The Headline News from Palestine

Mazen Qumsiyeh

As'ad Abukhalil interview by Ali Abunimah on the the Nahr al-Bared siege

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(from an Internationally recognized Jewish South African in a major South
African paper)
Israel 2007: worse than apartheid, by Ronnie Kasrils


Top architects accuse Israelis of oppression, Hugh Muir, Saturday May 26,
2007 The Guardian "Leading British architects have accused their
counterparts in Israel of complicity in schemes that contribute to the
"social, political and economic oppression of Palestinians".


(40 years of illegal colonial settlements)
"A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after
the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements
in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that
he still believes that he was right."


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Palestinian Refugees at the center again
by Mazin B. Qumsiyeh (Media Monitors, Saturday, May 26, 2007)

"Research has shown that the return of Palestinian refugees to be legal,
moral, and also doable. Annulling it would set a poor precedent in flaunting
international law and allowing exclusion based on religion."

Forty thousand Palestinian refugees were directly affected by the recent
Lebanese army attack (funded by the US government) on a fringe group. A few
hundred Palestinian refugees are stranded on the borders of Iraq trying to
flee the direct and deliberate attacks on them and the refusal of the
so-called "government" of Iraq and the US/British occupation forces to
provide protections. Israeli occupation forces (funded and armed by the US)
attack refugee camps in the occupied West Bank and Gaza almost on a daily
basis. These tragedies in Lebanon, occupied Iraq, and occupied Palestine
once again highlight the truth that no peace is possible without addressing
the central issue of the festering conflicts in Western Asia: the
displacement of Palestinians by the Zionist movement backed by Western
powers. While awareness of this in the International community is
widespread, there is self-censorship in the US mainstream media to the
detriment of US national interests.

The British and French empires made promises to the Zionist movement in 1917
to establish a "Jewish homeland" in Palestine if they won WWI. At the time,
Palestine had a minority Jewish presence of 7% living on 3% of privately
owned land. Jewish land ownership at the eve of the British-inspired,
American-pushed UN General Assembly RECOMMENDATION of dividing Palestine
into a "Jewish state" (55 percent of the land) and an "Arab state" (45
percent) in 1947 was less than seven percent of all privately held lands.

This recommendation was never implemented and instead Israel was
unilaterally declared by force and only admitted to the UN after assurances
that it would comply in a "timely manner" with UN resolutions including
those calling for Palestinian refugees to be repatriated. Yet, from that
time forward, Israel backed by Western powers methodically expanded and
destroyed the economic and political life of the remaining native
Palestinians. As a result of sometimes ingenious and other times brutal ways
of ethnic cleansing, a vast majority of Palestinian families (Christians and
Muslims) have lost lands or homes. Israel/Palestine now has about five
million Jews and five million Christians and Muslims. Of the nine million
Palestinians in the world, nearly six million are refugees or displaced
persons. A quarter of Israel's 1.2 million "Goyim" (non-Jewish) citizens are
considered by the Israeli legal system as "present-absentees"; lands and
homes vacated by Christian and Muslim refugees and "absentees" are
considered state property and turned over to the Jewish agency that
administers the land and leases it only to Jews. Dozens of Palestinian
villages and towns are "unrecognized" inside the borders of what became
Israel by 1949. Even as recent as last month, one whole Bedouin village in
the Negev was destroyed. These are the lucky ones because they are
considered by law Israeli (albeit 10th class) citizens. The situation in the
occupied areas (including refugee camps in those areas) is much worse.

Israeli hafrada (Hebrew for Separation) not only ensures no return for
refugees and displaced people but there is regular land confiscation in the
occupied West Bank and efforts to literally imprison and starve the
population so that the natives leave the remainder of Palestine. South
African law professor John Dugard, special rapporteur for the United Nations
on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, in a report
to the UN General Assembly stated that Israel created an "apartheid
regime... worse than the one that existed in South Africa." President Jimmy
Carter’s recent book titled "Palestine: Peace not apartheid" was actually
far too mild. The Apartheid walls and barriers are built around shrinking
group of ghettos and separate families from each other, from their farms,
from schools, from hospitals, and from work. No such system was ever
introduced in South Africa. The Jewish social professor at Harvard
University Sarah Roy calls it an organized and meticulous decades-long
program of "economic de-development". Ronald Reagan in his diaries in the
early 1980s was clearer "the Israelis for sure intend on taking over the
West Bank" (the remaining 20% of Palestine).
Research has shown that the return of Palestinian refugees to be legal,
moral, and also doable. [1] Annulling it would set a poor precedent in
flaunting international law and allowing exclusion based on religion.
Israeli artists and intellectuals have called for transforming Israel to be
a country of its citizens instead of the self-declared "Jewish state" in the
same way that South Africa evolved to a state of all its citizens. It is
only logical to expect that the current Palestinian citizens of Israel and
secular Israelis in general would aspire to a state that has a constitution
to protect all citizens instead of the current laws to discriminate against
non-Jews. Israeli laws give automatic citizenship to any Jew in the world
who desires it (except those who converted to other religions) while denying
return to native Palestinians simply for being Christian or Muslim.

Meanwhile, the U.S. congress, subservient to the Israeli lobby, gives more
of our money to Israel every year than it does to Sub-Saharan Africa,
Central America, and South America COMBINED. In this fact alone we will find
a lot to explain the quagmire we are creating in places ranging from Iraq to
Somalia. In it we find the reason why surveys even in Western Europe show
the public to identify Israel and the US (not N Korea or Iran) as the two
most dangerous countries in the world. To remedy this situation and advance
US interests around the world is not too complicated: US citizens have to
say enough is enough just like we did with ending US support for Apartheid
South Africa. US policy would then support basic International and
Humanitarian laws. We can start by engaging in boycotts, divestments and
sanctions on Israel until it implements resolutions of the International
Court of Justice, the 65 UN Security Council resolutions, and the over 300
UN General Assembly resolutions. Already many trade unions, churches, and
universities around the world are moving in that direction. As always, the
media and the government will follow.

Note:
[1]. See here and
here


Mazin