Israel Wants Palestinians Ethnically Cleansed from Jerusalem

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Israel is a ruthless Ziofascist state. It considers self-defense against its viciousness "terrorism." 

It punishes entire Palestinian families and communities. Its agenda includes daily state terror.

Partnering with Washington, it wages wars of aggression at its discretion, along with other high crimes against defenseless Palestinians - tormenting, imprisoning, brutalizing and killing them with impunity, committing slow-motion genocide.

It wants Jerusalem for its exclusive capital, ethnically cleansed of Palestinians, bulldozing their homes, seizing their property and dispossessing them.

Revoking the longtime Arab population's permanent Jerusalem residency status is one of its dirty schemes.

The fate of the city's 324,000 Palestinian residents hangs in the balance - over three-fourths in East Jerusalem, the remainder in the western part of the city, conditions made harsh for them, encouraging them to relocate elsewhere on their own.

According to the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), 83.4% of East Jerusalem Arab children "live below the poverty line." Over 40% of the city's residents have no access to its water and sanitation systems.

A 2,000 classroom shortage denies education to many thousands of Palestinian children. Only 41% of them are enrolled in city schools.

Palestinians in Jerusalem are permanent residents, not citizens. The residency status of 95% of them was revoked.

Construction by Palestinians on their own land throughout the Territories is considered illegal, subject to demolition, notably in Jerusalem.

Over 140,000 Palestinian residents of city live in isolated neighborhoods, disconnected by Israel's Apartheid Wall.

If forcibly expelled from the city, where will hundreds of thousands of Palestinians go? Israel's permanent residency revocation scheme takes many twists and turns.

The latest is a proposed Knesset measure, giving Israel's interior minister authority to revoke the residency status of Palestinians in Jerusalem and Golan - based on phony accusations of terrorism or so-called breach of trust against the state, both pretexts able to dispossess Palestinians for virtually any reason.

On Sunday, members of Netanyahu's coalition regime will review the measure, deciding on whether to advance it to Knesset readings for enactment - what's likely to be approved.

Palestinians throughout the Territories endure extreme occupation harshness.

In its yearend "State of Human Rights in Israel and the OPT," ACRI presented a bleak picture, saying in the past year, conditions worsened under Netanyahu's coalition regime.

Things "reached a new low," including "silencing of opinions and public criticism; attacks on pluralism; the delegitimization of political rivals, journalists, and human rights organizations, and so forth."

Policies affecting Palestinians included "incitement…discriminatory and racist bills."

Fifty years of occupation grow increasingly harsher, including the 2017 Regularization Law, authorizing expropriation of privately owned Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem land to facilitate illegal settlement construction.

Critics call the measure the Expropriation Law. Israel's attorney general opposed it, calling it illegal, a flagrant violation of international law.

The measure will be used as another way to ethnically cleanse unwanted Palestinians from East Jerusalem and elsewhere, depriving them of their property and other fundamental rights.

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