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2023-09-02 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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‘It's like 1948': Israel cleanses vast West Bank region of nearly all Palestinians
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[972 Mag] Please put the link in correctly
In mere months, entire Palestinian communities between Ramallah and Jericho have been chased out by settler violence and state policies — paving the way for a total Israeli takeover of thousands of acres of land.
There are almost no Palestinians remaining in a vast area stretching east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. Most of the communities who lived in the area — which covers around 150,000 dunams, or 150 square kilometers, of the occupied West Bank — have fled for their lives in recent months as a result of intensifying Israeli settler violence and land seizures, backed by the Israeli army and state institutions. The near-total emptying of the region’s Palestinian population shows how Israel’s slow but gradual process of ethnic cleansing is continuing apace, effectively annexing large swathes of the occupied territory for exclusive Jewish settlement.
More than 10 settler outposts — which are illegal even under Israeli law, though the current far-right government is working hard to legalize them — have been established in this area over the past few years, with their settlers weaponizing shepherding as a means to take over Palestinians’ land and force them out. The few small Palestinian communities that remain in the area may also soon be forced to leave, out of grave fear for their physical safety and mental wellbeing. In the last year alone, hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in this way.
Technically, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from this area was not an official act of "transfer." Neither the Israeli army nor the Civil Administration — the occupation’s bureaucratic arm — arrived with trucks, loaded the residents onboard, and destroyed their houses.
But they didn’t have to: in the face of unremitting settler violence and crippling restrictions by the Israeli authorities, the Palestinian residents felt that they had no choice but to flee. Some packed up their modest belongings, others left them behind. Largely agricultural communities, they relocated to areas where it would be more difficult for them to make a living, without pastoral land, but where they would at least enjoy temporary peace of mind.
Palestinians from several of the displaced communities described the same pattern to +972: Israeli settlers arrive with their herds and prevent them from grazing on land where Palestinians have grazed for decades; then armed settlers would proceed to harass them day and night, even entering houses, without the army or police intervening. Everyone described the same, overwhelming feelings of fear and distress under the shadow of these settler invasions.
"It’s like 1948," said Mohammed Hussein, a resident of Ein Samia — invoking the year of the Nakba ("catastrophe") and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland during Israel’s establishment.
Waah, waah, it's Jewish land. Get used to it. Go to Egypt or Jordan if you're so scared. You're not under threat of existential destruction. Israel? IS.
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Posted by Harcourt Tholuse6841 2023-09-02 00:00||
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Posted by Grom the Reflective 2023-09-02 02:58||
2023-09-02 02:58||
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Posted by Herb Johnson6409 2023-09-02 03:52||
2023-09-02 03:52||
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