{"id":25597,"date":"2021-05-11T20:04:58","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T20:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/synerjies.com\/?p=25597"},"modified":"2021-05-11T20:06:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T20:06:01","slug":"sheikh-jarrah-the-latest-episode-of-israels-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synerjies.com\/2021\/05\/11\/sheikh-jarrah-the-latest-episode-of-israels-apartheid\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheikh Jarrah: The Latest Episode of Israel\u2019s Apartheid"},"content":{"rendered":"

The threat to evict Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah district in East Jerusalem had become a rallying cry for Palestinians and an emblem of the very unbalanced conflict between Israel and Palestine. This threat is part of a wider effort to remove Palestinians from East Jerusalem to reinforce the Jewish control of East Jerusalem. The Israeli goal is to prevent it from being included in future peace negotiations as the capital of the Palestinian state and secure the future of Jerusalem as a Jewish capital for the Jewish people. A textbook example of ethnic cleansing, and a traditional Israeli tactic to move things on the ground to shape negotiations in their favor.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s been happening for the last few days is, effectively, the highest point of violent clashes in years between the two sides to the extent that some are talking about the prospects of a third intifada. While it is pretty early to call the unravelling unrest a third in intifada, it could definitely evolve to be one especially after the horrible escalation of violence against the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and in Gaza. Currently, Israel is escalating violence by firing rockets into Gaza after clashes in Jerusalem Monday left hundreds of Palestinians injured. More problematically, there is nothing happening on the ground that indicates any concrete international move against Israel to force to stop this apartheid.<\/p>\n

Context<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Since the start of the month, the prospect of the evictions prompted protests and confrontations between Palestinians and the Israeli police and Jewish extremists. Hence and out of calculations, the Israeli Supreme Court delayed by up to 30 days a decision on whether to expel Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem out of fear that the hearing would intensify the already in place wave of unrest. Tensions reached a peak at the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on Friday night, where police officers threw grenades on and shot rubber bullets into worshipers praying.<\/p>\n

On social media, videos showed Israeli police inside the Aqsa mosque, the holiest of places during the holiest of months. This outraged Muslims around the world making the hashtag # SaveSheikhJarrah an international trend.\u00a0 \u00a0Things were at that level of clashes and online campaigning, till a certain point which is when Hamas fired rockets into Israel giving it a space to talk about self-defense and retaliate. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza left at least 24 dead, including nine children. According to Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the rockets killed 15 militants. Meanwhile, at least six were injured in the Israeli city of Ashkelon on Tuesday morning after a residential building was struck with rocket fire from Gaza. Additionally, the (IDF) said that 200 rockets have been fired from Gaza towards Israel since the hostilities flared Monday.<\/p>\n

Till the moment, the Israeli government is communicating that the Sheikh Jarrah case is a private real-estate dispute between the Palestinian families and a Jewish settler group. This, indeed, unwitty narrative aims at camouflaging the very political nature of the attempted displacement and how it relates to future negotiations as mentioned earlier, but a quick look at the origins of the case would demonstrate how political had it been all along. Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, it eventually gave ownership of the Sheikh Jarrah homes to the Jewish trusts. The trusts later sold it to right-wing settlers, who have tried to evict the residing Palestinians ever since. Some families have already been forced out, while the others are in various stages of the court process like the families that are currently clashing with the Israeli police forces.<\/p>\n

Israel an ‘Apartheid’ State: <\/strong>A PR Liability?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

After few days of the clashes, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry sent a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding Israel\u2019s actions against the Palestinian people in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The letter sent called on ICC to take a public stand against crimes perpetuated by Israel against the Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Even before the crisis, ICC\u00a0had already announced it would investigate war crimes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Israel has said it will not cooperate with the probe.<\/p>\n

Also, in a recently published report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of pursuing a policy of apartheid against Palestinians. Omar Shakir, the Watchdog’s Israel and\u00a0Palestine director, said the report\u00a0was “the starkest finding. HRW has reached on\u00a0Israeli conduct in 30 years.” The 213-page document\u00a0alleges that Israel\u00a0is committing the crime of “apartheid”\u00a0by seeking to maintain Jewish domination over Palestinians. It demonstrated that there was a “present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government \u2026\u00a0methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis\u00a0while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.” The report concluded that “the oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution.”<\/p>\n

These criticisms are against a backdrop of an international public that had become more aware of the history of the struggle and the continued Israeli violations against innocent people. This is especially true in the current times of social media where users can see for themselves in real time what\u2019s happening by other users and not having to rely on the coverage of the traditional media. Sheikh Jarrah crisis is, in fact, a case in point in this, because Palestinians have been live-feeding to the whole world the Israeli violence against civilians. These videos set in motion a great public momentum that resulted in #SaveSheikhJarrah being an international viral. Of course, this is not to suggest that social media is a totally free space, because still there is a significant censorship and manipulation. In this crisis for example, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter has admitted that user posts reporting on evictions by Israel in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood were removed. However, the social media platforms said it was a technical error, after being accused of deleting posts and suspending accounts to keep what\u2019s happening in the dark.<\/p>\n

For any other state such publicity would be a major PR liability affecting the reputation of a country, but in Israel case it is not as of a worrying issue as much it would have been for others. They count on their skills in re-writing the narrative, relying on their international political and diplomatic powers as well as major PR agencies. So, it\u2019s been the case that if there happened to be a liability, it is usually a temporary one especially among non-Arab and non-Muslim communities.<\/p>\n

The Outlook<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Probably, the intensity of the clashes will increase because of the following factors:<\/p>\n