How Palestinians in Jerusalem are being targeted in a campaign of ethnic cleansing
Jonathan Cook
Czech president Milos Zeman offered Benjamin Netanyahus ultra-nationalist government a fillip during his visit to Israel last week. He inaugurated a cultural and trade centre, Czech House, just outside Jerusalems Old City walls. At the opening, he expressed hope it would serve as a precursor to his country relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. If so, the Czech Republic would become the first European state to follow US President Donald Trumps lead in moving the US embassy in May.
It is this kind of endorsement that, of late, has emboldened Mr Netanyahus government, the Israeli courts, Jerusalem officials and settler organisations to step up their combined assault on Palestinians in the Old City and its surrounding neighbourhoods. Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967 and then annexed, as a way of preventing a viable Palestinian state from emerging.
Israel immediately began building an arc of Jewish settlements on Jerusalems eastern flank to seal off its Palestinian residents from their political hinterland, the West Bank.
More than a decade ago, it consolidated its domination with a mammoth concrete wall that cut through East Jerusalem. The aim was to seal off densely populated Palestinian neighbourhoods on the far side, ensuring the most prized and vulnerable areas the Old City and its environs could be more easily colonised, or Judaised, as Israel terms it.
This area, the heart of Jerusalem, is where magnificent holy places such as the Al Aqsa mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are to be found.
Under cover of the 1967 war, Israel ethnically cleansed many hundreds of Palestinians living near the Western Wall, a retaining wall of the elevated Al Aqsa compound that is venerated in Judaism. Since then, Israeli leaders have grown ever hungrier for control of the compound itself, which they believe is built over two long-lost Jewish temples.
Israel has forced the compounds Muslim authorities to allow Jews to visit in record numbers, even though most wish to see the mosque replaced with a third Jewish temple. Meanwhile, Israel has severely limited the numbers of Palestinians who can reach the holy site.
Until now, Israel had mostly moved with stealth, making changes gradually so they rarely risked inflaming the Arab world or provoking western reaction. But after Mr Trumps embassy move, a new Israeli confidence is tangible.
On four fronts, Israel has demonstrated its assertive new mood. First, with the help of ever-more compliant Israeli courts, it has intensified efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes in the Old City and just outside its historic walls.
Last month, the supreme court handed down a ruling that sanctions the eviction of 700 Palestinians from Silwan, a dense neighbourhood on a hillside below Al Aqsa. Ateret Cohanim, a settler organisation backed by government-subsidised armed guards, is now poised to take over the centre of Silwan.
It will mean more Israeli security and police protecting the settler population and more city officials enforcing prejudicial planning rules against Palestinians. The inevitable protests will justify more arrests of Palestinians, including children. This is how bureacratic ethnic cleansing works.
The supreme court also rejected an appeal against a Palestinian familys eviction from Sheikh Jarrah, another key neighbourhood near the Old City. The decision opens the way to expelling dozens more families. BTselem, an Israeli rights group, characterised these rulings as sanctioning the broadest move to dispossess Palestinians since 1967.
At the same time, Israels parliament approved a law to accelerate the settler takeover.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Nazareth
