It started off on Saturday with the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri - a Lebanese Sunni politician and longtime ally of the Gulf kingdom - announcing his resignation from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, last Saturday. A clearly orchestrated move produced and executed by his Saudi and Israeli paymasters.
Hariri announced on a Saudi-owned channel from the Saudi capital that he was resigning his post in protest at foreign intervention in Lebanon's domestic affairs. The irony was lost on him.
The ostensible reason he gave, as he invoked his late father's name, was that he too is threatened with assassination. But actually, his snap resignaton reflected a push by Saudi Arabia to openly confront Iran, its longtime regional adversary, and Iran's Lebanese ally, Hizbollah, to help Israel to get its revenge over the 2006 shameful defeat.
It will also likely plunge Lebanon into a fresh political quagmire, as the country's fragile coalition government suffers a severe blow and general elections set for May appear increasingly uncertain.
(The day after, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hizbollah movement would call the resignation a "Saudi-imposed decision". That Hariri's resignation speech was "written by Saudi". "It was not our wish for Hariri to resign. Even if he was forced to resign, the way in which it was executed does not reflect Hariri's way in dealing with things," Hassan Nasrallah rightfully added.)
Meanwhile, in Rhyad, as the day of Saturday turned into evening, it transpired that Houthi rebels (linked to Iran and allied with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is partially linked to the United Arab Emirates had fired at least one ballistic missile from Yemen towards the Saudi capital - which puts an exclamation point on the fact that the war in Yemen is far from over - more than two years since Saudi Arabia launched operation "Decisive Storm".
Meanwhile, in Rhyad, as the day of Saturday turned into evening, it transpired that Houthi rebels (linked to Iran and allied with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is partially linked to the United Arab Emirates had fired at least one ballistic missile from Yemen towards the Saudi capital - which puts an exclamation point on the fact that the war in Yemen is far from over - more than two years since Saudi Arabia launched operation "Decisive Storm".
As the clock inched to midnight another bombshell was dropped by the Saudis: A royal decree ordering the arrest of several princes, billionaires and notable figures, as well as the sacking of senior government officials. Some were the sons of the late King Abdullah. One was the head of the Saudi National Guard. All three of these developments will have seismic implications, not just in Saudi Arabia, but in the region and beyond.
The resignation of Hariri, or sacking by his Saudi sponsors, should sound the alarm bells for any government that doesn't want to see another war erupt in the region.
A lot of chatter involved Israel. It's no secret that Israel has been conducting military exercises on its northern front for several months now. While Hizbollah has been busy helping prop up Assad in Damascus, Tel Aviv has been developing its missile defence systems. Sooner or later, it will want to test those in real-life scenarios, as the logic of its former attacks on Lebanon and Gaza have it.
Forcing Hariri to quit the government would help Israel frame any aggression against Lebanon as an attack on Iranian proxies. With Gaza politically neutralised for now, following Hamas' handover of power to the Palestinian Authority, Israel could very well see this as an optimal time to attack. Such an attack would also provide a perfect opportunity for the West to test the new Saudi leadership's "moderate" credentials: Would it cheer Israel on?
In Yemen, the war has cost the Saudi economy hundreds of millions of dollars. This war, launched by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to put Iran in check, has failed to do it. But it has succeeded in killing thousands of innocent people, displacing millions, and helping Tehran position itself as the defender of the oppressed in the Middle East.
The targeting of Riyadh could push the young prince to be even more reckless and destructive in his ongoing expedition in Yemen.
Removing the head of the National Guard and a one-time contender to the throne is an obvious play to consolidate power by Bin Salman. However, what's puzzling is the detention of billionaire prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. On paper, Bin Talal and Bin Salman are a match made in heaven: Both want to transform Saudi Arabia into a "secular" society, both detest the idea of democracy and liberalism, and both are equally willing to hand over the Kingdom's wealth and sovereignty to the United States. Rumour has it that a possible reason for his detention was Alwaleed's refusal to put up money to help prop up Saudi's staggering economy. The message from Bin Salman to the country's wealthy elite is: Pay up or get locked up.
In the Saudi version of Game of Thobes, the 32-year-old Bin Salman shows that he is willing to throw the entire region into jeopardy to wear the royal gown. His actions have already all but destroyed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC); Yemen can no longer be referred to as a functioning state; Egypt is a ticking time bomb; and now Lebanon may erupt. There's a lot to worry about.
And Israel on all this? Burnt twice in the "wars" that it waged in Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, the IDF (Israeli army) would like to avoid repeating their past mistakes but Tel Aviv is eager to try their new weapons on Lebanese and Palestinians in order to sell them faster.
So, everything is possible. Around Christmas or the World Cup, when Western eyes will be turned to Russia.
So, everything is possible. Around Christmas or the World Cup, when Western eyes will be turned to Russia.
Impact of MBS's move on Palestine
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman’s - or MBS, as he is often referred to - brash attempt to consolidate power at home and assert primacy abroad will have ramifications far and wide.
Some of these will be felt in Palestine, where a shaky reconciliation agreement holds out the best hope in a long time for some relief for two million Palestinians in Gaza after 10 years of isolation imposed by Israel and Egypt.
One danger is that reverberations from Riyadh could undo the most important cornerstone of any successful reconciliation: the opening of the Rafah crossing, the only access to the outside world for the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza.
The crossing at the Egypt-Gaza border has been closed with only rare exceptions over the last four years.
Without such an opening, there will be no upside for Gaza and no incentive for reconciliation.
On Monday evening, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, made an unexpected visit to Riyadh for talks Tuesday with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, setting tongues wagging that he was next for the chop after Saad Hariri announced his resignation as Lebanon’s prime minister on Saturday from the Saudi capital.
But Abbas didn’t announce his own resignation, at least not yet. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA only reported that the two discussed US efforts to revive a peace process with Israel and Palestinian reconciliation efforts, without detail.
On both issues, Riyadh could have huge impact. MBS seems to have made a big impression on US President Donald Trump, who didn’t hesitate to tweet his support for Saturday’s round-up of royals and current and former high-ranking government officials.
King Salman and MBS “know exactly what they are doing,” Trump wrote, suggesting Washington is right behind whatever it is Saudi Arabia’s leadership is up to. And whatever that is, the ultimate target appears to be Iran, Israel long a bogeyman in the Gulf with which conflict, while entirely avoidable, is fast becoming self-fulfilling prophesy.
Indeed, Riyadh on Tuesday said Tehran might be guilty of an “act of war” for a missile attack on the Saudi capital over the weekend claimed by Yemen’s Houthi group, with whom Saudi Arabia has been at war since 2015. That marks a serious escalation and it is unclear what happens from here.
Saudi Arabia claims the Houthis are proxies of Iran.
Yemen apart, Saudi Arabia has traditionally avoided direct military engagements. The model usually followed is that of Syria, where Saudi Arabia funded a number of groups fighting the country’s army in an effort – now seemingly failed – to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
The failure to oust Assad, who has been backed to the hilt by Iran (but also by Russia...) is one reason why Gulf fears of Iranian power are peaking. Iran’s alliance with Syria is now stronger than ever. Iranian influence in Iraq had already expanded thanks to the 2003 US invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, and opened the way for the majority Shia community to assert control.
And in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia has apparently concluded that Hariri failed in curbing the power of Hizbollah, the Shia political party and resistance movement that drove Israel from southern Lebanon in 2000 and thwarted its invasion in 2006.
Thus, the so-called “Shiite crescent” that Jordan’s King Abdullah cautioned against shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq would seem – at least to Gulf eyes – to have become a reality.
In its outsized fear of Iran, Riyadh has in effect made common cause with Israel – for whom Iran has been a constant thorn in the side – and at a propitious time for both. After Barack Obama’s attempt at defusing world tensions with Iran through the 2015 nuclear deal – over the heads of Israeli and congressional opposition – Trump has walked the opposite direction.
It is now up to an overwhelmingly pro-Israel US Congress to decide how much the US will water down that deal.
That in turn – in a worst-case scenario – could set back in motion an Iranian nuclear program that could then trigger an Israeli military strike, something regularly mooted before the 2015 deal was signed.
In the short-term, meanwhile, Riyadh wants to ensure that no one else steps out of line and – openly or covertly – builds relations with Iran or otherwise veers from Saudi regional dictates, the reasons it, along with the United Arab Emirates, has ostracized Qatar.
And it is the reason why Palestinian reconciliation could also be at risk now.
One of the key stumbling blocks for Palestinian unity is the question of Hamas' military wing. In early October – and before a preliminary unity agreement was signed in Cairo on 12 October – a senior Palestinian Authority official let it be known that Abbas would oppose any “Hizbollah model” for Gaza.
By this he meant that he would not accept that Hamas keep its military wing, the Qassam Brigades - which is the only independent 'army' of Palestine, as the PA' is under Israel control - or any weapons not absorbed into the official Palestinian security services, and that there could be no funding from outside powers that did not go through the official government.
The former, and by extension the latter, is completely unacceptable to Hamas, which has agreed that it will coordinate any military action with Abbas’ Fatah movement but rejected out of hand dismantling the Qassam Brigades.
So fierce were disagreements that Egyptian mediators convinced both parties to postpone talks on the issue for later in order to reach the preliminary agreement.
Indeed, the signs for reconciliation so far don’t look great. Hamas has done most of the running, rounding up Salafi militants and building a buffer zone for Egypt, dismantling its administrative committee to hand over governance duties to the Ramallah-based government, which has also taken over charge of crossing into and out of Gaza.
In return, Hamas has so far received nothing. There has been no opening of crossings, the sine qua non of any agreement. And Abbas is still refusing to lift sanctions on Gaza that were imposed back in April and which plunged Gaza ever deeper into crisis.
And with Riyadh throwing its weight around, the issue might become more fraught. Senior Hamas leaders traveled to Iran last month after the preliminary agreement was signed, no doubt a signal to Abbas that the movement was intent on maintaining its own relations with the outside world, even after the loss of Qatar, which for years has been the movement’s main financial backer.
But if Saudi Arabia should continue the “my way or the highway” approach, such relations will be anathema to Riyadh, which will pressure Abbas to break off reconciliation, consequences be damned.
Hamas is in a corner, but can only yield so far. Abbas has nowhere else to turn, the fate of the peace process – Abbas’ first and last strategy – now in the hands of Trump, Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law, Middle East envoy and apparent secret confidant of MBS, and, of course, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
That’s some quartet to be beholden to. And in the end, unless Cairo’s interests in easing tensions in the Sinai somehow win out, two million Palestinians in Gaza stand to lose badly, with another massacre. While in the West Bank, the expropriation continues, rapidly.
Some of these will be felt in Palestine, where a shaky reconciliation agreement holds out the best hope in a long time for some relief for two million Palestinians in Gaza after 10 years of isolation imposed by Israel and Egypt.
One danger is that reverberations from Riyadh could undo the most important cornerstone of any successful reconciliation: the opening of the Rafah crossing, the only access to the outside world for the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza.
The crossing at the Egypt-Gaza border has been closed with only rare exceptions over the last four years.
Without such an opening, there will be no upside for Gaza and no incentive for reconciliation.
On Monday evening, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, made an unexpected visit to Riyadh for talks Tuesday with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, setting tongues wagging that he was next for the chop after Saad Hariri announced his resignation as Lebanon’s prime minister on Saturday from the Saudi capital.
But Abbas didn’t announce his own resignation, at least not yet. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA only reported that the two discussed US efforts to revive a peace process with Israel and Palestinian reconciliation efforts, without detail.
On both issues, Riyadh could have huge impact. MBS seems to have made a big impression on US President Donald Trump, who didn’t hesitate to tweet his support for Saturday’s round-up of royals and current and former high-ranking government officials.
King Salman and MBS “know exactly what they are doing,” Trump wrote, suggesting Washington is right behind whatever it is Saudi Arabia’s leadership is up to. And whatever that is, the ultimate target appears to be Iran, Israel long a bogeyman in the Gulf with which conflict, while entirely avoidable, is fast becoming self-fulfilling prophesy.
Indeed, Riyadh on Tuesday said Tehran might be guilty of an “act of war” for a missile attack on the Saudi capital over the weekend claimed by Yemen’s Houthi group, with whom Saudi Arabia has been at war since 2015. That marks a serious escalation and it is unclear what happens from here.
Saudi Arabia claims the Houthis are proxies of Iran.
Yemen apart, Saudi Arabia has traditionally avoided direct military engagements. The model usually followed is that of Syria, where Saudi Arabia funded a number of groups fighting the country’s army in an effort – now seemingly failed – to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
The failure to oust Assad, who has been backed to the hilt by Iran (but also by Russia...) is one reason why Gulf fears of Iranian power are peaking. Iran’s alliance with Syria is now stronger than ever. Iranian influence in Iraq had already expanded thanks to the 2003 US invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, and opened the way for the majority Shia community to assert control.
And in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia has apparently concluded that Hariri failed in curbing the power of Hizbollah, the Shia political party and resistance movement that drove Israel from southern Lebanon in 2000 and thwarted its invasion in 2006.
Thus, the so-called “Shiite crescent” that Jordan’s King Abdullah cautioned against shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq would seem – at least to Gulf eyes – to have become a reality.
In its outsized fear of Iran, Riyadh has in effect made common cause with Israel – for whom Iran has been a constant thorn in the side – and at a propitious time for both. After Barack Obama’s attempt at defusing world tensions with Iran through the 2015 nuclear deal – over the heads of Israeli and congressional opposition – Trump has walked the opposite direction.
It is now up to an overwhelmingly pro-Israel US Congress to decide how much the US will water down that deal.
That in turn – in a worst-case scenario – could set back in motion an Iranian nuclear program that could then trigger an Israeli military strike, something regularly mooted before the 2015 deal was signed.
In the short-term, meanwhile, Riyadh wants to ensure that no one else steps out of line and – openly or covertly – builds relations with Iran or otherwise veers from Saudi regional dictates, the reasons it, along with the United Arab Emirates, has ostracized Qatar.
And it is the reason why Palestinian reconciliation could also be at risk now.
One of the key stumbling blocks for Palestinian unity is the question of Hamas' military wing. In early October – and before a preliminary unity agreement was signed in Cairo on 12 October – a senior Palestinian Authority official let it be known that Abbas would oppose any “Hizbollah model” for Gaza.
By this he meant that he would not accept that Hamas keep its military wing, the Qassam Brigades - which is the only independent 'army' of Palestine, as the PA' is under Israel control - or any weapons not absorbed into the official Palestinian security services, and that there could be no funding from outside powers that did not go through the official government.
The former, and by extension the latter, is completely unacceptable to Hamas, which has agreed that it will coordinate any military action with Abbas’ Fatah movement but rejected out of hand dismantling the Qassam Brigades.
So fierce were disagreements that Egyptian mediators convinced both parties to postpone talks on the issue for later in order to reach the preliminary agreement.
Indeed, the signs for reconciliation so far don’t look great. Hamas has done most of the running, rounding up Salafi militants and building a buffer zone for Egypt, dismantling its administrative committee to hand over governance duties to the Ramallah-based government, which has also taken over charge of crossing into and out of Gaza.
In return, Hamas has so far received nothing. There has been no opening of crossings, the sine qua non of any agreement. And Abbas is still refusing to lift sanctions on Gaza that were imposed back in April and which plunged Gaza ever deeper into crisis.
And with Riyadh throwing its weight around, the issue might become more fraught. Senior Hamas leaders traveled to Iran last month after the preliminary agreement was signed, no doubt a signal to Abbas that the movement was intent on maintaining its own relations with the outside world, even after the loss of Qatar, which for years has been the movement’s main financial backer.
But if Saudi Arabia should continue the “my way or the highway” approach, such relations will be anathema to Riyadh, which will pressure Abbas to break off reconciliation, consequences be damned.
Hamas is in a corner, but can only yield so far. Abbas has nowhere else to turn, the fate of the peace process – Abbas’ first and last strategy – now in the hands of Trump, Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law, Middle East envoy and apparent secret confidant of MBS, and, of course, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
That’s some quartet to be beholden to. And in the end, unless Cairo’s interests in easing tensions in the Sinai somehow win out, two million Palestinians in Gaza stand to lose badly, with another massacre. While in the West Bank, the expropriation continues, rapidly.
Lebanon's political statu quo.
Lebanon's 18 recognised religious sects are all represented in parliament. Under a political system forged in 1989 in line with the Taif Agreement, Lebanon's president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a Shia.
There are five major parties.
There are five major parties.
Future Movement: A Sunni-majority party headed by Saad Hariri, former prime minister allied to Saudi Arabia current ruler who stepped down on November 4, 2017 after almost a year as prime minister.
Free Patriotic Movement: A Christian-majority party headed by former army General Michel Aoun, who returned to Lebanon in 2005, ending a life in exile in France, which he fled to after the end of the civil war in Lebanon. The FPM signed a memorandum of understanding with Hizbollah in February 2006, and the two parties have been close allies ever since.
Amal Movement: A Shia-majority party headed by Nabih Berri, serving 23 years as parliament speaker and counting. The party is an ally of Hizbollah and the Syrian government.
Hizbollah: A Shia party headed by Hassan Nasrallah. The party also has an armed wing that forced the withdrawal of the Israeli army from southern Lebanon, fought Israel in 2006, and is currently fighting alongside the Syrian government. Hizbollah is closely allied with Iran.
Progressive Socialist Party: A Druze party headed by Walid Jumblatt, who has shifted political allegiance several times over his career and used his position to act as kingmaker in political deals. Previously pro-Syrian, he is at present vocally pro-opposition, to the extent that he has voiced support for groups like al-Nusra Front, linked to al-Qaeda. Currently the PSP is allied to the Future Movement.
Inside Story: Is Lebanon on the brink of a turmoil?
Cheating with the Secular card to blame Iran
In a spirit of good brotherly love among Muslims, MBS, the Saudi prince, of course, blames Iran for the turn to the nasty old "radical Islam".
"What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia," the prince declared, "What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn't know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it."
"What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia," the prince declared, "What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn't know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it."
This blaming of Iran and Iranians for all the ills of the world is, of course, an old cliche among many Arab princes and emirs and even some scholars too. There are scholars of gender and sexuality in Islam who blame polygamy on Iranians, while some thinkers have blamed Iranians for the rise of homosexuality among the Arabs.
Left to their own devices Arabs, according to this xenophobic fantasy, would have been happily monogamous, heterosexual, and above all moderate Muslims, bordering with the top choice of being "secular" too. These nasty old "Persians" have been an old plague to these puritanical princes and their learned advisors.
Back to earth and among us mortals, however, we see a link between what Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, calls and considers "moderate Islam" and the "secular tyrants" of whom the Economist reports. As Madawi Al-Rasheed recently wrote: "The crown prince's understanding of moderate Islam is a project in which dissenting voices are silenced, activists are locked behind bars, and critics are forced into submission."
What is now being trumpeted as "moderate Islam" is an ideology of submission to the overpowering domination of neoliberal economics without any moral or imaginative resistance.
Accepting the Zionist theft of Palestine and competing to establish open diplomatic relations with Israel, systematic oppression of civil liberties at home, mobilisation of transnational Arab armies to bomb civilian targets in Yemen, turning ancient and historic cities to wet dreams of predatory capitalism, massive waste of national resources on advanced military equipment are some of the vintage doctrinal dimensions of this "moderate Islam" now being promoted by these "secular despots".
But under the smokescreen of these "secular despots" and hidden beneath their "moderate Islam," between the degenerate ideologies of fanaticism and ignorance that has informed the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the tribal despotism ruling supreme from one end of the Arab and Muslim world to another, stand tall masses of millions of people whose ancestral faith and political agency are not at the mercy of either Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his gang of murderers or General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi commanding a reactionary junta subverting the Egyptian revolution.
A fine example of such benevolent dictatorship that the Economist erroneously describes is the United Arab Emirates whose leaders have evidently "led the way in relaxing religious and social restrictions. While leading a regional campaign against Islamist movements, Muhammad bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the UAE's de facto leader, has financed the construction of Western university branches and art galleries."
What this kind of outdated Orientalism betrays is the simple proposition that the more the world looks like a fictional Europe, the more it is "secular" and "moderate", the more they are to be trusted and welcomed. Left to their own non-western devices, these Muslims become nasty, brutish, and fanatical. If they cannot become secular and moderate Muslims by themselves, then (damn it, why not) let a tyrant do it for them.
Entirely outside the purview of such banal Eurocentric imagination, the fate of nations in the Arab and Muslim world is determined by the internal logic and rhetoric of an entirely different dynamic.
The struggles of Arabs and Muslims for justice and civil liberties can no longer be divided into the bogus, flawed, and outdated "secular" versus "religious" division or "moderate" versus "radical" Islam. These are US and European think tank mantras categorically irrelevant to the inner working of Muslim moral and historical imagination, of which neither the Economist nor the Saudi prince have a blasted clue.
European colonialism and American imperialism (both now gathered at the root of the Zionist theft of Palestine) framing the rise and persistence of nativist tyranny, are the chief catalysts of critical thinking in the Arab and Muslim world and thus map out the future of its collective national destinies. Without a simultaneous attention to these historical forces, any fly-by-night concept like "secular despots" or "moderate Islam" is highfalutin hogwash.
Eastern's is as much an age of post-Islamism, in the elegant phrasing of Asef Bayat, as it is of post-secularism, as Jurgen Habermas has theorised. The binary of secular/religious was of a European (Christian) vintage and had nothing to do with Islam, Judaism, or any other religion. "Secularism," as Gil Anidjar has persuasively argued, was and remains Western Christianity thinly disguised.
The inner dynamics of Islam in its encounter with Europeans colonial modernity and the effervescence of Muslim communities in their renewed global and cosmopolitan contexts are mapping out the contours of a vastly different world than the one imagined by the Saudi prince or the prognostications of the conservative Economist.
Tribal monarchies, fake republics, military juntas, secular tyrants, and the militant fanaticism they have created, branded, and now fight are all made of the same cloth. The fate of 1.6 billion human beings who call and consider themselves, in one way or another, 'Muslim' is not and will never be determined by the juvenal delusions of any Arab prince or "secular tyrant" - nor indeed by their common nemesis in the frightful apparition of ISIL and its ilk.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The Saudi prince MBS must get his clues from the prince of Denmark, stop listening to his American and Israeli advisors and cease wasting his nation's resources on useless billion-dollar projects.
The Saudi prince MBS must get his clues from the prince of Denmark, stop listening to his American and Israeli advisors and cease wasting his nation's resources on useless billion-dollar projects.
PALESTINA
DAILY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION
Occupied East Jerusalem - Teachers and parents have decried a raid on a school by Israeli forces that resulted in the arrests of the school's deputy principal and three teachers.
Israeli police entered the Zahwa al-Quds kindergarten and primary school in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina on Monday and made the arrests because staff refused to follow Israel's education standard, according to school staff.
"Israel is attempting to force our school to adopt the Israeli education curriculum," Ziad al-Shamali, head of the school's parent committee, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. "We are refusing this. So they decided to raid our school and scare our children."
Local teacher Ola Nini told Al Jazeera several unarmed and plain-clothed Israeli police officers and officials from Israel's Jerusalem municipality entered the school during the first class of the morning. Zahwa al-Quds is a private school with about 90 students between the ages of three and nine.
Officers searched all the classrooms and demanded the identity cards of each teacher, Nini said, adding they then wrote down their names and made photocopies of their IDs.
Shamali said the officers also confiscated phones and deleted footage of the incident on the school's surveillance cameras. The students were so frightened that at least one child urinated on herself, Nini added.
"The officers began to question the students about the books they were reading and took pictures of the books," Nini explained. The officers then made their way to the principal's office, broke in, and confiscated teacher salaries and school papers in the drawers of the principal's desk, she said.
During the raid, the school's deputy principal and three teachers were taken into Israeli custody. They were released later on Monday.
By the way, Israel arrested so far this year 483 Palestinian children.
By the way, Israel arrested so far this year 483 Palestinian children.
Checkpoint
BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
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