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A new Palestinian uprising taking place inside the Zionist entity?

In this May 31, 2020 photo, protesters hold signs during a demonstration against the Israeli regime after Israeli troops shot and killed Iyad al-Halak, an unarmed autistic Palestinian man, in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa, near Tel Aviv. Protesters gathered to protest the killing of al-Halak in Jerusalem al-Quds and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis the previous week. (Photo by AP)

By Wafaa al-Udaini

Palestinian journalist based in Gaza

As gang-related violence is on the rise inside of Israel, Israeli authorities have refused to protect Palestinian holders of Israeli passports living in places like Jaffa, Haifa and Nazareth. The refusal of the Israeli police to do their jobs in Palestinian communities, combined with their murder of multiple Palestinians has now sparked widespread protests.

Violent protests have recently erupted in what is known as the 1948 Palestinian territories ("Israel"), following a string of Israeli police murders of Palestinians and the authorities’ refusal to crack down on crime, in the communities in which it has been escalating. It was therefore no coincidence that the Palestinian protesters directed at the Israeli authorities.

This is because Israeli policies have created a toxic environment within the Palestinian society, which led to a worrying increase in the rates of crime and domestic violence, among the Palestinians in Israel, or as it they are sometimes called "Israeli Arabs". This situation was exacerbated following the deterioration of the economic conditions, accompanying the coronavirus pandemic. Following the funerals of two men killed at the hands of Israeli police in Tamra, near Haifa, sullen protesters were seen carrying several placards which read "We are killed while the police are laughing" and "stop discrimination".

Ripping apart Palestinian social fabric 

Since 1967, the Israeli occupation authorities have worked to fragment the social fabric of Palestinian society. This has been done by, for instance, cancelling thousands of residency permits for Palestinians residing in Jerusalem (al-Quds), the prevention of any intermingling of Palestinians living in Jerusalem (al-Quds) with those in the 1948-Occupied territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Such fragmentation of the social fabric destroys families and prevents family reunification, which is one of the serious problems that Palestinians suffer from. Added to the above problems, is the transformation of the local economy into being subordinate to that of Israel, this deprives Palestinian youth of equal work opportunities, and turns them into cheap labour that serves the Israeli economic machine.

Israel confiscated large areas off of the Palestinians, who were able to avoid being completely expelled from Palestine following the Nakba in 1948, depriving dozens of Palestinian villages in northern Palestine of the agricultural lands that the rural communities used to depend on, while in the south of Palestine, the situation was worse as the Israeli occupation converted large areas of the Negev desert into closed military areas and gathered the Bedouin Palestinians in closed ghettos that they called "cities" to deprive them of the pastures on which they depended for their livelihood as shepherds.

Nearly 20% of the Palestinians inside Israel are refugees who were expelled by the Israelis from their villages in 1948, or as Israel referred to them as ‘present absentees’. They were transferred to other Palestinian villages and cities, and are still deprived until this day from returning to their homes and lands. This has contributed to the increase in population density in the Palestinian areas, amid the lack of opportunities the work.

The Israeli regime has also established further discriminatory policies against the Palestinians that have deprived them of many government and private sector jobs. In order to justify this they use various arguments, the main reason they give is that Palestinians do not serve in the Israeli army, and thus has led to high unemployment rates in the Palestinian community inside Israel. According to the figures of the Employment Office in Israel, the unemployment rate had reached 4% for Israeli Jews, in 2018, whilst amongst Palestinians inside of Israel it had reached 10%. These numbers however, do not reflect the reality faced by Palestinians, unless we take into consideration that the majority of them do not find viable job opportunities and work terrible hours, for much less money on average and in lower standard workplaces. This is what contributed to the 44% poverty rate among Palestinians in Israel, in 2018, compared to 20.4% among Israelis in general, according to the statistic of the Israeli National Insurance Institute.

The Israeli role was not limited to exacerbating poverty and unemployment rates within Palestinian society, as we all know the close connection between crime, poverty and unemployment. Rather, it went beyond that to the point where the “security” services have turned a blind eye to the criminal activities of many of their collaborators, especially those of the Israeli Shin Bet, and supply them with weapons despite knowing that they use them in criminal acts. Allegations have also been ongoing of Israeli police involvement with those in the business of drug trafficking and taking missing goods using them to settle personal scores. This lenient and supportive policy for criminals is considered a reward for them by the "security" services that they provide to the Israeli occupation authorities.

However, some Palestinian activists believe that the policy of turning a blind eye is not only a reward for a collaborator, but also expresses a desire of the Israelis to destroy Palestinian society from the inside and transform Palestinian cities and villages into places that are not suitable for life, thus pushing Palestinians to emigrate abroad using an indirect method of ethnic cleansing.

Community leaders also accused the Israeli security services of using local mafias in order to liquidate political activists opposed to the occupation policy, such as the assassination attempt against Suleiman Agbaria, a leader in the Islamic movement, which the Israeli authorities banned on charges of "terrorism". In addition to the assassination of the activist in The Islamic Movement, Muhammad Abu Negm, two weeks ago. Although there are no clear primary sources of evidence proving the Israeli security services were implicated in these assassinations, the close relationship it has with many mafia elements in Palestinian society cannot be ignored and has been the cause of much speculation.

I interviewed poet and former detainees from the 1948 territories, Dareen Tartour, who said that “the Israeli police are involved in crimes and that the source of 90% of the weapons are from the Israeli police" she added “that they know everything and everyone but they mean to spread the crimes to distract the Palestinians with themselves". Lawyer Husam Younes also warned of a rapid increase in the crimes this year, insisting that Israel violates international laws by not bearing responsibility for Palestinians in Israel.

The Israeli authorities not only deprived the Palestinians of their livelihoods, but are re-engineering the Palestinian society's economy to be a market for cheap labour. The Zionist entity has created an economic spiral, that pushes more and more Palestinians into poverty. This is why it has been no shock that the demonstrators continue to vent their anger at the Israeli authorities and hold them responsible for exacerbating the crime in their society, whilst continuing to kill their youths.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)


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