Bi-Weekly Brief for March 28, 2022
A digest of Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinian land and livelihoods, and Palestinian resistance.
Israel positions itself as bridge between Arab leaders and US in evolving new world order
While Gabriel Boric, the new president of Chile, called for solidarity with Palestinians similar to that shown to Ukrainians, many Arab leaders regard Palestine as yesterday’s issue. Propelled by the Ukraine crisis and fears of a possible US-Iran nuclear deal, Israel, Egypt and the UAE conducted a path-breaking summit at Sharm el-Sheikh on March 22. The fruits of the Abraham Accords were fully visible within Israel itself when, on March 27-28, Israeli Foreign Minister Lapid met in the Naqab kibbutz of Sde Boker with US Secretary of State Blinken and the foreign ministers of Egypt, UAE, Morocco and Bahrain while Prime Minister Bennett was isolated with Covid. According to Haaretz, Israel refused to invite the PA to participate as Blinken had requested and the King of Jordan declined to attend, instead visiting Ramallah on March 28 to discuss rising tensions in Jerusalem with PA President Abbas. As the officials gathered in the desert, alleged ISIS sympathizers conducted a second lethal attack in a week within Israel and the Israeli cabinet approved 4 new Jewish towns in the Naqab, where the ethnic cleansing of Bedouin citizens of Israel has long been underway. Meeting with Bennett before the summit, Blinken said there was ‘no daylight’ between Israel and the US on the need to prevent a nuclear Iran, and called on him to avoid violence during Ramadan by stopping settlement expansion.
He then met with the PA president who reportedly criticized the ‘double standard’ in how international law was being invoked in the Ukraine crisis but ignored in the case of Palestine.
What kind of ‘haven’ is the Jewish State when so many of Ukraine’s Jews prefer refuge in Germany?
Relations between Ukraine and Israel have been strained since the Russian invasion began. Israel has turned away many non Jewish Ukrainian refugees, refused to supply Ukraine with its Iron Dome and Pegasus surveillance system and has no interest in sanctioning Russian oligarchs who have donated heavily to Israel and are now making it their home. According to one report, some 5,000 Jewish Ukrainians have sought refuge in Germany instead of Israel, seeing it as more welcoming, and Israel as a ‘conflict zone.’ On March 20, Ukraine’s relations with Israel took a turn for the worse when President Zelensky delivered a live-stream speech to the Knesset in which he stated that Moscow was using the “language of the final solution.” The following day Prime Minister Bennett rejected the words of the Jewish president of Ukraine, saying “it is forbidden to compare anything to the Holocaust.” Meanwhile in the US, Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger from Illinois, a strong supporter of Israel, declared on March 20 that its refusal to give Ukraine military aid “will have bearing on future aid from the US to Israel” and everyone had to pick a side in the battle “between Good and Evil.”
Israel’s ongoing dispossession draws rebuke from some in Congress but business as usual prevails
On March 21, 50 House Democrats signed a letter asking Blinken to stop the ‘destruction and displacement’ of Walaja village adjacent to Bethlehem, which they said “would run counter to the values shared by the U.S. and Israel.” Meanwhile, the repression and takeover of Palestinian land was unrelenting. On March 15 three Palestinians – one of them a 17 year old - were killed during night raids in Qalandia and Balata refugee camps and the Naqab. The army has fired live rounds and injured scores of Palestinians during West Bank demonstrations, including in the UNESCO Heritage site of Battir near Bethlehem, where there were protests against settlers who had moved tents and water tanks onto Battir’s land. On several occasions Israeli forces attacked farmers and shepherds in Gaza with gas bombs and live ammunition and repeatedly fired at fishing boats. The army razed lands and destroyed olive trees near Bethlehem, and demolished agricultural sheds and solar units near Jericho, while settlers uprooted olive trees, stoned Palestinian drivers, vandalized cars and homes in a West Bank village, and set a mosque on fire. It was also recently reported that Israelis can fulfill their national service requirement by volunteering to serve at ‘illegal’ farming outposts. Now every soldier manning a checkpoint is expected to meet the quota of adding at least 50 Palestinians to the ‘Blue Wolf’ tracking system during each shift, rapidly expanding Israel’s ability to monitor the entire Palestinian population. While Israel intensifies its control of the Palestinian people and de facto annexation of Palestinian land, the US Ambassador to Israel stated that he is prepared to ‘pound the tables’ to ensure Palestinians get not their freedom or equality, but 4G internet service.
High Court to rule on whether to expel 1,200 Palestinians from villages in the South Hebron Hills
On March 15, the Israeli High Court held a final hearing on petitions brought by residents in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills after they were expelled from their homes in 1999 to make way for Firing Zone 918 and then allowed to return but only a temporary basis. In the decades since then, the 20 villages where farmers and shepherds live have been subjected to frequent demolitions and settler attacks. The state prosecutor in the case and one of the three judges who will shortly rule on the fate of Masafer Yatta’s residents are themselves settlers.
Yet another report lays bare Israel’s apartheid practices as BDS gets a big win in the US
Shortly after Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh offended some members of a Congressional delegation by using the word ‘apartheid,’ Canadian law professor Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council, released a hard-hitting report spelling out exactly why Israel’s policies towards Palestinians qualify as the ‘crime of apartheid’ as defined by the Convention Against Apartheid and the Rome Statute. He concluded: “This is apartheid. It does not have some of the same features as practiced in southern Africa; in particular, much of what has been called ‘petit apartheid’ is not present. On the other hand, there are pitiless features of Israel’s ‘apartness’ rule in the occupied Palestinian territory that were not practiced in southern Africa, such as segregated highways, high walls and extensive checkpoints, a barricaded population, missile strikes and tank shelling of a civilian population, and the abandonment of the Palestinians’ social welfare to the international community. With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.” Two days after the report was released, the Middle East Studies Association announced the culmination of a process that had begun in 2014: by a vote of 768-167, its members upheld the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel.
Water Fact
March 22, World Water Day, put a spotlight on the water calamity in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli group Gisha issued the report ‘Still Waters’ that declares: “Access to water and sanitation services is a basic human need, fundamental right and patently humanitarian imperative. Israel’s control over the crossings has far-reaching ramifications for living conditions in Gaza. This control comes with legal and moral obligations to protect human rights and ensure access to everything needed to facilitate normal life, all the more so given the far-reaching damage caused to infrastructure by Israel’s assault on the Strip in May 2021. However, instead of fulfilling its obligations towards Gaza’s two million residents, half of whom are children, Israel is cynically exploiting its control of the crossings and deliberately undermining even the basic maintenance of water and sanitation services. This cruel conduct is wrong and illegal, and it must come to an end” (in bold in the report). Mazen Al-Banna from Gaza’s Water & Environmental Quality Authority pointed to dangerous salinity levels and the fact that 98% of Gaza’s water is unfit for human consumption, and said the blockade has made it impossible to improve the water situation.
Compiled by The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
A recording of the ‘Parched in Palestine: Resisting Water Apartheid’ webinar is available here.
Banner design by Paul Normandia of Red Sun Press.
