"Gaza Island"

[Karee 4,190]

That's a big OR, isn't it? Those who didn't flee are now Israeli citizens, are they not?

So if you flee a war zone, you lose your citizenship? Cool.

[Golden Gate 530]

That's a big OR, isn't it? Those who didn't flee are now Israeli citizens, are they not?

Hmmmm. Why did they flee???????

[mawilson 2,133]

So if you flee a war zone, you lose your citizenship? Cool.

They didn't have any citizenship. There was no "Palestinian state".

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The land is either occupied (in which case it's under Israeli control) or it's not - then you count them separately. Can't have it both ways.

The source I used counted them the way the Israeli government counts them. I don't count colonized people as citizens of any occupier, and, apparently, neither do they. That's pretty consistent with ethnic cleansing.

Published 02:04 12.05.11Latest update 02:04 12.05.11

Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or, democratic Israel at work

While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 - over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force - it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us.

By Gideon Levy

It happened on the day after Independence Day, when Israel was immersed in praise of itself and its democracy almost ad nauseam, and on the eve of (virtually outlawed ) Nakba Day, when the Palestinian people mark the "catastrophe" - the anniversary of the creation of Israel. My colleague Akiva Eldar published what we have always known but for which we lacked the shocking figures he revealed: By the time of the Oslo Accords, Israel had revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank. In other words, 14 percent of West Bank residents who dared to go abroad had their right to return to Israel and live here denied forever. In other words, they were expelled from their land and their homes. In other words: ethnic cleansing.

While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 - over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force - it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us. Also with us is the goal of trying to cleanse this land of its Arab inhabitants as much as possible, and even a bit more. After all, that's the most covert and desired solution: the Land of Israel for the Jews, for them alone. A few people dared to say it outright - Rabbi Meir Kahane, Minister Rehavam Ze'evi and their disciples, who deserve a certain amount of praise for their integrity. Many aspire to do the same thing without admitting it.

The revelation of the policy of denying residency has proved that this secret dream is in effect the establishment's secret dream. There one doesn't talk about transfer, heaven forfend; nobody would think of calling it cleansing. They don't load Arabs onto trucks as they once did, including after the Six-Day War, and they don't shoot at them to chase them away - all politically incorrect methods in the new world. But in effect that's the goal.

Some people think it's enough if we make the lives of the Palestinians in the territories miserable to get them to leave, and many have in fact left. An Israeli success: According to the Civil Administration, about a quarter of a million Palestinians voluntarily left the West Bank in the bloody years 2000-2007. But that's not enough, so various and sundry administrative means were added to make the dream come true.

Anyone who says "it's not apartheid" is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so? Why is an Israeli allowed to marry a foreigner and receive a residency permit for her, while a Palestinian is not allowed to marry his former neighbor who lives in Jordan? Isn't that apartheid? Over the years I have documented endless pitiful tragedies of families that were torn apart, whose sons and daughters were not permitted to live in the West Bank or Gaza due to draconian rules - for Palestinians only.

Take Dalal Rasras, for example, a toddler with cerebral palsy from Beit Omar, who was recently separated from her mother for months only because her mother was born in Rafah. Only after her case was publicized did Israel let the mother return to her daughter "beyond the letter of the law" - the cruel letter of the law that does not permit residents of Gaza to live in the West Bank, even if they have made their homes there.

The cry of the dispossessed has now been translated into numbers: 140,000, only until the Oslo Accords. Students who went to study at foreign universities, businessmen who tried their luck abroad, scientists who went abroad for professional training, native Jerusalemites who dared to move to the West Bank temporarily - they all met the same fate. All of them were taken by the wind and expelled by Israel. They couldn't return.

Most amazing of all is the reaction of those responsible for the policy of ethnic cleansing. They didn't know. Maj. Gen. (res. ) Danny Rothschild, formerly the chief military governor with the euphemistic title "coordinator of government activities in the territories," said he heard about the procedure for the first time from Haaretz. It turns out that not only is the cleansing continuing, so is the denial. Every Palestinian child knows, and only the general doesn't. Even today there are still 130,000 Palestinians registered as "NLR," a heartwarming IDF acronym for "no longer a resident," as though voluntarily, another euphemism for "expelled." And the general who is considered relatively enlightened was unaware.

This is an absolute refusal to allow the return of the refugees - something that would "destroy the State of Israel." It's also an absolute refusal to allow the return of the people recently expelled. By next Independence Day we'll probably invent more expulsion regulations, and on the next holiday we'll talk about "the only democracy."

[Sofiyya 1,687]

West Bank demolitions highlight struggle for Jordan Valley

By Joel Greenberg, Published: July 5 (2011)

FASAYIL AL-WUSTA, West Bank — The Israeli troops and bulldozers arrived in the early morning and quickly got to work, tearing down shelters made of plastic netting and poles that had served as homes for about 100 people in this impoverished Bedouin community in the parched Jordan Valley.

The aftermath of the sweep last month against what Israeli authorities said were illegally built structures was still visible on a recent afternoon. Battered appliances, broken furniture, tattered clothing and other belongings that residents said they were prevented from removing were strewn in the dirt piled on the collapsed dwellings.

People took cover from the baking sun in makeshift tents constructed from the remains of their former homes and in others supplied by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Mobile tanks and electricity cables temporarily strung across the ground were the only sources of water and power.

“We have nowhere else to go,” said Talib Abayat, sitting in the shade of a lone tree.

The desolate scene reflected the state of the neglected Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley, an area that amounts to more than a quarter of the West Bank but remains largely under Israeli control, with wide gaps between the resources allocated to Palestinians and Israeli settlers.

Running along the West Bank’s border with Jordan, the Jordan Valley has long been considered an area of strategic importance by Israel, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has demanded a long-term military presence there as part of any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

Israeli settlements housing about 9,400 people line the road through the valley, scattered among ramshackle villages and encampments where about 80,000 Palestinians live. Nowhere in the West Bank is the contrast more stark between the settlements, with their intensively irrigated farmland, red-roofed homes and streets shaded by shrubs and trees, and the dusty Palestinian communities and their fields, dependent on limited water supplies.

A series of demolition operations last month underlined Israel’s claim to the area, which a recent poll showed most Israelis believe is part of Israel, not occupied territory, and populated mostly by Israelis. The poll was commissioned by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has asserted that there can be no Palestinian state without the Jordan Valley, which he called the Palestinian breadbasket. Yet with more than 70 percent of the area under Israeli control — designated as state land, military firing zones or nature reserves — the Palestinian Authority has little influence over the region’s development and the use of its resources.

Along with the demolitions at Fasayil al-Wusta, structures were torn down in two other sites in the Jordan Valley last month, part of what the United Nations and human rights group say is an increase this year in demolitions of Palestinian homes in areas of the West Bank that are under direct Israeli control.

According to figures compiled by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the Israeli authorities have so far this year demolished 103 Palestinian residential structures in “Area C,” the designation for the 60 percent of West Bank lands that remain under full Israeli control. In 2010, 86 structures were demolished, and in 2009, 28 were torn down, according to B’Tselem.

Planning policies that limit the growth of Palestinian communities in the Israeli-controlled areas leave little room for authorized construction, forcing people to build homes without permits, which are then torn down, rights advocates say.

Officials of the Civil Administration, the Israeli military government in the West Bank, say that the demolitions are carried out because Palestinians build illegally on state lands and in military zones and that similar measures are taken against wildcat building by Jewish settlers in unauthorized outposts.

Capt. Amir Koren, a spokesman for the Civil Administration, said master plans are being drawn up that would permit new building in Palestinian villages in Area C and cited broader plans to provide water and power hookups for large Bedouin encampments.

An official involved in building regulation, who spoke on the condition he not be identified by name because he was not authorized to speak on the record, said a plan that would allow construction in the area of Fasayil al-Wusta was expected to be approved soon.

In al-Hadidiya, another Bedouin community where shelters were torn down last month, Abdel Rahim Bsharat, 63, said his family had land-ownership registration going back many decades and had been living in the area well before the neighboring settlement of Ro’i was established.

Bsharat recalled that when soldiers came to demolish his family compound of shelters and livestock pens, an officer told him that it was a military zone and that he needed a building permit.

“I’m on my land. I don’t need a permit,” Bsharat said. “They want to empty the area. They want us to go.” He said settlers have fired warning shots at Palestinians herding sheep on the surrounding hills and ordered them away.

At Fasayil al-Wusta, where men earn about $15 a day doing seasonal farming work at the neighboring Israeli settlement of Tomer, people said they were in dire need after the loss of their homes and possessions. A Danish church group has contributed materials to help them rebuild, but the threat of more demolitions remains.

“We need a solution,” said Abed Yassin, standing near the wreckage of his shelter. “We need a place to live.”

Edited July 29, 2011 by Sofiyya

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

The Partition envisioned by the UN allotted the main Jewish population centers to the Jewish State, but still contained a 45% Arab population. This wasn't what the Zionists had planned - they wanted a Jewish State with a clear Jewish majority.

Zionist militias and terror gangs had also attacked additional territory before May 14, 1948 - outside what was designated in that Partition plan. This would have increased the Arab/Jewish population ratio even further - in Jaffa alone, by more than 80,000 Palestinians.

And this was not the only problem for the Zionists. Palestinian Arabs still owned and occupied the vast majority of the territory’s productive land and businesses.

This issue was discussed at length by Zionist leaders for decades before 1948. They are on record stating openly their plans to get rid of the Arabs, and admitted it afterward:

1923: "Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population - an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs...... Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important... to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through with playing at colonizing."

- Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 192

3

1937: "We must expel Arabs and take their places." 

- David Ben Gurion, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, 1985

1937: “In Dr Weizman’s opinion, it would be possible to transfer 100,000 Palestinians in 20 years, I.e. 5000 per year. He told of a plan to set up a fund for a large re-settlement. The Jews will contribute to this the amount of 1 million Palestinian pounds, and another 2 million pounds will be given…from the savings of the Mandatory treasury”

- Protocol of the 20th Zionist Congress

1937: “With compulsory transfer we have a vast area…I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it."

David Ben Gurion, Righteous Victims, p. 14

3

1937: "Didn’t we transfer Arabs from D’ganya, Keneret, Merhavya, and Mishmar Haemek? I do remember the nights on which Shmuel Dayan [the father of Moshe Dayan] and I were called to Merhavya to help ‘Hashomer’... carrying out [Arab] evacuation. What was the sin in that?"

- Yosef Baratz, one of the leaders of the Mapai Party, Expulsion of the Palestinians, p. 75

1940: "Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left."

- Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department in 1940, "A Solution to the Refugee Problem," September 29, 1967; also Documents from Israel, 1967-1973, p. 21

1948: “After attacking Lydda and then Ramla…what would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities…not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution…and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he remained silent, as was his habit in such situations…Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: “What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: ’Drive them out’ (garish otem in Hebrew)…Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook”

- Yitzhak Rabin, Soldier of Peace: The Life of Yitzhak Rabin” p. 140-141; also “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem” p. 207

1969: “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not either. Nahlal (Dayan’s own settlement) arose in the place of Mahlool; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Zsarid in the place of Huneifis; Kefar Yehusha’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”

- Moshe Dayan, Ha'aretz, April 1969

1979: “Great suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action…who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part. Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action…to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action.”

- Yitzhak Rabin, New York Times, Oct. 22, 1979; also The Birth of Israel, p. 101

Consider that than 80% of the entire land area of Israel is land that was appropriated from Arab refugees. Nearly a quarter of all buildings left standing in Israel in 1948 had been occupied by those Arabs. Ten thousand shops, stores, and other businesses inside the new Israel had been Arab businesses. Half of all the citrus fruit holdings in the new state had belonged to the Arabs. By 1954, more than one-third of the entire Jewish population of Israel was living on “absentee property” - most of it now “absorbed” into the Israeli state and the Israeli economy. The State of Israel quickly passed a slew of its own laws stating that all this was entirely legal and that the new status quo could not to be altered by any "foreign" interference.

Most tellingly of all, just eleven weeks after the State of Israel had been proclaimed - after publicly stating to the UN that it was calling on the Palestinians Arabs to “play their part in the development of the State” - the government of Israel formally announced that it would deny the refugees their right to return to their properties. And this had nothing to do with “security,” but, as Israel itself stated to the UN:

“On the economic side, the reintegration of the returning Arabs into normal life, and even their mere sustenance, would present an insuperable problem. The difficulties of accommodation, employment and ordinary livelihood would be insuperable.”

Because Jews had seized the Palestinians’ property and were now living in their homes and eating up the fruits of their labor.

We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed... we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them."

- The Other Exodus by Erskine Childers

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

That's a big OR, isn't it? Those who didn't flee are now Israeli citizens, are they not?

Civilians who flee a war zone are legally entitled to return to their homes, and this point is repeatedly affirmed by the UN and the Geneva Convention.

[Golden Gate 530]

They didn't have any citizenship. There was no "Palestinian state".

So that gives other people a right to take over their land, I guess???????

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Civilians who flee a war zone are legally entitled to return to their homes, and this point is repeatedly affirmed by the UN and the Geneva Convention.

It looks like that wasn't added to the Geneva Convention until 1949. I wonder if it was written in as a result of the 47-48 civil war.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It looks like that wasn't added to the Geneva Convention until 1949. I wonder if it was written in as a result of the 47-48 civil war.

And when did the State of Israel sign the Geneva Convention ?

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

It looks like that wasn't added to the Geneva Convention until 1949. I wonder if it was written in as a result of the 47-48 civil war.

Probably not, I just realized the 4th convention as a whole wasn't ratified until 49.

And when did the State of Israel sign the Geneva Convention ?

Did they sign it?

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

They did, with certain reservations

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

They did, with certain reservations

Btw they sign in 49....which means their current immigration policies are illegal.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Probably not, I just realized the 4th convention as a whole wasn't ratified until 49.

Did they sign it?

You could easily look this up. Israel signed the Geneva Conventions in 1949 and ratified them in 1951.

[mawilson 2,133]

So that gives other people a right to take over their land, I guess???????

Just because you happen to live somewhere doesn't mean you hold sovereignty over the territory.