How to Steal a Country?

Human Wrongs Watch By Walid Salem* 

11 Jun 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service — You start by appropriating  pieces of land in different places, followed by occupying the land and the territory, and then grab the country, change its space and landscape.

Dr. Walid Sal

All of this to be usually done on the name of modernization, and the transformation from underdevelopment to civilization..

Easy!

In order to do so, you get the support of a mother country, or mother Countries, who will give you supporting declarations, and offer you financial support and control over the so called “state land” and some economic privileges as well.

Easy!

In the case of Zionism, it will start in the Pre-1948 by taking the state land with the British support, and buying some pieces from big owners here and there, up to six percent of the land of Palestine till 1948.

The British to help by allowing the Zionist settlements to build their own economy, and their independent security forces, also by granting them the monopoly over the new companies of electricity and Dead Sea products established in the 1920’s.

Easy!

After 1948, the new State of Israel to declare most of the land of Palestine after it was ethnically cleansed, as an absentee and state land. That was followed by taking the crucial portion of the land of Palestine by expropriation. These lands to become the land of “Jewish people” owned firstly by the The Jewish National Fund (Keren  Kayimet),  and later most of the lands were moved to the ownership of the “ State of Israel Land Authority”.

Much easier!

Zionism started then by taking small part of the land by purchase in the pre- 1948 period( not more than six percent), followed by appropriating the majority of the land after 1948, coinciding the establishment of Israel that inherited the country that was called Palestine, and inherited its territory, space and the landscape as well.

Easy!

In the post 1967, the 1948 emerging state started establishing the settlement of Gush Etzion directly after the 1967 war, while a settler movement called Gush Emunim (The Block of the faithful) started Kiryat Arba, a and the settlements in the heart of Hebron followed by other settlements in other places of West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem reaching today the number of 636,000 colonial settlers.

Also Easy! If you appropriated the big part of the country in 1948, why then not to continue and appropriate it all!

While East Jerusalem is De Jure annexed (According to the Israeli law and in complete violation to the international law), the Area C is a De Facto annexed, and in its way to be De Jure annexed. The plans for that annexation are ready.

Uri Ariel the Minister of Agriculture suggested last year annexing Area C, and deporting its population to areas A and B. His suggestion ( which is also the proposal of his boss in the Jewish Home Party Mr Naftali Bennett), became already a plan that is under implementation as a new B’tselem report this week indicated in regard to the collective evacuation of the Bedouins from the areas around Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and Hebron.

Also the Knesset Committee of Civil and Security Affairs, discusses in their 4th of June meeting what it called as the “Palestinian strategic takeover of Area C”. Adding to that the new laws to enforce the Israeli law on the colonial settlements, prevent the Palestinians to submit cases directly to the High Court of Justice, and the new military order released in the last weeks which will accelerate the process of Palestinian houses demolition in Area C.

All of that was followed by the new declarations for building new settler colonial units in area C, and in East Jerusalem.

Saeb Erekat, the Head of the PLO Negotiations Department  said yesterday in the anniversary of the 5th of June 1967 that the occupation that continued over 51 years already” Was transformed to Colonialism”.

A new situation emerged then which will require a different kind of therapy both by the Palestinians and by the international Community.

It is noticeable that this unilateral approach to create” The whole Israel land” as a fact in the ground is combined as well with the plans for the “Completion of Israel inside its 1948” territory.

In this regard one can see the resolution of the 37th Zionist Conference of 2015 that steps should be taken to “Zionize” the Negev and the Galilee. The Israeli High Court resolution of last April to evacuate Um Al Hiran village in the Negev is just one of the last signals of that process, followed two days ago by the decision of the Minister of Housing Yoav Galant to build new five Jewish settlements in the Negev.

Besides that one can see the attacks on the Palestinian Knesset members and the attacks against the Palestinian demonstrators such as what happened in Haifa two weeks ago.

Very very easy: You displace and following you replace. Also you keep attacking and oppressing the “Leftovers”.

The question is: What is the end story of this displacement/ Replacement intertwined process?. It is noticeable that the Palestinians are still to be considered not as human beings, and nor as a people.

But since 1897 they were and still considered to be as merely an obstacle on the face of the expansion of the Zionist project. This obstacle must be removed where ever it makes a problem according to this perspective. This is the way that it goes.

Extremely Easy!

Today we reached a point were Gaza, the tiny Strip of 360 square kilometers, and resided by more than two million of which the majority are 1948 refugee, is considered to be in the best cases the place where the Palestinian State will be established while surrounded by all the restrictions that we see, while West Bank will follow to path of Jerusalem of getting annexed to Israel as a whole or at least two third of it (Area C).

Very Easy plan of one party unilateral dominance on the expense of the other party, and as such a recipe for one option only, which is the continuation of the antagonism for another one hundred years or so as much as Zionism does not recognize the Palestinians.

Let us notice: Despite all what Zionism did since 1897, the Palestinians inside Palestine are already now a majority of the population of the historical Palestine without the 1948 and 1967 Refugees being included.

Will the Zionist solution be by considering them as a “demographic threat” to get rid of? Or it will reach a point of looking for reconciliation? The second option does not look to be likely!

——-

*Dr. Walid Salem is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

He was born in East Jerusalem in 1957 and teaches democracy and human rights at AlQuds University.

He is a writer of thirty books and training manuals, and tens of research papers on Democracy, civil society, citizenship, refugees, and Jerusalem. He is also a consultant, evaluator, and trainer for several public and private bodies.

Salem trained more than thirty thousand Palestinians on these issues since 1990, and, since 1993, he is the Director of The Centre for Democracy and Community Development, East Jerusalem.

He is the Coordinator of Middle East Citizen Assembly as regional network of experts and activists on citizenship issues that include participants from 19 countries from the region since 2004.

He has lectured at several international conferences and seminars about democracy, Jerusalem, refugees, and development in Palestine.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 11 Jun 2018: TMS: How to Steal a Country?

2018 Human Wrongs Watch