes for a two-state solution.”
Jerusalem remains at the heart of the decades-long Mideast conflict, with Palestinians insisting that East Jerusalem — illegally occupied by Israel since 1967 — should serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
A shocking document last September revealed that, during the 1948 Nakba, Zionist militias engaged in a wide-ranging chemical and biological warfare campaign to expel indigenous Palestinian communities from their lands, slow the advance of intervening Arab armies, and poison citizens of neighboring states.
This unconscionable use of biological weapons on civilian targets, which sought to infect the local Palestinian population with typhoid, dysentery, malaria, and other diseases by contaminating local water supplies, was subject to a concerted coverup at the time – one that was maintained by the Zionist state for decades thereafter.
Even after its exposure, the Israeli academics who helped break the story were at pains to diminish its significance, unconvincingly arguing it was a failed strategy promptly jettisoned and forgotten about as a result.
But newly declassified Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) files starkly underline this narrative to be an abject lie. Released by the Jewish Settlements Archival Project, an initiative of New York University’s Taub Center for Israel Studies, they amply show that the Israeli occupiers employed much the same tactics in order to purge Palestinian areas to make way for illegal settlements in the West Bank, and elsewhere.
Facts on the ground
In 1967, Tel Aviv emerged victorious in the Six Day War and effectively annexed significant swaths of surrounding territory from neighboring Arab states.
Israel’s occupation of these areas, and indeed the construction of settlements for Jewish colonists, was and remains absolutely illegal under international law and has been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. Initially, successive Israeli governments claimed the settlements were the work of individual settlers and non-governmental entities such as the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization, and insisted that the state neither approved of nor could prevent their expansion.
Again, the newly-released papers starkly demonstrate this to be a deliberate deception. The trail begins in January 1971, when the cabinet of then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir met to discuss the forthcoming construction of settlements. The need for unfailing public secrecy about what was about to happen was considered paramount. At the start of the summit, the premier requested:
“Before we move forward with our discussion, there’s something I’d like to ask. It was our habit that for anything that has to do with settlements, outposts, land expropriations, and so on, we simply do and do not talk [about it]… Lately, this … has broken down, and I’m asking ministers for the sake of our homeland to hold back, talk less, and do as much as possible. But the main thing, as much as possible, is to talk less.”
This extended to Meir demanding ministers not attend settlement opening ceremonies, and avoid being seen by the media anywhere near the sites. In April 1972, this oath of silence remained very much in force, with minister without portfolio Yisrael Galili reminding his cabinet confederates at a meeting to “refrain from dealing with the matter in the press, as it could cause damage.”
Around this time, the Israelis began constructing the first illegal Jewish settlement, Gitit, in the West Bank. Kickstarting the criminal enterprise required displacing Palestinians from the nearby village of Aqraba. This was first attempted by brute force, with IDF soldiers demanding they vacate the area to make way for a new military training zone.
The Palestinians ignored them, and continued cultivating the land, prompting Israeli forces to damage their tools. When they still refused to budge, the IDF was ordered to use vehicles to destroy crops, and dispossess the indigenous population. Soldiers struck upon a radical, bloodcurdling solution: a crop duster would rain down toxic chemicals, lethal to animals and dangerous for humans, to precipitate their departure.
Still, Aqraba’s population refused to budge, prompting the IDF to up its devilish campaign’s ante quite considerably. In April 1972, the military’s Central Command met with representatives of the Jewish Agency’s settlements department. They established “responsibility and schedule for the spraying,” at such a density that it would preclude humans from inhabiting the area for several days “for fear of stomach poisoning” and animals for a full week.
The Jewish Agency was given the job of obtaining the plane, which it did from Chemair, a local crop-dusting company. The explicit aim was to “destroy the harvest” of the Palestinians, and forcibly expel them from the area in perpetuity.
The next month, the destruction was so severe that Aqraba’s mayor wrote to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. They stated the village had 4,000 residents, who until recently had cultivated “145,000 dunams of agricultural land.” Now, after “the authorities” had burned wheat and confiscated land, the Palestinians were left with just 25,000 dunams.
“The damage is unbearable … how will we be able to provide for ourselves?” the mayor despaired.
Israeli occupation forces finally took over the land in May 1973. Tel Aviv was asked for permission to “seize the land for the purpose of establishing a settlement,” which was granted. Three months later, construction commenced.
‘Get cover for it’
While Israeli governments covertly encouraged and facilitated the creation of illegal settlements, it is clear there was some internal dissent on the issue at various times.
In 1974, the head of the Israel Lands Administration began steps to establish another Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Ma’aleh Adumim, before the government had made a formal decision on the matter. Former IDF general turned Knesset representative Meir “Zarro” Zorea actively lobbied the Jewish Agency to allocate an appropriate budget for the effort, suggesting the organization “funnel money to settlement activity and get cover for it after a while, when I request budget approval.”
At a subsequent cabinet meeting however, then-Housing Minister Yehoshua Rabinovitz was dismayed, declaring, “this has no budget, and I don’t know how work is being started without sitting down with us.” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin attempted to calm him, stating, “that’s what we’re meeting about right now.”
“There might be room for clarifying this issue, but I wouldn’t suggest going into it today. I know it may not be following the neatest definitions, but I’m in favor of them starting to carry out this infrastructure work,” he added.
Later on, the aforementioned Yisrael Galili pressed ministers to define Ma’aleh Adumim as “an A-class area,” thereby granting it and its Jewish settler population greater benefits from the government, despite the fact it would lie in illegally occupied territory. The Israeli government officially granting the settlement this classification would, by definition, amount to a de facto endorsement, in contradiction to its official public stance.
“I’m surprised that you don’t understand that this whole subject is one of the ingenious methods to alleviate a process that could be very dangerous internally in Israel,” Galili explained.
These shocking communications remained concealed for half a century before the Jewish Settlements Archival Project released them to the world. It is almost inevitable that a great many more incriminating documents remain sealed in the IDF’s vaults. The project’s archives end in summer of 1977, and as of January 2023, there are 144 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem, housing 450,000 colonizers.
Stealing that much land, and displacing so many people in the process, was a vast undertaking that frequently met bitter local resistance, which continues today. Given the efficacy of chemical and biological warfare in stealing Palestinian land over so many years, there is no reason to think this heinous approach wasn’t employed again and again over the years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is known to be against the establishment of a Palestinian state, but now he has made it clear that he wants to go even further. “We need to eliminate [Palestinian Arab] aspirations for a state,” he told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee as reported in Israeli media on 26 June. The right-wing leader added that his government is “preparing for the day after Abbas,” referring to the 88-year-old head of the Palestinian Authority. “We have an interest in the [Palestinian] Authority continuing to work. In the areas in which it manages to act, it does the work for us.”
Some people, including Palestinian Authority officials, seemed surprised by his words, which is odd, given that Israel’s intentions regarding Palestinian freedom and statehood are known even to political novices.
The official spokesperson for the Palestinian presidency retorted by emphasising that only an independent Palestinian state can achieve “security” and “stability”. This terminology is often used by Palestinian officials to induce sympathy in the US, as such language is borrowed from Washington’s narrative about Palestine and the Middle East. Practically-speaking, “security” is almost always linked to Israel, and “stability” is related to the US agenda and interests in the region.
For Israel, however, such language lacks any urgency, because “security” from Tel Aviv’s perspective is obtained through unconditional US support and “security coordination” between the Israeli military occupation and the PA. Both are already satisfied. That is why Netanyahu told the Knesset committee that the PA “does the work for us” and added, “And we have no interest in it collapsing.” In other words, the Israeli prime minister sees the PA as another line of defence against the very Palestinians whose interests the Authority is supposed to represent and promote.
As for “stability”, this is of little concern to Israel, for in practical terms it defines stability as its own complete dominance over the Palestinians. Actually, make that the whole region.
None of the above assertions are predicated on complex analyses or guesswork; they are extracted from official Israeli statements and actions on the ground.
When Israel’s far-right Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared in March that there was “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people,” he was not giving a history lecture, or merely engaging in hate speech. He was stating circuitously that Israel is neither morally, legally nor politically accountable for its actions against those who do not exist in the twisted Zionist worldview.
His remarks were consistent with the ongoing pogroms carried out by his supporters, the armed and dangerous illegal Jewish settlers across the occupied West Bank, against Palestinians in Huwara in February and, more recently, against Turmus Ayya and other Palestinian towns and villages. Neither the Americans nor the Europeans have imposed any punitive measures against Smotrich or even against the gangs of settlers who torched Palestinian homes and cars, killing and wounding many in the process.
Yet that is only a microcosm of the larger picture, whereby Israel says and does what it wants, while the Americans continue to read from an old political script as if nothing has changed on the ground. There can be no doubt, though, that US foreign policymakers know very well that Israel has zero interest in a just and peaceful settlement to its military occupation of Palestine.
We are entitled to ask, therefore, why the US government insists on following the same tired formula and urges both sides to re-engage in the so-called “peace process” and return to negotiations. This mantra continues to define US foreign policy, as it has done since the early 1990s, when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords. Oslo made a bad situation much worse; the number of illegal settlements and settlers has since tripled, and the Palestinian people are even more vulnerable, not only to Israeli violence but also to the PA’s repression and corruption. It is surely no coincidence that Abbas played a key role in getting the Oslo Accords signed.
Although Oslo was unfair to the Palestinians since it operated largely outside acceptable international paradigms and had no enforcement clauses or deadlines, Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders objected to it anyway, because — albeit symbolically — it expected Israel to behave in a certain manner. To be told not to build or expand settlements, for example, has always infuriated Netanyahu, who has lashed out even at his American benefactors many times in the past over this issue, most notably under the administration of President Barack Obama.
Israeli leaders feel that they are above any law or expectations emanating from outside, even if these expectations are quite minimal and made by close allies, such as Washington. With time, of course, Netanyahu prevailed, not only over any supposed “pressure” from the US and the international community, but also over the more “liberal” political forces in his own society.
Now, armed with a stable coalition government and apparently immune from any meaningful criticism, let alone tangible consequences for his actions, the Israeli leader is ready to carry out his right-wing agenda without hesitation.
Hence his recent remarks, which are a more emboldened version of the comments made in October 2004 by top Israeli government advisor Dov Weissglas, who explained the true intentions behind the Israeli military deployment in Gaza in 2005. It was an Israeli tactic aimed at “freezing the peace process,” Weissglas toldHaaretz. “And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.”
Even though this “whole package” has, indeed, been long removed from the Israeli agenda, the country’s leaders kept referencing a Palestinian state anyway in order to satisfy the minimal expectations of US policy. Netanyahu has played this game on more than one occasion, including his February interview with CNN, where he argued that a Palestinian state is possible, but only if it has no sovereignty. Now, he is ready to move past that seemingly old language, to new political territories, where even the aspiration for an independent Palestine is not permissible.
While Netanyahu’s disturbing but honest language is likely to invite yet more Israeli violence and Palestinian resistance, it should also bring about greater clarity by shelving, once and for all, the fraudulent discourse of “security”, “stability” and the moribund “peace process”.
Around 3,000 Palestinians were forced to leave the Jenin refugee camp overnight on 4 July, as the Israeli army pushed ahead with the second day of the largest military invasion into the occupied West Bank since 2002.
“There are about 3,000 people who have left the camp so far,” Jenin deputy governor Kamal Abu al-Roub told AFP on Monday night, highlighting that 18,000 people live there.
Palestinians leaving their homes told reporters that Israeli forces had threatened to target them if they refused to leave, while some said the troops fired live shots at their homes.
Several families were tear-gassed as they fled for safety.
According to the mayor of Jenin, Nidal Obeidi, the Israeli army started demolishing homes in the refugee camp after displacing their residents.
“Those being targeted now are not just the resistance fighters, but civilians are being killed and wounded as well,” he told Al Jazeera.
Tel Aviv’s brutal invasion of the flashpoint West Bank city started in the early hours of 3 July and has left at least 10 Palestinians dead. Over 100 others have been wounded.
Shelling and fighting continued overnight. In the early hours of Tuesday, Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes in the Al-Damej neighborhood, while drones could be seen flying over the camp.
The Israeli siege involved drone strikes, Apache helicopters, and ground forces, including army bulldozers that tore up streets across Jenin. The offensive has been widely described as one of the worst Israeli attacks on the West Bank since the end of the Second Intifada.
While reporting on the siege, several journalists reported they were directly targeted by Israeli live fire. Al Araby TV correspondent Ahmed Shehadeh said the army destroyed his camera while he and four other journalists were taking refuge inside one of the homes in the camp before being evacuated by the Red Crescent.
While the Israeli military initially declined to say how long the siege of Jenin would take, army spokesperson Daniel Hagari announced on Tuesday morning that the operation “could end faster than initially expected, even within a matter of days.”
The operation was launched in response to the unprecedented rise of armed resistance in the West Bank, which has become a significant threat to Israeli cities and illegal West Bank settlements.
Confronting the massive invasion are several different resistance factions, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Jenin Brigade, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and groups linked with Hamas.
The Jenin Brigade claims they have shot down at least four Israeli drones since the start of the siege.
Solidarity with Jenin has been pouring in from across West Asia and North Africa, with dozens of nations condemning the Israeli aggression.
A general strike was announced in the occupied West Bank for Tuesday, while people in Gaza held rallies to express solidarity with the people of Jenin.
Gaza resistance factions on Monday said in a statement, “We call on all our people in cities, villages, and camps, especially around Jenin, to confront the Israeli occupation and support Jenin.”
“We call on the resistance fighters in all arenas to respond to any aggression if the Israeli occupation continues its crimes against our people.”
By Khalid Amayreh, in occupied East Jerusalem | The People’s Voice | October 18, 2010
A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”
Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers. … continue
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