FATAH CALLS GENERAL STRIKE!
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FATAH CALLS GENERAL STRIKE!
Fatah’s top leadership called for a general strike throughout the
nation for yesterday, in protest against the ‘fierce and planned
Israeli attacks’ that have been launched on Jerusalem holy sites.
The decision follows a week of high tension in Jerusalem after Israeli
settlers backed by police were seen entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque,
setting off demonstrations.
A statement from the Fatah Central Committee, the movement’s highest
governing body said the strike was called in order to demonstrate
Palestinians’ ‘steadfastness and determination to keep hold of our
Christian and Islamic holy sites’.
The committee also called for peaceful demonstrations that would show
that Jerusalem is Palestinians’ ‘eternal capital’ and the future seat
of government in an independent state.
The statement further denounced Israel’s expansion of settlements in
the city as ‘an attempt by the Israeli right-wing government to return
to a cycle of violence in order to shirk its commitments to the peace
process’.
Fatah also urged Arab and Muslim states, the United Nations, and the
Quartet to intervene and support Palestinians in Jerusalem.
• Israelis must know that the status quo will lead to a ‘sliding back
into the darkness’, Jordan’s King Abdullah II asked the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz to tell its readers.
‘Is Israel going to be fortress Israel or is it going to be part of
the neighbourhood? Because if there is no two-state solution, what
future do we all have together?’ the monarch told a reporter from the
newspaper in Amman.
‘Show me the future of Israel 10 years from now.
‘Where do you want Israel to be vis-a-vis its relationship with Jordan
and other Arab countries?
‘I understand that you tend to live in the here and now.
‘You are worried about the next threat.
‘It is difficult for an Israeli to look into the future because of the
security aspect.
‘But if there is peace and stability, then people can look into the
future,’ he said.
The publication of the wake-up call comes as Israel is being forced
back to the peace talk table while it simultaneously pursues the
expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, steps up
repressive procedures against Palestinians living in Jerusalem, denies
the allegations of war crimes made public in the UN-mandated Goldstone
report and war mongers over the spectre of a nuclear Iran.
Jerusalem is ‘a tinderbox that will have a major flashpoint throughout
the Islamic world’, the King told the Israeli newspaper.
And he cautioned Israeli police who have recently sparked clashes in
the Old City over restrictions on movement and access to its holy
sites.
On Wednesday, police presence was so tight that Palestinian
schoolchildren had difficulty accessing their places of study.
It ‘is important to understand the need of ending all settlement
activities and other unilateral actions that threaten the identity of
the holy city’, King Abdullah II cautioned.
The Jordanian monarch gave the interview to Haaretz on the same day as
thousands of Israeli settlers and members of the Knesset celebrated
the laying of a foundation stone for the latest settlement project on
Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem.
Flanked by a heavy police presence, Israeli right-wing leaders laid
the foundation for an expansion of a settlement in East Jerusalem’s
Jabal Mukaber neighbourhood.
Fearing renewed protests following a week of unrest in reaction to
perceived Israeli infringement on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli police
blocked streets to allow a procession of settler leaders and activists
to the settlement of Nof Zion.
‘We weren’t going to cancel a serious ceremony regarding the
construction of another Jewish residency in East Jerusalem just
because a few Hooligans make some noise,’ organiser Avichai Buaran
told Israel’s Army Radio, according to the newspaper Haaretz.
‘Nof Zion is in the Arab town of Jabel Mukaber, but it remains a
Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem,’ he was also quoted as saying.
The ceremony marked the beginning of construction of 105 housing
units, an addition to an existing 95 units.
Israelis aspiring to become settlers in the new houses brought a Torah
scroll to Nof Zion’s synagogue.
The international community deems illegal all Israeli settlements
across the Green Line border, including those in East Jerusalem.
The expansion of settlements has been a driving factor behind renewed
Palestinian protests in the city.
Meanwhile, Israeli police announced that restrictions on access to the
Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, would continue for a
fifth straight day on Thursday.
Muslim men over age fifty will be allowed to enter the shrine,
provided they possess an Israeli ID card.
Women of all ages are permitted.
Reported intrusions by settlers into the Al-Aqsa compound caused
several days of demonstrations by unarmed Palestinians in Jerusalem.
Police armed with clubs and tear gas have forcibly dispersed the
protesters.