On Aug. 2, 2009, Israeli police dragged the Hanoun family out of their beds in the middle of the night and forcibly evicted them from their home in East Jerusalem.
 Housing protest in East Jerusalem |
This is not first or the last case of a Palestinian family being evicted in East Jerusalem, which is internationally recognized as the “Arab quarter” of the city. During Vice President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Israel, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu announced the approval of plans to build 1,600 new apartments for Jews only in East Jerusalem, in defiance of the international community’s prohibition against building settlements on illegally occupied land.
These units will add to the thousands of Jewish-only homes already constructed in East Jerusalem and to the fortress-like settlements in the West Bank.
These developments occur against the backdrop of additional provocations. Israel concluded the most violent incursions into Gaza since the genocidal 2008-2009 assault, killing one Palestinian along the border on March 26. Israel shut down access to Jerusalem from the West Bank during Passover, prohibiting access to the city for Palestinian Christians during their holiest week prior to Easter. Israeli officials outraged Palestinians by announcing plans to expand the prayer plaza at the Western Wall, near the Al-Aqsa mosque. This announcement led to militant protests in East Jerusalem.
As Israel continues to terrorize and evict Palestinian families while simultaneously demolishing homes across the West Bank, Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have issued empty statements of disapproval.
The creation and expansion of these illegal settlements has been going on for decades paid for, of course, by U.S. tax dollars. During her speech March 22 at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee summit, Clinton announced that the building and expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem has hindered the “peace process,” and for once, Israel was to blame. Mainstream media outlets report strained and tense relations between the Obama administration and the administration of Netanyahu. Later, Netanyahu visited the White House in an attempt to “amend ties” with the United States.
These “strained ties” between Israel and the United States make little difference in relation to the outcome for the Palestinian people. Just as before, the fraudulent “peace process” has never taken into account the plight of Palestinians living in Israel, those living in the West Bank and the Gaza strip, or the millions of refugees pushed out by Israel’s genocidal policies.
Israel’s role in the Middle East is to serve as a watch dog and proxy army for the United States. As long as there is resistance to U.S. imperialism in the region, Israel’s actions will go unchallenged by Washington. The Palestinians will continue to suffer oppression regardless of whether or not there are “peace” negotiations, because their struggle is viewed in Washington as hindering the imperialists’ intentions to restructure the Middle East. The relationship between the United States and Israel is so important that the Obama administration will not take real action to end settlement expansion, because the goal is not peace but continued domination.
The only force capable of changing this equation are the people’s movements in Palestine, the region and here inside the United States, the center of world imperialism.
