The pogroms are working – the transfer is already happening
JVL Introduction
Layan Mahameed introduces B’Tselem’s new report with the words “What’s happening now in the West Bank is forcible transfer”.
The ethno-nationalist version of the Zionist dream has become the only version of Zionism on offer: a Greater Israel with as much land and as few Palestinians as possible.
Partially realised during the nakba of 1947-48 where over 700,000 Palestinians left what became the state of Israel, “the demographic threat” returned in 1967 with the acquisition of many millions of additional Palestinians under Israel’s control.
The Oslo process offered one possible solution – confining most Palestinians under occupation in their own Bantustan statelet while green-line Israel remained the “Jewish state”.
But as the far right increasingly wielded power on the ground, this solution, barely taken seriously by the governments that propounded it, was abandoned in practice. Greater Israel is the goal, and the route map to it is ethnic cleansing.
B’Tselem describes the process in action.
This article was originally published by B'Tselem Newsletter on Thu 21 Sep 2023. Read the original here.
The pogroms are working - the transfer is already happening
Layan Mahameed writes:
What’s happening now in the West Bank is forcible transfer. Within about three months, four Palestinian communities have been forced to leave their homes in search of a safer place. Over the past two years, a total of seven communities have been forcibly displaced in this manner. This did not happen overnight, but as part of an ongoing Israeli policy the apartheid regime has been pursuing and implementing for years.
A new position paper we are releasing this week explains the impossible living conditions created by this policy, which leaves the residents of these communities no choice but to leave their homes. Once they do, Israel can achieve its goal and take over their land.
One of the tools the regime uses to oust Palestinian communities is settler violence. This violence is ceaseless. Part of my job here at B’Tselem involves researching these attacks, and one of the hardest things for me to see is the fear these acts of harassment and violence by settlers instill in residents of small, remote Palestinian communities. This fear is ever-present, along with the clear understanding that they are entirely alone with no one to protect them.
Here’s an example of how the apartheid regime uses settler violence to achieve its goals: Individual settlers establish a so-called agricultural farm. They graze their flocks in Palestinian pasturelands, scare the Palestinians’ flocks away, sometimes attacking both the livestock and the shepherds. They destroy Palestinian farm fields, invade homes in communities located near the “farm,” and threaten the occupants – while armed. All of this is done with the full support – financial and other – of the state. Sometimes, soldiers and police officers join in. Over time, Palestinians lose the ability to live off their lands as they had done for generations. That, coupled with fear for their lives, leaves them no other choice but to depart, at which point the state takes over their land.
The hands carrying out the violence may be the settlers’, but the arms are the long arms of the apartheid regime, which works to promote Jewish supremacy in the entire area it controls, including by displacing Palestinians off in order to take over their lands. Above all, it is important to remember that the people Israel terrorizes in order to achieve its goals are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, babies, the elderly, the sick, people with disabilities. None are spared.
Yours,
Layan Mahameed, B’Tselem
Click through to B’Tselem’s new position paper “The pogroms are working – the transfer is already happening“
For the triumph of evil it is only necessary that ‘good’ wo/men (governments in western countries in this case) do nothing.
This is also called ethnic cleansing. Forcible transfer / ethnic cleansing is a Crime Against Humanity. We need to emphasise this at every opportunity. Say so!
The Nakba never came to an end, it is carrying on 70+ years since it started, in between, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled Palestine or been murdered by Israelis and there is no sign of it relenting, in fact, it is getting worse as it is now using drones to destroy Palestinian Property and murdering civilians in the process. What does the rest of the World do, it watches in and does nothing. Though there are people across the World campaigning against Israel, their Politicians are afraid to stand up and challenge, apart from a few Irish politicians that do condemn Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians.