Six on History: Jerusalem
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For Netanyahu, Jerusalem and Gaza are the gift that keeps on giving.
"Israel is a colonial war machine that never sleeps. Its mounting provocations in Jerusalem in recent weeks have predictably driven Palestinians to the streets in protest.
Hence, the short answer to the question, “why?”, is simply, “why not?”, considering that every new Israeli day brings along more Palestinian dismay.
The Israeli occupation, repression, disruption, discrimination, property confiscation or home demolition are a decades-long daily affair. Likewise, racist and violent provocations by Israeli fanatics are common practice in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justifies the Israeli repression of peaceful protest and religious worship by portraying it as “a struggle between tolerance and intolerance; law and order and law breaking and violence”.
Netanyahu’s carefully articulated, self-righteous trademark “hasbara” has grown tired, blatant and ineffective, alienating instead of deceiving the allies, and infuriating Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims the world over. But it works at home.
In fact, the short answer to the other frequently asked question, “why now?” is well, Netanyahu, of course. Duh!
The man widely believed to be a serial liar and a skilled manipulator is on trial in Israel on various corruption charges, including fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. If he loses his premiership, there is little doubt he, like his predecessor Ehud Olmert, will go to jail.
Netanyahu has resorted to all possible means to maintain power, including grooming, empowering and allying with the most fanatic elements of the Israeli society – even more extreme than his extremist Likud party.
These are the same ultra-religious “neo-fascists” who, according to one Israeli journalist, in mid-April descended on the Palestinian areas of the city, intimidating, beating, looting, and destroying Palestinian property.
Netanyahu helped these racist fanatics organise and unite into the Religious Zionist Party, to ensure they pass the minimum threshold to enter the Knesset and join his planned coalition.
But while he has thus far failed to form another coalition government, they have succeeded beyond expectations, winning six decisive seats in the new parliament and unleashing a tirade of violent provocations, starting with Jerusalem.
Ironically, the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas jumped on the opportunity, postponing the elections he feared he would lose. Even more ironic is that the Palestinians are rebelling the most in areas where Abbas commands no security control or coordination with Israel.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has jumped on the threats by the Islamist movement Hamas to retaliate against Israel, if it continued its siege on Al-Aqsa compound, to further escalate the tension leading to attacks, counterattacks and, sadly, scores of mostly Palestinian casualties, and steering the attention away from the popular upheaval in Jerusalem.
I have no doubt that Netanyahu will use the new escalation to stay in power, whether by denying the opposition the chance to form a coalition or by insisting on another national emergency government.
But while he has had a major role in the ongoing escalation, he is by no means the first, nor it seems, the last to provoke violence and war.
Netanyahu, like his right- and left-wing predecessors, has been guided by his ideological guru, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who published almost a century ago his revisionist treatise, “The Iron Wall”, advising the Zionist leaders to do all to snuff out any glimmer of Palestinian hope that they might be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel”.
This may be shockingly brutal, but unlike Netanyahu’s spin, it is at least candid, especially in Jerusalem, the focal point of the Zionist conquest.
Israel has systematically Judaised Jerusalem at the expense of its Palestinian inhabitants, whether current or refugees prevented from returning. And today, the Palestinians are worried that Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, could be next, considering Israel’s colonial record.
Jerusalem is in fact a microcosm of occupied Palestine, where for decades, Israel has confiscated or demolished Palestinian lands, homes, and businesses in favour of its Jewish immigrants, and deconsecrated or reconsecrated many of Palestine’s holy sites in further the process of Judaisation.
Former deputy mayor of West Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, who also served as the head of Jerusalem planning department from 1971 to 1978, argued in his book, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, that:
“There was nothing novel about the victorious Jews’ takeover of sites sacred to the Muslims, save for the fact that it was something that might have been plucked from another era; not since the end of the Middle Ages had the civilised world witnessed the wholesale appropriation of the sacred sites of a defeated religious community by members of the victorious one. It’s true that places of worship in many countries have been vandalised – even recently – from the bombing of mosques in Sarajevo in the 1990s and the blowing up of churches by the Bolsheviks following the October Revolution, down to the plundering of churches and monasteries during the French Revolution. But to find accurate parallels for the reconsecration of places of worship by a conqueror, one must go back to Spain or the Byzantine Empire in the middle of the late 15th century.”
Another such example of rare candour came from none other than Teddy Kollek, who was West Jerusalem’s mayor for almost two decades, notably after the 1967 occupation of the eastern part of the city. He revealed Israeli chauvinism in a telling interview with Ma’ariv newspaper soon after the Al-Aqsa massacre in October 1990:
“Kollek: We said things without meaning them, and we didn’t carry them out, we said over and over that we would equalize the rights of the Arabs to the rights of the Jews in the city – empty talk … Both Levi Eshkol and Menachem Begin also promised them equal rights – both violated their promise … Never have we given them a feeling of being equal before the law. They were and remain second- and third-class citizens.
Ma’ariv: And this is said by a mayor of Jerusalem who did so much for the city’s Arabs, who built and paved roads and developed their quarters?
Kollek: Nonsense! Fairy tales! The mayor nurtured nothing and built nothing. For Jewish Jerusalem I did something in the past 25 years. For East Jerusalem? Nothing! What did I do? Nothing. Sidewalks? Nothing. Cultural institutions? Not one. Yes, we installed a sewerage system for them and improved the water supply. Do you know why? Do you think it was for their good, for their welfare? Forget it! There were some cases of cholera there, and the Jews were afraid that they would catch it, so we installed sewerage and a water system against cholera.”
This goes to show how Israel’s bigotry in Jerusalem is nothing new; in fact, it has been going on for decades, and it has gotten worse as more extremist mayors have taken the rein, contributing that much more to the pent-up tension in the city. Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities have continued their sermons about tolerance and peace.
Today, the self-proclaimed “only democracy in the Middle East” with the self-proclaimed “eternal, united capital”, stands once again exposed for its hypocrisy and double standard, having once again fuelled the cycle of hate and violence in Jerusalem and beyond.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem and extended its jurisdiction and administration to the captured city after the 1967 war, but for the Palestinians and for much of the world, Al-Quds remains an occupied city, albeit with better medical insurance.
It is also an isolated city. Israel severed Jerusalem from its Palestinian hinterland in the occupied West Bank soon after it signed the Oslo accords in 1993, making it ever harder for its residents to connect with their own families and loved ones.
In short, Jerusalem highlights Israel’s greed and Palestine’s creed like no other. The Palestinians generally accept to share the city, the Israelis mostly insist on having it all for themselves, come what may.
But Israel should be careful what it wishes for as it might just come true. The only way Jerusalem will be truly united is as the capital of a binational state."
"US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and White House Mideast peace envoy Jason Greenblatt, at an inaugural ceremony on Sunday, hammered through the final wall standing in front of an archaeological tourist site that was dug under Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
“Whether there was ever any doubt about the accuracy, the wisdom, the propriety of [US] President [Donald] Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, I certainly think this lays all doubts to rest,” said Friedman before joining other Israeli and American bigwigs in symbolically breaking down the wall, which led to the “Pilgrimage Road,” a now-subterranean stairway that was said to have served as a main artery for Jews to the Temple Mount thousands of years ago.
The ceremonial event angered the Palestinian Authority, as well as several left-wing Israeli NGOs, which claimed the opening of the site would further entrench an Israeli presence in eastern parts of the city that Palestinians hope will one day serve as their capital.
The Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, tweeted that Friedman, who before becoming the ambassador was a contributor to settlement causes, was himself “an extremist Israeli settler.”
While Trump said his decision in late 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital did not relate to the borders of the city, which would be determined in a final peace agreement, Sunday’s ceremony appeared to indicate some American recognition of Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem.
“It confirms with evidence, with science, with archaeological studies that which many of us already knew, certainly in our heart: the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people,” Friedman told the crowd of nearly 100, among whom were Sara Netanyahu; Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer; former Jerusalem mayor and current Likud MK Nir Barkat; Republican Senator Lindsey Graham; mega-donors Miriam and Sheldon Adelson; and the US ambassadors to Portugal, France and Denmark. ... "
"Last September, President Donald Trump was exultant. Accompanied at the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior leaders from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Trump hailed the normalization of ties between Israel and the two Gulf monarchies. The agreements were lumped under the grandiose title of the “Abraham Accords,” a nod to the promise of coexistence and shared prosperity in the birthplace of three great religions.
But the gambit from its inception was met with plenty of cynicism. Neither the UAE nor tiny Bahrain was ever at war with Israel. They already maintained numerous channels of clandestine cooperation with the Jewish state. The agreements they signed, as would later be the case with Sudan and Morocco, came with significant geopolitical sweeteners from the Trump administration. And as nondemocratic states, their ruling elites could not claim to even represent the abiding views of their small numbers of citizens, let alone the critical mass of regional public opinion.
Yet the accords were cast as “a pivot of history,” as Netanyahu put it in September. The monarchs had opted to dispense with nearly two decades of Pan-Arab consensus on Israel by normalizing ties before a meaningful conclusion to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was reached. Their decision reflected a real political exhaustion with the Palestinian cause on the part of some political elites in Arab countries, who are more concerned about the new challenges posed by the Iranian regime or political Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood than the old struggle of the Palestinians. Supporters of the agreements claimed the “comprehensive peace” Trump promised would emerge because of the greater leverage governments like the UAE would now have over both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
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Then came this week’s spasm of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, triggered after weeks of unrest and clashes in Jerusalem. On Tuesday, militants in the blockaded Gaza Strip launched one of the largest salvos of rockets ever fired into Israel, killing at least three people.
“The onslaught was even fiercer in Gaza, where Israel waged one of its most intense air campaigns since a 2014 war engulfed the sides for more than a month,” my colleagues reported. “The Israeli military said it struck more than 500 targets in retaliation for the rocket attacks from Gaza. By Tuesday evening, the Palestinian Health Ministry said the strikes had killed 30 Gazans, including 10 children, and injured about 200 others.”
The escalation followed spiking tensions in Jerusalem, where recent marches of far-right Jewish supremacist groups, an Israeli push to evict Palestinian residents in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and brutal crackdowns by Israeli security forces on Palestinian protesters all laid the tinder for a far bigger spark. The unrest spread to cities outside the occupied territories, as Palestinian citizens of Israel rallied in support of their brethren.
In this maelstrom, even the Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel are loosening their embrace. Both the UAE and Bahrain condemned Israel’s storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque, considered the third holiest site in Islam, this past weekend, as well as its moves to kick dozens of Palestinians out of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Social media in both countries saw a surge of hashtags in support of their Arab compatriots in the Jerusalem neighborhood.
Following a virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of the Arab League on Tuesday, Morocco’s top diplomat condemned the “hateful” rhetoric and actions of the far-right Jewish groups involved in the violence in Jerusalem. The bloc, long derided for inaction, said it would exert more pressure on behalf of Palestinians at the United Nations and at the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor in March launched a formal investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the occupied territories.
Anwar Gargash, a prominent Emirati diplomat who has in the past been outspoken in his criticism of Iran, tweeted his solidarity with Palestinians, “with the end of the Israeli occupation, with the two-state solution, and with an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is a historic and principled position that does not budge.” The governments of Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all issued statements on similar lines, affirming their support for a Palestinian state along 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
That’s a traditional line that Arab governments often invoke whenever Israel-Palestinian violence flares. But it’s more conspicuous now as it flies in the face of the “vision for peace” unfurled by the Trump administration with Netanyahu’s blessing last year, which plotted a vague, shrunken future Palestinian state with limited sovereignty and no capital in Jerusalem proper. In the view of the Trump administration, the Abraham Accords would speed a realignment of regional politics, one in which Arab countries friendly to both Israel and the United States would discard their concerns for the Palestinians in favor of greater trade and security cooperation with Israel.
Now, though, thanks in part to provocations from the ascendant Israeli far right and what Jerusalem-based journalist Noga Tarnopolsky described as Netanyahu’s opportunism, the plight of the Palestinians is front and center in the global political conversation. “You have to wonder why would Israel turn the dormant Palestinian issue into a raging crisis,” observed Vali Nasr of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “Israel’s entire strategy with Abraham Accords was based on the argument that the Palestinian issue was no longer relevant. Now thanks to a series of Israeli mistakes it is back in force.”
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