Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

Salaam

Another update.

Blurb

Israel is a few days away from beginning to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank. But as the July 1 start date set by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approaches, a workable plan remains unclear.

The United States is backing the annexation if Netanyahu can reach an agreement with his coalition partner, Benny Gantz.


Blurb

Israel plans to announce its annexation of the Jordan Valley and the northern part of the Dead Sea. The Palestinian people, already occupied and denied their basic human rights for more than 70 years, are set to lose more land and more rights.


Blurb

Zionist leaders are extending their occupation of Palestine, intending to formally annex more than 30% of the West Bank. Included in this is the Jordan Valley, a large stretch of land bordering western Jordan. Israel already invades more than 80% of the Jordan Valley for the sake of small communities of illegal settlers.

Since 1967, almost all of the West Bank, home to over three-million Palestinians has been occupied and controlled by Israeli security forces.

The West Bank, which is ‘Palestinian’ land in international charters, and sits within the borders of the pre-1967 war is blighted by more than 120 Israeli settlements, housing more than 300,000 illegal settlers. A further 100 settlements are ‘illegal’ under Israeli law itself, but are nonetheless supplied with services and utilities. Hundreds of kilometres of the ‘Apartheid Wall’, rip through the West Bank as well as endless military checkpoints.

This area, along with the besieged Gaza strip, the latter also eaten up by an enormous surrounding buffer-zone were supposed to constitute a ‘future Palestinian state’ as part of the popular solution to the conflict called the ‘two-state solution’.

Israel’s planned unilateral action, illegal under international law has been decried by the international community, constituting the “most serious violation of international law” yet. For many, it is the end of Palestinian Statehood and proves that the policy of ‘negotiation’ has not worked.

For some others, however, it is a reminder that just as Zionist annexation knows no limits, Palestinian aspirations should likewise know no limits. That Palestine, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem and its historic cities from where millions of Palestinians hail including Jaffa, Haifa, Lydda and others is indivisible, that the occupation of Palestine is destined to end and that its inhabitants will ultimately return to their ancestral lands.

 
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Salaam

Like to share



Interesting response.



Don't be so quick to discard ANY possible tool. This is the system that I personally led within--and I can tell you from that direct experience that it's been trying to deliver justice for Palestinians for a couple decades now. The only reason it's failed is the U.S. veto at the UNSC. And that veto is hanging by one, (literally) aging thread: the generation of U.S. national security leaders of my generation & older, who grew up and formed their opinions of the conflict during the Cold War, when Israel was 'our guys' in our existential fight against godless Communism, while most of the corrupt, secular Arab regimes standing up for Palestine were Soviet vassals. We just weren't able to break free of that mindset--not when the Palestinians started focusing on legitimate Israeli military targets and the Israelis

started killing three times as many innocent civilians as militants (like in the 2014 Gaza war), and not when Israel stopped being 'our guys' in ANY real sense of the term. But guess what? WE'RE RETIRING--and I can ALSO tell you from personal experience that the generation coming up BEHIND us recognizes that neither the children of Palestine NOR THOSE OF ISRAEL will ever know peace UNTIL ALL KNOW JUSTICE. And even some of us old guys have started to see the light: remember, Obama let a Security Council resolution get passed that has it ON THE

RECORD that every Israeli settlement in the occupied territories IS ILLEGAL, and built on Palestinian property. That resolution isn't going to be repealed (because ALL THE OTHER P5 MEMBERS would veto THAT)...and it's sitting there like a ticking time bomb waiting for the next administration willing to let a resolution go through saying--for example--that the State of Israel OWES BACK RENT AT MARKET RATES on every unit of housing, which will be deducted from the aid we give them, and given to the Palestinian authorities.

Or designating a robust, U.S.-led UN peacekeeping force whose mission is to KEEP THE IDF THE HECK OUT OF PALESTINE, and help the Palestinians build a robust security infrastructure of their own (I was actually allowed to sketch out a plan for THAT one before I retired)

As us old Cold Warriors age out of the population, demographics are, at last, turning the tide toward justice. Now mind you, I'm NOT telling you to put all your eggs in that basket & be patient: as Black Lives Matter has reminded us over here lately, it's not for the oppressor to tell the oppressed what timetable is 'acceptable' for justice. Be activists. Be impatient. As you note, you've been made to wait too long for justice already. And under Trump and Netanyahu, things have unquestionably gotten WORSE, not better, these past four years.

But I AM telling you this basket called International Law--designed, yes, by us colonizers for our own ends--is, increasingly, in new hands--and eggs are piling up to tip the balance. Put your trust in Allah, not us. But know we're here--and there are more of us every year.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1278479929705926666.html
 
Salaam

Another update





More misery.

Blurb

The Israeli army has begun bulldozing some villagers' homes in the occupied West Bank.

One family's house has already been demolished - and the same is expected to happen to more than 30 other buildings.

The Israeli government says they have to go because they were built without a permit.

Al Jazeera's Nida Ibrahim reports.

 
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Salaam

Another update. Zios are laying the foundations for the next 'stage' of their conquest.

Blurb

Israeli authorities have forcibly installed loudspeakers in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound for the third time since 2017.


Blurb

A clause in the UAE-Bahrain deal with Israel leaves the ‘door wide open’ to the division of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

 
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Salaam

Another update. Fruits of UAE selling out.

Blurb

'I don’t speak with normalisers like you… Get out!'

Palestinians at al-Aqsa Mosque reject a visit by a delegation thought to be from the UAE, asking them to leave the holy compound.

The incident comes a month after the UAE and Bahrain signed a deal to normalise ties with Israel.


 
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Salaam

Already mentioned but Ill put it here.

Blurb

More than 200 people, mostly Palestinians, have been injured in clashes with Israeli police in occupied East Jerusalem. Violence broke out at the Al Aqsa Mosque and elsewhere in the city.
Thousands of Muslims had packed the site for the last Friday prayers of Ramadan.

Many stayed on to demonstrate in support of Palestinians facing eviction from their homes by Jewish settlers.


Related

Blurb

Although Sheikh Jarrah makes up just a tiny part of Occupied East Jerusalem, the area is a major source of tension between Palestinians and Israelis.

A recent order to evict Palestinian families has triggered days of violent protests.

On Friday, more than 200 people were injured when security forces stormed the nearby Al Aqsa mosque compound to clear demonstrators.

So why is the Sheikh Jarrah dispute so contentious?

 
Salaam

The situation is getting worse and worse. IDF taking out the media.

Blurb

Israeli air strikes destroyed a tower block in Gaza housing several media outlets, including the Associated Press and al Jazeera.


I dont agree entirely with this but its a decent enough place to start to understand what its going.

Blurb

Though the tit-for-tat #Israeli and #Palestinian reactions seem emotionally driven, there is a calculated rationale in the fighting.


More in depth commentary

Blurb

The TAP team are joined with Dr. Norman Finkelstein to discuss the current Israeli aggression against Masjid al Aqsa and the attacks on Gaza.

○ Are Hamas to blame for firing rockets?
○ Is Sheikh Jarrah just a legal dispute?
○ Was invading masjid al Aqsa justified?
○ These amongst other questions are addressed


More comment. Two state solution is dead.

"I'm hopeful now, and I haven't been hopeful in a long time. What's happening now is putting a check on Israel. They have a problem now."

Jewish-American political analyst Dr Norman Finkelstein speaks to MEE about his views on Israel’s latest offensive in #Gaza


More comment and analysis

Blurb

Dr Finkelstein tells me that Israel is committing a “massacre” in May 2021 in Gaza and that the term “apartheid” in application to Israel is now ‘spreading like wildfire’. He clarifies hopes for the future and ‘one person one vote.’

 
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Salaam

Sums it up nicely.

Irish MP Richard Boyd Barrett challenge Israeli ambassador at Oireachtas committee over Israel's treatment of Gaza.

 
Salaam

More comment.

Blurb

On Wednesday, we spoke to the Israeli Ambassador, and now it was the turn of Palestinian Ambassador Husam Zomlot. We asked that given he works for the Palestinian government in the West Bank, does he support what Hamas has been doing in Gaza?


Blurb

Following the ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas is claiming victory over Israel's government, and enjoying its highest wave of support across the Palestinian territories in years.

Former Hamas chief and current director for diaspora Khaled Meshaal talks to MEE's Editor-in-Chief David Hearst about what his party intends to do now, and why the US and Arab countries have made critical misstakes in sidelining Hamas and the Palestinians.

 
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Salaam

It hasnt ended.

‘A war declaration’: Palestinians in Israel decry mass arrests

Israeli police launch wave of arrests targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel who rallied in support of Sheikh Jarrah, Al-Aqsa and Gaza.

Israeli police announced they will arrest hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel over the coming days for their participation in recent sit-ins in support of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the besieged Gaza Strip.

The wave of mass arrests will take place as part of what police called “operation law and order”. It is intended to penalise those who have taken part in demonstrations against settler violence, the Israeli forces’ crackdown on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and the military’s 11-day bombardment campaign of Gaza, which killed 248 people.

In a statement on Sunday night, Israeli police said some 1,550 people have already been arrested since May 9 and the campaign is a “continuation” that aims to “prosecute” demonstrators who have over the past two weeks taken to the streets in towns and cities across Israel.

Thousands of security forces from “all units” will be deployed to carry out raids, it said, in towns and cities predominantly inhabited by Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the country’s population.



The statement did not say the campaign would target Jewish settlers who have attacked Palestinians and their homes, as documented in videos and images widely shared on social media.

Police – including border guards and reserve brigades – will search homes and conduct “investigations” until charges are submitted and prison sentences are imposed, it added.

Hassan Jabareen, the general director of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, declared the campaign a “war” against Palestinian demonstrators, political activists and minors.

The massive arrest operation is a “militarised war against Palestinian citizens of Israel,” Jabareen said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera on Monday, urging a “rapid response” from all Palestinian political movements, parties, and from the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel.

The purpose of the arrests is to “intimidate and to exact revenge on Palestinian citizens of Israel – ‘to settle the score’ with Palestinians, in the Israeli police’s own words – for their political positions and activities”, he said.

Disrupting protests

Rallies in cities including Haifa, Yafa, Lydd and Nazareth started earlier this month in solidarity with Palestinian families facing the imminent forced expulsion from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.

During the sit-ins, several Palestinians were assaulted by Jewish settlers who at times, backed by Israeli police, marched in the streets chanting anti-Palestinian slogans, including “death to Arabs”.

Others were killed as the demonstrations quickly grew following Israeli forces’ attack on worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the subsequent Israeli military assault on Gaza.

On May 10, a Palestinian resident was shot dead by a Jewish settler who was part of a far-right mob. And on May 19, Mohammed Kiwan, 17, succumbed to his wounds after being shot in the head by Israeli police in the town of Umm al-Fahem.

Dozens of others have been arrested with some still awaiting formal charges.

To date, 140 indictments have been brought against 230 people, the majority of whom are Palestinians, including minors, local media reported. They have been charged with assaulting police officers, endangering the lives of citizens in the streets, demonstrating, throwing stones and arson.

‘Didn’t want us to go home’

In Yafa, Bashar Ali, a 25-year-old university student, was among the 1,550 arrested during the past two weeks.

He was with a group of protesters who suffered beatings and tear gas inhalation after protesting against Israel’s bombardment and continuing siege of Gaza on May 11.

“It was a peaceful sit-in of some 250 people,” Ali said. “Some of us were working on raising funds for those wounded in Jerusalem and Gaza.”

After gathering for nearly two hours at one of Yafa’s community parks, protesters began making their way home at about 6:30pm, but the police blocked the main streets.

“They didn’t want us to go home. Some police officers began assaulting us, I saw them beat an elderly man and a young lady,” Ali recalled.

“We confronted them and that’s when a group of armed policemen gathered and arrested me along with several others,” he added.

Ali was released the following day but is now under house arrest for one month. He is currently in Kokab, a village in al-Jalil (Galilee), where, according to him, six people were arrested from their homes overnight.

Janan Abdu is a Haifa-based lawyer with the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel who has volunteered to defend imprisoned Palestinians.

“These are not just police forces but also include special units – border police, secret services and undercover forces,” she said.

Abdu said she noticed similarities in the “kind of violations and ill-treatment” these same units used against Palestinians in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

“They treat their citizens as an enemy. There has always been two systems: one for Arabs and one for the Jews,” said Abdu.

“Police have attacked and arrested people recording and documenting the assaults. In some cases, police also collected false evidence from minors during interrogation sessions during detention.”

Major miscalculation’

Meanwhile, Ahmad Tibi, a member of the Israeli parliament with the Joint List, the Palestinian-majority electoral alliance, said Israel did not expect the Palestinian citizens of Israel to rally in support of others in Jerusalem and Gaza.

The “major miscalculation” by Israeli police came even though this is not the first time Palestinian citizens of Israel have rallied against Israeli policies in Jerusalem and other parts of the occupied territories.

In the latest round of sit-ins, police “lost control” inside Israel, Tibi said, describing the latest campaign as a “show” and a bid by the Israeli police to assert control at the expense of the Palestinian people.

It is a “miserable attempt to intimidate our youth to stop them from exercising their right to express their opinion”, he said.

“The Israeli police lost their ability to frighten and terrorise the Palestinians. This is why they launched this campaign,” he told Al Jazeera.

More than 500 Palestinian homes are expected to be raided in the next 48 hours, Kayyal said, citing Israeli police and media reports.

“They want to restore this feeling of terror in us, to teach us a lesson. But they also want to disrupt Palestinian unity – which is what this uprising is all about.”

Meanwhile, calls for action on social media by Palestinians in Israel – who amount to 1.8 million people – have spread, with many describing the announcement as a “declaration of war”.

Palestinian citizens of Israel have long been discriminated against in many aspects of life, including the right to due process.

But according to Kayyal, protests are not enough to stop the cycle of violence.

“We need to start a new chapter as Palestinians inside Israel. We need to rip apart and dismantle Israel’s fragmentation policy [of Palestinians under its control],” he said.

“Our fight as Palestinian citizens of Israel is a part of the collective fight of the Palestinian people against Israel’s settler-colonial project.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/24/a-war-declaration-palestinians-in-israel-decry-mass-arrests

 
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Salaam

More comment. More on the 'peace industry'



Israel’s state violence is being shielded by plastic ‘peace-building’

Calls to export Northern Irish-style ‘peace’ to the Middle East ignore that it isn’t peace at all

As the dust settles on the latest bout of asymmetrical violence in the Middle East that has left at least 243 Palestinians and 12 Israelis dead, the language of forging an “enduring peace” has returned. Calls for increased humanitarian aid to help rebuild Gaza are heard alongside an espoused commitment to “peace-building” efforts from the international community, with the usual clamour around reinvigoration of the long-defunct two-state “solution”.

Not for the first time, Northern Ireland has been mooted as a fitting model to emulate. And why not? The 1998 Belfast Agreement is routinely lauded on the international stage as an example of how to bring a seemingly intractable conflict to an end. As former British secretary of state for Northern Ireland Peter Hain once claimed, “If one of the longest-running conflicts in European history can be resolved, then there is hope for even the most bitter and seemingly intractable disputes across the globe”. Long-drawn equivalences between Palestine-Israel and sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland provide the rationale for comparison, not least due to strong identification between communities across the divide, as evidenced by Palestinian and Israeli flags flown in communal opposition.

Since the ushering-in of peace in Northern Ireland there has been a proliferation of initiatives and enterprises that have sought to bring the lessons of Ireland’s “peace-building” experience to other global trouble spots, including Palestine-Israel. Former-combatants, “peace” institutes, think tanks, bureaucrats, diplomatic missions, academics, religious and other civil society actors have become participants in what has become an amply resourced industry. With the International Fund for Ireland as a blueprint, an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace has managed to secure $250 million from the US House of Representatives, with a further nominal commitment from the UK government for what is “envisioned as a $200 million annual fund”.

To suggest that “peace-building” may be anything other than a wholesome and worthy pursuit may be an unpopular position to take, but it is vital to question the peace that is being promoted and whose interests are being served. A year after the Nakba of 1948 – an event described by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé as the “ethnic cleansing of Palestine” – the UN hosted peace talks in Lausanne. On the agenda for resolution were matters that to this day remain unresolved: borders, the status of Jerusalem, the repatriation of refugees, Palestinian property. For Palestinians waiting for justice, time can be measured in subsequent peace processes – Wye River, Camp David, Oslo, Hebron, Taba, Beirut. Meanwhile, Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian land and oppression of the people has continued, unopposed in any meaningful way by the international community – the very same nations that sponsor peace talks.

Ongoing colonisation

At his inaugural speech at the United Nations Security Council in January, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney cited the “intractable conflict” in Palestine and Israel. This is a serious mistake for one who is earnest about bringing peace. The situation is not “a conflict” but rather there is conflict, born out of long-standing injustice and ongoing colonisation – currently evidenced by Israel’s attempts to forcibly transfer Palestinian citizens from their homes in the Jerusalem suburb of Sheikh Jarrah – and the continued denial of Palestinians their rights under international law.

To refer to the situation as a conflict in these circumstances is to apply a grammar that is values-laden and aligned with a particular world-view, one that endorses the acts of the powerful and simultaneously denies justice to the colonised. In this grammar, armed soldiers firing on unarmed civilians become “clashes”, Palestinian lands and homes become “contested spaces” and a state being investigated for war crimes in Gaza “has the right to defend itself” while bombing a territory comprising 80 per cent refugees that it occupies (affirmed by the UN despite Israeli claims to the contrary) and has laid siege to for 15 years.

When the violence of Israel’s settler colonialism is met with the Palestinian right of resistance (as affirmed under UN Resolution 37/43) the imposition of “peace-building” interventions, contrived in centres of power and sponsored by countries that trade with and arm Israel, must be held up to scrutiny. As scholars who have explored the exportation of the Northern Irish “peace-building” experience to Palestine-Israel, we are clear; the “peace” that is being exported is not “peace” at all, but rather a form of pacification that marginalises calls for justice and embeds a deeply unbalanced status quo using the language of “reconciliation”, “dialogue” and “cross-community”, all central to the optics of peace in Northern Ireland and indeed in other liberal interventionist approaches to peace. Northern Ireland’s “peace-building” experience, almost completely silent on its own colonial past, when pressed into service in Palestine-Israel, pours cold water on those who continue to struggle against colonisation and who are seeking to resist the very real prospect of being forcibly removed from their homes, of those fighting for survival in the face of erasure. “Peace-building” practices are thus weaponised as instruments of pacification in Palestine.

No justice, no peace

Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, veterans of anticolonial struggle who are hailed now as great peace-makers, both understood that there can be no peace without justice. Last week two pre-eminent groups of scholars separately wrote to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court both calling for intervention from the court for crimes unfolding before our eyes against the Palestinian people. Scholars of genocide, mass violence and human rights wrote: “Palestinians, their history, and the ongoing Israeli state violence against them since the Nakba in 1948 have been marginalised in our field for far too long.” While legal scholars declared that “What is now occurring is the latest in a series of gross injustices that together may be construed as a continuation of the Nakba of 1948, and the Naksa [displacement ofPalestinians after the six-day war] of 1967”.

International law cannot be partisan and must be applied equally and for all.

Ireland has taken a first and vastly important step in recognising that settlement building is de facto annexation – a crime under international law. The next step has to be the enactment of the Occupied Territories Bill, banning the trade in goods from stolen Palestinian land and the application of sanctions to Israel for its breaches of law. We cannot be bystanders or, worse, accomplices in what history will reveal to be a terrible crime.

This is not the time for plastic peace-making.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/...-shielded-by-plastic-peace-building-1.4579301
 

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