By Dr. Elias Akleh

The world’s attention is focused on the Syrian war against terrorism, on the Egyptian demonstrations and conflict, on the Tunisian demonstrations and on the daily Iraqi terrorist car bombings. The Israeli terrorism against Palestinians on the other hand has been dropped off the radar. The Israelis are taking advantage of this to intensify their terrorism, persecution, ethnic cleansing, and large scale land theft of Palestinian land.

The Israeli occupying government had intensified its Palestinian land expropriation. The Israeli terrorist army would declare a coveted piece of land as a military area, they evict its inhabitants, surround it with barbed wires, raze the land uprooting all trees, make the land barren, and eventually allow extremist squatters to move in first with mobile homes and later start building their colonies.

The Israeli military has been concentrating on two major areas; the Naqab (Negev) area and the Jordan Valley. The Naqab is home for almost 40 thousand Palestinian refugees, who were evicted from their original Palestinian towns during the Nakbah of 1948. They moved to Naqab for temporary refuge until the war ends for the hope of returning to their towns later on. When the Israeli government prevented them from returning they had no choice but to build their own shanty towns; a total of 40 villages. These villages were not recognized by the Israeli civil authority and did not provide any services to them. The Palestinians had to build their own infrastructures; homes, streets, schools, electricity and water. The Israeli government has schemed what is known as “Praver’s Plan” or “Prawer-Begin Plan” aiming to confiscate 850 dunums of land, demolish 40 Palestinian villages, and substitute their Palestinian inhabitants with newly Jewish immigrants especially from African countries such as Ethiopia. When the residents refused to evacuate the Israeli military bulldozers moved in and started demolishing the villages. The residents did not leave but rebuilt their homes again; the Israeli bulldozers came back and demolished the homes again and again.  Some villages have been demolished many times. The village of al-Araqib had been demolished 54 times so far.

Many Bedouin tribes have been living in the Jordan Valley for hundreds of years. The valley is located in the occupied West Bank yet Israeli government considers it as vital for Israel as Tel Aviv and as Jerusalem. The Israeli terrorist forces are moving in that area lately and evicting all the Bedouin tribes in the region. The Jordan Valley; extending from the Tiberias Lake north to the Dead Sea south, has a large concentration of underground water resources and Israel wants to put its hands on the entire valley. The Bedouins have been warned to leave. The Israeli army had moved in and started demolishing their tents, their barracks, their stables, and scattering their sheep flocks. Palestinian Bedouin communities such as Kherbet Makhul had been demolished four times so far. The latest was perpetrated by Israeli army at 2 o’clock in the morning while Bedouins were asleep. In an attempt to force the Bedouins to evacuate the army and extremist Israeli settlers have poisoned water wells causing the deaths of many cattle. When some European diplomats, such as the French Marion Fesneau-Castaing, attempted the delivery of humanitarian aids; tents and food, to these Bedouins last Friday October 4th the Israeli terrorist army attacked her, dragged her out of her truck, threw her on the ground, and drove the truck away confiscating it.

The Israeli government has also intensified its policy of Palestinian home demolition. This policy is a part of the bigger plan of graduated Palestinian cleansing and eviction out of their home land. The terrorist Israeli practice of demolishing Palestinian homes, infrastructure and sources of livelihoods continues to devastate Palestinian families especially in East Jerusalem and Area C in the West Bank under direct control of Israel. This policy is going on while Israeli armed extremist squatters are allowed to illegally build their small colonies on top of confiscated Palestinian hills and enjoy the protection of the Israeli army.  The Palestinians are not allowed to build new homes or even build any add-ons to their homes to accommodate their family expansion. The Israeli terrorist forces would exercise their early hour routine of driving their bulldozers into some Palestinian suburbs to demolish a Palestinian home that was built without a permit. The army breaks into the Palestinian home, give the Palestinian family ten minutes to evacuate and start demolishing the home. Palestinians are denied building permits. Many Palestinians are given the order to demolish their own homes otherwise the Israeli army would demolish it and the home owner will be charged exuberant fees. In contrast Israel continues its plans of illegal colonies (settlements) building. This Israeli systematic policy of Palestinian home demolishing and colony building on confiscated Palestinian land contravenes the 4th Geneva Convention.

As part of the whole plan of graduated choking and strangling of Palestinian communities the Israeli government is intensifying its theft of Palestinian water sources, contaminating those they could not acquire with sewage waste water, and poisoning Palestinian water wells. While many Palestinian cities suffer routine interruption of water supplies the Israelis are enjoying themselves in swimming pools, fresh water supply, and wasteful daily showers.  A  study by the UN Human Rights Council reported that deep water drillings by the Israeli national water company Mekorot and the Israeli agri-industrial firm Mehadrin in the occupied Jordan Valley have caused the drying up of Palestinian wells and springs. Almost 80% of all drilled water from this area is consumed by Israeli illegal colonies in the West Bank. The Palestinians are not allowed to drill their own water wells. Israeli forces routinely destroy Palestinian pools for collecting rain water under the justification of construction without permit. Many other water wells and water springs have also been destroyed, poisoned and contaminated when Israeli colonies intentionally dump their sewage waste water into Palestinian cities and agricultural land. The aim is to devastate Palestinian agriculture and economy. The British Foreign office has published confidential documents confirming Israel’s water theft policy recommended by David Ben-Gurion in 1941 when he wrote “We have to remember that for the Jewish state’s ability to survive it must have within its borders, the waters of the [rivers] Jordan and Litani.”

Israeli army has also intensified its arrests and kidnapping of Palestinians especially children under the accusation of stone throwing. Many Palestinian children students are routinely stopped on their way to school at Israeli military checkpoints, searched, humiliated, and at times arrested. Israeli forces conduct routine middle of the night raids against Palestinian homes, where they break into the homes, smash its furniture and contents, terrorize families, drag young boys from their beds, blind fold them, dump them on the floor of a military jeep, and drive them to a prison within Israel, where their parents are not allowed to see them. The children are harshly interrogated, threatened, tortured; some are raped and then imprisoned.

Palestinian schools and students have suffered in the recent weeks a remarkable escalation in attacks by Israeli soldiers and also by extremist settlers, according to reports by Tadamun Foundation for Human Rights. These attacks, including raiding the schools and destroying their contents, as well as detaining and assaulting students, have been on the increased especially by settlers, who stormed and attacked students like what had happened in Jalud School and Beit Dajan School in Nablus, and Khader School in Bethlehem.   Such terrorist practices have been intensified to a point that led many British intellectuals to write a letter entitled “Action for Palestine” published in the Guardian newspaper calling on the Israeli authorities to end Palestinian kid’s abuse.

The terror of extremist colonizers/squatters (settlers) has been notably intensified. Following the open callings of virtually every Zionist Israeli leaders such as Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, Rafael Eitan, Arial Sharon among many others, and the calling of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel for ethnic cleansing, massacres, and eviction of Palestinians from their home land through the use of assassinations, intimidations, land confiscation, and all types of terrorists acts , the new Zionist Israeli generations are being raised on such terrorist values since their kindergarten school education. The most violent are Yeshiva (religious schools) students. Colonizers/settlers are armed and trained on the use of weapons by the Israeli army. Their youth are encouraged to form gangs and to attack Palestinian towns and terrorize its inhabitants while under the protection of Israeli soldiers. According to the Israeli Ynet News the number of cases of violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians is on the rise: Olive groves are being uprooted, property is being vandalized, and mosques and cemeteries are being desecrated. Numerous such acts are being perpetrated against an innocent, helpless public (this is the logic of the "price tag" policy) yet the state is barely investigating them and rarely brings the culprits to justice.

Religious Extremist young Israeli occupiers/settlers in the occupied West Bank routinely attack Palestinian farmers and destroy their crops. Thousands of olive trees, the main crop for Palestinians, have been uprooted, torched, damaged, sprayed with chemicals, or cultivated by Israeli colonizers. Such crimes against olive trees are expected to intensify with the beginning of the olive season this month. Israeli spraying planes dump chemicals on Palestinian crops just before beginning of season. Water wells are poisoned and farm cattle are shot randomly. Israeli colonies/settlements have become launching points for the many terrorist attacks against Palestinian communities.

Israeli gangs vandalize Palestinian schools, mosques, churches and cemeteries. They destroy school properties, holy books and praying carpets in mosques, vandalize churches and burn their properties.  According to a report in the Times of Israel, Israeli gangs don’t just attack Muslims and their mosques, they also had intensified their attacks on Christians especially in Jerusalem, where they spray anti-Christian graffiti on churches, vandalize Christian properties, and attack and spit at Christian priests and nuns in the streets of Jerusalem. All Palestinians; Christians as well as Moslems, are the target of such extremist Israeli young gangs. There has been significant increase of such attacks, which reached 589 attacks between January and August 2013 compared to 370 attacks during last year.

During the last few months Zionist Jewish religious extremist organizations have intensified their breaking into and desecration of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the second holiest place for Moslems, and attacked worshippers under the protection of fully armed Israeli soldiers. Encouraged by the lack of Arab and international criticism and by encouragements of some Israeli MPs the number of such attacks on the mosque is on the rise with increasing number of violators in every incident. These extremist religious organizations believe that while the Arabs are busy with their inner conflicts they can occupy Al-Aqsa mosque and limit the number of Moslem prayers the same way they had done in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in the ultimate goal of destroy the mosque and the building of their alleged temple.  This is a very dangerous move and will invite the wrath of the whole Islamic World not just the Arabs, and will lead to devastating wars.

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By Dr. Elias Akleh eakleh@ca.rr.com