What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens who lived in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the official Israeli version, the vast majority fled into the depth of Syria by the end of the war. According to military documents and eyewitness reports, tens of thousands were expelled in a transfer that reminds that of the residents of Lod [Lydda] and Ramle [al-Ramla] in 1948.
Israeli eyewitness: “[W]e saw a big group of Syrian civilians, a few hundred people, gathered in front of tables with soldiers sitting behind them. We stopped and asked a soldier what they were doing. He answered they were doing pre-expulsion registration. I’m not a softhearted person, but I immediately had the feeling that something here wasn’t right. I still remember what a bad impression this sight left on me. But it was, de facto, like it was [with the Arab populations] in Lod, Ramle and other places in the War of Independence.”
*UPDATED* IOA Editor: As in 1948, the “Israeli narrative” tries to sweep Israel’s ethnic cleansing crimes under the rug. As in 1948, official Israel lied about the fate of the local population during and after the war and so did Israeli historians, as this story reveals.
It is not our right or responsibility to lecture the Palestinian leadership on what they should do. That is up to the Palestinians to decide. But it is very definitely our responsibility to focus attention on what we should be doing. Of prime importance is to educate and organize the American public and to develop popular forces that can overcome the dominant propaganda images that sustain the US policies that have been undermining Palestinian rights.
IOA Editor: And much more from Noam Chomsky on the US and Israeli dynamics of the Occupation, and on approaches available to the anti-Occupation movement, including detailed comments on BDS.
Adalah lawyer Abir Baker: “The Shin Bet is facing an internal crisis over this arrest and the settlers are trying to exploit that with their campaign. Many members of the Shin Bet are settlers themselves and think of these extremists as their colleagues, not as the enemy. The line between the Shin Bet and these extremist organisations is very blurred.”
In recent years, interest in the pre-state Revisionist underground movements has grown among West Bank settlement youth. These young people want to give the nationalist Lehi and Etzel (Irgun Zvai Leumi) movements a more prominent role in Zionist history and aggrandize figures who sacrificed themselves for the Land of Israel.
IOA Editor: There is a natural continuity between Israel’s pre-state right-wing terrorist organizations and today’s settlers, who are sometime the very same individuals, their children, or followers. The “Lehi” (“Stern-Gang”) and “Etzel” (“Irgun”) mentioned here are best known for their 1948 war crime of the Deir Yassin massacre, which played a key role in the ethnic-cleansing of Palestine that followed.
Jonathan Cook writes about the rich tapestry of discriminatory laws and practices designed to marginalise, weaken and exclude Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens.
Israeli settlers took over a Palestinian home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City today, evicting about 45 members of an extended family which has occupied the building for more than 70 years.
Participants in May’s Turkish-sponsored flotilla to Gaza have been offered “Palestinian citizenship” as a gesture of thanks. But after learning that the Palestinian Authority is refusing to issue passports to some Gaza residents, most of them decided to decline the offer.
Saeb Erekat: “We are in a situation where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. There is a cost if we agree [to direct talks] and a cost if we don’t.” Mr Erekat stressed the dismay among ordinary Palestinians over the lack of diplomatic progress. Supporters of a two-state solution like himself were losing legitimacy, he added.
Michael Sfard: “Either way, even if wounding of my client was the result of negligence and not criminal intent -even then the State of Israel has a moral, ethical and legal obligation to pay for her treatment.”
Security forces in the West Bank continue to arrest people identified with Hamas… The same security authorities that have won praise from the occupier for the quiet they’ve achieved while the occupier acts: confiscating land, demolishing homes, expelling people, arresting children, preventing free movement and killing.
“The situation in Gaza has to change,” he told businessmen in Ankara. “Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”
Around 300 Bedouins living in Israel’s Negev desert have been made homeless after police raided their village and razed their homes. Israeli activists said 1,500 police arrived in Al-Arakib village at dawn. They destroyed 30 to 40 makeshift homes and uprooted hundreds of olive trees belonging to the villagers.
IAF officer: “There are very high mountains in central Romania with a flat area around them and this unfamiliar terrain … provided the crews with a unique environment for training that cannot be carried out in Israel” … As Israeli-Turkish relations began deteriorating … so far as joint air force exercises go, Romania is now Israel’s closed European ally.
IOA Editor: Of all probable future Israeli targets, high altitude training can only serve to emulate conditions in Iran.
[A]utomation makes killing cheaper… the demand for remote-controlled machines is stoked by the large savings in defence costs. A drone operator can be trained in a day; a pilot may need years of expertise to fulfil the same mission.
Haneen Zoabi: “It took us 40 years for us to admit that we were even Palestinians. Another 15 years passed before we realised that the peace process started under Oslo had been a disaster. The Zionist project was to domesticate its Arab citizens as the hewers and drawers of water. But the carrot-and-stick approach failed, and now we see Israel is prepared to throw away its liberal side to control us. We were passive once and now we are becoming active about our national identity.”
A decision by Israel’s Supreme Court to double a 15-month jail term for a policeman who shot dead an unarmed Palestinian driver suspected of stealing a car has provoked denunciations from police commanders and government officials.
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