Our Wednesday News Analysis | Why the world abandoned Palestine

Palestinians take part in a protest against the holding of the annual flag march in Jerusalem which marks Jerusalem Day, at the Israel-Gaza border fence east of Gaza City on 18 May, 2023 (Reuters)

",,, the Palestinian cause still resonates in the global consciousness as 'an expansive metaphor for broader global struggles against colonial occupation and injustice'”.

French director Olivier Assayas’s masterpiece Carlos reminds us how symbolically, geopolitically and internationally important the struggle for the liberation of Palestine was in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a cause that inflamed imaginations worldwide.

Upon the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the world depicted in his film - the political atmosphere, the intense and widespread pro-Palestinian sentiments, and the centrality, whether real or perceived, of the Palestinian struggle - seems to have largely evaporated, to the point where it is legitimate to ask ourselves whether Palestine is still a cause celebre.

Is it still a factor that matters in international relations? If so, how - and if not, why?...

Read more: Why the world abandoned Palestine

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56 years of occupation: Explaining the Palestinian ‘Naksa’

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/06/56-years-of-occupation-explaining-the-palestinian-naksa/

By YUMNA PATEL
Published June 5, 2023

When Palestinians commemorate the Naksa, they are not only commemorating a historic loss of life and land, but the ongoing military occupation that every day, strips them of their rights to life, freedom, dignity, and self determination.

IN THIS 1967 PHOTO FROM THE U.N. RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY, UNRWA, ARCHIVE, PALESTINE REFUGEES FLEE ACROSS OVER THE JORDAN RIVER ON THE DAMAGED ALLENBY BRIDGE DURING THE 1967 ARAB-ISRAELI WAR.

"Fifty-six (56) years on, Israel’s military occupation has not ended. Rather, it has taken on new life.

... Israel has continued to enact a number of laws and policies that serve the chief goal of further expanding Israel’s control in the territory,
through land grabs, settlement construction,
and the violent subjugation of the Palestinian population."

Today Palestinians are marking 56 years of Israeli military occupation. More commonly known as the Naksa, ‘setback’ or ‘defeat’ in Arabic, June 5th marks the first day of the six-day war, which culminated in Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

The Naksa took place in 1967, just nineteen years after the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, when Israel was established on the lands of Palestine. During the Nakba, more than 750,000 Palestinians became refugees, and the new Jewish state had taken over an estimated 78% of the lands of historic Palestine. What was left of Palestine after the Nakba fell under Egyptian and Jordanian administration.

But following the six-day war, Israel took over control of the remaining 22% of Palestinian territory, enforcing a military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, in a move that was never recognized by the international community...

Read more: 56 years of occupation: Explaining the Palestinian ‘Naksa’

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OPINION | ISRAELI PROTESTERS, INSTEAD OF ‘DEMOCRACY,’ CHANT ‘APARTHEID’!

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-06-07/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israeli-protesters-instead-of-democracy-chant-apartheid/00000188-95dd-d3a7-adcf-b5df02d80000

By Michael Sfard
Published June 7, 2023

An Israeli settler directs another operating an excavator outside a portable building under construction at the former settler outpost of Homesh in the occupied West Bank in May.Credit: MENAHEM KAHANA - AFP

This week, we are marking the end of the occupation’s 56th year. The fact that so much time has passed means that the vast majority of the millions of human beings living under the Israeli occupation grew up in it.

They have never experienced a single day without oppression and dispossession, and they aren’t acquainted with a reality in which they are citizens who participate in making the decisions that affect their lives.

Some of them already have grandchildren, who were also born into a world in which an Israeli with a gun decides everything – whether they will be able to go abroad, whether they will be allowed to access the family’s orchard, whether they will be able to pray in Jerusalem, whether the Gazan son will be allowed to say goodbye to his dying mother who lives in the West Bank.

But the soldier isn’t the only problem for the people living under occupation. Because alongside the armed Israeli in uniform, there is also a Jew with a gun, or a club or a stone who is not wearing uniform. And the Jew without uniform steals their land, uproots what they have planted, harms their flocks, burns their homes, wounds them and even kills them. The Jew without uniform is waging a total war to annihilate Palestinian life in the West Bank’s open areas...

Read more: Opinion | Israeli Protesters, Instead of ‘Democracy,’ Chant ‘Apartheid’!