Sunday, March 31, 2019

Land Day An Integral Part of Palestinians' Political Life: Iran

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s Foreign Ministry has issued a statement on the occasion of the Land Day of Palestine, saying that the day is an "integral part" of Palestinians' political life and has played a key role in keeping alive their resistance against the occupation of the Zionist regime.

The Palestinian Land Day is an annual event to mark the killing of six Palestinians by Israeli forces during mass protests against Israel’s seizure of their land in 1976.
In late March 1976, Israeli troops killed six Palestinians, wounded 100 others and detained hundreds more who had held peaceful demonstrations against Israel’s confiscation of 21,000 dunams (5,189 acres) of their land. Palestinians, both at home and overseas, have been marking the event known as the Land Day with rallies and remembrance ever since.
Here is the full text of the statement released by Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Friday:
In the history and culture of Palestinians’ struggles and resistance, the Land Day is a turning point that has played an important role in keeping alive their resistance against the occupation of the Zionist regime.
Since 1976, when the seeds of resistance were planted for the first time in the occupied territories, much innocent blood of the oppressed people was shed to nourish the solid tree of resistance. As a result, the Land Day is an integral part of the political life and struggles of the oppressed Palestinian people. It has been shaped and persisted in protest against violence, racial discrimination, confiscation of lands, destruction of villages and displacement of Palestinians.
The acts of the president of the United States over the past year to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Zionist regime, the relocation of the US embassy to this city, and his latest move to recognize the sovereignty of the fake and illegal Israeli regime over the occupied Golan Heights as well as his attempts to complete his so-called "Deal of the Century" reveal the fact that the resistance of the Palestinians against the Zionist regime is a right move. Therefore, the Land Day is one of its symbols, and the region’s resistance movement needs to keep it alive.
In addition, the US government’s acts in violation of the UN Security Council’s resolutions to support the Zionist regime, which are in contradiction of international laws and principles, have led to the international community’s strong opposition, and have proved that the efforts of some Arab states in the region to normalize ties with this regime are useless.
It also revealed that the overt and covert attempts to establish relations with this regime have no bearing on the rights of the Palestinians and putting an end to the occupation of Arab-Islamic lands; therefore, they should give up such illusions.
In pursuit of defending the Palestinian cause, the Islamic Republic of Iran vehemently condemns the criminal acts of the Zionist regime and the illogical US support of this regime, which is completely against international rules and principles.
The Islamic Republic believes that the establishment of a lasting and just peace in the region would only be possible through continuation of resistance to completely end the occupation. (It will be achieved through) the return of all displaced people to their homeland, the establishment of the future Palestinian state on the basis of a referendum with the participation of all its main inhabitants and finally the formation of a unified Palestinian state with Jerusalem (al-Quds) as its capital.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Gaza, Stonewall: Izzy Mustafa on Why People Rise Up

by 

Photo courtesy of Izzy Mustafa.
Every Friday since March 30, 2018, in what’s known as the Great March of Return, Palestinians in Gaza come to the Israeli border fence to protest nearly twelve years of a blockade that has made Gaza into what’s often called the world’s largest open-air prison. They also come to invoke UN Resolution 194, their right to return in peace to their homes, from which they were expelled in 1948 when Israel was created. Last year alone, some 189 Palestinians – including children, journalists, and the disabled – were killed at the border, most by Israeli live ammunition; 23,000 have been injured. One year later, the protests continue. Why?
Izzy Mustafa is a Palestinian-American trans man who grew up in New Mexico and moved to New York, where he works at the Adalah Justice Project. Two years ago, I interviewed Izzy about Islam and Gay Pride. Recently, I interviewed him about the Great March. I started by asking him what he’s been doing lately.
IM:   I’ve been going back and forth between here and Palestine. I was in touch with folks in Gaza. It’s as if my mind’s been in both Gaza and New York City. When the Great March began, I reached out to journalists, bringing pictures, stories to push out onto social media, to help lay the context of what the Great March of Return is about.
SD:   What is the Great March about?
IM:   For the first time in decades, Palestinian civil society has come together in this mass mobilization to demand their human rights. Because the circumstances in Gaza are dire. Gaza is one of the most impoverished places in the world. Since 2007, people are not allowed to move in or out of Gaza freely. They’re limited to only four hours a day of electricity. In Gaza, 95% of the water is unclean and unfit for drinking. People know that they need to bring their demands to the world because nobody is listening.
The banner everyone walks under is the banner of freedom and justice and return. Men, women, children, grandparents, students, teachers – you have bricklayers, shop owners, every segment of Palestinian society in that March. Because everybody is impacted by this horrific siege.
SD:   How has this affected you personally?
IM:   On April 6 of last year, a week after the first Gaza mobilization, I helped organize a protest in Union Square to let people in New York City know what was happening in Gaza. Hundreds of people came out. It was a very emotionally driven protest.
I asked Palestinians from Gaza to tell their stories. One of them was a really good friend. She was a journalist herself when she was in Gaza two years ago. We were on the train to the protest and both of us were on WhatsApp. Right before the Union Square stop, we got this message about a journalist in Gaza we were working with. It said he was shot in the stomach by Israeli snipers. He was being rushed to the hospital.
I told her, “He’ll be OK. He had a Press vest on.”
We got to the protest, and she started to speak. She said something like, “My friend Yaser Murtaja is currently in the hospital. He was shot. He was wearing a Press vest. He’s somebody who’s dedicated to bringing the story of Gaza to the world.”
As she was speaking, a man from Gaza came up to me and said, “Yaser is dead.” And my heart dropped.
Then I had to go up to speak. My friend had gone into the crowd and as I was speaking I was looking for her, because I knew she was going to find out the news. Three minutes into me speaking, I see my friend rush toward me. She grabs me with tears in her eyes. “They killed Yaser. Yaser is dead.”
Yaser Murtaja was like a brother to her; she grew up with him. He died at 31, without ever leaving Gaza. He made a film about her family – it’s going to be screened here in April. But in that moment, I made a commitment to help amplify the voices from the ground in Gaza to U.S. audiences.
SD:   A few years ago, a UN report said that by 2020 Gaza would be unlivable.
IM:   Gaza is already unlivable. You have rising death rates from starvation, poverty, from not being able to go to a decent hospital, suicides because people can’t find jobs. People are putting their bodies in front of these snipers because they know they have nothing to lose. What’s the last step in creating an unlivable situation? It’s the breaking down of a population’s social fabric. Soon, because there’s so much anger and desperation and lack of power, Israel is going to watch Palestinians in the Gaza Strip cannibalize themselves.
SD:   You’ve worked with Ahmed Abu Artema, a poet and journalist in Gaza, who was one of the organizers of the Great March. He believes in “peaceful resistance”?
IM:   Ahmed Abu Artema is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever met. Yeah, he helped make the Great March essentially peaceful. Just by being Palestinian, people mark us as terrorists, mark us as violent people, as savages, barbaric. Palestinians knew that, in order to appeal to the international community, they had to march in a peaceful way for the world to see us as somewhat human.
SD:   What about differences between Palestinians who support Hamas as opposed to other groups?
IM:   I think most of the population, whether on the West Bank or in Gaza, are becoming jaded with political parties and leadership that claim to represent Palestinians. Fatah and Hamas aren’t the legitimate leaders of our people. They create this media idea that it’s an equal playing field, that the occupier and the occupied are equal because there are two governments. But there’s really one legal regime – Israel, which controls everybody. Any uprising has to come from the grassroots, has to come from the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. Palestinian refugees in Gaza are that.
SD:   Do you see new political groups forming now?
IM:   I think it’s more like a change of spirit. What’s great is you can be Palestinian and be in an organization that works on queer rights. Actually, we should be working toward other struggles – other forms of liberation, as well as our own. That’s how you build communities. You work with other people who might not understand your background but do understand oppression; understand we’re all in this life together. Whether you’re an indigenous queer woman from the Navajo Nation or a Palestinian queer in Palestine…
SD:   If there was one thing you could say to the U.S. queer community, what would that be?
IM:   We’re all human. If you see my humanity as a trans person, you should also be able to see my humanity as a Palestinian. And, as a queer person in the U.S., you should understand the importance of mass mobilization. The tradition of Pride comes from Stonewall, when people rose up. In Gaza people are rising up. So we must stand with each other; stand for liberation for everybody. Gaza isa ticking time bomb and if we don’t do something now, in my opinion, we have failed all humanity.
© Susie Day, 2019.
References
UN Resolution 194, Right of Return (“refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date…”):
Yaser Murtaja:
Murtaja film screening, April 6, NYC:
Ahmed Abu Artema:
Abu Artema Speaking in NYC March 14, 2019:
EXTRAS.
Commemoration of one-year anniversary of Great March:
Israel Starts Building Massive Fence on Gaza Border:
UN condemns Israel:
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Trump’s Green Light to Israel: First the Golan, Then the West Bank?

by 

U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv • Public domain
Nazareth.
When President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem last year, effectively sabotaging any hope of establishing a viable Palestinian state, he tore up the international rulebook.
Last week, he trampled all over its remaining tattered pages. He did so, of course, via Twitter.
Referring to a large piece of territory Israel seized from Syria in 1967, Trump wrote: “After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability.”
Israel expelled 130,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights in 1967, under cover of the Six Day War, and then annexed the territory 14 years later – in violation of international law. A small population of Syrian Druze are the only survivors of that ethnic cleansing operation.
Replicating its illegal acts in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel immediately moved Jewish settlers and businesses into the Golan.
Until now, no country had recognised Israel’s act of plunder. In 1981, UN member states, including the US, declared Israeli efforts to change the Golan’s status “null and void”.
But in recent months, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu began stepping up efforts to smash that long-standing consensus and win over the world’s only superpower to his side.
He was spurred into action when the Bashar Al Assad – aided by Russia – began to decisively reverse the territorial losses the Syrian government had suffered during the nation’s eight-year war.
The fighting dragged in a host of other actors. Israel itself used the Golan as a base from which to launch covert operations to help Assad’s opponents in southern Syria, including Islamic State fighters. Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, meanwhile, tried to limit Israel’s room for manoeuvre on the Syrian leader’s behalf.
Iran’s presence close by was how Netanyahu publicly justified the need for Israel to take permanent possession of the Golan, calling it a vital buffer against Iranian efforts to “use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel”.
Before that, when Assad was losing ground to his enemies, the Israeli leader made a different case. Then, he argued that Syria was breaking apart and its president would never be in a position to reclaim the Golan.
Netanyahu’s current rationalisation is no more persuasive than the earlier one. Russia and the United Nations are already well advanced on re-establishing a demilitarised zone on the Syrian side of the separation-of-forces line. That would ensure Iran could not deploy close to the Golan Heights.
At a meeting between Netanyahu and Trump in Washington on Monday night, the president converted his tweet into an executive decree.
The timing is significant. This is another crude attempt by Trump to meddle in Israel’s election, due on April 9. It will provide Netanyahu with a massive fillip as he struggles against corruption indictments and a credible threat from a rival party, Blue and White, headed by former army generals.
Netanyahu could barely contain his glee after Trump’s tweet, reportedly calling to tell him: “You made history!”
But, in truth, this was no caprice. Israel and Washington have been heading in this direction for a while.
In Israel, there is cross-party support for keeping the Golan.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US and a confidant of Netanyahu’s, formally launched a plan last year to quadruple the size of the Golan’s settler population, to 100,000, within a decade.
The US State Department offered its apparent seal of approval last month when it included the Golan Heights for the first time in the “Israel” section of its annual human rights report.
This month, Republican senator Lindsey Graham made a very public tour of the Golan in an Israeli military helicopter, alongside Netanyahu and David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Graham said he and fellow senator Ted Cruz would lobby the US president to change the territory’s status.
Trump, meanwhile, has made no secret of his disdain for international law. This month, his officials barred entry to the US to staff from the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, who are investigating US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The ICC has made enemies of both Washington and Israel in its initial, and meagre, attempts to hold the two to account.
Whatever Netanyahu’s spin about the need to avert an Iranian threat, Israel has other, more concrete reasons for holding on to the Golan.
The territory is rich in water sources and provides Israel with decisive control over the Sea of Galilee, a large freshwater lake that is crucially important in a region facing ever greater water shortages.
The 1,200 square kilometres of stolen land is being aggressively exploited, from burgeoning vineyards and apple orchards to a tourism industry that, in winter, includes the snow-covered slopes of Mount Hermon.
As noted by Who Profits, an Israeli human rights organisation, in a report this month, Israeli and US companies are also setting up commercial wind farms to sell electricity.
And Israel has been quietly co-operating with US energy giant Genie to explore potentially large oil reserves under the Golan. Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has family investments in Genie. But extracting the oil will be difficult, unless Israel can plausibly argue that it has sovereignty over the territory.
For decades the US had regularly arm-twisted Israel to enter a mix of public and back-channel peace talks with Syria. Just three years ago, Barack Obama supported a UN Security Council rebuke to Netanyahu for stating that Israel would never relinquish the Golan.
Now Trump has given a green light for Israel to hold on to it permanently.
But, whatever he says, the decision will not bring security for Israel, or regional stability. In fact, it makes a nonsense of Trump’s “deal of the century” – a long-delayed regional peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that, according to rumour, may be unveiled soon after the Israeli election.
Instead, US recognition will prove a boon for the Israeli right, which has been clamouring to annex vast areas of the West Bank and thereby drive a final nail into the coffin of the two-state solution.
Israel’s right can now plausibly argue: “If Trump has consented to our illegal seizure of the Golan, why not also our theft of the West Bank?”
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Understanding white supremacy beyond the far-right and the Daily Mail


writes Dr Sadia Habib


In the wake of last Friday’s terror attacks in Christchurch, it has become embarrassingly clear that Muslims haven’t really understood the multi-faceted nature of white supremacy, writes Dr Sadia Habib. 
After the grief of Friday’s terror attack at two mosques in Christchurch, Muslims around the world have been mourning, reflecting and processing how this atrocity occurred.
More than ever before, we must urgently read and learn about the basics of how race, racism and white supremacy operate.
What is white supremacy?
The opening words of Charles W. Mills’ The Racial Contract introduce us to the meaning, function and nature of white supremacy as an ‘unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today’ (p1).  Mills details at length which theories you will encounter in your politics and philosophy textbooks, and it won’t be about the system of white supremacy.
Moreover, what we must never forget is that this ‘omission’ is ‘not accidental’: ‘standard textbooks and courses have for the most part been written and designed by whites, who take their racial privilege so much for granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination’ (p1).
What is the function of racism?
Where, why and how is white supremacy pervasive in our world?
These are core questions we should be visiting and re-visiting.
Beyond far right racism
There are different ways we might begin to try and understand how Christchurch could have happened.  Comprehending what happened is incumbent on us all who yearn for a world without Islamophobia. We can’t simply bury our heads in the sand, and leave the few to speak up against rising Islamophobia. That’s not the Islamic way.

Christchurch massacre suspect Brenton Tarrant

Some have been reading through the killer’s manifesto – The Great Replacement – to try and make sense of what led to this unthinkable act of violence against Muslims.
That alone is not enough. It’s far too easy to blame far right extremists for white supremacy.
We need to move beyond focusing on far right racist rhetoric.  We need to do more than boycott the tabloid gutter press, like the Daily Mail.
We can’t just keep on sharing those clever memes and infograms that rightly highlight how mainstream media perpetually represents Black people as ‘thugs’, Muslims as ‘terrorists’, and Whites as a ‘lone wolf’.
BBC Newsnight platforming Islamophobes
Of course, we must keep on interrogating how the mainstream media is complicit in emboldening the far right, in normalising far right White supremacists, in readily giving extremist White racists a platform.
On the very day that the Muslim Ummah was grieving globally about Christchurch, popular news and current affairs television programme, BBC Newsnight, invited Generation Identity onto the show.
When criticised for airing White supremacist Islamophobes, BBC Newsnight attempted very badly to defend their poor decision as being in the interests of anti-racism: “It is important we examine and challenge ideologies that drive hate crimes in a wider context, whether they have been distorted, and the connection they may have with any European or UK groups.” And yet the big complaints made on social media by viewers were that not only was this an insult to the grief of Muslims, but that worse yet, there was no critique.
And that’s how white supremacy works – in the case of BBC Newsnight, we see how whiteness operates to serve and protect white supremacist thinking, ironically under the guise of faux anti-racism.  Are savvy enough to recognise this and tackle this?
Invisible Muslims
Where are we failing when it comes to knowing how white supremacy operates? Moving beyond the aforementioned examples of the Islamophobia of far right extremism and the mainstream media, more importantly, we must also dissect the invisibility of Muslims.
White supremacy doesn’t just perpetuate negative representations of Muslims, it also works in cunning and strategic ways to promote the positive representation of white actors, at the expense of Muslims.
Muslims are either painted as villainous, or they are erased. White supremacy isn’t just about Muslims being vilified in the media, whilst whiteness is typically glorified or vindicated. It’s way more than that.
It’s our responsibility to learn what constitutes whiteness and how it reigns supreme in multi-faceted ways.
EggBoy and PM Jacinda Ardern
Think deeply about the humanisation of whiteness – of white terrorists, white racists, white politicians, white pretty-much-everyone.  Even that young boy who we can’t help but cheer on – EggBoy.
Of course it’s very easy to commend EggBoy and the NZ PM Jacinda Ardern. Muslims and all seem to be understandably bowled over by the compassion of these two and their actions in our names.
But racism operates in such insidious ways that the media will keep on reproducing these actors as white saviours, again at the expense of the Muslim saviours and Muslim victims.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Much as we might admire EggBoy and Jacinda, we must continue to ask questions about why Muslims aren’t at the forefront of positive media attention.They very rarely are. If they are, we feel we are expected to feel relieved, excited or grateful.
Why are Muslim victims not humanised in painstaking detail, as White victims of terror and even White terrorists are? Think Manchester. Think Je suis Charlie. Think about the killer of Jo Cox described as a timid man who loved volunteering and gardening.
When Mills refers to the political system of white supremacy that’s made the world what it is today, we can see how this relates to what is erased in media narratives about Muslim lives, communities and deaths.  Again, as Mills reminds us, this erasure is never accidental, but reflects, both wittingly and unwittingly, the status quo of white supremacy.
Humanising whiteness
That’s how racism operates at every level. Not just demonising Muslims, but importantly humanising white terrorists, white criminals, white regular folk, white politicians, white everyone.
White supremacy is reproduced everywhere. Seemingly benign words and actions relentlessly repeated by the institutions of politics and media are often not virtuous or harmless. They serve to perpetuate the myth of white innocence, white compassion, white saviours or white fragility. Whiteness as the norm. And construct everyone else as the opposite. As abnormal, and as deviant.
If we don’t educate ourselves on the meanings, practices, and systems of racist oppression, how can we ever even begin to disrupt and dismantle these insidious injustices?
Ask. Read. Reflect.
It’s imperative then that we keep on asking important critical and nuanced questions. We question. We read. We reflect. We write. And we continue until we better understand how racism and white supremacy operate at every level in society to keep us down, keep us ignorant and keep us oppressed.
Dr Sadia Habib is author of Learning and Teaching British Values (Palgrave, 2017). She is co-founder of The Riz Test and co-editor of The Bookslamist.  You can follow her on Twitter on @educ_research. 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Arabs now realise the Golan Heights can only be recovered by armed resistance

By Abdel Bari Atwan 
Veteran Arab journalist Abdel Bari Atwan says that by recognising Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, the U.S. is telling Syria it can only recover its occupied territory by force.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights did not come as a surprise. It was only to be expected given the shameful defeatism Arab regimes are displaying these days.
Their failure to react forcefully or practically to Trump’s recognition of occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal capital” removed any obstacle to his latest move. In such circumstances, he could soon go on to recognise the annexation of the West Bank, which he no longer considers to be occupied, and to support Israeli designs on other territories.
A senior Hezbollah official who spoke to Raialyoum suggested that there are positive aspects to this decision: It has ruled out any prospect of any Syrian government seeking to recover its occupied lands through negotiations, and left it with no option other than armed resistance in all its variants – ensuring that the country remains within the “Resistance Axis” for decades to come.
Successive Israel prime ministers tried to lure Syria out of that axis by holding out the prospect of giving back the Golan Heights through negotiations. Successive U.S. presidents colluded in that deception. But the Netanyahu/Trump duo has made things clearer – it has demonstrated that the negotiations were a lie, the promised peace was a mirage, and the prospective return of the Golan Heights was never more than a big ruse.
The same happened in the case of the 1993 Oslo Accords with the PLO and the 1994 Wadi Arba agreement with Jordan.
With his decision, Trump has unwittingly legitimised the launch of armed resistance to liberate the Golan Heights – as in the West Bank, Gaza, and South Lebanon. So does the near-unanimous international opposition that encountered his endorsement of Israel’s annexation of the Heights.
Armed resistance 
Israel is trying to use force to impose facts on the ground, while exerting pressure on its allies to accept them as new realities. It has been proven in practice (in South Lebanon, Gaza and during the early stages of the 1973 war) that this policy can only be countered by force.
It was painful to witness some of the reactions to this provocative and insulting American step. Worst of all was the failure of the Syrian opposition to come out clearly and frankly against this theft of a precious part of their country with no legal or moral justification. The Golan Heights do not belong to the current Syrian government or to President Bashar al-Assad, who these factions oppose, but to all Syrians since time immemorial.
The Golan Heights









The reaction of the Arab regimes was nearly as bad. Some of them dragged their feet before issuing statements opposing the move – for more than a day in the case of some Gulf governments. That was disgraceful in the full sense of the word.
The Israeli occupation state was thrown into a state of confusion by a single missile fired by besieged resistance fighters in Gaza that hit a building north of Tel Aviv. One can only imagine what would happen if many more missiles, much more capable, were to start hurtling down on Israeli targets from a reactivated Golan Front.
Some say this idea is far-fetched. They note that the Golan Front was kept quiet by the Syrian regime for over 40 years. That is true. But times and circumstances have changed. The US has now blessed Israel’s annexation of this part of Syria, after trying for eight years to fragment the entire country but failing due to the resilience of the Syrian army and state. Syrian air defence missiles ended Israel’s impunity in the skies, and now it faces the prospect of being confronting with thousands of ground-to-ground missiles.
The army that succeeded in recapturing most of Syria’s cities is certainly capable of recapturing the Golan Heights. It represents the entire country, and has acquired unprecedented combat expertise and skills. This is not only our judgement: Israeli military experts are saying the same thing.
What’s the real plan?
A final point needs to be mentioned: Trump’s unlimited and naked support for Netanyahu, and his flagrant intervention in the Israeli elections in his favour, suggest that a plan is being prepared. Its features may not emerge until after Netanyahu is re-elected with the support of the president of the world’s strongest power.
What could these be? Waging war on Iran and its allies after the implementation of the second phase of sanctions that aim to stop all Iranian oil exports? A re-occupation of the Gaza Strip? An assault on Lebanon in a desperate attempt to destroy Hezbollah? Or possibly a military invasion of Syria?
These are hypothetical questions to which we have no answers. What we can say, in all confidence, is that any US plans – whether in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine – are doomed to fail, and to backfire catastrophically on those who hatch them.
Netanyahu has been bombing Gaza relentlessly, yet still seeks Egypt’s mediation for the third time in less than two months to halt missiles strikes from the Strip. He has ordered more than 200 airstrikes on Syria, but failed to achieve any of his aims, whether removing Iranian forces from the country or preventing missile deliveries to Hezbollah.
The writing, therefore, is on the wall.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, March 29, 2019

Security, water and oil: Hidden reasons why Golan matters to Israel

In yet another blow to international law, the United States President Donald Trump, with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, on Monday signed a proclamation, officially recognising Syria’s Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

There is hardly a whimper of protest from any US politician; after all they brag about their country as a promoter of human rights, democracy and justice. 
The majority of the American politicians apparently see no wrong in Trump’s disdain for international law. Even in the Democratic Party, which is quick to pounce on him after almost every tweet he writes, most politicians make no criticism of Trump’s policy on Israel.  

In May last year, when Trump binned international consensus and recognised the whole of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, there was little opposition within the US, though the move dashed the freedom hope of millions of Palestinian people and earned international censure.  No wonder, Trump had to fear none when he signed the Golan Heights declaration.
The Golan Heights region belongs to Syria.  It had been an Ottoman territory before Britain and France, just as two thieves would split their loot, shared the Middle-Eastern region between them in terms of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement during World War I.  This criminal deal, along with the Arab tribal sheikhs’ betrayal of their Ottoman Sultan, is the root cause of almost every problem besetting the region today. 

Israel captured the Golan Heights during the 1967 war and has since built settlements for its Jewish people.  Israel annexed the territory in 1981, but neither the United Nations, nor any country, had recognized the annexation until Trump on Monday did so. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 497 condemned the annexation, stating “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction, and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect”.  
The annexation also violates Resolution 242, which emphasises “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”. 
Emboldened by the endorsement of the majority of Americans through their silence and enthusiasm to mollify the Israeli lobby, Trump displays no qualms over his disrespect for UN resolutions and international law. Sadly, only a few realise that such disdain is a feature of Fascism. 
Trump, the most pro-Zionist president in US history, would not mind being a Fascist to placate Israel, for it will win him the pro-Israeli white evangelical votes at the 2020 presidential election.  Monday’s proclamation is seen by most political analysts as a gift from Trump to Netanyahu to bolster his chances at next month’s general elections, when he is facing corruption charges at home.
"It appears that Trump’s action on Monday was part of Israel’s Plan B after its Plan A came a cropper. Plan A was to create a civil war in Syria, help the insurgents through overt or covert measures, overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, balkanize the country and install puppet rulers who will cede Golan Heights to Israel"
Electoral prospects apart, the question now is: What will Trump do next to serve Israel?  After Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, will he declare the entire West Bank as part of Israel – as demanded by the hardcore Zionists? Is this Trump’s much-touted Middle East peace plan?
It appears that Trump’s action on Monday was part of Israel’s Plan B after its Plan A came a cropper. Plan A was to create a civil war in Syria, help the insurgents through overt or covert measures, overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, balkanize the country and install puppet rulers who will cede Golan Heights to Israel.  
The entry of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia to the Syrian war to prop up President Assad scuttled the plan, forcing Israel to set in motion its Plan B. 
Why is the Golan Heights, Syria’s western territory, so important to Israel?  Israel has built more than 30 Jewish settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. Some 25,000 Israelis live there, in addition to the original inhabitants, the Syrian Druze people. The security of the Jewish settlers is one reason.  
Another reason is water. The Golan Heights is fertile and rich in water resources such as the Jordan River basin, the Yarmuk River and underground aquifers.  One third of Israel’s water requirement is met by Golan water sources.  

The Golan Heights also has military and strategic value, as it is a high altitude plateau that overlooks low lying areas in Syria 
and Israel.
Besides, security and water, the Golan Heights has another important asset – OIL. Israeli and US companies have plans to commercially exploit this oil discovered only a few years ago. But Israel is prohibited from selling the Golan oil in the international market because under international law, an occupying nation cannot profit from resources of an occupied area. With the US now recognising the Golan Heights as part of Israel, US companies such as Genie Energy which is connected with the George W. Bush era Vice President Dick Cheney and media mogul Rupert Murdock will now face no legal obstacles to extract Golan oil and ship it to the US market. 
Trump’s outlandish declaration has been renounced by the United Nations, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Arab world.  At the United Nations, European countries refused to endorse Trump’s proclamation, which came at a time when US politicians in a bipartisan show of support paraded to the AIPAC -- America Israel Public Affairs Committee a.k.a the Jewish Lobby -- conference in Washington DC to give their oath of allegiance to the state of Israel. 

Trump’s fascist action came also at a time when the Gaza Strip was bracing for an Israeli attack after a rocket fired from the Palestinian territory hit an Israeli village, injuring seven people, including two infants. But there was little mention in the mainstream US media that the rocket attack came after Israel during the past 12 months killed nearly 300 Palestinians, including children, disabled people and medics. The protesters were taking part in the Great March to demand that they be allowed to go to their villages in the occupied West Bank. 
In the pro-Israeli US media, including the CNN, the fact that Trump violated international law was hardly discussed. Their argument seems to be if Russia could annex the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, Israel could annex Syria’s Golan Heights. A helluva argument! If this is the line the US media are taking, shouldn’t they keep their mouths shut when China proclaims the nine-dash line or the so-called cow tongue in the South China Sea as Chinese 
sovereign territory? 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)