- 19 آيار 2021
- مقابلة خاصة
Jerusalem – Akhbar El Balad - In this interview, conducted by a German newspaper, with the writer and artist Dr Ali Qlebo which he talked about the Israeli hate speech against the Palestinians and the politicization of this speech against Islam and the Palestinians in a failed attempt to seize Al-Aqsa, displace the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and the brutal aggression on Gaza
Mr Qleibo, how does the current conflict affect you personally?
The Qleibo district in Gaza, known after our family citrus groves, is among the main targets of the Israeli Air raids. On the hilltop, we have built a mosque to service the adjacent village and our farmers that have tended our trees for over the past 100 years. On Saturday night the Qleibo Mosque was bombed into ashes and the two elder sons of our farmer were martyred. Many people remain trapped under the rubble of their houses as the bombardment continues nonstop. We will only be able to determine how many people are under the rubble when the bombardment stops. We've been grieving for the past days,
Hamas rockets and Israel's attacks on Gaza are now dominating the headlines. However, the current conflict began in Jerusalem.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ego has been so bloated since the Trump era to the point that he believes that he can get away with ethnocide. His hate discourse over the past few years has reflected a problem that lies at the root of the Palestinian/Israeli hostilities that reached its apex in Al Nakbah in 1948: the date of the expulsion of the Palestinians and the mass murders and forced evictions from their homeland parallel to the establishment of the state of Israel. Back then, people did not leave their homes voluntarily -rather they were terrorized away from their villages and homeland by brutal force when many were killed, cut to pieces and thrown into the water well of the village such as in Al Dawaymeh, Deir Yassin, Lod, Jaffa and Haifa to cite a few examples well documented by historians. The recent lynching of Palestinians by mobs, and the violent unleashing of militant Israelis against the defenceless Palestinians in Jaffa, Bat Yam, Haifa and at traffic intersections throughout the country triggers memories of the Palestinian ethnocide in 1948. The current forceful evictions in Sheikh Jarrah currently is at the heart of the uprising as, Jewish extremists protected by the police, are trying to take over houses from Palestinians. Many Palestinians see these collective evictions as an echo of 1948, a repetition of the expulsion.
In addition, there was unrest on the Al Aqsa Mosque /Temple Mount in the fasting month of Ramadan, then Jerusalem Day, on which radical Israelis celebrate the conquest of the city and do not hide the fact that they would like to get rid of the Arabs in it and appropriate the sacred Moslem mosque.
The challenges that the Palestinians face in protecting Al-Aqsa Mosque are complex, and there are many factors that play a role in this conflict. Demographic, theological, political and economic, then there is politics at the local, national and international level. But I still think I can say that Netanyahu in particular has made gross miscalculations and promoted the creation of the current crisis by inciting hatred against Palestinians. He thought the world was so busy with COVID19 that hardly anyone would notice if Israel appropriated in defiance of international laws (that protect Palestinians right as a people under occupation); Both the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and Al Aqsa mosque. So there were evictions, and access to the Dome of the Rock was restricted, and the Damascus Gate at the entrance to the old town was blocked again and again.
But the situation escalated.
In 1948 the Palestinians may have been helpless, but they aren't today. They protested peacefully in Sheikh Jarrah, and the people praying and meditating as is customary in Ramadan locked themselves in the Dome of the Rock in defence of one of the holiest places in Islam, the place where Prophet Mohammed connected with Allah in the Night of al Mi'raj. In the Palestinian struggle to protect the mosque from being appropriated by the Israelis, the sacred grounds became a battlefield as the Israelis entered with force to empty the building in order for the militant Zionists to take over. Netanyahu's actions were characterized by hubris and arrogance. He had no idea how to deal with the exploding situation. And then the rockets from Gaza hit in this awkward moment. They helped disperse the crowds of Zionists trying to break into the sacred Aqsa mosque– but they came almost as if to save them.
Did the Hamas rockets threaten tens of thousands of Israelis come in handy for Netanyahu?
They allowed him to shift the conflict and turn it to Gaza, as has been done repeatedly in the past as an act of collective punishment - hardly anyone speaks of the causes anymore. And Hamas is now presenting itself as the protector of al Aqsa in view of the fact that the Palestinian Authority has failed to protect both the Palestinian people in Sheikh Jarrah and Al Aqsa.
The fact that Israel cannot simply accept the missile terror and defend itself is probably legitimate.
Most of all, we feel helpless. Israel is taking action against Hamas - by imposing massive warfare in which the ordinary citizens are the prime victims. Most of the people in Gaza are regular families with children, bills to pay and dream of the day when their children are married... For over twenty years Gaza has been suffering under a state of total siege, with impossible living conditions and high levels of unemployment and the majority of the population living below the poverty line. They endured hard times and now once again they are the prime victims of collective punishment by the Israeli army. In the beginning, I described my personal pain. It increases a hundredfold in Gaza when you consider the massive destruction of this densely populated region of Palestine.
It is noticeably quiet around Mahmoud Abbas at the moment. The fact that the Palestinian President cancelled planned elections contributed to the escalation.
His authority has totally collapsed and he has lost credibility long ago. There is nothing left. He stays in his palace surrounded by heavy security forces... The corruption of our leaders, their subservient position in relation to the Israelis and their indifference to the public good of the Palestinians have been extremely demoralizing hence the eruption of grass-root movements against the occupation.
Why don't Palestinians protest against Abu Mazen too?
His henchmen beat up every protest, it's an oppressive regime. Look at this absurdity: until recently all over the world, there are demonstrations for the Palestinian cause - except in the nominal capital, in Ramallah! There's a joke going around in Israel right now: How can we better control the Arabs in Haifa, Akko or Lod? The answer: Perhaps we should hand over power to Abbas there, and then there will be serenity.
In the past few days, there have been hunting scenes in the cities you just mentioned: Jewish radicals persecuted and lynched Arab Israelis in the streets and in their homes protected by Israeli police. Is coexistence now threatened even where the two groups may not live together warmly, but at least live peacefully next to each other?
The extremists who hunted Arabs in Haifa, Jaffa and Bat Yam did not act spontaneously. These were groups that had existed for a long time. They are guided by an ideology of hatred, have absolutely no humanitarian values, just a feeling of ethnic superiority. Extremists like these are not unprecedented in history, they have occurred in many cities in modern history. This is simply an ugly chapter in modern-day Israeli/Palestinian conflict nourished by a group of Zionist extremists that have been empowered by Netanyahu and unleashed to terrorize the Palestinians, create chaos and ensure his position in power.
If these groups have been around for so long, why are they starting right now?
I have to come back to Netanyahu: In order to maintain power, he has integrated these groups into his coalitions in recent years and helped spread their narrative of hatred. They are vigilantes with impunity. In spite of all the anger about it, I also have to say: These people are only a small minority in Israeli society. In spite of everything that has happened, the dealings between Palestinians and Israelis in this country in general were and are still characterized by an astonishingly high level of politeness. In fact, these militants have little interactions with actual Palestinians but they do not reflect the attitudes of every Israeli. They are a militant political-religious party.
From the outside, it hardly looks like that.
Violent clashes, rockets and bombings are widely reported, but hardly any other incidents until Netanyahu intensified his anti-Palestinian campaign. An example: two weeks ago, Palestinians with Israeli passports (from the North and South) came to Jerusalem to pray in the Dome of the Rock. The police prevented them from entering the city.
There was it a street battle?
No, not: at all. Palestinians from all over Jerusalem set out to escort the people who had gotten down from the buses fourteen kilometres west of Jerusalem they started walking towards Jerusalem on the highway. The road towards them was also blocked. The result was huge traffic chaos, which also included many Israelis who were on their way to the beach that day - it was Shabbat. There was great fraternization on the streets, Jews and Palestinians did gymnastics here, played cards together, provided each other with drinks and talked together. Coexistence does not mean that we all have to marry each other. But that kind of humanizing with each other produces a very warm feeling.
Is this normality still possible? Since then, a lot has happened that creates bad blood.
In countless factories in this country, hospitals, municipalities, post office ... in all economic spheres, and civil life services Palestinians and Israelis work together, they know each other. And those who know each other have no hatred in them, unlike the extremists who hunted down people, they certainly don't know a single Palestinian personally. In a way, this Monday will be a normal working day - although the situation is grotesque, of course: people will talk about everything, just not what has happened in the past few days. They will avoid political issues whenever possible and pretend nothing has happened - for at least two weeks until things boil down.
And then this normalcy just continues until there is the next outbreak of violence?
Not quite, a lot has changed. The Palestinians - by which I mean the protests in Jerusalem, not the Hamas rockets - have clearly expressed their dissatisfaction with the ongoing Israeli occupation, showing that they do not accept the Oslo agreement. Although consumer life and standards of living have changed remarkably in the West Bank and there are now many elegant restaurants in Ramallah, expensive cars in the streets and elegant homes... But Palestinians are no longer willing to accept the occupation and normalize life under occupation. Exchanging freedom, pride and dignity for material goods is no longer justifiable,
So is a new political process needed?
The so-called peace agreement, the Oslo agreement, is dead, we are back to zero again, the year 1948, the year of the Palestinian Nakba and forced evictions from the homeland. Now we should pause and consider how we can live together, with the same rights and the same opportunities - but that can only succeed if Israel acknowledges its injustices and tells the truth, especially to their people; Forced displacements, and crimes committed to the Palestinians that have been kept secret in Israel to this day.
