Alquds issue 83 hi re

2 MAR 2016

Issue no 83, WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

ANALYSIS

Palestine 2016: An optimistic outlook

REPORT

Success of BDS campaign is essential for Palestinian survival

Israeli scheme to eliminate Green Line and judaize Occupied Jerusalem

Palestinian Question Washing Its Hands of Palestine and Why ?!!

Issue No 83 // 2 MAR , 2016

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ANALYSIS

Palestine 2016: An optimistic outlook

BY : Alaa Tartir

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n 2015, Palestine did not look good. According to the IMEU’s Review, approximately 170 Palestinians were killed and 15,377 were injured by Israelis in 2015; Israel destroyed or dismantled 539 Palestinians homes and other structures in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem (with more than 11,000 outstanding demolition orders against Palestinian structures in “Area C” of the occupied West Bank); and there were 6,800 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel as of December 2015 and approximately 650,000 Jewish settlers living in the occupied territories.

Will Palestine look any better in 2016?

Are there any sources of optimism and hope amid these bleak facts and the current events unfolding? Yes, I argue, despite all the odds.

A quick glance at the existing analyses indicates a worse year for Palestinians in 2016. These analyses predict an escalation of violence, the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA) with negative consequences on the Palestinian people, further intra-Palestinian 2 |

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fragmentation in the run-up to Abbas’s succession, fierce or even bloody intraFatah disputes, entrenchment of the Fatah-Hamas divide, continuation of the Israeli military occupation, and persistent American and European failure to put an end to the injustice and oppression.

To make things even worse, observers warn that 2016 might create a “ripe moment” for the arrival of ISIS to Palestine, especially if a “security vacuum” is created in the aftermath of the PA collapse.

Some of these predictions are plausible, but others, especially the ones coming from different local or international security apparatus and intelligence establishments, are mere speculation or unfounded and baseless predictions. These security-driven predictions are problematic as they prioritize the Israeli security needs and phobias and neglect basic Palestinian human rights and instead sustain the authoritarian trends and transformations. Hence, I argued, that instead of equating the “security vacuum” with the emergence of ISIS or a condition of chaos, it is the right moment to start

tackling the real question as far as security matters are concerned: How to put an immediate end to the Israeli military occupation?

Still, the fundamental problem with all the above-mentioned dominant predictions is that they dismiss the good news that is coming from Palestine. Here is a short list of some “sources of hope and optimism” to watch for in 2016.

First and most importantly, a new and different Palestinian generation is emerging. This generation carries new visions, objectives, and tools. While a segment of this generation is revolting in the streets of Palestine, another segment (although less visible than the revolting youth) is strategizing for the struggle and operationalizing these strategies, locally and internationally.

This new transnational generation is also forming its own intellectual leadership which is crucial to any process of a positive change. Year 2016 might witness the long-awaited revival of the Palestinian political thought, although this is an am-

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bitious goal. Undoubtedly, a new leadership is in-the-making and will emerge from this generation that is capable of addressing the root causes of the Palestinian misery, weakness and fragmentation. This is not an unattainable outcome or far-fetched objective.

This generation is not only fed-up with the Israeli occupation and its colonial policies, but also it is fed-up with the existing illegitimate and unrepresentative Palestinian leadership. They are sick and tired of the continuous failures, and they are thinking and acting to ensure that they get closer to the realization of their rights.

If this generation is “invisible” to many observers and policy-makers, a change of the lenses is urgently needed simply because over the last few year a new Palestinian leadership emerged in Israel and amongst the Palestinian civil society, for instance.

The unity of the Palestinian leadership inside Israel is another source of optimism, despite the caveats. The “coup” during the 2015 Israeli parliamentary elections transformed the threat of the Palestinian existence in Israeli politics into a new political opportunity.

The emergence of new leaders as Ayman Odeh will not pass without consequences on the Palestinian political and civil rights and the overall dynamics of the Palestinian struggle, if utilized wisely.

Indeed, observers argued that “instead of frantically trying to revive the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to represent all Palestinians...Palestinians can simply look west, to the Palestinian political parties inside Israel and already

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represented in the Knesset.” Such move, despite its potential limitations, would potentially mean new configurations and different set of assumptions for the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

The “new” Palestinian civil society leadership that emerged over the last decade is the third element in the optimistic and hopeful outlook for justice in 2016. The unstoppable successes of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement are the prime example. The influential role of the BDS and the successes it achieved were not only because of the organic formation of the movement’s leadership or because of its unifying and comprehensive principles and objectives, but also because of the sense of ownership to one of the tools for the self-determination struggle, the existing historical evidence regarding the effectiveness of such tools in ensuring justice, and the shifts and transformations in the global public opinion about the PalestinianIsraeli conflict.

The growth of the international solidarity movement that work in harmony with the Palestinian civil society priorities and calls is an inspiring example of global collaboration for universal rights realization.

Furthermore, Palestinians have far more legal tools to realize their rights than anytime earlier. The adoption of a rights-based approach in harmony with international law as part and parcel of a new Palestinian strategy and vision is key to any alternative political program.

While it is true that this alternative political program does not exist in full,

however it is not true that fresh and critical Palestinian policy voices do not exist.

These policy voices, regularly marginalized - especially if they are independent- in the Palestinian national liberation movement, are a crucial element in the optimistic future outlook due to their contribution to the processes of policy shaping and making at home, in exile, and at international fora.

These policy voices put the Palestinian people’s creativity, resilience, and the practice of resistance as a way of living under occupation, in the core of their thinking and analysis, which is a practice that has been missed for a while.

This “methodological choice” has direct implications on the short-term and longterm outcomes and on the legitimacy of the future leadership and its strategic choices and decisions.

The materialization of these sources of hope and optimism, or some of them, in 2016 might make it a different year than what the dominant predictions expect. One question remains unanswered, however: is there any good news coming from Israel?

This article was originally published in the Huffington Post.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Ma’an News Agency’s editorial policy.

Alaa Tartir is the program director of al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and a post-doctoral researcher at the Graduate Institute

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report

186 Palestinians killed by Israel over last 5 months: NGO

By Ryvka Barnard

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ccording to the latest Palestinian figures, since Oct. 1 of last year, at least 186 Palestinians have been killed and another 15,645 injured by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Over the same period, according to Israeli figures, 33 Israelis have been killed in a months-long wave of violence that some observers are calling a third Palestinian “Intifada” (“uprising”).

In a statement, the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) noted that 41 of the 186 Palestinians slain had been killed since the beginning of the current year.

According to the PRC, over the course of the last five months, Israeli forces have killed 41 Palestinians from East Jerusalem, 73 from Hebron and Ramallah, 19 from Jenin, 10 from Bethlehem, 10 from Nablus, and five from Tulkarm and Salfit, in addition to 25 Palestinians from Gaza and two Arab-Israelis.

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The NGO also noted that 88 of the slain Palestinians had been killed after allegedly stabbing -- or attempting to stab -- Israelis; 53 during clashes with Israeli troops; 21 after allegedly carrying out vehicular attacks; four by Israeli bombardments; and two after having been run over by Jewish settlers.

It also noted that, over the same period, a Palestinian child had been killed in Gaza by an explosive device, while one Palestinian detainee had died in an Israeli prison.

The PRC went on to state that, since last Oct. 1, 15,645 Palestinians had been injured by Israeli gunfire, 1,418 of whom had been struck by heavy ammunition, while another 3,153 had sustained injuries from rubber bullets.

Another 10,608 had suffered temporary asphyxia due to teargas fired by Israeli forces, the PRC said, while 464 others had been injured after being beaten by Israeli troops.

Israel’s Magen David Adom paramedic service, meanwhile, says that, over the same period, 33 Israelis have been killed and 311 injured in alleged attacks by Palestinians, including 38 who were seriously injured and 48 who sustained moderate wounds.

The Israeli foreign Ministry, for its part, alleges that, since Oct. 1 of last year, Palestinians have carried out more than 188 knife attacks, 75 shooting attacks and 39 vehicular attacks against Israelis.

Since last October, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories have seen numerous clashes between frustrated Palestinians and Israeli forces.

Many observers attribute the recent uptick in violence to the insistence of extremist Jewish settlers -- often accompanied by Israeli security forces -- on forcing their way into East Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, Islam’s third holiest site.

Issue No 83 // 2 MAR , 2016

ARTICLE

Success of BDS campaign is essential for Palestinian survival

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine The Israeli apartheid state seems to be taking the international campaign of boycott and disinvestment as well as other forms of protest against Israel’s decades-old occupation of the Palestinian homeland more seriously than ever before. According to the Hebrew media, Israel is utilizing its political and intelligence assets to thwart efforts to boycott Israeli settlements especially in countries considered close friends and allies of the Jewish state such as Canada and the United States. Israel is also pressuring governments and parliaments to take decisions and pass laws incriminating boycott of Israeli products. Last week, some irate Israeli officials sounded quite hysterical when they labeled the BDS movement “anti-Semitic.” In the past, we thought that anti-Semites were those bigots who hated Jews for being Jewish. Now Israel is redefining anti-Semites as those Zionists hate for criticizing the evil Israeli occupation of Palestine and systematic oppression and persecution meted out to the nonJewish population. The exaggerated Israeli apprehension about solidarity displayed by many people around the world with oppressed Palestinians languishing under a Nazi-like occupation reflects a deep moral crisis facing the apartheid state. One Israeli friend told this writer last week that “the BDS movement could have very dangerous potentials for Israel.” “Israel through its many canticles, especially in the West, could bully governments and business firms to stand against the BDS, but Israel cannot force ordinary people to buy Israeli goods and products.” Moral Stance The BDS movement is not anti-Semitic or anything of this sort. It is rather a moral, conscientious endeavor aimed at discouraging the apartheid state from pursuing its manifestly murderous tactics and

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policies against the helpless Palestinians.

Needless to say, these evil tactics are intended, first and foremost, to make life for Palestinians unbearable so much that these thoroughly persecuted people would be forced to leave their historical and ancestral homeland. Hence, many ordinary people around the world have reached the moral conviction that buying Israeli products and doing business with Israel actually amounts to complicity to murder and oppression. This is not an exaggeration. Israel has been carrying out a slow-motion ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, aimed at forcing them, or as many of them as possible to emigrate, so that the apartheid entity would be able to establish an ethnically and religiously pure and racist state. Needless to say, Israel is using the same tools that Nazi Germany used to carry out its racial policies. I am not eager to hurl the Nazi epithets at Jews. But let us be honest. When Jews think, behave and act like the Nazis did, we should be able to compare these oppressors with the Nazis.

Today, Israel emulates Nazi Germany in many respects. In Germany they had the Master Race whim. And here in Israel-Palestine, Jews are treated as Chosen People whereas non-Jews are treated as children of a lesser God. In Germany, non-Aryans were viewed as “untermenschen”, and in Israel nonJews are called “Goyem,” a connotation for animals. In Germany, the Nazis had the Lebensraum concept, and in Israel Jews are taking over Palestinian homes, land, property and businesses as well as building Jewish-only settlements. And as the Nazis used military might to reach their nefarious goals, the apartheid state of the Jews

are employing the same tools in order to reach very much the same goals, including the acquisition of neighbors’ lands, ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, military supremacy and regional hegemony. And they do all of this in the name of the holocaust.!!!! For these reasons, it is morally imperative that every honest woman and man around the world take a moral decision, now not tomorrow, to refrain from buying Israel produces and products from the nearby supermarket or grocery store.

Don’t buy Israeli products. Doing so helps Israel murder another Palestinian child. This is the very least honest people around the world could do in order to prevent evil from prevailing in Occupied Palestine. Israel may be hell-bent on crushing the Palestinians and dispossessing them of their land and human rights. But we who are loyal to our moral conscience first and foremost must be as determined to stand on the side of truth and justice.

A final word: We Palestinians depend for our very survival let alone steadfastness in the face of Israeli oppression on the goodwill and solidarity of the peoples of the world. So please, don’t forsake us don’t leave us alone.

Because if you do, we might be forced, God forbid, to face the unthinkable at the hands of Hitler’s disciples. Khalid Amayreh is a veteran journalist and current affairs commentator living in Occupied Palestine.

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Palestinian Question

Europe is Following Obama Washing Its Hands of Palestine and Why ?!!

By Alan Hart

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who has covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East.

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y headline is a response to recent comments made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a joint press conference in Berlin with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the decision of the Cameron government in the UK to make boycotting goods from “Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank” by publicly-funded bodies including local councils and universities a criminal offence. Much to the delight of Netanyahu who has rejected a French initiative to convene a regional conference to try to get a peace process going, Merkel said, “Now is certainly not the time to make really comprehensive progress.”

She added: “The European Union, and Germany as a member state, is very concerned about seeing things realistically. (My emphasis added). We know the threat of terrorism that Israel has to endure. We believe, on the other hand, that we have to advance a process of peaceful coexistence, and this, according to our opinion, is ultimately built on a two-state solution.” In my view Merkel’s words were, to say the least, disingenuous.

(My dictionary definition of that term is “not frank or open; merely posing as being frank or open; crafty, devious.”)

If Merkel and all other European leaders and their governments had any interest in acknowledging the reality on the ground in Israel/Palestine they would refrain from describing the attacks by individual Palestinians on Israeli Jews over recent months as terrorism.

To qualify as an act of terrorism an attack has to be motivated/driven by the need and determination to achieve a political goal. In the case of the Palestinians that would be ending Israel’s occupation and securing an acceptable amount of justice. That has not been 6 |

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the motivation or drive of any of the Palestinians who have attacked and sometimes killed Israeli Jews in recent months. The attacks were and still are motivated/driven by total despair – the abandonment by individuals of all hope for an end to Israel’s on-going and ever-expanding colonization of the occupied West Bank and all it means of terms of the theft of more and more Palestinian land and water and the destruction of more and more Palestinian homes. In other words, the individual Palestinian attacks on Israeli Jews over recent months are best (most accurately) described as understandable responses to Israel’s brutal

There is actually a great and little known truth hidden behind those words. It is to do with the real reason why Israel possesses nuclear weapons.

repression.

My other reason for describing Merkel’s words as disingenuous is that she knows, as all other European leaders and their governments know, that the two-state solution is dead, killed by Israel’s on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank. All Western leaders also know that even if they summoned up the will to use the leverage they have to try to cause Israel to agree to bring the concept of a two-state solution back to life as the way to peace, there could never be such a solution to

the conflict because no Israeli government is ever going to initiate a Jewish civil war to make the space for a viable Palestinian mini state. The problem for all European leaders and the American president (Obama at present and whoever succeeds him after the November election) is that they can’t acknowledge that the two-state solution is dead because to do so would leave them with only two options. One would be to go for a confrontation with Zionism and its monster child and use all of their leverage to try to bring about a one-state solution with equal political, other civil and human rights for all.

(Yes, that would mean the de-Zionization of Palestine) The other would be to say (as Obama has said more than once) that they can’t want peace more than the parties themselves; and that, of course, would be the cover for indicating without saying so that they were washing their hands of Palestine and leaving the fate of its Arabs to be determined by Zionism.

On the subject of the Cameron government’s decision to make boycotting goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank by publiclyfunded bodies a criminal offence, I agree with a comment made by Glenn Greenwald in a recent article. Cameron was, he wrote, playing his part in a very co-ordinated and well-financed campaign led by Israel and its supporters to destroy the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement. (In Jerusalem on 15 February, at the annual conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, retired Israeli Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser described BDS as “anti-Semitism” and “terrorism.”

I imagine he’s deluded enough to regard all and any criticism of Israel’s policies and actions as both). Hillary Clinton, still it seems the most likely

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next president of America, has been advancing this Zionist campaign to de-legitimize and outlaw the BDS movement for many months. She and others who are dancing to Zionism’s tune are not concerned that they are, as Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat put it in a PLO statement, “perpetuating injustice and empowering occupation.” Now back to Merkel’s statement that the European Union, and Germany as a member state, is “very concerned about seeing things realistically.” There is actually a great and little known truth hidden behind those words. It is to do with the real reason why Israel possesses nuclear weapons.

As I explain in detail in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, those Israeli leaders who insisted that anything should be done to enable their state to possess and develop nuclear weapons never believed they were necessary as a part of Israel’s defense against the Arabs. (In fact Ariel Sharon was the leader of those who were opposed to Israel acquiring nuclear weapons. Behind closed doors he argued that if Israel had them, the Arabs at some point would also acquire them.

And if that happened, he said, Israel’s ability to impose its will on the Arabs with conventional/non-nuclear weapons would be seriously compromised).

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The possession of nuclear weapons is Zionism’s ultimate blackmail card.

That was indicated to me in 1969 by Moshe Dayan, Israel’s one-eyed warlord. He assumed that a day would come when just about the whole world, governments as well as peoples, was fed up with Israel and would subject it to immense and possibly irresistible pressure to end its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians. At a point I said to Dayan, “What you seem to be saying is that if ever such a day comes, Israel’s leaders will say to the world, ‘Don’t push us too far or we’ll use these things.’” Dayan gave me a big smile and replied, “You’re understanding me.” (Three days before Israel went to war in June 1967 I asked him what he thought the coming days would bring.

He smiled, made a gesture with a finger to illustrate what he was about to say, then, directly to the camera, he said, “The desert is beckoning.” That told me Israel was about to strike.

In a report to ITN on the evening of Sunday 4 June I speculated that Israel would go to war the following morning. It did. And that’s why I had no problem believing what Dayan indicated to me in 1969).

The conclusion I draw from everything I have learned from nearly half

a century of engagement in various capacities with the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel is that there are two main reasons for the refusal of the major Western powers to confront Zionism in order to provide the Palestinians with an acceptable amount of justice.. One is the influence (declining a little but still awesome) that the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations has in the corridors of power together with unlimited funds to buy politicians. The other is fear that if pushed further than they were prepared to go, Israel’s leaders would press a nuclear button or two and more if needed. This fear is no doubt reinforced in the minds of those Western leaders who are aware of what Prime Minister Golda Meir once said to me in an interview for the BBC’s Panorama programme.

As readers of my book and one or two of my blog posts over the years know, she said that in a doomsday situation “Israel would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.”

To those who are clinging to the hope that Europe will take the lead in pressing Israel to be serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept I say – It won’t happen.

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Israeli scheme to eliminate Green Line and judaize Occupied Jerusalem Hilary Aked is an analyst and researcher whose PhD studies focus on the influence of the Israel lobby in the United Kingdom.

Follow her on Twitter: @HilaryAked Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author.

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Palestinian official report exposed an Israeli scheme to eliminate the Green Line in an effort to facilitate the completion of the Judaization project in East Jerusalem. The report said that falling in line with the ongoing settlement schemes that aim at judaizing East Jerusalem and eliminating the Green Line, the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem has developed a structural drawing to expand the settlement of Ramot on an area of more than 419 dunums of lands of the Palestinian villages of: Lifta, Beit Exa and Beit Hanina East of Jerusalem, to be included within the Judaization project “Ramot Slopes”. The Green Line is an imaginary line that separates the occupied Palestinian territories in 1948 from the occupied Palestinian territories in 1967. The report, issued by the PLO National Bureau to defend the land and resist the settlement, pointed out that the new 8 |

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Israeli plan would lead to the confiscation of 45 dunums of land of the villages Walaja, Shuafat and Enata to complete the establishment of the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank, and the establishment of a new crossing. The Ramot Slopes project will be implemented through the establishment of 1,435 settlement units, 240 private units, and the construction of public institutions. The new settlement neighborhood will extend westwards towards the valley of the Beit Exa, and southwards toward the depopulated village of Lifta, over what was known as the “Armistice line”. This will lead to a significant expansion in the northwestern part of east Jerusalem, which is one of the terms of the Jerusalem plan of 2020 which provides for the establishment of 58 thousand settlement units in the Jerusalem city by 2020.

The weekly report, which tracks the Israeli settlement violations of the

Palestinian territories, showed that the Judaization campaigns reached the Israeli education system, explaining that the Israeli Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett plans to launch the next educational year under the slogan of the “Unification of Jerusalem.” Bennett indicated, in his remarks, that a broad educational plan will be delivered to students of the grades of the primary level up to the secondary level, in response to all attempts that aimed at separating Jews from the city of Jerusalem.

The report further documented the demolitions in Abu Nawar hamlet in occupied Jerusalem, the demolition orders in its neighborhoods and violations in the al-Aqsa Mosque. It also pointed to the demolition orders in al-Khalil and Ni’lin village in Ramallah, as well as settlers’ violations in various provinces.

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images

Beautiful children from the village of Bilin, Palestine. 2 Mar 2016

They demolished our homes.. They will never demolish our will to live.. 2 Mar 2016

From The Al-Aqsa Mosque earlier today Spring Al Aqsa and the sanctity of families. 2 Mar 2016

This morning in the courtyards of masjid Aqsa, beautiful Holy Jerusalem.. 2 Mar 2016

Spring owers from occupied Palestine. 2 Mar 2016

Islamic of University of The Gaza, third and ďŹ nal day of the graduation. 2 Mar 2016

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Issue No 83 // 2 MAR , 2016