This week Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is in the States, and a lot of people are going to see him, so it seemed a good time to get up this video I made last July of Halper in the Old City, showing me the “Judaization” of East Jerusalem.
This is an important video because you can see how Israel strangled any possibility of two states by creating Jewish colonies all through the heart of Palestinian Jerusalem in an effort to engulf the Old City– a project that continues by the minute.
Halper and I stand on the rooftop of the Austrian Hospice, a quarter mile from the Al Aqsa Mosque, and look east and south, mostly. The video is 9 and a half minutes long. Here are some of the highlights:
–The first minute or so we look east at the Mount of Olives at a Jewish settlement. You can’t really make it out, but you can see the minaret on the horizon, and the Jewish building is right next to it.
–Also in the first minute, we look south at Ateret Kohanim, a religious Jewish settlement in the heart of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. At 1:37 you can see three big Israeli flags fluttering on top of this settlement (just to the left of the white flagpole in the foreground).
–At 2:00, Halper talks about 17 settlements, many funded by American Irving Moskowitz, all through the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, which spill out before us, beyond the walls of the Old City. These are all landgrabs. “Once you’re in, you’re in.” The Supreme Court orders them evacuated, but nothing happens.
2:31 In the distance on the southeast (Halper’s and my right) you can see the Israeli settlement of Nof Zion on the horizon (just to the left of the flagpole). To see the same terrain from Nof Zion in the south, here’s another video with Halper.
3:00. Halper turns to our left, the north, and shows me Israeli flags on a building on the north wall of the Old City, not far from Damascus Gate. “The message is, Dont think we’re confining ourselves to the Jewish quarter. This whole city is ours.”
5:43. Halper points out that Israel is planning a bypass road to go from south to north to connect all these colonies east of the Green Line. It will go from Bethlehem to Nof Zion, to the Mt of Olives and on up to Shilo in the northern West Bank. Because right now the settlers we see are “pioneers,” Halper says. “The road will open it up. They [settlers] are isolated today, but they know the road is coming… Then you won’t have to go through Arab alleyways [to get to your house].”
6:25. Halper talks about the death of the two state solution.
“We [at ICAHD] have said the two state solution is dead for a long time. We’re going to come out and say one state is the only option… That’s the meaning of these settlements.”
I say that that day, Dani Dayan had a piece in the NYT saying, “Stop talking about the two state solution,” all this is Jewish land.
Halper tells me about the Israeli plan to Annex Area C, which is 60 percent of the West Bank, but contains less than 5 percent of the Palestinian population. The Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed from this land. There were 200,000 Palestinians in the Jordan Valley in 1967. Today there are less than 50,000.
At 8:30, Halper tells me about the goal. When Israel annexes Area C, it will say, “Area A and B, that’s not our problem.” The Palestinians can have a state on that land. “Our hands are clean. We’ve nailed it down. There’s no occupation… That’s where Dani Dayan and the Levy Report are all headed.”
Halper continues: Israel knows that “the international community never accepted our annexation of Jerusalem, but they never did anything about it.” So now there will be some bitching and moaning about Area C, but nothing will happen.
“It’s over. That’s the end. Let’s think about Iran.”
They are JEWISH colonies. “Israeli” encompasses the 20% of citizens who are Palestinians. “Jewish” and the Jewish settlements don’t. Palestinians with Israeli passports are not allowed to live in the settlements BECAUSE THEY ARE EXCLUSIVELY FOR JEWS.
I still think Halper should have called his book “a Jew in Palestine”
Halper “once you’re in you’re in” 17 settlements around the old city. Not sure why Halper does not use “illegal” settlements. ILLEGAL.
Great video
Areas A,B,C. systematic planning for Apartheid
The ICAHD site makes this claim: “For almost that long we have argued that the two-state solution is dead and gone…”
Five years ago this October, at the Sabeel Conference in Boston about the Apartheid paradigm in I-P, an observer wrote about Halper’s presentation: “Halper exhorted the assemblage to take the apartheid-in-the-occupied-territories route because (this was said hurriedly, emphatically) ‘the single state is a non-starter’. ”
Halper has plugged in his birthright and his brilliant gate-keeping over the years has helped us arrive at this pretty pass.
Phil Mona Altawahy’s spray paint job made Up with Chris Hayes on Sunday
The implied message in the sad comments by Jeff Halper, is that he lends his support to a future Palestine that is “Jew free”. Jeff does not qualify any of his comments with the questioning of the Palestinians in allowing Jews to live in an independent Palestine with dual citizenship for example. Israel has and can have Palestinians living amongst Jews, but not the other way around. Don’t you think Philip, that the real racists and supporters of racism comes from the Palestinians, aided by fools like Jeff Halper?
At Camp David 2000, Arafat was offered vertical sovereignty over the holy sites, with Jews retaining horizontal sovereignty. The mosques, being above ground, to the Arabs, and anything below ground to the Jews. Remember the mosques are built on top of the ruins of the Jewish Temples ( 1 & 2 ). The Ten Commandment tablets may be still somewhere in earth below the mosques, so Israel says, leave things as they are. No digging that could have any impact on what lies below ground. The Palestinians rejected this at Camp David 2000. The Palestinians have no intention of sharing, thus they are not interested in peace. So they refuse to negotiate directly with Israel and let the UN and Europeans, and lost souls like Halper, do their dirty work for them, hoping they will apply economic pressure on Israel. Jews cannot turn their backs on the Temple Mount and the Palestinians know this. And yet they still refuse to consider sharing. And remember, the Palestinians have never, in all of history, controlled Jerusalem.