EDITORIAL: It is a constant struggle with its ebbs and flows of violence between the Palestinian people and Israeli occupation forces. Israel carried out air strikes on Thursday in Hamas-controlled Gaza for the second time in a week after a rocket fired from there landed in southern Israel.
Luckily, this time no one was killed on either side. Last year, 11 days of Israeli assault on Gaza had claimed more than 250 lives in the besieged Palestinian enclave and 13 in Israel.
Tensions have been soaring since the start of the holy month of Ramazan on April 2 over the situation in Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam and known to Jews as the Temple Mount, as the occupation forces allowed Jewish worshippers to enter the sacred compound and say prayers in celebration of Passover.
Israeli police also stormed the mosque compound wounding at least 158 Muslim congregants. Then, again, on Thursday soldiers raided the compound, targeting Muslims with tear gas and rubber bullets, to which Palestinian youth responded with petrol bombs. And Hamas gave a call for general mobilisation to defend against Israeli incursions into the occupied West Bank and intrusions in the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Meanwhile, the Arab League held an emergency meeting where its chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit urged Israel to end Jewish prayers inside the mosque compound, saying restricting the Muslims right of worship and allowing ultra nationalist Jews under police protection was a flagrant affront to Muslim feelings that could trigger a wider conflict.
Israel, he said, was violating centuries-old policy according to which non-Muslims may visit the Al Aqsa compound, but not pray there. Unfortunately, these words carry little weight since several members of the League have normalised relations with Israel, in utter disregard of the 2002 Saudi peace initiative, endorsed by the Arab League, that offered normalisation in exchange for Israeli full withdrawal from Arab lands occupied during the 1967 war, a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In fact, the Arab states maintained a deafening silence when the previous US president Donald Trump, going against international law and various UN Security Council resolutions, ‘recognised’ Israeli sovereignty over occupied Arab lands, including East Jerusalem the Jewish state claims, based on some Biblical prophecy, as ‘the eternal capital of the Jewish state’. Joe Biden has quietly been following his predecessor’s unabashed pro-Israeli stance. The US-led Palestinian-Israeli peace plan, even though a charade, has long been dead in the water.
After the latest eruption of violence, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed his concern over the “deteriorating situation in Jerusalem”, saying he was in contact with the parties to press them to do all they can to lower tensions, avoid inflammatory actions and rhetoric. That is a wane expectation. Violence may subside for the time being but will not end unless occupation ends. Israel cannot commit unspeakable atrocities with impunity to usurp another people’s land and have peace, too.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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