Demonstrations against the Israeli government’s plan to further its apartheid policy took place in the occupied territories and around the world Wednesday.
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By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip — backed by allies across the globe — organized protests on Wednesday against the Israeli government’s looming plan to further its apartheid policy by annexing up to a third of West Bank territory under U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called vision for peace for the region, which was unveiled in January and championed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In Gaza City, the Associated Press reports, thousands of protesters marched with Palestinian flags and signs decrying the annexation plan as a “declaration of war” on the Palestinian people. Following that demonstration, which reportedly ended peacefully in the early afternoon, other rallies were planned in the West Bank.
Protest signs captured by photojournalists said that “Palestinian Lives Matter” and “The annexation is contrary to the U.N. Charter, and a fundamentally illegal act.”
The demonstrations in the occupied territories came after Hazim Qasim, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas, said Tuesday that Hamas and all the other Palestinian factions “are united” against Israel annexing any West Bank territory. Qasim added that Wednesday would be a “day of real rage.”
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Solidarity rallies and car caravans were planned throughout Wednesday in California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Oregon. A dozen Democrats in the U.S. House and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday released a letter vowing to oppose further military aid to Israel if its government moves forward with annexing parts of the West Bank.
Solidarity protests were also held outside the U.S. consulate in the South African city of Sandton and in South Korea, the Middle East Eye reported Wednesday. “Protests in Jordan, which has threatened to take action should Israel move forward with its plans,” the outlet noted, “have meanwhile been postponed to Saturday, activists said on social media.”
After Netanyahu signaled on Tuesday that annexation could be delayed beyond his initial July 1 target date, Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis told Israel’s Army Radio station the process would not begin on Wednesday. He said the Israeli government is still sorting out details with the Trump administration and he now expects the annexation to occur later this month.
The anticipated annexation and Trump’s broader plan have drawn sharp critiques from the international community, which considers all existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, along with politicians and diplomats from various countries, have urged the Israeli government to resist annexation altogether.
Protests in Gaza Strip, July 1, 2020, against Israel’s annexation plans.
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Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor argued in a piece Wednesday that “whatever Israel decides, a one-state reality looms.” As Tharoor wrote:
“If Netanyahu presses ahead with annexation, prominent Palestinian officials fear a definitive end to their already enfeebled statehood project and a future shorn of equal rights of citizenship, where their lives and movements are forever curtailed by the imperatives of the Israeli security state. ‘It means that I, as a Palestinian, will not be able to do anything without their permission,’ Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told my colleague Ruth Eglash. ‘It means they will control my movements, my planning, my borders and my access to everything. …They are trying to suffocate me, bury me, and they think I will stand for it?’”
Others contend that years of Israeli occupation, land grabs, and settlement expansion in the West Bank and around East Jerusalem had already cemented this reality. “Contrary to the popular narrative, annexation will not kill the two-state solution — you cannot kill something that has long been dead,” wrote Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian American scholar. “Rather, annexation is dragging and displaying the two-state solution’s corpse before the world.”
“If you ask Palestinians in the Jordan Valley how they feel about annexation, many will tell you that they thought we had already been annexed long ago,” wrote Salem Barahmeh, executive director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “This is why we cannot help but ridicule the world’s growing, alarmist, and existential outcry as we approach July 1.”
Barahmeh, writing for +972 Magazine on Monday, added that “the Palestinian struggle today is not just about fighting annexation, which we must continue to do. It is about dismantling the entire system of apartheid. The world must recognize this reality for what it is, and impose political and economic pressure on Israel to dismantle that system. If the world is more interested in maintaining the current reality because it feeds a convenient façade, then the world itself is complicit.”
“Instead of maintaining this grand illusion, what we need now are systematic solutions that build a new social contract between the river and the sea, where everyone can be free with equal rights,” Barahmeh concluded. “This is not about who you are or where you [are] from, or whether you are Palestinian or Jewish—it is about the values you stand for. We cannot let another generation of Palestinians grow up under apartheid.”
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The Quisling Arab stooge dictators have been in bed with the Zionist Regime for decades. They will do nothing.
Bonesaw Bin Salman of Shady Wahabia has been trying to incite a war against Moslem Iran for years, offering to pay Trump and Netanyahu to do it. How contemptible is that? If Arabs have no self respect and will sell their own granny, why should anyone else respect them? Arabs always fall for colonial divide and rule games, Sunni against Shia. They always fall for it. If they won’t fight for their own interests, why should anybody else? Maybe one day they will discover an ounce of backbone and self respect. Until then, they will just be pushed around, bombed, invaded, robbed, killed, tortured and humiliated. Arabs always stab each other in the back. They have been doing that for hundreds of years.
The Zionists dropped 20,000 tons of bombs on their Gaza Concentration Camp in just one of their periodic pogroms, a greater explosive yield than Hiroshima . Egypt did nothing. Not a murmur of protest as Israeli aircraft used Egyptian air space for their bombing runs. Didn’t lift a finger.
Bin Salman, Qatar, Dubai, Sudan were falling over themselves to do deals with Israel and set up embassies as Zionist thugs were gunning down Palestinian kids with explosive bullets and British sniper rifles. Syria, Iran and Nasrallah showed some backbone, but even there you see the same thing. Egypt and Syria joined in the US invasion of Iraq, even though Iraqi troops fought and died in Syria in 1973 to stop a Zionist advance.
The corrupt, servile Palestinian leadership under Abbas has been grovelling to Washington and Tel Aviv for decades as their land and water is stolen and their people are butchered and humiliated. They aren’t going to change. They will make a few noises, but it’s all hot air and wind. The Jews know that and will just grab everything they want with complete impunity, as they have been doing for decades. They know they will always get away with it, no matter what they do and how many times they do it. America is Israel’s bitch. AIPAC, Adelson, Singer, Marcus pull Trump’s strings. Whoever replaces him will be in their pocket. The same goes for all the bought and paid for whores in Congress. As in the UK and EU. Nothing will happen, not even a minor purely token boycott of illegal settlement products.
Nobody is rising up against anything.
The Arabs always sell themselves to foreign invaders and oppressors.
And they sell themselves very cheap.
They won’t fight for themselves.
Why should anyone else fight for them?
Nothing surprising about these `new` repulsive revelations which have been going on for decades with the western world being silent.
hXXps://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/07/01/the-awful-truth-behind-the-apartheid-death-squad-trained-american-police-video/
Much more needs to be said and done by the leading news publications around the world in order to put an end to this abhorrend crime.
Especially American news outlet are to be blamed for their lack of non- coverage with numerous anti-racist intellectuals resolutely critical of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Western Mainstream Media variously censor or white-wash the nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, and grossly human rights-abusing conduct by Apartheid Israel.
There need to be voices raised,streets occupied with demonstrations like those we`ve seen resently across the US in the coming months.
stupid ignorant american goyem ( um, dah, thats plural for a stupid goy singular LOL) dont quite grasp that once palestine goes so does the world, but you’ll will find out in duw-e time swo enjoy youre last little taste of freedom you fools