Ben White Profile picture
Mar 29, 2018 6 tweets 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
The #GreatReturnMarch highlights a number of critical issues - like the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

But, as the name suggests, it is mainly about Israel's ongoing refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return home.

And here's something a lot of people forget, or don't realise.
Of the approximately 5.8 million UN-registered Palestinian refugees, just over 40 percent – two in five – actually live under direct Israeli (military) rule in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
These Palestinian refugees, therefore, are present within today’s single apartheid state reality, but alienated from their lands and properties by Israeli law and by force.
In fact, the *majority* of Palestinian refugees, even including those in neighbouring states, live within a short distance of where they were expelled and dispossessed.

So, for example: Palestinians expelled from Najd - now Sderot - are just 6 miles away, in Gaza's Jabaliya camp
Or take the Palestinian village of Miska, ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1948.

Today, its inhabitants & their descendants live anywhere between a few to a few dozen miles away. But around half are either Israeli citizens or in the West Bank.

arenaofspeculation.org/2011/05/18/pla…
What is the main point here? That the Palestinian refugees' return is not just a physical question but one of transforming discriminatory structures.

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More from @benabyad

Aug 31, 2018
"An emboldened Israeli right and their fellow ideologues in Washington sense an opportunity to deal UNRWA a fatal blow and thus, as they see it, liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue once and for all." My new op-ed:

middleeasteye.net/columns/trumps…
"For the Israeli hard-right, Trump’s decision to 'take Jerusalem off the negotiating table' was proof positive that...unilateralism ultimately gets results...[It] instilled a hope – if not outright confidence – over other issues such as annexation & the Palestinian refugees".
Since only the UNGA can change UNRWA's mandate, the US & Israel may have decided that breaking the agency financially, & obstructing its operations in the oPT, constitutes their best option for time being, alongside Trump's wishing away of the existence of Palestinian refugees.
Read 4 tweets
Aug 28, 2018
Today, Israeli occupation forces attacked Palestinians in Ras Karkar village in the central West Bank, as residents tried to protect their land from settlers and soldiers. 

Here, photojournalist Baha Nasr is assaulted (& then detained).

maannews.com/Content.aspx?i…
Update.

Ras Karkar's residents are continuing their resistance to the Israeli land colonisation today, with the village observing a strike, and preparations for further protests on the land in question.

wattan.tv/ar/news/262801…
facebook.com/20253196317093…
And here are more photos from yesterday:

(Credit: Issam Rimawi)

facebook.com/permalink.php?…
Read 5 tweets
Aug 21, 2018
That a respected journalist like @stephenkb wrote these paragraphs in The Sunday Times this week shows the event to which Palestinian history & experience is excluded in public discourse - an erasure which, by extension, delegitimises solidarity with their struggle.

THREAD ⬇️
I'm going to focus on the chant which @stephenkb cites by way of presenting the Palestine Solidarity Campaign as toxic (& thus not a group the unions should be affiliated to).

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free".

Is this an 'antisemitic' chant? Absolutely not.
Pre-1948, Palestine encompassed all of what is now Israel & the occupied Palestinian territory. In the Nakba, Zionist paramilitaries & Israeli state forces carried out a systematic expulsion of Palestinians & destruction of their communities.

Palestine *was* 'wiped off the map'.
Read 11 tweets
Aug 4, 2018
The Israeli army has killed another Palestinian child.

Moath Ziad al-Sory, 15, succumbed to his wounds early this morning, after being shot in the stomach by an Israeli soldier during protests in the occupied Gaza Strip yesterday.

english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=E…
imemc.org/article/child-…
According to this UN update, from 30 March to August 2, Israeli forces killed 164 Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip & wounded a further 17,259 - including 4,348 w/ live fire.

Yesterday (Aug. 3), Israeli army killed 2, wounded 220 (90 w/ live fire).

ochaopt.org/content/humani…
Read 4 tweets
Aug 4, 2018
Trump administration wants to get rid of UNRWA and strip millions of Palestinians of their refugee status
foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/03/tru…
Note this all too rare debunking of an Israeli talking point - namely, that in protracted refugee situations, UNHCR "recognises descendants of refugees as refugees".
The 2015 State Dept. report cited by @columlynch & @RobbieGramer echoes this comment in 2012 by a dept. spox. - both UNHCR & UNRWA recognise descendants of refugees as refugees & "the U.S. gov't supports this guiding principle".

foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/25/did…
Read 4 tweets
Aug 2, 2018
Why calling Israel an apartheid state or racist is not antisemitic.

My new op-ed on the IHRA document, self-determination, and attempts to silence and smear Palestinians and their allies.
middleeasteye.net/columns/why-ca…
Key points:

Contrary to argument of @Freedland & others, the example in the IHRA document pertaining to self-determination & Israel as a 'racist endeavour' is not about a "principle" but about the actual existing State of Israel.
Those downplaying the potential for the document to have a chilling effect highlight the qualifying "could" that prefaces the list of examples. But as the list includes obvious antisemitism like Holocaust denial, the "could" is often omitted in practice for *all* the examples.
Read 8 tweets

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