By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The National Bureau for defending land and resisting settlements ( nbprs ) stated in its latest weekly report , that in a report recently issued by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) in which it accused the State of Israel of committing crimes against the Palestinians that require accountability, as it reported some of the Israeli violations in a way different than the previous ways. It is 213-page report used clear and direct language directed to Israel. Its findings relied to various sources, including Government Planning Documents. The HRW stressed that the results of the report are concentrated on violations that are committed against the Palestinians living in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. It added that the Israeli authorities are committing a range of violations against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, including large-scale confiscation of land, denial of residency rights, suspension of civil rights, and amounts to inhumane acts and serious violations of the basic rights of Palestinians.
In Jerusalem, for example, the government’s plan for the municipality, including the western and occupied eastern parts of the city, specifies the goal of “preserving a solid Jewish majority in the city, and even the demographic proportions it hopes to preserve.” Violations include: the tight restrictions on movement, the closure of Gaza, the confiscation of more than a third of the West Bank land, the harsh conditions in parts of the West Bank that have led to the forcible transfer of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, depriving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their relatives of the right to residencym and the suspension of the basic civil rights of millions of Palestinians. The report was welcomed by the various official and popular Palestinian circles, who considered it as a great push for the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to consider and investigate the crimes of the occupation.
The report concluded with defining the Apartheid in the “Apartheid Convention” of 1973, and the persecution under the “Rome Statute” establishing the International Criminal Court) of 1998 confirmed based on these definitions and Human Rights Watch research, that the Israeli authorities are committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution committed against humanity.
Israeli policy of apartheid and racial discrimination is evident in the forms of Judaization that continues in the city. Last week, the occupation municipality in occupied Jerusalem, in cooperation with the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage and the Jerusalem Development Authority began erecting the so-called Wadi Al-Jouz Park. The project extended over an area of 25 dunums and included session corners, games and sports facilities, walking paths, cycling and shaded areas. The project is supervised by the Mori company of the occupation municipality. A two-year period has been allocated to complete the project, which is related to bicycle paths in the city, public institutions and schools to be established in the region in the future. Moshe Lion, the Mayor of the Occupied Jerusalem, said I congratulate the establishment of this large project.
Within the context, the occupation is working rapidly to establish a tourist center at the bottom of the Al-Buraq Wall, the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as the occupation authorities took advantage of the Corona period and the decrease in tourism in the city to accelerate the establishment of the tourist center as the occupation continued excavations under the Al-Buraq Wall to establish huge religious and tourist Jewish halls and centers to serve Israelis and extremist settlers, and to establish their Talmudic rituals and prayers. Since the beginning of the year 2021, the “Israeli Antiquities Authority” has intensified work in building and developing the place and establishing the tourist center. The center will be linked to the halls established by the occupation under Al-Buraq Square, and then linked to the tunnels in the area, and the tourist center includes several halls and small rooms for displaying films, video clips, and representative plays explaining Talmudic narratives. The days of the Temple period for the service of the “temple priests”, and also contains pictures of the alleged temple.
Under the support of the occupation government led by Netanyahu, settlers escalated their attacks on Jerusalemites, and the official Israeli television showed video footage showing settlers throwing stones at Palestinian cars. The video footage also showed that settlers have set up roadblocks on a road leading to Jerusalem, stop passing cars, and attacking the Palestinians, and it becomes clear that all the settlers participating in the attacks on Palestinian cars are followers of the ultra-Orthodox religious trend.
In Jerusalem, the alleged Temple Groups have intensified their mobilization and incitement for a massive and collective storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the twenty-eighth of the blessed month of Ramadan, coinciding with the so-called unification of Jerusalem. The spokesman for the so-called temple organizations, Asaf Farid called on his supporters to restore morale, stressing that the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be open to storming on the morning of the 28th of Ramadan and spreading everywhere, in synagogues and religious schools, in preparation for the storming by the thousands until it regains the Temple Mount from the Arabs.
List of Israeli Assaults over the Last Week Documented by the National Bureau:
Jerusalem:
- Handing demolishing orders to residential facilities in the Al-Issawiya town.
- Torching 3 cars near the village of Beit Iksa, northwest of Jerusalem, and writing racist slogans.
- Attacking the Palestinians properties, houses and vehicles with stones in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
- Performing provocative Talmudic rituals at the Moroccan Gate, and evacuated the Palestinians there.
Hebron:
- Attacking the houses of citizens in the villages of Tawana and Al-Mafqara in the Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, and throwing stones at them, this led to the injury of a number of them.
- Firing tear gas bombs against the citizens, causing a number of suffocation injuries.
- Storming agricultural land with an area of 25 dunums in the Baqa’a area, east of Hebron, adjacent to the Kiryat Arba settlement in an attempt to seize it.
- Installing new monitoring cameras in the Jaber neighborhood in the Old City of Hebron.
- Storming the Ibrahimi Mosque to perform Talmudic rituals under strict Israeli protection, and they attacked the citizen’s homes and properties as well.
Ramallah:
- Bulldozing agricultural lands belonging to a number of citizens in the villages of Deir Qaddis and Ni’lin, in preparation for establishing a settlement outpost.
- Attempting to bulldoze lands in the village of Ni’lin, west of Ramallah, to pave a 2 km long settlement road in the lands of the villages of Deir Qaddis and Ni’lin.
Nablus:
- Attacking the civilians’ vehicles with stones on the road between Jenin and Nablus, causing damages to some of them.
- Storming the village of Burqa, north of Nablus amid firing of rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas bombs.
- Storming archaeological area in the town of Sebastia and closing the site and the roads leading to it.
Salfit:
- Uprooting 13 olive trees in the village of Haris, west of Salfit.
- Bulldozing the lands of citizens in the town of Broqin, west of Salfit, with the aim of expanding the settlement of Brokhin”
Jordan valley:
- Expelling 4 Bedouin families living in Khirbet Ibziq, northeast of Tubas, in the Jordan Valley, with the aim of seizing the lands and its surroundings as firing targets for its forces during the military training.
- Handing notices of expelling to the people of Khirbet Homsa Al-Fawqa in the northern Jordan Valley under the pretext of conducting military training.