Ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
JVL Introduction
Neve Gordon gives an overview of the relentless pressure exerted on Palestians to leave their homes in the West Bank, in the hills east of Ramallah, the Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills. This has, he stresses, been in the making for many years.
Bu, with eyes on Gaza, it seems to be coming to a head.
Here is the text of flyers, in Arabcic, left on the windscreens of cars in Palestinian villages:
You asked for a Nakba similar to 1948, so by God we will descend on you ... soon. You have one last chance to flee to Jordan in an orderly manner because afterwards we will destroy every enemy and forcibly expel you from our holy land that God has dedicated to us and commanded us not to retreat from.
This article was originally published by London Review of Books on Mon 30 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
Ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
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Presumably, the Settlers haven’t had the chance to read your previous piece about the Parents’ Circle. There, a seeming equality united the two bereaved fathers; they could share moments together because they had something that manifestly connected them, but this is not a common situation. Generally, the Israeli Jews do not consider the “Arabs” in any way equal. The very structure of the society, as expressed so crudely in the Nation State Law of 2018, spells it out for anyone slow to work it out for themselves.
The lies told to hide what happened between 1947 and 1949 were revealed as such decades ago; we know that the land was ethnically cleansed – an expression we learned to use in the former Yugoslavia – and then stolen by the state and sold to the JNF in a neat arrangement to stymy UN resolutions – whatever they’re worth.
If the Palestinians can learn to accept their second-class status, if they come to accept that the price of remaining on the land is perpetual harassment or worse; if they can encourage their children to persevere with school even though success won’t mean much and might not prevent the habitual and diurnal humiliation at the hands of soldiers and police officers, then perhaps they can find a corner to inhabit that no one else wants.
Demonstrators shout, “No justice, no peace!” But that’s not true. Sometimes you are ready to accept whatever peace you can find when you lose a child, like the fathers interviewed for the BBC, and who am I to question that?
But of justice there’s none and that’s the truth, so don’t pass it off as anything else.