Contextualizing the capturing in Neve Yaakov – Mondoweiss

The occupied Palestinian territory goes by a few of the most violent, damaging, and deadly days in latest reminiscence. The Israeli army occupation is metastasizing right into a monster consuming away at Palestinian life in all its shapes and types. A way of hopelessness, frustration, and despair hovers over us all like a darkish cloud. 

Then immediately, one act of defiance pierces the darkish, igniting a spark within the eyes of the folks. A mourning tent in Jenin momentarily turns right into a celebration. A road in Kufr Aqab is drowned within the sound of fireworks and beeping vehicles. Khairy Alqam’s deadly assault, the place he shot and killed seven Israeli settlers within the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov, was one such second.

It’s exhausting to elucidate the fleeting spark folks felt after they heard the information. I do know for a undeniable fact that not one in every of us would enjoyment of loss of life. However to grasp the occasions at Neve Yaakov and the Palestinian response to it, it is advisable to perceive its context — it is advisable to perceive the historical past of the place the place it occurred and the non-public historical past of the one that carried it out. 

The Israeli and worldwide media, in addition to political leaders, have tried to show the assault right into a religiously-motivated crime as a result of it befell on the eve of Shabbat in an space adjoining to a synagogue. However these identical accounts ignore the truth that Neve Yaakov can also be dwelling to the Israeli army’s central command middle for the occupation of the West Financial institution, and the settlement has been central to cementing Israeli management over occupied Jerusalem. Ignoring this context solely works to dehumanize Palestinians.

When an assault like Khairy Alqam’s in Neve Yaakov happens, it’s essential to perceive that this violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

So right here is the context.

Private and political historical past

Whereas none of us could ever really know what drove Khairy Alqam to hold out an assault in Neve Yaakov on that Friday evening, a private motive could also be deduced from his very identify — he was named after his grandfather, a 51-year-old Jerusalemite who was killed by an Israeli settler in 1998. The settler who killed Alqam’s grandfather was Haim Ferelman, a follower of the proscribed Kach terrorist motion. Ferelman was launched in 2010 when he was acquitted by an Israeli court docket of killing Khairy and three different Palestinians. Celebrating his launch was one other follower of the Jewish-supremacist Kach motion, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who now serves as Israel’s Nationwide Safety Minister.

Past the non-public dimension, there may be the overall circumstance of occupation and the encroachment of unlawful settlements in East Jerusalem.

The assault befell in Neve Yaakov, an unlawful settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. It didn’t happen in a “neighborhood of Jerusalem,” as some within the media have claimed. This issues as a result of understanding the character of Neve Yaakov as a settlement is essential to understanding the occasion as a complete.

Neve Yaakov was established in 1972 on lands illegally expropriated by the Israeli occupation authorities earlier in April 1968 and August 1970. The lands seized belonged to 2 neighboring Palestinian cities, Beit Hanina (551 dunams) and Al-Ram & Dahiyeh Al-Barid (315 dunams), along with lands seized from the village of Hizma to the east (385 dunams).

The brand new settlement was constructed to soak up incoming Zionist immigrants from overseas. Lots of these had been from English-speaking nations, particularly American Zionists, following plans introduced by Kach chief Rabbi Meir Kahane. 

Previous to the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1948, Palestinians within the space near Neve Yaakov had recognized and acknowledged that Jews had already owned land in that space. These had been 62 dunams, purchased in 1924 from Beit Hanina residents by an American non secular Zionist motion often called “Mizrachi,” based in 1902. In 1948, residents of Neve Yaakov deserted the settlement with the onset of the Nakba, because the Jordanian Army mobilized towards the Zionist takeover of Palestine.

Between 1948-1967, the Jordanian army established a army base on the web site of the settlement, in a transfer that locals understood as Jordan’s method of preserving Jewish property from takeover in the course of the time of Jordanian rule over the West Financial institution & East Jerusalem.

The settlement we see right this moment is nearly nowhere close to what the previous web site was like. In truth, the settlement in its entirety is constructed on non-public and titled lands, whose Palestinian homeowners had been by no means consulted or compensated earlier than the hostile takeover.

Neve Yaakov, together with neighboring settlements in East Jerusalem similar to Ramot, Pisgat Ze’ev, and Pisgat Amir, had been important in Israel’s strategic plan to create a belt of Jewish-only settlements within the north of the occupied metropolis, meant to choke Palestinian neighborhoods by ending the territorial contiguity between them and to stop any potential pure growth of these neighborhoods sooner or later. Neve Yaakov, together with different settlements in East Jerusalem, served the direct goal of fragmenting and dividing the occupied metropolis.

The settlement mission in Jerusalem

At the moment, the implications of Israel’s settlement mission in East Jerusalem are felt by each Palestinian within the metropolis. The city of Al-Ram was forcefully separated from Dahiyat Al-Barid with an 8-meter-high concrete wall, which was constructed in 2006. Residents had been separated from their households and neighbors, because the wall actually got here up within the coronary heart of their city. Touring 20-40 minutes by infamous army gates and checkpoints was required for next-door neighbors to go to one another. 

The city of Hizma was blocked off from Jerusalem in its entirety, made into an efficient ghetto by the apartheid wall and a army checkpoint inaccessible to any of its residents. It was then encircled by the Jewish-only settlements of Neve Yaakov, Pisgat Ze’ev, and Pisgat Amir.

In Beit Hanina, the neighborhood the place I grew up, the impact was felt otherwise. The city was break up into two components, half of it behind the apartheid wall and designated as “Space B & C” of the West Financial institution, the place Palestinian life and development had been severely restricted, and the opposite half absorbed into the Jerusalem Municipality, falling below direct Israeli rule after the annexation of occupied East Jerusalem in 1980. Most of Beit Hanna’s remaining lands (2,927 dunams) had been expropriated for Jewish-only settlements, whereas Palestinians remained on solely 2,368 dunams of constructed residential areas.

Getting permits to construct properties for Palestinians in Beit Hanina is nearly unattainable. Those that construct on their land or add extensions to their properties obtain rapid demolition orders from Israeli authorities. As compared, the settlers in East Jerusalem continually obtain new expansions to their settlements, whereas totally new settlements are constructed particularly for Jewish settlers within the coronary heart of our metropolis. Since Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, 58,000 properties have been constructed for Jewish Israelis within the japanese a part of town, whereas lower than 600 properties have been constructed for Palestinians. The final dwelling to be constructed was within the Nineteen Seventies.

Past that, the assault in Neve Yaakov is already being exploited for extra draconian plans for the neighborhood of Beit Hanina. The mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Leon, and deputy mayor Arieh King — each adherents of a Jewish-supremacist ideology — plan on increasing settler initiatives aimed particularly at additional choking Beit Hanina and denying it of its remaining open land. 

Itamar Ben-Gvir can also be utilizing the assault in Neve Yaakov to say he’ll “battle terrorism” by fast-tracking the demolition of “unlawful” Palestinian properties and companies in Jerusalem. The bulldozers had been deployed that very same morning. The demolition of homes of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem constitutes a warfare crime and crime towards humanity below worldwide legislation.

As a consequence of Israel’s systematic coverage of refusing permits and lack of grasp plans for Palestinians in Jerusalem, nearly one-third of Palestinian development is deemed “unlawful,” in response to Israeli authorities. The man liable for issuing constructing permits in Jerusalem is a Jewish supremacist named Yonatan Yousef, who I personally witnessed chanting “We would like Nakba, we would like Nakba now” at Palestinian and left-wing Israeli demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah simply this previous month.