‘Pure terrorism’: World reacts to Israeli settler attack in West Bank & What lemons and oranges prove about Israel’s occupation 16AUG & 17JUN24

 

ISRAEL continues to allow and even promote the same genocidal tactics nazi troops and their allies in nazi occupied territories used against Jews. It really is inconceivable to me, and should be to all, especially Jews, that these nazi tactics are used with endemic impunity against the Muslim and Christian Palestinians in the West Bank. Any more, whenever I hear the expression "never again" I do not think of the Holocaust, instead I think of Israeli hypocrisy. I will also add this, I consider hamas worse than Israel as not only are they determined to commit genocide against Israelis, they do not care how many of their fellow Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are sacrificed in their genocidal campaign. This from Aljazeera.....

‘Pure terrorism’: World reacts to Israeli settler attack in West Bank

Deadly attack on Palestinian village of Jit sparks condemnation and calls for accountability, sanctions against Israel.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are reeling after Israeli settlers ravaged a village overnight, killing a 23-year-old man and injuring several others in the latest incident of deadly violence against Palestinians in the area.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Friday that Mahmoud Abdel Qader Sadda was fatally shot in the attack on Jit, in the northern West Bank about 10km (six miles) west of Nablus.

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Dozens of masked Israeli settlers descended on the village, opening fire on residents, setting cars ablaze and destroying homes and other property, according to witnesses and video footage from the assault.

The attack came amid a surge in Israeli military and settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has unfolded in the shadow of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

Nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank between the start of the Gaza war on October 7 and August 12, according to the latest figures from the United Nations humanitarian affairs office (OCHA).

Rights groups also have criticised Israel for allowing its forces as well as settlers to operate with “endemic impunity” in their attacks against Palestinians.

The assault on Jit drew widespread condemnation from Palestinians as well as foreign leaders, including those from countries that continue to provide military and diplomatic support for Israel amid the Gaza war.

Here are some of the reactions:

Palestinian Authority

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack as an act of “organised state terrorism”.

“We demand the imposition of deterrent sanctions on the racist colonial system, the dismantling of the terrorist settler militias, and the prosecution of their members,” it said in a statement.

Hamas

The Palestinian faction, which governs Gaza, offered condolences to the man killed in Jit.

In a statement, Hamas said the attack was part of Israel’s “fascist extermination plans”.

“We call on our people in all governorates of the West Bank to rise up in anger to deter the settlers and repel their terrorist attacks,” the group said.

Israel’s “policy of incursions, assassinations and unleashing settler gangs will only increase our people’s adherence to their land and holy sites”.

Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he viewed “with utmost severity the disturbances that took place” in Jit, “which included attacks on people and property by Israelis who entered the village”.

“It is the [Israeli army] and the security forces that fight terrorism, and nobody else. Those responsible for any offense will be apprehended and tried,” the statement said.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, also condemned the violence, which he attributed to “radical individuals”.

United States

A spokesperson for the US National Security Council said that “attacks by violent settlers against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank are unacceptable and must stop”.

“Israeli authorities must take measures to protect all communities from harm, this includes intervening to stop such violence and holding all perpetrators of such violence to account,” the spokesperson said, as reported by US media.

The US ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, added in a social media post that Israeli settler attacks “must stop and the criminals be held to account”.

European Union

Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said the attack in Jit “aimed at terrorising Palestinian civilians”.

“Day after day, in an almost total impunity, Israeli settlers fuel violence in the occupied West Bank, contributing to endanger any chance of peace,” he wrote on social media, urging Israel to “stop these unacceptable actions immediately”.

United Kingdom

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he condemns the attack “in the strongest of terms”.

“The scenes overnight of the burning and the torching of buildings, of the Molotov cocktails thrown at cars, of the widespread rampage and chasing of people from their homes, is abhorrent,” he told reporters in Jerusalem alongside his French counterpart.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that there will be a swift investigation. I hope that that investigation can ensure that those who engaged in this settler violence over the course of the last 24 hours are brought to justice.”

France

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said “any act that would destabilise” negotiation efforts – notably to reach a ceasefire in Gaza – is “unacceptable”.

“We are very vigilant and attentive and we denounce this situation,” he said, noting that France imposed sanctions against “violent settlers” earlier this year.

United Nations

Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the UN’s human rights office, said the violence in Jit was “not an isolated attack”.

“It is the direct consequence of Israel’s policy of settlement in the West Bank. We have been reporting for the past years about settlers attacking Palestinian communities in their land in the West Bank with impunity,” Shamdasani told reporters.

“And this really is the crux of the matter: the impunity that the perpetrators of such grave violations have been enjoying.”

She added that there have been “reports of Israeli security forces standing by as attacks take place”, as well as reports of “weapons being distributed to the settlers”.

“So there is clearly a state responsibility in this regard.”

UN special rapporteur

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said sanctions must be imposed on Israel after the settler attack.

“Time to act was decades ago: as it was not done, that time is now,” she wrote on X.

Peace Now

The Israeli group described the settlers’s rampage in Jit as a “pogrom”.

“This is pure settler terrorism—supported by the state, sponsored by our government,” Peace Now said on X.

What lemons and oranges prove about Israel’s occupation

Palestinians’ economic plight is not the result of failed aspirations or a lack of effort.

A Palestinian fruit vendor passes by a destroyed building in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on Nov. 6. (Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images)

By Tariq Kenney-Shawa

June 17, 2024 at 5:45 a.m. EDT

Tariq Kenney-Shawa is a U.S. policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank and policy network.

Imagine you’re a citrus farmer. You have spent months making sure your orange trees get just the right amount of water and nutrients. You have harvested your oranges, packed them carefully into crates and sent them off to be shipped abroad. But instead of reaching international markets, your oranges are held up by authorities unaccountable to you for seemingly arbitrary “security inspections.” Days, sometimes weeks, pass as your crates sit in the blazing sun, their contents wasting away. By the time the oranges pass the checkpoints, they are rotten and unsellable.

This was life for Palestinian citrus farmers for decades under Israel’s occupation. And their story proves one thing: Israel is and has always been the biggest obstacle to Gaza’s prosperity.

You might not believe it now, but Gaza was once lush with citrus orchards. For hundreds of years, Palestinian farmers tended to expansive orange and lemon groves. By the early 1900s, citrus was the region’s main export, including the famous Jaffa oranges, named after the coastal city just north of Gaza. The industry survived the violent upheaval of 1948, and Palestinian citrus farmers got a boost when Egyptian authorities, then in control, declared the Gaza port a free-trade zone, opening further access to European markets. By the 1960s, citrus was an economic backbone for the region, employing more than 30 percent of Gaza’s workers.

But everything began to change after Israel seized control in 1967. Israel refused to rebuild Gaza’s destroyed port, blocked trade to and through Egypt, and redirected citrus and other produce through Israel. Israeli authorities made life increasingly difficult for Palestinian farmers. Export restrictions deprived them of access to lucrative European markets, limiting them to Asia and the Middle East. These trade barriers — along with rising fuel and fertilizer costs and Israeli restrictions on water usage — undermined Gaza’s citrus industry. Total output, which was around 256,000 tons in 1976, dropped to 190,000 tons by 1983.

And that was just the beginning.

Over the decades that followed, Israeli soldiers and settlers bulldozed, torched and poisoned thousands of acres of citrus groves across Gaza. During the 1980s and ’90s, Israel claimed it was necessary to uproot and destroy citrus groves so they could not be used to shelter Palestinian resistance fighters.

Gaza’s orchards survived repeated onslaughts of Israeli soldiers and settlers, but it was Israel’s suffocating “security checks” that dealt the final blow to the industry. Today, orange and lemon trees no longer dot the countryside. An industry that could have served as a bedrock for Gaza’s economic development lies in tatters.

Israel’s campaign to sour Gaza’s citrus trade became a template for the decimation of countless other exports. In 2021, Israeli authorities required farmers in Gaza to remove the leafy green pedicels from their tomatoes before passing them through Israeli checkpoints to be sold in the West Bank. Without their pedicels, tomatoes spoil faster. After days of relentless Israeli security inspections, the produce would end up, like the oranges, rotten and unsellable.

When Israeli soldiers and settlers pulled out of Gaza in 2005, nearly four decades after seizing the territory, they framed it as an end to direct military occupation. Israelis often say this was Gaza’s opportunity to reach its full potential — that Palestinians could have turned Gaza into an economic powerhouse, a “Singapore of the Middle East.”

But the reality is that Israel’s occupation never ended; it only evolved. The difference was that Israeli settlers and soldiers were now redeployed around Gaza to control it from the outside. Restrictions on the movement of people and goods — already a fact of everyday life for Palestinians in Gaza — were tightened. When Hamas rose to power in 2007, those restrictions grew into a full blockade, turning the Gaza Strip into what has long been described as the world’s largest open-air prison. It served as a cautionary tale, a lesson to other Palestinians that they must acquiesce to perpetual Israeli domination or face Gaza’s fate.

Palestinian farmers in Gaza did their part. They played by the rules, cultivating their crops in the face of Israeli land encroachment and arbitrary export restrictions. They even switched to crops such as strawberries and tomatoes, which don’t grow on trees and thus could not be accused of providing cover for resistance fighters. Palestinians tried to make something out of the conditions under which Israel forced them to live, only to be obstructed by their occupiers at every turn.

Gaza’s citrus and tomato industries are just two casualties of Israel’s efforts to dominate Palestinians or to create the necessary conditions to force them out entirely. In 2008, Israeli officials said that they “intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.” Israel’s current assault on Gaza is but an accelerated version of a process that has been ongoing for decades.

Gaza’s plight is not the result of failed aspirations or a lack of effort on the part of its people. It is a direct consequence of Israel’s relentless project of subjugation. That is why conversations about the “day after” must recognize that there can be no future while Israeli occupation persists.

If Israel had truly wanted Palestinians to turn Gaza into a thriving economic hub, it would at least have let them export oranges.