The Palestine thread

[Mike Sheehy]

btw, I meant to ask you about this..

I don't think it was right to plant Europe's Jewish problem in the Middle East but it was done and there is no changing that.

Can you elaborate on what you meant by Europe's Jewish "problem" ?

[seafoid]

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.582534

Last week, 14-year-old Yusef a-Shawamreh and two of his friends left their village of Deir al-Asal al-Fauqa in the southern West Bank to pick plants on his family's field, west of the separation fence.

The three youths passed through a wide gap in the fence, which had existed for at least two years and which the Israel Defense Forces hadn't bothered to fix.

After crossing the fence, the boys heard three or four gunshots. The firing came from an IDF ambush, a few dozen meters away. According to an investigation by B'Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, released on Wednesday, the shots had been fired with no warning.

A-Shawamreh was wounded in the hip and fell to the ground bleeding. He managed to crawl to the road, but then the soldiers emerged from their hiding place.

The soldiers arrested the other two boys and a-Shawamreh received preliminary medical treatment. A military ambulance arrived only half an hour later, although an IDF camp is located a mere two kilometers away. Meanwhile, the boy bled to death.

A-Shawamreh was declared dead at Soroka Medical Center, Be'er Sheva, where he was eventually taken.

The IDF spokesman's statement said the soldiers taking part in the ambush noticed "three suspicious Palestinians who were vandalizing the separation fence, and opened fire at them according to the procedure for arresting a suspect. When the Palestinians refused to respond to the soldiers' calls, the force opened fire, wounding one of the Palestinians."

The details in B'Tselem's investigation and Amira Hass' report (Haaretz, March 24) paint a completely different picture. The boys did not vandalize the fence, and the soldiers fired at them without warning.

This chain of events is extremely grave. Opening fire automatically on people who pass through a gap in the fence is abhorrent and despicable. A-Shawamreh is the victim of a war crime.

There is no other way to describe the circumstances of his death.

The IDF cannot make do with its spokesman's attempt to whitewash the incident. It must hold a vigorous investigation and then put on trial the soldiers responsible and the commanders who sent them on the mission.

[Mike Sheehy]

Answer the question Seafoid.

Also, you never answered my question about the "Is John Terry a muslim"  thread...what are you trying to hide ?

[Mike Sheehy]

Still no answer.

Seriously Seafoid..what was Europes "Jewish problem" ?

Can you explain what you meant ?

[seafoid]

Still no answer.

Seriously Seafoid..what was Europes "Jewish problem" ?

Can you explain what you meant ?

Have you ever read up on the Holocaust in the Netherlands ?
75% of the Jews in Holland were murdered.
How did that happen?

They always talk about Anne Frank now.  Anne Frank is a story people can relate to.
They never talk about Apeldoorn. I wonder why.

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/apeldoornsebos.html

Do you understand why ?

[give her dixie]

On Monday, Israeli forces blocked all main entrances to the village of Nabi Saleh, and attacked anyone who attempted to enter or leave the village.

The Israeli regime imposed the blockade on the village after declaring it a 'military closed zone.' Residents of the village complain that they are facing a humanitarian crisis after the blockade.

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/04/14/358566/israel-continues-siege-on-wb-village/

Israeli occupation forces this morning demolished a number of water wells and agriculture infrastructure in Hebron, handed over demolition orders to owners of two residential houses in Bethlehem.

Local Palestinian sources said that the Israeli forces invaded the Palestinian neighbourhood of Abulhawa in Hebron.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/10785-israel-demolishes-wells-in-hebron

Thousands of Palestinians living in the Shuafat refugee camp, which is located in East Jerusalem, have been living without running water for more than a month, due to the failure of the Israeli municipality in the western part of the holy city to supply the necessary water.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/10783-palestinian-refugees-in-jerusalem-without-water-for-more-than-a-month

A 44-year-old Palestinian woman Nuha Mohammed Qatamesh died on Monday after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli occupation forces in al-Jadawel area, which is located between Aida refugee camp and Beit Jala, west of the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

A medical source in Beit Jala Government Hospital said that Qatamesh died after she inhaled tear gas fired by Israeli forces during clashes that erupted Monday evening in Aida camp.

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/politics/7358-palestinian-woman-dies-of-inhaling-israeli-tear-gas-in-bethlehem

The University of Haifa has launched an academic course to combat the online "delegitimization of Israel", in what it claims to be a "first" for academia. In a press release dated 30 March, the University proudly describes the four credit course, offered by the Department of Multi-Disciplinary Studies, as preparing "students to be unofficial 'ambassadors' for Israel on the Internet".

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/politics/10901-haifa-university-launches-course-in-pro-israel-propaganda

As Christians get ready to celebrate Easter, Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are envious of fellow Christians from all over the world who are able to visit Jerusalem's holy Christian sites and worship freely while they cannot.

Since Israel cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories in the early 1990s, Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been required to get Israeli army permission before they can enter Jerusalem.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/04/west-bank-palestinian-christians-denied-access-to-holy-places-in-jerusalem-during-easter.html#sthash.AygVOeMk.dpuf

[give her dixie]

Fatah and Hamas agree landmark pact after seven-year rift




The two main rival Palestinian factions have signed an accord designed to end seven years of sometimes violent division, paving the way for elections later in the year and the formation of a unity government within weeks.

The move, after a day of talks between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza that lasted until three in the morning, comes less than a week before the expiry of the deadline for US-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 29 April and is certain to complicate US efforts to seek another nine-month extension to those talks.

Israel immediately responded by saying the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was moving to peace with Hamas instead of peace with Israel. "He has to choose," said the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. "Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace, so far he hasn't done so."

After the agreement was announced, Israel cancelled a planned session of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. It also launched an air strike on a site in the north of the Gaza Strip, wounding 12 people including children, which underscored the deep mutual suspicion and hostility that persists. Speaking in Ramallah in the West Bank, Abbas said in his view the pact with Hamas did not contradict the peace talks he was pursuing with Israel, adding that an independent state living peacefully alongside Israel remained his goal.

The agreement, signed in Gaza City on Wednesday by Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of Hamas, and a senior Palestinian Liberation Organisation delegation dispatched by Abbas marks the latest attempt in three years of efforts to end the discord between the two factions.

A packed news conference in Gaza in a hall adjoining Haniyeh's home in Beach refugee camp cheered as he announced the deal to end the split between the two groups and between Gaza and the West Bank. "This is the good news we have to tell the people: the era of discord is ended," Haniyeh said.

Although there have been failed attempts to end the rift before, this agreement comes with both factions facing internal problems. Hamas has become ever more isolated internationally, particularly since the like-minded Muslim Brotherhood was ousted in Egypt last year. The new military-led authorities in Cairo have cracked down on the smuggling tunnels into Gaza.

Fatah and Abbas have been damaged by the failure of peace negotiations to deliver results amid continuing Israeli settlement building, all of which has pushed the issue of reconciliation up the agenda.

Despite talk before the announcement about the quick formation of a national unity government and a decree for elections, the wording of the agreement was less cut and dried – suggesting a possible timing for elections in at "least six months" after talks to try to form a new government by agreement.

The statement was also not clear whether Hamas figures would be represented in any new government – which could lead to a cut in EU and US funding. Sceptics, however, noted that similar agreements between the two sides – under Arab sponsorship – have been reached in the past but never implemented.

In Washington state department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the US was troubled by the announcement, which "could seriously complicate" negotiations to extend peace negotiations. "This certainly is disappointing and raises concerns about our efforts to extend the negotiations," she said.

"It is hard to see how Israel can be expected to negotiate with a government that doesn't believe in its right to exist." She also indicated there could be broader implications for an array of US policies towards Palestine, including aid, should Hamas enter into government without abiding a set of principles, including recognition of Israel, agreement to previous agreements, and a commitment to non-violence, dictated by Washington.

Secretary of state John Kerry spoke on the phone with Netanyahu on Tuesday, while other senior US diplomats on the ground have spoken with Mahmoud Abbas.

The root of recent conflict between the two largest Palestinian movements follows the 2006 elections which Hamas won but the west, Israel and Abbas largely refused to recognise. Hamas asserted its control of Gaza in 2007 leaving Abbas in charge of only parts of the West Bank. Since then both sides have become entrenched in their territories, setting up respective governments and their own security forces, and arresting their rivals.

Key stumbling blocks in previous attempts at reconciliation have been focused on security forces and on the Palestinian Authority's security co-operation arrangements on the West Bank that have seen the authority arrest and jail members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

There was no mention in the announcement that security co-operation with Israel would change. Despite Netanyahu's comments, later in the day a senior Israeli official was more cautious about the implications of the Gaza deal saying Netanyahu office was consulting on it. prime minister's office is consulting tonight the meaning of it. It does not bode well but for the moment the policy is wait and see."


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/plo-hamas-agree-unity-pact-form-government

[give her dixie]

Shocking video of Israeli occupation forces detaining a 6 year old boy yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTxJb-HLp70#t=63

[Mike Sheehy]

Still no answer.

Seriously Seafoid..what was Europes "Jewish problem" ?

Can you explain what you meant ?

Have you ever read up on the Holocaust in the Netherlands ?
75% of the Jews in Holland were murdered.
How did that happen?

They always talk about Anne Frank now.  Anne Frank is a story people can relate to.
They never talk about Apeldoorn. I wonder why.

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/apeldoornsebos.html

Do you understand why ?

Why do you think 75% of Jews in Holland were murdered ? I'd like to hear your explanation ?

What is the significance of Appeldoorn ? I think you are justifying anti-Semitism on the basis of how jews treated fellow jews with mental illness  ? That is a strange justification.

             

[Mike Sheehy]

Let it be noted that Seafoid still has  not answered what is Europes "Jewish" problem.

Nor has "Give her Dixie" explained why he associates with obvious extremist elements ( e.g Malaysian extremists)

I wish these lads would, for once, just engage and debate a point or two. What are they afraid of ?

[Mike Sheehy]

Still no answer.

Seriously Seafoid..what was Europes "Jewish problem" ?

Can you explain what you meant ?

Have you ever read up on the Holocaust in the Netherlands ?
75% of the Jews in Holland were murdered.
How did that happen?

They always talk about Anne Frank now.  Anne Frank is a story people can relate to.
They never talk about Apeldoorn. I wonder why.

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/apeldoornsebos.html

Do you understand why ?

ok, one more time...please Seafoid, in your own words...what exactly do you mean by Europes "Jewish problem".
The readers of Gaaboard are intelligent lads so I think you owe it to them to explain your position in detail.

No links. No cheap get out clauses. No plausible denial .......just your own words. 

[give her dixie]

Father blames Israeli military in Palestinian teens' deaths

By Ivan Watson, Kareem Khadder and Mike Schwartz, CNN
May 22, 2014

Beitunya, West Bank (CNN) -- Fakher Zayed is accustomed to trouble erupting on his doorstep.

For the past several years, Palestinian protesters have often clashed with Israeli security forces in front of his house. The four-story building stands on the edge of the West Bank village of Beitunya, within sight of the Israeli separation barrier and Ofer prison.

At first, the May 15 anniversary of the "Nakba," the exodus of more than 700,000 Palestinians after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, looked like just another day of Israeli-Palestinian skirmishing.

"(The Palestinians) were throwing stones, and the (Israeli) soldiers throw the tear gas. Plastic bullets," Zayed said. "They run away. After three or four minutes, they came back to throw stones again."

To protect his home, his family and his carpentry business, Zayed installed more than half a dozen security cameras around his building, which operate 24 hours a day.

Last Thursday, these cameras captured the chilling shooting deaths of two Palestinian teenagers. According to six hours of raw, unedited video distributed by the children's rights advocacy organization Defense for Children International and reviewed by CNN, the two boys -- ages 17 and 16 -- were shot on the same patch of asphalt on the same day, the second victim 73 minutes after the first.

The preliminary IDF inquiry indicates that no live fire was shot at all on Thursday during the riots in Beitunya and we have to determine what caused this result.
Lt Colonel Peter Lerner, Israeli Defense Forces

The families of the boys, as well as Zayed, blame the Israeli military for the killings.

"This is the first time they're shooting to kill here," Zayed said, speaking to CNN while standing on the exact spot outside his home where the two boys were filmed being shot.

But an Israeli military spokesman say its forces fired no live rounds during hours of clashes on May 15.

"During that demonstration that was extremely violent, the Israeli Defense Force used crowd-control methods and riot-dispersal means to prevent and control the overflow of the violence," Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told CNN.

"The preliminary IDF inquiry indicates that no live fire was shot at all on Thursday during the riots in Beitunya, and we have to determine what caused this result," Lerner added.

Security camera footage

CNN producer Kareem Khadder was filming the clashes in Beitunya on May 15.

Several dozen Palestinian youths used the wall of Zayed's house as cover. Periodically, they jumped out to hurl stones at about a half-dozen Israeli soldiers and border police officers standing on a hilltop perhaps 100 meters away. The Israeli forces responded with volleys of tear gas while periodically firing rubber-coated bullets from their rifles.

At one point, Khadder filmed a Palestinian teenager who appeared to be struck in the leg with one of these semi-lethal rounds. The boy hopped and limped for a few seconds in obvious pain but then turned around and rejoined the clashes.

At 1:45 p.m. May 15, Zayed's security camera caught the moment when one of the stone-throwing boys was mortally wounded.

Seventeen-year-old Nadeem Nouwarah was dressed in a sleeveless black t-shirt, wearing a black and white kefiyeh scarf to cover his face and carrying a backpack over both shoulders. As he walked toward the Israeli military positions in front of Zayed's door, Nouwarah suddenly fell forward, landing briefly on his hands, before rolling over to lie on his back.

Within seconds, a crowd of Palestinians gathered to lift Nouwarah and rush him to a waiting ambulance. According to a medical report, Nouwarah was pronounced dead in a hospital less than two hours later, having suffered a single bullet wound that entered his chest and passed out his back.

Though Khadder didn't know it at the time, he was filming two Israeli security troops firing their rifles at the Palestinian protesters at the same exact moment when Nouwarah was shot. In the video, it is not clear what kind of rounds the Israelis were shooting or whether their gunfire hit Nouwarah. However, Khadder's camera shows that less than 15 seconds after one of these gunshots, Palestinians were already racing to put the fatally wounded Nouwarah in the ambulance.

Suffering the effects of tear gas, Khadder soon left the protest. He was unaware that Nouwarah's wounds were fatal.

At 2:58 p.m., the security cameras filmed a second fatal shooting. Sixteen-year-old Mohammad Odeh Salameh was at the front lines of the protest, wearing a green Hamas flag as a cape as well as a green Hamas headband over his black mask.

As he was walking away from the Israeli positions, he suddenly fell to the ground and struggled briefly to get up. The boy was shot just a few steps from where Nouwarah had been wounded.

Doctors pronounced Salameh dead on arrival at the hospital, with a bullet wound that had pierced his back and exited his chest.

School in mourning

At St. George's school in Ramallah, relatives and classmates of the first victim, Nouwarah, were in mourning this week. Students wore black t-shirts with photos of the smiling boy. The eleventh-grader was pictured wearing a backward baseball cap.
The entire world should understand and know that my son was wearing a school backpack and leaving school when he was assassinated in cold blood.
Siam Nouwarah

"There were 21 students in our grade," said his 16-year-old classmate George Yousef. "Now, we are 20."

Nouwarah's father, Siam, told CNN he had expressly instructed his eldest son not to attend the Nakba protests.

"Afterwards, I felt he was not convinced with what I told him," said Siam, who works as a hairdresser in Ramallah.

Nouwarah appeared to have gone to the anti-Israel protests directly from school on the afternoon of May 15. His father showed CNN the bloody backpack his son was wearing when he was shot.

There was a small hole in the bag, in roughly the same location where the bullet would have exited Nouwarah's body.

Siam Nouwarah then pulled a packet of bloodstained papers out of the bag. They were photocopies of a textbook that included the writings of Anton Chekhov, accompanied by a teenage student's handwriting, doodles and class notes.

"We were surprised when we took the school backpack back from the hospital to find this bullet inside," said the elder Nouwarah. He then pulled a small used bullet stored in a plastic bag out of the backpack.

The metal slug appeared to be from a 556 NATO round, the standard ammunition used in M-16 rifles carried by Israeli security forces. It was impossible for CNN to confirm the authenticity of the bullet.

Siam Nouwarah said he was saving it for a forensic examination. He accuses Israeli soldiers of killing his son.

"The entire world should understand and know that my son was wearing a school backpack and leaving school when he was assassinated in cold blood," the grieving father said.

Ballistics

On Thursday, Lerner, the Israeli military spokesman, told CNN that a request had been put in with the Palestinian Authority to do a ballistic report on the bullet found in Nouwarah's backpack.

"That round that was presented shouldn't have been in the bag, so it also raises a question," he said. Lerner repeated the military's assertion that Israeli security forces fired only rubber-coated bullets -- which are not designed to penetrate bodies -- in Beitunya on May 15.

Regarding the CNN video of the Israeli security forces firing rifles at the Palestinian demonstrators at the moment when Nouwarah was shot, Lerner said the weapons being used had an attachment at the end of the barrel for firing rubber-coated projectiles.

Asked whether there could been some malfunction or mistake that would have led to the firing of a lethal round rather than a rubber-coated projectile, Lerner said, "I'm not aware of any malfunction at this time."

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has joined several human rights groups calling for an investigation into the deadly incident.

"I am deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding the recent death of two Palestinian minors," wrote Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations in the West Bank.

According to initial reports, Gunness added, both boys appeared "unarmed and appeared to pose no direct threat."

cctv footage of killing:   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsUuUsIx4Ww

CNN footage:               

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2014/05/22/pkg-watson-4a-west-bank-teens-shot.cnn



http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/22/world/meast/israel-west-bank-shooting/

[give her dixie]

For the first time, the Holy Land will witness a fearless pope

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had better brace himself: Pope Francis arrives in the Middle East on Saturday. The pontiff's words, of course, will be of the need to improve relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims. But the visit's semiotics will send out an altogether tougher message.

When the previous two popes went on pilgrimage to the region, they went first to Jordan, then to Israel, and then to the Occupied Territories. Francis has altered the order. He arrives in Jordan tomorrow but is insisting on then crossing into the occupied territories before visiting Israel. Francis, a man known for the potency of his symbolism and gestures, is making a point.

You see that point more clearly if you look at the official itinerary issued by the Vatican. The first thing the pope will do when he enters the Israeli-occupied West Bank is to call on "the president of the state of Palestine". The wording is significant: Francis is announcing that he is visiting an entity that Israel, like the United States, insists does not exist.

Pope Francis arrives at a time when peace talks have broken down and the Palestinian leadership has been taking unilateral steps in the international arena. Most significantly, a pact was signed a month ago between Fatah and Hamas to repair the rift between the rival factions. There is talk of a Palestinian unity government being formed within weeks. Many in the Vatican see the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation as having been carefully timed to come to fruition just as the pope visits.

Previous popes have trodden gingerly in the Holy Land. But Francis seems determined to back up the Vatican's agreement with the UN declaration in 2012 that Palestine is a member state. He will be based in the residence of the papal nuncio in annexed East Jerusalem; and, though he will venture into Israel to pay his respects at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and visit Israel's president and two chief rabbis, he will meet Netanyahu at the Vatican-owned Notre Dame complex that lies "on the seam line" between East and West Jerusalem.

The nearest Pope Benedict got to politics on his trip in 2009 was to describe the 26ft-high Israeli security wall, which cuts through the West Bank like a concrete scar, as one of the "saddest sights" of his visit. But Francis, known for his off-the-cuff remarks and vivid turns of phrase, could well say something explosive when, after saying mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, he has lunch with Palestinian children from the Aida and Dheisheh refugee camps.

The Vatican is publicly insisting that the main point of the trip is to mend fences between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. The official theme – "So that they may be one" – is timed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the meeting between a previous pope and the Orthodox patriarch, which lifted mutual decrees of excommunication that had split the churches in 1054, causing a thousand years of Great Schism.

Francis has other concerns. Christianity is in rapid decline throughout the Middle East. A century ago 20% of the population were Christians; today just 4%. Things have got much worse in the last decade with the invasion of Iraq, the Arab spring, and civil war in Syria.

Attacks on Christians are happening in Israel too, with firebombings and murders by Muslims and Jewish extremists spraying "Death to Arabs and Christians" and "Jesus is garbage" graffiti on Christian sites. In Bethlehem the Christian population has plummeted from about 60% in 1990 to 15%. Catholic leaders fear that, if the trend continues, the Holy Land will become a spiritual Disneyland, full of tourist pilgrim attractions but devoid of local believers.

But it will be Francis's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian issue that could have the greatest political ramifications. For decades the Vatican has favoured a two-state solution featuring security guarantees for Israel, sovereignty for the Palestinians, and a special status for Jerusalem and holy sites.

Inside Israel there has been increasing frustration, from some Israelis and even a few Palestinians, over whether agreement can ever be reached on two separate states. But the Palestinians must be given a proper state of their own – a single state would become a mere apartheid-style parody of democracy with two classes of citizen.

Pope Francis understands that. To emphasise two-state inevitability he will lay a wreath on the grave of Theodor Herzl, the Hungarian founder of modern political Zionism. He was told by a previous pope, when asking for help in establishing a Jewish state, that "the Jews have not recognised Our Lord, therefore we cannot recognise the Jewish people". The wreath will lay to rest that institutional antisemitism.

In all this the pope will be preaching a powerful message about "co-existence without fear". Francis is breaking precedent by including a Jew and a Muslim in the official Vatican delegation: a rabbi and imam who worked with him on interfaith dialogue in Argentina will incarnate the call for "co-existence". And to emphasise his "without fear" line, the pope has rejected the armoured car provided to previous popes and heads of state.

Whether any of this will shame the intransigents into making concessions that might at least allow the resumption of peace talks is another matter. But it will not be for lack of clarity from the visitor from Rome.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/22/pope-francis-holy-land-two-state-palestinians

[seafoid]

If you care about Israel, silence is no longer an option

http://www.reiner-bernstein.de/genferinitiative/ge_erklaerungen/Appell-Diaspora_22.03.13.pdf

[give her dixie]

Israelis demolish Negev mosque as ethnic cleansing continues

Israeli bulldozers guarded by a large force of police started to demolish the mosque in Wadi Al-Niam in the Negev on Thursday amid residents' fears that authorities could also demolish homes in the village. A demolition order had been nailed to the mosque wall a few days earlier.

The Negev Foundation for Land and Man denounced the demolition, describing the Israeli act as a blatant assault on the sanctity of the mosque and on Arab rights to live in the Negev. It also noted that the demolition violates the right to freedom of worship as well as international laws and conventions.

The foundation also condemned the police attacks on the residents of Wadi Al-Niam, the demolition of their homes, the confiscation of their property and the destruction of their crops. It stressed that the indigenous people of the Negev Desert are determined to stay in their homes in the face of Israeli scheming and force. It appealed to Arabs in Israel and the Arabs of the Negev in particular to stand by the people of Wadi Al-Niam.

The Islamic movement in the Negev said that the demolition of the Wadi Al-Niam mosque is a criminal act by the Israelis. It is, the movement said in a statement, part of the wider ethnic cleansing of the area by which Israel wants to displace 60,000 Palestinian Arabs from their traditional home in the desert so that Jewish settlers and the Israeli army can move in.

"The people in the Negev have the right to live on their own land," said the Islamic movement. "They have the right to build on it and live on it and worship on it." The demolitions, the statement added, will only increase the people's resolve to stay put on their land.

The movement called on all human rights organisations and institutions in the Negev to stand side by side with the people of Wadi Al Niam, defend their legitimate rights and confront Israel's ethnic cleansing.


- See more at: http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/11664-israelis-demolish-negev-mosque-as-ethnic-cleansing-continues#sthash.FVY2Oanh.cuyiQbMQ.dpuf