Treacherous happenings in Israel to eradicate Palestinians

Even prior to the inception of Israel in 1948, the Zionists have been aiming to take over the whole of the Palestinian land and eradicate its native population. Therefore, the use of false narratives such as, “the land without the people for the people without the land.”

The United Nations paved the way by getting the Partition Plan, Resolution 181 (II) implemented in November 1947, whereby 54 per cent of the Palestinian land was given to the Jews.

In 1967 after the Six Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank including East al Quds (Jerusalem). Since then, more than 750,000 Israelis live in at least 290 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East al Quds.

According to the 4th Geneva Convention - Article 49 states that: “The occupying power shall not deport nor transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies". This prohibition is designed to ensure the occupying power does not demographically engineer the occupied territory. Thus, building and expansion of settlements in West Bank and Al Quds are war crimes according to international law.

The new Israeli government now includes the extremist settler parties like Religious Zionist Party, which claimed “the Jewish people’s exclusive right over the entire land of Israel including Judea and Samaria (areas of West Bank).

When Netanyahu obtained the green light from the United States under the Donald Trump administration, he announced the annexation part of West Bank in July 2020, but it was condemned by the international communities.

According to Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer specialising in International human rights and international humanitarian law, Israel is now officially annexing the West Bank by a quiet bureaucratic maneuver. “It is done by transferring control of the Occupied territory from military to civilian leadership, a violation of /international law”, he wrote on June 8, 2023.

He quoted: “Netanyahu government recently decided to change the official governance structure of the West Bank by transferring many administrative powers from military to civilian command. Its moves should assuage any remaining doubts that Israel is in the process of fully annexing the West Bank—de jure.”

Sfard further wrote: “The world’s silence in the face of these developments is a particularly dangerous manifestation of Israel’s exceptionalism in the international arena. The United States and other Western countries’ apathy toward Israel’s changing legal regime in the West Bank poses grave real-life consequences for Palestinians under occupation. But the international community’s blunder is not new. It has been a feature—not a bug—of the system since day one of Israel’s occupation".

The plan to annex the West Bank was not accompanied by a grand statement this time, but for the first time, many administrative powers in the occupied territory are in the hands of a civilian, e.g. Israeli defence ministry’s portfolio transfer to Bezalel Smotrich.

This move effectively anointed Smotrich de facto governor of the West Bank. This amounts to an act of de jure annexation of the West Bank. This is a dangerous step toward entrenching apartheid within the territory.

Among the many processes being done in Israel to eradicate the Palestinians is to overhaul the judicial system. This caused the daily protests by thousands in Israel and more than 1000 academics and public figures said that the Israeli government judicial overhaul is all about ethnically cleansing the Palestinians.

The horrendous treatment and insecurities to the Palestinian lives in the West Bank and Al Quds are meant to evict them but Palestinians are resilient and resistant to all these. UN experts said in Geneva that the international community must take steps to prevent Israel’s annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory or risk being seen as accepting the Israeli government’s systematic violation of international law.

To be silent is complicit with apartheid Israel. Exposing Israel’s annexation requires new perspectives and strategies. Unfortunately, the world does not seem to know how to deal with Netanyahu’s silent tactics.

Dr Fauziah Mohd Hasan is the Honorary Advisor MWCQP and Rose2Rose Member of the GWCQP Presidential Committee.