'Israeli Claims of Democracy Absurd'

Source: PressTV

Contrary to its claims, the Zionist regime of Israel, which dispossesses the vast majority of Palestine's original inhabitants, is the anti-thesis of a democratic society, an analyst tells Press TV.

Interview with Ralph Schoenman, author of The Hidden History of Zionism

East Jerusalem Palestinians Being Evicted From Their Homes

Source: The Independent

Catrina Stewart

A 60-year-old law is being used to evict Palestinian families and expand Jewish settlements in the coveted suburbs of East Jerusalem

At the top of a steep and ramshackle street in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, a rusty, battered gate opens into an unremarkable house. Less than a quarter mile away, though, stand the Al Aqsa mosque and the Wailing Wall, two of Jerusalem's most venerated holy sites, making it a very attractive piece of real estate indeed.

For Mohammed Sumarin, 52, whose late uncle owned this house, this is home. He was born here, raised here, and has never lived anywhere else. But now he faces losing his home of more than half a century to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an Israeli charity that claims the house for its own and is battling to evict the family.

Silwan, sprawled along the southern flank of Jerusalem's Old City, is the politically sensitive epicentre of the struggle for East Jerusalem, coveted by Palestinians as the capital of their future state, and claimed by Israel, which annexed the eastern sector after the 1967 Six Day War, as an integral part of an undivided Jerusalem.

The evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are widely seen as deliberately aiding Israeli settlers in staking the Jewish claim to the eastern part of the city to thwart a final peace agreement that could cleave the city in two.

For the past month, the Sumarins have been living with the knowledge that they would have to leave their home by the end of the month or face forcible eviction. "We are not living like human beings," Mr Sumarin, a severe diabetic who is bedridden for much of the day, says. "We cannot sleep at night. We live in fear. We expect them to come at any moment and throw us out."

Waiting in the wings is Himnuta, the shadowy arm of the JNF, which declares itself the owner of the house. Himnuta, unlike the Fund, seeks to acquire property across the Green Line. Israeli and Palestinian activists fear that if Himnuta gets hold of the house, it will, as it has many times before, lease the house to El'ad, an extreme religious settler group that has established a bible-inspired archaeological park in the area and covets this neighbourhood for the Jews.

Bombed For Nothing: Everyday Life on Israeli-Gaza Border

Source: RT
Nadezhda Kevorkova

Despite all calls for peaceful negotiations, rockets and violence are part of life on the Israeli-Gaza border. As civilians bear the brunt of the conflict, Faisal Malaka from Gaza told RT’s Nadezhda Kevorkova how it feels to live there.

“Why do you always come after the war and destruction? Why don’t you want to stop them, before they start?” says local farmer Faisal Malaka, aged 22. He is reluctant to talk because he doesn’t think “they” do much good.

By ‘them’ he means the Israeli army officers, who are just a few hundred meters away. The border is demarcated with an electric fence and towers. Faisal says the fence is lethal. His house is closest to the border.

“Europeans have been writing about us in their newspapers since 1948. But nothing is changing. You are the fourth or the seventh to have come here since the war of 2008. Journalists can’t stop them,” Faisal tells the children to go inside the house and not to look out of the windows. He allows me, though, to take some pictures of the dents on the house walls and the steel shutters on the windows that are meant to protect his family. We had seen the dents and shutters from a distance. 

But children will be children: they sit in a corner for a while, then come and hang around the adults again. 

Faisal is a manager. A graduate of Gaza’s Islamic University, he has a Master’s degree with honors.

“The Israelis say, you are illiterate and ignorant peasants and you don’t know how to read or write.”

“We are the most educated people in the Middle East. The more they take from us, the more we learn. Before, I could work in the garden. The only thing I can do now is to learn. There’s nothing funny about it,” Faisal says in response to my forced smile.

His family used to have orchards, but not anymore.

“Since 2000, Israeli bulldozers have destroyed all the trees here. They’ve cut down all the orange, lemon, almond and olive trees. They’ve destroyed our hen-house. They buried our house in sand twice – in 2000 and 2009. On the 22nd of January, they came and buried our house in snow up to the roof?” Faisal tells me twice about the bulldozer as my mind refuses to take it all in.