Israel's ethnic cleansing - The untold story of Sheikh Jarrah
"Israel Ground Forces Shell Gaza as Fighting Intensifies "As Gaza War Escalates, New Front Opens in Israeli Cities "Landgrab continues - Israel plans to entrench annexation of East Jerusalem: Report "Evangelicals and Empty Promises: A Year After Trump’s Embassy Move, Only One Country Has Followed U.S. to Jerusalem""""
May 12, 2021 at 1:08 am | Published in: Article, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine
Palestinians in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, stage a protest in solidarity with Palestinian residents of the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah on May 10, 2021 [HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images]
Book Launch of Ramzy's Baroud latest book - The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story on 27 March, 2018 [Jehan Alfarra/Middle East Monitor]
Dr Ramzy Baroud
May 12, 2021 at 1:08 am
There are two separate Sheikh Jarrah stories. One is read about and watched on the news, the other receives little media coverage or due analysis.
Here is a little taste of the political discourse of Ben-Gvir and King, who were caught on video shouting at and insulting a wounded Palestinian protester. The video starts with MK Ben-Gvir yelling disparagingly at a Palestinian who was apparently wounded by Israeli police, yet returned to protest against the evictions planned for Sheikh Jarrah.
Ben-Gvir is heard shouting, "Abu Hummus, how is your ass?"
"The bullet is still there, that's why he is limping," responds Deputy Mayor King, who continues: "Did they take the bullet out of your ass? Did they take it out already? It is a pity it did not go in here." He points to his head.
Delighted with what they perceive to be a whimsical commentary on the wounding of the Palestinian, the politicians' entourage of Jewish extremists laugh.
While "Abu Hummus", wounded yet still protesting, is a testament to the tenacity of the Palestinian people, King, Ben-Gvir, the settlers and the police are a representation of the united Israeli front aimed at ethnically cleansing Palestinians and imposing a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.
Another important factor in the ongoing Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied city is Israel's court system, which has provided a veneer of legality for the targeting of Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem.
The legal basis of the Jewish settlers' constant attempts to steal more Palestinian properties can be traced back to a specific 1970 law, known as the Legal and Administrative Matters Law .. https://peacenow.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Legal-papaer-batan-sheikh-jarrah-eng.pdf , which allowed Jews to sue Palestinians for properties they claim to have owned prior to the establishment of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948. While Palestinians are excluded from making similar claims about the properties from which they have been driven since 1948 — this is what apartheid looks like – Israeli courts have generously handed Palestinian homes, land and other assets to Jewish claimants. In turn, these homes, as in the case of Sheikh Jarrah and other Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, are often sold to Jewish settler organisations to build yet more colonies on occupied Palestinian land.
In February, the Israeli Supreme Court awarded .. https://peacenow.org.il/en/%D9%8Dsheikh-jarrah-appeal-rejected-160221 .. Jewish settlers the right to have Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Following a Palestinian and international backlash, it offered Palestinians a "compromise", whereby the families relinquish ownership rights to their homes and agree to continue to live there as tenants, paying rents to the same illegal Jewish settlers who have stolen their homes in the first place, but who are now armed with a court judgement.
However, the "logic" through which Jews claim Palestinian properties as their own should not be associated with a few extremist organisations. After all, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 was not the work of a few extreme Zionists. Similarly, the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 and the massive settlement enterprise that followed was not the brainchild of a few extremist individuals. Colonialism in Israel was, and remains, a state-run project, which ultimately aims to achieve the same objective as that being carried out in Sheikh Jarrah: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Palestinians to ensure a Jewish demographic majority.
This is the untold story of Sheikh Jarrah, one that cannot be expressed by a few sound bites on the news or in social media posts. However, this most relevant of narratives is largely hidden. It is easier to blame a few Jewish extremists than to hold the entire Israeli government and establishment accountable. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is constantly manipulating the subject of demographics to advance the interests of his Jewish constituency. He is not only a strong believer in an exclusive Jewish state, but also fully aware of the political influence of Jewish settlers. For example, shortly before the 23 March General Election, Netanyahu gave the green light .. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210408-israel-approves-540-settlement-units-in-east-jerusalem/ .. for the construction of 540 illegal settlement units in the so-called Har-Homa E Area — Mount Abu Ghneim — in the occupied West Bank, in the hope of acquiring as many settler votes as possible.
Hence, while the Sheikh Jarrah story is garnering some attention even in mainstream US media, there is a near-complete absence of any depth and context to the coverage, including the fact that Sheikh Jarrah is not the exception but the norm. Sadly, as Palestinians and their supporters try to circumvent .. https://thewire.in/world/palestine-jerusalem-forcible-removal-families-sheikh-jarrah .. widespread media censorship by reaching out directly to civil societies across the world using social media platforms, they are often censored there, as well.
"Yakub, you know this is not your house," Muna says outside her home, addressing the settler.
"Yes, but if I go, you don't go back. So what's the problem? Why are you yelling at me? I didn't do this. I didn't do this. It's easy to yell at me, but I didn't do this," he replies.
"You are stealing my house." [See video below]
"And if I don't steal it, someone else is going to steal it."
"No. No one is allowed to steal it," insists Muna.
That, in a nutshell, is the untold story of Sheikh Jarrah and of Jerusalem; in fact, of Palestine. Muna is Palestine, and Yakub is Israel. If Muna is ever going to get justice, she must be allowed to reclaim her stolen home, and Yakub must be held accountable for his crime.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Sheikh Jarrah: What’s behind the violence in Jerusalem? - BBC News
•May 11, 2021
BBC News
Jerusalem is facing some of its worst unrest in decades. Hundreds of Palestinians and tens of Israeli police officers have been wounded in clashes over the past few days. But what triggered the unrest? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX4Jl5PWN9o
This gross injustice has been going on for decades.
Berlin Wall? Ni’lin Wall
November 2009 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43480931 .. one reply .. Good for them. The theft, rape and pillage of Palestinian land and resources has been and continues to be simply horrific. The Palestinian Village of Ni’lin .. Background information and reference data 29 May 2008 [...] Until 1948, Ni’lin villagers owned 58,000 dunums (580 hectares: 1 dunum = 0.01 hectares) of land, which stretched as far as Ramle and Lod, cities that now lie inside Israel. After the Nakba of 1948, 40,000 dunums of this land was annexed to the newly created Israeli state. P - After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements of Kiryat Sefer, Mattityahu and Maccabim were built on village lands. In addition, new roads were created for the ever-expanding settlements of Nili and Na’ale. Together, these settlements and their associated infrastructure ate up another 8,000 dunums of Ni’lin’s land. P - Moreover, an Israeli military base and scores of military checkpoints were also set up in the area. p - These confiscations left Ni’lin with just 10,000 of its original 58,000 dunums of land. Yet construction of the Wall on the western side of the village, and a military base on the southern side will strip Ni’lin of a further 2,500 dunums of land. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43483375
Netanyahu’s On the Way Out. Here’s What Biden Can Expect Next.
"Israel Ground Forces Shell Gaza as Fighting Intensifies"
Insert - U.S. tech giants’ vise over Israel tightens despite ceasefire Tech employees and Palestinian rights activists want companies like Amazon and Google to sever their ties to the Israeli government and accuse Facebook of "silencing" their cause. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/31/tech-giants-israel-ceasefire-491435
With a new Israeli government, the U.S. president has an opening on Iran and a rare chance to rebuild frayed ties with an ally. But he can't count on it to last.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and Israeli Minister of Education Naftali Bennett attend the weekly cabinet meeting at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2016.
Naftali Bennett (left) and Benjamin Netanyahu (right), pictured at the Israeli prime minister's office in Jerusalem in 2016. | Abir Sultan/Pool via AP
By DANIEL C. KURTZER, AARON DAVID MILLER and STEVEN N. SIMON
06/02/2021 06:56 PM EDT
Daniel C. Kurtzer is former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and former U.S. ambassador to Israel and S. Daniel Abraham professor of Middle East policy studies at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.
Steven N. Simon is professor in the practice of international relations at Colby College and a senior analyst at the Quincy Institute and has previously served on the U.S. National Security Council and in the Department of State.
For the first time in more than a decade, it looks as though Benjamin Netanyahu will soon be out of power in Israel. What many assumed would play to the longtime prime minister’s advantage and scuttle efforts to replace him — the recent mini-war with Hamas — has instead led to one of the most surprising turns in Israeli politics in years.
Just before midnight Israel time on Wednesday, Yesh Atid party head Yair Lapid informed Israel’s president that he had formed a coalition comprised of eight parties — including, for the first time, an Arab-Israeli party. According to the coalition agreement, Naftali Bennett of the Yamina party will serve first as prime minister, followed by Lapid in 2023. The next step is for the Knesset to vote to approve the deal, and there are still some outstanding questions remaining. But barring any unforeseen developments, Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure will end within a fortnight.
The new government will be a welcome respite for a U.S. president busy with domestic politics and eager to avoid a fight with Israel. The new prime minister, the right-wing Bennett, will be preoccupied with managing an unwieldy coalition. He’s likely to lower the temperature with Washington, temporarily subvert Netanyahu’s obsession with blocking the Iran nuclear accord, and try to refrain from provocative actions toward Palestinians certain to rile his centrist and left-wing partners and collapse the fragile government.
Biden’s team should anticipate a few months of calm on the Palestinian issue and the Iran nuclear deal — thanks as much to gridlock in the Knesset as to Jerusalem’s desire to smooth relations with Washington. But they shouldn’t forget that Bennett is an ideologue farther to the right than Netanyahu. The new prime minister’s hardline credentials and the machinations of right-wing members of his coalition are likely to become a problem at some point. There’s no trainwreck in store for Biden with Israel’s new government — but he shouldn’t expect a honeymoon, either.
Netanyahu will essentially be replaced by a more extreme, though much less politically savvy, version of himself. At 49, an untested and ambitious Bennett — the first Orthodox prime minister and a former aide to Netanyahu — will have to keep his fervent annexationist convictions and implacable opposition to Palestinian statehood under control. His new coalition government will be weighed down and checked by opposing factions that may constrain — but not eliminate — the right-wing impulses of the prime minister and his conservative partners.
Bennett’s left-wing partners and, most importantly, the centrist Lapid — to whom Bennett will hand off the prime minister post after two years — hold the key to his survival. And in a delicious irony given Bennett’s fervent nationalist views, so does a small Arab party, Ra’am. In return for promises of legislative and budget support, Ra’am will vote with the coalition in the event of no-confidence votes. It’s mutually assured destruction, Israeli-style. The government may well collapse at some point under its own weight — after all, the average length of Israeli governments is just under two years. But for now, two powerful incentives will hold it together: avoiding a fifth election and getting rid of Netanyahu.
Bennett and Lapid, who for now will become foreign minister, will work hard to normalize ties with the Biden administration and with the American Jewish community. The two men, especially Lapid, will look to repair relations with Democrats even while maintaining the friendly ties with Republicans that Netanyahu preferred. This will be an increasingly tough balancing act as progressives within the Democratic Party push Biden to be tougher on Israel. Israel will also need to listen carefully to the complaints increasingly voiced even by mainstream Democrats. Both Israeli and American lawmakers will want a return to a more bipartisan relationship, but getting there won’t be easy. Republicans, for their part, will do whatever they can to prevent a rapprochement between their colleagues across the aisle and Bennett’s government. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.-S.C.) is reportedly returning from Israel with a request for a billion dollars in emergency military assistance, which is likely to be scrutinized intensely by the progressive Democrats who recently sought to block an arms sale to Israel.
The new Israeli coalition will also face the intriguing challenge of rebuilding strong ties with the American Jewish community. On this count, it will enter office with one huge asset: the absence of the ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition. Bennett will thus be free to loosen somewhat the ultra-Orthodox parties’ control over many aspects of personal status in Jewish life, such as marriage and divorce, conversion and the like. This will appeal to the majority of American Jews in the Conservative and Reform movements.
On the Palestinian issue, Bennett is more ideologically rigid than Netanyahu. He will need to continue some settlement activity in the West Bank — enough to maintain support within his own Yamina party and Gideon Saar’s New Hope party, but not so much as to arouse the anger of the left. In particular, Bennett’s freedom of maneuver will be severely constrained by the presence in the coalition of the Labor Party and Meretz, two parties committed to the two-state solution and opposed to settlements and annexation.
Bennett will also be unable to stray too far to the right given the need to retain the support of Mansour Abbas’ Islamist Ra’am party. Ra’am’s tacit support will be necessary to keep the coalition together. It is not altogether clear whether Bennett and the left can successfully navigate this fine line, especially if the extreme right seeks to provoke Palestinians, or if Hamas decides to return to confrontation with Israel.
This standoff on peace process issues might even usher in a period of calm on the ground, especially in Gaza. The Israeli left has complained that Netanyahu’s policies have strengthened Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority. The new coalition could reverse Netanyahu’s policies, which resulted in allowing Qatar to funnel cash to Hamas, and move instead toward a more structured approach in line with the policies and priorities of the international donor community. As difficult as the issue of Gaza reconstruction is, the new government’s policy in the West Bank — where Bennett is likely to increase settlement activity — is a far bigger threat to the fragile coalition.
On the Iran nuclear accord, the new government is likely to tread carefully to avoid antagonizing the Biden administration. For weeks, American negotiators have been working in Vienna — indirectly through the Europeans — to revive the deal and restore limits on Iran’s nuclear program. Had Netanyahu remained in power, this might have been the one issue that turned existing U.S.-Israel tensions into a full-blown crisis. Netanyahu said recently that stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power was vital even if it came at expense of friction with Washington.
Members of the incoming coalition understand this well. Some might agree with Netanyahu that American Jewish critics of Israel will disappear in a generation or two “at most” and with Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s protégé and former ambassador to the United States, who recently argued that the strong, reliable support of Evangelicals, not Jews, was vital to the U.S.-Israel relationship. Other Israeli lawmakers, though, understand that American politics are too fluid for such simplistic and complacent assessments. They also understand, as illustrated by a hot mic incident revealing Netanyahu’s prior attempt to get approval for a strike on Iran, the profound risks of a hard-line stance on Iran, both for the relationship with the United States and, ultimately, for Israel’s position as a power player within the region.
Therefore, even though Bennett himself will remain hawkish on Iran, the new governing coalition will probably give Biden the time and space to stitch up a tattered nuclear deal and nudge Iran back toward compliance. As a practical matter, this will entail less lobbying against the deal in Congress, public statements indicating that Israel is prepared to give Biden, an old friend, the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps suspending for now Israeli attacks on Iranian soil, such as assassinations of scientists. This approach would carry relatively little risk for the new government, since negotiations on the new deal might fall apart anyway.
But make no mistake: This issue is not going away. Years of Netanyahu’s vilification of the Iran deal have seduced Israelis across the political spectrum into believing there remains a better deal to be had. Many Israelis argue that it’s not just Iran’s nuclear ambitions that are so dangerous, but also its missile development and malign activities in regional conflicts. For many, therefore, including Bennett, a nuclear deal — even one that stripped Iran of its right to enrichment forever — would simply not be enough. The period of calm Biden gets will be fleeting and uncertain, especially with Netanyahu leading the opposition and enjoying a bully pulpit in the Knesset and the media.
Indeed, Netanyahu will not simply disappear into an Israeli Mar-a-Lago. He will go into the opposition, where he’ll preside over the largest and most coherent political party in the country with a band of still-loyal followers. Netanyahu’s trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust will continue, most likely for months, all while he seeks to pressure right-wing members of the new government and works to secure its collapse. If and when it does, Netanyahu — still the most dominant and skilled politician in a country where 72 percent voted for right-wing parties in the most recent election — may be well-positioned to pick up the pieces.
Biden will catch a break with a less predatory and manipulative prime minister who won’t play to a Republican and evangelical base, and who is unlikely to openly oppose America’s Iran policy or engage in obvious provocations. Still, the contradictions that lie ahead are disorienting: an Israeli prime minister with anti-Palestinian convictions who will need to curb his own views to maintain coalition stability, and an Israeli government that wants to rebuild ties to a U.S. administration seeking an Iran deal that Israel opposes.
Biden should enjoy the respite he’s been given. Clashes between Washington and Jerusalem over the peace process and Iran will continue. The administration should not let these issues divert from its focus on domestic priorities, but events in the Middle East may not allow Biden to retain a relatively aloof stance .. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/06/joe-biden-israel-palestine-conflict-479405 . Indeed, the recent Israeli-Palestinian crisis — and the new prospect of an even harder-line prime minister — should remind the administration that while this issue may not be a priority, the region is often like the Hotel California: You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
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