Muslim-Christian group: Israel demolishing entire neighborhoods

Date: 22 / 02 / 2009  Time:  15:58
Jerusalem – Ma’an –

A panel of prominent Muslim and Christian leaders accused the Israeli occupation government on Sunday of “escalating their war against the occupied Arab city of East Jerusalem."

The group, Jerusalem’s Islamic-Christian Panel, called for Arab and international actors to “stand firm” against Israel and “rescue the holy city.”

Panel Secretary-General Hassan Khater said Israel is “expanding its persecution against Jerusalemites by targeting entire neighborhoods” with land confiscation and home demolitions.

He added that residents of the Al-Bustan neighborhood, south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, “are now in real danger,” especially after the city’s Regional Committee for Planning and Construction cancelled a plan suggested by its residents.

The committee rejected the appeal after approving another one for the same area presented by the Israeli municipality to remove the largest section of the neighborhood, as well as its 1,500 residents, in order to turn the site into a public park.

Khater told Ma’an that Israel “is trying to fool the residents by swapping their houses with others in Beit Hanina and elsewhere.”

He added, “This serious development reflects the amount of disdain the Palestinian Jerusalemites suffer from, and at the same time reveals the extent of the ongoing process of shifting Jerusalem to a pure Jewish city, ongoing since the Israeli occupation divided the city in 1967.”

The head of the Islamic-Christian group described iron-gate closure of parts of the city and new openings between Jerusalem and the neighborhoods of Al-Ram and Dahiyat Al-Barid as a policy aimed at displacing residents of Jerusalem from their city.

“This dangerous step separates more than 60,000 Jerusalem citizens from their city and has rendered their access to it very difficult and complicated,” he added.

Khater explained that Israeli authorities have so far succeeded in displacing tens of thousands of Christian Palestinians through imposing difficult living conditions on Palestinians, in general.

He explained that the percentage of Christians in the Holy Land has dipped to just one percent, while it stood at five percent just decades before.

“We will take advantage of the pope's visit on 8 May to call his attention to the Israeli conspiracy against the presence of the Christians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, in general, which has resulted in a continuous decrease in their numbers,” he said.

Khater called on the pope to dedicate a portion of his visit to checking up on the Christian and Muslim residents of Jerusalem.

He added, “Despite the utter condemnation of Israeli TV Channel 10’s mockery of Jesus Christ and his mother Mary, peace be upon them, we affirm that oppression and racism against Christians and Muslims in Israel is escalating.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized on Sunday for the television channel’s spoof of Christian figures, which at one point sarcastically insisted Mary was not actually a virgin.

Khater highlighted that Christian clerics are subject to mockery and harassment by radical Jewish residents on their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and that settlers often spit on the cross and on clerics while passing through the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City.

Israel announces plans to demolish Palestinian homes near Nablus

Date: 22 / 02 / 2009  Time:  12:26
Nablus – Ma’an –

 Israeli occupation forces on Sunday officially informed five Palestinian families from the Tana neighborhood in Beit Fourik, east of Nablus, that their homes were slated for demolition.

The head of Beit Fourik’s local council, Abdul-Basit Haneini, told Ma’an that Israeli forces stormed the neighborhood and handed warrants to the families in question, ordering them to evacuate their homes as soon as possible for demolition.

Haneini identified the families served with notices as Muhammad Nasasra, Dawood Khatatba, Abdul-Hamid Khatatba, Arafat Nasasra, and Radwan Khatatba.

He highlighted that 25 other families were served notice in the past, and that 12,000 donums of agricultural land had been confiscated from the town, leaving just 6,000 donums for the land’s indigenous owners.