THE Secretary-General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Saeb Erekat has denounced the ongoing escalation by the Israeli government against its Palestinian citizens as ‘fascist’ and ‘extremist’, in the wake of a continuing demolition campaign targeting homes belonging to Palestinian citizens of Israel.
‘This escalation, characterised by home demolitions and other restrictions against Palestinians in Israel, as well as in the West Bank, and Jerusalem, is a result of fascist alliances between (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and extremist forces in Israel,’ Erekat said on Saturday at a gathering held in the occupied West Bank city of al-Bireh.
The gathering was held to show support for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and was attended by members of the PLO’s Executive Committee, members of the Central Committee of Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and a delegation representing Palestinian citizens of Israel headed by Muhammad Baraka, the head of the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel.
The meeting came in the wake of widespread uproar following a demolition campaign targeting Palestinians inside Israel, after Palestinian homes were razed to the ground last month in the Bedouin community of Umm al-Hiran and the central Israeli city of Qalansawe.
However, demolitions of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have reached a record high over the course of 2016. The aim of home demolitions is racist to the core. It is to forcibly displace Palestinians from occupied Palestine, regardless of their status as residents of the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem, or as citizens of Israel.
This drive to expel Palestinians from their homes comes after the Washington Post said, after interviewing Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, that his ‘vision, is for a Palestinian state in Gaza, with autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and full Israeli rule in areas where Jewish settlements are located – territory designated Area C under the Oslo Accords’.
Bennett said: ‘My vision is very clear and coherent, the words and deeds must support each other. A Palestinian state in Gaza. This already exists, they have an effective government, recognised borders and a military. Autonomy in Palestinian Authority areas. It is less than a state but it has a huge degree of self-governance.
‘Applying Israeli law on Area C. There are 500,000 Israelis living there and between 70,000 to 100,000 Palestinians. The Palestinians would be able to vote for the Knesset and they would represent a one per cent addition to Israel’s population, which is negligible.’
This is the plan that is already underway, to drive Palestinians out of Israel, and much of the West Bank, and to regard the tiny Gaza Strip as the Palestinian state. This will require ethnic cleansing, and killing, on a scale that has not been seen since the Second World War.
Erekat stressed in his remarks that the Palestinian people are ‘proud to fight the ethnic cleansing in Umm al-Hiran, Qalansawe, Nablus, and Hebron alike.’ For his part, Muhammad Baraka said similar gatherings would be organised in the future in Gaza City, Qalansawe, the Lebanese capital of Beirut, as well as the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
‘Discrimination and violence is no longer a local issue, and an occupying state cannot just do whatever it wants to the people it occupies. Thus, the world must know the details about what Israel is doing to our people,’ Baraka said.
All Palestinians, Baraka added, were suffering from the same reality that he said ‘emerged from the Zionist ideology, which is enacting various policies of racial discrimination against our people’. In fact, Israeli forces opened fire at Palestinian fishermen and farmers in separate incidents on Sunday morning in Gaza.
It is clear that 100 years after the Balfour Declaration when Britain promised Palestine to the Zionists, the Netanyahu regime, heartened by Trump’s victory in the USA and PM May’s 100% support for Israel, is getting ready to impose a massive ethnic cleansing on the Palestinians whose country they are occupying.
On the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration the British trade unions must take a 100% stand with the Palestinian people. They must spell out that in the massive struggles directly ahead in Palestine, they will support the Palestinian masses 100%, and give them whatever support that is asked of them, to make sure that not only does the May government apologise for the Balfour Declaration, but that the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is established and recognised worldwide in 2017!
