Jerusalem’s Bully
Have you ever seen a bully steal something and, feeling guilty about the theft, intimidate the victim into remaining passive?
That is how Israel behaves in general towards the Palestinians, but the most glaring examples of such bullying can be seen almost on a daily basis in Jerusalem.
Since the beginning of this year, Israel has served over 200 demolition orders against homes of Palestinians in illegally occupied east Jerusalem. An entire neighborhood, al-Bustan, is due to be demolished in the village of Silwan to make way for a park built for the benefit of Israeli settlers. A Palestinian cemetery is to be razed to make way for the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of ‘Tolerance and Human Dignity’. Schadenfreude?
2009 is the year Jerusalem takes the mantle of Capital of Arab Culture (it was held by Damascus in 2008), and the official celebrations began yesterday across the Arab world. Except that any affirmation of the Arab identity of Jerusalem terrifies the Zionist state, and the bully responded predictably.
All leave was canceled for the Israeli police and army so they could move swiftly to forcibly end the festivities both in Jerusalem and Nazareth, confiscating property and arresting organizers. The police also banned any activities inside Palestinian schools in Jerusalem, going as far to ban unrelated Mother’s Day celebrations in the elementary schools.
The plight of Jerusalem is one of the most under-reported angles of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and dispossession. Palestinian Jerusalemites live an increasingly isolated existence, cut off from the West Bank, annexed by Israel without being granted citizenship and persistently subjugated to policies that attempt to deny their history and links to the ancient city.
Israel’s draconian and wholly unjustified reaction yesterday proves however that despite its monopoly on control and military power in Jerusalem, the bully remains paranoid.
