The first  day saw 11 witnesses give testimony of evidence regarding both genocide and ecocide, from the likes of Raji Sourani from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Dr. Omar Nashabe of Lebanon, and Maria Zendrera with the Global Sumud Flotilla. The proof of intent on the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s environment at-large, the destruction of all means of the ability to sustain life beyond the complete blockade, and the day-to-day impact on the Palestinian people was highlighted in the evidence delivered.

The second day of the Tribunal explicated on much of the same topics and included 5 witness testimonies. With the court in session, the prosecution began with the effects on women in a written testimony on Day 1 from Nadia Bakri, a feminist and human rights activist that served as director of the Women’s Affairs Staff in Gaza for 30 years before being forcibly displaced to Egypt due to the genocidal war. “There has been a deliberate targeting of women’s health centres and clinics in order to stop Palestinian people from reproducing, in line with Zionist strategy,” stated Suzanne Adely of the National Lawyers Guild, the Tribunal prosecutor representing Bakri.

The jurors then intervened with their own line of questioning to Raji Sourani and Dr. Omar Nashabe in order to clarify different aspects of their testimonies.

Sourani was asked by the prosecution about the recent historical precedent behind the UN Security Council’s recent vote around Trump’s ‘peace’ plan. He responded with, “There isn’t one word about the unalienable right of Palestinian people, the occupation is institutionalized, and supported more by the American presidencies who are involved directly with the genocide and supporting Israel directly. . . 30 years ago, we were extremely critical about the Oslo Accords which did not mention anything about ending the occupation and self-determination – and that was intentional.”

Dr. Nashabe added during his portion that it is not only a genocide or ecocide stating, “I’d like to reiterate that the ecocide and genocide is a fundamental part of this policy of total extermination. It can’t take place by just killing people, but you have to kill all forms of life that will allow the people to rebuild. It is a metacide, the destruction of everything.” Furthermore, he spoke about the schism within the United Nations due to this ‘peace’ plan and the deep crisis within the intergovernmental body, “What other kind of creative, destructive, violent tactics can [Israel] come up with now when they haven’t been able to achieve their vile, obscene objective? We are going through a crisis in international law never seen before – this is like George Orwell’s 1984 on an unseen scale.”

After the jurors’ line of questioning, the five witnesses testified on the stand either in-person, over Zoom, or through pre-recorded videos on the collective punishment, deliberate targeting of entire families, intentional blockades of food and water, direct targeting of farmers and fisherfolk by airstrikes and settler mobs, and even direct evidence of systematic repression and silencing of Palestinian voices by other states in collusion with the Zionist government.

Mushier Ek Farra, an activist and filmmaker that was in the midst of a project centring on the plight of Gaza’s fisher people until 2023, was the first witness on the stand. He spoke on the collective punishment inflicted in Gaza right from the beginning of the genocide, as soon as October 9th, 2023. He stated, “In one instance, 67 people were killed and 52 houses were destroyed to target a Hamas operative. That is collective punishment which even one of the accused [Joe Biden] has condemned.”

After Ek Farra, two written testimonies from Gaza – first a collection of testimonies from an activist, then a worker – were delivered by the prosecution. The collection of testimonies were procured through great difficulty due to the chilling effect from 172 journalists deliberately killed in their role of revealing the truth to the world. One of the Palestinian farmers willing to testify stated, “Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the land to destroy and raze it again, cutting irrigation networks, destroying water sources like agricultural ponds and wells, and shredding the remnants of the trees into very small pieces with massive machines.” In line with that, the testimony of the worker from Gaza illustrated the strategy behind this destruction, “The aim was to inflict the largest possible number of deaths and injuries among civilians and medical personnel to force them to leave northern Gaza.”

Three real-time Zoom testimonies along with videos of Palestinian farmers and fisher people conducted by a journalist who gave his own written testimony followed. Throughout the video testimonies, the strategy of complete destruction – not just of killing people en masse, but destroying the basic means to assure their existence – were exhibited throughout. In particular, the dire situation and sheer destruction of Gaza’s sole port was illustrated, compounding on the complete blockade that Israel has imposed, “The port, heavily bombarded with roughly 26 rockets on the third day of the war, was split in half. About 95% of fishing boats were destroyed. There is a deliberate strategy to create famine: the occupation closes crossings, blocks the entry of food supplies, and prevents fishermen from feeding our people.”

The real-time Zoom testimonies began with Mohammad el Bakri, an engineer specializing in agricultural infrastructure and board member of the Urban Agriculture Forum, “They have destroyed [the crops], there is nothing now. In the north and south of Gaza, all this land is agricultural land and Israel has not allowed anybody to access or reach this land. There is no income, there is no water as its polluted — the sewage water has gone into aquifers directly.” Founder and director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, added to this point in his testimony and illustrated how this is connected to the strategy of occupation of Israel in the West Bank as well, which has escalated to unprecedented heights since 2023. He stated, “In the West Bank, they are draining the wetland of the Hula, redirecting waters of the Jordan River to their settlements, and uprooting millions of indigenous trees to plant an invasive monoculture of European trees. This squeezes remaining indigenous Palestinians into “concentration areas” and refugee camps increasingly surrounded by environmentally damaging walls and military infrastructures.”

As the environmental aspects of ecocide and the many aspects to genocide aside from mass slaughter being thoroughly investigated, Dr. Diana Nazzal’s testimony touched on the devastating health impacts from the forced starvation, and hyperinflation along with targeting aid recipients as an aspect of the starvation. “The hair becomes thin and lost, the nails become brittle, the concentration and mental health of people become very poor, and their whole life becomes about how they can get their next meal,” stated Nazzal. “The hospitals would always prepare for when the Gaza Humanitarian Fund was providing ‘aid’ because children were deliberately killed – it was another example of using humanitarian aid to commit genocide.”

A kilogram of the following foodstuff had risen to these exorbitant prices, showcasing the impact of the complete blockade through land, air, and sea aside from the ecocide:

• Tomatoes: 163 euros in the North; 17 euros in the South
• Meat: 175 euros in the North; 95 euros in the South
• Flour: 1000 euros in the North; 90 euros in the South
• Sugar: 46 euros in the North; 40 euros in the South
• Coffee: 135 euros throughout Gaza

Throughout the testimonies around the massive destruction of Gaza’s environment, the massive loss of life and ability to sustain life, and the countless violation of international humanitarian law, the experts and witnesses all resolved that the true solution to end the horror inflicted by the Zionist entity is the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination. From the witnesses and experts:

• Mushier Ek Farra: “[Those killed through collective punishment] are people I knew who were not even part of the resistance, I would have supported their resistance, but they were just civilians. . . We need support out of solidarity, not charity. This is a political matter, we must extend our political support first and then sympathize. The same oil, mining, and timber companies destroying Gaza are destroying the rest of the world.”
• Dr. Diana Nazzal: “We want to have our land and right to self-determination and be left alone. We are able to build our own society but we aren’t given the chance to do so.”
• Mazin B. Qumsiyeh: “Only we, the Palestinian people, can challenge against our corrupt leaders and the occupation”

After the testimonies came to a close, the lead prosecutor – Jan Fermon – delivered his final statement:

• “I would say, from a broader perspective, we do have to say that this is even beyond genocide and ecocide–and that is metacide: the destruction of everything. I think that terminology is absolutely appropriate with what we’ve been hearing and witnessing. . . The liberation of Palestine is the work of the Palestinians. The work of the rest of us is solidarity. Nazism was brought down by the resistance of the people of the world. The US intervention in Vietnam was ended by the struggle of the Vietnamese people and the solidarity of the people of the world. Apartheid was brought down by the struggle of the South African people and the solidarity of the people of the world.”

At the end of the jurors’ deliberation, they delivered the verdict: finding Israel, the United States, and other complicit entities guilty of genocide, ecocide, and forced starvation – finding Israel as the principal perpetrator of these crimes and the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany complicit in aiding, abetting, and enabling the crimes found in the verdict. “Free, free Palestine!” rang through the hall, with attendees celebrating the decision, and committing to use the findings to exact justice and accountability in the streets through mass mobilizations and action in solidarity with the Palestinian peoples’ struggle for self-determination.

Earlier today, organisers and attendees of the Tribunal took a copy of the full verdict produced by the jurors to the Zionist consulate and held a demonstration. Representatives of the Zionist occupation refused to attend the Tribunal and subsequently refused to receive a copy of the verdict.

Throughout the two days of testimonies and evidence, the final guilty verdict of the International People’s Tribunal stands in line with what international institutions have also determined, but have either moved too slowly on or have wholly ignored. The verdict, based on a mountain of evidence showcasing Israel’s and US’s clear intent and exposing the ecocide rarely touched in the mainstream narrative, has put the power into the hands of the people to exact justice and accountability in solidarity with Palestinian people’s right to and struggle for self-determination.

The verdict serves only as a start. True justice will only be found through continued movement building and mass actions in the streets and in any venue possible if advocacy efforts will have any hope of contributing to justice and accountability. What the Tribunal proved is that true justice belongs with the people, and the people will fight for it until the end of all economic, political, military, and diplomatic support from Israel.

There will be more activities and campaigns in relation to the Tribunal in the coming months available for press to cover.

About the International People’s Tribunal for Palestine:

The IPT for Palestine is a civil society initiative organized by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), International Peoples’ Front, and the Peoples’ Coalition on Food Sovereignty, with the cooperation of endorsers including the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) and Palestine Land Studies Centre, among others. It aims to establish a historical record of crimes against the Palestinian people, mobilize international solidarity, and exert moral and political pressure on complicit governments and international institutions.

Watch the full Tribunal recording here: https://bit.ly/IPTPalestineRecordings

Related:

Gaza: 700 citizens demand release of detained Madleen activists, call upon UK to fix Israel’s accountability for genocide, blockade, war crimes in Palestine

How AI mistook Chhattisgarh truce move as religious leaders’ appeal for Israel-Palestine peace!

Former DU Professor, Achin Vanaik, stands by his lecture on Palestine despite pressure

The post Israel, United States & and other complicit entities guilty of genocide, ecocide, and forced starvation in Palestine: International People’s Tribunal appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It’s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar “problems” they’re trying to “solve.” Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a “genocide in the making”). Meanwhile, India’s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.

About the time Zionist settlers were beginning their occupation of Palestine in the early 1920s, an Indian right-wing figure, V.D. Savarkar, fashioned the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). Today, right-wing Hindu nationalists employ Hindutva and physical violence to further its vision of India as a nation for Hindus and Hindus only. Similarly, Zionism views historic Palestine as a land for Jews and Jews only. These parallel visions, along with the two governments’ increasingly authoritarian tendencies and ready use of violence, have drawn them into a dark alliance the consequences of which are unpredictable.

India Makes New Friends

The Republic of India and the State of Israel were born nine months apart in 1947 and 1948, each an offspring of partition. The British-ruled Indian subcontinent was then split into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, while Israel was carved out of a portion of the British Mandate Palestine.

Throughout the Cold War, India would be a leader of what came to be known as the nonaligned movement — formerly colonized nations that sought to develop independently of both American and Soviet influence. In the 1980s, it also became the first non-Arab nation to recognize the state of Palestine. A similar recognition of Israel didn’t come until 1992, around the time India was shifting away from its nonaligned social-democratic stance toward its current adherence to neoliberalism.

In recent decades, India and Israel have established strong trading relationships, especially in the military sphere. In fact, given the massive militarization of its borders with China and Pakistan and its suppression of occupied Kashmir and its people, India has become the top importer of weapons and surveillance equipment from Israel. In 2014, the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won power and its leader, Narendra Modi, became prime minister. In the process, India and Israel grew ever closer.

By 2016, as the Washington Post reported, “after Indian commandos carried out a raid inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in response to an attack by militants on an Indian army post, Modi trumpeted the action, saying: ‘Earlier, we used to hear of Israel having done something like this. But the country has seen that the Indian army is no less than anyone else.’”

Today, the Israeli weapons-robotics firm Elbit Systems has even established a drone factory in India and now has a $300 million contract to supply drones to the Indian army occupying Kashmir. Meanwhile, Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a mutual-admiration society, dubbed by the media of both countries the “Modi-Bibi bromance.” And New Delhi has all but abandoned the Palestinians.

Economic Alliances

When, on October 27th, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza, only the U.S., Israel, and a handful of small nations voted “no.” India abstained. (Apparently, the Modi-Bibi bromance wasn’t quite enough to sustain a “no” vote.) Modi, however, immediately responded to the measure’s passage by declaring his “solidarity” with Israel.

Economic, political, and diplomatic relations between New Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Washington (all nuclear powers, by the way) had been strengthening even before the current conflict. Last year, for instance, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the “I2U2 Group” to attract corporate investment for their mutual benefit. Projects now underway include “food parks across India” with “climate-smart technologies” and a “unique space-based tool for policymakers, institutions, and entrepreneurs” (whatever in — or out of — the world “food parks” and “space-based tools” might be).

Then, in September, the G-20 summit of the group of 20 major nations, meeting in New Delhi, approved an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor which, according to Voice of America, would “establish a rail and shipping network linking the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea.” And guess who now operates that very port? A company led by Gautam Adani, India’s richest person and (naturally!) a Modi buddy. Foreign Policy notes, “It is also palatable for the Middle East to have India as a major energy market to diversify its exports and offset Chinese influence over critical commodities such as oil and gas.”

But not surprisingly, the war in Gaza has thrown plans for such a new Indian-oriented economic corridor through the Middle East into limbo.

High-, Medium-, and Low-Tech Warfare

Militarily, the conflicts in occupied Palestine and occupied Kashmir are both lopsided mismatches. In each, a powerful nation-state is assaulting resource-poor populations, though the scale of slaughter, displacement, immiseration, and death wrought by the Indian regime doesn’t faintly approach what’s currently being done by Israel in the Gaza Strip — at least not yet. While the cases have similarities, magnitude isn’t one of them.

In Gaza, you have the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a massive high-tech killing machine financed in large part by the world’s richest nation, facing off against Palestinian resistance groups, including the Qassam Brigade, whose most effective weapons are homemade Yassin antitank grenades and whose defenses largely consist of a network of fortified tunnels. Instead of engaging in face-to-face subterranean combat with the Qassam fighters — something that could turn out badly indeed for the IDF — the Israelis have been carrying out an industrial-scale bombardment of densely populated areas. As of late November, the result was approximately 15,000 civilians killed (including more than 6,000 children) and the displacement of 1.6 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza’s population.

In India, the Hindu nationalists’ onslaught against non-Hindu minorities has not been carried out by the Indian Army itself, but by a paramilitary organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in partnership with the BJP. That unofficial army, founded almost a century ago and modeled on Italian fascist Benito Mussolini’s “blackshirts” and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi stormtroopers, has a membership of five to six million and holds daily meetings in more than 36,000 different locales across India. Its shock troops rarely even carry firearms; their weapons are low-tech, crude, and exceptionally cruel, and their targets are unarmed, unsuspecting civilians. They kill or maim using batons, machetes, strangulation, sulfuric acid to the face, and rape, among other horrors.

Such attacks by Hindu-nationalist gangs, different as they are from the military assault on Gaza, do have parallels in the occupied West Bank. There, Israeli settlers, some carrying government-supplied small arms, maraud through parts of that area (where they live illegally), beating, torturing, and killing Palestinians, including ethnic Bedouin families. They have expelled people from their homes, stolen their money and possessions, including livestock, and destroyed houses and schools. It is now olive harvest season and Jewish settlers have attacked Palestinians in their olive groves, sometimes forcing them off their ancestors’ land, perhaps permanently. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed this way since October.

Common Language

One of the worst atrocities perpetrated against Muslims since India’s partition occurred in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat. (Not coincidentally, that state’s chief minister at the time was Narendra Modi.) Following the alleged torching of a train compartment in which 58 Hindu nationalist “volunteers” were traveling, Hindu mobs inflicted state-sponsored terrorism on the Muslim community across Gujarat. More than 2,000 Muslims were killed. Speaking in the aftermath of that horror, then-prime minister A.B. Vajpayee offered a perfunctory admission of regret for the carnage, only to ask rhetorically, “Lekin aag lagayi kisne?” (“But who lit the fire?”) The implication was that since some from their community were accused of committing the initial crime, all Gujarat Muslims were responsible and that, however regrettably, justified their slaughter.

Similar allegations of collective guilt and justifications for collective punishment have a long history in Israel, as in the current conflict. In October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed that “there is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” That comment earned Herzog a place in a greatest-hits video of Israeli leaders attempting to defend atrocities inflicted on Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants. Similarly, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. told Sky News, “I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world… is showing for the Palestinian people, and is actually showing for these horrible inhuman animals.”

Some of the language surrounding it can be similar. Allegations that, in their October 7th attack on Israel, Hamas fighters beheaded children and tore fetuses from women’s wombs — none of which have been substantiated — eerily echo the sexualized violence committed by Hindu mobs in Gujarat in 2002 (rape, mutilation, the killing of women and their babies, and other horrors). A report of attackers using a sword to cut a fetus out of a Muslim woman and burning the bodies of both fetus and mother has been told and retold countless times over the past two decades.

And within mere hours of the October 7th attack in Israel, BJP politicians and Hindu nationalists in India were spreading propaganda on social media, including accusations that Palestinians were “worse than animals” and were cutting fetuses from wombs, beheading children, and taking girls as “sex slaves.” This started in India before IDF spokespeople began spreading similar claims.

An Unnatural Disaster

Drawing a comparison to the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the Israeli agriculture minister, a member of the security cabinet, recently explained his government’s goal to a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz this way: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” (Nakba was a reference to Israel’s forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from large portions of their territory in 1948.) When the incredulous reporter tossed the minister a lifeline, asking if he really meant what he’d said, he doubled down: “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

As of now, it certainly looks that way. The IDF bombed apartment blocks, shelters, schools, and hospitals in northern Gaza to force the migration of the population there toward supposedly “safe” south Gaza. They then began bombing southbound car caravans and even ambulances in which refugees were fleeing. Large groups of other Gazans were forced to make the long journey south on foot through narrow IDF-designated corridors. As the Guardian reported in mid-November,

“Those walking south under the tense gaze of Israeli troops, through a hellscape of tangled rubble that had been buildings two months ago, along roads shattered by weapons and churned to mud by tanks, had little hope of rest when they reached the south. Shelters are crammed, food and water supplies are so low the UN has warned that Palestinians face the ‘immediate possibility’ of starvation, infectious diseases are spreading, and the war there is expected to intensify in coming days.”

Israel soon began bombing parts of South Gaza, too, clearly trying to drive the refugees further south, possibly even through the Raffah gate into Egypt. But Egypt has refused to participate in such an ethnic-cleansing campaign. So, figuratively speaking, millions of desperate Palestinians have their backs to the wall, or in this case, fence, with nowhere to run.

As economic and geopolitical ties among Israel, India, and the U.S. have only continued to strengthen, Joe Biden has chummed it up with both Netanyahu and Modi, averting his eyes from their antidemocratic and all-too-violent national visions. He has backed the assault on Gaza all the way and as late as November 18th was still arguing in the Washington Post against a ceasefire. At the same time, he called for increasing the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza to remedy critical staggering shortages of food, water, housing, and fuel. In other words, the Biden administration is treating the catastrophe there like a natural disaster, acting as if there’s something terrible happening, something beyond his (or anyone’s) power to prevent, so all that can be done is to aid the survivors.

In truth, administrations in Washington have been treating Israel’s occupation and immiseration of the West Bank and Gaza like a natural disaster for more than half a century now. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, recently pointed out an incident that suggests just how disingenuous that claim is. In November, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came under withering criticism for permitting a few small, wholly inadequate truckloads of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt. As Theoharis noted, Gallant defended his decision to allow the aid this way: “The Americans insisted, and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” This puts the lie to the idea that Washington has no influence over the progress or outcome of this war. It does have influence over Israel — more than $3 billion worth in the form of military aid provided by Washington every year, not to speak of the $14 billion the Biden administration still wants to reward Israel with.

As we write this, we don’t know what will happen to the people of Gaza once the temporary ceasefire for prisoner exchanges expires. But rest assured that the governments of India and Israel will continue to feed off each other as they develop new strategies, tactics, and propaganda for their respective campaigns of occupation and oppression, campaigns the U.S. government, through both action and inaction, is endorsing. Consider them now three nations under god(s) of hell.

Priti Gulati Cox, (@PritiGCox), a TomDispatch regular, is an artist and writer. Her work has appeared in Countercurrents, CounterPunch, Salon, Truthout, Common Dreams, the Nation, AlterNet, and more. To see her art please visit occupiedplanet.com.

Stan Cox, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can, and the current In Real Time climate series at City Lights Books. Find him on Twitter at @CoxStan.

Originally published in TomDispatch.com

The post The Israel-India-U.S. Triangle appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Twenty-one hours back here is what New York witnessed

I can’t believe this coverage of the massive New York march for Palestine actually made it out. Just listen. pic.twitter.com/rkCU7p27db

— Stop Cop City (@JoshuaPHilll) October 20, 2023

The tweet on the protest had, by 3.45 p.m. October 21 received 491.6 k views and several thousand likes.

I can’t believe this coverage of the massive New York march for Palestine actually made it out. Just listen. pic.twitter.com/rkCU7p27db

— Stop Cop City (@JoshuaPHilll) October 20, 2023

This combined video from last week after the ghastly bombing at the Al-Ahli hospital at Gaza killing at least 500, is powerful

4TV UPDATES **Massive pro-Palestine protest in Madrid, Spain. pic.twitter.com/KbJywGZY6f

— Shakeel Yasar Ullah (@yasarullah) October 16, 2023

Free Palestine protests London Madrid Milan Brussels Berlin Doha Dhaka Bristol Amman Cardiff Dublin Paris Sydney Chicago Liverpool Los Angeles Amsterdam Edinburgh Damascus tt/syhu961 pic.twitter.com/yT3g2v2wIr

— Anna Mation (@annamation) October 16, 2023

Yes, there were free Palestine protests in London, Madrid, Brussels, Berlin, Doha, Dhaka, Bristol, Amman, Cardiff, Duplin, Paris, Sydney, Chicago, Liverpool, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Damascus.

Jewish Voice for Peace (that is staunchly non-Zionist and speaking against the war crimes of Israel has also been organising sit-ins and protests in the USA. Jewish Voice for Peace @JVPlive defines itself as “Jews organizing towards Palestinian liberation and Judaism beyond Zionism)

“We kept telling them stop equating violence with a people. War crimes are being committed —the answer to war crimes is not war crimes. To end the circle of poverty be honest. TELL THE TRUTH.” – @RashidaTlaib pic.twitter.com/cCWd0Ks7b0

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 20, 2023

October 19, JVP had organised an effective protest at Capitol Hill,Washington DC.

Grounded in that gravity, the thousands who poured out yesterday saw what’s possible when we take strategic, collective action. We are more committed than ever to escalating together from here.

: @ReedDunlea pic.twitter.com/IQR7Ra33W4

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 20, 2023

The crisis in Gaza only grows more extreme by the day. To shift the tides will require nothing short of a mass movement that refuses to rest–and refuses to let our government rest–until we end Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians.

: @ReedDunlea pic.twitter.com/waoHaRDi5Z

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 20, 2023

In Harvard, Boston, black students despite harassment and intimidation sustained their protests.

Wallahi I’m in tears…

Black students organizers at Harvard:
“ we will never be harassed into silence” #Gaza#Israel pic.twitter.com/2Nx7cTcU3b

— Abier (@abierkhatib) October 20, 2023

London

On October 19, Jews gathered in London to condemn their government’s stand:

HAPPENING NOW: 100s of Jews gather at Parliament Square to make clear that we will not let our grief be weaponised to justify genocide.

As Rishi Sunak visits Israel, we demand he pushes for: ceasefire now, release the hostages, end the siege on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/xPqMqfWrxe

— Na’amod (@NaamodUK) October 19, 2023

“HAPPENING NOW: 100s of Jews gather at Parliament Square to make clear that we will not let our grief be weaponised to justify genocide. As Rishi Sunak visits Israel, we demand he pushes for: ceasefire now, release the hostages, end the siege on Gaza, “ read the tweet.

Sydney

Though Austrialia elected a conservative party back to power and recently had a referendum that denied indigenous peoples their rights, the people spoke out against the injustices in West Asia.

PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTS IN SYDNEY AUSTRALIA

THE PEOPLE ARE WITH PALESTINE pic.twitter.com/UavRWv6DBP

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) October 21, 2023

Madrid, October 16

Massive pro-Palestine protest in Madrid, Spain.

I have never seen Spain supports us this much!
pic.twitter.com/xPVyDknvFY

— The Palestinian (@InsiderWorld_1) October 16, 2023

Massive pro Palestine protests in Madrid right now! pic.twitter.com/67WAc8h9Yf

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) October 15, 2023

Starbucks Workers unite

Meanwhile Starbucks Workers have unitedly stood behind Palestine and also in a public statement and poster called out their management for vilifying the union

In stark contrast, India that once proudly led the Non-Alligned Movement (NAM) and the rest of south Asia has been eerily silent. In some places like Delhi and Mumbai where protesters did take to the streets, including Uttar Pradesh, their was a “police crackdown.” The UP chief minister Ajay Bisht aka Adityanath going as far as to “threaten” protesters.

Here is a demonstration on South Korea

Free Palestine Protest in Seoul, South Korea. pic.twitter.com/W8se0hfRH8

— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) October 21, 2023

And here is Turkey

Turkey MASSIVE protest in support of the Palestinian people pic.twitter.com/lcjNVu8e6I

— Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) October 20, 2023

Related:

An Israeli air strike hits a Gaza church that wasn’t just sheltering Palestinian Christians and Muslims, but was one of the oldest in the world

US: Jewish peace activists protest in solidarity with Palestine, demand ceasefire in Gaza

Protesting US arms shipments to Israel, Director, US State department, Josh Paul, resigns

Israeli airstrike on Gaza hospital kills at least 500, Israel blame game continues

Palestine-Israel conflict: Need to look beyond security paradigm 

Ending Israeli Occupation of Palestine essential in ending historic injustice: UN Commission

The post New York, Chicago, Madrid, Athens, Sydney, Paris, the people march for #Palestine appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“The administration’s response, and much of Congress’ as well, is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia. . . . Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace,” says the detailed two page resignation letter by Josh Paul, Director of Congressional and Public Affairs at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, in charge of US Arms Transfers to Foreign Nations.”

The letter was made public on “X’ (formerly twitter at approximately 11 a.m. Thursday, October 19.

“We cannot be both against occupation, and for it, we cannot be both for freedom, and against it. And we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is materially worse,” says Paul in his detailed resignation letter that calls out the Hamas attack on October 7 as “monstrosity of monstrosity.”

But, he says, “This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia. That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides. I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer.

The entire text of the letter may be read here:

“I joined the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs (PM) over 11 years ago, and have found it a fascinating job with engaging, and often immensely challenging – intellectually and morally – tasks and objectives. I have been proud in my time of service to have made many differences, both visibly and behind the scenes, from advocating for Afghan refugees, to pushing back (with not insignificant results) on pending Administration decisions to transfer lethal weapons to countries that abuse human rights, to sculpting policies and practices that advance human rights, to working tirelessly to advance those policies and decisions that are good and just; from our global humanitarian demining efforts to our support for Ukraine’s defence in the face of murderous Russian aggression.

“When I came to this Bureau, the U.S. Government entity most responsible for the transfer and provision of arms to partners and allies, I knew it was not without its moral complexity and moral compromises, and I made myself a promise that I would stay for as long as I felt I the harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do. In my 11 years I have made more moral compromises than I can recall, each heavily, but each with my promise to myself in mind, and intact. I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued – indeed, expanded and expedited – provision of lethal arms to Israel – I have reached the end of that bargain..

“Yes, PM can still do an immense amount of good in the world: there is still, sadly, a great need for American security assistance – a need for American arms and defence cooperation to defend against the multiple military perils that democracy, democracies, and humanity itself, face on this earth. But we cannot be both against occupation, and for it. We cannot be both for freedom, and against it. And we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is materially worse.

“Let me be clear: Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.

“I am not ignorant when it comes to the situation in the Middle East. I was raised surrounded by debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; my Master’s thesis was about Israeli counter terrorism and civil rights (in researching it I met two men who have since been among my lifelong heroes, Uri Avnery, and an Israeli Palestinian advocate I shall not name here); I served for the U.S. Security Coordinator, living in Ramallah while advancing security sector governance within the Palestinian Authority and liaising with the IDF; and, I have deep personal ties to both sides of the conflict.

“Those who know me best know that I have opinions, and they are strong ones. But this is what is at the core of them: that there is beauty to be found everywhere in this world, and it deserves both protection, and the right to flourish, and that is what I most desire for Palestinians and for Israelis. The murder of civilians is an enemy to that desire – whether by terrorists as they dance at a rave, or by terrorists as they harvest their olive grove. The kidnapping of children is an enemy to that desire – whether taken at gunpoint from their kibbutz or taken at gunpoint from their village. And, collective punishment is an enemy to that desire, whether it involves demolishing one home, or one thousand; as too is ethnic cleansing; as too is occupation; as too is apartheid.

“It is my firm belief that in such conflicts, for those of us who are third parties, the side we must pick is not that of one of the combatants, but that of the people caught in the middle, and that of the generations yet to come. It is our responsibility to help the warring parties build a better world. To centre human rights, not to hope to side-line or sidestep them through programs of economic growth or diplomatic manoeuvring. And, when they happen, to be able to name gross violations of human rights no matter who carries them out, and to be able to hold the perpetrators accountable – when they are adversaries, which is easy, but most particularly, when they are partners.

“I acknowledge and am heartened to see the efforts this Administration has made to temper Israel’s response, including advocating for the provision of relief supplies, electricity, and water to Gaza, and for safe passage. In my role in PM, however, my responsibilities lie solidly in the arms transfer space. And that is why I have resigned from the U.S. Government, and from PM: because while I can, and have, worked hard to shape better policy making in the security assistance field, I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be short-sighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse, and which I wholeheartedly endorse: a world built around a rules-based order, a world that advances both equality and equity, and a world whose arc of history bends towards the promise of liberty, and of justice, for all.

“And I would note with concern in parting, as regards competitions well beyond this current conflict, that if we want a world shaped by what we perceive to be our values, it is only by conditioning strategic imperatives with moral ones, by holding our partners, and above all by holding ourselves, to those values, that we will see it.

“I want to close by noting that while bureaucracy is not without its automatons, and that, as I have learnt, physical courage comes easier than moral courage, I have had the privilege of working with a large number of truly thoughtful, empathetic, courageous, and good civil servants, and many of them can be found in PM, from its entry level to its most senior level. As they carry on advancing the interests of the nation and the world in a field in which, perhaps more than any other, it is easier to be better than it is to be good, I can say without hesitation that they are the best. I wish them continued success, strength, and courage. And I wish all of us – peace.

Josh Paul, October 18, 2023.

Related:

Israeli airstrike on Gaza hospital kills at least 500, Israel blame game continues

Palestine-Israel conflict: Need to look beyond security paradigm 

Ending Israeli Occupation of Palestine essential in ending historic injustice: UN Commission

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It ought to be crystal clear but curiously isn’t to the media that, rather than deter Palestinians from their decades-long struggle to free Palestine, the collusion between the Trump administration and some Arab governments to impose “the deal of the century” on Palestinians will radicalize the mainstream Palestinian population, and plunge the struggle into, at the very least, another intifada (uprising).

At the heart of the matter is the struggle for the collective rights of the Palestinian people as a whole. What Palestinians are interested in are the questions of who is capable of undoing the disastrous consequences of the Oslo Accords; who can hold Israel accountable; who can build grassroots strategies for steadfastness rather than simply “ruling”?

But the reality is that Palestinians must contend with the complexities and failings of the political structures they already have.  Which political bloc is likely to emerge as stronger, once the chips are all down?

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Today, in addition to Fateh (also spelled Fatah) and Hamas, the political party most likely to emerge as a strong contender in the vacuum that will emerge after Mahmoud Abbas (now 83) is gone from the political scene is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose revolutionary strategyfor the liberation of Palestine as published in February 1969 differs from that of Fateh’s pragmatic and concession-based approach .

As Khaled Barakat writes:

The PFLP’s strategy emphasizes that we are not starting from scratch. There is no zero point in thought, history and struggle, and the Front is a democratic revolutionary party with a rich historical experience of half a century. It has lived a permanent, continuous experience amid battle and confrontation. The march of half a century of right and wrong, achievements and setbacks, and we want this situation to remain consistent with the general goals of the revolutionary party, a necessary condition for progress and growth.

PFLP General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat has been Israel’s political prisoner for 13 years now, but he and his comrades continue to be steadfast.

Another leader, KhalidaJarrar, recently released from Israeli administrative detention, is also steadfast.

What’s happening today in Palestinian politics is dismal, but there is hope.

In 2012, the UN recognized the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine”, but what transpires politically in Palestine is not happening in an independent Palestinian state; it is happening in the occupied West Bank and encaged Gaza Strip.

Palestinians have a new prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, whose political affiliation is with Fateh, the party that has control over the Palestinian Authority. This party is loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, who has little popular support or relevance, and run by Fateh strongmen known for their corruption and occupation profiteering.The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which is supposed to represent all Palestinians, including those in exile, is Fateh-dominated, its National Council having elected Abbas as the Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee (May 4, 2018).

Keep in mind that that neither Hamas, nor Fateh (in the form of the PA) possesses political autonomy. Economically too, Israel has sole control over the external borders and collects import taxes and VAT for the Palestinian Authority, trimming what it passes on to the PA at will.

Some background and context on Palestinian representation:
It’s important to understand that Palestinian government in the occupied territory derives its legitimacy from the Palestine liberation Organization (PLO).

The PLO was formed on May 28, 1964to unite Palestinian political movements from the extreme right to the extreme left under one umbrella and approve the Palestinian National Charter , which proclaimed in Article 2 that “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”. The Palestinian National Charter legitimized support for armed struggle as a strategy of resistance against Israel and affirmed its morality.

The creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was prompted by a desire on the part of Palestinians to move away from the disastrous conventional political and military approach of the Arab Higher Committee in 1948.  The PLO quickly movedtowards, as ‘IsamSakhnini put it in 1972, “an autonomous Palestinian action by which the Palestinian people will address themselves to their cause directly and not vicariously.”

Early on, the Palestinian groups that espoused guerilla warfare against Israel emerged as the new leaders of the PLO. Less than a year later, Yasser Arafat, the head of Fateh, became chairman as both Fateh and the popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) made substantial political gains.

All that changed when the Oslo Accords established agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO made huge concessions before even entering negotiations in order to be recognized by the United States, after it had secured United Nations and Arab League recognition as “the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

And as OsamahKhlalil shows in Oslo’s Roots: Kissinger, the PLO, and the Peace Process – Al-Shabaka, “The PLO leadership, in particular key figures in Fateh, sought to establish a relationship with Washington at the expense of other Palestinian factions.”

In 2017 Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, organized a roundtable discussion among Palestinians on PLO and Palestinian Representation, in which the topics of discussion were the following three issues: Reforming the PLO, Representation Under Occupation, Leadership to What End?  Al-Shabakais an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law.

Fateh today dominates the PLO, because the party of the “pragmatic approach” to the struggle of Palestinian liberation since Oslo has been the dominant and increasingly authoritarian party in the Palestinian Authority administration.

Now that the Oslo Accords, which had held them back for more than two decades, is defunct, the reform of the PLO or the formation of a new organization to represent all Palestinians is inevitable.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

Courtesy: Counter Current
 

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We have seen the Israeli occupation expand its reach through its growing settlement enterprise, increasing home demolitions, and extrajudicial killings of unarmed protesters, all with the full backing of the United States and relatively no accountability from the international community.

2018 marked 25 years since the Oslo Accords were signed, but a fair and just peace agreement for the Palestinians remains far out of reach — the dream of an independent Palestinian state even further.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which was supposed to be a temporary government according to the accords, has developed into a despotic regime, focused more on quashing dissent and policing free speech than achieving liberation and statehood.

2018 also marked 70 years since the Nakba, the tragedy that has shaped the Palestinian issue for generations.

But as evidenced by the ongoing fight for the rights of refugees in Gaza’s Great March of Return, the fight against expulsion in places Silwan and Khan al-Ahmar, and the fight for equal rights as citizens in Israel, the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, of the Palestinian people did not end in 1948.
 

The impact of Trump

President Donald Trump talks with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jared Kushner in Jerusalem, May 22, 2017. (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)
 

It goes without saying that perhaps that most defining moment of the year actually took place in late 2017, when President Donald Trump announced that the US would be recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The decision sparked widespread protests that lead to the arrest of hundreds of Palestinians and the injury of many more. Even after the initial protests died down, Trump’s Jerusalem decision has continued to be a feature of nearly every demonstration, big and small, across Palestine.

Over the course of the year, the Trump administration has relentlessly unleashed a series of political decisions aimed at harming the Palestinian people and forcing their leadership to the negotiating table.

From defunding UNRWA and USAID in the West Bank and Gaza, to moving the Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump’s decisions will have a lasting political impact on the region. The human impacts have already begun to be felt.

More than 60 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli forces on the Gaza border on May 14th when they were protesting Trump’s decision to move the embassy.

Last week, a three-year old Palestinian refugee boy died waiting for treatment in a Lebanon hospital. Many have attributed his death to the UNRWA financial crisis, saying that the family could not afford to pay and that the hospital delayed the treatment because they were waiting for the insurance payment from UNRWA.

As time goes on, more than 5 million Palestinian refugees will feel the effects of UNRWA’s financial crisis in the form of job cuts, reduced healthcare coverage, and the shut down of primary schools across the region.

The existence of UNRWA is truly essential to the lives of Palestine’s most vulnerable communities. Living in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, I have witnessed my neighbors skip doctor visits and unable to purchase necessary medications due to the fact that the current health care they receive UNRWA doesn’t cover all of their needs.

If the already lacking coverage is taken away from them, it is not out of the question that many more will suffer the fate of that young boy in Lebanon.

The UN has reported that despite a rise in humanitarian needs across the occupied Palestinian territory, funding levels for humanitarian interventions declined significantly: only US$221 million had been received, compared to the $540 million requested in the 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan.
 

Gaza & The Great March of Return

Much of this year’s coverage of news in Palestine has focused on the besieged Gaza Strip, which entered its 11th year under siege in 2018.

With every passing day, the situation in Gaza grows more and more dire. People see only a few hours of electricity a day, unemployment rates are at an all time high, and hospitals are closing their doors due to lack of medications.

In 2018, the UN reported that around 1.3 million people in Gaza, or 68 per cent of the population, were food insecure.

We have reported on a series of stories from the Gaza Strip this year, each one more distressing than the last.

We have seen children with cancer forced to travel alone to the West Bank for treatment without their parents, UNRWA employees set themselves on fire after losing their jobs, and the ever rising death toll from the Great March of Return.

On Saturday, one Palestinian was killed and six more were injured along the Israeli border fence.

UN documentation reported on December 28th that the death toll from Gaza’s Great March of Return stood at 180, and that over 23,000 people had been injured in the protests. Among the dead are journalists, medics, women, and children.

This year marked the highest death toll in a single year since the Israeli offensive on Gaza in 2014, and according to UNOCHA,  the highest number of injuries recorded since the group began documenting casualties in the occupied Palestinian territory in 2005.

The Great March of Return has galvanized Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip to demand an end to the crippling Israeli siege.
 

The Great March of Return in Gaza, August 10, 2018 (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Despite nine months of death and injuries, and no tangible wins for the protesters, the continued participation of Gazans in the march is evidence of the growing desperation in the coastal enclave.

With nowhere to go, no future for Gaza’s young people, and no medicine for the sick, the only remaining choice for many is to try as hard as they can to tear down the walls and fences surrounding them, knowing full well that death awaits them at the borders.
 

Growing discontent with PA

In the PA-controlled West Bank, there is a growing sense of discontentment with the government and its leaders, who continue to prioritize their consolidation of power and resources over the rights of the people.

The state of hopelessness and frustration among Palestinian citizens is on a steady rise, with polls showing that Palestinians ranked corruption as the second largest problem they face after the economic crisis – higher than the Israeli occupation, which ranked third.

Palestinian economic and social decline has led to higher rates of poverty and unemployment, with college graduates witnessing the highest rates of joblessness.

The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), once the most important official instruments of control and accountability for the government, has been dysfunctional for the past 11 years.

The PA’s executive authority and security apparatuses have continued to impose restrictions on media and journalists through the Cyber Crimes Law, blocking websites that publish dissenting voices, and detaining journalists and activists critical of Mahmoud Abbas and his regime.

Over the summer, PA forces violently suppressed youth-led protests that criticized the government’s policies in Gaza and its security coordination with Israel, which has been denounced as a “revolving door” policy funneling Palestinian activists from PA jails to Israeli prisons.

In the wake of a spate of attacks earlier this month allegedly orchestrated by Hamas, demonstrations erupted in support of the PA’s rival faction, and in condemnation of Israel’s punitive ongoing home demolitions, road closures, and massive arrest campaigns.

Video footage of the protests showed PA security forces using batons to beat demonstrators, many of them women.

Despite widespread public outcry and ongoing protests, the PA is moving forward with a controversial social security law which will see citizens that work in the private sector paying seven percent of their monthly salaries taxes to the Palestinian Social Security Corporation (PSCC), with no clauses exempting workers who receive minimum wage.

While the law claims workers will be able to apply for a retirement pension at age 60, it stipulates that widows, orphans, and the families of Palestinians killed by Israel will not be eligible to receive benefits.

Palestinians have voiced their opposition to the law, citing concerns that if subjected to monthly deductions, workers receiving already low wages will not be able to provide for their families or pay off hefty bank loans, which many Palestinians use to purchase homes, cars, etc.
The primary opposition to the law lies in the fact that many Palestinians do not trust the government to uphold its end of the deal, and that under the Israeli occupation and an increasingly unstable PA, there’s no guarantee they would ever see the benefits of their contributions.
 

Business as usual for the Israeli occupation

According to UN documentation, a total of 295 Palestinians were killed and over 29,000 were injured in 2018 by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Over 459 Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were demolished by Israeli forces, marking a slight increase from 2017. The demolitions resulted in the displacement of 472 Palestinians, including 216 children and 127 women.

In the wake of this month’s spate of attacks on Israeli settlers and soldiers, Israel has stepped up its efforts to demolish the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks on Israelis, a policy that has been widely criticized for years as collective punishment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on so-called “deterrence” efforts, instructing security officials to fast track punitive home demolitions, despite previous recommendations from an Israeli military committee that the practice did not deter attacks.

Last week, the Israeli Knesset passed the first reading of a bill to forcibly transfer families of Palestinians involved in attacks against Israelis, despite heavy opposition from intelligence and army officials.

If passed into law, it would see that within a week of an attack or attempted attack, the Israeli army would be permitted to expel the relatives of the Palestinian assailants from their hometowns to other areas of the West Bank.

Forcible transfer is considered a war crime under international law.

Since the election of Trump, the West Bank has witnessed a steep increase in the expansion of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.

In the 22 months before Trump was elected, 4,476 settlement housing units were approved, according to settlement watchdog  Peace Now. But since his election, that figure has more than tripled to 13,987 housing units.

Earlier this week, Israel advanced plans for nearly 2,200 living units in 47 settlements.

Palestinians in the West Bank have also witnessed a frightening increase in settler attacks on them and their property, with settlers more emboldened than ever before.

In 2018, UNOCHA recorded 265 incidents where Israeli settlers killed or injured Palestinians or damaged their property, marking a 69 per cent increase from 2017.

One Palestinian woman, 48-year-old Aisha al-Rabi, a mother of eight, was killed in October when settlers attacked her family’s car with rocks as they were driving home in the Nablus district of the northern West Bank.
Some 7,900 trees and 540 vehicles were damaged or completely destroyed in settler attacks, the UN reported.
 

The Palestinians that shook 2018

Amid all the devastation of 2018, several Palestinian faces have emerged from the darkness to offer a sense of hope, inspiration, and resilience for their people.

The following men, women, and children have been iconicized through social media for their roles in combating the Israeli occupation and bringing the plight of the Palestinian people to the international stage.

Ahed Tamimi

16-year-old Ahed Tamimi in Israeli military court (Photo: Tali Shapiro/Twitter)
 

Ahed Tamimi was propelled on to the international stage when she was arrested by Israeli forces in December 2017 after she slapped an Israeli soldier during a raid on her hometown of Nabi Saleh.

As she severed out an 8-month sentence in Israeli prison, she shed a new light on the issue of Palestinian child prisoners and the struggles of Palestinian youth under occupation.

By the time she was released, she had reached star status in Palestine and beyond, and has remained outspoken in her criticism of the Israeli occupation, travelling the world raising awareness about the Palestinian cause.

Yasser Murtaja & Razan al-Najjar

Razan al-Najjar, photo shared by the al-Najjar family.
 

Yasser Murtaja, portrait from his Facebook page.
 

During the Great March of Return, Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian journalist Yasser Murtaja and medic Razan al-Najjar, drawing outrage from the Palestinian and international community.

Their deaths highlighted Israel’s widely criticized open-fire policy along the Gaza border, and the ongoing killing of unarmed civilians.

The funerals of both Murtaja and al-Najjar drew thousands of mourners, and their status as heroes of the Great March of Return has been memorialized on Palestinian social media.

The Bedouins of Khan al-Ahmar

Ibrahim Khamees, a member of the Khan al-Ahmar village council, watches as armed Israeli forces guard a bulldozer that razed lands on Wednesday to create a pathway for Israeli forces to use in the imminent demolition of the village (Photo: Akram al-Wara)
 

As the battle to save their village came to a head this year, the bedouins of Khan al-Ahmar remained steadfast in their nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation’s efforts to expel them from their lands.

Through grassroots efforts, the people of Khan al-Ahmar galvanized international support for their struggle, resulting in the indefinite postponement of the village’s demolition.

Rashida Tlaib

On their way to Congress: Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib (left) of Michigan, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Omar is the first Somali-American legislator elected to office in the United States. (Photo: Twitter/Rashida Tlaib)
 

Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan’s 13th Congressional District made headlines across the US and the world as one of the first Muslim-American women to be elected to Congress, and the first ever Palestinian-American woman to do so.

In Palestine, Tlaib’s win was a form of poetic justice: the descendant of Palestinians from a small occupied West Bank village would now be serving in one of the highest levels of US government.

Since her election, Tlaib has been outspoken in her defense of the BDS movement, and has even announced that she will be leading a delegation of her colleagues to Palestine, as an alternative to AIPAC’s annual Israel trip for new members of congress.
 

Looking forward

As we enter the New Year, there is little reason for optimism in Palestine.

The Israeli occupation continues to tighten its grip with the help of the US, and the prospect of any reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and free democratic elections in Palestine are virtually nonexistent.

Palestinians in the West Bank continue to see their family members cycled through the Israeli prison system, with 5,554 Palestinians in prison as of November.

The current security situation in the West Bank has created a climate in which Palestinians are scared to drive their cars between cities, fearful that a settler attack or wrong move at a checkpoint could spell their death.

In East Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees are bracing for the worst as Israel moves forward with its plans to shut down UNRWA’s operations in the city.

In Gaza, the Great March of Return pushes on into its 10th month, and an end to the Israeli and Egyptian siege is nowhere in sight.

The Trump administration continues to tout its “deal of the century,” which many Palestinians anticipate will attempt to erase any Palestinian claims to Jerusalem, and force them to once again compromise their rights for the sake of Israel and the settlers.

The political future of Palestine is as uncertain as ever, and 2019 will likely see a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation here.

This year, we have interviewed hundreds of Palestinians from the borderlines in Gaza to refugee camps of Bethlehem. Countless people have have opened up their homes to Mondoweiss, to tell us, and show us, the reality of their existence under occupation.

Time and time again, we have asked people what their message is to the world, and to the Israeli government.  And time and time again, there is one common theme to every person’s answer:  sumud, or steadfastness. 

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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Arriving, Tel Aviv
After I land in Tel Aviv, things start moving really quickly. The anxiety at passport control is quickly replaced by an odd sadness. Under a clear night sky, I am crossing open fields from where Palestinian families were expelled seventy years ago and they have never stepped there again. Even before I can make sense of this, I have crossed Jerusalem and staring at the huge, morbid apartheid wall as I reach the Qalandiya checkpoint. The Palestinian family I am to stay with lives minutes away from the checkpoint. My hosts were kind enough to accompany me in my travels.

On the road in West Bank
We venture out of the bustle of Ramallah and, much too quickly, we are looking at the expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements that mark the areas between the cities. In 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation signed the Oslo Agreement under the watch of the United States. While initially meant as a peace agreement, over the years, the terms of the agreement have allowed Israel to continue and exacerbate its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. As part of these agreements, the occupied-Palestinian territories were divided into three administrative divisions: Area A (18% of West Bank) which is under the civil and security authority of Palestinian Authority (PA). This mainly comprises of the major cities and a few other towns and villages, all separated by checkpoints. Area B (22% of West Bank) is under PA’s civil and Israel’s security control. This includes villages, farmlands and some illegal settlements. Area C, the remaining area, also the largest part of West Bank, is under complete Israeli control. These are the areas where most of the Palestinian farmlands and natural resources are, and also where most of the illegal settlements exist and are expanding.

Image Courtesy: wncw.org

If you’re not in a Palestinian city, you are surrounded and overwhelmed by these illegal settlements.  Soon, as you move outside any of the major cities, you can see separate roads that lead to these illegal settlements. They are invariably on hill tops for the purpose of surveillance. They are also invariably with red roofs. To understand this in a wider sense, it is a war crime to change the demography and architecture of illegally occupied regions. Israel is way ahead in systematically executing this illegality by constructing more and more illegal settlements, where Jewish-Israelis are given incentives for residing. These continue to expand as settlers and Israeli forces expel Palestinians from their homes, demolish their houses, and destroy their farms. And then there is the illegal Wall which runs through the West Bank, much further than Israel’s borders as demarcated after the 1967 war. Israel does not provide any maps of its borders and neither of the walls, so it can continue this criminal expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The aim, it seems, is to create Bantustans (or partially self-governing areas) within West Bank, like the Black-only ghettos that existed in apartheid South Africa.

West Bank is really small when compared to the distances between Indian cities. So you find yourself crossing settlements, the apartheid wall, villages, and refugee camps in a matter of hours. Of course, those hours could seem endless if an Israeli soldier happens to feel like messing with you. Almost everyone who goes to occupied Palestine has a story about taxi drivers. This is also borne out of necessity. Qalandiya check point on a Friday evening could be hours of waiting. Often, there are no signs that tell you which road you can take as a Palestinian (yes, this is what apartheid looks like), but each driver knows exactly which turn to take, or which short cut could help escape a long wait. Israeli soldiers could also, on a whim, come up with a new rule at any given second; this, too, is circulated within the community of Palestinian drivers.

Qalandiya checkpoint and the apartheid wall

The short distances between places also meant that we went from one of West Bank’s big cities to refugee camps, to villages surrounded by Israel’s occupying forces’ outposts, and back to Ramallah, in a single day. If these schizophrenic differences in terms of the impact of the occupation weren’t enough, our journeys were all across hilly landscapes (and all ten sunsets spent seeing the last lights spill over these hills) in a place where every inch of land had a story.

Closer to the Dead Sea is the city of Jericho, over 10000 years old and one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited human settlements. While on our way there, one of my companions remarked how fighting for one’s homeland is always a noble duty, but it becomes more so when that home is this beautiful.

The sharp contrasts in the way occupation and apartheid play out in each of these places is only compounded by the melancholic beauty of the rolling hills, and the layers of history they hold underneath. This becomes further condensed and intense in Jerusalem.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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Sabah al-Salibi collected dozens of small stones with her daughters, Susan, 22, and Rawand, 24. She said she wanted to pass them to the demonstrators whose eyes were blurry from teargas “to save them time by finding suitable stones” to throw at Israeli snipers hidden behind earthen berms at the Gaza – Israel fence.

Even though she was hit in the chin by shrapnel from an explosive bullet when the rallies reached their peak on May 14, Sabah, 50, insisted on participating with the thousands of demonstrators who protested during the ninth Friday of the March of the Great Return, which began on March 30.

“Although these stones are small and few, but are stronger than their bullets and gas canisters,” al-Salibi said. These stones were a source of frenzy for the Israelis when they were occupied Gaza in the 1987 uprising. The army used to impose a general cordon in Gaza in search of young men throwing stones at army.
 

Collecting small stones (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Meanwhile, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, nine women and four children were among the 109 Palestinians who were wounded by Israeli gunfire while participating in the continuing protest along the border.

The latest round of protests came after hours of Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously rejected two petitions presented by human rights organizations demanding Israel’s troops avoid using live ammunition against Gaza’s protests. On Thursday, the panel of three justices sided with the Israeli military, which argued that the protesters constituted a real danger to Israeli troops. Israel maintains its forces use of live fire is in line with both domestic and international law, arguing the demonstrations are part of the country’s conflict with Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.
 

Four children were among the 109 Palestinians wounded by Israeli gunfire (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

“The Israeli Court completely ignored the broad factual basis presented to it by the petitioners, which includes multiple testimonies of wounded and reports of international organizations involved in documenting the killing and wounding of unarmed protesters in Gaza,” the human rights groups said.

On Twitter, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman welcomed the ruling and criticized the rights organizations for challenging the military.

Since the demonstration began, Israeli army killed at least 115 demonstrators, and wounded more than 13,000.

After running behind Sabah who was rushing to around 150 meters from the fence to share her remaining stones, she yelled twice: “We will not give up!” Participating here weekly is a powerful message that we refuse what they did against our fathers and grandfathers 70 years ago. She told Mondoweiss.
 

Suhaila Abu Riash (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Not far away, Suhaila Abu Riash, 65 was also protesting in her own style.

She was spraying protesters’ faces with a homemade yeast and water mixture, that she believes might help alleviate the effects of tear gas.

I met the 65-year-old Abu Riash, while she was waiting another round of gas canisters dropping down from an Israeli drone. She said: “Nine weeks are not enough to express long years of anger.”

I gave a martyr in 2014’s war and ready to scarify by more sons if this protest needs. She told Mondoweiss. “No problem, but we will return and Israel will be vanished at the end, as we say: ‘Injustice cannot last.’”  Abu Riash, a mother of seven children, and her parents were displaced from Hiribya – located 14 kilometers northeast of Gaza.
 

Round of gas canisters dropping down from an Israeli drone. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Fighting the teargas (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

At the other side of the border, Gazans have been using burning kites to torch Israeli fields and forests as part of the March events.

A large scale fire broke out in the lands near Kibbutz Nir Am on Friday evening, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The Kibbutz is covered by heavy smoke, the cause of the fire is suspected to be a burning Palestinian kite flown in from Gaza.

The largest blaze yet sparked by the firebomb-bearing kites happened Wednesday near Kibbutz Be’eri, an Israeli community located some 4.3 miles east of Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp. The fire took over six hours to extinguish and consumed dozens of dunams of grasslands and agricultural fields in the area.

In recent weeks, Gazans have been flying flaming kites into Israel outfitted with containers of burning fuel, setting fire to large swaths of fields.
 

Since the demonstration began, Israeli army has wounded more than 13,000. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Since the demonstration began, Israeli army killed at least 115 demonstrators (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

At least 3,500 Palestinians have been victims of live fire, including, the elderly, journalists, paramedics, women and children. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Thousands of demonstrators protest (Photo: Mohammed Asad)

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net

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Yet except for a few Jewish intellectuals here and there — for example, the American rabbi Marc Ellis, or Professor Israel Shahak — reflections by Jewish thinkers today on the desolate history of anti-Semitism and Jewish solitude has been inadequate. For there is alink to be made between what happened to Jews in World War Two and the catastrophe of the Palestinian people, but it cannot be made only rhetorically, or as an argument to demolish or diminish the true content both of the Holocaust and of 1948. Neither is equalto the other; similarly neither one nor the other excuses present violence; and finally, neither one nor the other must be minimized. There is suffering and injustice enough for everyone. But unless the connection is made by which the Jewish tragedy is seen to have led directly to the Palestinian catastrophe by, let us call it “necessity” (rather than pure will), we cannot co-exist as two communities of detached and uncommunicatingly separate suffering. It has been the failing of Oslo that it planned in terms of separation, a clinical partition of peoples into separate, but unequal, entities, rather than grasping that the only way of rising beyond the endless back-and-forth violence and dehumanization is to admit the universality and integrity of the other’s experience and to begin to plan a common life together.

I cannot see any way at all (a) of not imagining the Jews of Israel as in decisive measure really the permanent result of the Holocaust, and (b) of not also requiring from them acknowledgment of what they did to the Palestinians during and after 1948. This means that as Palestinians we demand consideration and reparations from them without in any way minimizing their own history of suffering and genocide. This is the only mutual recognition worth having, and the fact that present governments and leaders are incapable of such gestures testifies to the poverty of spirit and imagination that afflicts us all. This is where Jews and Palestinians outside of historical Palestine can play a constructive role that is impossible for those inside who live under the daily pressure of occupation and dialectical confrontation. The dialogue has to be on the level I have been discussing here, and not on debased questions of political strategy and tactics. When one considers the broad lines of Jewish philosophy from Buber to Levinas and perceives in it an almost total absence of reflection on the Palestinian issue,one realizes how far one has to go.

What is desired therefore is a notion of coexistence that is true to the differences between Jew and Palestinian, but true also to the common history of different struggle and unequal survival that links them. There can be no higher ethical and moral imperative than discussions and dialogues about that. We must accept the Jewis experience in all that it entails of horror and fear; but we must require that our experience be given no less attention or perhaps another plane of historical actuality. Who would want morally to equate mass extermination with mass dispossession? It would be foolish even to try. But they are connected — a different thing altogether — in the struggle over Palestine which has been so intransigent, its elements so irreconcilable. I know that at a time when Palestinian land is still being taken, when our houses are demolished, when our daily existence is still subject to the humiliations and captivity imposed on us by Israel and its many supporters in Europe and especially the United States, I know that to speak of prior Jewish agonies will seem like a kind of impertinence. I do not accept the notion that by taking our land Zionism redeemed the history of the Jews, and I cannot ever be made to acquiesce in the need to dispossess the whole Palestinian people. But I can admit the notion that the distortions of the Holocaust created distortions in its victims, which are replicated today in the victims of Zionism itself, that is, the Palestinians. Understanding what happened to the Jews in Europe under the Nazis means understanding what is universal about a human experience under calamitous conditions. It means compassion, human sympathy, and utter recoil from the notion of killing people for ethnic, religious, or nationalist reasons.

I attach no conditions to such comprehension and compassion: one feels them for their own sake, not for political advantage. Yet such an advance in consciousness by Arabs ought to be met by an equal willingness for compassion and comprehension on the part of Israelis and Israel’s supporters who have engaged in all sorts of denial and expressions of defensive nonresponsibility when it comes to Israel’s central role on our historical dispossession as a people. This is disgraceful. And it is just unacceptable simply to say (as do many Zionist liberals) that we should forget the past and go on to two separate states. This is as insulting to Jewish memories of the Holocaust as it is to Palestinians who continue in their dispossession at Israel’s hands. The simple fact is that Jewish and Palestinian experiences are historically, indeed organically, connected: to break them asunder is to falsify what is authentic about each. We must think our histories together, however difficult that may be, in order for there to be a common future. And that future must include Arabs and Jews together, free of any exclusionary, denial-based schemes for shutting out one side by the other, either theoretically or politically. That is the real challenge. The rest is much easier.

Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.

This excerpt from the essay “Bases for Coexistence” has been published in the book ‘On Palestine’ (LeftWord Books, 2014) and has been published here with permission from the publishers.

First Published on Indian Cultural Forum
 

The post A Possible Peace: Imagining Palestinians and Israelis Living Together appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Although India consistently supported the Palestinian struggle to reclaim their lost lands and for forming their own country free from Israel, in recent years India has shown a distinct shift towards greater friendship with Israel. This trend has received a boost with the RSS backed BJP govt. coming to power in India in 2014. Israel is being portrayed as a valiant nation and a friend of India, whitewashing its brutal history of suppression and violence. Here are some shocking facts about Israel, lest we forget.
 

 
In 1920, the estimated population of Palestine was 603,000 of which Arabs were 90% and Jews 10%. Arabs comprised both Muslims and Christians. Led by British Zionists and general anti-Jewish actions in Europe, heavy migration of Jews to Palestine was organised for the next 16 years so that by 1936, the number of Jews had risen to 385,400 (27.8% of population) while 983,200 Arabs were living there. In 1948, through a UN overseen action, Israel was created leading to a war in Palestine (called ‘Al Naqba’ or catastrophe by Palestinians. This war was an onslaught on Palestinians forcing them to leave the lands of newly formed Israel. Between 1947 and 1950, 531 villages and towns were ethnically cleansed and people forced to flee their ancestral lands. Some 804,767 Arab Palestinians became refugees in surrounding countries. Jewish owned land holdings went from 8% prior to this war to 85% in 1950. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionist forces backed by Western powers was done by mass killings in 33 villages/localities.

[Source: Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle by Mazin Qumsiyeh excerpted in Americans for Peace Now , sister organization of Shalom Achshav , Israel’s preeminent peace movement.]
 

 
Body Count: Nearly 10,000 Palestinians have been killed since 2000
Since 2000, 9510 Palestinians and 1242 Israelis have been killed in the conflict. This includes 2167 Palestinian children and 134 Israeli children.

In the same period, 95,299 Palestinians and 11895 Israelis have been injured.

These are figures of directly caused death by opposition actions. It does not include deaths of Palestinians due to malnutrition or other indirect effects of Israeli actions like the blockade of Gaza, etc.

[Source: B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories ]
 

 
Political Prisoners: Over 6000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons

Israel is holding 6279 Palestinian political prisoners, including 300 child prisoners and 65 female prisoners. 520 of these are serving life terms while 466 are serving sentences of 20 years or more.

Palestinians are holding 0 Israeli prisoners.

[Source: Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association ]
 

 
Nearly 50,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished
Since 1967, Israel has demolished 48,488 Palestinian homes while no Israeli home has been demolished by Palestinians.

According to B’Tselem , Israeli Defence Forces carry out three types of mass demolitions of homes as part of a policy: 1) ‘Clearing Operations’ for military needs; 2) administrative demolitions of unauthorised houses in Area C of West Bank where Israel still forcibly retains planning and building authority and 3) punitive demolitions of houses intended to punish relatives and neighbours of Palestinians suspected of being involved in attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers.

Note that data is for ‘structures’ only and if a 3 storey building which was home to 3 families is destroyed, it is still counted as 1.

[Source: The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions ]
 

 
Israel has forcibly settled 500,000 Jews on Palestinian lands since 1967
Israel has built 261 settlements on Palestinian land consisting of 163 ‘Jewish only’ settlements and 98 outposts. This includes 24 neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.

After the 1967 war, this policy of forcibly taking over land and settling Israeli citizens on it was adopted. Over 500,000 Israeli citizens are now living in settlements on the West Bank. The sezed lands were declared closed military zones and Palestinians residing there or using the land for cultivation were forbidden to ever enter the area without military permission. Palestinian habitations have been walled off and a complex system of by-passes and roads built for their movement requiring military passes with armed guards monitoring all movement.

[Source: Americans for Peace Now , sister organization of Shalom Achshav , Israel’s preeminent peace movement.]
 

 
UN has condemned Israel 77 times for its illegal activities
The United Nations (UN) has passed 77 resolutions against Israel between 1955 and 2013 criticising it for unlawful attacks on neighbours, violation of human rights, gobbling up Palestinian land, illegal settlements, and Israel’s refusal to abide by the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention, besides the core issues of refugees, occupation of Jerusalem and expanding its borders.

Palestinians have been targeted by only 1 such UN resolution.

Such is the impinity of the Israeli state, backed by the US, that it has paid no heed to this condemnation by the global body and continues its policies unashamedly.

[Source: Americans for Peace Now , sister organization of Shalom Achshav , Israel’s preeminent peace movement, drawing from Paul Findley’s book Deliberate Deceptions (1998, pages 192-4) for resolutions passed from 1955 to 1992 and UN.org for 1993-2013]
 

 
Israel is a global exporter of war and violence
Israel spends 5.4% of its GDP on defence, one of the highest proportions in the world. Propped up by the US, Israel has become a major exporter of arms in its own right. In 2017 it was the world’s 7th largest exporter of arms according to SIPRI . It is well known for supplying arms and expertise to right wing death squads, dictators and repressive regimes round the world.

Since its formation in 1949, Israel has been aggressively involved in several declared and undeclared wars and several other military actions that are not officially called wars by Israeli state but in eality are wars. The major wars are: ‘War of Independence’ (1947-49); Suez-Sinai War (1956); Six-day War (1967); War of Attrition (1967-70); ‘Yom Kippur’ War (1973); First Lebanon War (1982-85); Second Lebanon War (2006); Gaza War 1 (2008-09); Gaza War 2 (2012); Gaza War 3 (2014). Besides these, it has officially listed its suppression of Palestinian intifadas (uprisings) as wars. These were the First Intifada (1987-93) and the Second (Al-Aqsa) Intifada (2000-05). All these wars have been marked by brutal massacres of civilians, including the infamous Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres in 1982.

[Source: MERIP and JVL ]

First published in Newsclick.
 

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