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Haider Eid says the rise of the BDS movement, the eruption of the Great March of Return, and the outpouring of demonstrations against Israel are in complete contradiction to the Palestinian leadership who still hold up the Oslo peace process and the two state solution at Palestinian’s ultimate goal. Eid says there is a strong need for an alternative program that makes the De-Osloization of Palestine its first priority.
Last week, the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung reported that Israel asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to stop funding the Jewish Museum in Berlin, among other institutions. The reason behind the demand: the museum’s exhibition on Jerusalem “presents a Muslim-Palestinian perspective of the city.”
Two years of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as a Middle East peacemaking team appear to be having a transformative effect – and in ways that will please neither of them.
Like the 403 other Congo nationals in Israel, Elijah (not his real name) faces deportation any time after January 5. He says he won’t go. “I’m not safe back in Congo. The same people who forced me to run away from there are still in power.”
When Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality served Murad Hashimi with a demolition order for the home he built 20 years ago, he was given two options: demolish the house himself, or wait for Israeli forces to destroy his home, and then pay them a large demolition fee. “The decision to destroy my house by my own hands was difficult, but I had to do it for economic reasons,” Hashimi tells Mondoweiss. Due to the high costs of renting demolition equipment, the Hashimi family worked with activists to start a GoFundMe page to help alleviate the financial burden. “Where else in the world do you have to ask strangers for money so they can help you demolish your home?” he asks.
Israel has stepped up its efforts to demolish the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks on Israelis in recent days, a policy that has been widely criticized for years as collective punishment. In addition, Israel’s Misterial Legislation Committee approved on Sunday a bill that would see the families of accused Palestinians attackers forcibly expelled from their homes and transferred to other areas of the West Bank.
The ripple effects of Thursday’s outburst of violence in the occupied West Bank continued to be felt on Friday, as Palestinians woke up to news of more arrests, clashes, and plans of collective punishment by the Israeli government.
On Monday December 10th, Esther Farmer, along with dozens of members of the Bubbie Brigade, joined over 400 New Yorkers in protesting the Anti-Defamation League. “This self-proclaimed civil rights group is sending American cops to be trained by the Israeli military. And we are horrified,” Farmer writes.
Nada Elia writes, “Finally, the fantasy of the two-state solution is dead. As people across the political spectrum from the right to the left agree that Israel controls historic Palestine in its entirety, the question now seems to be whether the one de facto state, from the river to the sea, will be Jewish, or democratic.”