“Postponing the eviction of Beit Yonatan is a premeditated move by [Jerusalem mayor] Barkat and the settlers to use the Palestinians as an excuse to avoid the order of the court,” said Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer.
Jerusalem
Israel has denied that it recently approved expansion plans for a hotel on the Mount of Olives owned by the Jordanian royal family, but documents obtained by Haaretz prove otherwise.
10 year old Palestinian boy: “One of the men grabbed me from behind and started choking me. The second grabbed my shirt and tore it from the back, and the third twisted my hands behind my back and tied them with plastic cords. ‘Who threw stones?’ one of them asked me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. He started hitting me on the head and I shouted in pain.”
26 former top EU officials, including ex EU chief Solana and former German President Richard von Weizsacker, urge world powers to confront Jerusalem over its refusal to obey international law.
Palestinian resident of the building: “The settlers arrived in the morning and began to break the lock… We were frightened. The children are scared of them and of their guards… Why do they come here? They have a whole country. So why here of all places, in our house?”
Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher: “In effect, [the new law] weakens the authority of the Knesset to decide these issues and turns it over to a system that has never been tried in Israel. It’s extremely difficult to predict how the [new] system will behave. It is clearly intended to make it more difficult to approve withdrawal from these territories. It really strikes at the heart of the Israeli parliamentary system.”
IOA Editor: Why is this important? The new law makes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and of Syria’s Golan Heights more permanently secured by making a negotiated compromise by a future Israeli government (however theoretical and hard to imagine) much more difficult to carry out.
For historical context, read about the 1967 expulsion of Syria’s Golan Height population, which was strikingly similar in methods and means to Israeli actions in the 1948 Nakba:
As … Netanyahu knows very well, it is not “settlements” per se that are illegal. It is the transfer of an occupier’s population into the occupied territories that violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. Such transfers are illegal irrespective of where they take place—whether in settlements in the West Bank countryside or in apartment buildings in East Jerusalem.
Young men have reportedly been roaming in and around Independence Park seeking Arabs to attack, trying to identify them by their accent.
IOA Editor: As is so often the case, propaganda is Israel’s “solution” to most problems: Any rumors about the victimization of Palestinians in Israel will be quashed.
“Technically, it would be very easy to stop these plans, but what they are doing is promoting them,” [Peace Now spokeswoman] said, saying it was highly unlikely Netanyahu was unaware the plans were to be made public during his US visit.
The Israel Lands Administration is transferring properties in the Silwan neighborhood and the Old City of Jerusalem to right-wing groups Elad and Ateret Cohanim for low prices, without issuing a tender as required by law, a Haaretz investigation has found.
IOA Editor: While the headline focuses on the least serious of the violations involved, the Haaretz investigation covers the Israeli government’s active involvement in the on-going takeover of East Jerusalem from its legitimate Palestinian residents (owners) to an illegal Israeli-Jewish control – in clear violation of international laws and conventions.
Former US president Jimmy Carter and two other Elders visit the weekly Friday Sheikh Jarrah demonstration in Jerusalem.
Former US President Jimmy Carter said on Friday that the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah is against international law. Carter spoke at a weekly demonstration held in the East Jerusalem neighborhood by Israeli and Palestinian left-wing activists, protesting a Jewish takeover of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
“If a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is to be found it has to be here in Jerusalem as well,” said delegation leader and former Irish president Mary Robinson.
Israeli officials said they discussed the construction with the U.S. administration and cut the number of planned units to temper American displeasure. The Palestinian Authority has insisted that it will not return to peace talks unless Israel ceases construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Sheikh Jarrah Jewish protest organizer: It is designed to produce “a transition from protest to struggle…. We are there to struggle in a subversive way.” The protest organizers are consciously striving to create a conflict between the many “left Zionists” among whom it has become fashionable to attend the weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah … and the Israeli state apparatus.
In a move that could strike a blow at already fragile peace talks, Jerusalem city planners will in the coming weeks discuss a scheme to build over a thousand housing units beyond the Green Line.
Among those surveyed … was Ofra Ben-Artzi, a left-wing activist and the sister-in-law of Sara Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister. “I told the pollster, ‘Imagine this kind of question being asked in London or New York.’ It testifies to the level of racism we’ve reached,” she said.
Yesterday, parties defending a 12th century Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem from disinterment and desecration provided new information on the latest demolitions by Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality to the United Nations and other international officials whom they initially petitioned on the matter in February 2010. The letter was sent by US academic Rashid I. Khalidi on behalf of the Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery.
If Israel’s latest order to deport the Hamas MPs was intended to curb support for the movement, it has failed. An array of prominent figures … have flocked to the Red Cross’s doors to offer solidarity. On Fridays the street outside doubles as an open-air mosque. The Hamas MPs, hitherto minor figures, have become celebrities.
Israeli settlers took over a Palestinian home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City today, evicting about 45 members of an extended family which has occupied the building for more than 70 years.
