Undercover police in Jerusalem protests
by TRNN
Riots took place all over East Jerusalem this week in protest of settlers threatening to force their way into the Al Aqsa Mosque. As a result, Israeli security forces shut down major areas of the Old City, including the mosque compound to Muslim men under 50.
The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke to Toufic Haddad, journalist and author of Between the Lines: Israel the Palestinians, and the U.S. "war on terror" about the real reason for these protests. Haddad explains that Israeli colonization over East Jerusalem led to home demolitions, confiscations, and the flourishing of settlements all over the Palestinian Territories. Because these protests are supported by the government, Palestinian protests are systemically repressed, leading to mass arrests, injuries, and sometimes death. Alternative tactics, such as undercover police often lead to the tensions which are expected to rise as the Jerusalem Municipal Police approved another right-wing settler protest for Sunday through the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
Actions in Jerusalem against military closures and
settler provocations met with police repression
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American writer based in Jerusalem. He is the co-author and editor of Between the Lines: Readings in Israel, the Palestinians and the U.S ’War on Terror’. His writings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been featured in Monthly Review Zine, Znet, Counterpunch, the International Socialist Review, and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has also been translated into French, Spanish, German, Norwegian, Dutch, Hebrew and Arabic.
|
