Israel has rejected every offer from Palestinians for a two-state solution

Pegging the fulfilment of Palestinian rights to a negotiated agreement Israel is committed to ensuring never happens has enabled the occupation to relentlessly march on

Colter Louwerse
11 March 2023

A Palestinian demonstrator facing Israeli troops waves a national flag during a protest against the establishment of Israeli outposts, near Nablus, on 10 March 2023 (AFP)


Defying a half-century of struggle against it, Israel’s settler-colonial regime in the annexed Palestinian territories remains obstinately entrenched.

Small wonder the United Nations General Assembly closed out 2022 by voting to request an International Court of Justice (also known as the World Court) opinion on how Israel’s annexation project, denial of Palestinian self-determination, and discriminatory legislation “affect the legal status” of its occupation of Palestinian territory.

Palestinians welcome UN vote asking ICJ to give opinion on Israel's occupationRead More »

If the Palestinian case prevails, the world’s preeminent judicial body will rule Israel’s military control of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem flagrantly illegal. As a raft of authoritative legal studies have demonstrated, such a judgment would require Israel to immediately withdraw from the annexed Palestinian territories.

Paramount in this case is the legal concept of “good faith”. In 1971, the World Court determined that a state which refuses good-faith negotiations to end its occupation forfeits its rights as a belligerent occupant. Consequently, it revoked South Africa’s right to a “continued presence” in southwest Africa (Namibia). The Afrikaner apartheid regime subsequently plunged into pariahdom, and two decades later, Namibia emerged independent.

Israel’s military domination of Palestine is likewise illegitimate. But even as they denigrate the World Court, Israeli officials turn the Palestinian accusation against itself. "The Palestinians have rejected every single peace initiative,” inveighed Israel's UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan. “And now they embroil an external body with the excuse that the conflict has not been resolved?"

Erdan’s charge recalled Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban’s infamous aphorism that the Palestinians “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace”.

But history records a different story.

Obstacle to peace

Here’s the truth, in brief: since the mid-1970s, the UN has upheld an overwhelming international consensus for resolving the festering "conflict". Predicated on fundamental principles of international law, it consists of a two-state settlement including Israeli withdrawal to its pre-June 1967 borders, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the vacated territories, Palestinian-Arab recognition of Israel and a “just resolution” for the Palestinian refugees.

In January 1976, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) offered to negotiate the terms of this "two-state" consensus. With Washington’s support, Israel refused the good-faith Palestinian proposal. Choosing expansion over peace, it has done so ever since.

With Washington’s support, Israel refused the [1976] good-faith Palestinian proposal. Choosing expansion over peace, it has done so ever since

A closer look at this historic moment demonstrates that Israeli-American bad-faith rejectionism is, in fact, the primary “obstacle to peace”.

The January 1976 resolution was first brought to public attention by Professor Noam Chomsky - who argued it “quite clearly” demonstrated Palestinian recognition of Israel - but the draft UN Security Council resolution remains little known.

Today, Israel’s apologists misrepresent the 1976 offer as a formula for Israel’s “destruction”. And yet, by shedding light on the negotiations from which the peace initiative emerged, my archival research confirms Chomsky’s analysis. Let’s set the record straight.

In the wake of Israel’s 1967 conquests, Israeli and Palestinian leaderships both spurned the international consensus. Repudiating UN efforts to negotiate its withdrawal, Israel launched an “insatiable quest for Lebensraum” in the West Bank. Conversely, the PLO refused recognition of a state built on the dispossession of its people and instead sought to retrieve all of Palestine, “through armed struggle”.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat soon signalled his willingness to exchange recognition of Israeli sovereignty for Palestinian self-determination. But it was not until the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war swung “the tide of world opinion” in Palestine’s favour that Arafat thrust his case into the UN, ambiguously offering Israel “the gun or the olive branch”.
'Tyranny of the veto'

Two years later, the PLO delivered the olive branch via the January 1976 resolution: co-signing a Syrian initiative at the Security Council, it promoted a text that for the first time incorporated the international consensus within a single UN document. Calling for independent Palestinian statehood, the draft resolution reaffirmed the right “of every state”, including Israel, to “peace within secure and recognised boundaries”.

US President Bill Clinton (C) PLO leader Yasser Arafat (R) and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after signing of the Oslo Accords at the White House, Washington, DC, 13 September 1993 (AFP)

Palestinian negotiators’ diplomatic overtures confirm the initiative’s conciliatory intent. “The PLO”, they insisted, “was in no way demanding the destruction of the State of Israel”, “wishes to avoid eliciting a US veto of the resolution”, and accepted affirmation of Israeli sovereignty as a “major concession”. As if to expunge lingering doubts, the PLO foreign minister penned an op-ed on the eve of the council’s vote, lauding the text as “consonant with … a just peace”.

How did Israel react to this unprecedented peace offer? Resolving to “never negotiate” with “terrorists”, it launched “preemptive” air strikes against Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, killing dozens. The wanton slaughter of civilians made President Gerald Ford “sick”, but politics trampled conscience - Washington quashed UN condemnation of the massacre.

And the Arab-Palestinian draft resolution? Defying the Security Council majority, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered it vetoed, killing this landmark “opportunity for peace”. The PLO bitterly condemned the “tyranny of the veto”.

Chomsky’s critics dismiss the 1976 peace initiative, arguing that the fratricidal Lebanese civil war rendered Palestinian recognition of Israel unthinkable. Yet the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) discerned that Arafat was “willing and able” to deliver - the 1976 initiative was not an aberration, but began a deluge of Palestinian two-state proposals, in 1977, 1979, 1980 and 1982.

Continuity of Israel's rejectionism

By 1981, the whole American intelligence community - including the CIA, State Department and Department of Defence - had converged on these two judgments: that firstly, in exchange for independent Palestinian statehood, Arafat was “prepared to recognise Israel’s right to exist” and “could probably enforce the discipline necessary to obtain acceptance of this within the PLO”; and secondly, that “in Israel there is broad agreement among nearly all political parties … that there can be no total withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 borders” and "even if the PLO were to modify its charter to recognise Israel”, all mainstream Israeli political parties “would still oppose” Palestinian statehood.

The basic impasse emerges crystal clear: the whole world - including the Palestinian leadership - stood united behind a pragmatic, if imperfect, resolution to the conflict; a recalcitrant Israel, backed by Washington’s paralysing power, stood alone in rejecting it.

So, what’s changed in the 40 years since? A little, but not a lot.

The peace process is an annexation process: Israeli colonisation steams ahead, while Palestinian resistance and moderation are crushed with undifferentiated force

In November 1988, the PLO formalised its recognition of Israel, despite Tel Aviv’s unaltered refusal to contemplate Palestinian rights. In the 1990s, Israel acceded to negotiations with the PLO under American auspices, even as it strategically refashioned its architecture of domination. And in 2002, Washington finally condoned a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state outcome.

But the most notable aspect of Israel’s policy has been the continuity of its rejectionism. Neither Israel’s ostensible 2000 nor 2007-09 peace offers met the minimum “good faith” threshold of the international consensus, while, since then, all Israeli governments have openly rejected the Palestinian right to a viable state.

Since 2014, even the pretence of negotiations has been dropped. The peace process is an annexation process: Israeli colonisation steams ahead, while Palestinian resistance and moderation are crushed with undifferentiated force.

Hinging fulfilment of Palestinian rights to a negotiated agreement has lent Israeli colonisation and apartheid in Palestine a veneer of temporariness, even as the regime works overtime to ensure its own permanence.

After decades of abuse, the prevailing paradigm has morphed into the grotesque, as Palestinian rights are interminably held hostage by a bad-faith negotiator: always tomorrow, never today… forever.

To realise Palestinian self-determination, it’s past high time that the World Court ended this mockery of law and justice.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Where Jordan And The Palestinians Part Company – OpEd

President Joe Biden greets King Abdullah II of Jordan, Thursday, February 2, 2023, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

 March 10, 2023 

By Neville Teller

On January 24, for the first time in over four years, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu  flew to Jordan to meet King Abdullah II, in an effort, no doubt, to start his new period in office with a clean slate.  He doubtless recalled the episode in 2019, toward the end of his previous term in office, when Abdullah declared to the world that relations between his country and Israel were “at an all-time low”.  Abdullah, too, may have wished to ensure no repeat of the previous public clash.

In one sense nothing much had changed.  As ever Abdullah focused, as the official Jordanian account of the meeting puts it, “on the need to respect the historical and legal status quo at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif and not to harm it.”

This was a covert reference to the visit by Israel’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, to the Temple Mount on January 3 – a visit which did not breach the status quo in any way, but which led to furious condemnation from the Arab world. 

Equally familiar during their meeting was Abdullah’s reiteration, for the umpteenth time, of his support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian dispute.  He favors establishing a sovereign Palestinian state within territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War, including east Jerusalem.

On the face of it, this demand puts Jordan arm-in-arm with the Palestinian Authority (PA), both apparently seeking precisely the same from Israel.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jordan believes that the active involvement of the US would be vital to any attempt to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict, and that Jordan would have a key role to play.  Abdullah met US President Joe Biden in Washington on February 2 when, according to media reports, Biden “reaffirmed his strong support for a two-state solution”, and recognized Jordan’s “critical role” in maintaining regional stability.

The PA leadership has a quite different view.  They broke off diplomatic relations with the US after then-President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017 and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in May 2018.  That chasm remains as wide as ever.  The US now has no official diplomatic offices in the Palestinian territories, and provides no consular services to Palestinians.  Equally, the Palestinians have had no diplomatic representation in the US since the closure of the PLO mission in Washington in October 2018. Palestinian leaders maintain that they would refuse to engage in any peace effort in which the US was dominant.

Explaining the position of the PA leadership, Dr Abdullah Swalha, founder and director of the Center for Israel Studies in Amman, said: “They can count on the Europeans, Japan and other countries, as well as the halls of the UN and some international human rights platforms.”

That difference between Jordan and the PA over the role of the US is exacerbated by their different positions on the two-state solution.  For the Fatah-controlled PA public advocacy of partition remains the tactical ploy originally conceived by Yasser Arafat at Oslo in 1993 – a ploy which has proved remarkably successful in winning world support for the Palestinians.  

Not long after the conclusion of Oslo 2 in 1995, Arafat held what was intended to be a secret meeting with Arab leaders in a Stockholm hotel. To his embarrassment, both his tactical plans and his strategic objectives were leaked to the Norwegian daily, Dagen. Among much else, he told Arab leaders that the PLO intends: “…to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state.”  The failure of the PA over the years to sign up to any of the increasingly generous partition deals subsequently tabled has demonstrated the sham that the ploy is.   

The Hamas organization regarded the Oslo Accord of 1993 as a total betrayal of the Palestinian cause, and broke with Arafat completely. On 5 September 1993, shortly after the terms were announced, Hamas issued its Leaflet 102 condemning both the agreement and the PLO leadership: “We will therefore insist on wrecking this agreement, and continue the resistance struggle and our jihad against the occupation power… Arafat’s leadership is responsible for destroying Palestinian society and sowing the seeds of discord and division among Palestinians.”

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, which contains some 40% of the Palestinian population. It  regards Israel as an illegal occupier of Palestinian land, and its purpose is to remove Israel through armed struggle and terror, and occupy all the land “from the river to the sea”.  It rejects the tactics of the PA leadership, and has consistently opposed Abbas’s apparent advocacy, in the UN and more widely, for a two-state solution, since one of the two states would be Israel. 

Jordan, together with the majority of world opinion, fails to take account of the realities of championing a two-state solution.  Nobody acknowledges that the real long-term objective of the Palestinian leadership is to gain control of all of what was Mandate Palestine, and that any PA leader signing up to a two-state deal would be regarded as a traitor to the Palestinian cause. Which is why no Palestinian leader has done so.

However, even if the PA could be induced to do so, Hamas and the 40% of the Palestinian population occupying Gaza would never come on board.  They would never recognize Israel’s right to exist in the region.  So what sort of sovereign Palestinian state could it be, shorn of half the Palestinian population?

There is an uncomfortable truth that Jordan, the US and all genuine supporters of the two-state solution must eventually face up to.  An essential prerequisite to any two-state solution would have to be the disempowerment of the Hamas organization.

Neville Teller

Neville Teller's latest book is ""Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020". He has written about the Middle East for more than 30 years, has published five books on the subject, and blogs at "A Mid-East Journal". Born in London and a graduate of Oxford University, he is also a long-time dramatist, writer and abridger for BBC radio and for the UK audiobook industry. He was made an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."

Palestinian Prisoner Jaradat Enters His 21st Year in Israeli Prisons

S.K | DOP - 11 March, 2023

The Palestinian prisoner Amir Muhammad Anis Jaradat, 38, from the occupied West Bank town of Silat al-Harithiya, to the west of Jenin, entered Saturday, March 11, 2023 his 21st year in the Israeli occupation prisons.

Muntaser Sammour, the director of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club in Jenin, said that the Palestinian prisoner Jaradat has been detained since March 11, 2003, on charges of resisting the Israeli occupation, and was sentenced to 26 years inside Israeli prison.

He pointed out that during prisoner Jaradat’s detention years, his father and two brothers died, and the occupation prevented him from bidding the last farewell to them.

Note that 4,500 Palestinians are currently detained inside Israeli occupation prisons, including 400 who have severe and chronic illnesses, 31 women, and 500 administrative detainees.

In the absence of strong pressure to stop the systemic inhumane abuses, the racist and fascist policies of the Prison Service Administration have a negative impact on Palestinian detainees.

 

Belgian MP Calls for Imposing Sanctions on Israeli Occupation

M.S | DOP - 11 March, 2023

Belgian MP Simon Moutquin called Saturday, March 11, for imposing sanctions on the extremist government of the Israeli occupation, for committing war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Moutquin said, in a speech in the Belgian Parliament, that the position of Belgium and the European Union towards what is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories is tantamount to a license to kill.

He added that the raids launched by the Israeli occupation forces or settlers in Jenin, Hawara, and Nablus come successively, which made the year 2023 the bloodiest for the Palestinian people.

“All this is happening under the most extreme right-wing government in its history, where the settlers become ministers, they get powers related to the Palestinian lands, and they assert without hesitation that they want the death of the Arabs,” said Motkin.

He pointed out that since the beginning of this year, 74 Palestinians have been killed, Israeli settler violence has peaked, and the Israeli settlements expansion has increased.

“The status quo is no longer acceptable,” he said. “To allow such a racist government to form would lead to losing all credibility of confronting the far-right around the world. Most importantly, failure to act against these war crimes is a license to kill for the Israeli government, its army, and its settlers.”

Moutquin added that the Israeli government agreement is very clear, as it stipulates the implementation of many measures, including the annexation of parts of the West Bank to the occupation state. However, the extremist government’s decision to transfer the authority of the settlers under the supervision of the Minister of Internal Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, makes this effective.

Moutquin asked, “What do we expect in the event of the seizure of the occupied Palestinian lands and the forced displacement of the Palestinians, as in Masafer Yatta, and the killing of journalists like Sherine Abu Aqleh?”

He concluded his speech by saying, “It is necessary to take a series of sanctions against the violence of Israeli settlers, including banning the import of products from Israeli settlements immediately, and summoning the Israeli ambassador for questioning about this unprecedented violence.”

The Palestinian Authority Is A Figleaf For Israeli Apartheid. Disband it.

At this point in history, the Palestinian Authority serves only to empower the two-state ruse until Zionism has achieved its singular, century-old goal: a race state in all of historic Palestine.

By Tom Suarez

March 11, 2023
Source: Mondoweiss

Palestinian Authority “security forces” — neither police nor soldiers — blocking angry protestors from approaching the "government" compound, 2013 (Photo: Tom Suarez)

Three decades ago, the Palestinian Authority, advertised as a five-year interim body that would give way to a sovereign government of a Palestinian state, was born from the Oslo Accords.[1] Billed as a “generous offer,” Oslo was the opposite: it implicitly legitimized Israel’s cumulative crimes while throwing the Palestinians a carrot held at what would forever be an increasingly long arm’s length — the PA being the cumulative carrot.

This was no aberration, but the continuation of the West’s active complicity in Zionism’s goal, dating back more than a century, of erasing the Palestinians. In a British Cabinet paper marked “secret” from 1921, Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, stated that “in the interests of the Zionist policy, all elective institutions [in Palestine] have so far been refused to the Arabs”—that is, Britain had turned Palestine into a “democracy” for the settlers, and an apartheid state for the indigenous Palestinians.[2]

And so the apartheid and displacement (which are all that Palestinians alive today have ever known ) continues, and it is assisted by the Palestinian Authority — a make-believe “government” that serves at the pleasure of Israel.

Israel follows the playbook of previous colonizing powers, in which members of the colonized are seduced with wealth and privilege to serve as a local client leadership, both to answer to their masters’ needs and to stymie indigenous resistance. Indeed, the PA goes a step further: it has made the captive Palestinian public dependent upon it financially, to ensure their compliance.

The PA was in truth a Trojan Horse, a veritable coup for Israel in the following ways:

1. The PA handed Israel the rhetorical gymnastics it uses to claim it is not an apartheid state.
Non-Jews the West Bank can’t vote in Israel’s elections, and are subject to a separate set of laws — but Israel claims this is not apartheid, and it has an alibi: non-Jews vote for their own government, the Palestinian Authority. In truth, Israel controls the entire land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The Palestinian Authority has no authority, except to control Palestinians on Israel’s behalf — it is, otherwise, little more than department name plaques affixed to doors on a compound in Ramallah. On this point alone, the PA should disband: deprive Israel of its apartheid fig-leaf.

2. The PA enables Israel’s sponsor states to continue to utter the time-buying phrase “two-state solution”.
Already in January 1949, a New York Times correspondent declared the two-state solution dead due to Israeli aggression.[3] She was correct. Today, the two-state mantra is invoked to stymy any reckoning until Israel has achieved Zionism’s singular, century-old goal: a race state in all of historic Palestine. Disband the PA to deprive Israel’s sponsor states of the ruse.

3. The PA is an economic boon for Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians.
International aid to the PA is in truth further money for Israel, since it is actually paying for its own “occupation” (annexation) of the land — above and beyond the stealing of the land’s taxes, its natural resources, revenue from its tourist destinations, and controlling its imports and exports. Disband the PA to deprive Israel of cover for its massive ongoing theft of Palestinian wealth.

THE BETHLEHEM GATE OF THE ISRAELI WALL — A RARE GLIMPSE AT IT OPEN, WITH UNIDENTIFIED ISRAELI VEHICLES RETURNING TO THE MILITARY AREA BETWEEN THE WALL AND RACHEL’S TOMB. IT IS THROUGH THROUGH THIS GATE THAT THE IDF COMES, WITH THE FULL COOPERATION OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, TO ATTACK THE NEARBY CAMPS OF AIDA AND DHEISHEH. POPE FRANCIS MADE A MUCH-PHOTOGRAPHED STOP AT THIS (CLOSED) GATE DURING HIS 2014 VISIT. (PHOTO: TOM SUÁREZ)

4. The PA is the outsourced thug keeping Israel’s hands clean in the public eye.
The PA violently represses Palestinian political freedom in the West Bank on behalf of Israel, saving Israel from the trouble and the bad press of doing it themselves. Disband the PA to make Israel do its own repression in its own name.

5. The PA saves Israel from the day-to-day chore of civil management and policing.
Disband the PA to make Israel responsible for the land it controls.

There have never been Palestinian elections as understood in our nominal democracies in the West. The much-touted elections of 2006 were ruled fair by international observers such as a Jimmy Carter, but this only concerned procedure.

To begin with, the choice offered the Palestinians was ultimately controlled by Israel. Young people who showed promise as future leaders — that is, teenagers resisting IDF incursions — were routinely jailed or shot dead in nocturnal Israeli raids on refugee camps. Candidates not to Israel’s liking were either captured and imprisoned (e.g., Marwan Barghouti), or assassinated.

Secondly, the election itself was a fraud. When the Palestinians didn’t elect who we wanted them to elect (Fatah), we waged war to prevent the winner (Hamas) from assuming power, ultimately confining it to the Gaza Strip and stripping it of representation and its own funds. Unelected Fatah remains in the West Bank, and President Mahmoud Abbas has held on to power years past his term because he’s our man in Ramallah (the presidency was not part of the 2006 election).

The US was shocked at Hamas’ win. But they should not have been: Palestinians were sufficiently fed up with Fatah’s corruption and its failure to defend them against Israel, that they were willing to give Hamas a chance, despite its social conservatism. In the aftermath, Condoleezza Rice, then U.S. Secretary of State, lamented that “they” should not have “allowed” Palestinians the option of Hamas.[4]

Whether Israel was truly shocked, or popped champagne corks, Hamas’ win has served it well. It fully fractured the PA, and provided Israel with a handy bogeyman, the mere invocation of whose name is sufficient to silence unfriendly questions.

Abbas and Co. have a good thing going, and would lose it all if they stopped doing Israel’s bidding — hence the now-familiar ritualistic theatre of the PA bringing claims to the International Court of Justice in the pretense of defending the Palestinians, and then rescinding the claim under the charade of Israeli “assurances”; or the PA submitting a resolution to the United Nations condemning Israeli settlement building, then withdrawing the resolution at the orders of the US. In well-worn political choreography, the PA top echelon betray the Palestinians in order to safeguard their cushy gig.

To be sure, there are many people in the Fatah PA whose intentions are sincere, and simply judge that Palestinian aspirations may better be served with the PA, warts and all, than without it. “Well, at least we’re here in Palestine now,” one veteran of the Palestine Liberation Organization told me several years ago. “Before, we were in Tunisia” — a reference to the years between 1982 and 1991, when the PLO was exiled there from Lebanon following the 1982 Lebanon War.

It’s time to deprive Israel and its cheerleaders of their grand fig-leaf. Retire the Palestinian Authority to leave Israeli apartheid no nook in which to hide.

Israeli Forces Shot Directly at Sheltering Civilians During Deadly West Bank Raid, Report Says

The Washington Post found that Israeli forces fired at least 14 times at unarmed Palestinians huddling between a mosque and a clinic during the daytime Nablus raid last month. The civilians would have been visible to them

Haaretz
Mar 11, 2023 
Israeli military forces raiding Nablus last month repeatedly fired at unarmed Palestinian civilians taking cover during clashes that broke out in the city, killing two and wounding three others, according to eyewitness accounts and a visual reconstruction of the events by The Washington Post.

According to the investigation, Israeli forces fired from inside an armored vehicle at least 14 times as they drove down the street and stopped at a short wall behind which unarmed Palestinians were huddled, continuing to fire even after the group would have been visible from the vehicle's windows.

The investigation, which used 3D modeling software and visual evidence from the scene, was based on witness accounts, previously unpublished videos of the event and audio expert analysis of the gunfire, according to the Post.

The West Bank is erupting. Israel’s top brass finally see the writing on the wall

Israel’s raid on Nablus proves Palestinians’ willingness to die in an unwinnable battle

Far-right Smotrich says his call to 'wipe out' Palestinian town was 'slip of the tongue'

Israeli forces entered Nablus's old city on the morning of February 22 to arrest wanted Palestinians, killing 11 and wounding 102 others, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, during the unusual daylight raid and in the confrontations with residents that followed it.

The army said its forces had entered the city to arrest wanted militants who were planning to carry out "imminent" shooting attacks. Soldiers then surrounded and demolished a building in which the suspects had barricaded themselves, sparking the deadly clashes.

During the arrest raid, the army said its forces were shot at and responded by returning fire. It added that residents threw stones, Molotov cocktails and explosives at the troops.

Israeli military sources claim that a number of suspects sought during the raid are affiliated with the nascent Lion's Den militant group, and had reportedly been involved in numerous attacks in the past against Israeli settlements and in the death of an IDF soldier last October. The Lion's Den later announced that six of those killed were members of the faction.

France 24 Fires Palestinian Journalist Over Supporting Palestine

Af.M | DOP - 11 March, 2023

French state-owned international news television network, France 24, fired on Saturday, 11 March 2023 the  Palestinian journalist Laila Odeh over her pro-Palestinian positions.

Media sources reported that France 24 fired Odeh from her job as a correspondent citing anti-Semitism posts as a pretext.

This crackdown on free speech was not the first since the topic is Palestine. Western democracy is being destroyed to protect the Israeli occupation and whitewash its crimes and violations against the Palestinian people. 

These blatant attacks on supporters of Palestine have been seen before in a concerted effort to silence Israeli occupation critics once. 

CNN fired Marc Lamont Hill as a contributor after he called for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” during a speech at the UN.

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute revoked  Angela Davis’s award for supporting the BDS movement.

Political scientist and son of Holocaust survivors Norman Finkelstein, whose tenure was denied and his reputation was tarnished by DePaul University over his criticism of Israel.

Yale University’s Department of History Yale University’s Department of History rejected Historian Juan Cole for criticizing Israel.

Guardian dismissed Journalist Nathan Robinson as a  columnist after joking about U.S. aid to Israel.

The University of Georgia banned Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin from speaking at the University for refusing to sign a pledge to forbid her participation in the BDS movement.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign fired the Scholar Steven Salaita over “disrespectful” tweets he published from his personal Twitter account criticizing Israel’s aggression on Gaza Strip in 2014. 

ONE DAY IN PALESTINE

Israeli Occupation Threatens 1500 Palestinians in Occupied Jerusalem with Forced Displacement

Af.M | DOP - 11 March, 2023

Israeli occupation threatens 1500 Palestinians in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Al-Bustan with forced displacement under the pretext of building without a permit. 

Since 2005, the Israeli occupation municipality has been seeking to demolish the entire neighborhood citing buildings without a permit as a pretext. 116 Palestinian-owned homes in the district are at risk of demolition after the Israeli occupation court refused to freeze demolition orders which could be executed at any moment.

The al-Bustan neighborhood is located in the heart of Silwan town and extends over 70 dunums.

In protest against the Israeli illegal demolition policy, Al-Bustan residents continue their protest steps and perform Friday prayers in the sit-in tent in the neighborhood, affirming their adherence to their homes and resisting all Israeli occupation Judaizing plans. 

Since 1967, the Israeli occupation has demolished more than 5000 buildings in occuiped Jerusalem under the pretext of non-licensing, displacing 39,000 people including women and children. 

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation has demolished 2,150 Palestinian houses in Silwan since 1967.

 Israeli occupation seeks to demolish 116 houses in the Al-Bustan neighborhood and forcibly displace its residents after demolishing 15 houses in the last five years.

Al-Bustan is one of the six Jerusalemite neighborhoods threatened by the nightmare of demolition and ethnic cleansing in Silwan to control the town and the vicinity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 

Settlers assault a youth in occupied Jerusalem and herders in the south of the West Bank

The beaten boy in Jerusalem arrested. (Wadi Hilweh Information Center)

JERUSALEM/HEBRON, Saturday, March 11, 2023 (WAFA) – Israeli settlers today assaulted a Palestinian youth in occupied East Jerusalem and herders in the south of the occupied West Bank.

In Jerusalem, witnesses said settlers and police beat a youth at Damascus Gate, one of the main gates into the Old City. He was also detained by the occupation forces.

In the south of the West Bank, settlers attacked Palestinian shepherds while herding their sheep in the pastures in the Jawiya area in Masafer Yatta and forced them to leave the area, according to Rateb al-Jabour, a local activist.

He told WAFA that the settlers also attempted to steal the sheep of one of the shepherds.

M.K.

Palestinian youth attacked by Israeli settlers, police in east Jerusalem

Palestinians were subjected to a series of attacks and instances of harassment in occupied east Jerusalem and the southern region of Masafer Yatta at the hands of Israeli settlers and forces.

The New Arab Staff
11 March, 2023

Israeli forces and settlers regularly intimidate, harass and assault Palestinians in the occupied territories [Getty]

Israeli settlers on Saturday carried out a series of attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territories of east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The settlers, as well as police officers, assaulted and beat up a Palestinian youth at Damascus Gate, located at the Al-Aqsa compound in the Old City of east Jerusalem, reported the Palestinian WAFA agency on Saturday, citing witnesses.

The boy, whose identity was not revealed, was later detained by Israeli police officers.

Settlers also attacked a group of Palestinian herders in the southern West Bank, who were herding their sheep in fields near the Jawiya area of Masafer Yatta, according to a local activist.

Israeli settler violence in Hawara: A sign of what's to come

In-depth

Jessica Buxbaum

Rateb al-Jabour told the Palestinian news agency that the herders were forced to leave their field while a settler attempted to steal one of the group’s livestock.

The Masafer Yatta region has been the site of increased anxiety and confrontations, due to Israel wanting to forcibly expel Palestinian residents of the region’s 12 villages to make way for a military live-fire training ground.

In May 2022, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld a law enabling the expulsion of some 1,000 Palestinians from the area, after a two decades-long legal battle.

Since then, Israeli authorities have gone on to demolish a number of homes and structures belonging to Palestinians, and have put forward the eviction of several residents. The Israeli Supreme Court claims that Palestinians living in the villages were not permanent residents of the area in the 1980s, when the army declared the area as a firing zone.

Rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have slammed the move.

Israel has carried out a number of violent incidents in the occupied territories this year, in what has been described as the "bloodiest" period in recent Palestinian memory.

At least 80 people have been killed in 2023 so far, including 15 children, while scores more are subjected to attacks at the hands of Israeli settlers and forces.

 

One Palestinian killed, dozens injured in Zionists attack


TEHRAN, Mar. 11 (MNA) – A 16-year-old Palestinian was martyred and dozens of others were injured during the attacks launched by the Zionists on different regions of the West Bank on Friday.

The Palestinian youth was shot dead by the Israeli regime's forces during the clashes in Qalqilya.

Zionist military forces also shot at Palestinians with war bullets and plastic bullets during Qalqilya skirmishes.

Dozens of Palestinians were also wounded during the Israeli regime's troops' attacks on different areas in the West Bank.

The Zionists attacked the Palestinian protestors with tear gas and bullets, according to the reports.

Clashes were also reported between the Zionists and Palestinians in the south of Al Khalil and the Occupied al-Quds.

Israeli Forces Kidnap Several Palestinians in West Bank

B.M | DOP - 11 March, 2023

Israeli occupation forces IOF kidnapped five Palestinians during raids in different parts of the occupied West Bank on Saturday morning, March 11, 2023.

Palestinian local sources reported that Israeli occupation forces kidnapped five Palestinian youths, including four ex-detainees, after raiding their homes in occupied Qalqilia.

In addition, Israeli occupation forces invaded different towns and villages in occupied Jenin, which triggered confrontations.

In Bethlehem, Israeli occupation forces kidnapped a Palestinian woman and four youths in their 20 after breaking into and searching their homes.

Local sources reported that the Israeli forces assaulted a Palestinian man after wreaking havoc on his home in Battir town, west of occupied Bethlehem.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces invaded Nablus and removed several Palestinian flags in the town of Sabastia, north of the city.

Earlier on Friday, Israeli occupation forces abducted two Palestinian children in Tel Rumeida in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

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Israeli occupation forces carry out daily incursions into the Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

The Israeli raids result either in arrests, injuries, or terror. Other deadly raids result in murders.

According to Palestinian figures, Israeli occupation forces detained 480 Palestinians, including 62 children and 10 women, in February 2023.

 Israeli Soldiers Injure Many Palestinians In Beit Ummar

 MAR 10, 2023

On Friday, Israeli soldiers injured many Palestinians in Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron, in the West Bank’s southern part.

Media sources said the soldiers invaded the Beit Za’ta area, in the eastern part of the town, leading to protests, and fired many live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets, and gas bombs.

They added that the soldiers shot a Palestinian with an expanding bullet in the leg, causing serious bone fractures before he was rushed to a hospital.

Palestinian medics also treated five young men who were shot with rubber-coated steel bullets, one who was shot with a gas bomb in the head and many who caused many who suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation.

Also Friday, a paramilitary Israeli colonizer killed Abdul-Karim Badea’ Sheikh, 21, at an illegal colony after he reportedly attacked him with a knife, near Qalqilia, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

Thursday morning, the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death of Walid Sa’ad Daoud Nassar, 14, who was seriously injured by Israeli army fire two days ago when the soldiers killed six Palestinians in Jenin, in the northern West Bank.

Newspapers Review: Israeli killing of Palestinians in West Bank highlight of dailies

RAMALLAH, Saturday, March 11, 2023 (WAFA) - The three Palestinian dailies published today, al-Quds, al-Hayat al-Jadida, and al-Ayyam, highlighted the killing of a young man by a settler’s bullets, and a child by the occupation forces’ bullets in Qalqilya, as well as the injuries during the Israeli army suppression of the weekly protests in the West Bank.

Following are the main headlines of these newspapers:

Al-Hayat al-Jadida:

Exchanging roles in the crime: Two martyrs from Qalqilya and Sineria were shot by the occupation forces and settlers

The President congratulates his Chinese counterpart on his unanimous election to a third term

Shtayyeh warns of the dangerous repercussions of the Israeli occupation's crimes

Prisoners sit-in in the prison yards; solidarity activity in Bethlehem

Education Ministry: Cuts in salaries of teachers to be redeemed in the March pay for those who return to work and compensate the students

Palestine and the Vatican stress that freedom of worship and access to holy places must be guaranteed

Xi Jinping wins a third term as president

Riyadh and Tehran agree to resume relations

The legal advisor to the Israeli government ordered a freeze on the decision to dismiss the police chief in Tel Aviv

Novelist Hassan Hamid won the Naguib Mahfouz Award in Egypt and the Arab world

The Factions’ Coordination Committee: The language of violence and treason is a violation of the most basic moral and patriotic values

Al-Ayyam:

Qalqilya: A settler shoots dead a young man, and the occupation army kills a boy during a demonstration

Netanyahu insists on passing the judiciary law, despite Herzog's warning of a catastrophe

The occupation authorities retract a decision to deliver the body of a martyr from Ni'lin

Friday's marches on time: Clashes and injuries; confronting incursions in Tulkarm, Beit Ummar, and Tuqu

Citizens and solidarity activists renew the demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah

Riyadh and Tehran announce the resumption of their diplomatic relations and the activation of security and trade cooperation

General Israeli concern: A dangerous, perilous, and very bad agreement that represents a complete failure

Education Ministry: Reimbursing cuts in salaries for teachers committed to work

Al-Quds:

Two martyrs in Qalqilya, one of them a child

The prisoners continue their collective mutiny for the 25th day

Saudi Arabia and Iran agree to restore diplomatic relations between them

A European delegation held and prevented from reaching the Jordan Valley

Injuries during the suppression of the weekly peaceful marches

Europe is preparing a joint statement against the death penalty for Palestinians, which Israel is working to enact

Washington warns against canceling the disengagement from the settlements evacuated in the northern West Bank

Netanyahu and Meloni discuss improving relations

M.K.

120+ Organizations Campaign Against Israel’s Retention of Palestinian Martyrs

B.M | DOP - 11 March, 2023

Above 140 International organizations have launched a campaign calling for Israel to release the bodies of Palestinian victims held by its authorities.

The International Campaign to Liberate the Remains of Palestinian Martyrs expressed solidarity with the families of Palestinian victims whose bodies are held.

The campaign is scheduled to start from March 11 to March 18, Samidoun Network reported.

Israeli occupation authorities hold the bodies of 256 Palestinian victims killed by Israeli forces in the Cemetery of Numbers. 131 others are held in the morgues.

Human rights institutions said that the Israeli policy of holding the bodies of Palestinian victims has been used since 1948.

Israel  has significantly escalated holding the victims’ bodies since the development of the Palestinian revolution after 4 June 1967