POLITICS
Rise of Israel: Decades of Ethnic Cleansing to Palestinians
Let’s remind the world about the truth they avoid.
Away from the sterile argument about the history of the land and to whom it belongs, nobody can deny the brutal Israeli abuses against the Palestinians from the last 73 years until this day.
From enforced expulsion to the Arab residents out of their homes, confiscation of lands, arbitrary arrests of men, women, and children. Building hundreds of settlement units every year, and murdering innocents in a cold blood.
Not only that, but they attribute the Arab culture — including their cuisine, clothes, and cinematic works — as their own.
Yet, there is limited coverage for the Israeli abuses under a worldwide silence that utmost ends up with condemnation and expression of concern, without any noticeable change on the ground.
From 1948 till the present moment, Israel disregarded every UN resolution concerning the violence on the Palestinian territories.
Continuing a series of erasing any trace of the Palestinians existence while creating an illusional and stolen history.
The Modern Holocaust
Expanding the settlements in the west bank twisted the map of the district and made the establishment of a Palestinian state impossible in the future. Thousands of settlement units are built every year, besides the division walls which separate the Palestinian families and paralyze their movement throughout the cities.
The apartheid system imposed by Israel on the west bank is real with different forms on the ground — including discriminating laws which repress the Palestinians and serve the settler’s rights, such as the confiscation of Palestinian properties from homes and farms.
About 20,000 Arab houses are threatened to be demolished and seized under “unlicensed construction” claims — to be given to settlers — in Jerusalem.
In occupied East Jerusalem, the Palestinians are not authorized to construct houses on their legally own lands since 2000. Which forces some of them to build their homes without a permit till they are ordered to demolish them forcefully at their expense. Similar actions of expulsion were imposed on the Palestinians who are considered Israeli civilians.
At the time of writing this article, there are attempts to expulse the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods in the city.
The assaults also involved the residents’ houses by repeated harassments from the settlers that escalate to a barbaric murder in some cases — as the Duma arson attack which caused a firebombing of a Palestinian family, and ِburning Mohammed Abu Khdier alive.
These crimes are not individual but urged by Knesset members. In many cases, the settlers are guarded by the military forces. By defending them against any Palestinian reactions that attempt to protect themselves and their families from the attacks.
What Israel has been doing since the occupation of East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza in 1967 until the present is not different from the enforced expulsion of the Palestinians from their homes in 1948 territories.
However, they’re being covered by the Israeli law to kick them instead of taking the traditional way of making genocides.
What’s Terrorism?
The Israeli leaders keep calling Palestinians terrorists whenever they show a natural reaction against the arbitrary executions toward them. But if we read the facts, we find that over 10,030 Palestinians were killed — including at least 2,172 children — and 95,255 injured by the Israeli forces from 2000 till 2021.
On the other hand, we find about 1,275 Israelis were killed and 11,895 injured during the same period. The Palestinians killed under the Israeli airstrikes are over 4000 victims, most of them are civilians. While 32 Israelis got killed by the Palestinian rockets.
Yet, we find a strong condemnation from the US and European Union of the Palestinian military wings — who react to the destructive attacks against Gaza — ignoring the Israeli siege, sniping, and airstrikes which damaged 52,900 homes in the 2008 aggression alone — when the use of rockets didn’t exist by the Palestinians— causing 6,410 with total demolish. Not to mention the use of prohibited weapons as the white phosphorus munitions.
How could we say Palestinians are causing terrorism based on these facts? It’s unreasonable and unjust to measure an entity that is toothed with heavy weapons and firepower with civilians who have nothing but stone and handiwork weapons.
The genocide that the Israeli snipers made at the peaceful Gaza border protests in 2018 that killed 183 and caused 12,000 injuries from a majority of people of women, children, men, and some with disabilities is called terrorism.
The murder of Iyad Al-Hallaq — a guy from the special needs — last year and shooting another in his neck from zero distance to cause him a total paralysis for refusing his generator to be taken by the Israeli soldiers is clear terrorism. They’re war crimes and thousands of other cases that faced a similar ending.
Let’s not forget there are about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners (captives) including 200 children and 450 with administrative detention — without charge.
It’s the Palestinian right to have self-defense against Israeli aggression, yet, the world recognizes the right of self-defense for Israel alone. This is what some parts of the international community refuse to acknowledge.
Ethnic Cleansing
Massive efforts are being made to erase any trace of the Palestinians on the land. Starting from the promotion of the claimed Israeli story of “a land without people for people without a land” — which is an absolute false opposes the reality where Palestinians lived and were recognized since before the foundation of Israel.
The Israeli government has built forests, roads, and national parks over the expulsed Palestinian villages in the 1948 territories including Jerusalem. Other villages were transferred to settlements.
According to Ilan Pappe — an Israeli historian — in his book the ethnic cleansing in Palestine:
…for example, the JNF did its utmost to try and cover the ruins of the Palestinian village of Mujaydil, at the town’s eastern entrance, with rows of pine trees, not a proper forest in this case but just a small wood. Such ‘green lungs’ can be found in many of Israel’s development towns that cover destroyed Palestinian villages… Near the now-uncultivated terraces, and under the swings and picnic tables, and the European pine forests, there lie buried the houses and fields of the Palestinians whom Israeli troops expelled in 1948… The true mission of the JNF, in other words, has been to conceal these visible remnants of Palestine not only by the trees it has planted over them but also by the narratives it has created to deny their existence.
The Arabic culture wasn’t left either, Israel adopted the Palestinian traditional dress in their national fashion. The Israeli cuisine includes many originated Arabic dishes — such as Hummus, Falafel, Shakshokah, Tabbouleh, Kubba, and Mujaddarah — which they claim to be theirs.
Biased Media & Censoring Social Media
Throughout the previous years, the Media coverage has been ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict events for the benefit of Israel. You will observe a limited coverage of the violence occurring in the occupied territories.
Some Media describes the Palestinian peaceful protests with names as clashes while calling Palestinians gunmen and terrorists.
At this very moment where there is a heavy escalation between Israel and the Palestinian citizens throughout the cities particularly in the Gaza strip, the major news media is ignoring the brutal Israeli airstrikes on the civilian towers and homes, except for Al-Jazeera Arabic and limited coverage in Al-Jazeera English.
Social media, on the other hand, has joined the Israeli crimes by shutting any speaking voice about it. Hundreds of contents and user accounts were censored recently which show the aggressive attacks on the Gaza strip, Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the settlers’ assaults on the Palestinian houses inside Israel.
Fortunately, some media started to speak up as what was mentioned in the Guardian's article about its worst errors of judgment over the 200 years:
When Arthur Balfour, then Britain’s foreign secretary, promised 104 years ago to help establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, his words changed the world. The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour declaration. Scott was a supporter of Zionism and this blinded him to Palestinian rights. In 1917 he wrote a leader on the day the Balfour declaration was announced, in which he dismissed any other claim to the Holy Land, saying: “The existing Arab population of Palestine is small and at a low stage of civilisation.” Whatever else can be said, Israel today is not the country the Guardian foresaw or would have wanted.
Spurious Peace Attempts
Let’s be honest, the zionists did not establish their state over the rubble of Palestinian villages and continue building tens of thousands of settlements in the Palestinian territories to accept peace one day.
Before the creation of Israel, there was the UN resolution 181 of the 1947 partition plan — which is still a right for Palestinians — that gives 43% of historical Palestine to the Arabs — who already owned 94.2% of the land at that time after the Jewish immigration — while jews who owned only 5.8% got 56% of the partition plan.
Neither the Palestinians nor Jews accepted the Plan. The Zionists took an opportunity to take as much as they could of the land in the 1948 war as the British mandate left, this formed the current Israeli map excluding the recognized occupied territories in 1967.
Israel wiped the idea of the 1947 partition plan after the six days war under the rule of acceptance of the existing reality. The Oslo accord aimed to create a Palestinian state in the Gaza strip and West Bank, but this wasn’t the case after 5 years of proceeding with the deal in the second Camp David Accord.
Israel refused to withdraw its settlements from those territories, it didn’t give self-governance for the Palestinians in the rest of the regions either, and excluded the return of the Palestinian diaspora.
The Trump peace plan made the two-state solution an impossible thing, it consisted of keeping 261 settlements as a part of Israel— which increased and keep increasing every year — leaving the Palestinian territories as enclaves inside the Israeli map, without independence of borders, military, nor a capital in Jerusalem or return of the refugees.
All this would still be agreed upon extra negotiations in a future vision if the Palestinians prove their good intentions.
The conclusion is Israel is an occupier, they have never and will never let Palestinians have their independent state.
Binyamin Netanyahu recycled Ben-Gurion’s ‘alarming’ statistics:’Ifthe Arabs in Israel form 40 per cent of the population,’ Netanyahu said, ‘this is the end of the Jewish state.’ ‘But 20 per cent is also a problem,’ he added. ‘If the relationship with these 20 per cent becomes problematic, the state is entitled to employ extreme measures.” He did not elaborate. — The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p250
On the other hand, it’s illogical for a person who believes to be expulsed from his home, after murdering or arresting members of his family, forced to live an oppressive life daily while endangering the existence of his identity to accept an unfair peace and give up his stolen rights.
The only way for peace is when Israel admits the rights of existence of Palestinians on the whole parts of the holy land, and commits to compensating them regarding it. That could be the only possible way to make peace in the middle east.
