Bi-Weekly Brief for January 31, 2022
A one page digest of Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinian land and livelihoods, and Palestinian resistance.
The entrenched impunity of settler violence gets attention but appears unstoppable
On Jan. 21, a gang of masked settlers from the Givat Ronen outpost used rocks, batons and shovels to attack villagers from Burin and members of Rabbis for Human Rights who were helping them plant olive trees. One of their cars was set ablaze. Some Meretz government ministers condemned the settlers, including Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz who denounced the “terrifying violence” which he termed a “pogrom.” Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev called the attackers terrorists but said it was “very difficult” to arrest them. The futility of trying to arrest perpetrators was illustrated when the army detained a settler throwing rocks at Palestinian cars passing through a checkpoint and the police immediately released him. A B’Tselem report calls settler violence “a form of government policy, permitted and aided by official state authorities with their active participation” with the strategic goal of displacing Palestinian communities. In a Jan. 25 letter, 7 major US Jewish organizations condemned “the violence committed by Jewish Israeli extremists,” referring to it as “an affront to Israel’s rule of law” carried out by “a small group of radicals.” The word ‘settler’ does not appear in the letter.
Endangered Sheikh Jarrah the setting for brutal eviction and demolition
At 2 am on Jan. 19, two days after Mahmoud Salhiyeh threatened to burn down his house to fend off eviction, military patrols descended on the 2 houses in Sheikh Jarrah which he owned. They fired stun grenades, cut the electricity, physically assaulted and detained 18 family members and dragged children in their sleepwear out into the frigid cold while preventing the press from approaching the scene. Before dawn they had destroyed the houses and 5 other commercial facilities on Salhiyeh’s land, uprooted ancient olive trees and removed the rubble. Salhiyeh, who has a Jewish wife, had been fighting in court for 23 years to prove his ownership of the 1 ½ acre plot which he bought in 1958. It was expropriated by the Jerusalem Municipality. The family now intends to appeal to the International Criminal Court. See a Democracy Now! report featuring Sheikh Jarrah’s Mohammed El-Kurd here.
More entrenched immunity: Israel determined to scuttle human rights investigation
A leaked Foreign Ministry cable reveals that Israel has launched a ‘top priority’ campaign to discredit a UN Human Rights Council probe into its May offensive against the Gaza Strip, fearing that it could refer to Israel as an ‘apartheid state.’ On Jan. 25, 42 US lawmakers asked Blinken to end the investigation. Israel is pouring another $31 million into an effort to improve its image. Meanwhile, the initial military investigationinto the death on Jan. 12 of the elderly Palestinian-American Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad found he was detained “after resisting a security inspection” and prosecutions appear unlikely. According to witnesses,As’ad, who lived in the US from 1969-2010, died after being dragged from his car at an Israeli checkpoint outside his West Bank village. He was thrown to the ground and lay cuffed, gagged and blindfolded on his stomach without moving for some 30 minutes while soldiers looked on.
Water Fact
The B’tselem report ‘State Business: Israel’s misappropriation of land in the West Bank through settler violence’ highlights testimonies of Palestinians, many related to the theft of their water supply. In the words of 83-year-old Abed Daraghmeh, a resident of Kirbet Samrah in the Jordan Valley: “When the settlers came here four years ago, we thought they would eventually leave.…But then we understood they’re here for a reason and aren’t acting alone but are working with the occupation authorities… From the moment they arrived, the military provided them with everything – water, electricity, roads, transportation – to allow them to settle on our lands for good, live comfortably and enjoy everything. We, who own the land, aren’t allowed to enjoy a single cubic meter of water, even though the pipes run right past our land. They even forbid us from restoring a rainwater cistern to use that water…Our lands and those of our families are here, but we live as though we’re in prison.”
Compiled by The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
Banner design by Paul Normandia of Red Sun Press