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By Ramzy Baroud

The deadly Israeli invasion of Jenin on July 3 was not a surprise.

Also, unsurprising is the fact that the killing of 12 Palestinians, wounding of 120 more and the destruction of nearly 80 percent of the Jenin Refugee Camp’s homes and infrastructure will not make an iota of a difference.

Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite his lofty promises of destroying the “safe haven … of the terrorist enclave in Jenin”, must have known that his bloody exercise was ultimately futile.

Indeed, as the Israeli military machine was toppling homes, smashing cars and harvesting lives, several Palestinian retaliatory attacks were reported, including in Tel Aviv, on July 4, and in the Kedumim illegal settlement on July 6.

In fact, unlike the Israeli response to the Second Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) of 2000, extreme violence will not weaken, but heighten Palestinian Resistance and counter attacks.

Back then, the Palestinian Authority had a degree of control over Palestinian groups and managed, although with great difficulties, to contain the Palestinian street.

Now, the PA has no such leverage.

Indeed, when a delegation of PA officials visited Jenin on July 5, to show ‘solidarity’ and to promise help in the recovery efforts, Jenin residents kicked the officials out of their camp.

Thus, neither did Israel manage to regain any kind of control over Jenin, nor did the PA succeed in reinventing itself as the savior of the people.

So, what was the point of all of this?

Writing in Haaretz, Zvi Bar’el linked the whole Jenin operation, dubbed ‘House and Garden’, to Netanyahu’s “loss of political control” over his government; in fact, the whole country.

It was “a showy operation”, Bar’el wrote, and “no sensible person in the army or the Shin Bet security service, or even in the silent circles of the right, actually believed that the operation would eradicate” the armed resistance, not only in Jenin, but anywhere throughout the West Bank.

A ‘showy operation’, indeed, and the best proof of that is the language emanating from official Israeli sources, lead among them Netanyahu himself.

The politically, but also legally embattled rightwing Israeli leader bragged about his army’s “comprehensive action”, carried out in “very systemic way … from the ground, from the air (and) with superb intelligence.”

He vowed to “return to Jenin” if “Jenin returns to terror”, and this “will happen much faster and with much greater power than what people might imagine.”

Tel Aviv’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, also spoke about the military’s “success”, in “deal(ing) a heavy blow to the terror organizations in Jenin”, and recording “impressive operational achievements.”

But none of this hyped language is true. What Israel refers to as ‘terror organizations’ in Jenin is part of a much larger phenomenon of armed Resistance, itself an outcome of an even larger movement of popular resistance that is felt in every corner of Occupied Palestine.

Quelling the rebellion is not a question of firepower. To the contrary, Israel’s ‘impressive operational achievement’ has simply poured fuel on a raging fire.

To distract from his mounting problems, and to keep his hardline coalitions of far-right politicians and their popular base of illegal Jewish settlers happy, Netanyahu has done the most foolish thing. He has simply turned a potential armed rebellion in Palestine to an imminent West Bank-wide revolution.

Unlike the Second Intifada, neither Israel nor the PA has any leverage over the new generation of Palestinian resisters. They are neither moved by false promises of a state, of jobs, of international funds, nor seem to fear threats of detention, torture or even death.

To the contrary, the greater the violence Israel metes out against Palestinians, the more emboldened they become.

Any examination of the political discourse of this new Palestinian generation, including that of social media, demonstrates a degree of fearlessness that is truly unprecedented.

This courage can be attributed in part to Gaza, whose ongoing resistance, despite the siege and horrific wars in the last two decades have greatly impacted the youth of the West Bank.

And, while PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Palestinian enemies engaged in a protracted charade of ‘national unity talks’ and ‘power sharing’, the new generation operated entirely independent from these superficial and insincere slogans.

Though they were mostly born or matured after the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, they perceive the political language and culture of that era as alien to them.

It is as if two different Palestines exist – one of Abbas, Fatah, factions, Oslo, donors’ money, ‘peace process’ and dirty politics and another of united Resistance on the ground, sumoud (steadfastness), Gaza, Jenin, Nablus, Lions’ Den and more.

Neither Netanyahu and Gallant, nor Abbas and his PA allies seem to understand, nor are willing to understand this historical shift in political discourses, cultures and language.

They are disinterested in the cultural shift simply because it does not serve the status quo, which has served them well. Netanyahu wants to stay in power as long as possible; Gallant wants to demonstrate his military prowess – for the sake of running for a higher office in the future – and Abbas wants to keep whatever share of power and money allocated to him.

Perhaps, at a deeper level, they all understand that what worked in the past – more violence in the case of Israel and more financial bribes and corruption in the case of the PA, will not work in the present.

Yet, they are likely to stay the course simply because they are weak, desperate and have no long-term visions, let alone real understanding of what is transpiring in Palestine now.

In some ways, it is a generational problem, and a conflict.

As soon as Israel invaded Jenin, all the traditional actors returned to the old script of previous Israeli wars and invasions. They scurried into position, using the ever-predictable language, approving, condemning, applauding and cautioning.

For the older generation, time has stood still. But it has not. The new Palestinian generation has buried the ghosts of the past and moved on. And now, they are ready to speak for themselves and to fight for themselves. Jenin is just the start.

The greater the violence Israel metes out against Palestinians, the more emboldened they become (Ramzy Baroud)

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books.

14 July 2023

By Maung Zarni

This week Aung San Suu Kyi’s fairy like re-emergence into the international policy circles was reported by Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai at the Association of South East Asian Nations Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Jakarta hosted by the current and rotating Chair. Jailed on trumped up corruption charges, and held incommunicado by Myanmar’s coup junta, the ousted civilian leader reportedly “encouraged dialogue” with the widely hated junta engulfed in multiple crises.

I do not doubt that the reported meeting took place. No official would concoct such a story. Having studied her leadership over the last 30 years, I also do not second guess the Thai guest’s relayed message that she is “open to dialogue” with the repressive military, or she “encouraged dialogue” amongst all warring parties in Myanmar’s perennial domestic conflict. On so many public and media occasions, including BBC’s Flagship Radio 4, the populist leader has said repeatedly that she “genuinely (read unconditionally) loved” the soldiers whom she felt were surrogate “brothers” serving in the army which her martyred father Aung San founded and led.

Love in the way one feels about a particular institution or particular population may be understandable – as in nationalism or patriotism. But it is both unprincipled and counter-productive for Suu Kyi to be voicing support for dialogue with no preconditions with the mass-murderous regime in Naypyidaw. Even as she was meeting the Thai visitor for over an hour, her military jailors were routinely carrying out air strikes against pro-democracy civilian communities – not as “collateral damage” but as “legitimate targets” – or severely restricting the humanitarian activities of international bodies including United Nations’ agencies and INGOs –to provide emergency support to nearly 2 million people displaced by violence. That’s roughly the total number of Rohingya people about half of whom fled the genocide in Western Myanmar in 2016 and 2017.

Against this backdrop, the jailed and failed transitional leader’s support for unconditional dialogue with the killers has potential to do more harm than good to the common mission of at least ending violent and oppressive military rule through both peaceful civil disobedience and widespread armed revolt.

There are four problems with her call for dialogue.

Problem one

First, the leaders of the National Unity Government (NUG) and the Committee Representing People’s Hluttaw or Parliament (CRPH) have repeatedly urged their grassroots supporters to support the NUG-led armed resistance. These leaders have been driving home amongst Myanmar public their central message – the blood debt precludes any talk (with the cruel military) – at every opportunity. How does Ms Suu Kyi’s message of “open dialogue” square with the anti-coup resistance’s consensus message of national liberation, as it were, by any means necessary? After all, these NUG and CRPH leaders view themselves as “second” and “third line” leaders from Ms Suu Kyi’s ousted National League for Democracy.

Problem two

Second, this message by NUG and CRPH has obviously resonated very well with the public, which has in turn resulted in “donations for the revolution”, to the tune of over $100 million. It is this grassroots financing from the Burmese public in Myanmar, neighbouring countries and western countries, that has sustained the armed resistance and the Civil Disobedience Movement. Notably, there has been an absence of material and financial assistance from any state during the 2.5 years old resistance movement. Even the United States Government – and the Congress – have limited the American support to “non-lethal assistance” while having poured nearly $80 billion worth of arms and other forms of support into Ukraine’s resistance in less than 2 years.

Wise or not, the anti-coup public want to see the complete eviction of the military. They want to see the genocidal generals dragged out of power by the latter’s feet, literally. For the military has, since the coup of February 2021, been engaged in what I would call a series of “mini-genocides”, that is, scorched-earth methods of destruction of pro-democracy villages and neighbourhoods throughout different ethnic regions including Myanmar Buddhists in the central plains of Saggaing and Magwe, as well as ethnic Chin in the highlands in Western Myanmar and Karenni in the region next to Thailand.

To get a sense of the scale of death and destruction, over 64,000 homes have been torched or otherwise destroyed by the junta troops in the last 2 years since the February coup of 2021. This figure is almost twice as big as 38,000 Rohingya homes (in over 300 villages) destroyed during the same military’s 2017 wave of genocidal destruction. [See the US Holocaust Memorial Museum reports on Rohingya genocide here].

What would happen to the financial and community support to the armed resistance that has not only sustained its momentum but took territorial and administrative control of some of the most important heartland’s regions? Saggaing and Magwe historically provided the largest number of military recruits to the country’s armed forces. Even these Bama Buddhist nationalist enclaves no longer accept the junta as their Bama brethren. Likewise, ethnic resistance organizations in the important frontier states such as Chin and Karenni regions have practically driven out a large number of the junta troops from their regions.

Problem three

Third, as Tria Dianti wrote for the Radio Free Asia, groups representing Myanmar’s civil society met just last week with Ngurah Swajaya, the head of the ASEAN Special Envoy’s office and delivered their unadulterated “No” to any talks with Myanmar junta, which they rightly characterise as “terrorist”. During the meeting, this coalition of grassroots resisters spelled out to the Indonesian diplomat the coalition’s official position: “the Special Envoy’s official engagement with the illegal military junta is inconsistent with ASEAN’s decision and stance to exclude and ban members of the military junta from all high-level ASEAN meetings.” Their message – delivered less than 7 days ago – is diametrically opposed to Ms Suu Kyi’s “openness to dialogue”.

Amongst the participants were representatives of both armed and non-violence organizations with national reach including Bamar People’s Liberation Army (BPLA), Chin Students’ Union of Myanmar, General Strike Collaboration Committee (GSCC), General Strike Committee (GSC), General Strike Committee of Nationalities (GSCN), General Strike Coordination Body (GSCB), Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM), Kachin State Civilian Movement (KSCM), Karen Student Network Group (KSNG), Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF), and Sagaing Forum.

Many of these networks are made up of, and led by, Generation Z resisters and other progressive Myanmar dissidents. They openly embrace Rohingya as integral part of Myanmar’s ethnic tapestry and disdain Ms Suu Kyi’s collaboration with (her) “Father’s military” whenever the troops launch vicious military operations against Rohingya, Kachin, Rakhine Buddhists, farm and labour activists and journalists. They are not going to be swayed by Ms Suu Kyi’s empty encouragement for dialogue, or external actors’ message of pacificism in the face of the junta’s brutal and relentless repression.

Will these mutually exclusive stances – Ms Suu Kyi’s dialogue with no preconditions or the general consensus in the resistance, no dialogue whatsoever with the terrorist junta – tear the society apart?

Troublingly, these fundamentals differences will likely trigger the horizontal violence amongst armed resistance groups, between those still blindly loyal to Suu Kyi, and those segments of the resistance that have embraced the post-coup revolutionary movement as a genuinely democratic alternative to Aung San Suu Kyi’s domestically failed and globally disgraced leadership?

Problem four

Fourth and finally, there is a timely and crucial question to be raised about Aung San Suu Kyi’s moral leadership, political integrity, and intellectual capacity to think through difficult challenges that have confronted the country in turbulent transition.

After all, even with her unfettered access to expertise, advice, public opinion and intelligence reports, Aung San Suu Kyi, both as opposition leader and subsequently the de facto head of state, has made a series of monumental errors with long-term consequences for the country – and her people.

As the opposition leader, she railed against farm and rural protest movement that sought to mitigate the devastating ecological and communal impact stemming from the Chinese mining projects, jointly conducted by the military. As the State Counsellor, the position she called “above the president”, she sung the official praise of Myanmar’s military while the latter launched military operations against Rakhine Buddhists, and her civilian Telecommunications Ministry shut down the Internet for the entire state of Rakhine for 2 years. And most infamously, she chose to defend the indefensible when she turned up at the International Court of Justice to defend and deny the military’s genocide against Rohingya Muslims. Remember how for months she justified prosecution of the two Burmese journalists working for Reuters on grounds of national security: they had the hard evidence of the military’s genocidal massacres, and they were trying to do their job of reporting on the factually verified story.

For its own bloc interests, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of course, is likely to capitalize on Suu Kyi’s message of “openness to dialogue” to continue to tinker with its fruitless 5 Point Consensus (5PCs), which many Myanmar analysts see as “dead upon arrival”.

I for one see no bright prospect in either ASEAN’s efforts or Aung San Suu Kyi’s hold on certain segments of Myanmar public.

Ms Suu Kyi’s abysmal record on neo-liberal economic policies, anti-Muslim racist politics and typically autocratic decisions have clearly demonstrated that she lacks a clear federalist democratic vision. And equally important, she shares the military’s Bama Buddhist chauvinism wherein both her policies and the military’s treat the non-Bama ethnic communities as “junior partners” in nation-building.

By way of prediction, she will continue to speak in her characteristically vague and empty rhetoric of “dialogue.” Ms Suu Kyi’s captors will carry on using any process of dialogue, not to seek lasting peace or build a new kind of politics based on the federal principles of ethnic group equality and democratic control of the country’s armed forces, but rather to wiggle themselves out of the violent corner they have created for themselves. After all, it is the original coup regime of 1962 led by General Ne Win which launched nationwide “peace dialogue” in 1963 while it and successive military regimes have since proceeded to plunge the country into further strife and turmoil in the ensuing 60-years.

Tragically, the public will become increasingly confused as to who is providing the pro-democracy leadership or which path – revolutionary or the status quo of the Suu Kyi-military deal, which will undoubtedly be backed by ASEAN.

Maung Zarni

Banner image: Aung San Statue Yangon, Wikimedia Commons, & Aung San Suu Kyi historical figure, Wikimedia Commons.

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide.

14 July 2023

Source: forsea.co

By Peter Koenig

About a week ago, the UN Human Rights Czar in Geneva issued a stern warning – “Up to 80 million people will be plunged into hunger if climate targets are not met”.

These are the words of Volker Turk, the head of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. He spoke at a Human Rights event, and highlighted as principal cause for this coming calamity – what else – “climate change”. He said,

“extreme weather events were having a significant negative impact on crops, herds and ecosystems, prompting further concerns about global food availability.”

This is immediately proven by never-before-in-history extreme floods in Vermont, USA, by extreme droughts in Europe and Central – Western USA and by enormous, never-before experienced – forest fires in Canada. More is already announced – extreme Monsoon rains in India, and possibly Bangladesh. What a coincidence. Except, there are no coincidences. Droughts and gigantic flashfloods, in calculated interchange. No coincidences.

Most people of this globe just simply cannot believe how evil some non-people are. The Covid crime and the vaccination genocide was not enough to open their eyes, that their governments cannot be trusted, that they are sold, either by money or by threats, to an extreme evil power, a Depopulation, a Eugenics Cult which is behind it all.

Mr. Turk went on claiming,

“More than 828 million people faced hunger in 2021, and climate change is projected to place up to 80 million more people at risk of hunger by the middle of this century.”

Further contributing to the drama, he added, “Our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying”; and that these factors will combine to lead humanity towards a “dystopian future” unless urgent and immediate action is taken by environmental policymakers.

And then came the MUST reference to the 2015 (COP) Paris Agreement often referred to as the Paris Climate Accords, which were adopted by 196 parties at the time. COP means “Conference of the Parties”. Adding to the confusion of UN jargons, it refers to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose signatories agreed to cap global warming below 2 degrees celsius above the 1850-1900 levels – or to 1.5 degrees celsius if possible. Does anyone understand the language to carry out this easy task?

Such an arrogant statement – humans making the weather with their sheer lifestyles – should already ring a strong bell in a clear-thinking mind of normal humans, but it doesn’t, because our pineal gland for logical thinking and perception of emotions has been gradually dumbed, reduced, even killed in some people with chemicals we eat regularly und imperceptibly in our daily food, chemicals sprayed from the air via chemtrails, “disinfectant” chemicals in the water, the uncountable PCR tests, with absolutely scientifically proven unnecessary sticks up the nose, to the thin separation between nose and brain – and pineal gland — and more.

To dull our sentiments and perception is a long-term goal that “our Masters” have been working on for the last at least hundred years – or longer.

Dulled minds are easier to manipulate. Add to this DARPA’s MK-Ultra and Monarch mind-manipulation program and we know why we are where we are.

Our mental desensitization is the product of a long-term plan, namely precisely the plan that is currently being implemented by the WEF’s Great Reset and the UN Agenda 2030. That just shows that the UN is totally compromised by a “deep state” system, or Diabolical Cult that is way stronger than all our international agencies together.

Incidentally, Bill Gates said once in an interview that even should he “disappear”, the system goes on; it had been prepared for a century or more. You won’t find this reference anymore anywhere on internet. But this is the level of well-planned evil that we are facing NOW – The Great Reset, the UN Agenda 2030, and the all-digitizing 4^th Industrial Revolution. All executed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations, and the World Health Organization (WHO).

They are the willing forefront of an enormously powerful financial behemoth which wants to stay in the dark, both literally and figuratively. Those who work the buttons for the Monster, have been promised “paradise”, or being part of the elite. Enough to buy their soul.

This financial elite system is controlling every sector of production, of food supply, of energy availability, and, indeed, of “climate change”. Yes, man-made climate change, but not the type that is supposedly carbon-based and depending on the human carbon footprint.

We are talking about highly sophisticated Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD), that are and have been causing extreme monsoons in Pakistan last year, this year already announced in India and possibly Bangladesh, and wherever an unruly population needs to be reined in, and where basic infrastructure and housing, as well as food crops must be destroyed, in order to create human misery, famine and death – and as a byproduct human obedience.

Would anybody like to pretend that Mr. Human Rights, Mr. Turk, when he speaks at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, does not know the facts? He is betraying the very people he has been mandated to defend and protect.

Massive depopulation, meaning, worldwide genocide, never seen before in human history – currently ongoing – it is Number One of the REAL 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), i.e. UN Agenda 2030. What the 17 SDGs say on the surface is but a smoke screen. The real meaning is reflected in this depiction – in Spanish – from Thereal2030.org – see this.

What Mr. Turk, Human Rights advocate, is saying goes exactly in the opposite direction of Human Rights. Mr. Turk, as the UN defender of Human Rights, the world’s highest Human Rights Officer, instead of protecting humans, he is sending them to death with the “climate change” narrative, with the false pretense that climate change will create and increase massive famine and death, if humanity and their leaders will not adhere to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreements.

This narrative is correct when applied to the since the 1940’s scientifically developed, today highly sophisticated ENMOD technologies. But people do not know, they are on purpose being indoctrinated that the “climate change” which they live is the result of humanities excessive carbon footprint. That is an absolute lie.

Mr. Turk, like all those who order him to help reduce humanity rather than protect humanity, knows very well that humans cannot change the climate by reducing the carbon footprint, because the human carbon footprint has an absolute minimal impact on what is called “global warming” or “climate change”.

Even if humanity would reach a “net zero carbon emission”, the climate would keep changing as it did for the about 4 billion years Mother Earth exists. The earth, like all the planets in the universe are dynamic beings, lives, if you will.

The climate is not influenced by humans, but to more than 97% by the sun, by sun movements. This is attested by any serious scientist – and more and more of those come to the fore to confront the ever-growing climate crime. And these sun-influenced dynamic changes are slow processes, over thousands of years, not noticeable within the extremely short time span of a human life.

Today, the world’s total energy use is still based to about 85% on hydrocarbons, and unless the world economy is made to completely collapse by the infamous slogan of “net zero carbon use”, or there is a sudden breakthrough in converting the endless sun energy by photo synthesis to energy, what the plants do, humanity’s survival depends on hydrocarbons for many more years to come.

Dear Mr. Turk, Defender of Huma Rights – you must know this, in the high position you are honored to hold, don’t you?

Where is your conscience, Mr. Turk, when you ring the alarm bell on innocent, already deprived people with famine, with a rapid increase of famine, and consequently with a rapid increase of death resulting from famine, when YOU know that the only man-made climate change is the one nobody talks about, the one emanating from the man-made ENMOD technologies.

The science of ENMOD, including HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is being weaponized, has been gradually weaponized for years. The science is known since the 1940’s and has been perfected to sophistication since then. It can even trigger earthquakes – has done so already on several occasions – killing thousands of people, leaving the masses under the impression that they became victims of a “natural event”.

ENMOD is weaponizing the climate.

The technologies of environmental modification can be and are applied clandestinely, most people have no clue what happens, when for example western summers are hot and dry like never before, when forests burn – put aflame by paid arsonists – and pollute the air for weeks and over thousands of square kilometers, when sudden, mighty thunderstorms bring flash-floods to overheated and dried out soil to slam down the final stroke to food crop destruction.

The media tells them: Claim it on “climate change” and help reduce your carbon foot print, do not eat meat, do not drive cars, do not fly, stay home, adapt to a modern lockdown. The new 15-minute cities are ideal for you, the commons.

Have you noticed how commercial flying is gradually becoming unaffordable for the common people, while of course, the rich and famous, the all-commanding elite couldn’t care less and keep using all the more their private jets to roam around the globe. Their carbon footprint is immaterial.

They laugh at the commons whose brains, and especially pineal glands, have been dulled by 5G ultra-microwaves, chemtrail-chemicals, water disinfectants – and more – so that the majority still falls for their governments lies that they better follow the rules, the “rules-based order” that replaced constitutional laws, or else.

Has anybody noticed? Nations’ constitutional laws are being ignored. No judge in the world would uphold them against the elite-led order.

Mr. Turk, in your recent Human Rights advocacy speech in Geneva, you did not address the latest craziness and ultimate crime on humanity, the Washington and EU idea to block out the sunlight to cool down the earth. For the sake of saving humanity from “climate change”.

See this and this.

Scientists have warned of devastating effects of climate “geoengineering”. Yet, the Human Rights Council has not brought it up. It is an unspeakable crime on Human Rights – as such weather and climate manipulation would abridge every Human Right.

Can you imagine what that would mean? Of course, instead of having a cooling effect to preserve the earth’s temperature within the 2015 Paris Accord – an absurdity in the first place — it would have a disastrous killer effect. Every life form needs the sun and dies without it.

Blocking out the sunlight would be the ultimate killing machine to reach the Number One SDG drastically reduce the world population. You missed that one, Mr. Human Rights.

How can you sleep at night, Mr. Turk, scaring already desperately poor and undernourished people with more famine, because they and their governments do not follow the 2015 Paris climate rules, so they may face death?

Maybe your pineal gland, Mr. Turk, has also been killed and you have no longer any feelings for Human Rights, reason enough for having been placed into the position of the Human Rights czar.

The UN Human Rights Council’s 53rd session ends on July 14. Thus, there are still a couple of days left to right your wrongs, Mr. Turk and your HR Council colleagues.

If not, We, the People, will do everything in our peaceful and spiritual minds to stop this climate crime, including divulging the real agenda behind the 17 SDGs and behind the illegal UN Agenda 2030, the WEF’s Great Reset. We will be a critical mass to bring back decency and harmony to human life.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world.

13 July 2023

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Countercurrents Collective

Moscow and Beijing should “lead the correct direction of global governance reform,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi underlined that the development of the bilateral ties between China and Russia has become “a strategic choice made by both countries based on their own national and people’s fundamental interests.”

Xi added that the importance of developing ties within such multinational groups as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS.

The Chinese President was hosting Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, on Monday.

Valentina Matvienko was visiting Beijing for talks.

The high-profile negotiations revolved around strengthening ties between the two nations, as well as their joint multinational projects.

“China is ready to continue to work with Russia to develop a new era of comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership that is mutually supportive, deeply integrated, pioneering and innovative, and mutually beneficial to help rejuvenate the two countries and promote a prosperous, stable, fair and just world,” Xi said during the meeting, which involved multiple senior officials from the two countries.

During the meeting, Matvienko relayed a “spoken message” from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Xi.

She said Russia-China ties have in recent years reached their highest-ever point and they will continue to improve even further. “This is the key role of the leaders of the two states. Such cooperation is in the best interests of our countries,” she said.

Speaking to reporters after the talks, Matvienko stated that Moscow can always rely on “a firm and reliable friendly shoulder in China,” hailing the country as a “very responsible serious state.”

“The main thing that I learned from all the meetings and conversations is that China will consistently and persistently continue cooperation with Russia, preserving the friendship that exists between our countries and peoples,” she said.

The Russian delegation, led by Matvienko, is set to remain in China until Wednesday.

West Pushes Neocolonial Agenda On World Stage, Says Lavrov

The U.S. and its allies are attempting to cling onto world hegemony against the tide of multipolar international order, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

“We do not define the currents phase of international relations as a new Cold War,” Lavrov told the Indonesian outlet Kompas.

“The issue at hand is about something different, namely, the formation of a multipolar international order. This is an objective process. Everyone can see that new globally meaningful decision-making centers are growing stronger in Eurasia, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.”

These countries and their associations are seeing success because they promote “values such as national interests, independence, sovereignty, cultural and civilizational identity and international cooperation,” in line with the global development trends, Lavrov explained.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-led “collective West” is trying to slow or reverse this process, the Russian diplomat said.

He said: “Their goal is not to strengthen global security or engage in joint development, but to maintain their hegemony in international affairs and to keep pursuing their neocolonial agenda, or in simpler terms, to continue to address their own problems at the expense of others, as they are accustomed to doing.”

Lavrov pointed to economic sanctions imposed by Western countries against Russia in response to its military operation in Ukraine, as well as “overall selfish foreign policy,” which he said had undermined global food and energy security and made life difficult for developing countries.

The Ukraine conflict will continue “until the West gives up its plan to preserve its domination and overcome its obsessive desire to inflict on Russia a strategic defeat at the hands of its Kiev puppets,” Lavrov added, noting that there are no signs of that happening at this time.

Instead, he said, “the Americans and their vassals continue feverishly pumping Ukraine full of arms and pushing Vladimir Zelensky to continue hostilities,”

Lavrov said it is telling that the West is ignoring the initiatives of the developing nations, for instance, the proposals by Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

“During his visit to Moscow on June 30, 2022, he spoke about the need for ceasefire, humanitarian assistance and food security and expressed willingness to ‘develop communication’ between the leaders of Russia and Ukraine,” the minister said. On June 3 of this year, Defence Minister of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto also spoke about settlement of the crisis in Ukraine. But Kiev instantly rejected his idea by saying that it needed no mediators right now.”

Lavrov said the so-called “peace formula” suggested by Zelensky is a symptom of the aggressive mood of Kiev and its external patrons.

“They are trying to push it through as the only possible option for settlement. In effect, it consists of a package of ultimatums for Russia: a demand to stage a trial of its military-political leadership and take off its material assets in the form of reparations. To legitimize these demands that have nothing to do with seeking a real settlement, they are trying to convene some ‘peace summit’ in the near future, to which they are inviting developing nations. I am sure the Indonesians understand perfectly well the harmful motive behind these plans and will not yield to the false rhetoric of those that stand for fighting to the last Ukrainian,” he said.

NATO’s Military Aid To Ukraine Brings World War Three Closer, Says Medvedev

A Reuters report said on July 12, 2023:

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s powerful Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, said late on Tuesday that the increase in military assistance to Ukraine by the NATO alliance brings World War Three closer.

Commenting on the first day of the summit of the U.S.-led alliance in Lithuania, where a number of countries pledged more weaponry and financial support, Medvedev said the aid would not deter Russia from achieving its goals in Ukraine.

“The completely crazy West could not come up with anything else … In fact, it is a dead end. World War Three is getting closer,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Diplomats say Medvedev’s comments give an indication of thinking at the top levels of the Kremlin elite.

He also advocated on Tuesday for using the “inhuman weapon” that is cluster munitions after what he said were reports of Ukraine already using it.

The U.S. announced it would supply Kyiv with cluster munitions that typically release large numbers of small bomblets over a wide area and are banned by many countries.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Moscow would be forced to use “similar” weapons if the U.S. supplied cluster bombs to Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have previously accused each other of already using cluster munitions in the 500-day war.

Other media reports said:

Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine will continue and its goals will remain unchanged, including Kiev’s rejection of NATO membership, said Medvedev.

Commenting on the early results of the NATO summit in Vilnius, the Russian security official emphasized that NATO made the decision to eventually admit Ukraine, albeit “nobody knows when and on what conditions” and to boost its military assistance to Ukraine.

“What does it mean for us? It is crystal clear. The special military operation will continue with its goals unchanged. One of them is the rejection of NATO membership by the Kiev-based neo-Nazi group,” he said.

“We insisted on that from the very outset, but it is impossible, and, therefore, this group has to be eliminated. This is possible and necessary,” Medvedev wrote.

US, Europeans Depleted Their Weapons Stockpile Fighting Russia In Ukraine

U.S. President Joe Biden has taken flak over an explanation justifying the deployment of cluster munitions to Ukraine in which he admitted both Kiev and Washington are running out of ordinary 155-millimeter howitzer shells.

“This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” Biden said in a televised Friday interview, shortly after Washington’s announcement on the expedited delivery of M864 Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) cluster bombs to Ukraine.

“And so, what I finally did, took the recommendation of the Defense Department, to not permanently, but to allow for, in this transition period, where we have more 155 weapons, these shells for Ukrainians, to provide them with something that has a very low dud rate,” Biden said.

The president’s comments were echoed by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who said in a Sunday chat show that the U.S. was running low on howitzer rounds.

The Ukrainians “are using artillery at a very accelerated rate, many thousands of rounds per day. This is literally a gun fight all along – from the Donbass all the way down towards Zaporozhye and Kherson. And so they’re running out of inventory,” Kirby said.

“We are trying to ramp up our production of the kind of artillery shells that they’re using most. But that production rate is still not where we want it to be. So we’re going to send these additional artillery shells that have cluster bomblets in them to help bridge the gap as we ramp up production of the normal 155 artillery shells,” the spokesman added.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl made a similar point on Friday, telling reporters Washington was looking to “bridge” a gap that exists between Ukrainian artillery round consumption and US and European production using cluster rounds.

“Vladimir Putin has a theory of victory, okay? His theory of victory is that he will outlast everybody. He will outlast the Ukrainians, he will outlast the United States, he will outlast the Europeans,” a flustered Kahl said. “That’s why President Biden has been clear that we are going to be with Ukraine as long as it takes and why we are signaling that we will continue to provide Ukraine with the capabilities that will keep them in the fight.”

Dedollarization Progress In Russia-China Trade

Media reports said:

Russia-China trade and economic cooperation is expanding, with over 80% of settlements between the two nations currently made in rubles and yuan, President Vladimir Putin has revealed.

The Russian leader was addressing a virtual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Tuesday via videolink from Moscow. The 23rd SCO summit is being chaired by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

According to Putin, the volume of trade between Russia and fellow SCO member states reached a record $263 billion in 2022. The figure was up 35% in the first four months of this year, he noted. The share of the ruble in Russia’s settlements with the SCO countries exceeded 40%, Putin said.

Trade between Russia and China has continued to accelerate after hitting a historic high of $190.3 billion in annual terms in 2022. Exports and imports have surged at double-digit pace since the beginning of the year. According to customs data, bilateral trade soared to $93.8 billion in January-May, marking a 40.7% increase compared with a year ago. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov recently said that bilateral trade is on track to surpass the target of $200 billion a year earlier than anticipated.

Economic ties have been bolstered by the mutual decision to conduct the majority of transactions in national currencies instead of the US dollar.

Palestine Updates 646

Ranjan Solomon

Jenin attacks rank as collective punishment

Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations have criticized punitive measures taken by the Israeli government against Palestinians as fears grow of escalation after the deadliest unrest for years in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the arrests a gross violation of international law and the Geneva Convention, adding that the collective punishment was an extension of the occupation policy aimed at removing the Palestinian presence from Jerusalem. Various groups said the Israeli action amounted to collective punishment and is illegal under international law. Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq Palestinian Human Rights organization, told Arab News: “These collective punishments are war crimes that the Israeli government takes against the Palestinians, as it punishes people who have nothing to do with those who carry out attacks against the Israeli occupiers. The Israeli government is fully responsible for the deterioration of conditions and massacres perpetrated by Israeli forces in the occupied Palestinian territories. The decision of the Israeli Cabinet to distribute more weapons to settlers in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, and to call on the occupation police to take up arms, constituted a green light for Jewish terrorist organizations – which take settlements and outposts as safe havens under the protection of the occupation army – to commit more crimes. Israeli HaMoked human rights organization, said that members of Israel’s Cabinet were threatening a range of measures, all of which constituted collective punishment against innocent people.

Meanwhile Workers World made a shocking compelling report on the insidious role of Human Rights Watch. The U.S. not only had weapons to ship and diplomatic support to provide, but also well-financed organizations that could speak hypocritically in the name of human rights. In every global crisis, these organizations will step forward to issue reports of political assistance to support U.S. imperialist aims. In 2002, international bodies and United Nations bodies resoundingly called for a war crimes investigation of the Zionist massacre in Jenin. There was a world outcry. The U.S. government used Human Rights Watch (HRW), a notorious NGO funded by the U.S. Congress through the National Endowment for Democracy, to divert and railroad the call for an international inquiry.The Israeli military conveniently lifted the total lockdown of Jenin’s desperate civilian population to give HRW investigators a special opportunity to gain entrance into the barricaded Jenin refugee camp. In the confusion of the continuing military lockdown and bulldozers plowing up roads, electric lines and plumbing. Workers World reports how HRW opened spaces to allow them to pass Israeli checkpoints and patrols along with the HRW delegation. It became obvious to Workers World that their report and photos they provided were sharply different from the sanitized report from HRW. Bertrand Russell once posed this pertinent question: “How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?”(Bertrand Russell)

13 July 2023

“The attack on Jenin may have now ended, but there is no bigger resolution in sight – and no sign that the continual rounds of Palestinian displacement will end any time soon,” writes Dr Anne Irfan (UCL Arts and Sciences) in The Conversation examining Palestine-Israel.

The Israeli army’s recent attack on Jenin refugee camp resulted in 13 deaths (12 Palestinians, including four children, and one Israeli soldier killed by suspected friendly fire). An additional 143 Palestinians were injured, with 20 in critical condition, and up to 4,000 displaced.

While this mass displacement has received less media attention than other aspects of the Israeli operation, it is central to understanding the region’s politics.

Forced migration has always been core to the dynamics of modern Palestine and Israel. Most Palestinians are refugees, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is organised around control of movement.

While often framed as a fight over religion and ideology, this is ultimately a struggle around demographics, displacement and mobility.

Much of the social media rhetoric on Jenin this week has asked why there is a refugee camp in the West Bank. It’s a question that reflects widespread historical ignorance both in Israel and across the west. In fact, there are 19 refugee camps in the West Bank, and eight in the Gaza Strip. More than 2 million Palestinians across the two territories are registered by the United Nations (UN) as refugees – and their original dispossession goes to the heart of the violence today.

When the state of Israel was established in 1948, it took over 78% of Palestine (much more than the 55% that the UN had originally allocated to the nascent Jewish state). Around three-quarters of the Palestinian population – 750,000 people – became refugees, expelled directly by Zionist militias or fleeing to escape massacres and other violence.

These events are known by Palestinians as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”), and are commemorated annually by refugee communities across the Middle East.

In the immediate aftermath of the Nakba, the refugees sought shelter in the neighbouring Arab states and the two areas of Palestine that did not become part of Israel: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Camps were built to house those with nowhere else to go. Jenin was one such camp, predominantly sheltering refugees from Haifa and Nazareth.

At the end of 1948, the UN passed Resolution 194, calling for the refugees to be allowed to return to their homes at the earliest opportunity. Successive Israeli governments consistently opposed this, and with no resolution, the refugees have remained in exile and in limbo.

Fast forward to 2023 and Jenin has now sheltered more than three generations of refugees. It is home to more than 14,000 people, surviving on less than half a square kilometre of land. When up to 4,000 Palestinians were displaced from the camp this week, they became refugees twice over. This is not the first time this has happened – Israel’s previous attack on Jenin in 2002 also displaced 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the camp’s population at the time.

The displacement of Palestinians did not end in 1948 but has continued for 75 years. In 1967, the Israeli army occupied the two parts of Palestine not subsumed in 1948: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (known thereafter as the Occupied Palestinian Territories or OPT). As a result, nearly 400,000 Palestinians became refugees, more than half for the second time. Jordan established six new refugee camps to house them.

The Israeli occupation places millions of civilians under martial law. Displacement and immobility are core features of the regime. The construction of illegal Israeli settlements often entails both, uprooting existing Palestinian communities and curtailing their freedom of movement by seizing land across the territory.

In addition to land grab, other Israeli measures that cause continual Palestinian displacement include forcible evictions, house demolitions, denial of residency rights, and discriminatory planning and zoning. This means that Palestinians must live with the constant threat of displacement hanging over them, and no protection of their civil rights as a population under occupation.

In all cases, Palestinians across the occupied territories struggle to negotiate their rights without the claims of citizenship. Recent high-profile cases of forcible displacement include Israeli eviction orders against Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah to make room for Israeli settlers. In the southern West Bank, Palestinian communities in Masafer Yaffa are facing expulsion as Israel appropriates the land for military training.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza face displacement of a different kind. Although Israel withdrew its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Palestinians there have continued to lose their homes due to ongoing waves of violence. Some 72,000 were displaced during the 2021 air attack on Gaza, as 2,200 homes were destroyed and another 37,000 damaged.

As around 70% of the Gaza population are refugees, this figure is a stark reminder of the continual nature of Palestinian forced migration. Many Palestinians now speak of “ongoing Nakba” to reflect this reality.

All this is possible because the Palestinians’ statelessness deprives them of basic rights. While discussions about the peace process is often framed in terms of conflict resolution and security, for many Palestinians the real priority is ending their dispersal and displacement.

The attack on Jenin may have now ended, but there is no bigger resolution in sight – and no sign that the continual rounds of Palestinian displacement will end any time soon.

7 July 2023

Source: ucl.ac.uk

By Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham

So’ed Od, a 13-year-old girl, is one of around 1,000 Palestinian residents of the eight villages in Masafer Yatta—a small region of rugged hills at the southern edge of the occupied West Bank. So’ed now spends her days helping her mother look after their flock of sheep and make cheese in the small village of Sfay, whose name comes from the Arabic word for “pure.”

So’ed stopped attending class after Israeli bulldozers crushed the village school. That day, So’ed told us, she helped young children, the students of lower grades, to escape through the windows. “We were in English class,” she said. “I saw a Jeep approaching through the window. The teacher stopped the class. Soldiers arrived with two bulldozers. They closed the doors on us. We were stuck in the classrooms. Then we escaped through the windows. And they destroyed the school.”

The destruction of the elementary school took place in November 2022 and was documented on video. Children in the first, second, and third grades can be seen in one of the classrooms, screaming and sobbing. Israeli soldiers surrounded the school, where 23 students were enrolled, and threw stun grenades at villagers who were attempting to block the path of the bulldozers. The sound of the explosions terrified the trapped students even more. In the videos, mothers can be seen pulling children out through the classroom windows. Representatives from the Israeli Civil Administration, the arm of the military that governs the occupied territories, entered the emptied school, removed the tables, chairs, and boards from the classrooms, and loaded them onto a truck, confiscating the items. The Civil Administration did not respond to our request for comment.

In 1980, the army had declared 30,000 dunams (nearly 7,500 acres) of the residents’ land to be a “firing zone”; the stated purpose was to remove Palestinians from the area, which Israel designated for Jewish settlement because of its strategic proximity to the Green Line marking the border. In May of last year, a three-judge panel of the Supreme Court rejected the residents’ appeal against the firing zone, effectively giving the army permission to continue to displace the Palestinians from their land. The judge who wrote the controversial ruling, David Mintz, lives in a West Bank settlement called Dolev, about a 20-minute drive from Ramallah.

The mass expulsion of Masafer Yatta’s residents has not yet been carried out, but the lives of all the people of these villages have changed beyond recognition in the months since the ruling. Soldiers have begun detaining children at impromptu checkpoints they’ve erected in the middle of the desert under the cover of night; families watch as bulldozers raze their homes with increasing frequency; and, right next to the villages designated for expulsion and demolition, soldiers are already training with live fire, racing tanks, and detonating mines.

Army officials have stated that plans to carry out the expulsion order have already been presented to politicians. This year, with the most right-wing government in Israel’s history in power––and with its ministers openly calling for mass population transfers and the erasure of Palestinian villages––it’s very likely that the mass expulsion will actually take place. If it does, it will be the largest single act of population transfer carried out in the West Bank since Israel expelled thousands of Palestinians in 1967, in the early days of the occupation.

Both of us have witnessed the struggle in Masafer Yatta from up close. Basel, a journalist and activist, was born in one of the villages there. His mother started taking him to demonstrations against the expulsion when he was 5. He grew up without electricity in his home because the military ordered a blanket ban on construction and access to infrastructure for Palestinians in the area. Over the past decade, he has been documenting the erasure of his community on video, and his posts have reached millions of people around the world.

Yuval was born in the city of Be’er Sheva, a 30-minute drive from Basel’s house, on the Israeli side of the Green Line. For the past five years, he has been reporting on the expulsion and apartheid in both Hebrew and English. The two of us work as a team, mostly for +972 Magazine and the news site Local Call, and this article is a product of our collaboration.

Since the court’s ruling last May, Israel has made the lives of the families in Masafer Yatta even more unbearable, to the point that it’s unclear whether they will be able to survive there. This process, however, has been going on for more than four decades—in what can best be described as a slow-moving expulsion. The primary tool Israel uses is the systematic denial of building permits. Because Palestinian residents cannot possibly live in a village without houses and other basic infrastructure—and because anything they build is deemed “illegal” and summarily demolished—over time this policy has forced the residents to leave their land.

Seven days after the ruling, the military razed the homes of nine families in Masafer Yatta; 45 people were left homeless. “It was one of the worst acts of destruction I have ever seen,” said Eid Hadlin, a local activist who lives in a house that has no running water or electricity and is facing a demolition order.

The bulldozers arrived at Al-Merkaz, one of the villages designated for expulsion. The soldiers let the residents clear out their homes. The women carried their personal belongings outside and gathered them into a pile: mattresses, backpacks, underwear and shirts, shampoo bottles. An inspector in the Civil Administration looked on until the houses were emptied. Then he gave the go-ahead, and the bulldozers wrecked it all.

Najati, a young teenager, sat with his grandmother next to the pile of debris that was once their home. He was furious. “The officer told me, as he was demolishing our house: ‘Why bother building? That’s it, finished—this area is now the army’s for training,’” he said.

One morning, the residents of his village discovered that soldiers had posted warning signs on their houses overnight. “You are in a firing zone,” the signs read, in Arabic that was so riddled with errors that they seemed to have been written with the help of Google Translate. “Entrance is forbidden. Anyone breaking the law can be arrested, fined, lose their vehicle, which will be confiscated, or can face any other punishment deemed fitting.” In the following weeks, soldiers built a checkpoint between the villages and confiscated vehicles that passed through it, under the pretext that driving through a firing zone is prohibited. And so, gradually, most of the residents were deprived of their ability to move freely.

Najati said his family slept outside that night, under the open sky, and the next day they cleared the debris and took out a loan to build another house, in the same spot. “I’ve lived in Masafer Yatta my whole life, herding sheep,” said Safa Al-Najar, Najati’s grandmother, her voice slightly hoarse but her smile that of a young woman. Her home was demolished that same day as well. And so, she said, she’ll sleep in the family’s cave.

“At first, my husband and I lived in this cave,” she said. “This was our bedroom, and living room, and kitchen—everything together. The sheep lived next to us in the second cave. But 20 years ago, when my children were grown, we built a house for them. Everything we built—destroyed.”

According to data from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, since 2016, soldiers have demolished the homes of 121 families in Masafer Yatta and have left around 384 people without shelter, many of them children. And it’s not only houses that are at risk, but all buildings and infrastructure. Pens for the sheep were also destroyed, water pipes cut, trees felled; even the access roads, which connect the villages to one another, were destroyed by a huge bulldozer.

At a time when two separate legal proceedings are being brought against Israel at The Hague—in the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice—Israel seems eager to avoid the harsh international condemnation that would inevitably follow from a brazen population transfer. By expelling the residents of Masafer Yatta house by house, Israel can achieve the same goal at a much smaller cost to its image.

Since the destruction of their school, children in Sfay have been attending class in a crumbling trailer parked on the outskirts of the village. There are holes in the roof through which rainwater leaks, and the bathroom door is a piece of curtain. The army has forbidden any renovation of the trailer—or the building of a new school.

So’ed’s village is fairly typical for Masafer Yatta. Most of its residents are farmers and shepherds who plant wheat, barley, and olive trees, make goat cheese, and wake up early in the morning to bake bread. The area is full of ancient caves, carved out of the soft white rocks in the hilly desert by residents many generations ago. So’ed’s parents lived in the caves, but they eventually built a house for her and her siblings.

Families whose homes are demolished by military bulldozers are forced to live in the caves, which quickly become overcrowded and suffocating. Yet the residents are also forbidden from renovating the caves, some of which are already uninhabitable.

“We want to build regular houses, to live aboveground. Sleeping in a cave is like sleeping in a grave,” said Fares Al-Najar, a resident of Al-Merkaz. Families who don’t have a cave or who refuse to accept such living conditions are forced to either leave their community and lose their land—or build a new house that will inevitably be demolished. “It’s an unending cycle,” Fares said.

Both the scope and the frequency of such demolitions have increased since the Supreme Court’s decision, which made it much easier for Israeli judges to deny the appeals submitted by the families’ lawyers. And while those appeals, too, were often denied in the past, the legal proceedings went on for years, buying the residents time to remain in their villages and organize their community struggle.

Masafer Yatta is part of Area C, a designation under the Oslo Accords, which covers 61 percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli military and civil control. Out of the hundreds of requests for building permits the army received between 2000 and 2020, it has denied over 99 percent of requests in Area C, according to data provided by the Israeli NGO Bimkom—Planners for Planning Rights.

In the 15 months since the Supreme Court ruling, the army has imposed a curfew on Jinba, the village where Nidal was born. Soldiers built two checkpoints next to the village: At one, there is a black tent; at the other, a tank. Both are used to detain residents, to confiscate their vehicles, and to block visitors from entering the village.

The court’s ruling in May “cut us off from the other villages,” Nidal said. “Every time we want to leave, to visit our family members, to go shopping, the soldiers detain us for at least two hours. That’s the best case-scenario. One time, they held me up for seven hours.”

People are afraid to drive to the villages for fear of losing their vehicles. In recent months, residents testify, soldiers have confiscated the cars of humanitarian workers, schoolteachers, and lawyers providing legal assistance to the residents. This policy also has a chilling effect on journalists, who are less able to come and report on the region. Cutting Masafer Yatta off from other communities is expected to make it easier for the army to carry out the population transfer with as few witnesses as possible.

The day before the start of school last year, soldiers refused to let the teachers of Jinba’s elementary school enter the village to prepare the classrooms. The soldiers at the checkpoint confiscated their car, explaining that they were in a firing zone. These decisions are made arbitrarily: The following day, the soldiers let the teachers through.

Royda Abu Aram, from the village of Al-Halawah, is a student in 12th grade, the year students take the tawjihi exams—the Palestinian equivalent of the SATs. “Yesterday I missed all my classes because there was no way for me to get there without a car or transportation,” she said. “My friend Bisan, who tried to get to school by car, was delayed by the soldiers for an hour and a half, in the sun.”

In a video recording of the checkpoint from August, a soldier, his hand resting on his gun and a large tank behind him, explains to a group of several adults and school-age children, backpacks slung across their shoulders, that “this area is designated as a firing zone, the army closed this area, and we are conducting searches here.”

Every school in Masafer Yatta has received a demolition order. “I really want to work in education. I’m interested in studying at university and becoming a language and English teacher,” Bisan, also a 12th grader, said. “But I’m worried I won’t do well on the tawjihi exam in these circumstances. It’s hard to learn when you know that you may wake up tomorrow and bulldozers will come to demolish your school.”

The Supreme Court ruling also granted permission to the Israeli military to start training with live fire in the area. Tanks have been roaring through the area between the villages while soldiers fire live rounds and detonate explosives; helicopters have been practicing landing and taking off. All these loud noises join the buzzing of the drones that the soldiers, and sometimes the nearby settlers, use to monitor whether residents are building new houses after their homes have been destroyed.

“Our entire village went outside to look at them,” said Jinba resident Issa Younis, after a day of tank training that took place next to the village last June. “The noise of the tanks was deafening. The mine detonations started before sunrise, right by our houses. All the walls shook, like we were in an earthquake.”

During one of these training sessions, in the village of Al-Majaz, soldiers placed targets on the windows of the houses, on a tractor, and on a car. Jabar, a 15-year-old boy, left his house to see what was going on. A sand cloud swirled around him—the result of a tank driving through the desert region. “The soldiers hung targets on the window of our house and on the haystacks,” Jabar said. “They wrote that they would be returning soon to shoot, but I took the targets down.”

The military promised the court that it would take precautionary measures when conducting any exercises with live fire, and that the soldiers would not endanger the lives of the residents. The reality has been different. In July 2022, Leila Dababsa was sitting in her home when she heard an explosion above her. The ceiling began to crumble. “The living room was filled with the sound of gunfire, and my daughter screamed,” she said, pointing to the holes in the tin roof. Most of the houses are built from cheap materials, out of fear that they will be destroyed. Leila and her daughter escaped and hid in a nearby cave.

“A second before they shot our house, I was picking tomatoes in the garden,” said Sa’ud Dababsa, whose house was targeted. “This is the first time that a bullet entered our home, into the living room. Before, we were in danger of being expelled. Now my family and I are in danger of being killed.”

Historically, the expulsion process in Masafer Yatta can largely be traced back to two men: Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, both of whom were senior military figures who later became Israeli prime ministers. They represent competing camps in Israeli politics: Sharon headed the Likud party, which is identified with the Zionist right, and Barak led the Labor Party, which is affiliated with the Zionist left. But on issues related to Masafer Yatta, the two worked together in harmony.

After leading the conquest of the West Bank in 1967, Sharon, then a military official, began the process of declaring various areas as military firing zones, first in the Jordan Valley and later in Masafer Yatta. “As one of the people who initiated the firing zones in 1967, everyone was aware of one goal: to enable Jewish settlement in the area,” Sharon testified in 1979. “Back then, I sketched out these firing zones, reserving our land for settlement.”

The locations of the firing zones weren’t chosen randomly. They perfectly matched the Allon Plan, which was submitted to the Israeli government a month after the occupation began by Yigal Allon, another future prime minister, and which determined that the areas should be permanently kept under full Israeli control. With their relatively arid climate, these areas had few Palestinian villages compared to the crowded northern West Bank, which made them appealing for Jewish settlement.

A map commissioned by the state in 1977 designates part of the Masafer Yatta region for such settlement. Three years later, in 1980, firing zones were declared in the same area.

In a secret meeting of the Ministerial Committee for Settlement Affairs held in July 1981, Sharon offered the army the firing zone that was declared in Masafer Yatta and reaffirmed that his goal was to remove Palestinians from the area, according to the official transcript. “We have a great interest in being there, given the phenomenon of Arabs from the villages spreading toward the desert [in the south],” he explained to the army chief of staff.

During the same period, the Israeli government worked to establish Jewish settlements in the region. Settlements like Susya, Ma’on, and Carmel were part of the state’s policy of cutting off the Palestinian population in the Negev, which is inside Israel, from the Palestinian population in the southern West Bank, like the residents of Masafer Yatta.

“For many years, there was a physical connection between the Arab population of the Negev with the Arab population in the Hebron hills. A situation was created in which the border extends inside our territory,” Sharon told the settlement committee. “We must quickly create a buffer strip of [Jewish] settlement, which will distinguish and separate the Hebron hills from Jewish settlement in the Negev. To drive a wedge between the bedouins in the Negev and the Arabs in Hebron.”

Sharon’s words are particularly relevant today, as not only the residents of Masafer Yatta but also the Bedouins in the Negev are being dispossessed of their land through the systematic denial of building permits and the declaration of military firing zones.

In 1999, Ehud Barak was elected prime minister. These were the days of the Oslo Accords, four years after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination—when there was still hope among Israelis and Palestinians that a peace deal might come. But Barak’s government decided to permanently remove the residents of Masafer Yatta. Under his watch, in November 1999, soldiers moved through all the villages, loaded 700 people into trucks, and expelled them. They became refugees in nearby villages.

“I remember that day vividly,” said Safa Al-Najar, now 70. “Soldiers came inside, while outside there were two big trucks waiting. They lifted us onto them by force, with all of our belongings. The sheep escaped on foot. They threw us into another village.”

Barak’s ethnic cleansing, carried out by a government that included the left-wing Meretz party, inspired protests in Israel led by intellectuals, among them famous authors like David Grossman. The protesters met with the general of the Central Command to express opposition to the operation, but they were told that it had to be carried out because, in preparation for further negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel had a major interest in keeping the region part of its sovereign territory.

The talks between Israel and the PLO for a final peace resolution, which took place in 2000 at Camp David, apparently led Barak to accelerate the dispossession efforts in Masafer Yatta. The thinking was that if there were no Palestinians living there, it would be more likely that the region would ultimately remain under Israeli control.

This is one reason why the “peace process” in the 1990s was in fact deeply destructive for many Palestinians: It galvanized rather than tamed Israeli colonialism. In those years, the number of Palestinian home demolitions grew significantly, while Jewish settlements were quickly populated and roads leading to them were rapidly paved.

A few months after Barak ordered their displacement, the residents of Masafer Yatta petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court against the firing zone. Palestinians living in the West Bank are subject to military law––they don’t have the right to vote and so are unable to influence the legal system that rules over them—and the Supreme Court has expanded its jurisdiction to encompass the occupied territories.

Their petition remained before the court for more than 22 years. Instead of making a decision, the judges issued an interim order allowing the displaced Palestinians to temporarily return to their homes. In 2012, while Barak was defense minister, the state declared in court that its demand for forced transfer was still active, and that the army was prepared to allow residents access to work their land only during Israeli holidays and on the weekends, when no military exercises took place.

Even this temporary reprieve came to an end last May, when the judges finally rejected the residents’ petition. In the ruling by Justice David Mintz, the court accepted the state’s claims that when the firing zone was declared over 40 years ago, the people of Masafer Yatta were not “permanent residents” of the area, but rather “seasonal residents.” That is, they used to move between two places, depending on the shepherding season: They had one house in a village in Masafer Yatta and another in the city. According to the letter of the military law, the declaration of a firing zone does not apply to permanent residents in the territory, but since, as the state claimed, the residents of Masafer Yatta were only “seasonal,” their expulsion should be permitted. The Supreme Court agreed.

Such legal arguments don’t impress halima, who was born in a cave in Al-Merkaz in 1948 and has lived there her whole life. “That’s their court, not ours,” she said, “and they use the law in order to expel us.”

The names of the Masafer Yatta villages are all over old maps that predate the Israeli state, including one by British surveyors from 1879. Another can be found in a 1931 book by a geographer named Nathan Shalem, who visited homes in Jinba and noted that human settlement there “had never ceased.” Aerial photographs from 1945 testify to the existence of the villages. Even the official documentation of the State of Israel shows that in 1966, the Israeli military blew up 15 stone structures in Jinba, then under the control of Jordan, later compensating the residents through the International Red Cross.

The Supreme Court rejected this historical evidence, which was attached to the residents’ petition. “The existence of the stone houses in the ruins of Jinba, in 1966, has nothing to teach us about the situation of things in 1980,” Mintz explained in his ruling. He gave evidentiary weight only to the area’s status in the year in which the military’s firing zone was declared.

In their decision, the judges relied on the work of an Israeli anthropologist, Ya’akov Habakkuk, who lived in the region in the 1980s, for their claim of “seasonality.” Habakkuk wrote that during the grazing season, in winter and spring, the families lived in Masafer Yatta, but in the dry months of summer, they lived in the adjacent city of Yatta. This describes the lifestyle of many families living in the region in the past, though not all of them.

Habakkuk himself is adamantly opposed to the court’s interpretation of his work. He told us he had no idea his research was being used to justify the expulsion. “It was obvious to everyone around that this is their village,” he said. “The families came there consistently, always to the same cave, and when they weren’t here, no one else would enter.”

International law explicitly forbids population transfers in occupied territory, with almost no exceptions. But in their ruling, the judges claimed that if there is a conflict between international law and Israeli law, “Israeli law decides.” In the decision, they wrote that the section of the Geneva Conventions forbidding population transfers is intended “only to prevent acts of mass expulsion of a population in occupied territory in order to destroy it, to perform forced labor, or to achieve other policy goals,” and therefore there is no connection with the Masafer Yatta displacement, which was only ordered so that the military could train there.

The ban on population transfers is found in the Fourth Geneva Convention, in Section 49: “Deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive” (emphasis ours).

The story of Masafer Yatta thus represents the cornerstone of Israeli settler colonialism throughout Israel-Palestine. On both sides of the Green Line, Palestinian displacement is largely achieved by way of the law: the systematic denial of building permits, the denial of Palestinian ownership rights to the land in question, the declaration of expansive firing zones, the designation of national parks, and the establishment of new Jewish settlements to “drive a wedge” and cut villages off from one another.

“Everything that lies behind the process is the theft of our land and the expulsion of our communities,” said Nidal Abu Younis, the head of the Masafer Yatta village council. “Destroying our homes, confiscating our vehicles, destroying our roads and schools––it’s all one massive crime. They can expel us at any moment. Now more than ever, we are in need of international solidarity.”

10 July 2023

Source: thenation.com

By Hala Yacoub

The Israeli government recently released over a million documents from their state archives, revealing part of Israel’s plans to create a new stage of Israel’s settler colonial enterprise. This strategy depends on the slow ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in order to build settlements in the West Bank.

These documents show minutes from meetings held by the Israeli military’s Judea and Samaria Division which depict the stages of the settlement project in the West Bank. According to the documents, the first step would be dispossessing Palestinians from their lands using the legal cover of ‘firing zones’, and if they refuse to leave their homes, they will face oppressive consequences, including the destruction of crops.

The documents also catalogue the Israeli colonisation of Aqraba, a village in the north of the West Bank, and the building of the Gitit settlement on the land. They detail the stages of creating a coercive environment in order to forcibly dispossess Palestinians from the village, as previous tactics failed – including declaring the land a closed military area.

”It is clear that Israel treats the West Bank as its private ‘sacrifice zone’ because it is much cheaper to pollute the area than to responsibly process or reduce waste. However, it would be naïve to wait for an environmentally responsible approach from an apartheid regime which exists to serve a larger settler-colonial enterprise – especially when the continued violations help advance this project.”

In order to achieve their goal, Israeli authorities, including the occupying military, the settlement department at the Jewish Agency and the Custodian of Absentee Property, admitted to employing “a crop duster” in order to spread toxic chemicals which are “lethal for animals and dangerous for humans”. They served to also drastically deter the growth of crops on the land.

This poisoning of the land tactic has been a new revelation provided by the documents released.

Similarly to the case of Aqraba in the 1970s, today Masafer Yatta and the Jordan Valley are also facing policies aiming to displace and cleanse Palestinians from their lands. This starts with Israel creating military training areas which serve as a legal cover, and subsequently developing a coercive environment by systematically attacking Palestinian presence in the targeted areas.

Sacrificing Palestinians

The crime of crop dusting has in fact been ongoing since 1972. Little has changed throughout the decades, today’s practices and yesterday’s policies prove that when all else fails, Israel will easily resort to attacking the Palestinian ecosystem using toxins in order to feed its settler-colonial enterprise and apartheid regime.

Palestinian land is also used as a colossal sacrifice zone by Israel which places open waste dumps belonging to its illegal settlements, in the occupied Palestinian territories [oPt].

Today, there are at least 15 documented Israeli dumping sites in the West Bank that are located near Palestinian villages that are negatively impacting the communities’ well-being, agriculture, and security. Some involve the burying of raw waste and others are used to treat recycled waste – a hazardous process.

In the Jordan Valley, the soil is reported to absorb 60% of toxic sludge resulting in Israeli wastewater treatment. Furthermore, the largest Israeli dumping site created for medical waste treatment is located in the illegal Maale Ephraim settlement in northern West Bank.

To make matters worse, several industries and landfills have been closer to the green line or inside the West Bank where the environmental repercussions would only fall on Palestinians. For example, the Geshuri and Sons Factories, which produce a range of products, mainly pesticides, were moved from their previous location – which was considered too harmful for Israelis – to the Nitzanei Shalom industrial settlement in the city of Tulkarm.

The Kfar Saba pesticide factory was also moved to the Tulkarm area, as was the Dixon Gas company’s industrial gas factory which required open air to freely burn its solid waste produce. Both of the factories produce dangerous pollutants which are harmful to Palestinians.

Ecocide for apartheid

For Israel, the West Bank is populated by ‘non environmental rights deserving’ Palestinians who are consequently forced to suffer through increasing rates of cancer, optical and respiratory diseases. This is certainly the case in Tulkarm where, according to research by professor Mazen Salman from the agriculture faculty at Khudouri University, most of the optical and respiratory diseases in the area are located in the surroundings of the Israeli factories.

Not to mention, the acres of Palestinian crops that have been destroyed including citrus farms in Wadi Qana and olive tree groves in Qaryut (found in the Salfit governorate).

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It is clear that Israel treats the West Bank as its private ‘sacrifice zone’ because it is much cheaper to pollute the area than to responsibly process or reduce waste. However, it would be naïve to wait for an environmentally responsible approach from an apartheid regime which exists to serve a larger settler-colonial enterprise – especially when the continued violations help advance this project.

By placing hazardous landfills in the oPt, Israel not only the generates a coercive environment in order to displace Palestinians, but also the de facto annexation of the lands that host the landfills – which is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention.

The relationship between Israel’s environmental violations and its apartheid regime are inescapable. Using waste dumps in the oPt in order to efficiently maintain the economy of Jewish settlers, annexing and displacing Palestinians to empower Israel’s settler colonialism, imposing impossible living conditions on Palestinians, systematically sacrificing a zone and its population for the sake of another, are all apartheid practices. After all, the Apartheid Convention (1973) highlights in its definition the “imposition of living conditions calculated to cause its physical destruction”.

Indeed, Israel’s violations are not merely environmental, neither in intent nor effect. Sacrifice zones, as a global phenomenon, serve imperialist interests. This not only highlights that the Palestinian struggle is an environmental one, but also that environmental justice is incomplete without the fight for decolonizing Palestine.

Hala Yacoub is a 24-year-old trainee lawyer at Al-Jubran Law Firm and a legal researcher at the Justida Legal Research Centre in Palestine.

13 July 2023

Source: newarab.com