Opinion Editorials, January 2017

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Conditions for a New Palestinian Revolution Are Now There Just Like They Were in 1936 and 1987  By Mazin Qumsiyeh Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, January 20, 2017

A Palestinian woman crying during the Israeli demolition of her home	Israeli bulldozer demolishing Palestinian homes in Qalansweh, January 10, 2017

Eleven homes were demolished by the Israeli occupation government in one day in the village of Qalanswe (occupied in 1948 https://youtu.be/IFMZvMZWpLA ). The pace of home demolitions accelerated recently and are expected to accelerate more as Israel violaes human rights and international law with international impunity. Donald Trump will follow on the heels of Obama in giving a green light for further ethnic cleansing.

The conditions for revolution are there just like they were in 1936 and 1987:
 
1) Political factional leadership disconnected from the people’s needs or thoughts and the natives who dislike the existing political factions and want serious change.
 
2) Most people have given up on political structures and the so called “peace process” (an industry of talk and profit for elites).
 
3) A colonizer-occupier so self-assured that they have things under “control” they actually do things like killing unarmed demonstrators or demoliting homes or collective punishment. Israel just decided to deport from Jerusalem 12 family members of a Palestinians who killed four soldiers who illegally occupy East Jerusalem (International law recognizes such acts as legitimate forms of resistance). This cockiness can accelerate the arrival of uprisings.
 
4)  An international world order that does not see the centrality or urgency for the Palestinian issue and is complicit in the crime (even projecting Israeli flags on state buildings in Europe last week and instituting laws that attack freedom of speech).
 
These conditions were present before every one of the uprisings (1881, 1904, 1912, 1921, 1929, 1936, etc). In South Africa under apartheid there was also 14 or 15 uprisings before apartheid ended. Let us hope that this coming one in Palestine will be the last. Netanyahu just sent his jets attacking Syria (a violation of International law). Obama dropped 26,000 bombs in 2016 on seven countries.  We do not expect Trump to do any better!

Local leaders also do not give us chance for optimism. Abbas believes in talking and the King of “Saudi Arabia” believes in bombing hospitals and schools in Yemen to serve Israeli interests and keep his throne.  And as JFK once said: once you make a peaceful revolution impossible you make a violent revolution inevitable. It is time to think globally and act locally.
 
A poem about life by Mazin Qumsiyeh in English and German https://promosaik.blogspot.com.tr/2017/01/facing-life-von-mazin-qumsiyeh-in.html
 
Stay Human/Bleib Mensch and come visit us in Palestine
 
Mazin Qumsiyeh

A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home Professor and (volunteer) Director Palestine Museum of Natural History Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability Bethlehem University Occupied Palestine http://qumsiyeh.org http://palestinenature.org Join me on facebook https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org.

editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org