domingo, 3 de dezembro de 2017

The Right of Return after 100 years of ethnic cleansing of Palestine

BREAKING NEWS: US Embassy in Jerusalem?!!!


U.S.A. semestrial blackmail campaign becomes reality: The US relocation of the embassy to Jérusalem will determine the city's fate by recognising it as the capital of the occupying state, before even embarking on the peace negotiations it's trying to achieve.
This will destroy any potential of establishing an independent Palestinian state through US negotiations - which is a dangerous breaking point.
The US government is trying to draw out a path for the region at the expense of Palestinians, while attempting to force new conditions on their leadership before announcing its own plan for the peace process.
To regular people, it doesn't really matter if the embassy stays in Tel Aviv or is relocated to Jerusalem.
But this move would make it clear to the rest of the world that there is no real sovereignty, and that the PA has no say over anything that happens in Jerusalem.
This has been the situation since 1967 - so this may be a good thing for Palestinians, to leverage on the fact that the occupation is real, and the move would act as proof.
As to the expansion of Israel's illegal settlement project and its house demolition policies in East Jerusalem, the move is merely an additional step that Israel would be taking to fulfill its objective of making Jerusalem its "undivided" capital.
So, it's really part of the wider context that started with the annexation.
Reactions to U.S.A. decision in short
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish president: A red line for Muslims
King Abdullah II, Jordan: Dangerous repercussions
Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian president: Dangerous consequences
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas chief: Igniting the sparks of rage
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egyptian president: Undermining chances of peace
Saudi Arabia, statement: Grave and deep concern
Syrian government: Culmination of the crime of usurping Palestine
Iran's Supreme Leader: Result of US failure
Sigmar Gabriel, German FM: Fuelling conflict
Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi prime minister: Utmost concern
Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, Arab League chief: Dangerous measure
Antonio Guterres, UN chief: Opposed to unilateral action
Frederica Mogherini, EU diplomatic chief: Resolve Jerusalem status through negotiations
Pope Francis: The Pope issued an unusually heartfelt plea to Trump to respect the status quo on the city, and to conform with UN resolutions. He told thousands of people at his general audience: “I cannot keep quiet about my deep worry about the situation that has been created in the last few days.  I hope wisdom and prudence prevail, in order to avoid adding new elements of tension to a global panorama that is already convulsed and marked by so many cruel conflicts”.

Five weeks ago, I spoke of the malicious Balfour Declaration. As the fateful month has just ended, and the situation in Palestine worsens daily, I feel the need to make the word more specific about the Zionist plan to rule over the whole Palestine and Palestinian struggle for Al-Awada, the Right of Return. 
November has been a bleak month for Palestinians, at the mercy of ruthless and indifferent colonial powers for a century now.  November 2017 marked the centennial of the Balfour Declaration, a single-paragraph letter from the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, to World Zionist Organization leader Lord Rothschild sealing a quid pro quo to save Britain from defeat in World War I and sacrificing the Palestinians in exchange.
Since the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1916, the UK and France with characteristic colonial arrogance decided in the Sykes-Picot Agreement how to divide up Ottoman Arabia if victorious. Meanwhile, however, British forces urged the Arabs to revolt and fight with them, for which the Arabs were promised political independence in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence of 1915-1916 should the Triple Entente prevail.  On this pledge, Arab leaders fielded some 70,000 troops under mixed Arab and British command including Capt. T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) fighting major battles from June 1916 through October 1918 in the Palestinian cities of Gaza, Rafah, Jenin, Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarm, Nazareth, Beersheba and Tiberius, as well as key cities in Syria.
The Arab-assisted Entente prevailed, whereupon an Anglo-French Declaration of November 7, 1918 assured “the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations.” To implement the promised political liberation, the post-war League of Nations mandates given France and Britain were intended to guide Arab territories to independent nationhood. French-controlled Syria and Lebanon and UK-controlled (Trans)Jordan and Iraq became independent nations but UK-controlled Palestine did not. What happened?
The World Zionist Organization (WZO), established in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, had set its sights on Palestine. To assess feasibility for Jewish colonization they dispatched two rabbis who sent back a coded message, “The bride is beautiful but already married.” Debating how to proceed facing this obstacle, in his 1923 essay “The Iron Wall” Revisionist Zionism founder Ze’ev Jabotinsky emphatically identified their goal as “Zionist colonization” that must be “carried out in defiance of the will of the native population” since “every indigenous people will resist alien settlers,” requiring “the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through.”
These two histories were brought together by German U-boats.
In early 1917 Germany was on the verge of victory due to its highly successful submarine blockade of shipping to Britain. In desperation, the British government sought help from the WZO to draw America into the war since, according to Israeli historian Tom Segev, British PM Lloyd George believed that “the Jews controlled the White House.” They struck an agreement, which launched the Zionist lobby in America, prominently including American Zionist leader and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and banker Jacob Schiff, both advisors to President Wilson, and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter who, with future WZO President Chaim Weizman, scuttled a June 1917 diplomatic mission to negotiate a potential Ottoman peace treaty that would have precluded the British mandate in Palestine.  Whether their efforts were decisive we cannot know, but despite Wilson’s 1916 campaign pledge to remain neutral, on April 6, 1917 America declared war on Germany. On November 5, 1917 a reciprocating British pledge was formalized in Lord Balfour’s letter: His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…
The tide was turned, costing 116,000 American lives - and 20 million Russians that were quickly forgotten by Western interpretation of History - and Germany surrendered on Nov. 11, 1918 to the Russians after they had liberated the concentration camps and marched towards Berlin to fight what was left to fight following American and British bombings of the capital.
By 1947 British facilitation had tripled the Jewish population from 10% in 1920 to over 30% of Palestine, but the land remained over 90% Arab-owned.  Throughout this period the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi underground Zionist militias had ruthlessly terrorized both the British and Palestinians – documented in an October 1948 UN report titled “Timeline of Zionist Terror” – and the exhausted British ceded the problem to the UN, resolving to terminate their mandate in May 1948.  The UN General Assembly appointed two commissions to explore options, which both came under massive lobbying, manipulation and extortion. 
The option for a single, integrated democratic state was rejected. Instead, in another bleak November in Palestinian history seven decades ago, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended that 55% of land that wasn’t theirs be given to yet another European colonial project, Zionism, on November 25, 1947.
Violating the UN Charter’s principle of self-determination for previously non-self-governing peoples, UNGA 181 was never sent to the Security Council, which was developing an alternative 5-year UN trusteeship plan when the Zionist militias launched a blitzkrieg (“Plan Dalet”) ethnically cleansing a third of Palestine before the British withdrew, then seizing 78% by December 1948.  Almost a million largely helpless Palestinians, previously disarmed by the British, were expelled and never allowed to return, violating international law and Israel’s own 1949 pledge as a condition of UN admission.
Under continuing colonial arrogance, this remains the heart of the impasse.  A 2009 survey of Israelis and Palestinians under occupation following Operation Cast Lead found that 87 percent of the Palestinians considered the “right of return AND compensation” for refugees to be “essential” to a final agreement, but this option was rejected by 77% of Israelis as “unacceptable.” This right is one of three objectives of the BDS movement that Israel and its US lobby so vehemently oppose as “the destruction of Israel.” This would decolonize Palestine, erasing Israel’s Jewish majority, ending Jewish domination, supremacy and privilege, and inevitably discarding the 65 laws that now discriminate against non-Jewish citizens of Israel. It would provide in exchange a normal multi-ethnic, egalitarian, actually democratic society.
Collectively replicating the “fearless moral inventory,” apology and restitution that are the heart of every 12-step program, this alone can heal the relationship between these two peoples, simultaneously relieving the anger of one side and the guilt (however unconscious) of the other.  As a political psychologist and former clinician, that’s my prescription.
But the faithful, steady, stubborn execution of Jabotinsky’s 1923 vision continues to block this simple solution, trampling upon the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention and countless UN resolutions, including 44 UN Security Council resolutions vetoed by the US under relentless lobby pressure.  In each of these vetoes the US has stood alone, unsupported by any of the four other permanent or 10 rotating members of the UNSC.  Michel Warschawski of Israel’s Alternative Information Center sees Israel self-isolating behind its own walls, building its own “open tomb,” and we have been its enabler.
Their lobby has been rated among the two most powerful in Washington by Congress members and staff, represented not only by nationally well-known AIPAC, ADL, JINSA, WINEP, and the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (51), but a nationwide network of Jewish Federations, Community Relations Councils and media figures.
Thus have Jewish Americans played decisive roles in both creating and sustaining the ongoing Palestinian catastrophe, and Jewish Americans of good conscience and rational judgment now have a duty to spare no effort to end it.  Many are increasingly doing so, propelled by Jewish Voice for Peace, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, If Not Now, and Jews for Al-Awada -Palestinian Right of Return, which includes an impressive list of intellectual leaders and potential community speakers. 
After 100 years it’s time to revisit Balfour’s ignored provision that non-Jewish communities in Palestine be protected.


Al Jazeera World: The Deportees, by Bahea Namoor (46')


PALESTINA

DAILY CRIMES OF THE OCCUPIERS
Israeli settlers have shot and killed a Palestinian farmer near a village in the northern West Bank, media reports say.
The Palestinian Maan news agency said the 48-year victim, identified as Mahmoud Zaal Oudah, was shot dead on Thursday while working on his farm close to the Qasra village, located south of Nablus.
According to the report, the shooting assault took place amid skirmishes between Palestinian locals and a group of Israeli settlers, following which Israeli troops stormed the area.
Palestinian farmers have remained a constant target of vandalism by Israeli military and settlers.
Most of the attacks carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property are met with impunity, with those guilty rarely facing consequences for such actions.
The occupied Palestinian territories have witnessed new tensions ever since Israeli forces introduced restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem al-Quds in August 2015.
More than 300 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces in the ongoing tensions since the beginning of October 2015.


OCHA  





BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
Caros Amigos 

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