Bill F.
Under
the cover of on-again-off-again endless talks on the comatose ‘two-state
solution’, Israel
has continued its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.
No
sooner had the last lot of talks been arranged than Israel announced the
building of more housing units on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem.
As
part of the deal to re-start talks between Netanyahu and Abbas, even the agreed
release of a few Palestinian prisoners was conditional on them not returning to
their homes in the West Bank, but to Gaza.
Only
massive protests by the Palestinian population forced Abbas to call off further
collaboration with US imperialism and the reactionary Israeli government.
Prawer
Plan
Then
in June the Israeli Knesset narrowly passed the Prawer-Begin Bill, which calls
for the forced expulsion of up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouin from the Negev
desert region in southern Israel.
The
intention of the bill is to destroy 35 villages which pre-date the establishment
of Israel in 1948 and are deemed ‘unrecognised’ by the Jewish state.
In
the period 1971-73 Bedouin filed more than 3,000 land claims covering 10% of
the Negev region. Only in 2004 were these rejected by the Israeli state which
maintained that they had not been properly registered, even under Ottoman laws
in 1858, or British Mandate laws in 1921. Because the inhabitants are deemed to
be ‘trespassers on state land’ they have been denied water, electricity,
sewage, education and healthcare. They are the poorest and most vulnerable
citizens of Israel.
Of
course, it’s just another land grab to establish new Jewish settlements and
military bases closer to Egypt, as well as mining and other industries.
The
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay issued a statement of
criticism. "If this bill becomes law, it will accelerate the demolition of
entire Bedouin communities, forcing them to give up their homes, denying them
their rights to land ownership, and decimating their traditional cultural and social
life in the name of development.”
On July 15, large demonstrations were
held across Palestine in opposition to the Israeli land grab. A statement
issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine noted that “This
scheme targeting our people in the Naqab (Negev) is part of the continuous
aggression against our people in the ’48 lands, and the implementation of a
policy of displacing them from their villages and towns on the road to creating
“a Jewish state.” The policy reveals the criminal and racist nature of this
illegitimate entity which seeks to liquidate the Palestinian national cause.”
Media
hypocrisy
Under
the sponsorship of US imperialism, the Israeli settler state is becoming even
more arrogant and aggressive and is sowing the seeds of its own
destruction.
Ethnic
cleansing is seen as a crime against humanity, but Israel has not been called
to account for its apartheid wall, its creeping settlements and land grabs, its
daily humiliation and terrorising of Palestinians trying to survive in their
own country. The struggles of the Bedouin will relegated to a footnote by the
western media establishments.
And
while the monopoly media coverage of the conflict in Syria has been full of
righteous indignation at the alleged use chemical weapons, hardly a word has
been reported about Israel’s use of white phosphorus bombs in Gaza or its own stash
of nuclear and probably chemical weapons.
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