Latest news with #ethnicCleasing
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Students drop claim of Israeli genocide in Gaza
An accusation that Israel has committed genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza has been dropped by students at the University of Manchester following a backlash. The 2,000-word motion, which expresses solidarity with Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas war, was withdrawn earlier this week. It was lodged with the university's student union (UMSU) by a student from the university's Friends of Palestine group several months ago. The motion accuses Israel 'in its entirety' of being 'an apartheid settler-colonial state committing ongoing genocide against Palestinians' and recognises that 'as an occupied nation, the people of Palestine have the right to armed resistance under international law.' It also urged full support for the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement against Israel. In addition, the motion argues that a two-state solution has become 'impossible' due to the 'continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine' and advocates for a 'single, free, multi-faith Palestinian state'. Manchester University's Friends of Israel Society was outraged by the motion and wrote to the UMSU, setting out why the proposal and the procedure for considering it were unlawful. It said the statement contained ' false and one-sided allegations '. In March, a debate took place, and Jewish students put forward nine amendments to the motion, but these were rejected. These included one that would have recognised Hamas as a terrorist organisation and another calling on Hamas to release the remaining hostages it still holds captive. A third urged the student union to refrain from 'glorifying' violence against Israeli civilians. Jewish students held a silent protest outside the building where the meeting took place, holding pictures of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, who were held hostage in Gaza by Hamas. Commenting on the motion being withdrawn, Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKFLI), who worked with the Friends of Israel Society on getting the motion dropped, said: 'We are very pleased with this outcome, which clearly results from drawing attention to the student union's legal obligations. 'Student unions must conduct political debates fairly, must not discriminate against Jewish or Israeli students, and must not engage in political campaigns outside their charitable objects. 'We congratulate Naomi Brookarsh, president of the Israel Society at Manchester University, on her work resisting this attempt to misuse the student union to intimidate Jewish students and other students who support Israel.' A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), who also wrote to the union and university to express concerns, told The Telegraph: 'Manchester University Students' Union disregarded the concerns of Jewish students and regulations for charities when it tried to advance this reckless and divisive motion. 'Whether or not it is meant as such here, the phrase 'armed resistance' is commonly used in this context as a euphemism for terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish state. 'At a minimum, this motion aspired to deprive the Jewish people of their right to self-determination. 'These motions do nothing to change things in the Middle East but contribute to the ostracisation of Jewish students on campus. 'This motion never should have been even drafted, let alone put forward. Jewish students have the same right to feel safe on their campus as any other group. 'We wrote to the students' union and are pleased to see that the motion has been withdrawn, even if there was no remorse in the withdrawal statement. 'We will continue to tackle extremism and antisemitism on university campuses wherever we find it.' In a statement, the UMSU apologised for the length of time it took to consider the motion and said: 'We will be reviewing our democratic processes as a result.' It added: 'We stand in full solidarity with the Palestinian resistance to ongoing genocide in Gaza. 'The double standards held over colonised people compared to those doing the colonising are absurd. 'Those in support of Palestinian liberation are required to constantly qualify their support of basic human rights, whilst Israel continues its extermination, starvation and 'conquest' of Palestinians undeterred.' It went on to criticise charity law, which it said prevented students' unions from taking 'principled positions and resourcing campaigns on the most pressing issues of our day'. In a statement issued previously, the University of Manchester said it considered 'aspects of this motion to be wholly unacceptable'. It added that it had raised 'serious concerns with the students' union regarding its wording, particularly where it risks undermining the principles of equality, safety, and wellbeing.' The University of Manchester has been approached for further comment.
Jordan Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Jordan Times
Trump's dangerous resettlement scheme
Donald Trump's latest gambit on Palestine is to call for a million Gazans to be resettled in Libya. A country at war with itself, Tripoli has rejected this proposal as well as millions-of-dollars-pie-in-the-sky that Libya would receive to shoulder the burden of a million restive Palestinians. To add injury to this insult, the Trump administration has closed the US Palestinian Affairs Office in East Jerusalem, the sole direct channel between the US and Palestinians, and merged the office with the US embassy in West Jerusalem which caters for Israelis. While on his tour of the Gulf, Trump repeatedly said the US should 'take' Gaza and make it into a 'freedom zone." What does this mean? Freedom for whom? Not for Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians for sure. Freedom from Palestinians and, perhaps, for Israelis and wealthy international real-estate investors to transform Gaza into a Disneyland resort. Earlier this year Trump said the US would take over Gaza after the Palestinians were expelled into Jordan and Egypt, rebuild the strip with money not from the US, and turn it into a Middle Eastern riviera. Amman, Cairo and the Arabs rejected this proposition. Trump's delusional schemes are in line with Israel's earlier establishment of a vehicle for "voluntary" ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and sending them to war-torn Sudan and Somalia and impoverished Somaliland in Africa. Israel has backed up this scheme by preventing all food, water, fuel and medicines from entering Gaza since March 2, ending the ceasefire on March 18th, and stepping up its military campaign with the objective of occupying most or all of Gaza and confining Gazans to unsafe "safe zones." Trump has not joined the chorus of Western friends of Israel who have exerted pressure on Israel to compelled it to lift minimally its blockade and allow the entry into Gaza of some supplies to prevent starvation and famine. Instead, on the humanitarian level the Trump administration and Israel have proposed a system of distributing supplies in southern Gaza, forcing those living in the north to leave in order to survive. This programme would be controlled by US contractors and the Israeli military and provide lifegiving aid only to Palestinians vetted by Israel. UN and international humanitarian agencies have rejected this plan as it would "weaponise" aid. Nevertheless, Israel could continue the blockade to blackmail the UN and aid agencies to accept the unacceptable plan. The acceptable plan for Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, is the two-state solution, endorsed by the UN and the international community. Last July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on a request made by the UN General Assembly following rulings made by the Human Rights Council. Then ICJ President Nawaf Salam said the court had found that "Israel's... continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal." He stated. "The State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible." This included ending illegal settlement activity and evacuating all its settlers from the affected areas and pay reparations to Palestinians for damages inflicted by the occupation. This would mean abandoning 145 official Israeli settlements and 200 settlement outposts and rehousing more than 700,000 Israeli settlers who would exit the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Trump has asked the wrong people to be resettled. The ICJ said Israel's "policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory", which is illegal under international law. The ICJ added by saying Israel was "not entitled to sovereignty" over any areas of the occupied territories. While this amounts to a comprehensive ruling on the status of the occupied Palestinian territories, no action has been taken because the West, dominated by the US, has no intention of resolving the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli crisis by insisting that Israel abide by the two-state solution. Palestinian self-determination, independence and statehood rather than ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid could resolve the conflict. This conflict has gripped the Arab world since Britain and France carved up and took over Arab lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire after World War One instead of granting the Arabs independence promised for joining the war against Germany and its Ottoman allies. Nothing positive nor sensible can be expected from Trump even though he is in his second term, cannot run again, and is not a committed Zionist like his predecessor Joe Biden. During his first term when Trump was yearning for a second, he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, shifted the US embassy to Jerusalem, declared Israeli settlements were not illegal, and defunded the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. His actions negated the terms of the 1993 Oslo peace process which said the fates of Jerusalem, Israeli settlers and Palestinian refugees were to be determined through negotiations between virtual Palestine and omnipresent Israel. Trump also closed the East Jerusalem US consulate serving Palestinians and the Palestinian mission in Washington.
RNZ News
09-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
'Another Nakba': UN committee warns of new mass expulsion in Palestinian territories
Palestinians leave the scene after performing Friday prayers near the lands that Israeli settlers are threatening to confiscate, after the armed Israeli forces prevented them from reaching their lands, in the Dhahiriya area, south of Hebron, on May 9, 2025. Photo: MOSAB SHAWER The world could be witnessing "another Nakba" expulsion of Palestinians, a United Nations committee warned on Friday, accusing Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and saying it was inflicting "unimaginable suffering" on Palestinians. For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the "Nakba" , or catastrophe - the mass displacement in the war that accompanied to Israel's creation in 1948. "Israel continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on the people living under its occupation, whilst rapidly expanding confiscation of land as part of its wider colonial aspirations," warned a UN committee tasked with probing Israeli practices affecting Palestinian rights. "What we are witnessing could very well be another Nakba," it said, after concluding an annual mission to Amman. During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as "the Nakba". The descendants of some 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in what became Israel presently make about 20 percent of its population. The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1968. The committee is currently composed of the Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Senegalese ambassadors to the UN in New York. "What the world is witnessing could very well be a second Nakba. The goal of wider colonial expansion is clearly the priority of the government of Israel," they said in their report. "Security operations are used as a smokescreen for rapid land grabbing, mass displacement, dispossession, demolitions, forced evictions and ethnic cleansing, in order to replace the Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers." - AFP
