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

Recovering Palestina unity

 People from all ideological backgounds, raising flags and banners bearing the names of the villages from where Israelis uprooted them came together to demand their rights

On March 30, 2018, I witnessed something that I will never forget. I saw tens of thousands of people, with different political affiliations and ideological backgrounds, standing together in one field, raising the Palestinian flag and banners bearing the names of the villages and towns from which Israel had uprooted them. On that day, the divisions among Palestinians disappeared, and the people came together to demand their inalienable rights.

The Great March of Return opened a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle for freedom. It gave the Palestinian people a new opportunity to collectively rise up against the Israeli occupation.

Since then, we have paid a heavy price for our peaceful resistance. Some 266 Palestinians have been killed and more than 6,557 have been injured by live ammunition; 124 have had a limb amputated.

But we have persevered. Every Friday, thousands of us, women and men, young and old, have continued to stream to the border fence with Israel to demand our legal right to return to our homeland and demonstrate that we will not accept a slow death inside the walls of the Gaza Strip prison.

The Great March of Return has rekindled our spirit of resistance, empowered us, made us stronger and more unified.

When I and my friends first started discussing the idea of a march more than a year ago, I did not expect that we would achieve so much.

The idea came to us at a time when popular resistance in Palestine had suffered massive decline. Since the end of the second Intifada in 2005, there have been sporadic protests but no spontaneous mass movement.

Instead, various political factions had taken over the streets with planned demonstrations, rallying their members and supporters. Such activism organised along political lines had reduced many Palestinians to passive bystanders and alienated them.

This was highly detrimental to the national cause, because it factionalised the resistance movement. Since the occupation targets the Palestinian people as a whole and not just a particular political faction, the national struggle can only be successful if it involves every single Palestinian. 

In addition, Israel's wars on Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014 had shifted the spotlight to the armed factions and away from popular resistance. These military confrontations had also allowed Israel to double down on its attempts to justify its excessive use of force against the Palestinian population under the pretext of protecting itself from attacks from armed groups.

As a result, international attention had shifted away from Israel's rights abuses and focused on its security pretences. This had additionally side-lined ordinary Palestinian and their demands for an end to the occupation and the right of return.

But all of this changed with the Great March of Return.

What distinguishes it from the protests and confrontations of the recent past is not only its popular and peaceful nature, but also its inception. The idea for the march came from the youth of Gaza - my friends and I took the initiative and floated the idea on social media. Ordinary Palestinians discussed it and helped it to mature and transform into something that can be adopted by all members of the Palestinian society.

The Great March of Return, as an idea conceived by the people, managed to cut across factional lines and build a united front. It channelled the Palestinian people's energy that does not find a place in the activities of traditional factions.

Individuals and families without any political affiliation who in the past had felt they could not find a place for themselves in many other protests actively participated in this march. Civil society organisations and activists also joined and so did clan unions.

The Great March of Return also attracted many young people who had been disillusioned and depoliticised by the disastrous state of internal Palestinian politics and rekindled their spirit of resistance. It helped a new generation of Palestinians embrace the Palestinian struggle for the right to return.

The march - with its popular mandate and peaceful nature - also managed to undermine Israel's efforts to present Gaza as a "security issue". The constant protests have been a source of dismay, annoyance and embarrassment for the Israeli occupation.

Israel's violent response to the Great March of Return proved that it does not want the Palestinians to adopt the peaceful option. Scared that our peaceful resistance can harm its propaganda efforts painting us as the aggressors, Israel chose to attack demonstrators that pose no direct threat to its people. And as its soldiers killed, maimed and silenced peaceful protesters, the Israeli state tried to put the blame of the bloodshed on the victims.

However, this time, the occupiers did not succeed. This march helped more and more people around the world see our plight and hear our demands for freedom and dignity.

The Great Return March restored credence to the concept of peaceful struggle. If armed resistance confronts the occupation with bullets, the peaceful struggle confronts it with the power of words and the justice of the cause.

Israel may have military strength, but it is morally weak. It displaced a people, occupied its land, and continues to usurp their freedom and dignity to this day. Therefore, the Palestinians naturally have the moral high ground in this struggle and their peaceful protests deliver stronger blows to Israel than any other weapon.

One year after the start of our march, I'm filled with a mix of sadness and determination. We paid with the lives and bodies of many Palestinians for these peaceful demonstrations. With every single Israeli bullet that hit one of the protesters, our suffering and grief as a people multiplied. However, we did not give up for 70 years and we have no intention to do so now. 

The Great March of Return is the response of a proud nation to decades of occupation, aggression and theft. By taking this peaceful stand, we are announcing to the world that despite Israel's attempts to wipe us out, we are still standing strong and united. 

Reproduced from Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/great-march-return-resurrected-palestinian-resistance-190328082440677.html

Hebron, an open-air prison in Palestine

Hebron is the largest city in the occupied territories of the West Bank of Palestine and capital of the governorate of the same name. Despite being located in Palestinian territory, the 600,000 Palestinian inhabitants of the governorate live a life totally controlled by the Israeli army that authorizes their trips, even within the Palestinian territory, allows them to go to their places of work or educational institutes and indicates to them what paths they should take, although sometimes it involves traveling much greater distances than necessary. On local routes there are numerous controls where Palestinians are often prevented from continuing and in all cases are treated as second-class citizens.
The city of Hebron
Hebron is a Palestinian city located in the West Bank, and one of the oldest permanently inhabited cities in the Middle East. Located 30 kilometers south of Jerusalem and nestled in the Judean Mountains, it is 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and the second largest in the State of Palestine, just behind Gaza.
The Governorate of Hebron is the largest in Palestine, with 1,060 km2 and a population of 600,000 inhabitants.
The municipality itself has an area of ​​74 km2 and a population of 216,000 inhabitants.
There are also about 850 Jewish settlers (200 of them, Yeshiva students) 345 concentrated in the old neighborhood.
The proximity to Hebron of the cities of ad-Dhahiriya, Dura and Yatta means that there are no municipal boundaries between them.
Hebron is an important West Bank trade center, responsible for approximately one third of the region's gross domestic product, largely due to the sale of marble from its quarries. Hebron also has an important renown locally for its grapes and figs, its limestone, its traditional glass and ceramic factories and for a leading dairy manufacturer, al-Junaidi. The old city of Hebron is characterized by its Mamluk architecture and its narrow, meandering alleys, its stone houses with flat roofs and its old bazaars. In the city are also the University of Hebron and the Polytechnic University of Palestine.

City besieged and strictly controlled
Most Palestinian cities and communities in the West Bank are surrounded by colonies, currently 200 with half a million Jewish inhabitants in them. Almost all the colonies were built illegally on land violating the Oslo agreements. In the case of Hebron, the Jewish colony is inserted in the urban area of ​​the city. In this colony live 850 Jewish settlers, of whom about 345 are in the old quarter of the city as students of yeshiva (schools for the study of the Torah and the Talmud).
The city is divided into two sectors: H1, controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, which accounts for 80% of the municipal territory, and H2 (approximately 20% of the city), administered by Israel. To travel, even within the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Palestinians must apply for permission.
All security agreements and travel permits for local (Palestinian) inhabitants are coordinated between the Palestinian National Authority and Israel through the military administration of the West Bank (COGAT). The Jewish settlers have their own system of government, the Jewish Community Committee of Hebron, and they can vote in the Israeli elections, something that their Palestinian neighbors can not do.

The sacred character of Hebron
The strong relationship of Hebron with the biblical figure of Abraham makes it venerated by Jews, Muslims and Christians. In the city is the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is considered the burial place of patriarchs and biblical matriarchs. Hebron is the second most sacred city of Judaism, only after Jerusalem, while Islam considers it one of the four sacred cities along with Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina.

The future
The social situation of the city is hardly sustainable. Due to the submission to which the Palestinians of Hebron are forced, frequent episodes of violence are triggered as a reaction to the mistreatment and discrimination suffered by the Palestinians in it.
There is little information in the international media about the dramatic situation that the inhabitants of Hebron are experiencing and there is uncertainty about what the fate of the younger generations will be like.

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

Israel's settlements: 50 years of land theft explained

To the casual visitor or tourist driving through the occupied West Bank or Jerusalem, Israeli settlements may appear as just another set of houses on a hill.

The middle-class suburban style townhouses, built fast and locked in a grid of uniform units, stand like fortified compounds, in direct contrast to the sprawling limestone Palestinian homes below.

Settlement homes, mostly constructed of cement with a cosmetic limestone cladding, tend to fashion a similar look: American-style villas topped by red-tiled roofs and surrounded by lush, neatly trimmed green lawns.

The largest settlement, Modi'in Illit, houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews in the occupied West Bank. The mega-settlement has its own mayor, as well as schools, shopping malls and medical centres.

Some settlements even have their own universities.

Today, between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis live in these sizeable settlements, equivalent to roughly 11 percent of the total Jewish Israeli population.

They live beyond the internationally recognised borders of their state, on Palestinian land that Israel occupied in 1967, comprising East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Since then, the Israeli government has openly funded and built settlements for Israeli Jews to live there, offering incentives and subsidised housing.

So why have these housing compounds caused so much rancour and been called a threat to the prospect of peace in the Holy Land?

What are settlements and how did they come about?

Contrary to common belief, settlements are a legacy of the pre-1948 period, before the creation of Israel.

In the 1880s, the community of Palestinian Jews, known as the Yishuv, amounted to three percent of the total population. They were apolitical and did not aspire to build a modern Jewish state.

But in the late 19th century, the Zionist movement - a political ideology - grew out of Eastern Europe, claiming that Jews were a nation or race that deserved a modern “Jewish state”.

The movement, citing the biblical belief that God promised Palestine to the Jews, began to buy land there and build settlements to strengthen their claim to the land.

At the time, these settlements, built largely on the coastal plain and in the north of the country, were called “Kibbutzim” and “Moshavim”.

The first Kibbutz Degania, was established in 1909 by European Jewish colonists. Tel Aviv, now the economic capital of Israel, was also built in the early 20th century and was one of the first settlements.

The approach is known as “creating facts on the ground” - laying a stake in an area to ensure that it will be part of a future state and difficult to get rid of later on.

The distribution of the settlements determined the map of the proposed United Nations Partition Plan for Jewish and Palestinian states in 1947.

By 1948, prior to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the Zionist movement, Jews had control over less than six percent of the land.

As European Jews began to colonise Palestine - many pushed by anti-Semitic persecution in Europe - the balance of land control between Palestinians and immigrant Jews shifted significantly.

The project was facilitated by the British, who were occupying Palestine from 1917 to 1947, with the aim of building a Jewish state.

Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants from their lands as Zionists bought land from absentee landlords.

Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, Jews were allocated 55 percent of the land, encompassing many of the main cities with Palestinian Arab majorities and the important coastline from Haifa to Jaffa.

The plan would deprive the Palestinian state of key agricultural lands and seaports, which led the Palestinians to reject the proposal.

Shortly after the issuance of UN Resolution 181 that called for partition, war broke out between Palestinian Arabs and Zionist armed groups, who, unlike the Palestinians, had gained extensive training and arms from fighting alongside Britain in World War II

Zionist paramilitary groups launched a violent process of ethnic cleansing in the form of large-scale attacks, massacres, and destruction of entire villages aimed at the mass expulsion of Palestinians to build the Jewish state. By the end of 1949, the Jewish state had taken up some 78 percent of historical Palestine.

Of the remaining Palestinian territories, the West Bank and East Jerusalem came under Jordan's control, while Gaza was placed under Egyptian control.

The international community recognised Israel based on the 1948 borders.

But less than 20 years later - in 1967 - another Arab-Israeli war broke out. During the fighting, Israel militarily occupied the rest of historical Palestine, consisting of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel also occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the Syrian Golan Heights. With the exception of the Sinai Peninsula, all the other territories remain occupied until today.

In response, the UN Security Council members voted unanimously for Resol utio 242 on November 22, 1967 - exactly fifty years ago.

The resolution stated that Israel must withdraw from the territories it seized in the war and formed the basis for all ensuing diplomatic negotiations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the concept of “land for peace”.

Israel, however, did not accept the resolution and continues to violate it to this day, 50 years later, by building settlements on the territories meant for a Palestinian state.

This meant that it extended its law to East Jerusalem and claimed it as part of Israel, unlike the West Bank, which it physically occupies but does not claim.

The annexation of East Jerusalem is not recognised by any country in the world as it violates several principles of international law, which outlines that an occupying power does not have soveereignty in the territory it occupies.

The international community, including the US, officially regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory.

However, since Israel considers East Jerusalem part of its state, it calls the settlements there “neighbourhoods”.

When the guns fell silent in 1967, the Israeli state began building colonies, or settlements, for its Jewish Israeli citizens on Palestinian land it had just occupied.

Settlements have become the hallmark of the Israeli colonial project in Palestine.

In the last 50 years, the Israeli government has transferred between 600,000 and 750,000 Jewish Israelis to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They live in at least 160 settlements and outposts.

This means that roughly 11 percent of Israel's 6.6 million Jewish population now lives on occupied land, outside the internationally recognised borders of Israel.

The dilemma of the settlements and the occupation has effectively split Israelis between those who believe it is their God-given right to settle land that was promised to the Jewish people, and others who believe the settlements are a death sentence for the Jews.

To religious Jews, the outcome of the 1967 war and the seizure of the remainder of historical Palestine - particularly East Jerusalem, which houses the Old City - led to a sense of euphoria.

Thousands of Jews, including secular Jews, flocked to the Western Wall, also known as the al-Buraq Wall to Muslims. They wept as they gave thanks for what they believed was a miracle from God.

The majority of Israeli Zionist leftists who oppose the settlement project however, believe in the Jewish state along 1948 borders and reject Israel's expansion into the occupied territories.

To Palestinians, Israel's occupation and the settlement project did not come as a surprise; the Zionist movement was founded by non-natives to colonise the land, just as they did in 1948.

Munir Nuseibah, a law professor at al-Quds University in Jerusalem, says the occupation and the settlement project “reminded the world of the colonial aspects of Israel”.

Why are they illegal under international law?

In a series of agreements known as the Geneva Conventions, formulated in the aftermath of World War II, the international community established a set of accepted rules and standards for the protection of civilians, prisoners and injured people in times of war.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which defines humanitarian protections for civilians caught in a war zone, an occupying power is forbidden from transferring parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies.

The rationale behind this is simple.

1. To ensure that the occupation is temporary and allow for a solution to the conflict by preventing To ensure that the occupation is temporary and allow for a solution to the conflict by preventing the occupying power from acquiring long-term interests through military control.

2. To protect occupied civilians from theft of resources by the occupying power.

3. To prohibit a de facto situation in which two groups living on the same land are subject to two different legal systems, i.e. apartheid.

4. To prevent changes in the demographic makeup of the occupied territory.

But the Israeli government maintains that the status of the Palestinian territories is ambiguous, as there was no internationally recognised government in the territories prior to the 1967 war. The Israeli government argues that it took the territory from Jordan, which had control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 1949 and 1967, while Egypt had control of the Gaza Strip.

Israel regards the West Bank as “disputed” territory and thus refutes the existence of a military occupation there; saying the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply. But the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice, and the international community have all affirmed that it does.

Israel also denies that any of the settlements were built on private Palestinian land.

What types of settlements are there?

There are three main types of Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories, all of which involve seizing Palestinian land and are all illegal under international law.

Built by the Israeli government, mainly in rural areas in the West Bank and Jerusalem, many are on private Palestinian property and within close proximity to Palestinian towns and cities,

After the signing of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, the Israeli government stopped officially building new settlements but expanded existing ones,

In 2017, Israel started building the first new settlement in two decades.

How does Israel take over land?

Israel has developed a myriad of ways to seize Palestinian land.

Since Israel has not annexed the occupied West Bank and does not have jurisdiction there, it uses military orders as well as its own interpretations of Ottoman, British and Jordanian laws to seize Palestinian property.

In East Jerusalem however, the state applies Israeli law, despite the fact that the territory is considered occupied under international law, and the Palestinians who live there are not Israeli citizens.

Israel has declared at least 26 percent of the West Bank as “state land”.

Using a different interpretation of Ottoman, British and Jordanian laws, Israel stole public and private Palestinian land for settlements under the pretext of “state land”.

Though many Palestinians had paid taxes and cultivated their land for decades, most land wasn't registered during the Ottoman and British occupations; in 1968, Israel stopped the process of land registration and declared any unregistered land as belonging to the Israeli government.

Settlements on “state land” often expand into surrounding, privately owned, Palestinian land.

As an occupying power, Israel does not own the West Bank and is not permitted under international law to seize land in this manner.

Why the locations of settlements matter

Settlements are scattered across the West Bank in a way that makes a contiguous Palestinian state impossible, while in Jerusalem the Israeli government has built settlements around the city to consolidate control over it.

These “ring neighbourhoods” are a set of major settlement blocs to the north, east and south of the Jerusalem, which Israel hopes to annex to its state.

The ring settlements have effectively cut off the West Bank's north from the south, impeding the ability of Palestinians to travel between cities in a normal fashion.

The building of these Jewish settlements around the city was not random but rather tells of a deeper Israeli political aim.

After the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, the mayor of the contested city, said in 1968: “The object is to ensure that all of Jerusalem remains forever a part of Israel. If this city is to be our capital, then we have to make it an integral part of our country, and we need Jewish inhabitants to do that.”

Indeed, Israel formalised its annexation of the eastern half of the city in 1980 when it passed the Jerusalem Law claiming that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”, in violation of international law, which states that the city should be administered by the UN for its importance to the three Abraham

The purpose was to seal the fate of Jerusalem and thwart negotiations over the city in any future agreement.

The woman who first introduced the Jerusalem Law to the Israeli parliament, Geula Cohen, also  believes that Israel could annex the entire West Bank “if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wills it”.

Israeli lawmakers are now making moves to annex three large settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli-defined boundaries of Jerusalem.

The so-called “Greater Jerusalem bill” would see the addition of 140,000 Jewish Israelis who live in these settlements to the population of Jerusalem, to ensure a Jewish majority in the city.

"The government will approve the Greater Jerusalem law that will strengthen the eternal capital Jerusalem - demographically and geographically," Yoav Kish, the Knesset member (MK) who suIn 2004, Israel began building the separation wall, which was meant to provide “security” for Israelis by dividing between the West Bank and Israel following the second Palestinian uprising in 2000.

Israel has however used the wall to annex more land to its borders and has built it around some of the largest settlements in the West Bank, placing them on the “Israeli side”.

Some 85 percent of the wall falls inside the West Bank, and not on the Green Line. Palestinians have therefore aptly described the wall as an “annexation wall”.

In 2009, the Jerusalem municipality adopted a master plan intended "to guide and outline the city's development in the next decades”. The vision, as stated in the plan, is to create a ratio of 70 percent Israeli Jews to 30 percent Palestinians in the city. While many Israeli members of parliament hope to annex the entire West Bank - which they call by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria - there is a fear that bringing the territory into the boundaries of Israel would upset the population ratio by tipping the demographic balance in favour of the Palestinians in the country.

Annexing the West Bank would mean giving the 3.1 million Palestinians who live there Israeli citizenship and extending Israeli law, instead of martial law, to the area. Many see this as “an end to the Jewish state”, as Palestinians would outnumber Jewish Israelis.

But the growing settlement enterprise across the West Bank brings this possibility closer to reality every day.

Map shows Area C (in dark brown), and the route of the separation wall, which Israel has used to annex parts of the West Bank to East Jerusalem

For some Israeli right-wing ministers, the annexation of Area C - which makes up 60 percent of the West Bank and is subject to total Israeli control - is a more realistic aim for the time being.

All the settlements are located in Area C, where some 300,000 Palestinians live - a figure consistently under-reported by Israeli politicians. Annexing the territory would mean that Israel could absorb the maximum amount of land with the least number of Palestinians.

The settlements in the West Bank are already connected to East Jerusalem and Israel through a series of Jewish-only roads that give the settlers the luxury of crossing the Green Line without having to pass through Palestinian population centres - as though they live in one single state.

The situation in Area C, where Israel consistently acts to minimise Palestinian presence through home demolitions, displacement, theft of resources and refusing to grant building permits, amounts to de facto annexation.

Quotes from Israeli politicians on annexation

 "I believe that our right to the Land is absolute and unshakable and it that [sic] includes the entire Land [...] The correct policy, from the point of view of Israeli interests regarding our political ability at the moment, is to combine the attempt to hold the maximum amount of territory and apply sovereignty over the maximum amount of territory while keeping the Arab population within it to a minimum. This situation already exists in Area C, which is under our control; there are little more than 50,000 Arabs.”

Yariv Levin - 2014

How do they impact Palestinians?

Besides being built illegally on private and public Palestinian land, settlements impact the day-to-day life of Palestinians in many ways.

In 2016, the UN found that the economy of the occupied Palestinian territories would be twice as large if the 50-year occupation were lifted.

Israel's policies of occupation and settlement have come to be seen as a purposeful strategy of de-development to weaken resistance to military rule and thwart attempts to build a successful Palestinian state.

Theft of resources

The settlements have only been able to thrive through severe economic exploitation of the occupied West Bank at the expense of the natives.

While the majority of the Palestinian population in the West Bank live in Areas A and B, the infrastructure upon which their livelihood depends either lies in or crosses into Area C.

Produced by Zena Tahhan

Ref,  https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2017/50-years-illegal-settlements/index.html