Israeli forces are rounding up Palestinians en masse inside Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory as part of what Israeli police are calling “Operation Law & Order”, following two weeks of Palestinian uprisings over Israeli aggressions in Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah, and Gaza.
Shortly after midnight on Monday the Israeli police announced plans to “launch an extensive arrest operation across the country,” targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel over the next 48 hours in order to “settle scores” and “close accounts.”
Israeli Hebrew-language media sites reported that the operation was approved by Israel’s Minister of Internal Security Amir Ohana and Police Commissioner Major General Kobi Shabtai, the latter of which instructed thousands of active officers and reservists to arrest a target goal of 500 Palestinians.
Ynet news reported that “a few days after recovering, mostly from the trauma in Lod (Lydd),” Israeli police realized that their “deterrence” policy had been “severely damaged.”
In the early hours of Monday morning, videos began surfacing on social media of Israeli police handcuffing, blindfolding, and rounding up Palestinians in the streets of Lydd (Lod), a historically Palestinian city in central Israel that became the site of massive Palestinian protests two weeks ago, after an Israeli setter shot and killed Moussa Hassouna, a resident of Lydd.
Ynet reported that police have already prepared consolidated cases against the Palestinians being rounded up, “with evidence that will allow a speedy indictment to be filed,” adding that the Israel State Attorney’s Office has already filed more than 140 indictments in all districts against some 230 defendants, “Arabs and Jews, some of them minors, for various offenses in the riots.”
While the Israeli police claimed the operation was targeting Palestinians “identified with criminal organizations,” Palestinian activists and rights groups have called Israeli authorities out for what they are saying is “pure collective punishment,” and a clear attempt to punish and suppress those who partook in protests as part of the ‘unity uprising.’
“The massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli police last night is a militarized war against Palestinian citizens of Israel”
Dr. Hassan Jabareen
“The massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli police last night is a militarized war against Palestinian citizens of Israel,” Dr. Hassan Jabareen, general director of Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said in a statement.
“This is a war against Palestinian demonstrators, political activists, and minors, employing massive Israeli police forces to raid the homes of Palestinian citizens. These raids are intended to intimidate and to exact revenge on Palestinian citizens of Israel – ‘to settle the score’ with Palestinians, in the Israeli police’s own words – for their political positions and activities,” Jabareen said.
One system for Palestinians, another for Jews
Monday’s arrest campaign was not limited to Palestinian citizens of Israel, however, with reports from Palestinian rights groups like Grassroots Jerusalem indicating that at least 15 Palestinians from Jerusalem were rounded up on Monday morning.
Local Palestinian media have also reported widespread night raids in the occupied West Bank in recent weeks, with Israeli soldiers targeting Palestinian activists, journalists, and youth who participated in recent protests in the territory.
In a report published on Monday, Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer pointed out that since April at least 1,800 Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and historic Palestine have been arrested and/or detained.
As for those who were arrested and rounded up in the weeks prior to Monday’s campaign, many Palestinians in places like Jerusalem are facing arbitrary bans on entering their holy sites, and are being forced to pay thousands of dollars in bail.
Addameer pointed out that while arbitrary arrest of Palestinians who participate in protests and Palestinian political life is common practice for Israel, the most recent escalation of Israeli state violence “notably escalated in its aim as a blanket repression and collective punishment of all who engage in protest, self-defense, and many more.”
“The existence of two different legal systems for groups living in the same area, highlighted by the escalation of recent events, clearly consecrates the Israeli apartheid regime, whether in Jerusalem and the 1948 occupied territories, or in the West Bank under the military regime”
Addameer
The group highlighted the fact that while many Palestinians, particularly those living in Israel, are being hunted down and indicted on charges of “incitement” and racially-motivated violence against Jews, Israeli settler violence is “afforded immunity and protection,” despite widespread documentation of Israeli mobs chanting “death to Arabs” and targeting Palestinians and their property in places like Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, and Akka — often in the presence of police.
Israeli media have reportedly widely on the case of three Jewish Israelis being indicted on “terrorism” charges for their participation in the lynching of a Palestinian man, 33-year-old Said Moussa, in the central Israeli city of Beit Yam.
Moussa’s lynching was broadcast on live Israeli television, as Jewish Israeli mobs pulled him out of his car and beat him within an inch of death, reportedly in the presence of Israeli authorities.
Haaretz reported that prior to the lynching of Moussa, “dozens of right-wing activists marched in the city and attacked a number of Arab-owned businesses. The rioters smashed windows, threw objects and chanted racist slogans.”
In its report, Haaretz quoted a senior police official who said that “There was an estimate that a few dozen people would come – but in reality 300 people came.”
Despite documentation in the media and on social media networks, and the admission of police that hundreds of Israeli Jews took part in these mobs, there was no evidence to suggest that hundreds of Israeli Jews were also being rounded up in massive arrest campaigns, like the ones currently targeting Palestinians.
“The existence of two different legal systems for groups living in the same area, highlighted by the escalation of recent events, clearly consecrates the Israeli apartheid regime, whether in Jerusalem and the 1948 occupied territories, or in the West Bank under the military regime,” Addameer said.
Thank you, Yumna! I read this interview @- Democracy Now! from this morning:
“Amid Gaza Ceasefire, Israel Arrests Hundreds & Continues “Colonial Violence” in Occupied Palestine … (what follows is an excerpt)
… MOHAMMED EL-KURD: Of course. I mean, I think there’s two things to be said about Sheikh Jarrah: the then and the now. The then is that it is a microcosm of the Israeli reality, the Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine at large. It is absurd to people to hear that there’s a settler from Long Island that’s squatting in my house, but he wouldn’t be able to do that without being emboldened by the Israeli occupation forces, by an Israeli judicial system that is inherently colonial and supremacist, and by American tax dollars. The person in my house has been there, much like many Israelis have inhabited homes that belong to Palestinians that were thrown out of them, that were massacred, that were forced to flee. And this is the situation in the entire neighborhood. You have settler organizations, that are registered in the United States, that are working and collaborating with the Israeli authorities to fabricate documents to throw out Palestinians. I think it’s important to put in context that we are a community of refugees that is facing a billionaire-backed settler organization that is working in different countries.
And what’s happening in Sheikh Jarrah is not just in Sheikh Jarrah. It’s happening in Silwan, where more than 800 Palestinians are about to be made homeless and a hundred homes will be destroyed, demolished. It’s happening in the South Hebron Hills. It’s happening in Issawiya, where the Israeli authorities are building, quote-unquote, “national parks” to behave as colonial borders, to prevent natural community growth in Palestinian communities. There’s many and a million ways in which Palestinians in Jerusalem are dispossessed. And sometimes it’s a judicial system, sometimes it’s artillery and weapons, and sometimes it’s national parks. But it all behaves in the same way.
I also want to just make a quick note that Sheikh Jarrah has been under an illegal blockade for the past three weeks. No Palestinians — no Palestinians, not even medics, not even journalists —are allowed into the neighborhood, except the people that live there. …”
much more @- https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/24/israel_gaza_jerusalem_ceasefire_tension
Crooked Bibi is showing his people just how “tough” he is, and knowing he has made a huge blunder sending his goons to attack worshippers in the Mosque, which resulted in rockets coming their way.
Israel has lost the PR war after the massacre of babies, Bibi is taking his anger and frustrations out of these poor Palestinians. Obviously the apartheid nation will not treat their own people this way, only those Arabs deserve the “nazi” treatment.
1 of 2
Thousands of Jews and Arabs march in Tel Aviv for peace, coexistence – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)
“Thousands of Jews and Arabs march in Tel Aviv for peace, coexistence”The Jerusalem Post, May 22/21 by Tobias Siegal
EXCERPT:”Protesters voiced support for the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and called on the government to take immediate action to reach peace with the Palestinians
“Thousands of Israelis marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening in a show of support for peace and coexistence between Jews and Arabs amid two long weeks of intense violent riots waging across the country.”Protesters also voiced support for the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect early Friday, calling on the government to take immediate action to end Israeli occupation in the West Bank and to reach peace with the Palestinians.
“The mass march was organized by the ‘Standing Together’ and ‘Breaking the Silence’ movements. It left Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and made its way toward Habima Square.”Speakers included well-known Israeli novelist and left-wing activist David Grossman, author ʻAwdah Bishārāt, Joint List leader Ayman Odeh and MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz).”‘I hear politicians and security officials speak about another round of fighting in a few months or years, while being blind to the 7 million Palestinians living between the [Jordan] river and the [Mediterranean] sea,’ Odeh said. ‘There are two peoples living here and both deserve the right for self-determination.’
“‘These past few days have shown us how life in this country can look like – a nightmare,’ Zandberg added. ‘We don’t want to start waiting for the next war, but to change direction toward peace – to live together in true partnership.’ A similar protest took place last Saturday at Habima Square, which was one of several protests attended by Jews and Arabs across the country that called for peace and for coexistence amid the nationwide riots and the military operation in Gaza. (cont’d)
The Zionist entity just doesn,t get it??.
Biden and crew did not expect to get involved in this “Conflict” but he is in it now , up to his neck.He is making statements using the term “Equal” in several different contexts and geographical locations, one of which is so called , “Israel proper” .Netanyahoo,s goons are busy arresting Palestinians only and they imagine this will go unnoticed or will not make it to the Oval Office.I am willing to bet that Biden has by now a special observer (reporting directly to him) tasked with monitoring israel,s behaviour both in the occupied territories and so called Israel proper.Netanyahoo is trying to negate the ceasefire so he can continue to impress the electorate and stay in power and out of gaol.
Netanyahoo may soon find out that the USA is no longer “Easily Moved” if he keeps pushing Biden and making him look like a fool.There is no love lost between these two.
2 of 2
“Jews and Arabs gathered daily during Operation Guardians of the Walls on bridges and intersections along the country and protested against the ongoing violence.
“Also on Saturday, hundreds gathered outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, calling on Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu to resign and blaming him for the escalation in Gaza and claiming that he deliberately extended the operation for no reason but personal interest.
“Earlier Saturday, about 200 people marched along the streets of the mixed city of Jaffa, voicing support for coexistence between Arabs and Jews while visiting small local businesses.”