The Palestinian-Israeli conflict
A historical overview
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been going on since the early 1900s; when the mostly-Arab region was part of the Ottoman Empire and, starting in 1917, a ‘mandate’ run by the British Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were moving into the area, as part of a movement called Zionism among mostly European Jews to escape persecution and establish their own state in their ancestral homeland. Later, large numbers of Middle Eastern Jews also moved to Israel, either to escape anti-Semitic violence or because they were forcibly expelled.
In Nov. 1917 the British Government stated its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine when it released the Balfour Declaration, which read in part:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The year was 1948 when Israel has bullied its way into a state. Thousands of Palestinians fled their homes to survive. Over the years, Israel has expanded more and more while Palestine kept shrinking. For Palestine, this era represented a major turning point. Over 80 percent of Palestinians were expelled and approximately 80 percent of Palestinian land was seized by Zionists. Palestinians refer to the year 1948 as “Al Nakba” — “The Catastrophe”. After the tumultuous events of 1948, 150,000 Palestinians remained in Israel. They were granted Israeli citizenship. Yet, they lived under Israeli military rule. After 1967, Israel extended its military control over Palestinians living in the occupied territories: The West Bank and Gaza Strip. Following Israel’s occupation of historic Palestine, it began building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The settlements serve as Zionist colonies, where Jewish settlers are allowed to carry weapons under the protection of the Israeli army.
Sheikh Jarrah conflict
Concerning the history of the recent events in Sheikh Jarrah, in 1956, 28 Palestinian refugee families displaced from their homes in the coastal cities of Yafa and Haifa eight years prior eventually settled into the Karm al-Jaouni area in Sheikh Jarrah. The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, at the time was under the mandate of Jordan, which struck an agreement with the UN agency for refugees (UNRWA) to build housing units for these families. The deal stipulated the families were to renounce their refugee status in return for land deeds signed in their names after three years of living in the area. However, that did not take place and in 1967 Jordan lost its mandate as East Jerusalem was occupied by Israel.
Khalil Toufakji, a Palestinian cartographer and expert on Jerusalem, said he traveled to Ankara in 2010 to search in the Ottoman-era archives for a document that negates any Jewish ownership of Karm al-Jaouni. After more digging, Toufakji found out in 1968 that Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, issued a decree — signed by the finance minister at the time — which stated Israel was bound to the Jordan-UNRWA agreement. “This fact is what has been raised to the Jerusalem High Court on behalf of the Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah,” he said but added there is little reason to believe the court will rule in favor of them. “Israeli courts — judge, jury, and legislation — are all in the service of the Jewish settlers,” he said.
About 200,000 Israeli citizens live in East Jerusalem under army and police protection, with the largest single settlement complex housing 44,000 Israelis. Recently, dozens of Palestinians have faced dispossession from their homes in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in what they say is a move to force them out and replace it entirely with a Jewish settlement. Israel’s settlement project, which aims at the consolidation of Israel’s control over the city, is also considered illegal under international law.
The Jerusalem District Court ruled at least six families must vacate their homes in Sheikh Jarrah on Sunday, despite living there for generations. The same court ruled seven other families should leave their homes by August 1. In total, 58 people, including 17 children, are set to be forcibly displaced to make way for Jewish settlers. The court rulings are a culmination of a decades-long struggle for these Palestinians to stay in their homes. In 1972, several Jewish settler organizations filed a lawsuit against the Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah, alleging the land originally belonged to Jews. Sheikh Jarrah is but one example of what is happening to Palestinian neighborhoods.
In response, Sheikh Jarrah was the site of demonstrations as dozens of Palestinians living there faced forced expulsion in a case filed against them by settler organizations. Mass protests against their forced dispossession this month quickly spread across historic Palestine and caught the attention of international media. Social media users from the ground and around the world have uploaded and shared video content and images about the attacks, using the hashtag in both English and Arabic #SaveSheikhJarrah. Several US lawmakers, including Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman have spoken out against the attacks and imminent forced displacement in Sheikh Jarrah. Social media users sharing content from Sheikh Jarrah complain their accounts have been censored, limited, or shut down. The complicity between Israel and social media companies in regulating and censoring Palestinian content and accounts is well documented. Following a visit by a Facebook delegation in 2016, Israel’s justice minister at the time stated that Facebook, Google, and YouTube were “complying with up to 95 percent of Israeli requests to delete content” — almost all of it Palestinian. Palestinians have also highlighted in addition to cracking down on freedom of expression, the acquiescence of these social media companies to Israeli government requests of revealing users’ data have led to the arrests of hundreds of Palestinians in the past several years, mainly for their posts on Facebook. In contrast, Israelis do not face the same treatment.
This is not the first time that Palestinians’ voices have been silenced, their lands stolen, and their rights are taken away and it is clear that it is not the last either.
