Gaza, a cornered and extremely vulnerable people

Extreme scarcity and desperation define life in the Gaza Strip today. The population has been subjected to a cruel blockade by the Israeli government since 2007. Before the current crisis, after the Hamas attack on Israeli territory with taken of hostages, Gaza had already been bombed by Israel several times, killing hundreds of people and destroying many buildings. and structures. It must be remembered that the 2 million residents who live in the small territory of 375 km2 have been suffering multiple hardships. Before the current total lockdown they had lived on four hours or less of electricity a day. It had been the case for a long time that most families did not have access to clean water because the supply system was contaminated with sewage: For some school children, breakfast was a cup of hot water flavored with a pinch of salt. Today not even that. Said Omar Ghraieb, a journalist and digital media manager who lives in Gaza. "Despair is not even the right word to describe what is happening here because things are getting worse," he said. "We wake up to a world of fighting every day." For more than a decade, Palestinians living in Gaza had suffered major escalations of violence and an Israeli-imposed air and sea blockade that has decimated infrastructure, stifled economic growth and living conditions so bleak that United Nations officials They said, before the Israeli bombings, that a humanitarian disaster was inevitable.
"We are really seeing a collapse on the ground," said Matthias Schmale, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which provided humanitarian assistance to more than 1.3 million refugees in the autonomous Palestinian territory.

You can imagine that some reaction from the population was inevitable. The Hamas attack, as well as other reactions of Palestinian rebellion in Gaza, were predictable.
To all of the above we must add that there are nearly 3 million Palestinians in the Western Bank of the Jordan, constantly dispossessed of land and homes due to the advance of Israeli colonies in their traditional lands. In their jobs and transfers they are permanently humiliated with controls on all the main routes in the territory. As if that were not enough, something similar is happening in the Arab and Muslim sector of Jerusalem. The Palestinians themselves, who have been incorporated into Israeli citizenship for decades, are constantly discriminated against and their rights are not taken into account. Added to the above is that there are several million Palestinian refugees in neighboring countries. Jordan, which in practice has been and is a country with a majority Palestinian population, is threatened both politically and militarily by the Israeli state. Something similar happens in the south of Lebanon and in the southwest of Syria, a country that has already lost the Golan area since the 6-day war and Yon Kippur in 1967 and 1973. Something similar can be said of Egypt, particularly on the peninsula. of Sinai, which was already occupied by Israel in 1967. There are also several million Palestinians who were forced to migrate to different countries in the world.
In this situation it seems difficult that the solution of eradication of the Palestinian population from their former territories becomes impracticable. Netanyahu's policy of taking advantage of the reaction generated by the Hamas attacks on his territory to annihilate the Palestinian population, both those actively involved in the resistance struggle and the civilian population made up mainly of women and children, has generated and is generating rejection in Arab and Muslim governments, as well as in numerous social and political organizations throughout the world. It would be easier for Netanyahu to reach an agreement with Palestinian Hamas leaders to achieve the release of hostages captured by Hamas in exchange for the release of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons. This would allow time for Israel's political forces to rethink their relationship with the Palestinian political leaders, and advance the constitution and demarcation of an internationally recognized independent Palestinian state. While that would be the solution, it is not likely that due to the racist and Islamophobic reactions that have developed in a part of Israeli society, it can happen in the near future.
Israeli decisions are influenced by the United States, which constitutes the main economic and military support of the Israeli state, but American positions are influenced by a very politically strong pro-Israeli sector that prevents the United States from changing its position.
Meanwhile, the death toll of thousands of Palestinian victims, most of them civilians, including tens of thousands of children, seems set to continue.
At the same time the world watches with a lot of anger and a lot of helplessness.

A Rock and a Hard Place: What is it like to live In Jerusalem?

This is the story of Jerusalem as told through its own people.

Jerusalemites of three faiths share their life stories and thoughts on the city's past, present and future.

This is the story of Jerusalem as told through its own people.

Omar: 'What's kept Jerusalem from developing is the Israeli occupation'

Omar Harami stands in a 'ghost town' in occupied East Jerusalem, where Israeli walls and borders have created empty neighbourhoods that once thrived

"When it comes to East Jerusalem, four out of 10 houses is under demolishing threat or already had demolition orders and being processed," says Omar Harami. "Israel knows if you destroy houses you destroy families and when you destroy families you destroy communities."

Harami works for the Christian Liberation Theology Centre Sabeel, a civil rights-based organisation working for a peaceful resolution to occupation in Jerusalem. He sees Israel's occupation of Jerusalem as systematic, and the destruction of its original Palestinian communities as a means to further cement Zionist presence.

 "Just about every possible public service you can think of is under-budgeted and lacking in East Jerusalem," says Laura Wharton. Wharton served in the Israeli army in the 1980s but believes there must be a better way to organise and run the city, where everyone is treated equally. She is a member of left-leaning Israeli political party Meretz.

"The only thing they get a lot of is parking fines and housing demolition orders. Those are the only things they get," she says.

Zionists have their own opinions

On the opposite side there is Daniel Luria

"There's never been an Arab state here with the capital of Jerusalem," he says.

There's never been a Palestinian state here. This talk about Palestine, Palestine ... I've never heard of anything more absurd."

Luria is the executive director of Ateret Cohanim, a settler organisation working to create a Jewish majority in the city of Jerusalem. Raised in Australia, Luria says Israel is his only home, in spite of only having moved there 25 years ago. He is one of mor0 than 850,000 people residing in Jerusalem.

Some recent history of the city

After a peaceful period under Ottoman rule, where Islam, Christianity and Judaism coexisted in relative harmony, the decline of the empire and consequent victory of the British in Palestine during World War I set the stage for the eventual takeover of the city.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jewish forces captured West Jerusalem as the eastern half became part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Almost two decades later, the 1967 Six-Daywar  would see the Jewish state claim rights to the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and all of Jerusalem.

Since then, Israel has established over 200 illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land with about 600,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

In this two-part film, Al Jazeera's Awad Joumaa follows a cast of characters - Jewish, Christian and Muslim - that call Jerusalem home. A Muslim scholar; a Christian Palestinian researcher; a former Israeli soldier and former Zionist turned professor; a self-described Zionist settler; a peace activist; an actress and her artist son; and a father, whose son is under home detention, fighting to hold on to his house in the Old City. These are some of the key characters, sharing their stories and thoughts on the city's past, present and future.

Mahdi Abu A'asab has spent more time waiting for verdicts in Israeli courts than outside playing with his friends in the last few years of his teenage life. The fact that his family is also on edge because of the constant threat of detention makes things all the more stressful for the 15-year-old.

"They kept setting my court appointments at the same time as the house courts to make my father confused," says Mahdi. "Which court case does he go to? To my court hearing or to the one for our home? They kept putting pressure on him with my cases and they arrested me many times although I did nothing."

"The only people with connection here with sovereign rights here are the Jewish people. There's never been an Arab state here with the capital of Jerusalem. So when I hear Arabs today talking about they've got a connection for generations, no such thing," says Daniel Luria. 

Raised in Australia, Luria was raised in a Zionist household and moved to Jerusalem 25 years ago. Although he believes there is "room for everyone [from different faiths] in Jerusalem", he holds firm in his belief that Israel belongs to the Jewish people and the Jewish people alone.

"History unfolds in many ways I'm here and basically we are here; we don't have any exclusive claims we don't try to have a monopoly on even the historical narrative," says Professor Mustafa Sway. "Everyone is welcome but it's the power structure that maintains the colonial project. That's basically what we refuse."

Sway is a professor of Philosophy and Islamic Studies at Jerusalem's Al Quds University. His eldest son, Mahmoud, lost his ID status in the country when he travelled to the United States to seek work after chronic unemployment within Palestine. He is now only able to visit Palestine, and in particular Jerusalem, as a tourist. 

Meir: 'We are living in a city that discriminates against 40 percent of the population'

"There are days that I couldn't sleep," says former Zionist and soldier Meir Margalit. "In particular when the municipality demolished houses. How can I as a Jew, we who suffered from discrimination over centuries, how can we in our country discriminate other people. No, it's impossible. This is something that doesn't fit with the Jewish concept that I grew up with."

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Margalit spent 20 years serving as a council member on the Jerusalem Municipality, trying to prove a case of discrimination against Palestinians using empirical evidence, such as municipality budgeting. 

"Look at the kitchens inside the restaurants ... most of those people will be Palestinians from the West Bank or occupied areas of Jerusalem with very low salaries," says actress Huda Imam as she wanders the bustling streets of Jerusalem. "They are treated not even like third-class citizens; they are treated like garbage." 

Imam's entire family was evicted from West Jerusalem in 1948 when Jewish forces captured the city. Between 60,000 and 80,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes.

Sahar: 'Inequality is an inherent part of the city'

"Enlistment in Israeli society is the default right. So choosing to step out of that is, is choosing to be different and to define yourself as different and it has different consequences that are beyond prison," says Sarah Vardi, an Israeli dissident who, against Israeli societal expectations, refused to serve in the army.

"I think for me a lot of it is choosing to be an outsider."

Reproduced and adapted from Al Jazeera

Reference:

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2019/03/jerusalem-rock-hard-place-190325074255178.html

The most unworkable and ridiculous 

israeli-palestinian peace plan

For Palestinians is synonim of surrenderTrump's peace plan  rolled out with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu

WASHINGTON — The atmosphere felt more like a celebratory Mar-a-Lago gathering, bringing together really good friends, rather than the usual somber, staid event one might have otherwise expected at a Middle East peace plan rollout. 
A military band in red dress uniforms played "Hail to the Chief" as US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered the White House East Room. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the GOP donors and pro-Israel philanthropists, were sitting in the front row, along with the US and Israeli officials and VIPs who had labored on the plan. There were of course members of Congress and other VIPs, including Trump impeachment attorney Alan Dershowitz, former Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, now head of the anti-nuclear deal United Against Nuclear Iran, and the ambassadors from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman. No Palestinian officials were present — the Trump administration ordered the Palestinian mission in Washington closed in 2018.
 Trump and Netanyahu both made lengthy congratulatory statements on a 180-`page peace plan almost no one had seen prior, frequently interrupted by applause. They took no questions, though a couple hundred journalists stood packed in the back. Of the major American news channels, only Fox News apparently covered the event live, which was hastily scheduled during the last day of the Trump defense team’s arguments in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. 
Trump, sounding relaxed and untroubled by the Senate proceedings, proclaimed his peace vision a historic breakthrough.

References:
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/01/trump-peace-plan-rollout-white-house-israel-palestine.html

 https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/01/trump-peace-plan-rollout-white-house-israel-palestine.html#ixzz6COQGLFCn

Israel's nation-state law to unleash 'deepening apartheid'

Experts in London warn of new stage in 'settler-colonial' process amid fears for Palestinian citizens under 2018 law.

Palestinian citizens of Israel and their supporters participate in a rally to protest against Jewish nation-state law in Rabin square in Tel Aviv, Israel, August 11, 2018 [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

London, United Kingdom – Israel is poised to unleash a new round of oppressive apartheid policies against Palestinian citizens within its own borders, according to leading experts.

The re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard-righ nationalist, as prime minister sets the scene for a new phase in an historic project to end the "demographic threat" posed by Palestinian citizens of Israel to the Jewish majority, they say.

On Saturday, experts at a London conference explored the challenges facing the 1.8 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a group that comprises 20 percent of the Israeli population yet faces widespread discrimination.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, panellist Jonathan Cook, a prominent writer on Palestine, said the controversial 2018 Nation State Law has essentially heightened a "comprehensive apartheid" that reflects the demographic fear of Palestinian citizens of Israel among the country's leaders.

Palestinian citizens had long been regarded as a "Trojan horse" by Israeli politicians, he added.

The Nazareth-based author told the conference: "Stating that the law turns Palestinians into second-class citizens or risks turning it into an apartheid state can easily become a trap.

"It suggests that Israel was a normal Western-style liberal democracy before the law. But the law changes very little: Israel was established as an apartheid state."

Middle East Monitor organised the London event, which brought together prominent academics and writers from across the world who all agreed on the characterisation of Israel as an apartheid state.

Attention has turned to Palestinian citizens of Israel since the Nation-State Law declaring Israel to be the "historical homeland of the Jewish people" was passed last summer, and since Netanyahu won a fifth term on pledges to annex additional parts of the occupied West Bank.

Lawyer Suhad Bishara, a Palestinian human rights expert, told delegates: "The Nation-State Law has no one state vision. There will be annexations, and we can see that from what's happening on the ground."

Referring to the efforts by Israel's Zionist left to conceal mistreatment of the Palestinians behind liberal democratic language, Cook said: "The law may have done us a favour: it makes it clearer what kind of state Israel is."

Speakers outlined a broad range of areas - social, economic, legal and geographic - in which apartheid policies operate to discriminate against Israeli Palestinian citizens, many of whom were declared "present absentees" by Israel under a 1950 law to enable it to appropriate their land and property.

New stage in 'settler-colonial' process

Comparing Israel with apartheid South Africa, whose government corralled the indigenous majority into self-governing "bantustans", Professor Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University said the Nation-State Law opens a new stage in the Israeli "settler-colonial" process, which he called one of "deepening apartheid".

"Apartheid, of course, is illegal, it is a war crime, it is a crime against humanity."

Mapping out the process of "Judaisation" by which the Israeli state has taken control of Palestinian ancestral lands, he said the Nation-State Law enshrines this process in a legal framework, and likened the hierarchy of citizenship that now exists in the country to that of apartheid South Africa.

Mazen Masri of City University in London explored the legal strategies that now exist in Israeli law to discriminate against Palestinian citizens.

He said: "Discrimination already exists in a range of legal strategies that are meant to discriminate without actually officially sanctioning discrimination.

"The main concern of the Nation-State Law is not really the ethnoreligious and inherently exclusivist principles and also the entrenchment of Israel's colonial nature and policy, the main problem is that this act demonstrates that Israel is closer to apartheid than democracy."

An Israeli Palestinian politician, Dr Yousef Jabareen, told the conference that he had sat in the Knesset and had to listen to other politicians making racist arguments in which the Palestinians were depicted as both a dangerous "fifth column" but also as inferior.

"The basis of democracy is equal rights and equal citizenship and for the Palestinians these have been violated for over 70 years," he said. "The Nation-State Law restates this: it opens the door for further policies and tools of oppression."

by Gavin O’Toole

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/nation-state-law-opens-stage-settler-colonial-process-190427214518436.html

Palestine identity targetted by Israel

Everything Palestinian in Jerusalem is targeted by Israeli occupation," said Palestinian Archbishop of Jerusalem's Greek Orthodox Church, Atallah Hanna on January 29 during a meeting with a delegation from the medical aid organisation Doctors without Borders.

"The Islamic and Christian holy sites and endowments are targeted in order to change our city, hide its identity and marginalise our Arabic and Palestinian existence," the archbishop added.

Hanna, who has been at the forefront of the Palestinian Muslim and Christian struggle against Israel's Judaisation schemes, is, of course, correct in his assertion that Jerusalem is targetted. But the truth is that there is a systematic campaign to strip not just the holy city off of its Palestinian character, but also the whole of Palestine.

A few days after the Palestinian Christian leader made his comments, Israeli authorities carried out excavations in the historic al-Bahr Mosque in the city of Tiberias, on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee. In its place, Israel aims to establish a museum, a practice it has used many times in the past in order to erase historic symbols of Palestinian existence.

An 'invented people?

Israel's disregard for the historical rights of Palestinians is deeply rooted in Zionist ideology. Indeed, from the very start, Zionist ideologues promoted the idea that Palestine was a place bereft of culture or heritage - an arid desert, waiting for Zionist pioneers to make it "bloom".

For those claims to acquire a degree of plausibility and for the myth of Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land" to be solidified, the Zionist movement needed to erase the very existence of the Palestinian people.

After the establishment of the Israeli state, its leaders never made it a secret that this is indeed their intention. "It is not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist," Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-74) said in an interview with the Sunday Times in June 1969.

The notion that Palestinians are not a people with a collective sense of nationhood has remained a defining concept of Zionism until this day and has spread well beyond Israel's borders. American Christian evangelicals are particularly avid supporters of the idea, which has led some American politicians to also publicly embrace it. In 2011, for example, then US presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told the Jewish Channel that the Palestinians were an "invented people".

The practical application of this idea has meant that the construction of anything Jewish Israeli - whether it is cities, settlements, bypass-roads or numerous edifices of art, culture, religion and so on - has had to take place in parallel to the demolition and erasure of Palestinian cities, villages, streets, homes, cultural and religious sites. 

Erasing Palestinian existence

On July 19, 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the "nation-state bill", practically making apartheid official by defining Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and marginalising Palestinians, their history and language. However, that bill was the mere culmination of decades-long efforts. 

During the British mandate, the colonial authorities, for example, were using predominantly Arabic names of localities, towns and villages; there were some about 3,700 of them. By contrast, there were just 200 Hebrew toponyms, most of them being names of Jewish settlements, including new ones that were being built under the patronage of the Zionist movement. This was quite indicative of the demographic distribution and land ownership in Palestine at the time (at the beginning of the British mandate in the 1920s, the Jews, including newly arrived settlers, were just 11 percent of the total population).

However, as soon as the Israeli state was created against the will of the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab population of the Middle East, a vicious campaign to "remap" Palestine was launched.

A 1948 letter sent to first Israeli Interior Minister Yitzhak Gruenbaum read: "The conventional names should be replaced by new ones ... since, in an anticipation of renewing our days as of old and living the life of a healthy people that is rooted in the soil of our country, we must begin in the fundamental Hebraicization of our country's map."

Soon after, a government commission was created and tasked with renaming everything Palestinian so the new state can lay its claim on towns, villages and various other geographical areas.

Another letter written in August 1957 by an Israeli foreign ministry official urged the Israeli Department of Antiquities to speed up the destruction of Palestinian homes conquered during the Nakba. "The ruins from the Arab villages and Arab neighbourhoods, or the blocs of buildings that have stood empty since 1948, arouse harsh associations that cause considerable political damage," he wrote. "They should be cleared away."

For Israel, erasing Palestine and writing the Palestinian people out of the history of their own homeland have always been a strategic endeavour.

"Considered as a major accomplishment of modern Jewish nationalism, the 'Hebraicization of Israel' usually refers to the revival of the Hebrew language undertaken by and associated with Zionism as a restorative project of nation-building," Israeli academics Maoz Azaryahu and Arnon Golan wrote (PDF) in their paper "(Re)naming the Landscape: the Formation of the Hebrew Map of Israel". 

"A lesser known aspect of the 'Hebraicization of Israel', however, has been the 'Hebraicization of the map', a state-promoted national project whose objective was "To Judaize (sic) the map of Israel and to affix Hebrew names to all geographical features in the map of Israel".

This is as true in the case of Palestine, as it was in the case of all colonised nations. And like other settler-colonialist powers, Israel is well aware of the important rapport between places, names and collective identities of the indigenous, colonised people.

As Canadian historian Kaleigh Bradley pointed out in a recent essay: "For indigenous peoples, place names act as mnemonic devices, embodying histories, spiritual and environmental knowledge, and traditional teachings. Place names also serve as boundary markers between home and the world of outsiders." 

The Israeli Zionist campaign to rename Palestinian places, destroy Palestinian heritage sites, claim Palestinian culture, undermine the Arabic language and erase cultural contributions of the Palestinian people has continued for over 70 years now. 

More recently, the Israeli army has used its violent military assaults on Palestinians not only to take Palestinian lives but also to destroy cultural monuments and places of worship of historical significance. According to official Palestinian reports, Israel destroyed 73 mosques in the 51-day war on the besieged Gaza Strip in 2014. 

Some of these mosques, like al-Omari Mosque in Jabaliya, are ancient structures that date back more than a thousand years. Al-Omari Mosque was built nearly 1365 years ago and has served as a symbol of hope for Palestinians in Gaza, a reminder of past grandeur. 

The Israeli authorities have also increased pressure on Islam's third-holiest site: al-Aqsa Mosque. It has facilitated the forceful incursions of the Temple Mount Faithful, an extremist Jewish group, into the Haram al-Sharif compound, where the mosque is located. The group has declared that it is keen on destroying al-Aqsa Mosque in order to build a "Third Temple on Temple Mount" - something the Israeli government clearly also wishes for.

There have been various attacks on Palestinian cultural heritage in Nablus, al-Khalil (Hebron), Ariyha (Jericho), Yaffa (Jaffa), Haifa and many other Palestinian towns and villages. 

Yet, despite all of this destruction, on intellectual and political levels, Israel still remains insecure about its past and uncertain of its future.

The future of Israel and Palestine

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris predicted a grim future for his country.

"This place will deteriorate into a Middle Eastern state with an Arab majority," he said referring to Israel and Palestine. "The violence between various populations inside the state will continue to increase ... The Arabs will demand the return of the refugees. The Jews will remain as a small minority in a large Arab sea of Palestinians - a persecuted minority or a slaughtered minority, as it was when they lived in Arab countries."

"In another 30 to 50 years, they will overcome us, one way or another," he added. 

It doesn't matter whether Morris' offensive prediction was meant to manipulate existing fears among his countrymen, to hype the sense of victimisation that continues to define the collective Israeli Jewish mindset, or to communicate his honest feelings.

Either way, his statement explains why Israel acts against the Palestinian identity with such a great sense of urgency, intensifying attacks on Palestinian culture, speeding up annexation of Palestinian land, expanding Jewish settlements and Jewish-only roads, renaming streets, marginalising the Arabic language or, to use Archbishop Hanna's, targeting "everything Palestinian". 

But the foretold demise of Israel as a "Jewish state" will come not as a result of the Arab majority "slaughtering" the "persecuted minority", but as a result of Israel's own reckless actions. Before the Zionists, there were many other invaders. Many fled, but many others chose to stay and were naturally integrated into the fabric of the diverse Palestinian society.

Israel refuses to accept the fact that the Palestinians' relationship with their land cannot be dictated or terminated by violence, Knesset bills or army decrees. To the contrary, the more aggression is unleashed onto the Palestinians, the stronger the Palestinian sense of nationhood grows. The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his seminal poem, "ID Card" was able to capture brilliantly this Palestinian spirit of resistance:

From Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/israel-judaisation-palestine-failing-190212113024316.html

In the XXI century

In Israel “bastards” (people that were born outside wedlock) are not allowed to marry!

At 5:30 a.m. on July 19, police officers knocked on the door of Dov Haiyun, the Conservative rabbi of the Moriah community in Haifa, and took him to the police station for questioning. How did this come about?

In addition to civil courts, the Israel Police also serve religious courts. When a religious court submits a complaint, the police can detain the suspect for questioning and, if need be, arrest him. In the Kafkaesque case of Rabbi Haiyun, the Haifa Rabbinical Court complained that Haiyun had officiated a marriage for a woman who was forbidden to marry, and did not report the marriage to the rabbinate.

The rabbi is a well-known and well-connected person. He managed to contact Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who directed the police to release him. The questioning will take place at another time, but the incident exposed one of the most embarrassing aspects of Israeli democracy: that religious matrimony laws are also part of the state's canon.

Today, Israel is one of the only democracies in the world where all citizens are obligated to marry and divorce in a religious framework, even if they are atheists. They are not allowed to marry outside of their religious community, meaning, for instance, that an Arab Christian cannot marry an Arab Muslim in Israel. Anyone who wants a civil marriage must marry abroad, and only then will the Israeli Interior Ministry register the individual as married according to the foreign wedding certificate. This is not a result of lenient legislation, but rather a Supreme Court ruling from 1963 in the Funk-Schlesinger case..

Israel's chief rabbinate only recognizes the Orthodox stream of Judaism and ignores Conservative and Reform rabbis. Orthodox Judaism determines who is allowed to marry couples in Israel, and it has published a list of about 1,850 rabbis who are exclusively allowed to officiate traditional Jewish wedding ceremonies. Unlisted rabbis are only allowed to officiate private ceremonies, which the state won't recognize.

The marriage and divorce ordinance, which is part of Israeli law, is a 99-year-old British ordinance that is based on a similar Ottoman ordinance. Only five years ago was a clause added to say that "anyone who does not make sure to register his marriage or divorce, or to register a marriage or divorce that he officiated for someone, is to be sentenced to two years in prison."

Rabbi Haiyun has been accused of this crime, even though he is not among those authorized to officiate, and the ceremonies he officiates have no official standing.

But this is not the whole story. The couple whose marriage caused the rabbi's detention was forbidden to marry, according to the Orthodox view, because the woman is defined as a "bastard" meaning she was born out of wedlock. According to Rambam’s Mishneh Torah book of law, such a person is not meant to "be part of the Jewish community" and is sentenced to eternal singlehood, unless she marries a slave, a convert or another person born out of wedlock. In the two years that passed since the wedding, the rabbinic court decided, "out of the goodness of its heart," to nullify this terrible sentence and release the woman from bastard status. Yet this development did not interest the religious jurists who directed the Israel Police to arrest Rabbi Haiyun.

Gaza: the largest open air prison of the world

Deficit and desperation define life these days in the Gaza Strip subjected to a cruel blockade by the government of Israel since 2007. Gaza was also bombed by Israel several times killing hundresds of people and destroing many buildings and structures.

The 2 millon residents living in the small 375 km2 territory must live with four hours of electricity a day. Most people don't have access to clean water because the supply system is contaminated with sewage. Breakfast for some schoolchildren is a cup of hot water flavored with a dash of salt.

"Despair isn't even the right word to describe what's going on here because things are getting worse and worse," said Omar Ghraieb, 31, a journalist and digital media manager living in Gaza. "We wake up to a world of struggles each day."

For more than a decade Palestinians living in Gaza have endured major escalations of violence and an air and sea blockade, imposed by Israel that has decimated the infrastructure, stifled economic growth and made living conditions so dismal that United Nations officials say a humanitarian disaster is unavoidable.

"We really are seeing a collapse in place," said Matthias Schmale, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which provides humanitarian assistance to more than 1.3 million refugees in the self-governing Palestinian territory.

For most of those struggling to survive in Gaza, the hardships are real.

Speaking via the social media app WhatsApp, Ghraieb recalled how it was not so long ago that the power stayed on for eight hours each day, enough time to cook, surf the internet and heat the apartment that he shares with his father and sister.

Palestinian charge their cellphones using batteries, a free service offered in a Gaza City neighborhood suffering from power disruptions.

Many people have resorted to burning wood and stocking up on blankets to stay warm, Ghraieb said. Generators are available, but few people can afford the fuel to run them.

"Of course some have it better than others, but … it's like we went back a decade," Ghraieb said. "It's crazy seeing the world advance by the minute while seeing a place you call home decline by the second."

Health facilities are also feeling the strain of the power scarcity. Last week, a hospital serving 66,000 people in the northern Gaza Strip halted operations and a children's medical center reduced its services to a bare minimum.

According to the World Bank, only 10% of Gaza's population has access to safe drinking water. The sewage system has broken down and wastewater pollutes the aquifer that flows beneath Gaza.

The 1.3 million refugees whom UNRWA serves account for about 70% of Gaza's population of 2 million people. Of these refugees, 77% live in poverty and depend on the U.N. agency for food, Schmale said.

"Gaza is a place that has been testing the limits of what the minimum level of sustainability is before a total humanitarian catastrophe," Munayyer said. "We inch closer every day to finding where that threshold is."

An economy in ruins

About 46% the population in Gaza, which covers 141 square miles, is without work. The statistic stands at 64% among young people under the age of 25, and at 77% for women within that group. And unemployment is rising, according to U.N. officials.

"A lot of these industries that you could rely on to produce and generate some independent dynamism for the economy have also suffered because of the siege policy," Munayyer said.

Egypt's border with Gaza is closed and Israel allows only trucks carrying food or other humanitarian necessities to pass through. The dramatic drop in purchasing power of Gazans is evident in the number of supply trucks entering the strip weekly from Israel. It has dropped from an average of 900 trucks a week to about 300, according to Israeli army data.

Entire industries have collapsed within the Gaza Strip. Farming areas along the perimeter of the strip have been ruined by the siege and three recent wars with Israel, in 2009, 2012 and 2014.

Israeli forces assault Palestinians, prepare to demolish village

At least 35 Palestinians wounded as Israeli forces prepare to demolish the entire Khan al-Ahmar village near Jerusalem.

Israeli forces have assaulted dozens of Palestinians protesting the demolition of a Bedouin village near occupied East Jerusalem and the forcible transfer of the entire community.

According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, at least 35 Palestinians were wounded, including four who were hospitalised, during the events which took place on Wednesday at the Khan al-Ahmar village.

Videos taken by witnesses and circulated online showed Israeli forces beating and attempting to arrest men, women and children. In one video, Israeli forces were seen violently dragging a Palestinian woman on the ground and pulling off her headscarf. 

Israeli forces arrived to the scene with heavy equipment and at least one bulldozer early on Wednesday, after a long legal battle between the community's close to 180 residents and the Israeli Supreme Court.

Khan al-Ahmar falls in Area C of the occupied West Bank - under total Israeli administrative and military control.

While the Israeli court has sanctioned the demolition of the village because it was built without the necessary construction permit, Israeli authorities rarely, if ever, approve construction permits in Area C due to the expansion of illegal Jewish-only Israeli housing settlements there.   United Nations figures show that Israeli authorities have approved just 1.5 percent of all permit requests by Palestinians between 2010 and 2014. 

The Jahalin Bedouin community that lives in Khan al-Ahmar set up camp in the area as early as 1953, long before two Jewish-only settlements were built around it. 

The community believes they are being forcibly removed to allow Israel to expand its settlements on their land. 

From Al Jazeera 

A Palestinian village was demolished 100 times by the Israelis in the Naqab desert  (Negev in Hebrew).

D.Anton
The Palestinian village of'Araqib is located in Desert Naqab (Negev).
Araqib Lands that belonged to its inhabitants since Ottoman times, were expropriated by Israel under the Law of Land Appropriation of 1952 and the villagers were forced to retreat. However many Araqib residents returned to the village, rebuilt it and over time its population reached 300 people living in a bedouin style of pastoral life.
On July 27, 2010 the buildings of the village were demolished for the first time on July 27, 2010.
A Palestinian from Araqib described the situation before demolition:
"Our life was beautiful. We were using the land. We planted barley or wheat in winter and melons in Summer. We all had tractors and worked. We had 500 olive trees. We were doing oil and sold it. We planted tomatoes, zucchini and fruits. We also had sheep. My wife and I had more than 500 hens. We used to sell everything in Beershelva markets, Rabat and elsewhere ... until that damn day of July 27, 2010".

Since then demolishers have returned to the village once or twice a month to destroy the temporary houses. Araqib Palestinians built it again and again. Besides destroying houses a hundred times the government of Israel also began their legal action to recover the costs of demolition which according to them would amount to 8 million shekels (467,000 dollars).
Araqib Palestinians, who are Israeli citizens, have not allowed to be threatened, they keep coming back and build new houses on the ruins of the ones that were demolished.
Haqmeh Abu Madigem, a villager lady from Araqib said:  "I'm tired of demolitions but I remain here. Even if our houses are destroyed 200 times, I will not move. For me it is the most beautiful place in Earth ."

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/israel-destroys-palestinian-village-100th-time-160703091747401.html

Palestine, a Homeless People

Danilo Antón

It is the 69th anniversary of the "naqba", the "catastrophe" that occurred in 1948, the year the Palestinians lost their country and became a dependent and discriminated population.
A homeless people, a consequence of the geopolitical agreements of the main western powers during the postwar period, and of the massive economic and military support of the United States. From these agreements was established the state of Israel which settled in Palestine displacing the people who had occupied it for tens of generations. The "catastrophe" still continues in the face of international indifference.

Demographic history of Palestine

In 1922 the population of Palestine was predominantly Arab. It is estimated that Palestine was populated by about 750,000 inhabitants. Approximately 88% were Arabs, of whom 10% were Christians and 78% were Muslims. The Jewish community consisted of only 12%.
In 1931 the population had grown to 1 million inhabitants. Of these the Arabs were 85%, (Muslims 76%, Christians 9%) and the Jewish community had increased to 17%.
Immediately after World War II, prior to the first Jewish-Arab war, in Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel, the population of Palestine amounted to 2 million inhabitants, 60% of whom were Muslims, 7% Christians and 30 % Jews.
After several decades of clashes between Arabs and Israelis, the entire territory of Palestine became directly or indirectly controlled by the Israeli state.
At present the total population under Israeli rule is over 11 million. Some 6,400,000 Jews and 1,800,000 Arabs live in Israel proper  There are 2,800,000 Arabs and 370,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank of the Jordan. In Gaza there are 1,850,000 people, virtually all Arabs. In total in the conglomerate guarded by Israel there are about 6,800,000 Jews (including the colonists in the West Band) and 6,450,000 Arabs.
In addition, the Israeli occupation of Palestine generated refugee camps and Palestinian communities resulting in a Palestinian diaspora of more than 5 million in refugee camps in countries bordering Palestine and in colonies of Palestinians in the rest of the world.
In total, the Palestinians are about 12 million. Of these, just over half are still in the territory of ancient Palestine which today is occupied or controlled by Israel.

The future

It will not be easy for the State of Israel to complete the task of completely eliminating the Arab population from ancient Palestine, including the territory officially ruled by Israel.
More than 6 million Palestinians live a daily life of controls, restrictions, discrimination, economic exploitation, and when necessary, repression, imprisonment and death.
The Palestinian people lost most of the traditional lands and are on the way of losing the remaining ones.
But this process does not seem sustainable. It may happen that the State of Israel and its supporters in the US, Europe and other parts of the world will not be able to prevent this shameless apartheid situation from continuing too long.

An important part of the Jewish communities in Israel and other parts of the world, which retain the memories of Nazi apartheid, are beginning to recognize that this situation is unacceptable.
Surely the main vulnerability of the State of Israel is neither military nor economic, but of an ethical nature, which sooner or later will be expressed in the political developments of the future.

D.A.