Protests Hit Al-Quds for 7th Week

 

TEL AVIV (Dispatches) – Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Al-Quds for the seventh consecutive week Sunday to protest against the current Zionist regime’s plans to extremely harden judicial laws. 

On Monday, Knesset members will be able to vote on the bill, which aims to allow parliament to overrule the supreme court with a simple majority vote. 

Lawyer Nati Ron said Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime was “aiming at ruining” the Zionist regime by “cancelling the courts”.

Netanyahu returned to power following elections in November, at the head of a coalition with extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, but he is still on trial accused of corruption.

President Isaac Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, had urged Netanyahu’s regime to suspend the legislative process and hold talks with the opposition in hopes of reaching a compromise.

According to an Israel police spokesperson, protesters blocked road access in the Shuafat, Issawiyam, Jabel Mukbar and Silwan neighborhoods. 

The “one-day civil protest” is staged against the checkpoints that were installed last week in response to the deadly attack in which police officer Asil Su’ad was killed. The protests are also sparked by recent measures announced by the Zionist regime, including the demolition of illegal Palestinian houses. 

Protests broke out early Sunday in several neighborhoods of East Al-Quds, with participants blocking roads with burning tires and garbage cans. 

A police statement said troops handled a fight that broke out in one of the neighborhoods between the rioters and residents who wanted to go to work. 

The Zionist regime’s extremist security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he has instructed police to continue with Operation ‘Concentration of Effort’ in East Al-Quds. He urged troops to show “zero tolerance towards those lawbreakers”.

Unprecedented protests have hit Occupied Palestine amid deepening political divisions over the current extremist regime’s plans to overhaul the judicial system. In a recent television address, Herzog warned that Israel was on the verge of “societal collapse” from the tensions.

Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai on Saturday warned that the current political climate could lead to deadly violence, as he pleaded with Israelis to “lower the flames”.

“I’ve tried to refrain from these kinds of interviews. But the situation we’re in keeps me awake at night. We’re on a steep slope, of inflammatory argument, of people writing things without considering the impact they can have on the other side,” Shabtai told Channel 12 news.

“This is an opportunity to tell everyone to breathe, calm down, to discuss, and not to become violent in words or deeds… Israel has already seen harm done to public figures,” he said.

“We saw a hand grenade thrown [with fatal consequences at a demonstration 40 years ago, killing Emil Grunzweig]. We saw the assassination of a prime minister,” Shabtai added, referring to the 1995 assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“We see these threats on social media,” he continued. “We have to lower the flames… we will do everything we can to prevent harm to any public figure.”

Turning to recent retaliatory attacks in Al-Quds, Shabtai said police were operating in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Al-Quds.

“There are more than a few warnings of attacks, in recent weeks we’ve seen a tangible increase in the number of warnings. Our concern is the unknown — lone-wolf attackers. I wouldn’t call the situation now an intifada, but there is an escalation,” he said.

To help prevent retaliatory attacks, Shabtai said Zionists with gun licenses should carry their weapons, conceding that “it’s not possible to have police on every corner all the time.”

Earlier this month, Ben Gvir expedited the civilian gun license process, reportedly leading to a sharp rise in the number of permits issued by his ministry’s firearms licensing department.

 

Palestinians Declare Civil 

Disobedience 

 

Palestinians in occupied East Al-Quds declared a general strike and civil disobedience on Sunday to protest against the growing Israeli crackdown in the city. 

Young protesters burnt car tires and set up barricades overnight at entrances to different neighborhoods, including Shufat, Anata, Jabal al-Mukabber, Issawiya and al-Ram town.

The civil disobedience action includes not going to work in Israeli workplaces and refusing to pay taxes to

the Israeli-run municipality and other state agencies.
Palestinian national and Islamic forces said the protests are in response to a series of punitive measures imposed on residents in the city last week by Ben-Gvir.
Over the past week, the crackdown involved demolishing at least seven buildings, arresting 100 people, setting up dozens of roadblocks and checkpoints, and confiscating money and assets from former and current political prisoners, among other measures.
Zionist prison authorities, which are part of Ben-Gvir’s remit have also begun imposing harsher conditions against Palestinian prisoners, such as closing the canteens, cutting hot water, and removing kettles and gas hobs used to heat food.
The crackdown was launched following three deadly car-ramming and stabbing attacks earlier this month that left four Zionists killed.
Strike organizers said in a statement on Saturday that Palestinians, especially in Shufat, have been subjected to “abuse, torture, humiliation and daily oppression” since the retaliatory attacks.
The military chief of staff, the director of the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet, and the police commissioner urged Netanyahu to speak with Ben-Gvir to halt his measures.
Shin Bet director Ronen Bar, who normally reports to the prime minister, separately made a rare call to Ben-Gvir and warned him that he was “creating a feeling of collective harassment” in East Al-Quds and “agitating” the city.
Tensions in the region have been growing amid increasing Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Al-Quds since last year.
Israeli forces and settlers have martyred 49 Palestinians since the start of January at a rate of more than one fatality per day.
Palestinians have killed 10 Zionists in the same period.
Last year, at least 220 Palestinians were martyred during Israeli attacks while 30 Zionists were killed by Palestinians.
The 2022 Palestinian death toll in the West Bank was the highest since 2005.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns warned earlier this month that current tensions bear an “unhappy resemblance” to the Second Intifada.
He added that the CIA is working with Israeli and Palestinian security services to prevent “explosions of violence”, but admitted that it’s “going to be a big challenge”.