Israel will devastate 200 Palestinian businesses in al-Quds [Jerusalem]
Member of the PLO Executive Committee Dr. Hanan Ashrawi has affirmed that Israel’s plan to demolish decades-old Palestinian industrial area in the Wadi Al-Joz [Valley of the Walnuts ]neighborhood and replace it with a gentrified settler neighborhood with the flashy name of “Silicon Wadi” is an outrageous and criminal plan that will devastate 200 Palestinian businesses in the area and deprive hundreds of Palestinians of their sources of livelihood.
“Israel’s focused and systematic plunder of occupied Jerusalem persists unabated, in violation of international law and proclaimed positions of states worldwide,” Dr. Ashrawi said in a statement sent to Syria Times e-newspaper.
She referred to a sharp increase in home demolitions and the displacement of many families in Jerusalem during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It is a massive scheme that brings Israel’s displacement and replacement policy against the Palestinian people into sharp focus, especially in Jerusalem. In this connection, we warn companies that they will be held legally and financially responsible for any direct or indirect engagement in this illegal enterprise, in line with international law.”
“In addition to the physical mass displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem, Israel continues to enact its racist demographic engineering tactics. Namely, Israel has renewed its ban of Palestinian family reunification for the eighteenth year. This policy tears thousands of Palestinian families apart and imposes the impossible choice on thousands of Jerusalemites of choosing between their families and their right to live in their ancestral hometown, Jerusalem.”
She concluded by saying: “These concerted illegal Israeli actions in Jerusalem and across the occupied West Bank continue because the international community has yet to muster the moral and political courage to make Israel bear the consequences of such grave violations of international law, including international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute. This requires the ICC to act swiftly and to start its investigation to apply its mandate to curb Israeli violations and to bring Israel to compliance with law. Without accountability, Israel will continue to implement its colonial project of creating “Greater Israel” on all of historical Palestine, trampling on the universal values of human rights and condemning the region to endless conflict and strife.”
Basma Qaddour