Israel's War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands
“We weren’t going to cancel a serious ceremony regarding the construction of another Jewish residency in East Jerusalem just because a few Hooligans make some noise,” organizer Avichai Buaran told Army Radio. “Nof Zion is in the Arab town of Jabel Mukaber, but it remains a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem,” he added.
IOA Editor: The colonial project continues, “dunam here and dunam there,” as the old Zionist saying goes.
Jonathan Cook covers the growing tension between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem, culminating yesterday in warnings by Palestinian officials that Israel was “sparking a fire” in the city.
[The plan] calls for the construction of 14,000 housing units for 40,000 Jewish Israelis on 3,000 dunums… The land in question is owned by Palestinians in the West Bank village of Al-Walaja, sandwiched between the settlement of Gilo and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.
The top PLO negotiator, Dr Saeb Erakat, condemned what he termed Israeli violence against worshippers. “This attack on ordinary civilians and worshippers at Al-Aqsa is unacceptable…” Israeli settlers were “determined to destroy Jerusalem as it once was, an open and multicultural city, and home to the world’s three great monotheistic faiths… Israel’s actions are both illegal and are designed to make Jerusalem a ‘united city’ for Israeli settlers only, while Israel continues to target the city’s Christian and Muslim population.”
Israelis, Palestinians work together: The Occupier and the Occupied.
Meanwhile, Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority that it would condition permission for a second cellular telephone provider to operate in the West Bank – an economic issue of critical importance to the PA leadership – on the Palestinians withdrawing their request at the International Court.
[T]he Syrian Foreign Ministry has accused Israel of “the crime of burying nuclear, radioactive and poisonous waste in the Golan, exposing the population to the danger of grave illnesses.” The report also notes that the “living conditions of the Syrian inhabitants of the occupied Golan are deteriorating every day.”
An organization committed to populating East Jerusalem with Jewish residents has said that it has six properties in the Old City to sell to 22 Jewish families, which would bring the number of Jews living in the Arab quarters of the walled city to 1,000.
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to meet U.S. President Barack Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday in New York, workers in the West Bank settlement of Betar Ilit will continue… laying the groundwork for new homes… The fact that the hill is outside the perimeter of existing buildings runs contrary to the Israeli contention that construction is being performed within the existing built-up areas.
IOA Editor: Business as usual: Under US diplomatic blessings, and naval protection, the Empire continues to grow – “dunam here, and dunam there,” as the old Zionist expression goes.
[I]t’s important for me to tell you, my worldview-sharing [Israeli] compatriots, that many settlements have already almost swallowed up all the agricultural lands from villages in their vicinity. No construction freeze will return them to their owners, most of whom have become day laborers, working or unemployed without any kind of social benefits. They and their wives and children don’t go to the expensive shopping malls in Ramallah.
Occupation is not on the Israeli agenda. Not a single Jewish MK in today’s Knesset ran on a ticket calling for an end to the occupation. The media, too, is doing everything it can to blur and suppress this issue. While everyone is busy blurring and deceiving, it’s time to use the one tool Israel has never employed: a referendum – Israel’s first – for or against continuing the occupation, whatever either choice entails.
IOA Editor: Be careful what you wish for?
[A]ny plan, proposal or initiative for peace in Israel-Palestine must be filtered through the following set of critical questions: Will this plan really end the occupation, or is it merely a subtle cover for control? Does this plan offer a just and sustainable peace or merely an imposed and false quiet? Does this plan offer a Palestinian state that is territorially, politically and economically viable, or merely a prison-state? Does this plan genuinely and justly address the refugee issue? And does this plan offer regional security and development?
Since early August, when two families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem were forcibly evicted from their homes, Muhammad Sabagh has had little sleep. The 61-year-old retired plumber fears that he, his five brothers and their wives and children may soon also find themselves on the street.
The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Heritage and Waqf claimed that the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the “Elad” settler organization has already dug a 120 meter long, 1.5 meter wide tunnel from underneath Jerusalem’s Palestinian Silwan neighborhood toward the mosque.
Three days after the U.S. administration criticized the decision of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to authorize the construction of hundreds of new housing units in settlements, the Israel Lands Administration published tenders for the construction of 486 apartments in the neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev in East Jerusalem. The new construction project is designated for the outer edge of the northeastern municipal boundary of Jerusalem, and will narrow the distance between the homes on the edge of the neighborhood and the nearby Palestinian communities.
Thus the absurdity: In Beitar Ilit, which will stay under Israeli control, construction will cease. But in Mitzpeh Yitzhar and the agricultural lands nearby, business will go on as usual, even though the settlers’ success there will mean a death blow to the two-state solution… The Americans will know what is happening; they don’t miss much between the satellites and CNN. What they do miss will be filled in by Peace Now and its associate organizations.
IOA Editor: “The Americans” will surely know, but will they really care enough to do something about it? Doubtful. Why now?
National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau on Monday lashed out at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for a partial construction freeze in the West Bank, deeming the Palestinians “occupiers” and declaring any bounds on settlements a “violation of human rights.”
The “Shock Vehicle” is outfitted with new systems to deal with disorder. In addition, it can remove obstacles weighing half a ton. As of next month, it will be put to use in all IDF West Bank units.
IOA Editor: The latest toy in the IDF killing arsenal is touted as increasing security to both Occupation soldiers and demonstrators. The IDF PR team didn’t mention the recent deaths and grave injuries of anti-Occupation demonstrators targeted by soldiers using gas canister launchers. The “Shock Vehicle” will undoubtedly help soldiers improve their aim when launching gas canisters.
A Military Police investigation into a soldier’s killing of a Palestinian near Hebron in January has been going on for seven and a half months, and there is still no end in sight. Yet the sector commander has been giving briefings for the past few months based on his own inquiry into the incident, which he describes as “a serious failure in moral and professional terms.”
If there is any truth in the reports that came out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Europe – that the United States agreed Israel can go on building in East Jerusalem – the headlines should have read “Obama has pulled out of the Middle East peace process.”
“The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns,” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz Thursday… Tutu also commented on the call by Ben-Gurion University professor Neve Gordon to apply selective sanctions on Israel. “I always say to people that sanctions were important in the South African case for several reasons… it actually did hit the pocket of the South African government…”
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman should have sent a big bouquet to Donald Bostrom, the Swedish photographer and journalist who wrote the article claiming that the Israel Defense Forces harvested organs from dead Palestinians… It has been a long time since such a propaganda asset has fallen into the hands of the friends of the occupation. It has been a long time since such damage has been caused to people seriously attempting to document its horrors.
Rather than demand an apology, the Israeli peace camp needs to send Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon a large bouquet of flowers… His statements are straight-from-the-source, first-hand proof of the decisive role the senior military echelon has played in thwarting the peace process.
IOA Editor: True, and very important to recognize. However, what Eldar calls the lack of courage to deal with settlers and fear of “presenting a map which demarcates the state’s permanent borders,” reflect, first and foremost, a lack of commitment to such demarcation.
Historically, right-wing (“Revisionist”) Zionism has viewed Israel’s eastern borders as located somewhere between the Jordan River (“less extreme”) and deep inside Jordan (“more extreme”). So-called “moderate” Labor Zionism, on the other hand, has viewed Israel’s borders with infinite flexibility: initially influenced by the availability of contiguous land and by low Palestinian population density, and ultimately driven by opportunities. For example, the Jordan Valley was first to be included in the future Greater Israel by Labor policy makers, and subsequently settled by Labor-led governments. Future settlements, increasingly deeper in the heartland of the West-Bank, were built as opportunities (often domestic politics) presented themselves – following the old pre-State adage “dunam here and dunam there” (dunam is unit of area approximately equal to 1/4 acre).
A plan for the building of a new settlement, Ma’aleh David, in the middle of an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem was filed for approval by the relevant municipal committee at the Jerusalem Municipality. The plan calls for the construction of 104 housing units on the land where the former headquarters of the Judea and Samaria police was housed in the neighborhood of Ras al-Amud.
B’Tselem told Haaretz it intends to appeal against the decision to close the case. “The footage of the attack shocked the Israeli public, but nobody was ever brought to trial. This decision joins other cases in a disturbing trend of a lack of law enforcement, signaling to violent settlers that they can do anything they want,” the organization’s comment read.
Ya’alon told the crowd: “I am not afraid of the Americans” adding, “there are moments where we must say ‘we’ve had it up to here’”.
Ya’alon also referred to the Israeli anti-settlement organization Peace Now and the so-called Israeli “elites” as “viruses… causing grave damage to the state of Israel.”
The U.S. State Department on Wednesday criticized Israeli restrictions placed on foreign nationals entering the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge, calling the new regulations ‘unacceptable’.
“We have repeatedly told the Government of Israel that the United States expects that all American citizens to be treated equally, regardless of their national origin or other citizenship,” a statement issued by the State Department said Wednesday.
For 15 years, Sabawi entered and left the country with no problems, as a senior partner in an insurance company and as chairman of a construction company. But in April, he was denied entry at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
IOA Editor: Quite a contrast to Natanyahu’s “economic peace plan” – Israel’s latest propaganda tool used to avert a meaningful dialog with the Palestinians, and to protect the Occupation.
During the entire period of our rule in the territories, we have destroyed the existing leadership, which led to the rise of more extreme leaders. We destroyed the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat, who had agreed to a two-state solution and was capable of “delivering the goods.” And we brought about Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip. Now we are cultivating the third stage: Al-Qaida.
IOA Editor: This Israeli-centric commentary is rare in its honesty as to who is responsible for where the dialog between Israel and the Palestinians is. For Israel, the more extreme and violent the enemy, the easier it is to ‘prove’ the claim that “there is no one to talk to…” Whether this is brought about via an assassination campaign directed at Palestinian moderates (1980s), the derailing of the meaningful negotiations in Madrid by the introduction of Oslo, the settlement program, the violent crushing of the Intifada and the destruction of Palestinian national infrastructure, or the strangulation of and attack on Gaza – it all serves the same purpose: to crush Palestinian nationhood.
IOA Editor: Very important coverage of Israeli policies intended to make life impossible for Palestinians in the West Bank – a key part of the greater offensive on the future of Palestine: By taking over land and shutting off access to natural resources, Israel can shut off the future for the Palestinians in Palestine.
The original Hebrew version header of this article read “200 West Bank villages are not connected to a pipe. That’s how Israel is drying out the residents of the PA”.
Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Monday urged Israel to consider resettling the evacuated West Bank settlement of Homesh, calling it a strategic asset in the face of Palestinian terrorism.
American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a nonprofit organization that sends millions of shekels worth of donations to Israel every year for clearly political purposes, such as buying Arab properties in East Jerusalem, is registered in the United States as an organization that funds educational institutes in Israel.
Yesh Din, Palestinian village council head file petition to High Court of Justice demanding interim order against construction in nearby settlement on what they say is private Palestinian land be halted immediately.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
