Endless Nakba

Endless Nakba

by Stephen Lendman

Palestinians are as powerless as Jews were in Nazi Germany. They're denied fundamental rights everyone deserves.

They face daily persecution, collective punishment, extrajudicial viciousness, economic strangulation and endless ethnic cleansing.

Israel calls legitimate resistance and self-defense terrorism. Endless Nakba marks daily life in Palestine - Israel high crimes committed with impunity.

Millions of Palestinians suffer at the hands of a ruthless regime ignoring their fundamental rights.

The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council highlighted "the 67th year of forced displacement from, and within, (Palestinians') ancestral homeland."

Israel continues committing grave breaches of international law - often with rubber-stamp judicial authorization.

On May 5, Israel's High Court ruled an estimated 700 Umm al-Hiran village Israeli citizens can be forcibly displaced for exclusive Jewish development.

According to Justice Elyakim Rubinstein:

"The state is the owner of the lands in dispute, which were registered in its name in the framework of the arrangement process; the residents have acquired no rights to the land but have settled them (without any authorization)."

False! Displaced residents were transferred to the village by Israeli military decree in 1956. It's been their legal home for almost 60 years.

They petitioned against eviction in November 2013. They argued forced displaced for exclusive Jewish development violates their fundamental rights.

Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel coordinator Amjad Iraqi called the ruling the first High Court one authorizing exclusive Jewish development at the expense of Arab citizens.

It signifies Israel can forcibly displace Arab citizens from all villages it wishes to make way for Jewish development.

In other words, Muslim Israeli citizens have no rights whatever. Israel can discriminate against them ruthlessly.

"(T)housands of Bedouin citizens are now in even greater danger of imminent displacement with Israeli law turned even further against them," Iraqi explained.

Evicting Bedouin citizens is part of a greater longstanding Israeli ethnic cleansing program - ongoing since 1948 to make Israel and Occupied Palestine as exclusively Jewish as possible.

About 1.7 million Palestinians are Israeli citizens. They're treated like fifth column threats.

Dozens of discriminatory laws oppress them. Tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens live in so-called unrecognized villages.

They're denied electricity, water, education, healthcare and other basic services. They endure home demolitions, forced displacements and Israeli security force violence.

Adalah launched a Save Umm al-Hiran campaign "to raise awareness of the village's struggle and demand cancellation of the residents' eviction."

It urges others to join their action for justice. Adalah attorney Myssana Morany expressed outrage against a blatantly discriminatory Israeli Supreme Court decision benefitting Jews at the expense of Arab citizens deserving equal rights.

Its ruling "contradicts the essence of the rule of law, since it is the obligation of an administrative authority to strive for equality, not just in its meaning as relating to all as equals, but also in terms of relating to different people differently," she said.

"(T)he court refused to see the human, social, historical and political aspects and ignored the state’s responsibility for the situation it created. Instead, it took advantage of the legal opportunity to remove the residents."

"The Attorney General too, in his refusal to find an overall solution to the problem of construction without permit, defends the rule of law in only its formal aspect, while ignoring the years-long institutionalized policy that created the serious shortage of housing in Arab society."

Longstanding Israeli policy is ruthlessly discriminatory. Arab citizens and occupied Palestinians are denied fundamental rights afforded solely to Jews.

Don't expect Israel's new harder than ever hardline regime to change things. Expect greater than ever Palestinian pain, suffering and misery.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen [at] sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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