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Saturday, 26 September 2009

“Israel” Increases Its Ethnic And Religious Cleansing In Al Quds


{Silwan neighborhood} By Abda’Allah Darqawi

{Silwan neighborhood} By Abda’Allah Darqawi


NEWS: Hundreds of Israeli settlers desecrate Ishaq’s tomb in the Ibrahimi Mosque

By Yusuf Fernandez, taken from Al manar


September 23, 2009

In recent months, Israel has increased its efforts to strengthen its presence in East Jerusalem (Al Quds), which it captured in the 1967 war. According to the international law, East Jerusalem is Palestinian and an occupied territory, just like the West Bank or Gaza. The Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem the capital of their future state. The holy city is home to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which includes Islam’s third holiest shrine Al-Aqsa Mosque, and represents the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In September 2000, it was a visit by opposition leader Ariel Sharon to Al Haram al Sharif -accompanied by 1,000 armed security guards -that sparked the Second Intifada. Now, Israeli and Palestinian peace activists warn that the provocative actions of government-backed settlers within Jerusalem could spark yet another serious escalation of tensions and even a Third Intifada.

After the 1967 war Israel annexed East Jerusalem to Israel in a move recognized by no other country. Israeli efforts to destroy the Arab-Islamic-Christian identity of East Jerusalem started immediately after 1967. Four days after seizing the city Israeli army bulldozers razed the Maghariba and Sharaf neighborhoods. The Palestinian inhabitants were expelled at gunpoint. Two mosques, two religious schools or Zawiyas and 135 houses were blown out. Since the Israeli annexation, more than 35% of East Jerusalem´s territory has been expropriated.

Israel has moved more than 180,000 Jewish settlers to its settlements in the East Jerusalem or event to some Arab enclaves. About 240,000 Palestinians live in the East part of the city. Almost all the city’s Palestinians refuse to vote or run in municipal elections, saying that it would be recognition of Israeli rule.

Israel has used the Apartheid Wall, which it is building in the West Bank, to cut off many Palestinian neighborhoods from Jerusalem. Actually this process started almost immediately after the 1993 Oslo “Peace” Accords were concluded. While they were negotiating the “peace” with the Palestinians, the Israeli authorities erected roadblocks and other measures designed to cut off the city´s Palestinians from their compatriots (including close family members) in the West Bank.

While playing tricks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Arab leaders, the Israeli apartheid regime is accelerating the pace of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem by using draconian and racist against Palestinian residents. Recently, the world condemned the recent evictions of two families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Palestinians and international activists organized several protests in the city against the evictions. Hatem Abed Al Qader, the head of Jerusalem Affairs Unit in the Fatah Movement has stated that the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem has issued 1,200 demolition orders against Palestinians families in East Jerusalem in the first half of this year.

Israel has tried to justify these measures by saying that the constructions were “illegal”. However, the truth is that, according to Haaretz, is extremely difficult for East Jerusalemites (Palestinians) to get construction permits in contrast to Jewish settlers who, merely by being Jews, have the automatic right to live in the place they want in Jerusalem. Human Rights groups operating in occupied Palestine have described these policies as “obviously racist.” The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) estimates that 23,535 Palestinian homes overall have been destroyed from information gotten from the Israeli Ministry of Interior.

Palestinian urban development is also being impeded by depriving East Jerusalem of most of the still vacant areas available for economic and demographic growth. Palestinians from East Jerusalem get tiny municipal budgets that greatly restrict essential public services – in sharp contrast to areas where Jews live both in West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem settlements.

At the same time, Israeli press has recently revealed that the racist measure of stripping native Palestinian Jerusalemites of their “residency rights” in their own city by the apartheid Israeli government was being carried out at an accelerated pace. Palestinians in East Jerusalem have the status of permanent residents in Israel, the same status granted to foreigners who settle in the Zionist entity. “Treating these Palestinians as foreigners who entered Israel is astonishing since it was Israel that entered east Jerusalem in 1967,” said the Israeli group B´Tselem.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has recently reported that the number of East Jerusalem residents whose “permanent residency status” has been revoked increased by more than six times in just one year. In 2005, the number of residencies revoked stood at 222, according to the Haaretz. This number rose to 1,363 in 2006, when an Interior minister, member of the fundamentalist Jewish Shas Party, ordered that the residency cards of thousands of Palestinians were revoked. On the other hand, Israel imposed excessive taxes on Palestinian real estate, including homes.

These measures seek to force Palestinians to migrate. When a Palestinian leaves Jerusalem to live in another place he/she loses his/her residency card, even though he/she was born in the city, and he/she can never return there. Arab residents of East Jerusalem have to constantly prove that they live, work and pay taxes in the city to maintain their residence permits. Israeli authorities think that these measures will allow them to achieve this goal: the expulsion of Muslim and Christians from Jerusalem and the Judaization of the city as well as the destruction of its Arab, Christian and Islamic identity.

Moreover, a Palestinian from Jerusalem who marries a woman from the West Bank, Gaza or any foreign country cannot bring his/her partner to live in the city. This last law, which has been upheld by Israeli Supreme Court, violates the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention for the Rights of the Child, according to human rights organizations.

In some occasions, the settlers have tried to directly steal the land and houses from their legitimate Palestinian owners. On June 11, a group of Palestinian residents managed to stop Israeli settlers from taking over their land located east of Jerusalem’s Old City. The land, of 1,75 acres, is owned by two Palestinian families from East Jerusalem. Witnesses told the Palestine News Agency WAFA that the settlers arrived at the locations along with Israeli city planners but the residents were at their lands and stopped the process. Actually, the settlers were supported by the Israeli municipality, which plans to use the land to expand the nearby Israeli illegal settlement of Beit Oret. Hateem Abed Al Qader, the Palestinian Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, was at the location and said that the residents would keep a 24-hour presence on the land to protect it.

On March 12, Palestinian sources reported that a group of extremist Jewish settlers attacked dozens of Palestinian homes and stores in East Jerusalem. The settlers were marching in the city and chanting slogans against Arabs and Palestinians, calling for their expulsion from the city. The Israeli police did not attempt to intervene, and allowed the settlers to continue their march. The settlers chanted “death to Arabs” and other racists slogans while marching in Arab markets and the alleys of the Old City.

On the other hand, Israel continues to build settlements in and around the city, an act that is illegal under international law. Palestinian sources said Israel is working on a new settlement plan that is equal to the grab of nearly 140-thousand acres of Arab land near Jerusalem. “The new project focuses on the areas located around Al Quds by expanding the Maale Adumim settlement and connecting other settlements around the city,” the sources said. Based on the same plan, Israeli authorities have envisaged altering the current Arab-Jew proportion of the population in the city. By 2020, they are expecting the Jewish settlers to form 88% of the whole population. Of particular concern are “settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans (for) 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as (more) for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls”. “They are indulging in ethnic cleansing in broad daylight. They are chasing Palestinians out of their homes. They are trying to decapitate Arab existence in East Jerusalem, step by step, home by home, neighborhood by neighborhood, while they continue to lie about their desire for peace,” said Rafiq Al-Husseini, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Among the most dangerous and explosive aspects of Israel’s efforts to Judaize East Jerusalem is the ongoing excavation and digging beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Palestinian religious officials told the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram that “digging beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque is seriously undermining the foundations of Islamic shrine and the nearby Dome of the Rock.” Sheikh Mohamed Hussein, head of the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem, warned that it was only a matter of time before a “major disaster” occurred as a result of Israeli diggings in the vicinity of the Haram Al-Sharif (Al-Aqsa Mosque) esplanade. He accused the Israeli authorities of constructing subterranean tunnels beneath Islamic holy places without any consideration for the safety of Islamic shrines. “I can say without the slightest exaggeration that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is facing the danger of collapse as a result of these excavations,” he told Al Ahram.

A confidential EU report, dated 15 December 2008 and published in the British newspaper The Guardian, accused Israel “of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank (Separation) barrier as a way of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem.” More still, including restrictive permits, “closure of Palestinian institutions,” and various other ways to “increase Jewish presence in the city, impede Palestinian urban development, and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank” incrementally to annex it.

The report points out that these plans are now accelerated and have undermined the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) credibility as well as weakened support for peace. It calls “Israel’s actions in and around Jerusalem….one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making (yet) have limited security justifications.” In addition, they are illegal.

“There are plans for 3500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumin, home to 31,000 settlers,” it adds. The EU report called Israeli E1 measures “one of the most significant challenges to the….peace process.” Along with continued home demolitions, expanding the Maaleh Adumin settlement into area E1 threatens to completely encircle the city with Jewish settlements and split the West Bank in two. Once the Separation Wall is completed, East Jerusalem will be isolated physically, politically, commercially and socially.

The EU report cites Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibits “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory….” Neither shall “The Occupying Power….deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” In addition, numerous UN resolutions established “no legal validity” for settlement building or for East Jerusalem’s annexation.

Extremist Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that Jerusalem will remain united as the capital of Israel. Israel continues to expand its Jews-only settlements in East Jerusalem in defiance of international protests. Some of groups have accused Israeli Primer Minister, who wants to force Palestinians to “recognize” that Israel is a “Jewish state”, of seeking to legalize the brutal discrimination who suffer Palestinians living in Israel and the fundamental priviledges that Jews have over non-Jews.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been forced to set up its headquarters in nearby Ramallah, not in Jerusalem. The Israelis have prevented the PA from locating any of its institutions in East Jerusalem. Israel has also moved to suppress Palestinian cultural activities associated with the city being declared the capital of Arab culture for 2009. On 19 March heavily armed policemen violently dispersed a meeting at the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, confiscating posters, leaflets, placards and computers. Israeli police also raided schools, social clubs and community centres to foil activities celebrating Arab culture in the occupied city. Several organizers, including East Jerusalem lawmaker Hatem Abdel-Qader, were arrested on charges of disturbing peace.

The Palestinian Authority has denounced the expansion and called on the international community to stop all settlement activities in East Jerusalem. Addressing the Arab-Muslim world, Abbas said: “I urge our Arab and Muslim brothers to come to the rescue of Jerusalem, protect Jerusalem from the act of rape to which the city is being subjected… Jerusalem is being Judaised by force, its Arab identity is being obliterated, its history is being falsified, its people are being oppressed and tormented. Its homes are being demolished. Jerusalem is the beginning and the end, it is the ultimate address of peace. Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.”

Israeli authorities can carry out an ethnic cleansing because world leaders, above those of the Unites States, exempt Israel from international law and give its government license to plunder, oppress and kill defenseless Palestinians with impunity, separate them in isolated cantons, keep them under military occupation, starve them to death in Gaza under siege and ruthless bombings, and purge them relentlessly from Jerusalem. When a Washington Post reporter questioned her about the 143 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem that Israel intended to demolish in the following weeks, Hillary Clinton described the demolitions as “unhelpful” -maybe she did not find a softer word-, noting that they violated Israel’s obligations under the US “road map” for peace.

Israeli officials were unimpressed by Clinton’s warnings. Jerusalem’s Jewish mayor, Nir Barkat, described her words as “a lot of air”. Shortly after her statement, Israeli officials revealed that the number of Palestinian homes that Israeli occupation forces intended to destroy had increased from 143 to 179, which would affect more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of whom had lived in the city for generations.

However, according to AFP, the United States could have completely abandon its complaints over Israeli construction in East Jerusalem. If this is true, it would be certainly a stupid move because no Palestinian will ever accept an state without East Jerusalem as its capital. Otherwise, any “peace process” will be doomed to failure since its very beginning. Addressing Israel, Abbas said: “Peace can’t be made through the building and expansion of settlements, brute force and military insolence. What happened in Gaza recently reflects the Israeli mindset, and with such a mindset, it is clear there can be no peace.”

{RB note: Abbas and his lot won’t do anything it is the Palestinian people and their true supporters who will stand against these crimes. }

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