Renewed efforts by Israel to turn tens of thousands of Bedouin into refugees in their own country – some for the second or third time – is proof that in a Jewish state some Israelis are simply the wrong kind of citizen.
How would you describe a white town in the United States that froze the tender for plots of land in a new neighbourhood because it risked allowing blacks to move in? As racist? And yet, replace the word “white” with “Jewish” and this describes what has just happened in Kfar Vradim, a small town in the Galilee. Vradim’s policy cannot be judged in isolation. It reflects how Israeli society has been intentionally structured for decades.
More than a decade ago, US President Jimmy Carter warned that Israel was practising apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. But in truth, it would be more accurate to say Israel itself is an apartheid state.
The Greek Orthodox Church has been plunged into a renewed crisis in the Holy Land as its leaders are accused of selling off land to extremist Jewish settlers in prime locations in Jerusalem's Old City. Hundreds of Palestinians rallied in the city to call for the removal of Patriarch Theophilos III, claiming that he had colluded with a settler organisation.
Israeli police have refused to return the body of Yacoub Abu al-Qiyan, two days after he was shot dead during a pre-dawn raid to bulldoze his home and those of another dozen families in Umm al-Hiran. But claims that he was an ISIS terrorist who used his car to ram into police, killing an officer, have rapidly unravelled. Video evidence and a leaked autopsy suggest police caused the accident by opening fire on his car, and then allowed him to bleed to death.
Palestinian leaders in Israel have warned that they suspect the Israeli government is behind recent efforts to trick the families of refugees from the 1948 war into signing away the rights to their lands. Experts say Israel has been working to pressure families into selling their lands for decades as a way to undermine a Palestinian right of return, one of the key demands in any peace agreement.
An Israeli government plan to build hundreds of homes for the country’s Druze population faces stiff opposition after it was revealed that the new community would be located on the lands of Palestinian refugees. The town, due to be built west of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, would be the first new community for members of Israel’s Palestinian minority since the state’s founding 68 years ago.
