Our Wednesday News Analysis | Using the Right Language: The ‘Incremental Genocide’ of the Palestinians Continues

A Palestinian woman examines damage caused by the Jewish settler pogrom in the town of Huwwara, in the occupied West Bank. (Photo: Oren Ziv, via ActiveStills.com)

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/using-the-right-language-the-incremental-genocide-of-the-palestinians-continues/?utm_content=buffer16d50&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

By Ilan Pappe
Published March 16, 2023

“… even when I looked at those atrocities, as did others, we defined them, with certain justice, as ethnic cleansing; or, as Edward Said called it, a project of accumulation (of land and power) and displacement (of people, their identity, and their history).

I hesitated to use, for all these dark chapters, the term ‘genocide’. I used it only once when, describing the Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip since 2006, I framed it as an incremental genocide.

The recent sprees of killing, since the beginning of this year and the benefit of yet another commemorative moment of recollection, probably justify expanding the term beyond Israel’s atrocious assaults and siege on the Gaza Strip.

I am writing this op-ed on March 10, 2023. Seventy-five years ago, on this date, the military command of the Zionist leadership publicized Plan Dalet, or Plan D, which, among other guidelines, instructed the Zionist forces on their way to occupy hundreds of Palestinian villages and several towns and neighborhoods in historical Palestine, to carry out:

“Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

Similar guidelines were given to the urban areas. This was a softer version of the real commands that were given to the units on the ground. Here is one example of an order sent to a unit entrusted with occupying three large villages in Western Galilee as part of Plan D commands:

“Our Mission is to assault for the purpose of occupation…to kill the men, destroy and set fire to Kabri, Umm al-Faraj and An-Nahr”...

Read more: Using the Right Language: The ‘Incremental Genocide’ of the Palestinians Continues

ISRAELI OCCUPATION IN PALESTINE MUST END AS VIOLENCE ESCALATES

A Jewish man passes a row of Palestinian shops closed in the Old City of Jerusalem as part of a general strike, a day after 10 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli army raid in the West Bank, occupied Palestine, Feb. 23, 2023. (AP Photo)

Source: Daily Sabah
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/israeli-occupation-in-palestine-must-end-as-violence-escalates

By NAJLA M. SHAHWAN
Published March 16, 2023

As the occupation is 'eating away' both Israeli and Palestinian societies, Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said 'the violence and tragedy in Palestine must end'

“More than 270 Israeli settlements encroach on and fragment Palestine. The Separation Wall divides thousands of Palestinians from each other and their lands. It constitutes a major obstacle to their freedom of movement, including impairing access to health care, schools and employment – and it imposes a suffocating straitjacket on their lives,"

The current spate of deadly violence is distancing the prospect of a two-state solution to end the Israel-Palestine conflict, as the occupation is “eating away” at both societies, the U.N. rights chief told the Human Rights Council last Friday.

“For this violence to end, the occupation must end,” said the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) head Volker Turk, after presenting the council with his latest annual report on the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

“More than half a century of occupation has led to widening dispossession, deepening deprivation and recurring and severe violations of the rights of Palestinian people, including the right to life,” he said.

The occupation is “eating away at the health of both societies,” on every level, from childhood to old age, and in every part of life, he continued.

Member states should play a role in “assisting all parties to find the exit ramp.”...

Read more: Israeli occupation in Palestine must end as violence escalates

A CIVIC ZIONIST’S POWERFUL VISION OF A TRULY DEMOCRATIC ISRAEL FOR ALL ITS CITIZENS

Social entrepreneur Shuli Dichter. His memoir, "Sharing the Promised Land," is refreshingly honest and thought-provoking.Credit: Nathan Caspi

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/a-civic-zionists-powerful-vision-of-a-truly-democratic-israel-for-all-its-citizens/

David B Green writes in Haaretz on 8 March 2023

If this is the time for a paradigm shift in the nature of Israel’s political regime, social entrepreneur Shuli Dichter’s ideas have a great deal to contribute – as revealed in his just-translated memoir

“Sharing the Promised Land: In Pursuit of Equality between Jewish and Arab Citizens in Israel,” by Shuli Dichter (translated from Hebrew by Joyce Klein and Aloma Halter). Ebook-pro.com, 228 pages, $12.99 (paperback), $2.99 (Kindle)

"Sharing the Promised Land is a memoir, not an autobiography, in which the author recounts a string of eye-opening personal experiences, and the changes they wrought in his own way of thinking. (Originally published in Hebrew in 2014, this English version is self-published, but was translated and edited with obvious professional care. I should also acknowledge that I have known and admired the author for years.)"

In the early 1990s, Shuli Dichter entered the home of a wealthy Arab businessman in the northern Israeli town of Baka al-Garbiyeh. Dichter, who was then around 40 and living nearby in Kibbutz Ma’anit, was hoping to get his host to finally sign up for a joint real-estate venture he had proposed more than a year earlier.

This was during the optimistic days following the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords and Dichter – though he probably knew more about the issue of Arab-Jewish coexistence than business – nonetheless had dreams of a project that would benefit both communities.

Ma’anit, a veteran kibbutz founded in 1942, had a long-term lease from the government on some 70 dunams (18 acres) of agricultural land that, because of recent regulatory changes, could now be rezoned for far-more profitable commercial purposes. The neighbor from Baka owned five cement plants. Why not join forces to build a shopping center on the site, which they could then operate and profit from together?

Read more: A civic Zionist’s powerful vision of a truly democratic Israel for all its citizens