It Is Essential of Palestinians Who Hold the Keys to Their Homes to Rise Up

Rasa - Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is openly stepping around a threatened US aid cut to Palestinians, even backing a funding halt as he repeats calls for a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees to be dismantled.

News ID: 435711

Date: 10 January 2018 - 04:53

RNA - Netanyahu's public comments reflects a desire to show support for a major ally. With Palestinians seething over US President Donald Trump's divisive recognition last month of Jerusalem Al-Quds as Israel's capital, he has even threatened to withhold aid money, accusing them of being "no longer willing to talk peace".

This week in a report denied by a State Department official, Western media outlets say Washington has frozen $159 million in funding for UNRWA. The UN agency, founded in 1949 and mandated by the General Assembly to continue with its services until a just and lasting solution is found for the Palestine refugees, is a main provider of educational and health services in the Gaza Strip. No wonder Netanyahu says UNRWA is "an organisation that perpetuates the Palestinian problem. It also enshrines the narrative of the so-called 'right of return'. Therefore, UNRWA should pass from the world."

At any rate, the US and Israeli regimes have clear criteria to dismantle UNRWA, advocate a suspension of funding for Palestinians, perpetuate the refugee crisis, and ultimately Judaize the Holy Land. Meaning, Palestinians in the West Bank, who have now spent 50 years under Israeli military control, and their daily lives are full of checkpoints, walls and patrols, have no choice but to rise up. They should do so before it gets too late:

A- Palestinian officials say Trump's declaration on Jerusalem Al-Quds, overturning decades of US policy, means he cannot serve as an honest broker in peace negotiations that Washington has been trying to revive. They condemn his remarks on the funding halt as blackmail.

B- Palestinians want East Jerusalem Al-Quds as the capital of a state they seek to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This has been backed overwhelmingly by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The US is the largest donor to UNRWA, with a pledge of nearly $470 million as of 2016. If that money goes away, the OIC should step in to fill the gap. This is because in addition to its services in Gaza, UNRWA operates in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

C- Palestinians need all the support they can get from the OIC and the UN. This is because the US and Israel are now actively invested in a system of political Apartheid in Palestine, and are twisting the arm of the PA to facilitate such a dreadful regime. Worst thing the international community could do right now is look the other way.

D- The US and Israel have something far more consequential in mind. They are planning a series of measures aimed at fully denying Palestinians their legal rights in Al-Quds and precluding any future peace settlement based on sharing the city between Israel and a future Palestinian state. This is while international law insists that Israel has no sovereignty over East Al-Quds, illegally occupied and annexed in 1967 and 1980 respectively.

E- There is a troubling reason why Trump wants to move US embassy to Al-Quds. The idea is to further demote the status of Palestinians, who would find themselves in a politically gray area. This could give Israel’s military enough time to kill, wound and detain even more Palestinians.

The good news is that a telling vote at the United Nations on December 21 showed that the US and Israel stand alone in their criminal campaign to deny Palestinians their rights in their unlawfully occupied city. Wasting no time, Palestinians should take matters into their own hands as the Zionist regime is now pushing forward with designs to further isolate Al-Quds through further construction of the Separation Wall and illegal settlements and to empty it from its Palestinian inhabitants.

Palestinians should understand that Israel is exploiting the unparalleled US support to the maximum, and that any delay on a new wave of uprising would certainly be missed opportunities to ensure their right to freedom and self-determination permanently. The nature of the US-Israel coordination is indeed unprecedented. The nature of the Palestinian uprising should equally be unprecedented, else they would be intimidated, bullied and ultimately stripped of their right to have the entire Al-Quds as their eternal capital.

The Palestinians should choose between their existing humiliation or eternal humiliation when Al-Quds is no longer theirs. PA officials have made many threats so far, including the exclusion of the US from the peace process and changing their demand to a one state solution. But there needs to be something concrete regarding one that is predicated on a united Palestinian leadership that truly explores new options, allies and future outlook.

It is essential of the people of Palestine, therefore, to take to the streets to end the US-funded Israeli occupation and Apartheid and its abuse of Palestinian indigenous rights - some of which are happening right now. They can be pretty much sure that the international civil society (19 organizations worldwide), including the UN and OIC, stand right beside them in opposition to the US and Israel and their racist and colonial rule over Palestine

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