Noura Erakat is a Palestinian American human rights attorney and assistant professor at George Mason University. She is the author of “Justice for Some: Law as Politics in the Question of Palestine,” which will be published next year by Stanford University Press.
Over the past month and a half, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have taken part in a series of weekly protests called the Great Return March, culminating Tuesday with Nakba Day, when Palestinians mark their mass expulsion during Israel’s establishment in 1948.
Men, women and children have been braving Israeli army sniper fire to demand that they be allowed to exercise their internationally recognized right to return to lands they were expelled from by Israel. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers, and thousands more have been wounded since the protests began.
While much of the media coverage has been casting the protests as a response to the Trump administration’s move of the U.S. Embassy to Israel to Jerusalem, they are in fact part of a century-long legacy of Palestinians protesting for their rights and freedom.Palestinians have been organizing demonstrations, boycotts, strikes and outright........
Israel has told Gazans that anyone attempting to breach this wall and escape from Gaza will be shot. Anyone approaching it will be shot. And that is precisely what has happened over the weeks of protests by Palestinian refugees seeking to highlight their seventy-year exile from land they can see just beyond the wall. Scores of Palestinians have been killed, including journalists and children. Thousands more have been injured by live fire, with many losing legs and arms to amputations. Alongside this, there has been a report of one Israeli soldier hurt by a stone.
There are many words for what this is. Palestinians speak of heroism, resistance, dedication, and martyrdom. The Israeli government calls the shoot-to-kill and shoot-to-injure policies “self-defense.” Individual soldiers call it “following orders.” Israeli human rights groups, meanwhile, call the policy ordered by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman “grossly illegal.” My grandmother would have called it a shanda (Yiddish for a “disgrace”). But whether it is heroism or self-defense; whether the orders to shoot are legal or illegal; the mounting Israeli gun violence the world has been forced to witness along the Gaza ghetto wall is, without a doubt, disgusting. For any human being, no matter what their political views or ties to Israel or to Palestinian Arabs, the continuous mass shooting of Palestinian civilians is, or should be, emotionally and spiritually intolerable.
That it is psychologically and politically possible for Palestinians to continue sacrificing themselves in this way testifies to the desperation of their circumstances; that it is psychologically and politically possible for Israelis to murder and maim so many men, women, and children trying to escape from the ghetto within which they have been concentrated, or just trying to attract the world’s attention to their suffering, is a tragic and humiliating stain on the Jewish state and the Zionist movement that created it. It is also entirely self-defeating for a state struggling against efforts to “delegitimize” its existence.
To be sure, there is always Israeli hasbara, or propaganda, to help those seeking some way to suppress the revulsion and pain that any decent person must feel at the stories coming out of Gaza. This hasbara insists that the protests are nothing more than a cynical Hamas publicity stunt. It tells us that armed Hamas terrorists are hiding themselves among the demonstrators, using the miserable masses to conceal their efforts to kill Israelis. Who could doubt this? When the British ruled Palestine, the underground Jewish army prided itself on hiding arms factories in grammar schools and synagogues. And as we know, in any besieged ghetto there will be ghetto fighters, and they will be treated as heroes by those on the inside, and terrorists by those on the outside. But if there are certainly men of violence among the masses of protestors, let us not forget that alongside the many Israeli soldiers who surely suffer some pangs of conscience, there are some, as we have seen on videotape, who high-five one another for using fancy sniper rifles to put big holes in human bodies hundreds of yards away.
As for those in charge of the security policies of the current Israeli government, they know all too well what they are doing, what horror they are inflicting. The security hawks that staff leading think tanks and Israeli government ministries regularly speak of the need to “mow the lawn” in Gaza, to keep the population there on a “strict diet,” and to “manage the conflict” by using purposefully inflicted suffering to sear into Palestinian hearts the belief that resistance is futile. When Israel adopted its policy of enforcing a hermetic seal around Gaza in 2007, a political geographer at Haifa University named Arnon Soffer offered his full-throated endorsement, but added that it would eventually mean, not shooting armed men, but “putting a bullet in the head of anyone who tries to climb over the security barrier.” “If we want to remain alive,” he said, by which he meant if Israel wants to remain a “Jewish” state, “we will have to kill and kill and kill.”
The struggle for a two-state solution is not moribund; it is dead. This is true even if the pretense that negotiations could succeed remains a useful excuse—a way for Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the United States, and the peace-process industry to exploit or ignore the deepening oppression of the current one-state reality. As documented by the Israeli military, there are now more Palestinians under the control of the Israeli state than there are Jews. Indeed, for all intents and purposes the Palestinians of Gaza and of the West Bank are already within the Jewish state. They are citizens of no other country, no other recognized state. As measured by how much impact the State of Israel has over the intimate details of their lives, and indeed over whether they will live at all, they are as much inhabitants of the State of Israel as black slaves were inhabitants of the United States or as Africans in the Bantustans were inhabitants of apartheid South Africa. The five-decade occupation of the West Bank and the dozen-year blockade of Gaza, combined with regularly inflicted violent punishment, just mark differences in the way the Israeli state governs different populations in different régions.
In this sense, there is no longer any reason for Israelis to fear the Palestinian call for return as a “threat” to the ideal of a Jewish democratic state. After all, what did that ideal actually mean? It meant a state that was controlled by Jews, for Jews, but which could front itself as a democracy with equal rights for all. However, no state that uses the kind of mass incarceration, heavy and constant surveillance, collective punishment, and bloody violence against those under its control that Israel does against Palestinian residents can any longer front itself as democratic. Nor can it be reasonably argued that allowing refugees from Gaza to settle in the underpopulated areas surrounding the Gaza Strip would be a greater danger to Israel and its Jewish inhabitants than letting the Gaza time bomb tick until it explodes.
The truth is, no matter how much Israelis try to deny or distance themselves from the suffering their government is inflicting on the people of Gaza, their fates are intimately intertwined. Consider Ashkelon, an Israeli city on the Mediterranean coast thirteen miles from the Gaza Strip. Before the expulsion of its population to Gaza after the 1948 war, it was the Palestinian town of Majdal. Israel (with the complicity of the Palestinian Authority) has reduced the amount of electricity allowed into Gaza so that it is available for not more than four hours. For two million people that means real misery, but it also means that sewage treatment plants cannot operate properly, contributing to the fact that 97 percent of the drinking water in Gaza is contaminated. Experts warn of cholera and other epidemics that are liable to be unleashed in Gaza and spread beyond the wall surrounding it. Meanwhile, Ashkelon’s desalination plant, a facility that provides Israel with 20 percent of the its drinking water, has had to shut down on a number of occasions because of sewage from Gaza flowing into the area’s waters, while the city’s beaches have been closed because of fecal matter washing up on the shore.
The immediate solution to the human catastrophe that is the Gaza Strip is to end the brutal blockade that immiserates it and drains all hope from its inhabitants—a direction of policy advocated by many Israeli military and security experts. Only by doing so can life there be normal enough to convince ordinary Palestinians in Gaza that it is worth more than what happens to them when they try to escape.
Conflict Zone confronts Israeli minister Michael Oren and his hasbara
Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem following Israel's occupation were not granted Israeli or Palestinian citizenship, but were instead issued Jerusalem residency ID cards, which can be revoked by Israel at any time.
Last year, Israel revoked the residency of 35 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, including 17 women and four minors, according to Israeli rights group Hamoked.
Since 1967, almost 15,000 Palestinians have had their Jerusalem IDs revoked, mostly for failing to prove to Israeli authorities that Jerusalem or Israel was the centre of their life.
For there is a new "breach of loyalty" legislation which applies to numerous cases.
Owing to the ambiguity of what exactly constitutes a breach of loyalty or allegiance to the Israeli state, Palestinians and rights groups fear that the new law will have far-reaching consequences for Palestinians in East Jérusalem.
"If you leave such a draconic law with this much ambiguity surrounding it, then you give the state very strong powers to erode people's basic rights," said a Rights lawyer. "If Israel uses this legislation to fight the [Palestinian] population, then you're looking at a very problematic situation of mass residency revocations. Every Palestinian holds principles against the occupation and against the Israeli state. No one knows how far Israel will go with this law, but it's clearly very dangerous. The legislation gives Israel more control over Palestinian politics and activism, because the possibility of being kicked out of the city scares us. It will give Israel another opportunity to displace more Palestinians from the city."
Actually, even lawyers are at a loss as to how to defend Palestinians who could be targeted with the new law.
"How do you defend someone who is being accused of breaching allegiance to the Israeli state?"
To live Under occupation and daily bullying should be enough. To kiss your torturer is too much to ask.
Legal Status of Jerusalem
Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the United Nations and international community have not recognized the sovereignty of any country to any part of Jerusalem in the absence of a permanent peace agreement in the region.
Under the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine passed in November 1947, Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international regime administered by the UN. Following Israel’s establishment in May 1948, the western part of Jerusalem came under Israeli control.
The eastern portion of Jerusalem, including the Old City and its historic Muslim, Jewish, and Christian holy sites, has been under Israeli military rule since the June 1967 war and is considered occupied Palestinian territory under international law, not legally part of Israel.
After it occupied East Jerusalem, Israel massively expanded the municipal boundaries of the city into the West Bank and annexed it in a move that has been repeatedly rejected as illegal by the UN, including numerous Security Council résolutions.
Prior to the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in November 2017, US policy on the city was in line with the international community’s refusal to recognize any country’s sovereignty over any part of the city until a peace agreement is reached.
Israeli Policy in Occupied East Jerusalem
Since militarily occupying East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, Israel has attempted to restrict and reduce the Palestinian population of the city while increasing the growth of its Jewish population, part of a plan to cement control over the entire city. In the words of the US State Department International Religious Freedom Report from 2009: “Many of the national and municipal policies in Jerusalem were designed to limit or diminish the non-Jewish population of Jerusalem.”
This process, which is called “Judaization,” involves: Severely restricting the ability of Palestinians to build or expand homes in East Jerusalem by making it almost impossible for them to obtain construction permits. Destroying Palestinian homes and other structures that are built without permission. Revoking residency rights and social benefits of Palestinians who stay outside the city for seven years or more to study or work, or who are unable to prove that their “center of life” is in Jerusalem. Systematically discriminating against Palestinian neighborhoods when it comes to municipal planning and in the allocation of services, including education and sanitation. Aggressively encouraging Jewish settlers to move to East Jerusalem in violation of international law, often evicting Palestinians from their homes in the process. Building a wall on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice, to sever it geographically from Palestinians in the West Bank.
Messianic Jewish Extremists & the Noble Sanctuary Mosque Complex
In recent years, messianic Jewish extremism has been growing in Israel. Much of it is focused around building a Jewish temple in the Noble Sanctuary mosque complex in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam and one of the most sensitive religious sites in the world.
With encouragement and material support from Israel’s government, these dangerous religious fanatics have been developing plans for a new temple and intensifying their provocations in the Noble Sanctuary, threatening to incitement a major religious conflagration in the region and beyond.
Jerusalem: By the Numbers
More than 320,000: Number of Palestinians living in occupied East Jérusalem.
Almost 300,000: Number of Jewish settlers living illegally on occupied Palestinian land in East Jérusalem.
Approximately 14,000: Number of Palestinian Jerusalemites who have had their residency rights revoked by Israel since 1967.
Approximately 5,000: Number of Palestinian homes destroyed by Israel in East Jerusalem since it began its military rule over the city in 1967.
More than 17,000 acres: Amount of Palestinian land in the West Bank illegally annexed to East Jerusalem by Israel after it occupied the city in 1967.
35 per cent: Amount of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem that Israel has confiscated for the use of illegal Jewish settlements.
13 per cent: The amount of East Jerusalem land that Israel has zoned for Palestinian construction, much of which is already built-up.
Approximately 4 million: The number of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza who are not allowed to enter Jerusalem without difficult to obtain permission from Israel’s occupying army.
Palestinian activist mounts legal challenge over Israel prison abuse
Ahed was arrested after she confronted Israeli soldiers outside her home in Nabi Saleh last December. The confrontation occurred on the same day that her 15-yeard-old cousin, Muhammad, was shot in the head.
Muhammad has been held in military detention three times now, an experience that many Palestinian children suffer and that has healthcare professionals warning of lifelong trauma.
Muhammad’s latest detention came on the morning of Sunday, 20 May, when he went to the supermarket in Nabi Saleh, his village in the occupied West Bank, to buy groceries. He noticed a white car in front of his uncle’s house from which two young men emerged.When Muhammad approached, the men grabbed him from behind and pulled him into the car.
“They pointed a gun at me, so I would not scream or call for help,” Muhammad said, recounting the short but frightening drive. When they stopped at the military watchtower near Nabi Saleh, he understood that he had been taken by Israeli undercover forces.
There, the military commander in charge of the area of Nabi Saleh and nearby Beit Rima, told his captors to keep him. “He said I would not be going home,” Muhammad recalled.
He was then transported to an Israeli military base near the town of Aboud. “They beat me everywhere, very hard,” Muhammad said. “They were wearing boots, they hit me on my back, my hands, my head.”
The Israeli army handed him over to Palestinian security forces at night, after Muhammad’s family managed to convey to the army that the boy needed to take his medicine.
In the six-hour operation that followed the injury, the surgeons had to remove a large part of his skull to relieve pressure on the brain.
This was the third time the army has detained Muhammad. He was first taken from his home at the age of 13 and served a three-month prison sentence. The Israelis then arrested him again in a night raid in February, just two months after his injury and still awaiting restorative surgery.
“Even if Muhammad is never arrested again, he will be alert every second of his life. Always ready to be taken again,” Murad Amro from the Palestinian Counseling Center in Ramallah explained. “It is the military’s way of teaching children a lesson, inflicting a sort of psychosocial handicap from a young age.”
Addameer, the prisoners rights group, reports that as of April 2018, Israel is holding more than 300 Palestinian children, of whom 65 are under the age of 16.
Statistics gathered by Defense for Children International Palestine find that in 2017, almost 75 percent of detained children reported physical violence during arrest.
Murad Amro said that the way a child reacts to the trauma of arrest can vary. The reaction is connected to a number of factors, like socioeconomic background, family dynamics and predisposition.
“However, we generally observe that childhood detention has a severe impact on the functioning of a child and family structure,” Amro explained. “A child after detention is not the same child.”
“Adolescence in itself is a dangerous place,” she says. "Adolescents are more impulsive. They tend to engage in more high risk activities than adults. In Palestine, those activities are likely to involve confrontations with soldiers “especially because soldiers provoke children. Recently, the Israelis reduced the age of responsibility to 12.”
Meaning that children at a vulnerable and impulsive age are treated as adults in Israeli military courts. During every stage of detention, the child experiences a number of shocks. The first is to be taken from home by soldiers and to see that parents are powerless in front of the Israeli military.
“Your parents are the ones that discipline you, try to control your behavior and claim to protect you,” Jabr said. “It is a shock for the child to see that when there is a real need for protection, the parents are helpless.”
Then children often endure severe abuse on the way to the interrogation center. “The child is beaten, humiliated, sometimes bitten by dogs, sometimes soldiers piss on him or her. Interrogators also attempt to make children believe that society has betrayed them, Jabr said, for instance by saying a child’s name was given to soldiers by friends or classmates. At the same time, interrogators might try to induce guilt by threatening to demolish the home or harass the child’s siblings. Sometimes, they bring belongings from home to the interrogation, just to show the child their ability to reach family members.”
Such psychological pressure pushes many children to sign confessions in Hebrew they do not understand.
When Muhammad Tamimi was arrested last February, he signed a confession within hours of his arrest, stating that his injury was not caused by a bullet but a bike accident. The statement was patently signed under duress and he later told journalists that the soldiers beat him into confession.
The psychological pain does not end after release. When a child returns home from prison, there are celebrations. But Jabr explained that children themselves can suffer from the ambivalence of the experience.
“There is a tendency to amplify the child’s sacrifice – to glorify him or her as a hero. Meaning there is no space for the child to talk about the pain and shame. Children often feel guilty because they confessed or gave names. The parents themselves also feel guilty, because they could not prevent what happened. The whole family system is disturbed by the experience.”
Jabr also emphasized that every child reacts differently to detention. Not all children display symptoms of trauma, and there are countless psychosocial factors at play.
“Some become submissive. Others will want to identify with the physically stronger group, the soldiers. Others will be very angry and engage in even more high risk activities. It is the last group that is more likely to end up in prison again.”
Jabr explained that children can come out of prison suspicious of others, as they were told by interrogators that society betrayed them.
The children have learned from the experience that the structures around them cannot protect them. Many find it hard to adapt again and obey social norms and many drop out of school after detention.
For his part, Muhammad puts up a brave front. After three arrests, he is not scared anymore, he says.
His mother, Imtithal Tamimi, tells a slightly different story. Sunday night, for instance, he slept in his older brother’s bed.
“He is afraid to sleep alone.”
Who wouldn't?
Inside Story: Israel and the Walls that souround it
PALESTINA
Palestinians are hailing the decision by Brazilian music legend Gilberto Gil to pull the plug on a performance in Israel this summer.
Dozens of artists are declaring their support for the cultural boycott of Israel following the latest Israeli mass killings of civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip.
They include bands such as Portishead, Wolf Alice and Slaves.
Artists are endorsing the cultural boycott of Israel en masse after Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel may be drunk with impunity, but like apartheid South Africa after the Sharpeville massacre, Israel is being held accountable for its crimes.
Artists and bands can add their name to the now more than 1,300 who signed the Artists Pledge for Palestine in Great Britain.
