By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A Palestinian boy scuffles with an Israeli soldier during a demonstration by Palestinians against the Israeli decision to include two West Bank shrines on a list of their national heritage sites in the West Bank village of Beit Omar, near Hebron, Saturday, March 6, 2010. AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi

This decision came as a first step in adopting his plan of reviving and renovating Jewish sites throughout Palestine; a plan he announced in his speech at the Tenth Annual Herzliya Conference last month. This plan is aimed at connecting the young Israeli generations to the land as a counter measure to the numerous Palestinian NGO's web sites and activities aiming at asserting the Palestinian roots and heritage to the land.

Netanyahu's government had also announced its decision to launch a 30-month project to allegedly renovate and develop the infrastructure of Christian and Moslem neighborhoods of the city of Old Jerusalem. The real aim of this project is the elimination of the Arab identity and characteristics of the town, and morphing it within a Jewish religious color.

The 43 years old Israeli archeological dig underneath and around the Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque did not uncover any shred of evidence of the alleged Jewish temple on that site. After falsifying the history, Zionists now need to distort the Arabic features of the town and turn it into Jewish. The destruction of Palestinian Al-Bustan neighborhood to build the so-called Biblical Gardens Project around the old city is just one of those distortions.

Netanyahu had also declared Israel's intention of keeping key parts of the West Bank even if there is a peace agreement with the Palestinians. He was referring to major Israeli colonies (settlements) in the West Bank especially those in Jericho and the Jordan River Valley along the eastern border of the West Bank. He alleged Israel's control of the border is essential to block the alleged flow of weapons from Jordan to Palestinians. When Israeli government demanded no preconditions for the resumption of peace negotiation, this decision seems to be a precondition.

These announcements had infuriated the Palestinians, who went out into the streets demonstrating into every major city to protect their holy mosques, homes, and land. The demonstration in Al-Khalil (Hebron) was especially furious because Netanyahu's decision to add the Ibrahimi Mosque to Israel's list of national heritage coincided with the sixteenth anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre perpetrated by the Zionist Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered in cold blood 29 Moslems while kneeling in prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque.

After the six-days-war in 1967 the Israeli government took control of the Ibrahimi Mosque, and provided protected and free entry to extremist Zionist Jews to pray while limiting access to Moslems prayers, who have to go through electronic gates and body search before entering their mosque. It is reported that Israelis are destroying the Islamic characteristic of the Mosque especially its ancient carpet by dropping burning acid on it.

Netanyahu's decisions had encouraged extremist fundamentalist Jewish groups, who called for entry and prayer into Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during the Purim Jewish festival last Sunday. Violent clashes took place between the Israeli police, who tried to provide safe entry to hundreds of these extremists, and Moslem Palestinians, who gathered in the Mosque to protect it. This Friday, also, more clashes broke between the Israeli police and Moslem prayers at the Mosque.

Other extremist Zionist Jewish groups were so encouraged by these decisions so that they started building colonies on Palestinian land in Jericho. Others rushed in occupying more homes in the Jerusalem Palestinian suburb of Sheikh Jarah under the protection of Israeli police. More and more Palestinian families are being evicted from their homes to allow extremist Israelis to occupy those homes. This Saturday, March 6th, has witnessed a huge gathering of Palestinians and pro-peace Israelis demonstrating against these evictions in the area.

Netanyahu's decisions carry some dangerous implications. He knows that the US is applying pressure on Arab leaders and the Palestinian Authority to re-engage into peace negotiations without any preconditions such as freezing colonization (settlement). His decisions came as pre-emptive preconditions against any possible future political agreement in order for Israel to keep control over any area with alleged Israeli heritage sites. This translates into further fragmentation of contiguous land for any possible future Palestinian state.

The decision clearly demonstrates to Palestinians and to the world the Israeli intransigence, disregard to all international laws and UN resolutions, and aspiration for further expansion rather than for peace.

It can be easily seen that the 18 years peace negotiations yielded no peace, no end to Israeli occupation, and no Palestinian state in any shape or form. With their "land for peace" offer and Arab Peace Initiative the so-called Arab moderate leaders had achieved nothing but more Israeli colonization, demolishing more of Palestinians homes, and Judaizing more of Old Jerusalem including Christian and Moslem holy places. The process of peace negotiations with Israel has proven to be just a waste of time and providing opportunities for more Israeli colonization.

Yet, when Arab masses are demanding their leaders to protect their religious sites with actions rather than just mere condemnations, those Arab leaders, lacking any political will, had disappointed their people for the Nth time, and gave another lenient response to Netanyahu's decisions. In their summit last Wednesday March 3rd Arab leaders agreed to a US proposal for "indirect" Palestinian-Israeli talks for a four-month period.

One wonders what "indirect" talks would produce that the 18 years direct talks did not accomplish.

The illegal Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, whose presidency had expired January 2008, was under tremendous pressure from the US and donor countries to resume negotiations with Israel. He and his gang are faced with the threat that their usefulness may terminate, and they may lose their political and economical power. But unlike the American administration Abbas could not drop his previous demand for settlement freeze before returning to negotiations. So he resorted to the Arab League to provide him with a political cover. He, now, can baldly claim that renegotiation was an Arab League decision.

Sadly and ironically the Arab League Chief, Amr Mussa, declared: "Despite a lack of conviction over Israel's seriousness, Arab foreign ministers will give indirect talks a chance, for the final time, in order to facilitate US efforts, within four months." He also added: "There was a consensus that Israel is not interested in peace, the proof being what is taking place on occupied land ... Acts which are meant to provoke the Arab and American sides."

It was clear that the Arab League decision was aimed at providing an Arab cover for an already-taken Palestinian decision to hold indirect negotiations with Israel without any guarantees. Nabil Abu Rudeina, a Palestinian spokesman, gave a silly justification for calling on delegates to accept the principle of indirect talks when he said: "Israel does not want to return to the negotiating table, but it wishes to blame the Palestinian side saying that the Palestinians do not want to enter into negotiations. So we must put a stop to this pretext and reveal Israel's true position before the international community and the American administration."

After 18 years of fruitless negotiations with many Palestinians concessions and with the Arab Peace Initiative it has become so obvious to even the politically naïve person that Israel does not want peace. Abu Rudeina's justification is no longer valid and constitutes only dust in the eyes.

Palestinian leaders, in Ramallah, understand very well that they have no power at all. They are just employees, whose job is to partially administer the occupied territories and to oppress Palestinians to guarantee Israel's security. Any deviation from these duties would mean assassination, similar to what happened to Arafat, or at best the loss of their lucrative political positions. Many Arab leaders, on the other hand, are hoping for a Palestinian state in any form or shape to keep the Israelis busy and to stop any further expansion outside of Palestine.

With their immigration to occupied Palestine (Israel) from every part of the world Zionist Jews bring with them different, and often, opposing social, political and religious biases. Such biases create division and inner conflict. Netanyahu, like all his Zionist predecessors, understands the need for creating a common external enemy in order to unite his people. Israel needs a perpetual conflict with its neighbors in order to survive internal conflict. Israeli leaders, thus, provoke their Arab leaders in order to justify their aggression against them and to fulfill the Zionist dream of greater Israel.

Many Arab leaders are under the illusion that Israel would be contained into a border within Palestine. The Zionist end goal is to build greater Israel from Nile to Euphrates, and even larger if they could, in order to control the whole Middle East with its natural resources especially oil. Zionized western countries; Germany, France, United Kingdom, Canada, and US are in full support to the Zionist project and would not restrict Israeli expansion.

It behooves all Arab leaders to abandon their weak ineffective moderate approach, to unite as one entity, and to adopt resistance to put a stop to this expanding Israeli cancer, otherwise they would face the same fate native American Indians had suffered ... genocide.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

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By Karin Friedemann

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayad has made a formal complaint to the Canadian government regarding the intention of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum to collaborate with the Israel Antiquities Authority to host "Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World" from June 27 to January 3, 2010.

Palestinian Archaeological Department Director-General Hamdan Taha explains, "The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories... I think it is important that Canadian institutions would be responsible and act in accordance with Canada's obligations."

The Israeli exhibition violates international conventions or protocols that Canada has ratified and that protect cultural property during armed conflict. The State of Israel seized the Jordanian-owned Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem in 1967 to take possession of the scrolls and has continued to loot similar Palestinian cultural property from the Occupied Territories ever since. Under the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the 1954 Hague Convention along with its two associated protocols, Canada is legally obliged "to take appropriate steps to recover and return any such cultural property" at the request of the wronged party.

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition is part of Israel's effort to re-brand itself. According to The Economist, American Jewish groups and Israeli diplomats are trying to create the perception of Israel as "hip, cool, cultured, fun and creative." The campaign has included placing sexually suggestive advertisements in Maxim and other men's magazines.

Harvard Professor Stephen Walt suggests in his Foreign Policy blog that the re-branding effort is foredoomed to failure: "Restoring Israel's image in the West isn't a matter of spin or PR or `re-branding;' it's a matter of abandoning the policies that have cost it the sympathy it once enjoyed. It's really just about that simple."

The archaeological component of the propaganda campaign, however, uses subliminal suggestion to bypass such political arguments. A top Israeli re-branding advocate argues, "[Let's] get to that first stage when people associate Israel with science and music and archaeology...Then we'll take it from there."

In Facts on the Ground Columbia Professor Nadia Abu Al Haj writes, "In the context of Israel and Palestine, archaeology emerged as a central scientific discipline because of the manner in which colonial settlement was configured in a language of, and a belief in, Jewish national return." Even though asserting ownership to a country after absence of 2000 years is preposterous, Israel's theft of Palestine from the native population is popularly legitimised through the claim that today's Jews descend from inhabitants of Greco-Roman Judea.

According to New York Times Reporters Ethan Bonner and Isabel Kershner in "Parks Fortify Israel's Claim to Jerusalem," "[There] is a battle for historical legitimacy. As part of the effort, archaeologists are finding indisputable evidence of ancient Jewish life here."

This claim is nonsense.

Intellectuals of Jewish origin in 19th century Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, invented their folk narratives `retrospectively,' out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people, argues Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Sand, author of How and When the Jewish People Was Invented.

There is no single founder population for modern Jewry any more than there is a single founder population for modern Christians or modern Muslims. Late ancient and early medieval texts describe an ethnically diverse collection of communities associated with proselytizing pre-Rabbinic Judaism.

In English to use the word Jew is anachronistic before the 10th century when medieval Rabbinic Judaism crystallised thanks to the efforts of Saadyah Gaon (Sa`îd bin Yûsuf al-Fayyûmi) and his colleagues.

With the revolutionary codification of Rabbinic law these communities became part of a vast trade network that spanned the Christian and Muslim world and that extended into China and began to exchange members on a large scale. The main population-exporting region seems to have been located in territories near the Black Sea.

Current genetic anthropological findings based on DNA analysis indicate that the male ancestors of Yiddish Jewry were of Eastern European and non-Levantine Southwest Asian origin while the female ancestors were Eastern Europeans.

Sand admits, "[The] chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I [meaning Israeli Jews] are its descendents."

The Palestinians' ancestors created the Hasmonean Kingdom, composed the Hebrew Bible, followed Jesus, wrote the New Testament, compiled the Mishnah, and redacted the Jerusalem Talmud. The Palestinian people constitute the living link to the earliest beginnings of the heritage from the Torah and Gospel.

Zionists are almost pitiable, for they are so ashamed of their own history that they have usurped one belonging to another people. When the Israeli government sends the Dead Sea Scrolls to Canada, by its own law Canada must turn them over to their rightful owners - the Palestinian people.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women.

Source: Khaleej Times

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