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arfare, including civil wars, counterterrorism, and other conflicts, is a part of daily life around the globe. From the end of the Cold War to the present, not too far in the past, in other words, the world has witnessed many wars and armed conflicts. This includes the war in Bosnia, the civil war in Somalia, the war in Kosovo, the Chechen rebellion, the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, the Arab Spring, and subsequent civil wars like those in Libya, Yemen, and Syria.

Added to these, the massacres of the Rohingya, the terrorist attacks of ISIS, and Russia’s attempt to invade Ukraine followed. In addition, there is the continued occupation of Palestine by Israel, which in the last two months has escalated to genocide in Gaza.

Muslim states or groups make up one or both sides in most wars. At the same time, other Muslims are greatly affected and enraged by the killing, inflicted injury, oppression, and abuse of their fellow Muslims throughout the world. These events have sparked resistance among affected Muslims and the emergence of armed factions, some of which later evolved into terrorist groups such as ISIS. Overall, however, Muslim responses have been and continue to be largely nonviolent.

The intensity of the responses has varied from conflict to conflict. For example, Muslims denounce the invasion of Muslim nations, the persecution of Muslim minorities, and the persecution of Arab authoritarian regimes. But more than any war, tyranny, struggle, or act of brutality of any kind, Israel’s occupation of Palestine has provoked the most anger among Muslim populations.

Given that more people have died in earlier conflicts, many people find the overwhelming support for the Palestinians strange and even incomprehensible. Thus, for instance, Muslims denounced the Assad regime’s killing of 500,000 Syrians, but they still feel Israel’s crimes against Palestinians are incomparable. The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan angered Muslims, but Palestine remains their top priority.

Non-Muslims in particular seem perplexed by this anger, but they shouldn’t be. It is reasonable to pay more attention to the occupation of Palestine for a series of reasons. First, Israel has been occupying Palestine for 75 years, during which the Palestinian people have been systematically massacred, displaced, imprisoned, and their land stolen.

Palestine is still being annexed today. What is more, thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel at any given time, and since October 7, 2023, Israel has been carrying out ethnic cleansing and genocide. After the indiscriminate killing of more than 27,000 civilians by the Israeli army, 70% of whom were women and children, including those who died under the rubble, Gaza has been virtually destroyed.

Israel’s horrific actions have led to the denouncement of the genocide in Gaza not only by Muslims but by people of other faiths as well. Given how long Palestine has been persecuted, even if the recent genocide had not occurred, Palestine would still be on the world’s radar. Israel’s persecution is continuous, and when the world begins to lose interest in the Palestinian cause, an Israeli attack or a decision to build more illegal settlements draws people’s attention back again.

Second, Israel is undeniably the offending party and has no justification for occupying and harming Palestinians. Israel is acting illegally and in violation of international law. Not even its supporters, including the U.S., support the occupation. Legally speaking, no one supports Israel’s policy, because it is completely unlawful and immoral; Palestinians, conversely, are universally accepted as the victims of Israeli aggression and supported by both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

For example, while Muslims were generally opposed to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country and the Talibans’ self-defined Islamic rule that was seen as overly fanatic, softened Muslims’ reaction to the U.S. invasion. Added to this, while the Americans eventually withdrew from Iraq, Israel seeks to occupy all of Palestine and perhaps its surroundings permanently.

Third, Palestine never had the opportunity to acquire weapons to oppose Israel. The Palestinians were forbidden to arm themselves by both Israel and other international actors. With a better equipped army, Israel has continuously murdered Palestinians in cold blood. As expected, outsiders, especially Muslims, could not resist Israel’s massacring of civilians with advanced weapons.

Fourth, the Zionist movement is using religion it its war against Palestinians. The British offered the Zionists many different places to live, but they insisted on Palestine, saying that the region was the homeland promised to them by God—despite the fact that the majority of Zionists, in fact, were secular.

When the Palestinians did not hand over their land to Jewish migrants, the latter used force to annihilate them. The Muslim community feels obligated to speak out against Israel’s actions because religion is still heavily used by the Zionist movement. In other words, Muslims respond with their religious beliefs because the criminal party, i.e., Israel, invokes Judaism when it kills. Thus, faith-based activities elicit faith-based responses.

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amas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, as the name suggests, was motivated by a central focus on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Israeli aggression against the holy sites. The aim of the operation is to put an end to the 15-year blockade of Gaza and the related status quo in the Palestinian arena. It can be said that Hamas has achieved this goal at a tactical level in a short period of time. This operation has shaken global public opinion and forced it to take a position.

Although the operation carried out by Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has been hyperbolically described as “Israel’s 9/11,” it would be more accurate to characterize the al-Aqsa Flood as a successful deception operation in which Hamas skillfully managed to conceal its military plans by convincing Israel that it no longer wanted war.

Hamas meticulously continued its preparations for this operation while Israel, with an unexpected naiveté, thought that it was keeping Hamas under its control. It has even been claimed that during the preparation process, Hamas deliberately reduced the tempo and frequency of its actions against Israel. Military experts have claimed that the operation was the most surprising attack since the Yom Kippur War with some describing it as an unprecedented intelligence maneuver.

Why was Israel taken by surprise?

The timing of the operation, which coincided with the Sabbath, the Jewish day of worship and rest, created a shock factor that made it difficult for the Israeli forces to react immediately. Moreover, infiltration from multiple points (air, land, and sea) took the Israeli defense by surprise.

Hamas decided on the details of the operation with a very limited group of people in order to prevent leaks from within its ranks. Some analyses have also pointed out that recently Israel shifted its focus on the steps to be taken to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and away from Hamas.

An analysis of the tactical phases of the operation reveals that as the rockets launched from Gaza caused surprise, infiltrations were carried out with motorized parachutes and hang gliders in the shadow of the rockets. The initial infiltrating elements and elite units of Hamas were seen fortifying area control and security which facilitated attacks on the concrete barriers reinforced with electronic systems. This allowed buldozers, motorcycles, and land vehicles to breach the barrier system, enabling more elements to infiltrate.

Drones carrying improvised explosive devices (IEDs) disabled the electro-optical systems of the Israeli watchtowers. At the same time, the communication line with the Israeli army headquarters was disrupted, limiting the ability to respond to the attack immediately.

The kidnapping of Israeli prisoners into Gaza will provide Hamas with political leverage to increase its bargaining power in future prisoners’ exchange.

Finally, it is argued that the Israeli army made a strategic mistake in deploying its troops mainly in the West Bank, which was one of the factors that facilitated the execution of this operation.

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hanks to the Iraqi army, the Palestinian city of Jenin was not captured in 1948 when Israel was created. The Iraqi army was able to retake the city, and the dozens of graves in the Iraqi Army Martyrs’ Cemeteries bear witness to the battle that took place there against armed Jewish militias, which eventually lost control of the city. But in 1967, Jenin was captured when Israel “finished the job” and occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Sinai, and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War.

Just outside the city of Jenin, a refugee camp was built in 1948 and became home to thousands of Palestinian refugees who were expelled at gunpoint when Israel was created. In 1967, more Palestinians were driven from Jenin into Jordan, becoming refugees for a second time. Mornings in Jenin is a novel by Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa that tells the story of a Palestinian family from the village of Ein Hod, near Haifa, who became refugees in Jenin in 1948. The scenes of Palestinians leaving the refugee camp en masse on July 4 was a stark reminder of the Nakba.

Jenin is more than a Palestinian refugee camp. It is a symbol of the refugee issue and of the defiance in the face of Israel’s expansion; in 2005, Israel withdrew from the Hermesh settlement near Jenin when it also decided to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. The right-wing Israeli coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu decided to legalize the settlement as part of its drive to expand settlements and annex parts of the West Bank, namely Area C, which makes up 60% of the territory. In the eyes of Israel’s most right-wing government, the 2005 disengagement from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank was a strategic mistake that needed to be reversed.

Area C and taming Jenin

For this reason, and to pave the way for Israel’s plans to annex Area C of the West Bank, the Israeli army has launched a campaign targeting the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Over the past year, Israel has carried out repeated incursions into the refugee camp, killing dozens of Palestinians. For Israel, the crushing of any Palestinian resistance is a precondition for its annexation plan. For the first time since 2002, when Israel razed the Jenin refugee camp to the ground, the Israeli army used drones and helicopters to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes, calling the incursion “Operation Home and Garden.”

Ironically, Operation Home and Garden left many Palestinian homes and gardens in Jenin in ruins. Israeli bulldozers deliberately destroyed roads, targeted media and medical crews, and forced thousands of Palestinian refugees out of the camp after threatening to bomb their homes. In this manner, Israel announced the start of the second phase of the operation in which it plans to target every single house in the refugee camp and capture or kill Palestinian armed men inside the crowded refugee camp. So far, the Israeli operation in Jenin has killed 12 Palestinians and injured 100 others, 20 of whom are in critical condition.

The Israeli army will extend its operations to other towns and refugee camps in the West Bank—Jenin is just the beginning. The Israeli government is determined to confiscate more Palestinian land, demolish more Palestinian homes, and give the green light to Israeli settlers to carry out more pogroms against Palestinian towns, as happened recently in the West Bank towns of Huwara and Turmus Ayya.

Jenin is the only the start

Palestinians on the ground know only too well that Israel will never leave the West Bank and will only expand there. They also knew back in 1993 when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel agreed to establish a Palestinian state “within five years,” it was simply a trap and that Israel would never have allowed the Palestinians to have their own sovereign and independent state. All the Palestinians can aspire to is a couple of mayorships outside Area C of the West Bank, without any political representation or rights. The Israeli invasion of the Jenin refugee camp, and probably other West Bank towns, is proof of this.

In Israel’s eyes, Palestinians are merely cheap laborers that can build Israeli cities and settlements, and granting them full rights is out of the question. For Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who make up 20% of Israel’s population, all that is in store for them is more violence and crime that will eventually force them to leave, without the Israeli police ever intervening to make any arrests. What is certain, sadly, is that there are worse days ahead for the Palestinian people and that their conditions will only get worse under Israel’s continuing military occupation: Jenin is only the beginning.

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n May 2, 2023, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) announced the death of iconic Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan in his cell following 87 days of hunger strike. Adnan’s health started to deteriorate in the past few days and his family was not able to communicate with him via videoconference as they had done in the past at court due to what many believed a serious deterioration of his health. His family and lawyer were also not able to visit him for the past few days.

This was not the first time Adnan went on hunger strike: he was well-known on the Palestinian streets for his previous prolonged hunger strikes to protest his administrative detention without charge or trial in Israel jails.

Adnan was 44 years old and married to Randa Adnan. He was the father of nine children who live in the town of Arraba in the West Bank, southwest of Jenin. Israel arrested Adnan 12 times in total; he spent eight years in prison and went on six hunger strikes.

Multiple hunger strikes

In 2004, he went on a hunger strike for 25 days; in 2012, he went on a hunger strike for 66 days; in 2015. he went on a hunger strike for 56 days; in 2018, he went on a hunger strike for 58 days; and on May 2, he lost his life following 87 days of hunger strike. Due to multiple hunger strikes, he suffered from long-term health implications in his kidney, lungs, and throat.

In A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian and Irish Hunger Strikers, published by An Fhuiseog in Belfast in 2021, Adnan’s story is featured along with 23 other Palestinian and Irish hunger strikers. While working on the book, I had a brief phone call with Adnan. I remember his voice was very weak and he was barely able to talk due to his illness and the damage his vocal cords suffered from past hunger strikes.

He shared with me that he works as a baker and that he does not subscribe to Palestinian factionalism, although he was a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Islamic Jehad Movement during his student years. His discourse tended to be focused on Palestinian unity and nationalism, and one could find him at different political and social events across the West Bank.

In the book, he spoke of how he inspired a generation of young Palestinians to stage hunger strikes to win their freedom, “I came to the idea of how I could break the chains and destroy the arrogance of the jailer by declaring that I would go on hunger strike, alone.” He added, “Time for me was unlimited, everyday passed like a year, each day became heavier than the day before. Mentally, it was not easy at all. However, I was determined to teach the occupiers a lesson in dignity and defiance. They, the occupiers, spared no means to weaken me. I will never forget their insults. I was usually showered by the jailers. I will never forget how they moved my weak, faint, and emaciated body from one position to another; even my organs collapsed. They tried to kill me by neglecting me medically.”

No revenge

Speaking at a press conference after his death, his wife said that there is no point to “take his revenge now, after people failed to show solidarity with him,” when he was left to go on a hunger strike alone. She added, “We don’t need to have rockets fired and blood spilled now.” Adnan concluded by asking people to “remember the faces of her children” who she said will follow the same path as their father.

Following a previous hunger strike, Randa Adnan had stated, “Khader does not need someone to carry his coffin today; if he loses his life, then let people enjoy a life without a dignity, in which a brother abandons his brother.”

Following his death, Palestinians announced a general strike in Jenin, Adnan’s hometown. Protesters took to the streets in Gaza, Ramallah, and Nablus to express solidarity as every Palestinian household had become familiar with the name of Khader Adnan in the past few years.

Randa Adnan noted that Israeli jailers “left him without help until his flesh blended with his bones,” referring to his medical condition and loss of weight following 87 days of hunger strike.

Blackout about the conditions leading to Adnan’s death

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave orders to the IPS to crush any attempt by Palestinian prisoners to protest Adnan’s death. Although his death is likely to lead to more unrest in the Palestinian Territories, Adnan was left to die and it is suspected that he lost his life as he was forced-fed by his jailers, according to Majed Al-Najjar, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Club in Ramallah.

As of yet, it is uncertain exactly how Adnan lost his life; however, his death brings to mind the death of three Palestinian hunger strikers on July 14, 1980, after they were force-fed by Israeli jailers while on hunger strike.

The Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees called for “forming an international investigation committee to look into the conditions that led to Adnan’s death,” noting that Israel’s prevention of Adnan’s family and lawyer from visiting him in the past days was an introduction to his death.

Similar to his past hunger strikes which won him his freedom, this time too Adnan will win his freedom, but in a coffin – that is assuming that Israel, which holds the bodies of dozens of Palestinian prisoners who lost their life in jails, will release his body. It is certain that his death will cause more tensions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as Adnan was an iconic figure, taking the region once more time into unchartered waters.

Israel, especially under its current government, fails to understand the symbolism of Palestinian political prisoners for Palestinian society. This is why it seems to be unaware of the implications of leaving a Palestinian hunger striker to die.

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he world watched in shock as the Israeli occupation forces broke into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, beating worshippers and forcing them out of the third holiest site in Islam during the holy month of Ramadan. Some 400 Palestinians were arrested, a hundred were injured, two of whom are in a critical condition, while the invading forces destroyed a small clinic attached to the mosque to prevent providing medical care to those in need. Ambulances and hundreds of Palestinians, who protested outside the gates of the mosque, were prevented from entering.

Israeli forces broke into al-Aqsa and forced worshippers out to clear the way for right-wing Israeli settlers who planned to storm the holy site during Passover on Wednesday, April 5. These Israeli provocations are the immediate result of an incitation by radical Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was formerly convicted of criminal charges and who, as a lawyer, defended and celebrated Israeli settlers burning a Palestinian family.

During an interview on Israeli Channel 12 on April 4, Ben-Gvir said, “Jews should storm the Temple Mount (al-Aqsa Mosque), because it is not only for Arabs; I call on Jews to storm the Temple Mount. It is the most important site for the State of Israel. I don’t accept that only Muslims enter the site … Jews, too, have human rights in this country, and they have the right to break into the site; I will, too, storm it, but not on Wednesday.”

His proposal was that Israeli settlers should break into al-Aqsa, but without offering sacrifices, again because “there are human rights for Jews too in this country.” Palestinians know these human rights well—they have been deprived of them for 75 years. Human rights and what remains of democracy in Israel today is only for Jews. It is no coincidence that the so-called democracy protests in Israel almost completely ignore Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine and concentrate exclusively on the rights of Israeli Jews rather than the rights of Palestinians, who don’t even come second in this narrative.

Protests in Israel as aggression against the Palestinians continue

Some Israelis today feel threatened by the growing influence of right-wring religious parties, which make the majority of Netanyahu’s government. These fears, however, have nothing to do with the Palestinians. Most Israelis, be they on the right or left of the political spectrum, agree on the need to continue the occupation and they have no problem with what the world recently witnessed at al-Aqsa. The world will get used to it—or so they tell themselves. Instead, they are concerned that the Israeli government, which was formed on the premise of making life for the Palestinians who are already second-class citizens even worse, might suppress some of their rights.

Palestinians have no place in this equation and that’s why they are not involved in the ongoing protests in Israel. One of the demands Ben-Gvir was conceded and a quid pro quo for postponing judicial reforms until the summer was forming a new force under his command, which mainly aims to target Palestinians—as if Israeli police and army violence directed against them, especially during Ramadan, was not satisfactory. In other words, Ben-Gvir, who provoked storming al-Aqsa, will have a new force under his command that will further crush the Palestinians, as we have seen on April 5, in return for postponing judicial reforms in Israel, which have nothing to do with Palestinians.

Israel has been implementing a plan to divide al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews, both in terms of space and time, as it did with the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. This is why we see an increasing number of raids into the holy site during Ramadan, which sees increasing Muslim worship and presence there. Israel has been gradually implementing its plans to divide al-Aqsa Mosque.

Until three years ago, it rarely conducted raids into the mosque during the month of Ramadan. Now, not only do Israeli settlers break into al-Aqsa during Ramadan, but they also raise the Israeli flag in it. The next step will be allowing biblical sacrifices inside, and performing the biblical “epic falling”, in which they fall on the ground as part of their prayers, at the sacred site, which is an open call for a religious war in the Middle East.

This will necessarily translate into escalation in the Palestinian Territories, which, as the last two years have shown us all, Palestinians will pay for heavily. Soon after Israel assaulted worshipers at al-Aqsa, homemade projectiles were fired into southern Israel from Gaza, to which Israel responded by targeting several sites in the coastal enclave. Similar to May 2021, such provocations will likely lead to further escalations, leaving more destruction and loss of lives on the Palestinian side.

Are international condemnations enough?

Except for shy condemnations, the world chose not to take action to bring Israel’s right-wing government to account. This silence will encourage the Israeli government to implement more aggressive and expansionist polices in the coming weeks, which will take the region, especially considering the ongoing domestic crisis in Israel, into a new military escalation. The world has to act now to prevent such escalation, which is building up at al-Aqsa and in Gaza as Palestinians will not stand watching as Israel violates their right to worship at the holy mosque. Israel is trying to export its internal crises into Jerusalem and Gaza, and Palestinians will likely pay dearly for their policy as they always have.

The world should boycott the Israeli government, comprised of far-right, radical settlers. Their plans and policies deny the existence of the Palestinian people and view them as aliens on their own land. The Israeli government not only encourages storms into al-Aqsa, but provides the support and cover to make them happen. The world should not accept normalizing beating Palestinians, killing them, and annihilating their villages, as an Israeli minister shamelessly advocated recently.

The Palestinians are here to stay, because they have no other place to go to and all of Israel’s policies will not force them to leave. It is high time for the international community to end the suffering and misery of the Palestinian people under Israel’s prolonged military occupation. While militarily occupying another nation and beating worshippers during their holy month, calls for “democracy protests” in Tel Aviv appear meaningless and shallow.

Israeli minister Ben-Gvir, who incited violence against Palestinians at al-Aqsa without a shame, should be boycotted and not welcomed anywhere in the world. Israel’s Western allies who contribute to the suppression of the Palestinian people through their silence should speak up as they readily do for Ukraine. Their silence will only translate into more violations against Palestinians who seem to be forgotten as the world celebrates the so-called democracy protests in Tel Aviv and allows Israel to control the lives of the Palestinian nation for more than seven decades now.

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n Zionist literature, Israel’s foundation in 1948, which followed a mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians, is always portrayed as a success story. The story is presented as follows: the country “defeated seven Arab armies” and emerged victorious. There is no mention of the expulsion of the Palestinian people who ended up as refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The narrative of Israel’s creation is fictious and romanticized, and does not reflect the reality of the country now–a country steadily nearing an existential crisis.

The generation of Israel’s founders is almost non-existent today; the young soldiers who fought Israel’s “war of independence” in 1948 no longer govern the country. Today, Israel is ruled by the second- and third-generation politicians and former officers who served in Israel’s various wars and share a different strategic approach based on expansion and economic peace with Israel’s neighbors without settling the Palestinian issue. One such Israeli leader, who has been active for a couple of decades in Israel’s political spectrum, is Benjamin Netanyahu, or as he is known locally, “Bibi.”

Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Petah Tikva (Openning of Hope), the first Jewish colony to be built in Palestine in 1878. He served in the Israeli army as part of the elite unit Sayeret Matkal, taking part in the war of attrition between Israel and Egypt in 1967-1970. His ambitions didn’t stop at the army, which is the case for many Israeli politicians who have emerged over the years from the ranks of the military. He ran for politics, becoming the head of Israel’s opposition in 1993-1996. His eventful return to Israeli politics in 2009-2021 and his recent return to office have sent mixed messages and marked the start of a new era in Israeli politics.

A country without a constitution

When Israel was established in 1948, it had no constitution. Instead, there was a set of laws and regulations given that Israeli political parties have always been divided and bringing them together under one constitution would not be feasible. At the same time, the Supreme Court of Israel is supposed to be independent and apolitical. The last two years have seen five snap Israeli elections due to the inability of Israeli political parties to form a stable political alliance, resulting in the return of Netanyahu as  prime minister, after serving as Israel’s head of opposition for almost a year.

Netanyahu’s plan to appoint judges to the Supreme Court has faced a fierce Israeli opposition, accusing Netanyahu of attempting to take over the judiciary. This time, Netanyahu had to seek the support of extreme far-right political parties to form a fragile coalition, including ministers with a criminal record in his cabinet to the dislike of Israeli allies such as the U.S. The statement of Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that there is a need to wipe out the Palestinian village of Huwara in the West Bank, which saw a pogrom, only added fuel to fire. In a recent conference, Smotrich tried to save face by whitewashing his earlier statement.

This Israeli generational gap which has only been widening due to politics and perspectives is manifested today in the ongoing protests in Israel against Netanyahu. This divide could challenge Israel’s whole existence, and has pushed Israel’s president to warn of a “very serious” crisis over Netanyahu’s plan to make a judiciary overhaul. “We are in a very serious situation that may have political, economic, social and security consequences,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said before a ceremony in Tel Aviv on March 13, 2023. He went on to warn that a civil war in Israel is a possibility and that politicians should understand that Israel is not immune to such a development.

Unrest in Israel could lead to regional unrest

Israel’s growing turn towards the right disturbs some of its allies and is a threat to regional instability. This is especially true considering the growing protests in Israel, which, in turn, might push the Israeli government to export its crisis to the wider region and especially to Gaza, translating into another military confrontation with the Palestinian factions there. In the past, Israeli politicians have tried to resolve internal crises by creating other crises and by showcasing the Palestinians as the “true” enemy of all Israelis, who need to stand united behind the government.

This is a likely scenario given Israeli ministers’ growing anti-Palestinian discourse ahead of Ramadan and the repeated Israeli incursions and assassinations in the West Bank. These developments have made some Arab governments feel more wary of Israel’s actions, pushing them to take steps that reflect a sense of unease with the policies of the Israeli government.

Another development that might push the Israeli government to export its ongoing crisis is the recent China-brokered Saudi-Iranian deal, which was surprising to many. Israeli commentators have described the deal as a defeat to Israel’s diplomatic efforts to isolate Iran, in a region where some countries looked to Israel as a “savior” against a possible Iranian expansion. Israel’s securitization of Iran’s regional ambitions and its nuclear program have pushed certain regional state actors that feel threatened by Iran’s interventionalist policy closer to Israel.

As Ramadan approaches, escalation with the Palestinians because of incursions by Israeli settlers into Al-Aqsa, is very possible. In light of the escalation that has been building up in the West Bank, a confrontation in the region this spring or summer might be Israel’s way out of its domestic crisis. The divide in Israel is widening by the minute, and the second- and third-generation Israeli leaders might be taking the country and the whole region into a new unknown direction.

Only responsible international pressure on the Israeli government might stop another confrontation. One fact, however, is certain: the Israel of 1948, which was created by a different generation, is not the Israel we see today. Second- and third-generation Israeli politicians are not only gambling with the future of the whole region but also with the future of Israel itself.

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hen hundreds of Israeli settlers burned 15 Palestinian homes and 100 Palestinian cars in the West Bank’s town of Huwara near the city of Nablus on February 26, 2023, some analysts, government spokespeople, and political commentators expressed their shock at the magnitude of organized violence against Palestinians. Unfortunately, this violence comes as no surprise to the Palestinian people and has been building up for the years.

The town of Huwara has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli settlers and it has almost become the norm to read news about such attacks. What is different this time, however, is that formerly convicted settlers are now ministers in Netanyahu’s fragile coalition such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who serves as Israel’s National Security Minister and who openly incites violence against the Palestinian people.

To damage control the horrific crime, which resulted in the death of Palestinian Sameh Aqtash, 37, who had just returned from Turkey after volunteering to help with the recent earthquake, and the injuring of a hundred other Palestinians, after setting fire to their houses, some Israeli commentators tried to link the violence to the earlier killing of two Israeli settlers in the town on Sunday. But the ongoing Israeli settler violence in Huwara has been taking place for years now and it was not a reaction to any one particular event.

Violence against Palestinians continues unabated

Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians in the two weeks prior to the shooting incident that killed two Israeli settlers near Huwara. Following the latter incident, the Israeli army closed the two entrances of Huwara and allowed armed Israeli settlers to go inside on foot, providing them with cover to carry out their crime after Israeli politicians made calls to burn the village.

The Israeli army also prevented medics from evacuating those injured by the Israeli settler attack, which reveals the extent of the protection and collaboration between Israeli settlers and the Israeli army. This pushed some commentators including from Israel itself to make a comparison between what Israeli settlers did in Huwara to Kristallnacht, where Nazis in Germany burned Jewish-owned homes and businesses and murdered close to 100 Jews on November 9 -10, 1938.

Out of the 300-400 settlers who took part in the Huwara pogrom, nobody was arrested. Not only this, Israeli settlers jubilantly danced following the deadly violence in Huwara. In fact, the violence in Huwara came after calls made by Israeli Knesset Member Zvika Fogel to burn the town down.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told journalist Matan Hodorov, “I think Huwara needs to be erased. The state should be the one to do that.”

Smotrich added that “we shouldn’t be dragged into anarchy in which civilians take the law into their own hands.”

U.S. reacts to Israeli violence in Huwara

On March 1, 2023, Ned Price, U.S. State Department spokesperson, said, “I want to be very clear about this. These comments were irresponsible. They were repugnant. They were disgusting.”

Meanwhile, Hady Amr, the U.S. Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, visited Huwara and met with victims of the Israeli settler attacks, while the State Department warned against increasing violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers. The U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs stated, “Amr visited with the victims of Sunday’s Huwara attack. He expressed his deepest condolences and condemned the unacceptable widescale, indiscriminate violence by settlers. Extremely concerned by recent escalating violence in the West Bank.”

Fogel tweeted that “we have to stop with the word ‘proportionality.’ Stop the lack of will for collective punishment because it doesn’t suit the courts. Hawara closed + burnt down, that’s what I want to see.”

On an earlier occasion, Fogel said that “100 Palestinians must be killed a day,” whom he described as “terrorists” to force them to “the Israeli will.”

A state in the service of settlers

In the same context, to understand better the link between Israeli settlers and the Israeli army, a closer look at a video published by the Israeli Human Rights Organization B’Tselem in 2021 is revealing as it exposes the connections many of these settlers have with the army. In the video, an Israeli settler named Zvi, who established the “Zvi Bar Yosef Farm” on the lands of the Palestinian village of Deir Nizam in the West Bank, threatens the Palestinian farmers and owners of the land with his gun. When they tell him that they are going to call the Israeli Civil Administration and army, he responds, “I am the army.”

In light of these developments, it is ironic that the settler violence in Huwara came a day after the Aqaba Summit, attended by Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Israel, and the United States, which aimed to de-escalate the situation in the West Bank ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The situation in Israel today is clear: Israel has become a state for the settlers where some of these militias have the support of Israeli ministers such as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Israeli settlers who chant “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn” have the direct support of people in uniform and the Israeli government. The same as other Israeli settlers who set hundreds of Palestinian homes on fire and uprooted thousands of Palestinian olive trees got away with their crimes, it is highly unlikely that the Israeli settlers who burned homes in Huwara will be touched.

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ndercover Israeli forces invaded Jenin refugee camp in the early hours of Thursday, January 26, 2023, and fired at a group of Palestinians who refused to hand themselves over. The invading force, in turn, was targeted by Palestinian fire after their activity was exposed by locals.

According to Palestinian health authorities, nine Palestinians were killed, including three Palestinian fighters and an elderly woman, and 20 others were injured. Four of those injured were shot in the upper part of their bodies and are in critical condition.

Palestinians rushed some of those injured by Israeli fire to a local sports club, but invading Israeli forces attacked them inside, demolishing the walls. Local sources have revealed that the Israeli forces also crushed a Palestinian car in which two Palestinians who were injured were inside and killed them before leaving the refugee camp, following four hours of clashes in which an Israeli drone was also downed by Palestinian fighters.

Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli reactions

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has called for an emergency meeting in Ramallah to discuss the implications of killing nine Palestinians in Jenin, as Mahmoud Abbas, President of the PA, called for lowering the Palestinian flag for three days as a sign of mourning.

The spokesperson of the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sinan Al-Majali said the invasion into Jenin camp will only serve to escalate the situation and lead to yet another cycle of violence whose price will be paid by all. The Israeli incursion into Jenin came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman, during which meeting he affirmed that the status of Al-Aqsa Mosque will stay the same, after Israeli forces prevented Jordan’s ambassador to Israel from entering the compound.

Following the Israeli operation in Jenin, Netanyahu held security consultations with army officials, whereby the Israeli army activated the Iron Dome battery in the south, fearing a retaliation from Gaza.

The Israeli army said it killed three Palestinians who were planning an attack against Israel during the invasion.

Saleh Al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas, said the retaliation for what Israel did in Jenin will not take long.

Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip announced a general strike to mourn the killing of the nine Palestinians in Jenin.

The Israeli invasion into Jenin refugee camp was the most serious since Israel’s invasion and destruction of large parts of the refugee camp in 2002.

Following the killing of 9 Palestinians, a number or home-made projectiles were fired into Southern Israel on January 27, which prompted the Israeli army to attack targets in Gaza over night.

The Palestinians killed in the Jenin refugee camp are the following:

Nour Ghunaim

Motasim Abu Al-Hassan

Hamoudi Al-Washi

Abdallah Al-Ghoul

Hamodui Al-Shaqi

Talip Izriqi

Izzideen Salahat

Waseem Jai’is

Majeeda Obaid

T

he new Israeli government, the most radical in Israel’s history, poses a scary scenario for instability in the Middle East region by igniting radical discourse and action that might lead to war. Formed by Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after five elections in four years, Israel’s right-wing government seems to be more threatening than ever, with formerly convicted Israeli politicians becoming ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir.

In fact, Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultra-nationalist national security minister, didn’t wait very long before making an unpreceded provocation by visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque under heavy protection by the Israeli police, although Netanyahu stated that storming Islam’s third holiest site will not happen after meeting with Ben-Gvir.

The visit stirred condemnations by several countries such as Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt, and a UN Security Council session was held to discuss the visit, as Palestinian armed factions in Gaza threatened to retaliate. This seems to be the new norm: Israeli leaders who long advocated the construction of settlements on Palestinian lands, the execution of Palestinian political prisoners, and house demolitions are now the decision-makers in Israel. Having right-wing politicians as ministers in Israel will likely translate into more displacement of Palestinians, military confrontations with Gaza, and military incursions into the West Bank.

A deeper look at the terms according to which the new Israeli government was formed speaks of the future policy of the right-wing coalition. The new Israeli government will increase the salaries of Israeli soldiers by 20%, rewarding even soldiers accused of killing Palestinians – this appears emblematic of its policy towards the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The policy is a continuation of an old tradition of blaming Palestinian victims for their own death. The murder of 32-year-old autistic Palestinian Iyad Al-Hallaq in Jerusalem in May 2020 by an Israeli soldier, and the praise he received by then Israeli Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn as “professional handling of the issue,” is just another example.

The Israeli government aspires to promote the Abraham Accords and expand them to include other countries, but is facing serious challenges especially after the public relations disaster Israel suffered at the World Cup in Qatar and the unprecedented pro-Palestinian support shown by football fans there, which made many Israelis feel shocked. The issue with Israelis is that they feel more shocked by people’s reactions to their actions than they feel ashamed about continuing the occupation and causing unlimited suffering to the Palestinian people.

The Israeli government also seeks to reach a deal with the United States to allow entry into the country without a visa for Israelis. The plan, however, is hitting a wall because of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian-Americans visiting Palestine and sending many of them back. Most likely, a visa-free entry to the U.S. for Israelis will remain a pipe dream as long as Israel does not take concrete actions to end its mistreatment of Americans of Palestinian origin, such as the shooting and killing of Omar Asad, 78, in the West Bank in January 2022.

The agreement based on which the Israeli government was formed highlights the “natural right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.” Thus, the Israeli government will take the necessary measures to implement Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, keeping in consideration Israel’s diplomatic and international situation. This translates into a formal declaration of the death of the two-state solution, which Palestinians gave up a long time ago, although their leadership says otherwise. The Israeli government will also decide on the legality of Israeli settlement outposts within two months of its formation, and it pledges to provide these illegal settlements with the needed infrastructure to thrive. This includes legalizing the Homesh settlement which Israel withdrew from in 2005 as part of its unilateral plan to withdraw from Gaza.

The Israeli government plans to strengthen and support Israeli settlements in the Palestinian city of Hebron. This Israeli pledge is particularly challenging and will translate into more violence on the ground as Israeli settlements in Hebron are small outposts surrounded by a sea of Palestinians, where hundreds of Israeli settlers control the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, especially in Hebron’s old city.

The Israeli government will also change a previous law that allowed Israel to give back property in the West Bank purchased by its “enemies” before 1948. This will allow the Israeli government and settler groups to take over these properties as “enemy properties.” The government will also maintain Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, and combat all efforts made by the Palestinian Authority to have any presence in the city.

The Israeli government will invest in the Golan Heights as strategic geography, which is a violation of international law as the territory is considered occupied under international law and is part of Syria. It is worth mentioning that the text of the Israeli coalition agreement does not include the Golan Heights, where the government plans to allocate resources for expanding the settlements, as part of the “Land of Israel.”

The Israeli government plans to punish the Palestinian Authority for taking actions against Israel’s illegal practices at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) by withholding Palestinian tax money which Israel has the final control over according to the Oslo Accords of 1993. This includes salaries paid by the PA to the families of Palestinians killed or held by Israel.

The Israeli government will encourage a law that will allow it to withdraw Israeli citizenship from Palestinians who live in Israel, which is an unprecedented move that will open the door for displacing more Palestinians from Israel. Today, some two million Palestinians live in Israel, and they hold Israeli nationality that were imposed on them in 1966 by Israel.

The Israeli government will ban raising Palestinian flags at governmental or local institutions supported by the state. The fact that the text of the agreement refers to the Palestinian flag as the “Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) flag” is in itself very telling.  It is a declaration of war against anything Palestinian which is a continuation of Israel’s long-standing policy of negating the Palestinian national identity and treating Palestinians as foreign in their own country. The Palestinians who hold Israeli nationality and face daily violence are viewed by the Israeli state as lacking personal safety rather than an ethnic minority that is facing eradication.

The above is not strange as the Israeli government only sees Israeli settlers as legitimate residents and provides them with all the necessary tools to thrive in the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian people. The Israeli government will only cause more violence in the region, and it might cause a religious conflict sooner than many might think. The United States and the European Union are urged to speak up against the current Israeli government which publicly declares that Palestinians are not safe or equal under its exclusionary laws.

On August 1, Israel launched another military campaign against the Gaza Strip, killing 46 Palestinians, 16 of whom were children, as young as 5 years old, and injuring 365 others. Israel claims that its military campaign only targeted Islamic Jihad, but facts on the ground speak of a different reality.

Since 1948, and especially with the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967, Israel has systematically targeted the Palestinian existence. Several massacres against the Gaza Strip took place at the hands of the Israeli army such as the Khan Yunis massacre on November 3, 1956, which claimed the lives of 275 Palestinians, while another massacre in Rafah killed 111 on the same date as the Suez Crisis broke out.

The excuse then was hunting Palestinian fighters during the crisis. More Palestinians were killed before and after as they attempted to return back to their towns and villages in what became Israel. They were called “infiltrators.”

The mere Palestinian existence after the Nakba is in itself a threat to Israel, as many of these Palestinians are refugees who reside a few miles away from what used to be their towns and villages and now under Israeli control. Israel has always sought to keep Palestinians at bay, by any means necessary, be it arrests, assassinations, massacres, or siege. Palestinians always have to be caged because, God forbid, if they are not, they might return back to what became the state of Israel, thus threatening its demographics.

An ongoing war

Understanding the Israeli policy of targeting the very existence of Palestinians translates into a dim reality on the ground where Israel’s non-stop war against the Palestinians continues unabated. This has included targeting the Palestinian presence in Lebanon, pressuring other countries to push the Palestinians out, and incessant surveillance of Palestinians putting them under a never-ending pressure. The Israeli understanding of suffocating the Palestinians stems from their belief that if Palestinians breathe enough, they may take action.

That’s why we read in the news every day that an Israeli raid targeted a Palestinian group or city. Israel’s propaganda machine, the Hasbara, promotes the claim that these attacks are individual, and they only target specific groups or cities. The truth is, in Israeli eyes, Palestinians are one, be they in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, today’s Israel, or in exile. According to this Israeli understanding, Jenin is Gaza, Jerusalem is Hebron, and Nablus is Lod. The demolition of Palestinian houses in Israel or Jerusalem is also part of this Israeli approach.

For the Israeli policy to succeed, all of a sudden, after placing Palestinians under siege for more than 15 years, Israel decided to grant the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip thousands of work permits. The logic behind this is that Israel assumes that the Palestinians in Gaza will not risk losing these permits by engaging in a military confrontation with Tel Aviv, especially given that the majority don’t have an economic alternative and poverty has taken its toll on them.

Stories should count, Not numbers

In the midst of this Israeli madness, and as Israel’s killing machine continues targeting the Palestinians uninterruptedly, we should remember that Palestinians are not merely numbers and victims: Palestinians are a people with a history, families, memories, and dreams. The most recent Israeli offensives on Gaza, Jenin, and Nablus speak of these stories and dreams.

Alaa Qaddum, 5, had dreams that were cut short by an Israeli missile while playing with her friends to the east of Gaza. Her 7-year-old brother and father were injured too.

Ahmed Walid Ahmed al-Farram, 16, was killed by an Israeli air strike, according to Palestinian sources. His father was not able to bid him a final farewell as he couldn’t exit Israel, where he works, due to the closure of crossings leading to Gaza.

Another Israeli air strike on August 2 killed Yasser al-Nabahin and his three children, Muhammed (13), Dalia (13), and Nimer (9).

Palestinian elder Naa’ma Abuqaida, 62, lost her life as an Israeli airstrike targeted the car she was in on her way to her son’s wedding.

Palestinian Ashraf al-Qaisi, a father of eight, who works as a street vendor, agreed to let his house be demolished in order to make way for rescuers to reach his neighbors who were trapped under rubble. Rescuers couldn’t reach them because of the huge destruction Israeli air strikes caused.

When asked about where he plans to go with his family, al-Qaisi said, “To where people who have lost their houses go.”

The August 2022 escalation in Gaza reminds Palestinians of previous escalations they have experienced, during which they have lost their homes and loved ones. This is once again proof that there is no postwar or post-traumatic phase in Gaza, because wars and trauma are ongoing.

Is the war on Palestine over?

As part of the latest Israeli to keep Palestinians under pressure, the need to wage an ongoing war on their existence by using different means and targeting all Palestinians regardless of where they are emerges. Israeli escalations do not differentiate between one city or another, a man, woman, or political group. All Palestinians, including those in exile, many of whom are denied entry to their homeland, are equally and obsessively viewed as potential threats to Israel.

The war on Palestine is far from being over. It is waged every day and against all Palestinians by using different excuses and means. It requires keeping the rest of Palestinians/cities at bay, including by offering them work permits to buy their silence. By doing so, Israel kills two birds with one stone: exploiting the Palestinians by making them work as cheap laborers and pressuring them not to call for their national rights.

With Israel’s strategy of divide and rule, Palestinians in Israel are given the most rights (for the time being), and Palestinians in Jerusalem are given more rights than Palestinians in the West Bank, and, of course, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

On August 13, reports suggested the Israeli government is considering allowing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to travel through the Ramon Airport too, as part of a package to allow 20,000 workers from Gaza work in Israel. The Israeli equation is clear: if Palestinians in Gaza remain calm, they will receive some economic bribes on the provision they never talk about their political rights.

Palestinians across the globe mark April 17 of each year as Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, a day that was introduced by the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on April 17, 1974, to recognize the sacrifices of Palestinian political prisoners and to call for international solidarity. Yousef M. Aljamal spoke to freed Palestinian prisoner Esmat Mansour, 45, who spent 20 years in Israeli jails, where he authored three novels, about the situation of Palestinian prisoners, prison literature, and Palestinian prisoners’ message to the world.

Q. Let’s start by getting to know you more closely. Could you introduce yourself and tell us about your life before you were arrested by Israeli forces in 1993? Why were you arrested?

My name is Esmat Mansour from Deir al-Jir village, east of Ramallah in the West Bank. I was imprisoned in 1993 before the Oslo Accords for participating in a military operation in which an Israeli settler was killed near Ramallah in the Beit El settlement, which is an illegal settlement established on the lands of Ramallah and Al-Bireh. At the time, I was a high school student, and I was 17 years old. I was sentenced to life, but because I was below the legal age, I was sentenced for 22 years, of which I spent 20 in Israeli prisons.

Of course, I was subjected to an Israeli interrogation that lasted sixty-three days in Al-Maskubiya Detention Centre in Jerusalem, in which all methods of torture were used against me. This is because I was part of a military operation, thus the act was viewed as dangerous because an Israeli settler was killed. We were young, 17 and 19 years old, which was an unprecedented experience for Israel. We were of non-partisan backgrounds and carried the attack individually. After that, I was moved between different prisons and served 20 years of imprisonment before being released in 2013 as part of talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel to resume peace talks.

Q. You published three novels while in prison. What are these novels about? Can you talk to us about the literary and cultural scene in Israeli jails, including the contributions of Palestinian prisoners to prison literature?

I entered prison at a young age. Being imprisoned and having much time encourages prisoners, especially young ones, to learn more about culture and politics. The prisoners consider reading, writing, and culture as important tools in our struggle for liberation, because we carry and convey a message and struggle in the name of our Palestinian people. It is a sign and a guarantee for the continuity of our struggle.

Thus, Palestinian prisoners are engaged in culture. At the beginning of their hunger strikes and with the start of Israel’s military occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) banned prisoners from having access to books and newspapers. The Israeli occupation prevented Palestinian political prisoners from even owning a piece of paper or pen. Palestinian prisoners were only allowed to have the three holy books. In addition to holy books, Israeli newspapers were allowed as well.

When Palestinian political prisoners started their first mass, open-ended hunger strike on February 18, 1969, their demand was to have access to paper and pens. We wanted books. We wanted to communicate with the world and know about culture, science, and the revolutionary experiences of others such as that of Ireland. As a result of the successful hunger strike of 1969, prisons filled with books. This meant that huge libraries came into existence over the years in prisons.

Even though the IPS has repeatedly prevented the entry of books, Palestinian political prisoners smuggled them through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): brochures, novels, plays, collections of poetry, books about the struggles of other peoples, political readings, translations, and analyses, all of which were handwritten. They were placed in pamphlets—what prisoners call the “cultural department” inside prisons.

Q. How long were you placed in solitary confinement?

I spent two months straight in solitary confinement, but there were times when they moved me to the regular prison department for a week. This period gave me an idea of ​​isolation. I know political prisoners who spent from 7 to 15 years in solitary confinement. Our lives are joined and mixed, and we live our experiences almost collectively.

This novel was part of a competition to publish the works of prisoners, and was ranked first by the evaluation committee and published by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. After that, I published a collection of short stories called A Closed Space. The collection talks about the barrier between prison and freedom, the moments when prisoners move outside the regular cells to meet their families, who ironically enter prison to see them. It is known that the family visitation rooms are located in an area inside the prison but are separate from the prison cells.

Prisoners’ cells are a few meters away. We get out of the prison cells and our families enter the prison walls. I call it the grey area in which you are freed from prison for moments and our families enter the prison. There are human and emotional scenes there, where families and prisoners are separated during the visits by a net or, later, glass barriers. These barriers still stand between a child and his father, a prisoner and his daughter, or a wife and her husband.

Q. Can you recall a scene that particularly struck you from these visits?

Watching a Palestinian mother age and lose her ability to see and hear over the more than 20 years she visited her son in prison. At the beginning of the visits, she would communicate with him directly through the prison window’s nets. After 20 years, she had aged, and was in her seventies or eighties, and her hearing and sight got weaker. The IPS replaced iron nets with glass barriers and installed landlines for prisoners to communicate with their families. The prisoner spent the whole visit trying to show his mother where the phone was, knocking on the glass barrier while she couldn’t see or hear him. It was a very sad moment. Even when she picked up the phone, she couldn’t hear anything. I engraved these scenes in my memory and later in short stories and literary texts.

The third book I wrote was about Gaza, and it is called Silek (fence in Arabic). It talks about the border fence in Gaza. I was at the Beer Al-Saba prison. Most of the prisoners from Gaza were placed there. They would talk about their experiences and adventures when crossing the border fence. It caught my attention that when they were talking about Egypt, they were talking about the Egyptian border, and when they were talking about Israel, they were talking about the fence. In other words, they did not recognize the border walls and fences as such. So, I said in my mind that this is a sign that people refuse, both emotionally and spontaneously, to consider Gaza as not belonging to Palestine.

I wrote these stories and spoke about my own experiences after what happened in Gaza in 2007, when Hamas took control of power, and the changing reality there. These are the three books that I published while in prison. When I was freed, I wrote a novel titled Al-Khazneh, the Arabic word for for a vault, treasury, or safe. The novel speaks of escape attempts from Israeli jails, aside from the recent one that took place at the Gilboa prison in September 2021. I used the term “Al-Khazneh”, because in Israel, they consider Gilboa prison a safe, yet six prisoners were able to break out even though it was a fortified safe—that is how I decided on the title of the book.

Q. How did you smuggle these writings out of Israeli prison?

Palestinian prisoners are pursued in every aspect. I personally used to write after 12 at night because only then the conditions were suitable for writing. There were ten and sometimes twelve or even eighteen prisoners in the same cell. One above me, another next to me, and I didn’t have enough personal space. It is not the perfect solitary situation that a writer needs.

So, I used to wait until the prisoners sleep at 12 and start writing until dawn, when prisoners would wake up to perform their prayers. I would go to bed then and give what I wrote to a prison mate, who would start copying my writings, and give them to another prison mate to make a third copy. We would make three copies and keep them in different places, because, if a copy gets confiscated, we’d have the other copies left.

We would follow the same strategy until the writing is over. The next challenge was how to send it out of Israeli prison. Smuggling writings was our only way out, because we can’t send these writings in the forms of letters, which get read and censored by the prison’s administration. We also could not send them with our families, so we had to smuggle them either with prisoners finishing their prison terms in capsules that they would swallow or hide in their bodies or clothes, with lawyers, or by some other means.

I personally smuggled my writings with prisoners who served their sentences. Sometimes, novels are ready to be published, but we have to wait for a long time to smuggle them out. The process may be delayed for months, waiting for a prisoner to be released. During this time, we could check the text and do some edits and notes. Other prisoners might also read and review the writings until we find a way to smuggle them.

A video of an Israeli interrogator violently interrogating then 13-year-old Palestinian child prisoner Ahmad Al-Manasra went viral in November 2015. In the video, Al-Manasra repeatedly told his Israeli interrogator that he couldn’t remember as his interrogator screamed at him, accusing him of not telling the truth. Ahmad was referring to the day his cousin Hassan, 15, was killed in Jerusalem, and he himself was injured and left to bleed on the ground after being run over by an Israeli car.

The ramming attack took place after Israeli settlers accused both Ahmad and Hassan of attempting to carry out a knife-stabbing attack. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers cursed him, damning him to death, and the Israeli police—as seen in videos of the incident—kept watching.

The issue of Palestinian prisoners impacts every single Palestinian family, with nearly a million Palestinians arrested by Israel since 1967. At the end of February 2022, 4,400 Palestinians were arrested by Israel, of whom 160 are children and 33 women, while 490 have been placed under administrative detention without a charge or trial.

A separate military judicial system

The Israeli occupation authorities have a separate military judicial system before which Palestinians are brought to court, unlike Israelis who live in the same area in illegal settlements in the West Bank. Palestinians brought before military courts are handed tough sentences and their conviction rates are extremely high. Since Israeli law does not allow convicting children below 14, the Israeli authorities waited for Al-Manasra to turn 14 before convicting him, handing him a sentence of 12 years. Al-Manasra’s sentence was later reduced to 9.5 years.

Following much physical and psychosocial violence, Al-Manasra’s mental health has deteriorated significantly—a process that only got worse when he was placed in solitary confinement. The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) has isolated Al-Manasra since November 2021, claiming that his mental health is not stable and putting him with other inmates might cause harm to them!

Bargouthi was arrested again in 2019 after defending Al-Manasra and was sentenced to 13.5 years in Israeli prison by the Ofer Military Court, the same court where he once defended several cases of Palestinian child prisoners. Many viewed the sentence as an attempt to silence lawyers who defend Palestinian child prisoners.

The deteriorating mental health of Al-Manasra is the logical outcome of Israeli prison conditions where Palestinian prisoners are held lacking the minimum standards of human dignity. Such conditions push Palestinian prisoners to stage both individual and mass, open-ended hunger strikes to improve their prison conditions.

The family of Al-Manasra held a press conference in February this year during which they revealed more information about their son’s mental health. The family noted that “Ahmad was severely beaten when arrested, which caused a fracture in his skeleton that caused him to suffer from hemangioma.” They went on to say that “due to the extreme psychical and psychological suffering he was exposed to, Ahmad has been suffering from severe headaches.”

The family added, “The repeated placement of Ahmad in solitary confinement [For four months now], along with psychological and physical torture, and depriving him of the needed medication has resulted in psychological disorders, which got only worse by isolating him from the rest of prisoners.”

Al-Manasra’s family stressed that the Israeli authorities refused to release him from solitary confinement and put him in the normal prison sections as recommended by a mental health specialist who was able to pay him a rare visit. The specialist condemned the Israeli authority’s claim that the reason for placing Al-Manasra in solitary confinement was to protect him and the rest of the prisoners following the deterioration of his mental health.

In a recent statement, Al-Manasra’s mother called for his immediate release, noting that her son is “a child whose condition would make a stone cry.” She added that her son needs her and that not being able to meet face to face is costing him dearly.

In light of this reality and following a call for solidarity with Ahmad Al-Manasra by his family, an international campaign was launched. The hope is that this call for solidarity will pressure the Israeli authorities to improve his prison conditions and move him to the regular prison sections.

Palestinian child prisoners should receive the attention of the world whose deafening silence allows for the violations against them to continue. Such efforts should build on previous campaigns and initiatives including “No Way to Treat a Child,” a campaign launched by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) of the Quaker Church in the U.S. Legal actions should be taken in various parliaments across the globe to provide protection for Palestinian children.

The U.S. House of Representatives draft bill 2407 calls for linking American foreign aid to countries’ treatment of children, including Israel. The bill calls for making sure that Palestinian children’s rights are not violated by American tax money. Other draft laws and bills could be introduced at a national level in other countries to build more pressure on Israel to end its military occupation of Palestine.

Theodor Herzl, the co-founder of the Zionist movement, which also established the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in 1901, had a clear goal in mind – to see Palestine without Palestinians. The ultimate goal of establishing JNF was to acquire lands in Ottoman Palestine to establish Jewish settlements.

Land acquisition in Palestine by all possible means and in different forms has continued in the years since then. From massacres to afforestation, and to establishing beach resorts on the ruins of Palestinian villages, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians has never stopped.

JNF dedicates February 5 of each year as a day to donate for the planting of trees in Israel – an operation that it promotes in many countries across the world, including the United States. According to JNF USA, “JNF is ‘greening’ the desert with millions of trees, building thousands of parks across Israel.”

In this process, the group says it has “planted more than 250 million trees, built over 250 reservoirs and dams, developed over 250,000 acres of land, created more than 2,000 parks and provided the infrastructure for over 1,000 communities.” JNF owns 13% of land in Israel and it effectively controls the other 80%.

Since day one, Israel, and JNF by extension, have hid behind clichés of making the “desert bloom.” It is the Zionist movement after all that called Palestine “a land without a people to a people without a land” when Palestine was a thriving nation that had cinemas, theaters, newspapers in different languages, industries, railways, airways, thriving businesses, and cultural communities in major cities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa. and Akka.

To materialize ethnic cleansing, the Zionist movement changes this time the landscape of Palestine by planting trees under the claim of afforestation.

Palestinians, who have centuries-old ties to the land, have lived on their land for generations, and land deeds (which they still keep) mattered very little to them as their connection to their land was stronger than papers and documents, which are colonial in essence.

The Zionist movement was built on the denial of the existence of the Palestinian people, and for ethnic cleansing to be successful – it is still a failure and incomplete – they needed to erase Palestinian villages, change the names of Palestinian cities and towns, and change the landscape of these communities sometimes by bulldozers and other times by planting trees under the claim of afforestation.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers continue their unbated campaign of uprooting Palestinian olive trees because these tree reminds them of the Palestinian existence. Some olive trees in Palestine go thousands of years back to the Roman period. As JNF brags about planting 250 million trees in Palestine, Palestinian farmers resist the Israeli occupation by planting more olive trees, demand access to their land and harvest, and by teaching their children that a country “that is built on enmity towards olive trees can’t survive in the Levant,” as Palestinian poet Tamim al-Barghouti put it. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers continue uprooting olive trees and Israeli authorities continue taking over Palestinian land.

Not just in the Southern Hebron Hill, where iconic Palestinian elder and leader of popular resistance Haj Suleiman al-Hazalin, 75, was murdered on January 17, 2022, after an Israeli police officer intentionally hit him with his car on January 6, 2021 – the police officer is still at large. Al-Hazalin was a Palestinian refugee from the Negev where his family ended up as refugees in 1948.  In an interview with Aljazeera, he had said, “They [the Israeli forces] tried to get me out of the area several times, but I am a man who does not give up.”

Afforestation to Colonize

A few miles to the south, where al-Hazalin originally comes from, JNF continues its “afforestation” of Palestinian lands. Dozens of Palestinian villages and communities are still to be “recognized” by the Israeli government, which means that these communities do not have access to basic services, electricity, or water, unlike adjacent Israeli settlements built on lands that have belonged to the Palestinians for hundreds of years.

A few years ago, JNF failed to implement the Prawer Plan in the Negev, which aims to push Palestinians out and to give them houses within “recognized” communities. The end goal of the plan was to take over Palestinian land. However, JNF has not given up and is back now with a new “afforestation” plan which sparked huge protests in the Negev and dozens of arrests. A video from the protests of Palestinian activist Aden Al-Hajouj went viral, in which she stated, “This is Palestine and will remain Palestine. This is the Bedouin land; we will not leave.”

Afew miles further, by the end of 2021, the Gaza Strip had become the most densely populated place on Earth with 2,313,000 Palestinians living on 365 square kilometers with a monthly birth rate of 6,000. The Gaza Strip looks much like a concrete jungle with almost no forest areas. The JNF, of course, has no interest in planting trees there.

The Israeli government views Gaza as a threat and thus recently built a wall around it to prevent Gazan refugees from returning to their towns and villages, some of which are visible to the naked eye across the border. The Gaza Strip is not of interest to JNF or the Israeli government, and keeping it less green serves the goal of making it the world’s biggest open-air prison.

The recent revelation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of the existence of a Palestinian mass grave of victims of the Nakba from the village of Tantura under an Israeli beach resort speaks volumes of how the world treats the Palestinian narrative. Palestinian survivors of the Tantura massacre have long spoken of the massacre during which some 200 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood between May and June 1948.

This is not surprising given how the early founders of the Zionist movement viewed Palestinians and Palestine. Bhagat Abu Gharbia, a Palestinian fighter of the 1948 war, quotes Herzl, in his book The Jewish State, as saying, “When we establish our state, we will not use the same method used by Europeans when establishing their own states, none of us will carry spears and swords and hunt bears, killing them here and there. We will not deal with these animals individually; we need to establish a capable authority to gather these beasts in one place and destroy them with one blow.”

But it took Haaretz, an Israeli publication, to get a former Israeli solider to “confess” in order for the Tantura massacre to be recognized. Thousands of Palestinian testimonies of Nakba survivors don’t count, some of whom are still alive and were interviewed by Politics Today. The world only accepts the narrative of the colonizer and the credibility of their archives, much of which are still buried – same as the bodies of tens of thousands of Palestinians who were buried in mass graves in 1948.

After all these years of afforestation, and as protests continue in the Negev against JNF, the only truth is that Israel, with the way it stands today, is a failure and JNF by extension is a witness to this failure. It is an incomplete project which targets Palestinians regardless of where they are. The Israeli targeting of Palestinians will only make them unite and come together, acting as a one nation, and when they do so, no military force, regardless of how mighty it is, can stop them from attaining their rights. The truth is that the entire state of Israel was built on a mass grave – be it covered by a beach resort or a forest planted by JNF.

Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the Zionist project moved to effectuate and legitimize the gains of its ethnic cleansing campaign through various means, one of which is education. Education is a human right. On this fourth annual International Day of Education, under the theme of “Changing Course, Transforming Education,” it’s important to emphasize the nature of Israel’s education curriculum vis~a~vis its Arab-Palestinian citizens, which serves to uplift the nationality of one group (Jews), and dimish or omit the nationality of another (Palestinians). The indigenous Palestinian community was the majority in Palestine, and now live as a “foreign” minority in the newly founded state, with second-class citizenship.

Israel is required to recognize the right and freedom of its Palestinian minority to practice their culture, religion and language, and to adopt positive measures to avoid discriminating against them. Moreover, indigenous minorities have the right to have their history expressed in state institutions, including the education system. In Israel however, Palestinians are limited in their political and cultural expressions, especially through Israel’s education system. A prime example of this is the Nakba Law, which prevents publicly funded institutions, including schools, from commemorating the Nakba (i.e. catastrophe).

The Nakba represents the ongoing forcible displacement, ethnic cleansing, land theft, and systematic oppression of the Palestinian people. It rests in the collective memory of the Palestinian people, yet it’s suppressed, and hidden in the Israeli history curriculum. In fact, the 1948 ethnic cleansing campaign that caused the dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians is taught from an Israeli perspective as a “just war” while purveying the myth of “the few against the many.”

When the Nakba is mentioned in textbooks, it’s framed as part of the unfolding events of the Israeli war of independence, and Jews and Palestinians as equal sufferers, in effect positing parity between them. Moreover, the resulting refugee crisis is blamed on Arab states or the Palestinians themselves. The purpose of this pedagogical approach is to absolve the crimes of the state’s Zionist settler-colonial project, or at least provide justification for it.

Israeli textbooks reinforce Jewish-israeli territorial identity, wherein Palestinians are not regarded as ancestral inhabitants of the land, and therefore have no claim to it.

Israeli textbooks reinforce Jewish-israeli territorial identity, wherein Palestinians are not regarded as ancestral inhabitants of the land, and therefore have no claim to it. While Palestinians have been appointed to lead the Department of Arab Education since 1987, they lack decision-making authority, which remains exclusively under the direct control of the Ministry of Education. This contrasts sharply with the state’s Jewish religious school system, which is physically and administratively separate from the state’s secular Jewish school system, and maintains complete autonomy over its educational policy, aims and goals.

Israel enacted the State Education Law in 1953, the main object of which is to “educate” on the “loyalty to the State and the Jewish people.” The law as amended in 2002 references the Palestinian minority, referred to as Arabs in Zionist discourse, by “acknowledging” their language, history, and heritage. A mere acknowledgement implies mere mention, as opposed to education.

Palestinian students in Israel are deprived of the Palestinian literary classics taught throughout the Arab world. In addition to not learning about the Nakba or Palestinian history, they also spend many more class hours on the study of Hebrew, Jewish history, and Jewish culture than they do on Arabic literature and history. One example is that of foremost Palestinian poet laureate, Mahmoud Darwish, whose work Israel tried to ban in both Jewish and Palestinians schools. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman described Darwish’s texts as “fuel for terror attacks.”

A study found that over the years, generations of Israeli jews were taught from Hebrew textbooks that portrayed Palestinian-Arabs in a negative and deligitimizing way. Furthermore, on a general level, Palestinian society was presented as “primitive, backward and passive.” Israeli Jews were thus subjected to this form of negative and dehumanizing stereotyping, which ultimately conditioned how they perceive Palestinians.

What makes this trend more troublesome is that Palestinian history teachers can do little to correct it. They’re limited by the state curriculum and textbooks and banned from using other texts. The inevitable result of this educational regime is that Palestinian students are forced to memorize history as it is presented in these textbooks, because their final high school graduation exams depends on it.

Jewish exclusivity to Palestine was not only taught since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948; in fact, a study shows that history textbooks in the pre-state era (1900-1948) stressed the exclusive rights of the Jewish people to ownership of Palestine. The indigenous Palestinian-Arabs were portrayed as “backward, primitive,” and thus left the land “neglected” while awaiting “Jewish redemption.”

Additionally, the earliest geography textbooks, produced by Zionist authors in Europe who embraced the Zionist slogan of “a land without a people for a people without a land,” omitted the presence of the indigenous population. This orientalist framework represented the indigenous Palestinians as a “negative homogenous mob that threatens, assaults, destroys, eradicates, burns and shoots . . . who strive to annihilate the most precious symbols of Zionism.”

Israel’s education system is designed to maintain racial domination of one racial group over another, while systematically oppressing them. There’s a word for such a system: Apartheid.

Even the updated history textbook of 2016 reinforces the omission, dehumanization, and denationalization of the indigenous Palestinian minority that characterizes Israel’s prior history curricula. They’re referred to in the negative as “non-jewish groups,” and viewed as an amalgamation of religious, cultural and linguistic groups, thereby reinforcing the notion that Palestinians are not a national group, let alone in a struggle for national liberation. Palestinian citizens are thus alienated from their ancestral connection to Palestine, and the Zionist-Israeli ideology, narrative, and history is amplified to reinforce colonial domination.

As we reflect on the right to education, we must first understand how education is sometimes employed to undermine the existence of an entire people. Palestinian citizens of Israel learn their diluted history from within that prism. Israel’s education system is designed to maintain racial domination of one racial group over another, while systematically oppressing them. There’s a word for such a system: Apartheid. This week is that of the International Day of Education, and we recognize Israel’s apartheid education system and rally for all educators and educational institutions to incorporate this fact and knowledge in how we educate about the world.

On the morning of May 10, 2021, I rolled out of bed and headed to Capital Mall, Gaza’s only shopping mall. My plan was to buy a gray hat for my son Ayman (4) and pink hair clips for my daughter Mariam (3) to complement their Eid clothes. I wanted to please my kids and avoid their temper tantrums.

On the evening of the same day, however, my concern shifted to whether I will die or live, whether I will leave my kids behind or we will all die together.

On that evening, Israel started a war on the Gaza Strip and used internationally prohibited weapons: a total of 1,500 strikes took place in the 11-day war, injuring 1,900 Palestinians, and killing at least 260. Gaza health authorities reported 39 women, 17 elderly, and 66 children among the dead, and 1,800 houses, 3 towers, 437 apartments, and 3 mosques destroyed.

When the Israeli warplanes hit Gaza again recently, my daughter, Mariam, woke up from her nap, crying because of the loud noise. This brought back memories of the May war seven months ago.

A day before the war, we were eagerly awaiting Eid al-Fitr. I remember the smiley little faces of my kids while they rummaged through the shopping bags to see what I had bought. Mariam loved her new hair clips; however, Ayman didn’t like his new hat and tossed it to the side. I promised him I will replace it with whatever he liked. My kids are everything to me.

When the Israeli warplanes hit Gaza again recently, my daughter, Mariam, woke up from her nap, crying because of the loud noise. This brought back memories of the May war seven months ago.

A day after the start of the May war, we heard the shocking news that Israel had threatened to destroy the Hanadi Tower using warplanes. My thoughts traveled, “Is it going to be destroyed? Are they going to start a war? Is it our turn to die? What would happen to my kids if I were no longer around?”

What should I answer? He hadn’t lived through such terrible events before, and he is too young to understand the horrible truth. So, I decided to lie. “They are fireworks to celebrate the coming Eid.”

He looked at me, unconvinced, and asked, “Why is this tower being destroyed on TV?”

I smiled sadly and said, “They destroyed it because it’s old and they didn’t want it anymore.” He was convinced.

The next day, Al-Shorouq Tower was also threatened to be leveled to the ground in ten minutes by Israeli warplanes. It hosted nothing but companies, businesses, and press offices and was located at the heart of Gaza City, opposite my family’s house. My parents didn’t have time to leave their home. I called my mother to beg them to come to my place, but she said, “There is not enough time and no vehicles to pick us up. If we go on foot, the shrapnel will kill us. And if the tower collapses on us, we will die.”

I couldn’t hold my tears, I hung up the phone, waited for their news, and sent my prayers to God. One of my eyes was on the TV and the other on the window waiting for an explosion to happen.

A few minutes later, the awaited explosion occurred and Al-Shorouq Tower was leveled to the ground by Israeli F-16s warplanes. I didn’t dare to call my parents. How would I live without them? I am still young and I needed them. Ayman interrupted my tears, “Mom, why are you crying? Don’t be sad, they don’t need this tower anymore; it is old,” he innocently comforted me.

I took a deep breath and played the strong mom’s role and lied again, “Yes, that is true. But I’m worried about your grandfather and grandmother.” I picked up my phone to call them. I received a message. My mother wrote to me: “Don’t worry. We are completely fine. The house was damaged badly, but it’s okay.”

I was confused whether to feel happy for my parents’ safety or to feel sad for the disaster and destruction.

Every night, my husband and I would take shifts. One stays awake, and the other sleeps until the next explosion. We slept on the floor to protect our children from any flying glass.

Despite the danger that surrounded my mother, she used to contact me every single hour to make sure that we were fine. There is nothing in this world like a mother.

The morning after the war, I was busy cleaning the house, when little Ayman asked me, “Mom, did the fireworks end? Is today finally Eid? Can we go out now?” I said that we could. When I looked at him, he was putting on his gray hat, the one he had disliked before the war.

I smiled and thanked God that we were somehow back to our normal life.

When Arabs arrived in Central and South America, they had nothing but the clothes they wore. They were called “Turcos” as they carried Ottoman passports. Today, they are wealthy and occupy important positions. Are they “sons who lost their mothers,” as a poet once put it? Do they maintain their ties to Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the lands of their ancestors? Yousef M. Aljamal of Politics Today spoke with Simán Khoury, a Palestinian-Salvadorian, who serves as the president of the Palestinian Federations in Latin America, about the ethnically Arab populations in Latin America today.

Q. When people of the Levant arrived in Latin America in the late nineteenth century, they were called “Turcos.” Can you tell us about this? What does it mean and how do South Americans perceived the term?

The Arab immigration, especially from the Levant or Greater Syria, to Latin America was mostly in the late nineteenth century during the period of the Ottoman Empire. All those immigrants held Ottoman passports. So basically, people there did not distinguish between Arabs and Turks, and they called us all “Turcos” (Turks).

Q. What is the reason for this contempt of “Turcos”?

The majority of those who immigrated at that time were poor and ordinary people, mostly peasants. Ordinary Latin Americans, who lived and thought in feudal structures, considered them as inferior, lower-class people.

When our grandparents and our great-grandparents arrived there, four, five, or six generations back, they did it barefoot, which means that they were in a dire economic situation.

Q. What was the stereotype in the minds of immigrants about Latin America? I mean economically.

They were men of modest substance. Everyone wanted to go to America, meaning North America, and had no idea about possible differences between North, Central, and South America. They thought that they were going to North America. However, they arrived at Puerto Colombia, in Colombia, or in Cuba, where they split up. Some went to Chile, some went to El Salvador, and from there to other places, especially the places where they had relatives, if any.

Q. Why are Levant immigrants mainly concentrated in Chile, El Salvador, and Honduras?

There are about a million Palestinian immigrants in Latin America. The majority almost are from Palestine, especially from Bethlehem. In addition, the majority of those immigrants were Palestinian Christians from the city of Bethlehem. Chile has about half a million Palestinians, and there are maybe some 200,000 in Honduras, and 120,000 in El Salvador. Although there are people who say that these numbers are exaggerated, I am sure that they exist and we have statistics supporting that.

Chile has about half a million Palestinians, and there are maybe some 200,000 in Honduras, and 120,000 in El Salvador.

Q. There is a saying, which goes “In every town in Chile, there is a priest, a policeman, and a Palestinian.” Can you tell us more about Palestinians’ impact in Latin America today? What are their positions, their economic status, their cultural, political, and societal status?

When immigrants arrived, they were in a miserable economic situation and suffered from extreme poverty, but they managed to integrate. First, they worked as street vendors and this contributed to their marginalization by the feudal and wealthy classes. But they managed to set up shops and work in textile factories. Gradually, their financial situation improved, which led to an improvement in their social situation. These immigrants struggled for their children to live a better life. They sent their children to schools and universities, and were able to obtain a better social status.

Q. You have spoken about the relations that still link the Latin American Levantines with the Middle East. How do you see the new generation, especially with the Internet and easy access to information? Do they try to restore this relationship and the link between them and their countries of origin? If yes, how do they express this?

Although these migrations took place a long time ago, 80, 100, or 120 years ago – for example, I immigrated 41 years ago – the link between Palestinians and their homeland, despite the fact that they belong in the countries they are currently in, is excellent. They visit their homelands, whether Palestine, Syria or Lebanon – especially the Lebanese, who live in large numbers in Brazil, reaching 7 million.

They still send money and other kinds of aid, whether from Chile, Brazil, or El Salvador to their families there and continue to visit them. As an expression of our cultural identity, we participate in pro-Palestine political and cultural events on every possible occasion and follow the latest news. We have activities, including political ones, to support the Palestinian cause. We have many people in El Salvador who are politically active and support the cause.

Q. Historically, the relationship between South and Central America and the Middle East is strong, but recently, there has been a rise of the right wing in South and Central America. This, of course, also applies to the whole world. Do you observe any impact of this trend on South American interest in Middle Eastern affairs?

This has a great impact on our relationship. In 2017, with the presence of a left-wing government and the activism of the Palestinian community, we were able to close the Israeli embassy in El Salvador. However, the current situation is different due to the economic power of the Jewish lobby in South America.

In 2017, with the presence of a left-wing government and the activism of the Palestinian community, we were able to close the Israeli embassy in El Salvador.

At present, Palestinian embassies are not showing enough effort to influence these countries diplomatically and win their support. This is surprising because this cause is fundamental, it is about displaced people who are being expelled from their lands by brutal force. I personally blame Palestinian diplomacy because there are many countries, even when Chile was ruled by the right, which are still supportive of Palestine. For example, the President of the Republic of El Salvador Elías Antonio Saca González visited Palestine and he was a right-wing politician. He visited his family, the city of Bethlehem and Palestine, while currently, there are leftist countries that try to destroy these relations.

Two months ago, we published an article on the controversial issue of using models with the Palestinian keffiyeh in the training of the Panamanian police by the Israeli police. What are the reflections on this in local society?

Even though we have a large group of Palestinians in Panama, who have the upper hand in the country economically, the incident shows that the Israeli lobby is strong. I have personally been to the city of Cologne, where the greatest merchants in the Colon Free Zone are Palestinians. The community is doing what it can and we cannot blame them. What’s sad is that the Palestinian community has not had enough support from the Palestinian government or the PLO during the last three or four decades.

Is it possible to form a lobby that supports the rights and demands of the Arab Middle Eastern communities in Central and South America, similar to, for example, the Jewish lobby in the U.S. so that it presses, for example, for the recognition of the Palestinian state? In entire South America, Mexico and Panama are the two states, which haven’t yet recognized Palestine.

There is a lobby in Chile. For example, we have around 12 parliamentarians of Palestinian origin, and there is a league of these parliamentarians to support the Palestinian cause.

There is a lobby in Chile. For example, we have around 12 parliamentarians of Palestinian origin, and there is a league of these parliamentarians to support the Palestinian cause. Similarly, although this lobby is currently less effective in El Salvador, they nurture considerable support in Latin America in general.

Olive trees and harvests have an exceptionally important place in Palestinian culture, especially in villages where farming is the main source of income for Palestinian families. Palestinians and especially farmers have always looked at olive trees as a national symbol that should be kept and protected as it speaks of the thousands of years of their history in Palestine. This special importance has been expressed in the Palestinian culture, through oral history, songs, and poetry.

Late iconic Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish famously spoke of the relationship that connects Palestinians and Israeli soldiers with olive trees.

These soldiers, these modern soldiers

Besiege her with bulldozers and uproot her from her lineage

of earth.

They vanquished our grandmother who foundered,

Her branches on the ground, her roots in the sky.

She did not weep or cry out. But one of her grandsons

Who witnessed the execution threw a stone

At a soldier, and he was martyred with her.

Olive harvest in Palestine sees the gathering of families where all members for days participate in picking the olives. The olive harvest in Palestine starts after it rains for the first time in autumn – an indication that olives are ripe and ready to be picked. This usually happens every year in early October and lasts for a couple of weeks. In the Gaza Strip, some people use the expression “The cross has materialized,” to declare the start of the olive harvest season. The expression has its roots in the city’s oral history which saw conversions to Christianity following the worship of stars and fire in the past.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that olive trees are like children to Palestinians.  When my family wanted to tear down our house to build a new one, my aunt resisted the idea because we had to cut down two olive trees my grandfather planted some 35 years ago. My aunt cried when they cut the trees, and all our attempts to save them by planting them elsewhere didn’t succeed. Although we planted new olive trees later, my aunt would always speak of the two olive trees her father had planted, alongside which she grew up in our Gaza refugee camp.

Palestinian author Sarah Ali once wrote, “If a Palestinian bulldozer were ever invented (Haha, I know) and I were given the chance to be in an orchard in Haifa for instance, I would never uproot a tree an Israeli planted. No Palestinian would. To Palestinians, the tree is sacred, and so is the land clasping it.”

Today, the scene of olive harvest in Palestine is not only about family gatherings, traditional songs, and family bonds. The olive harvest in Palestine is about proving a connection to the land, a battle to maintain existence on the land as Israeli settlers – day and night – burn hundreds of olive trees as part of their ongoing attacks against Palestinians. Attacks that include stoning Palestinian cars, and burning Palestinian houses (with families inside), mosques, and churches.

These very Israeli settlers also move the olive trees they uproot to decorate the entrance of settlements built on Palestinian lands in order to prove their claimed connection to the land. The image of Palestinian Mahfoza Oude hugging an olive tree as a group of Israeli soldiers attempted to uproot it speaks of the Palestinians’ relationship with olive trees and the land.

Most of the olive trees the settlers uproot are older than the state of Israel, which was only declared in 1948 on the ruins of Palestinian cities and villages. These olive trees stand as a striking reminder to settlers of the history of Palestine, which has always been a land of peaceful religious co-existence, where a person like my mother, who was born in Bethlehem, the city where Jesus was born, still says “The cross has materialized” to mark the start of the olive harvest, without even realizing its meaning.

Although the situation for Palestinians is very grim on the ground, the increasing international solidarity for the Palestinian people – and their olive trees which attest to their history on this land – will continue to preserve this existence and culture.

Palestinian poet Tamim al-Barghouti said in one of his poems that a state that was built on enmity towards olive trees would not survive in the Levant. It is true. Darwish said, “If the olive tree knew [what was happening to] its planter, its oil would become tears.” The ongoing Palestinian commitment to the land, represented by planting more olive trees as Israeli settlers uproot hundreds of them, is telling that a future solution that ignores Palestinians and their connection and claim to the land is unlikely to see the light.

The future must unequivocally include the Palestinians. All Palestinian refugees and their descendants should be able to have breakfast on their lands which always has abundant olive oil. No more olive trees should ever be uprooted just because some Israeli settlers have decided to rewrite history.

On October 21, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced the issuance of a military order designating six prominent Palestinian human rights groups as ‘terrorist organizations’. Gantz claimed that they are secretly linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a socialist political group that Israel considers, along with most Palestinian political parties, ‘a terrorist organization.’

The Palestinian organizations included in the Israeli order are Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights, Al-Haq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children Palestine, Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

Considering the significance of these organizations in Palestine and their global networks among like-minded civil society organizations, the Israeli decision provoked a public outcry. One of the many statements of condemnation was a joint statement by rights groups, Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), in which they called Gantz’s move an “appalling and unjust decision”, which represents “an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement.”

Strong Words, but No Actions

AI and HRW, which have documented Israeli human rights violations of Palestinians for many years, fully understand that the ‘terrorist’ designation is consistent with a long trajectory of such unlawful moves:

“For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians. While staff members of our organizations have faced deportation and travel bans, Palestinian human rights defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression. This decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations.”

Equally important in the world’s leading rights groups’ statement is that it did not fail to highlight that the “decades-long failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in this brazen manner.”

True to form, the international community did react to Gantz’s decision, albeit it was the kind of ineffectual reaction, which persisted in the realm of rhetoric that is rarely followed by substantive action.

A joint statement by UN experts called the Israeli decision “a frontal attack on the Palestinian human rights movement, and on human rights everywhere”.

Raids, Arrests and Death Threats

Addameer – In December 2012, the Israeli army raided the headquarters of Addamer in Ramallah, confiscating laptops and a video camera. The offices of the Union of Palestinian Women Committees were also raided by Israeli occupation forces on the same day. The organization is one of the six now designated by Israel as ‘terrorist.’

In September 2019, Addameer’s offices were raided, once again. The Israeli military raid at the time, however, did not generate as much attention or outrage, despite the accompanying violence, let alone the blatant violation of human rights. Then, Al-Haq – also one of the other six effectively banned Palestinian groups – issued a statement warning that “the private property of human rights organizations in occupied territory is especially protected under Article 46 of the Hague Regulations (1907).”

In March 2009, Jabarin was prevented by Israel from traveling to the Netherlands to receive an award on behalf of his organization. Again, in November 2011, this time, Jabarin was now allowed to travel to Denmark.

Expectedly, such legal constraints mattered little to Israel.

Al-Haq – Al-Haq’s staff have faced many restrictions throughout the years. Shawan Jabarin, the General Director of Al-Haq, has been banned from travel on various occasions, starting in 2006.

In March 2009, Jabarin was prevented by Israel from traveling to the Netherlands to receive an award on behalf of his organization. Again, in November 2011, this time, Jabarin was now allowed to travel to Denmark.

The Israeli obstacles began taking even more sinister turns when, in March 2016, Jabarin began receiving death threats over the phone. These anonymous calls began arriving “in the context of increasing harassment of Al-Haq and its members, amid their recent work at the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeking justice for human rights violations being committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” the Front Line Defenders website reported.

Defense for Children International-Palestine – In July, and again August 2021, Israeli forces raided Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) offices in Al-Bireh, in the occupied West Bank. They seized computers, hard drives and other material, alleging a link between the organization and the PFLP.

This allegation had already been advanced in 2018, when UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) persuaded Citibank and the Arab Bank PLC to stop providing banking services to DCIP, providing what they defined as “evidence of the close ties” to the PFLP.

While it is true that the recent Israeli measures against Palestinian NGOs are a continuation of an old policy, there are fundamental differences between the growing perception of Israel, now, as an apartheid state and the misconstrued perception of the past, namely Israel as an oasis of democracy.

Even international entities and groups that are yet to brand Israel an apartheid state are becoming familiar with the Israeli government’s undemocratic nature.

A ‘Tectonic Shift’

In December 2019, and after years of haggling, the ICC resolved that “there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine, pursuant to Article 53(1) of the (Rome) Statute.” Despite intense Israeli and western pressure, the last hurdle in the way of the investigation was removed last February, as the ICC has finally approved the Prosecutor’s request to open legal proceedings regarding war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza.

This legal milestone was cemented by major declarations, one made by Israel’s own rights group, B’tselem, in January, and another by HRW in April, both slamming Israeli policies in Palestine – not just the occupied territories – as ‘apartheid’.

This critical change in the international legal position regarding Israel’s new, unflattering status, was boosted by Israel’s own violent actions in East Jerusalem, Gaza and throughout Palestine in May. Unlike previous wars, the May events have shifted sympathy mostly towards Palestinians, who are fighting for their freedom, homes and other basic human rights.

The change was also notable within the US government itself, which is unprecedented by any account. An increasing number of US lawmakers are now openly critical of the State of Israel, due to a radical change in the US public opinion and, again, unprecedently, they are not paying a heavy price for it as was often the case in the past due to the great influence of the Zionist lobby in Washington.

“The shift is dramatic; it’s tectonic,” the BBC, on May 21, quoted US pollster, John Zogby, as saying. “In particular, younger generations are considerably more sympathetic to the Palestinians – and that age gap has been on full display with the Democratic Party,” the BBC noted.

The recent capture of six escaped Palestinian political prisoners from Israel’s Gilboa prison meant their freedom was tragically short-lived. But the escape itself, reportedly through a tunnel dug with a rusty spoon, helped put a spotlight on the plight of Palestinian prisoners and their steadfast resolve to resist the Israeli settler-colonial regime.

The publication of A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian & Irish Hunger Strikers (2021) by Norma Hashim and Yousef M. Aljamal is likely to help steady the focus of that spotlight and add another dimension; namely, the use of the hunger strike to call attention to the freedom struggle and the long history of this tactic which has been used not only to improve prison conditions and uphold the dignity of prisoners but also to expose the fundamental nature of colonialism.

A Shared Struggle is the third in a series of books on Palestinian prisoners by the authors. It is preceded by The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag (2013) and Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak (2016). What makes A Shared Struggle unique is its focus on the hunger strike and the parallels it draws between the Irish hunger strikers who helped bring about the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and Palestinian hunger strikers who have long been an integral part of the fight for the Palestinian right of self-determination.

Of course, numerous other parallels between the Irish and Palestinian struggles abound. In their valuable introductions, the Palestinian-Irish academic Asad Abu Sharkh and former Irish political prisoner Danny Morison point out many of them, including the settler-colonial Plantation of Ulster and the role of Herbert Samuel, the British Home Secretary who oversaw the internment of thousands of Irish revolutionaries during the Easter Uprising of 1916 and who later advocated for the Balfour Declaration and became the High Commissioner to Palestine, where he helped repress Palestinian resistance to British colonialism.

Ultimately, it’s the contrast between the Irish and Palestinian hunger strike experience that seems most politically instructive, as noted by international law expert Richard Falk in his foreword.

It becomes easy to understand why to this day popular sentiment in Ireland is often with the Palestinians, why murals in Belfast testify to this solidarity, and why the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has made such headway there.

But ultimately, it’s the contrast between the Irish and Palestinian hunger strike experience that seems most politically instructive, as noted by international law expert Richard Falk in his foreword. Chief among the differences, Falk notes, was the willingness of the Western corporate media to cover the Irish hunger strikers in 1981, most notably Bobby Sands who was elected to the British Parliament while on hunger strike and whose death from starvation, along with nine other strikers, is often credited as a pivotal moment.

That same media, however, studiously avoided coverage of Palestinian hunger strikers, denying them the publicity that is essential to the success of a hunger strike, as several contributors to this book point out in their accounts of their experience.

Currently, Israel incarcerates about 4,650 Palestinian political prisoners, including 200 children, 40 women, and 520 held under “administrative detention”, which is a suspension of habeas corpus that means people are never charged and never have their day in court, the kind of draconian, Kafkaesque measure that the United States duplicated in Guantanamo.

The testimonies in A Shared Struggle provide flesh and blood to these statistics and give readers a glimpse of the courage and determination of the hunger strikers who risk death, do serious harm to their own health, and experience agonies that few can even imagine.

As A Shared Struggle shows, several hunger strikes have been carried out to protest administrative detention, along with cruel and inhuman treatment, torture, restrictions on and denial of family visits, medical neglect, solitary confinement (itself a form of torture), and other violations of international law that the Israeli government implements on a daily basis.

The testimonies in A Shared Struggle provide flesh and blood to these statistics and give readers a glimpse of the courage and determination of the hunger strikers who risk death, do serious harm to their own health, and experience agonies that few can even imagine. Their heroism is all the more profound when you realize that being removed from society does not mean you are removed from history. In fact, as both the Irish and Palestinian struggles demonstrate, prisoners make history.

Whatever I write will not match in the slightest the horror my family and I felt on May 16, 2021 in Gaza. Yesterday was pretty good compared to the horrifying days we lived earlier. We even felt somehow “safer” and got some sleep.

Two days earlier, on May 14, I was terrified, praying for the safety of my family, who I care about more than myself. We didn’t have many children in the house – just two young girls, a two-year-old and a four-month-old. My niece Sahar is two and a half, and this is her first experience of war. We tried to convince her that all the bombs were just the sound of Eid fireworks. She didn’t buy it, but she insisted on wearing her flowery pink Eid dress, as the Israeli bombs fell all around us and the sky became filled with the unwelcome orange color of air strikes.

It was 3:00 a.m., when normal people living under normal circumstances, with no Israeli occupation, would be serenely sleeping in their warm, lovely beds. My family was sound asleep. It was only my brother and I who were awake. I was trying to write a short story about the situation, with my little niece, Sahar, as the main character, premised on the notion that that “she doesn’t want any of these games.” Ahmad, like any Gazan, was following the latest news. Ten minutes later, the phone rang, and it wasn’t a Palestinian number. Ahmad trembled. “Reem, look, this is an international number. I don’t want to answer.” I insistently replied, “Please, answer. If they want to destroy our house, we could have a chance to get away!”

In many videos I’ve watched, the Israeli military calls to warn people, giving them five minutes so that they can run and save their lives. In other cases, they do not make such calls – they just bring down the house on the heads of its residents. Ahmad refused to answer the call, and it rang again. A moment of silence and fear. Again, he refused. I hate to cry in front of others, or to insist that he answers when he clearly does not want to. I suppose it is 3:15 a.m. He texted the number. It was an ambulance.

The ambulance was on its way with my grandmother, my uncle, and his family – his wife, and their four boys and two girls. All the children were under eleven years old. For more than ten minutes, Ahmad tried to describe the road to the driver. It was very dark and dangerous for the ambulance to go out. Actually, it is dangerous in daylight as well.

Out of panic, my uncle’s family could not recognize the road for more than an hour, roaming the dark roads trying to reach our house, which they had visited countless times before.

Out of panic, my uncle’s family could not recognize the road for more than an hour, roaming the dark roads trying to reach our house, which they had visited countless times before. They were with us last week, to celebrate Ramadan. Their faces had been so bright, and the kids’ smiles so wide as they had just bought new clothes for Eid. The kids had run towards us, bragging about their clothes. Their faces looked different now and full of fear. Finally, it was dawn, we hardly even tried to feign sleep.

I knew then that I did not want to become a mother. I am already a mother figure to my 12 nieces and nephews, but being a mother to little children under these circumstances is the most difficult thing. My friend Rozan had a baby boy a week ago. I saw him; his body was so tiny and I really feel sorry for those tiny bodies. How will their small bodies and innocent hearts afford all these bombings and the loud sounds of air strikes? Rozan sighed. “All I need is to return him back to my belly; it is safer there.” Another friend of mine had a baby girl about a month ago, and she said something similar, “The louder the bomb, the tighter I hug my daughter.”

It was May 15. Our house has more than seven children, all of whom are less than eleven years old, and more than nine women. We all had our own goals in life. During the war, life stopped. I stopped my hobbies such as watching the sunset and photographing it. The sky’s beautiful color was gone. It was dark or lit with airstrikes and flames. All we sought was to survive, not to lose any of our relatives and beloved ones.

At noon, Saturday, May 15, the kids wanted to have a shower. Unfortunately, they ran away, escaping death from their houses without taking any of their clothes. What shall they wear? We don’t have children their age, and there were no clothes shops nearby.

At noon, Saturday, May 15, the kids wanted to have a shower. Unfortunately, they ran away, escaping death from their houses without taking any of their clothes. What shall they wear? We don’t have children their age, and there were no clothes shops nearby. So, unfortunately they had to wait until their clothes dry. What is more, being in the bathroom for a long time during the war is not a good habit – you might experience the raw fear of hearing loud bombings while bathing. The kids wore my 29-year-old brother’s shirts instead.

Night was about to fall. I was not sure what time it was. I sat in my room. It’s not my own room anymore, for it is housing another family. I opened my notes and read a piece of poetry I wrote back in 2019, which talks about a child called Ameer during an Israeli escalation in Gaza.

My name is Ameer, a Gazan martyr,

A kid.

Our stories, laughs, roars no longer heard

Look on my face, and despair

Of taking my soul, my dreams, my Palestine.

It was midnight, May 16. Every night we say, “No, this is the worst – let’s just wait and survive till the next day!” But, I admit, this night was really the worst. We feared sleeping. We all gathered in “my room,” the center of the house. We all sat together, so if we were bombed, we might die together. A few hours earlier, Aseel Wadiya, a friend of mine from Gaza, wrote on her Facebook page, a heart-touching text in Arabic.

Now

I am absorbing our ceiling. I need to befriend it, so it will be cool with me if it falls.

Okay, my lovely home’s ceiling, let’s make a deal!

Please, forgive me for the many times I bothered you with the balloons to surprise my mom.

Forgive me for the many times I kept looking pointlessly at you at night.

Forgive me for distancing you from the floor so much.

Forgive me for choosing your color on your behalf.

What should I do now, so you may forgive me?

There is no time.

You have to get ready for hugging me tenderly, gently.

The entire night, I looked pointlessly at the ceiling, asking myself the same question: what should I do?

Naftali Bennett is an Israeli ultranationalist politician, born on March 25, 1972, in Haifa to a Jewish family migrated from the United States. He attended the Yavne Yeshiva High School in Haifa, becoming a youth leader with the religious Zionist youth organization Bnei Akiva. Bennet and his family are followers of Orthodox Judaism.

Bennett graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a degree in law. He served in the Sayeret Matkal Unit, the elite unit of the Israeli army, which is in charge of carrying out critical operations. Much later in 2018, this unit would come under the spotlight when Hamas commanders in the Gaza Strip uncovered two of its vans, which hid intelligence equipment and a dozen Israeli special forces, resulting in the killing of one of the Israeli commanders.

Naftali Bennett served as a commander in Lebanon and the West Bank. In 1996, his force came under mortar fire in Lebanon. Following the shelling of the area by the Israeli army to cover his force, the shells hit the UN compound in the village, killing 102 Lebanese civilians.

Bennett owes his wealth to two information and data protection companies, which he co-owned. Cyota was sold for $145 million and Soluto, where he served as CEO, was sold for $100 million.

Bennett began his political life in 2005 when he was appointed the head of Benjamin Netanyahu’s team, then leader of the Israeli opposition. He led Netanyahu’s Likud party in the primary elections, which he won, paving the way for Netanyahu to become Israel’s prime minister in 2009.

In 2013, Bennet came under fire for saying, “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.”

In the same year, Bennet was appointed the director general of the Yesha Council, the main settler advocacy group in the West Bank. He advocated for annexing Area C of the West Bank, which comprises nearly 60% of the territory. Throughout his political life, Bennett has served as the head of a number of political parties, including the Jewish Home (2013-2018), the New Right (2018-2019), Yamina (2019), New Right (2019-2020), and again Yamina (2020-present).

Between 2013 and 2020, Bennett served as minister of economy, minister of religious services, minister of diaspora affairs, minister of education, and minister of defense.

In 2013, Bennet came under fire for saying, “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.”

Bennet told the Israeli television channel Keshet 12 (Channel 12) that a war in Gaza would lead his coalition to collapse because the United Arab List, which is part of the coalition, would not support it.

He believes that the relationship with the United States is strategic to Israel, but he has also noted that Israel’s security comes first, and that Israel should not care about what the world has to say about it vis-à-vis Iran.

Bennett describes himself as “more right-wing than Mr. Netanyahu.”

Bennett has described himself as “more right-wing than Mr. Netanyahu.” He is also an advocate of keeping Israel a Jewish state and controlling the Syrian Golan Heights.

“As long as I have any power and control, I won’t hand over one centimeter of land of the Land of Israel,” he said in an interview in February 2021.“There are some things that we all know will never happen … The Sopranos will never return for another season … And a peace agreement with the Palestinians will not happen,” he continued.

Bennett’s vision for the Palestinians is made of a number of points. First, the annexation of most of the occupied West Bank, which will allow Jewish settlers to remain there and give Israel control over water resources.

He is in favor of squeezing most West Bank Palestinians into urban enclaves with limited control over their lives. A few tens of thousands of Palestinians would be granted Israeli citizenship, to “counter any claims of apartheid,” his vision reads.

Bennett notes that no connection between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank should be established, and that Israel should continue to have full security control there. He is staunchly against the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He supports improving the living conditions of the Palestinians, rather than giving them a state. In an interview with the Guardian in 2017, Bennett said there would not be a Palestinian state on his watch. “It’s just not going to happen. A Palestinian state would be a disaster for the next 200 years.”

In 2013, Bennett stated that Palestinian “terrorists should be killed, not released,” and in 2018, Bennett thought Israeli forces at the Gaza fence should have a “shoot to kill” policy, which also includes minors.

For Palestinians, it does not matter if Israel’s prime minister is Benjamin Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett as their policies are ostensibly the same. Bennett has been inspired ideologically by Netanyahu’s approach of annexation and he has served as a minister under Netanyahu five times.

Palestine is back on the map. There’s no question about that. But who put it there, who’s taking the credit for the Palestinian resistance’s defeat of Israel’s infamous “Iron Dome”, who will benefit from proving Israel’s military vulnerability, and who will lead the Intifada 3.0 that has revived hopes for millions of people around the world who want to see Jerusalem saved from expanded occupation?

On paper, the most vocal and aggressive Palestinian resistance groups, inside Palestinian territories, are Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. With the latest round of military actions, they’ve proven, some would argue, that they are the strongest flag bearers for the cause of Palestinian freedom. Israel’s vulnerable nature was broadcast around the world as news outlets and the internet became flush with videos of barrages of rockets flowing out of Gaza at dozens of targets including Israel’s largest seaport Ashdod, the nearby Israeli settlement of Sderot, the seaside city of Ashkelon, Israel’s capital Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. Even though the “Iron Dome” managed to intercept a large number of incoming rockets, as Israel claimed, some did pierce the defense system.

According to Israeli sources 4,375 rockets were fired from the besieged Gaza Strip between May 9 – and May 20. More than 90% of them were intercepted by Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system. The Palestinian resistance rockets caused extensive damage to Israeli infrastructure and killed 13 Israelis.

Targets included military bases, economic centers, and residential neighborhoods; much like the targets targeted by Israeli jets and drones. However, the Israeli operations, both offensive and the “Iron Dome” operation, came at a much higher financial cost than the Palestinian resistance had to incur. Something that will further pinch Netanyahu’s struggling political career. This is where the Palestinian succeeded to expose Israel’s military vulnerabilities.

According to Israeli experts, Palestinian short-range rockets fired at Israel cost between $300 – $800 each. The cost of longer-range rockets, like “Ayyash-250”, that targeted Ramon airport, is unknown. On the other hand, every rocket fired by the “Iron Dome” system carries a cost of $35000 – $100,000. The launcher system, known as “Tamir” holds 20 rockets, each with a range of 20km. Israel conducted over 1,000 interceptions according to some sources putting the cost of operating the “Iron Dome” at $35 to $100 million over a span of 11 days.

The question is how did Palestinian resistance groups manage to deal such a heavy blow to one of the most advanced and powerful militaries in the world?

The system identifies incoming rockets, decides which pose a threat, and launches a counter projectile to neutralize the threat in the air. But despite the highly advanced military technology and more than $1.3 billion worth of research and development put into developing the “Iron Dome”, Palestinian rockets managed to rain down on Israel changing the balance of power in the Palestine-Israel battle space for the foreseeable future.

The question is how did Palestinian resistance groups manage to deal such a heavy blow to one of the most advanced and powerful militaries in the world?

Following the announcement of a ceasefire that began on May 21, Hamas leaders spoke publicly about Israel’s capitulation to the Palestinian resistance’s military capabilities. Ismail Haniyeh and Khalid Mishaal boasted about the success of Palestinian resistance in the face of all odds.

In fact, Hamas leaders’ public statements overlooked a number of strategic victories achieved in their most recent parlay with Israel, including but not limited to: proving Palestinian military capabilities despite the 14 year-siege of Gaza, proving siege tactics are not enough to squash the Palestinian resistance, forcing Israel to endure huge costs to prevent even more damage to Israel, exposing Israel’s security vulnerabilities via the large scale widespread civil disobedience witnessed by the entire world via live stream, and proving its capacity to influence public sentiment deep inside occupied territories and in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas. To the dismay of millions around the world, all of these achievements, were subdued by an unsurprising Egypt brokered ceasefire announced by Israel and precariously accepted by Palestinian resistance groups.

Iran has proxy forces in a number of Middle East countries and especially in Lebanon and Syria. However, only three rockets were reported to have been launched from Syria at Israel during the 11 days and two of them landed in Syria. It isn’t clear who launched them. In southern Lebanon, at least four rockets were launched at Israel, causing no damage at all. Furthermore, protesters gathered at the border with Israel in Lebanon in support of Palestine scaling the border wall and destroying security cameras.

One protester was even shot by Israeli forces and later died of their wounds. Social media accounts boasted that the young man was a Hezbollah member and called him a martyr. At the same time, social media accounts published videos showing Hezbollah members detaining participants and scolding them for getting involved in the protests. While all of this was happening Palestinian groups, according to Hamas, who received support from Iran, were firing non-stop barrages of rockets at Israel, while Israel conducted airstrikes killing 248 people including 67 children and 39 women.

The potential for a larger scale operation were ripe and people around the world were waiting in angst for Intifada 3.0. But to the behest of many, nothing happened, no notable rocket fire by Iran happened, no ground forces amassed at the many borders with Israel controlled by Iran, and Jerusalem, along with the rest of Palestine, remains occupied by Israel.

One question in many people’s minds, but few are willing to ask, is why Iran didn’t put into action their tens of thousands of proxy fighters based in Syria, Lebanon and even Iraq. Iran funds and supports the Hash al Shaabi in Iraq, or Popular Mobilization forces, who came into the scene as part of the U.S. led international coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve, to defeat the Daesh terror group.

In Syria there are more than 100,000 Iran backed militants in various capacities and in a variety of locations, including near the Golan Heights and the Lebanese border. Iran also controls a logistics route connecting Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut. Iranian proxies and their leaders including from Lebanese Hezbollah and the IRGC move freely between the four countries. The Iranian proxies have heavy and advanced weapons in their arsenal including medium range and long-range rockets, as well as tanks and armored vehicles.

They also have anti-tank guided missiles and heavy artillery as well as a large arsenal of small caliber artillery as well as vehicles mounted machine guns and ammunition to go along. More importantly, they have influence over tens of thousands of eager ideologically motivated fighters ready to use those weapons when the orders come in.

But history will show that during Gaza’s May 2021 conflict, and the widespread Palestinian defiance of Israeli aggression, deep inside occupied territories, as well as Israel, was not enough to bring that large cache of weapons and fighters into action. Yahya Sinwar, the recently released former prisoner and now head of Hamas explained the axis of resistance’s lack of action in a televised speech. He said that he was personally in touch with Iranian officials and the commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Hasan Nasrallah who offered their help, but Hamas rejected.

The justification is that the recent assault on Gaza and ensuing counter operation by Palestinian resistance groups was only a test of the resistance’s ability to hurt Israel and not a fight for liberation of Alaqsa. Now there’s talk of Hamas reopening their diplomatic channels with Damascus as well. Of course, a gesture that is fully backed by Iran, a renewed relationship with Damascus would allow Hamas to continue their hit and run campaign against Israel with even more depth. For several years, Hamas hasn’t been on the good side of the Assad family ever since some of its leadership spoke openly of their support for anti-regime protesters. Some of Hamas’ leadership that once took shelter in Syria was forced to flee to neighboring countries.

But that may all change now. Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, made the clearest statement following the latest Gaza – Israel standoff saying that Assad has been a loyal and consistent supporter of the resistance efforts. Some high -level Hamas supporters including Saleh Alnamy denounced the statement. According to Hamdan, Assad’s Arab origin and commitment to opposing Israel is well known. Of course, Hamdan overlooked the fact that the few rockets launched at Israel from Syria were completely ineffective. One could understand from Hamdan’s statements that the hundreds of thousands of people killed by Assad, backed by Iran, over the past decade, were only steppingstones towards the liberation of Jerusalem.

The ongoing Israeli policies of mass expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem is a continuation of a more than seven-decade-long policy of ethnic cleansing against native Palestinians following the creation of Israel on May 15, 1948.

Israel’s nature has been augmented in ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism from day one, when its creation meant the mass expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from 532 villages in 1948. Israel’s creation on the ruins of Palestine was based on a complete negation of their existence, forcing them out of their lands and houses, and replacing them with colonial-settlers from all over the world.

Israel’s settler-colonialism and viewing Palestinians as a threat to this project and, therefore, displacing them by all means possible – was and still is the backbone of this project. Despite the UN Resolution 194, which calls for the return of Palestinian refugees to their towns and villages, Israel continues not only denying these refugees the right to return, but also pursues its policies of expulsion against Palestinians who managed to remain in their towns and villages.

From relocating these Palestinians to ghettos such as those in Jaffa, to placing them under military orders in what became Israel, to mass expulsion such as the case of the village of Abu Ghosh in 1950 and Al-Majdal in 1949-1950, Israel has proven repeatedly that its settler-colonialism project necessarily means uprooting the Palestinians.

Not only this – Israel has engaged in another war of changing history by renaming most street names and villages taken from their Palestinian owners and giving them Hebrew names. The village of Yibna became “Yivne,” the village of Aqer became “Kiryat Ekron,” and so on. Zionism has taken over an entire country with institutions and infrastructure and has turned its people into refugees. The process of changing demographics and names targeted Palestinians from villages around Jerusalem, especially west of Jerusalem.

Flourishing Palestinian neighborhoods to the west of Jerusalem such as al-Qatamoun, al-Talbieh, al-Baqa’a, and others were depopulated, and the houses were stolen in the most barbaric manner and given to the families of high-ranking Israeli generals as war booty.

Flourishing Palestinian neighborhoods to the west of Jerusalem such as al-Qatamoun, al-Talbieh, al-Baqa’a, and others were depopulated, and the houses were stolen in the most barbaric manner and given to the families of high-ranking Israeli generals as war booty. Some of these houses belonged to well-known Palestinian families such as al-Dajani, al-Khalidi, al-Karmi, and many others.

The house of the family of the well-known Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said was among these houses in al- Talbieh. In some cases, invading Zionist militias found food still hot on stoves left behind by terrified Palestinian families who had to leave at gunpoint.

The return of Palestinian refugees is a taboo topic that Israel is not willing to discuss. The bad news for Israel is that despite all its plans to force Palestinians out of Jerusalem, it has failed miserably. The numbers speak louder than its actions. Khalil Tafakji, the head of the maps department at the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem, in the Old City of Jerusalem, told Politics Today that out of 4,220 ownership deeds, Palestinians, either Muslims or Christians, or private owners, own a total of 84%, in addition to the 8% owned by Muslim waqfs. The remaining deeds are classified either as under state or municipality ownership, including real estate owned by Jewish settlers, most of which is located in the city’s Jewish Quarter, which has historically been predominantly Jewish. These numbers do not include waqf ownership associated with the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Some 35,000 Palestinians live in the Old City alongside some 4,500 Jewish settlers. The numbers of the latter fluctuate depending on tensions in the city as many of them live in settler outposts. This is despite all Israeli attempts to use legal loopholes to strip Palestinians off their houses by imposing high taxes on them, unleashing armed-to-the-teeth radical colonial-settlers against them, and using excessive police violence.

Israel uses all possible means to force Palestinians out of Jerusalem. This includes offering them huge sums of money. The owners of one of four houses currently under threat of expulsion in Sheikh Jarrah were offered $6 million to leave the house and they refused. The Israeli government claims that what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is a “real estate dispute,” which is laughable. What Israeli settler told Palestinian Muna al-Kurd, whose house is under threat of confiscation, on camera says it all. “If I don’t steal it, someone else is gonna steal it,” he said in English. This only proves that this is a systemic campaign led by settler groups to kick Palestinians out.

In light of the Palestinians’ refusal to leave, the Israeli apparatus moved to using force to expel them. This included breaking into Al-Aqsa Mosque and firing rubber-coated canisters and sound bombs at worshipers, injuring 208 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Three of these Palestinians lost one or both of their eyes as the invading Israeli police intentionally targeted Palestinians in the head. Palestinians faced their repression with their bare chests with one Palestinian teen literally jumping into a group of Israeli soldiers. The battle conjures images of David and Goliath.

History proves that Israel’s use of force against Palestinians only backfires. The Israeli state has to recognize the rights of Palestinians because maintaining an apartheid system, as it has recently been characterized by Human Rights Watch, will end up costing them way more than giving the Palestinians their full rights. Palestinians are not going to disappear, be it in Jerusalem or inside Israel itself. Today, Israel has turned into apartheid state that thinks a Jewish settler who just arrived in the country has a right to houses that have been inhabited by Palestinians for hundreds of years.

Israel might have the power now to suppress the Palestinians, shoot them in the eye, fabricate claims that what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is a “real estate dispute,” but its intellectual leaders, unlike its politicians, know very well that they can’t sustain this system of apartheid for very long. In the same way that the Second Palestinian Intifada erupted in Jerusalem, a Third Palestinian Intifada is now a stone’s throw away. But this time, no one knows where it will stop. And then, all the normalization agreements and all the recognitions of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will not be able to stop the Palestinians and their supporters across the globe.

Israel’s provocative policies in Jerusalem, particularly in the Old City and at Al-Aqsa Mosque, the second holiest site in Islam, violate international law and threaten the existence of Palestinians in the city. Israel should end the occupation and cease all its policies that aim to reduce the Palestinian presence in the city by replacing the land’s rightful owners with Jewish settlers.

We view Israel’s measures in the city, the latest of which was the crackdown on Muslim worshipers while performing their prayers during the last days of the holy month of Ramadan, resulting in the injury of 208 persons, as a complete disregard for the feelings of Muslims worldwide and the international community. The latter usually chooses silence over morality, tacitly encouraging Israeli occupation authorities and settlers to violate the rights of the Palestinians further.

The expulsion of Palestinians from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah is a continuation of a seven-decade-long policy based on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the destruction of their lives, their social fabric, their houses, and, at the same time, an orchestrated effort to increase the city.

Before the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem in 1948 and 1967, the city had always been an example of religious co-existence where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived peacefully for centuries. The current Israeli colonial policies inflict harm on the residents of the city including the Jews who want to observe their rituals in peace.

Israel’s policies in the city of Jerusalem and elsewhere in Palestine have been characterized by various international and local human rights organization as apartheid. The mass expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah is in line with Israel’s policies of denying Palestinians their basic rights and it has to end now. The power of people on the ground will always prevail over the power of guns, and it is time for Israel to allow the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, rather than making them refugees for the second time.

Many of the residents of the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem are refugees from West Jerusalem, whose houses were taken by Israeli Jewish settlers in 1948. Now is the time to allow all refugees to return back, in accordance with UN Resolution 194.

There is no doubt that the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has encouraged Israel to adopt more violent and oppressive policies against the Palestinians. This has been further advanced by the normalization agreements signed recently between certain Arab countries and Israel.

However, the global solidarity with the Palestinian people today is proof that these agreements will not outlive the terms of office of the current officials in power. All attempts to silence and censor solidarity with the Palestinian people by social media companies will also not help.

Politics Today believes that the only way forward is to grant the Palestinians their full rights on their land and to call a spade a spade. Today, Israel has become an apartheid state and the Palestinian people deserve to live in freedom from fear. Occupation and mass expulsion are not sustainable. We call for all countries of the world to invest in justice rather than apartheid.

Mahmoud Hijazi was the first Palestinian political prisoner to be freed from an Israeli jail on April 17, 1971. On March 22, 2021, he passed away in the West Bank city of Ramallah aged 85. Since his release and deportation to Lebanon at the time, April 17 has been marked as the Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. Despite its immense importance to Palestinians and the fact that more than a million Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since 1967, the issue of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails has not won enough global publicity, and is not adequately reflected in Palestinian politics.

While researching the issue, I was shocked by the immense suffering and torment prisoners and their families have been subjected to throughout the years. Today, many in the West know Bobby Sands, the Irish prisoner who passed away in 1981 while on hunger strike, but few know Marwan Barghouti, a veteran Palestinian prisoner and political leader. Palestinian political prisoners have many stories that the world needs to hear. They might hold the key today to many problems that will impact the course of events in Palestine for years to come.

A few years ago, I had the chance to interview former Palestinian political prisoner Muhammad Abushawish, a neighbor, novelist, and avid cat lover. Abushawish passed away in April 2020 due to illness and health complications resulting from his incarceration in Israeli prisons that lasted a total of 14 years. Abushawish was arrested seven times by the Israeli military; at his first arrest, he was only six years old.

Abushawish’s wish was to bring his jailers and interrogators to account before it was too late. He wrote a novel in Arabic documenting his torture in Israeli prisons titled Before My Tormentor Is Dead. However, he passed away before he could confront his and other Palestinian political prisoners’ tormentors – the least of his tortures involved lighting a match under his genitals.

The story of Abushawish is not different from that of Ahmad Alhaaj, now 87 years old, who was arrested in 1967 by the Israeli military and imprisoned for nearly three years.

The story of Abushawish is not different from that of Ahmad Alhaaj, now 87 years old, who was arrested in 1967 by the Israeli military and imprisoned for nearly three years. While in jail, he was subjected to hanging and torture that made him lose his consciousness. Jokingly, his jailers used to offer him a pair of left socks to use because he was a leftist. Today, Alhaaj is as determined as when he first left to return to his village of Al-Sawafir in what is today Israel – imprisonment has not made him change his mind.

As of March 2021, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association, there are 4,450 Palestinian political prisoners detained by Israel. Of these prisoners, 33 have spent more than 25 years in jail, 543 are serving life sentences, 300 are from Jerusalem, 250 are from the Gaza Strip, 70 hold Israeli citizenship, 140 are child prisoners, 37 are women, and 440 are administrative detainees.

Al-Jabis was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to 11 years in jail. She suffers from third degree burns and is the victim of medical negligence according to her family. Nearly 60% of her body is covered in burns and she has lost two of her fingers. Israel accuses her of attempting to carry out a vehicle-ramming attack.

However, al-Jabis denies the accusation, stating that her car caught fire and when she attempted to get out, Israeli forces at a nearby checkpoint locked the door and prevented her from doing so, causing her serious burns. Along with the issue of female prisoners, administrative detention is one of the most challenging forms of arrest for Palestinians.

Administrative detention is one of the most unjust systems used by Israel against Palestinian prisoners.

Administrative detention is one of the most unjust systems used by Israel against Palestinian prisoners. Having its legal roots in the practices of British colonial rule in Palestine, the Israeli authorities use this law to detain Palestinians without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time. Their detention can be renewed every six months, they are never charged or convicted, and are detained based on “secret evidence.” Some Palestinians have been held in administrative detention for up to 15 years without a single charge.

Palestinian children have not been spared Israeli detention either. The torment of Palestinian children in Israeli jails might sound shocking to many. Malak al-Khatib was only 14 years old when she was arrested in 2015 by Israeli forces as she unknowingly entered a closed Israeli military zone while attempting to pick a wildflower on her way back from school. She served two months in prison before being released.

According to Israeli law, which does not apply to Israelis who live in the West Bank, Palestinians under the age of 16 are considered children. Palestinian children are tried before a kind of military court where they are handed down harsher sentences. These children, just like adults, are detained outside the Palestinian Territories in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Some of them are placed under house arrest by Israeli courts, where their families become their own jailers, fearing having to pay fines if their children leave the house.

In 2015, Ayman Abbasi, a former Palestinian child prisoner, was shot dead in Jerusalem during a peaceful protest against Israeli policies. The Israeli army tried to kidnap his body to use it in future swap deals with the Palestinians. This policy, which has been in place for years, amounts to collective punishment. Mourners tried to smuggle Abbasi’s body, jumping from one wall to another, and managed to bury him before the Israeli forces were able to succeed in their plans. Yet, this meant that his family was not able to bid him a final farewell.

Despite the existence of many tragic stories, some Palestinian prisoners were able to turn their prison cells into schools. There are several examples of Palestinian prisoners who were able to finish their bachelor and master’s degrees while incarcerated. However, several years after its launching, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) suspended all access to education for Palestinian prisoners. Palestinian prisoner Hilal Jaradat from the West Bank city of Jenin, who was deported to Gaza upon release in 2011, managed to learn 16 different languages while in prison.

When in 1948 Zionist militias invaded the village of Aqer, where my family is originally from, my great-grandfather was one of a few poorly equipped fighters who tried to stop the invading forces. The fighters took up posts at the village school, located nearly a kilometer from the village.

Soon after, and after some resistance, the invading militia took over the school, killing the fighters who remained inside, including my great-grandfather, who was found dead inside the building. My grandfather buried his father in the village graveyard only to become a refugee for the rest of his life in Gaza days later.

A few years later, my uncle Ahmed, named after my great-grandfather, received an unexpected visitor at his Gaza clinic. The visitor was the person who had found my great-grandfather’s body decades ago at the village school. He had kept some of my great-grandfather’s belongings for decades and was looking for my family so as to return them. When he met my uncle, he gave him a pocket watch that had belonged to my great-grandfather and which he had kept for nearly three decades.

He told my uncle the story behind the pocket watch and this story has been passed down orally in my family from generation to generation. The picture of my great-grandfather still hangs on the walls of my extended family’s home in our refugee camp in Gaza.

It was land that pushed my great-grandfather to fight the invading Zionist militias in 1948, although he knew that a few fighters would not be able to stop an invading army. His love of the land and his understanding of the meaning of life with and without it was his sole motivation.

My great-grandfather bled to death defending the village land, of which, ironically, he owned nearly none. He was a peasant, working for rich families which owned much of the village’s land. But for him, his love of the land was unconditional – and this land that he loved and tried to protect was not a mere commodity.

Although in today’s world these documents prove ownership, Palestinian society’s relationship to land goes beyond official papers.

Today, many Palestinians try to prove their ownership of land, which amounted to a total of 13 million dunums in 1947, by presenting documents given to them by the colonial British authorities. What if Palestinians didn’t have these documents? Would it mean that their rights to their land are null and void? Clearly not.

Although in today’s world these documents prove ownership, Palestinian society’s relationship to land goes beyond official papers. The relationship a peasant has with the land is like the relationship between a mother and her children. It is deep and interconnected in a way that a settler-colonial society can never understand.

It was land that pushed Palestinians on March 30, 1976 to protest Israel’s confiscation schemes in the Galilee, with the Israeli forces eventually killing six Palestinians living in Israel and injuring 50 others. Since then, Land Day has been marked on March 30 every year.

In 2018, Land Day took a dramatic turn when a group of Palestinians erected tents at the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip and were joined by hundreds of thousands of refugees from the coastal enclave.

In 2018, Land Day took a dramatic turn when a group of Palestinians erected tents at the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip and were joined by hundreds of thousands of refugees from the coastal enclave. The tent-protest became known as the “Great March of Return” and continued for months at the Gaza fence.

According to the United Nations, since the outbreak of the Great March of Return, 214 Palestinians have been killed, of whom 46 were children, and nearly 36,000 others have been injured. Palestinians, mostly refugees, staged the protest to call for the return to their towns and villages, some of which appear on the horizon as they look east and north of Gaza.

It was land that motived them to start this largely non-violent protest which was met with Israeli fire and snipers. Israel has claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinians at the Great March of Return, and thousands more lives before and since then. But it is beyond doubt, that Israel has failed to erase the love in the hearts of all Palestinians for their land.

I have seen this love and dedication in my visit to Hawaii in the United States. The Kanaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiians, have a special relationship with the land or, as they call it, Aina. “Aloha ‘Aina,” they declare every day, peace and love to the land. The Kanaka Maoli believe that there are hundreds of thousands of elements in nature, which come together to make the land.

In Hawaii, I was introduced to the notion that a people on their land can’t be homeless, but rather they are houseless. Palestinians, too, relate to this notion of homelessness and houselessness. In fact, this was the exact reason why my great-grandfather fought for a land of which he owned very little and was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in its defense.

The question that remains unanswered today is when will land in Palestine, which Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said, “was created for peace but never saw peace,” finally see peace? In the words of Darwish, this land is “what makes life worth living” and despite confiscation and occupation, Palestinians today express their unyielding generational connection to their land by marking Land Day on March 30.

This connection lives on and grows despite all attempts made by Israel to make Palestinians aliens on their own land – be it in Gaza, the West Band, or what is today Israel.

Time has proven that the more Palestinians stay away from their land, the more they become attached to it. That’s why when Palestinian refugees manage to visit Palestine using a passport that allows them to do so, the first thing they do is pick up a grain of sand and bring it back with them.

It is the land that has always connected Palestinians with the notion of home – not walls, not houses, not debris or bricks. For this reason, demolishing Palestinian houses may make Palestinians houseless, but they will never be homeless or landless. Because our home is our land.

Mourid Barghouti, 77, passed away on February 14, 2021 in the Jordanian capital Amman, after a life-long commitment to literature, politics, and public affairs in the Arab world. Born to a Palestinian family in the West Bank, Barghouti grew up surrounded by his extended family which lives in Deir Ghassana and the nearby villages.

In 1963, Barghouti left Palestine to pursue his undergraduate studies at the University of Cairo in Egypt. As he sat his final exams in his senior year, Israel occupied the West Bank, depriving him of his right to return to his village for the next 30 years.

While studying at Cairo University, Barghouti met Radwa Ashour (d. 2014) who he married in 1970.  Ashour was a well-known Egyptian novelist who left behind a great legacy of novels and literary works. The couple’s only son, Tamim, is a known poet and a professor of political philosophy. During a poetry competition, a literary critic once told Tanim, “You have proven that poetry genes can be inherited through DNA.”

The Barghouti family has a remarkable legacy of literature, politics, and public engagement, which is rare to find in a single family in the Arab world. It all started with the marriage of Radwa and Mourid, a marriage that was characterized by imprisonment, exile, and separation as well as great contributions to literature and politics.

Life in Exile

On the eve of signing the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, Barghouti was deported to Lebanon for his critical views of the accords. He spent thirteen years in Budapest representing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), although he kept himself away and refused to join any Palestinian political party. His life in exile sharpened his memory, prompting him to write twelve poetry collections and a couple of autobiographies that were translated into numerous languages.

Barghouti’s return to Palestine, however, inspired him to pen one of his greatest autobiographies, I Saw Ramallah, in which he documented his experience in exile.

Upon his return to the Palestinian territories, Barghouti took a job under the Palestinian Authority, but unable to cope with corruption, he resigned three years later. His return to Palestine, however, inspired him to pen one of his greatest works, I Saw Ramallah, in which he documented his experience in exile.

Crossings and Waiting

For him, the crossing point controlled by Israel “nullifies the fatherhood of fathers, the motherhood of mothers, the friendship of friends, and the love of lovers.” Upon his return to Ramallah, he found out that many things had changed in his 30 years of exile.

The feeling of being uprooted and not belonging characterized another of his works: I was born there; I was born here. In this Memoir, Barghouti described the feeling of living under occupation. After a long time of waiting, he was able to take his son to his home village in Ramallah, so that he could tell him “I was born here,” showing him a room in his family’s house.

The Palestinian novelist points to the ways Israel uses waiting as a weapon to make Palestinians wait forever for borders to open, for electricity to turn on, for permits to be issued, and for occupation to end. In I Saw Ramallah, Barghouti stresses the fact that Palestinian life has been characterized by uncertainty because of this very waiting. He recounts how Palestinians had to leave Palestine “until things get clearer” and they could return back, but that time never came. How they moved from Jordan, to Lebanon, to Tunisia, to establish a state under occupation “until things get clearer.”

The truth is that Barghouti was among the few Palestinians who understood the wrath of having a state under occupation, who was a critical voice of the Oslo Accords of 1993 between the PLO and Israel – a fact that brought him much trouble.

Just like Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who was a close friend of Barghouti, and Edward Said, who wrote the foreword to I Saw Ramallah, describing it as “one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement,” Barghouti understood well that the Oslo Accords were meant to end any self-determination and statehood aspiration of the Palestinians. In addition to expressing this skillfully in his writings, Barghouti was very critical of the corruption of the PLO leadership.

A life-long Commitment to Freedom

Apart from his involvement in Palestinian politics, Barghouti was known for supporting the uprisings that broke out in the Arab world. His fierce commitment to freedom never changed over time, despite imprisonment, exile, and exclusion.

His voice was always critical, it never faded over the years. Neither did his commitment to literature and his family. Six years after the departure of his wife, Radwa Ashour, Barghouti’s powerful presence in literature and politics has slipped away.

Perhaps a lesson one can take away from the rich life of Mourid Barghouti and Radwa Ashour is that commitment to a cause, even though it might bring many troubles, gives life a purpose. After 77 years, much of which were spent in exile, Barghouti departed us so that he could see Ramallah from above – without Israeli travel restrictions and checkpoints.

On February 5, the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced their decision that the court holds jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Palestine. While the court did not elaborate on what steps would follow, it is expected that international criminal investigations will be commenced, and that, potentially, Israelis (and Palestinians) guilty of crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court will be indicted and, hopefully, put on trial.

Understandably, there has been great excitement for this decision amongst human rights advocates and proponents of Palestinian rights, especially because it comes after a long period of foot-dragging on the part of the ICC. People have been disappointed before – the ICC Prosecutor repeatedly refused to investigate the Freedom Flotilla case, where Israeli commandos had forcibly stopped ships with humanitarian supplies headed for Gaza and killed ten persons in international waters.

Instead of examining the case in the context of the ongoing blockade of Gaza by Israel and the many violations inflicted upon the population of that territory, the prosecutor viewed the incident in isolation, and stated that the gravity of the violations did not reach the level required by the ICC Rome Statute.

In late 2019, on the basis of a protracted, nearly five-year-long preliminary investigation, the prosecutor stated she was “satisfied” that war crimes were being committed in Palestine. However, in recognition of the “unique and highly contested legal and factual issues” with regard to Palestine, she requested the court to ascertain whether the ICC did indeed have jurisdiction over Palestine – a move that, in the eyes of many, appeared as an attempt at passing the hot potato. Many feared another disappointment, and have been elated with the recent decision.

There is no question that the decision of the ICC is an extremely positive development. Israel and its allies in the United States and other Western countries go to great pains to present the situation in Palestine as a battle of democracy against “Islamofascist terror,” one that can only be solved by total annihilation of the enemy.

Conversely, many do-gooders in the West perceive Palestine merely as a humanitarian crisis that can be solved by development aid for poor Palestinians, or as one requiring “conflict resolution” interventions where Jews and Arabs hug each other in workshops, and all is well.

When it comes to the treatment of Palestinians, impunity permeates all levels of the Israeli political and military apparatus.

All of these narratives are, of course, false – Palestine is a human rights crisis, which is characterized by impunity for the violators of human rights. Resolution obviously requires a political solution, but eradicating impunity and punishing persons guilty of human rights violations and war crimes must be at the core. It is not only that lasting peace requires justice – justice is in and of itself a vital goal.

Impunity in Israel for human rights violations

When it comes to the treatment of Palestinians, impunity permeates all levels of the Israeli political and military apparatus. From the lowest-ranking soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) who shoots and kills Palestinians without justification, to the IDF general who orders the bombing of civilian homes, to the political leaders who incite genocide and instruct the building of Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land, the chances of being held to account have, up to this point, been practically zero.

A stark example of the situation is the case of Elor Azaria, an IDF soldier who was caught on video executing a wounded, defenseless Palestinian in the city of Hebron. Though international pressure forced the IDF to arrest and try him, thousands of Israelis demonstrated in his support, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and other ministers demanded leniency. He was eventually released after only nine months and became a hero in many quarters of Israeli society, appearing on television as a political consultant in recent elections.

Propaganda about the “only democracy in the Middle East” aside, it is clear that Israel will not hold violators to account. Therefore, it is vital that the ICC take the necessary action to punish offenders. Make no mistake: the Israeli military and political elite is aware of the great dangers international justice poses. Unsurprisingly, Israel is not state party to the ICC, nor is the United States, but 123 countries are. Should the ICC issue indictments, every one of those states would be under a legal obligation to arrest the suspect, making travel to those countries impossible.

Though not stated in so many words, the land that was occupied (and subjected to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) by Zionist forces in 1948 is recognized as the sovereign territory of Israel, and is therefore not part of the equation.

High-ranking IDF officers are already issued with a special emergency number, should they be arrested while traveling abroad, and there are special teams of lawyers ready to jump to their defence. That this is all being done proves that Israel sees the writing on the wall. Do not believe the bravado of Netanyahu and others: the prospect of being hauled to court in The Hague keeps them up at night.

The shortcomings of international efforts: the injustice of the “two-state solution”

The decision of the ICC is, therefore, an important, positive step towards addressing impunity in Palestine. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that it has a serious shortcoming, namely that it covers only the portion of Palestine occupied by Israel in 1967, i.e. Gaza and the West Bank (which includes East Jerusalem). The ICC states explicitly that its jurisdiction extends only to those territories, and that it is only able to adjudicate violations that took place there.

Though not stated in so many words, the land that was occupied (and subjected to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) by Zionist forces in 1948 is recognized as the sovereign territory of Israel, and is therefore not part of the equation. Even though Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (‘48 Palestinians’) live under a discriminatory regime with similar rights violations as Palestinians in the 1967 lands, and even though Palestinian refugees continue to suffer the violation of their internationally recognized right to return to their homes, those issues are not looked at as relevant.

Of course, as a legal matter, the ICC is correct: the state party to the ICC is the State of Palestine as recognized by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. Since that state is based on the Oslo framework, its territory can include only the land occupied by Israel in 1967 (a mere 22 percent of historic Palestine).

Indeed, that the right of Palestinians to self-determination is only to be recognized in territory occupied since 1967 (and, so it is suggested, no further) is stated clearly in numerous UN resolutions on the issue, including the one adopted by the General Assembly admitting Palestine as an observer state.

Herein lies the real problem with international efforts on the issue of Palestine: from the get-go, the so-called international community has de facto recognized the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and accepted the state of Israel. By doing so, it has failed to protect the rights of the Palestinian people.

UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the “Partition Resolution,” is a stark example. At the time of the resolution, Palestinians comprised approximately two-thirds of the population of Palestine, and owned approximately 93 percent of the land. Despite these undisputed facts, the UN’s great idea was to split the country and create two states, with Palestinians asked to give over half of the land to Zionist settlers who had recently arrived from Europe.

Though manifestly unjust, this “two-state solution” has been the framework for international intervention in Palestine to this day – indeed, now the Palestinians are expected to settle for even less than the Partition Plan of 1947.

In the summer of 2017, I attended an exceptional Palestinian wedding in Istanbul, where the groom was from the Gaza Strip, the bride was from the West Bank, and those in attendance were from every corner of historic Palestine, including Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenships. The groom and the bride held their wedding in Istanbul knowing that it is impossible to hold it in Palestine, where both of them could not be present at the same time.

Gaza has been placed under a tightened Israeli siege for nearly 15 years and it is nearly impossible for Palestinians from Gaza to travel to the West Bank, including cancer patients, let alone those wishing to attend a wedding. The only solution was to hold the celebration in Istanbul, and just like the city connects Asia with Europe, it connected, even for a short while, Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Israel.

Among the attendees were Muhannad Abu Ghosh and Sherin al-Araj. Both were arrested by Israeli forces on January 15, 2021 for contacting “foreign agents and persons.” al-Araj  was released on February 10, 2021. This accusation, which is too loose and could include contacting Palestinian friends and colleagues residing outside of Palestine, including those in Gaza, could send them to prison for years.

The arrest of Abu Ghosh and al-Araj is not surprising knowing that Abu Ghosh was repeatedly summoned and arrested in the past over his activism. The arrest of activists Abu Ghosh and al-Araj is part of a mounting Israeli campaign that targets Palestinians in Israel who have connections with Palestinians anywhere in the world in an attempt to silence, isolate, and cut them off from the rest of the Palestinian social, cultural, and economic fabric.

Palestinians Majd and Ward Kayal were arrested by Israeli forces in their Haifa home in December 2020 for the same reason before being released shortly thereafter.

Frustrated by these Israeli policies and guided by their belief that they have the right to connect with their fellow Palestinians without a permit, let alone an Israeli one, Palestinian activists took to social media to express their anger and unity. A group of activists launched a hashtag in Arabic, Mutawasiloun, which could be roughly translated into “we will continue to connect with each other,” to protest these Israeli policies.

Some activists expressed their rejection of these Israeli policies, others narrated how they never met Palestinians from the West Bank or Palestinians in Israel.

While some activists expressed their rejection of these Israeli policies, others narrated how they never met Palestinians from the West Bank or Palestinians in Israel, and others yet made use of the hashtag to celebrate Palestinian culture, food, and social ties, which they said will not be restricted by Israel regardless of its efforts.

During this process, Palestinians who remained in cities such as Majdal, Askalan, Jaffa, and Ramle were driven out to make space for Jewish migrants. Palestinians were viewed by the newly established Israeli state as unwanted others, a fifth column, a demographic threat, or at best a security threat.

Today, the 150,000 Palestinians who remained inside what became the borders of the state of Israel have become nearly two million. The “danger” of the demographic bomb has only increased with time and so have Israeli measures against Palestinians in Israel.

In addition to Israel’s attempt to silence Palestinians who now hold Israeli citizenship, Israel has accelerated its measures to get rid of Palestinians in Israel, including waging arrest campaigns, house demolitions, and blackmailing them to make sure that they have no national aspiration or connection to the rest of the Palestinian society.

The more Israel demolishes the houses of Palestinians in Ramle, the more people realize that the collapse of this system is a matter of time.

One attempt to cut Palestinians in Israel off from their fellow Palestinians was imposing military service on the Druze Palestinian community in Israel as well as on some Palestinian Bedouins.

The “divide and rule” policy has been at the heart of Israel’s strategy to divide Palestinians. What could be better than a Palestinian killing another Palestinian after all? If you want to be a Palestinian in Israel, you are welcome as long as you commit to the principles and ideology of the state which views you as a fifth column. Once you contact a Palestinian outside of Israel for any purposes, you will pay the price – as demonstrated by what happened to Abu Ghosh and al-Araj.

If you are a Palestinian in Israel and want to be part of the hasbara machine of Netanyahu’s right-wing government, you are more than welcome. And what better timing than to claim falsely that Jews, Christians, and Muslims “co-exist together in peace” in Israel? Once, however, certain Palestinians step out of this zone designated by Netanyahu’s government, they become unwanted others and a fifth column who deserve to be arrested and harassed.

After 73 years, Israel should understand that all attempts to isolate Palestinians from each other will eventually fail. Israel has not managed to make the Palestinian diaspora in the U.S., Europe, and South America forget Palestine, although many of them left decades before Israel was established. Israel will never succeed in making Palestinians in Israel less Palestinians over time.

The answer of these Palestinians is clear: the Palestino Football Club in Chile, established by Palestinian migrants, and Little Palestine in Chicago. Palestinians carry Palestine with them regardless of where they live. And what about the Palestinians who live in Palestine?