Palestine Update 599
Editorial Comment
Historical exposés, Muslim leaders protest change of UK Embassy to Jerusalem, and Jenin youth grow militant
A group of Israeli scholars, including Professors Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim, have “dismantled the occupation state’s official narrative about its creation in 1948 and the birth of the Palestinian refugee crisis”. One of them, Benny Morris, went on to rationalize the political fact of ethnic cleansing arguing that Israelis rid the country of tens of thousands of Arabs during the 1948 war. He deems that was the exclusive way to create the Israeli State. The controversy is well documented in the report “Historians reveal Israel’s use of poison against Palestinians”.
The Council of the Islamic Jerusalem Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs, one of the institutions of the Hashemite King Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein’s Custodianship of the Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem, has written to King Charles III calling for a review of the UK Government’s decision on the placement of the British Embassy to Israel and to move it from its present location in Tel Aviv to a new site in Jerusalem.
In Khallet Athaba’ people are all set to lose their homes when bulldozers arrive. Shepherds are being pressured to quit grazing land that is being taken over by settlers. “Water and animal feed deliveries, as well as visitors from charities and activists who used to help deter settler violence, have been stopped at the firing zone’s perimeter and turned around for lack of travel permits. New checkpoints have completely isolated villages such as Jimba, making it difficult for residents to leave: the Palestinians are held up and questioned by soldiers sometimes for hours at a time, and around 60 unlicensed cars have been confiscated…The feeling is a sense of being pursued at all times.”
Israel has yet to provide evidence that Al-Haq and the other organizations it wants to have banned are front groups for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. So far, the evidence supplied by Israel earlier this year Israel seeks to discredit and defund Palestinian civil society organizations, especially those that monitor Israel’s abuses of our rights and call for justice. It’s about the wider implications the raid has for Palestinian civil society.
Meanwhile thousands of young people in Jenin are on Israel’s terrorism watch list, making them ineligible for work permits in Israel that would allow them to make a living. And they have watched as Israeli raids have killed dozens of noncombatants in recent months, already making 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2015. Poverty and fury have made the camp a hotbed of militancy. The new generation wants to guarantee that the despised national government is replaced by local militias, which will measure their legitimacy in guns rather than ballots…Fifty-six percent of Palestinians support armed attacks against Israelis, and the same proportion expect Jenin’s armed resistance to spread throughout the West Bank. Israel and its western allies are frowning upon this turn of strategy. They want the violence reined in and the arms to be stamped out. If the West demands non-violent resistance on the part of the Palestinians, why are they arming Ukraine? This is where the double standards come in. Armaments to Ukraine are lucrative military trade and that gets a pass by western standards. The call for a just peace based on a dialogue on a level playing ground – wherever- clearly has few takers in the Western military-industrial-complex.
The news we share has defining value and we urge you to disseminate it far and wide.
In solidarity,
Ranjan Solomon
On behalf of MLN for Palestine Updates
Historians reveal Israel’s use of poison against Palestinians
The details of Israel’s secret use of biological weapons and poison against Palestinians during the 1947/48 ethnic cleansing campaign has been revealed in a recent article by historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar. The 84-year-old Kedar is professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the more well-known Morris is famed for his work as one of Israel’s “New Historians”. This group of Israeli scholars, including Professors Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim, dismantled the occupation state’s official narrative about its creation in 1948 and the birth of the Palestinian refugee crisis. However, unlike his fellow historians, Morris went on to become a rather controversial figure for adopting morally questionable positions in defence of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. “I find myself as convinced as ever that the Israelis played a major role in ridding the country of tens of thousands of Arabs during the 1948 war,” said Morris in an article in the Los Angeles Times about the controversy surrounding his book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. “For unearthing that dark side of 1948,” Morris said that he was vilified by the “Zionist establishment.” He was accused of shattering the founding myths of the Israeli state and lending moral weight to the Palestinian cause. Morris rejected the claim as “untrue” and explained that he “was simply a historian seeking to describe what happened.”
Affirming his commitment to Zionism, however, Morris went on to defend Israel’s ethnic cleansing. “I also believe their [Israeli] actions were inevitable and made sense” said Morris before giving his justification for why Israel had to expel three quarters of the indigenous non-Jewish, Muslim and Christian Palestinians. “Had the belligerent Arab population inhabiting the areas destined for Jewish statehood not been uprooted, no Jewish state would have arisen, or it would have emerged so demographically and politically hobbled that it could not have survived. It was an ugly business. Such is history.”
Read full report in Middle East Monitor
UK embassy in Israel: Full letter from Muslim leaders in Jerusalem to King Charles III (Excerpts)
Dear His Majesty King Charles III,
The Council of the Islamic Jerusalem Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs, one of the institutions of the Hashemite King Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein’s Custodianship of the Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem, sends His Majesty King Charles III best regards and wishes of great leadership of the United Kingdom and its respected people… His Majesty, We have noted with deep concern the recent call of the British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, for her government to review the placement of the British Embassy to Israel by seeking to move the embassy from its present location in Tel Aviv to a new site in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem has been a great example of coexistence and peace between its religious communities for centuries. The International Community, including the United Kingdom, recognized the special historic and legal arrangement, also known as the “Status Quo” since 1852. This special arrangement safeguarded the rights of religions, their relationships, the Holy Sites and the authentic character of the Holy City of Jerusalem. The respect of the Status Quo continued until the Occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, when Israel started to impose many unilateral measures in favor of its Jewish identity/community. The international community has denied these unilateral measures, including the announcement of both sides of the city, as united capital of the State of Israel in 1980, by frequently adopting tens of UNGA/UNSC/UNESCO resolutions.
The conservation of the pre-1967 Status Quo in Jerusalem is essential for preserving our religious rights, peace in our Holy City and good relations between the religious communities around the globe. The recognition of this Status Quo made most of the world’s governments refraining from moving their embassies to Jerusalem until reaching a final status arrangement by peace and negotiations not by occupation and enforcement.
We oppose moving the British embassy to Jerusalem since we understand it, as a message to the universe that the UK, in contrary to the international law and the Status Quo, accepts the continuing Israeli illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories, the Israeli unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem and the Israeli illegal Judaization measures in the Holy City. Such move undermines the two-state solution, cancels the possible peace agreement demarcation of borders between the two states. It also inflames religious conflict and an already instable situation in Jerusalem, the rest of the occupied territories and among communities in the UK and worldwide.
Finally, we hope that the British Government will keep on its historic refrain from moving its embassy to Jerusalem and upkeep its commitment to safeguard the historic Status Quo in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Signed:
-
Sheikh Abdul-Azim Salhab, Head of the Council of Islamic Jerusalem Awqaf
-
Sheikh Mohammad Azam Al-Khatib, Director General of Jerusalem Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs
-
Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, Great Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine
-
Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, Chair of the Islamic Higher Commission in Jerusalem
‘Every day is worse than the one before’: a fight for survival
“Since the legal limbo ended in May, the situation has changed quickly for the worse. Demolitions have accelerated, with all 80 people living in Khallet Athaba’ expected to lose their homes when bulldozers arrive. The army is also carrying out more live fire training, sometimes damaging Palestinian buildings or leaving behind casings and debris resident’s fear could be unexploded ordnance. Shepherds say they are regularly told to leave grazing land, which is then taken over by settlers. Water and animal feed deliveries, as well as visitors from charities and activists who used to help deter settler violence, have been stopped at the firing zone’s perimeter and turned around for lack of travel permits. New checkpoints have completely isolated villages such as Jimba, making it difficult for residents to leave: the Palestinians are held up and questioned by soldiers sometimes for hours at a time, and around 60 unlicensed cars have been confiscated…The feeling, as the Abu Aram family put it, is a sense of being pursued at all times.”
More from the report in The Guardian
We document human rights violations -Israel Wants to Silence us
“Israel has refused to provide us with any evidence to support its claim from October that Al-Haq and the other organizations are front groups for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In August, The Guardian reported that a classified C.I.A. report that reviewed the evidence supplied by Israel earlier this year had found nothing to validate it. Israel’s persecution of our organizations has been roundly criticized. Israel clearly aims to discredit and defund Palestinian civil society organizations, especially those that monitor Israel’s abuses of our rights and call for justice…My main concern, however, is not for me or Al-Haq. It’s about the wider implications the raid has for Palestinian civil society. The organizations targeted by Israel provide vital social services and support to a Palestinian population devastated by more than half a century of brutal Israeli military occupation and colonization by Israeli settlers. Over the past year and a half, leading international and Israeli human rights organizations have joined Palestinians in concluding that the oppressive system Israel has imposed on us amounts to apartheid. Perhaps this is why Israel has intensified its efforts to suppress our work…Washington and European nations must show that they are serious about supporting human rights and democracy in the Palestinian territories and Israel. Our organizations must be allowed to do their crucial work. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before Israel intensifies its repression and finally succeeds in silencing us.”
Young Palestinians arm for new era of violent resistance
“Expectations of the passing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — the deeply unpopular, heavy-smoking 86-year-old autocrat who is believed to be in ill health — have already sparked a bloodier social order in this occupied city. In Abbas’s wake, “there will be fauda” — “chaos” in Arabic — said Mohammad Sabbagh, head of the People’s Services Committee of the Jenin refugee camp…Thousands of young people in Jenin are on Israel’s terrorism watch list, making them ineligible for work permits in Israel that would allow them to make a living. And they have watched as Israeli raids have killed dozens of noncombatants in recent months, already making 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2015. Poverty and fury have made the camp a hotbed of militancy…The new generation, Sabbagh said as he paused to shake hands with camp residents, is trying to ensure that the despised national government is replaced by local militias, which will measure their legitimacy in guns rather than ballots…Fifty-six percent of Palestinians support armed attacks against Israelis, and the same proportion expect Jenin’s armed resistance to spread throughout the West Bank, according to a June poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.” See“Expectations of the passing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — the deeply unpopular, heavy-smoking 86-year-old autocrat who is believed to be in ill health — have already sparked a bloodier social order in this occupied city. In Abbas’s wake, “there will be fauda” — “chaos” in Arabic — said Mohammad Sabbagh, head of the People’s Services Committee of the Jenin refugee camp…Thousands of young people in Jenin are on Israel’s terrorism watch list, making them ineligible for work permits in Israel that would allow them to make a living. And they have watched as Israeli raids have killed dozens of noncombatants in recent months, already making 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2015. Poverty and fury have made the camp a hotbed of militancy…The new generation, Sabbagh said as he paused to shake hands with camp residents, is trying to ensure that the despised national government is replaced by local militias, which will measure their legitimacy in guns rather than ballots…Fifty-six percent of Palestinians support armed attacks against Israelis, and the same proportion expect Jenin’s armed resistance to spread throughout the West Bank, according to a June poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.”