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To the settler chief who insists Jews must rule Israel even if Arabs become the majority

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A Palestinian man walks past Israeli settlers standing outside a Palestinian house after it was occupied by settlers, Hebron, West Bank, Mar 27, 2018. (photo: Hazem Bader / AFP)

If nothing else, the right has persuaded me of this: We need to offer every West Bank Palestinian the option of voting in Israeli elections. If you refuse to allow them a country, for God’s sake, allow them the vote.

By Bradley Burston | Haaretz | Mar 27, 2018

“I truly believe that our right to the Land of Israel holds true whether or not [there is a majority]. It is just as when Ben-Gurion established the state and there were 600,000 [Jewish] people facing one and a half to two million Arabs. Our right to the land of Israel was strong and present then. And it exists now as well. Therefore, the majority is not meant to be the deciding factor in our decision making.”
— Yigal Dilmoni, deputy CEO of the settlement movement’s Yesha Council

A senior Israeli settlement movement official, responding to statistics cited by the Israeli military indicating that Jews are now a minority in the Holy Land, stated this week that Jews have the right to rule Israel even if Arabs become a majority within the country.

The statement came hours after a furor erupted Monday in the Knesset, where figures cited by an army colonel showed that some three million Palestinians now live in the West Bank and another two million in the Gaza Strip.

Combined with the 1.8 million Arab citizens of Israel and the 300,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, the statistics meant that from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, Arabs may outnumber Israel’s 6.6 million Jews by as many as 600,000 people. . . .

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Trinity College Dublin students overwhelmingly back BDS

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Trinity College Dublin student come together to support the Palestinian-led BDS campaign. (photo: Palestinians abroad / Facebook)

The referendum saw the highest turnout in recent years.

By Middle East Monitor | Mar 23, 2018

“If we can help make a difference by boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning those organizations complicit the oppression of the Palestinian people, then I think it worthwhile to do so.”
— TCDSU President Shane De Rís

Students at Trinity College Dublin have overwhelmingly voted to support the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, with the referendum result announced to cheers and chants.

Asked whether Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) should “accept a long-term policy on Palestine and in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS),” 64.5 per cent of students voted in favor (1,287 students of a total of 2,050). . . .

As BDS is a “long-term policy,” it required that 60 per cent or above of the students balloted voted in its favor. The referendum was held after students gathered the necessary 500 signatures to put the vote to the student body.

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Elderly Palestinian return to their villages for the first time in 80 years

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Amena Sanqar was 17 when she and her family were forced to flee their village of Beit Nabala. (photo: Shatha Hammad / Al Jazeera)

To commemorate Land Day, group of Palestinian refugees returned to the villages from which they were expelled in 1948.

By Shatha Hammad | Al Jazeera | Mar 29, 2018

“We only took a few utensils to use for food preparation, we didn’t take many clothes, and we left our jewelry back at our home. We thought we would be back in a few days.”
— Hawwa told Al Jazeera.

In a rush, Hawwa al-Khawaja and her daughter Khawla stepped off a bus as it pulled over at the entrance of what was once the village they called home. The elder Khawaja stood there greeting others who had arrived on the buses that followed, just as she used to greet her village’s visitors as a young woman before 1948.

“Welcome, welcome to al-Thahiryeh,” the 90-year-old said. “We apologize for not having a home to welcome you in.”

Since 1948, there have been no homes or residents in the destroyed village of al-Thahiryeh, which lies southeast of the city of al-Lydd. That year, Zionist forces pushed out Palestinian families living in the village, before destroying every inch of it. Al-Thahiryeh was one of 500 villages that faced the same fate in what became known as the ethnic cleansing of at least 800,000 Palestinians.

On Wednesday, Hawwa al-Khawaja returned to al-Thahiryeh for the first time, but only for a few hours.

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Gazan Christian do not yet have permits to visit Jerusalem for Easter

FILE PHOTO: A worshipper lights a candle as she visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City
A worshipper lights a candle in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City, Jan 22, 2018. (photo: Ammar Awad / Reuters)

Gaza has only 1,000 Christians among a population of 2 million in the narrow coastal strip.

By Stephen Farrell | Reuters | Mar 27, 2018

“Israel is a sovereign state and it has the right to decide who will enter its gates. No foreign residents have an inherent right to enter Israel, including Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.”
— Civil Administration (COGAT) spokesman

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said church authorities had applied for around 600 permits for Gazans to travel, but had not received any, three days before Good Friday.

Israel tightly restricts movements out of the Gaza Strip, territory controlled by Hamas, an Islamist group that it considers a terrorist organization.

The Israeli military-run authority that operates in the West Bank defended its policy to restrict access as many Palestinians had stayed on illegally in the past, and said it would only issue permits to people aged at least 55.

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Palestinian march along Israel’s border turns deadly on day one

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Israeli military vehicles are seen Friday next to the border on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, as Palestinians demonstrate in Gaza. (photo: Amir Cohen / Reuters)

At least 15 people have been killed at the outset of a massive protest expected to last another month and a half.

By Krishnadev Calamur | The Atlantic | May 30, 2018

If the demonstrations continue, and Israel responds the way it did today, there is a significant risk that the death count will rise, and an already complicated situation will get worse.

Israeli troops opened fire Friday at Palestinians near the Gaza Strip’s border with the Jewish state, killing at least 15 people and wounding many more. The numbers came from the Palestinian health ministry, which put the number of those injured at more than 1,000.

The Palestinian demonstration at the border, dubbed the Great March of Return, was billed as peaceful and nonviolent. Protesters pitched tents near the border with Israel and demanded that refugees be allowed to return to homes they left behind in 1948 during the creation of the state of Israel. Israel, which estimates that 17,000 Palestinians have gathered near the border at six locations, said its troops were enforcing “a closed military zone.” The Israeli army also said it opened fire toward the “main instigators” of what it called rioters who were “rolling burning tires and hurling stones at the security fence and at” Israeli troops. Israel had warned Gaza residents against protesting, and said Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, was “cynically” sending women and children “to the security fence and endangering their lives.”

The date the protest began, March 30, is the anniversary of Land Day, a 1976 event in which Israelis killed six Palestinians who were protesting the confiscation of their lands. The protests are expected to last until May 15, the anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, which the Palestinians view as a “naqba” or “catastrophe” for their people.

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Easter in Jerusalem: Palestinians continue to live the suffering of Christ

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Right wing demonstrators wave Israeli flags as they pass through the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, May 24, 2017. (photo: AFP)

The ultimate goal of Israeli policy is to maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and if possible end all Palestinian presence in it, particularly in the Old City.

By Khalil Fawadleh | Wafa | Mar 29, 2018

“Jerusalem should be open to all without any discrimination. We should have free access to Jerusalem, free access to our holy places.”
— Rev. Ibrahim Shomali, Chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem

As the Holy Week during which Christians commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ draws nearer, Palestinians in general and the Christians in particular continue to experience the suffering of Jesus Christ more than 2,000 years ago, according to Palestinian Christian activists.

Noura Carmi, member of the Armenian Orthodox Church, said during a tour of Jerusalem’s Old City organized by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Negotiations Affairs Department on the occasion of Easter celebrations, and specifically through Via Dolorosa, which marks the 14 stations that Christian tradition identifies as the path which Jesus Christ took before his crucifixion, that Palestinians today were still living the suffering of the Christ, who walked that road more than 2,000 years ago, bloodied from wearing a crown of thorns on his head and carrying a heavy cross on his shoulder.

She pointed to buildings taken over by fanatic Jewish settler organizations, many of them were owned by Arab Christian residents of East Jerusalem, as part of a broad Israeli scheme to turn the Old City into a purely Jewish city.

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Israel fast-tracks new US embassy in Jerusalem

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US consulate in Jerusalem, Feb 24, 2018. (photo: Ammar Awad / Reuters)

The Finance Ministry will allow the Jerusalem municipality to waive the required permits.

By Staff | Reuters | Mar 27, 2018

“We will not allow needless bureaucracy to hold up the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital.”
— Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon

Israel has expedited construction permits to enable temporary quarters for the US Embassy to open in Jerusalem as planned in May, the Finance Ministry said on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump in December broke with other world powers by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announcing the US Embassy would be moved there from Tel Aviv.

Trump’s reversal of decades of US and broad international policy was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “historic decision.” But it drew criticism from around the world and outraged Palestinians, who want a capital for their own future state in eastern parts of the city.

Israel has said the Embassy will be opened on May 14, the 70th anniversary of its founding. A US official said it would be located at a provisional site in Jerusalem that now houses a US consular section.

Building a permanent embassy could take several years.

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At 31, my first glimpse of life outside Gaza

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Abier Almasri (photo: Human Rights Watch / Reuters)

I try not to think about how, later this month, I will enter the Erez checkpoint from the Israeli side and cross back into Gaza, unsure when, if ever, I will be allowed to leave again.

By Abier Almasri | Reuters | Mar 16, 2018

Friends and family back home keep asking, “How’s life outside Gaza?” I can’t answer. How to tell people who live on four to six hours of electricity daily that high-rise buildings in New York leave their lights on 24 hours a day, simply because it looks nice? How it feels to live without generator noises, the deafening roar of Israeli military drones at night, or the constant fear of imminent conflict? Or that you can hop on a bus, train or plane on a whim, without needing a permit, and travel across the world?

I was born and grew up in Gaza. My father was a soccer coach for many years and his stories about his travels to other countries always made me want to travel too. But Israel imposed a land, air and sea blockade on Gaza in 2007 and has kept Gaza mostly closed ever since. So I never made it out until now, at age 31, I was allowed to leave — for just a little while.

I work for a global human rights organization and spent months seeking the exit permit from the Israeli government that would allow me to leave, to participate in security and research training sessions, to attend key organizational meetings, and to meet colleagues based just a short drive away in Jerusalem or Ramallah — to say nothing of those overseas. But I faced obstacles every step of the way to obtaining the documents and permissions I needed simply to get out of Gaza itself — until I got a phone call on January 28.

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Palestinians hold day of mourning after 773 shot with live ammunition

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A wounded Palestinian is evacuated during the clashes between demonstrators and Israeli troops. (photo: Barcroft Images / Xinhua)

At least 15 killed when Israeli soldiers open fire during mass demonstrations in Gaza.

By Hazem Balousha and Oliver Holmes | The Guardian | Mar 31, 2018

“There is fear that the situation might deteriorate in the coming days.”
— Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, assistant UN secretary general for political affairs

Gaza hospitals, running low on blood and overstretched by the huge number of wounded, were reeling after one of the enclave’s bloodiest days outside of open war, in which Israeli soldiers shot 773 people with live ammunition, according to the ministry of health.

Fifteen of the wounded died, said the ministry spokesperson Dr Ashraf al-Qidra. “Most of the dead were aged between 17 and 35 years old,” he said. “The injuries were on the upper part of the body.” He added that the remainder of the wounded, some of whom were in a critical condition, had been “shot with live ammunition.”

The violence erupted on Friday after mass demonstrations took place demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to land in Israel.

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More Arabs than Jews live in Israel and Palestine, according to Israeli Army

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Palestinian women at the Qalandiyah checkpoint, 2016. (photo: AP)

The Israeli Army presented data to the Knesset showing 6.8 million Palestinians now living in Israel-Palestine, but only 6.5 million Jews.

By Yotam Berger | Haaretz | Mar 26, 2018

“Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean there is an equal number of Palestinians and Jews, and that’s nothing new. That’s why the crossroads where we presently find ourselves is clear: either two states based on 1967, or one state that is an apartheid state, or one democratic state in which everyone has the right to vote. There is no other option, and at least this simple truth has to be stated clearly.”
— Knesset Member Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List

The Israeli army presented data on Monday to a Knesset panel which show that more Arabs than Jews live between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

According to Civil Administration’s deputy commander Col. Haim Mendes, five million Palestinians live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This figure does not include the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, or the 1.8 million Israeli Arabs. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, as of September 2017 some 6.5 million Jews live in Israel. . . .

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