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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-resistance-occupation-army-legal-not-terrorism">middleeasteye.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israelis take note: Armed resistance to occupation is legal, not terrorism</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Orly Noy - September 13, 2022<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><img src="cid:ii_l81soapp2" alt="image.png" width="392" height="220"><br><p>It is doubtful if more than a handful of Jews in <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank">Israel</a> could tell you accurately how many raids the Israeli army conducted last week in <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank">Palestinian</a> cities in the West Bank, the number of arrests they made, or the number of people they killed.</p>
<p>At the same time, it is doubtful if there were more than a handful of Israelis who had not heard of the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinians-fire-bus-with-israeli-troops-west-bank-6-hurt-2022-09-04/" target="_blank">shooting incident</a> on a soldiers' bus in the Jordan Valley, on Sunday 4 September.</p>
<p>A Palestinian shooting at Israeli soldiers - as opposed to Israelis
shooting at Palestinians - is not just an alarming “man bites dog” story
that reverses the usual order, demanding extensive reports; in all of
those reports, the event was defined as a terror attack and the
Palestinian shooters as terrorists.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-anti-terror-law-crush-palestinian-civil-society" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/image-18-08-22-at-7-15-pm-1661102141.jpeg?itok=15p9spw8" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="245"></a></p><p><font size="1">How Israel's 'anti-terror' law is crushing Palestinian civil society</font></p>
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<p>Not a word about how the shooting targeted soldiers of an occupying army and occurred on occupied land.</p>
<p>The Israeli media has a key role in shaping public consciousness to
serve the establishment’s propaganda machine, while keeping the Israeli
public thoroughly ignorant of the most basic facts.</p>
<p>The Israeli public, in general, has completely internalised the
notion that, by definition, there is no legitimate Palestinian struggle
for national liberation.</p>
<p>As with the thorough erasure of the 1949 armistice line, also known
as the Green Line, from Israeli consciousness - to the point that the<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-forbids-tel-aviv-green-line-maps-schools" target="_blank"> mere mention of its existence</a>
by the Tel Aviv municipality provokes threats from the Ministry of
Education - so too the consistent labelling of any Palestinian struggle
as terrorism obscures the important distinction under international law
between an action targeting combatants and one directed against
civilians.</p>
<h3>A legitimate right </h3>
<p>The fact is that international law recognises the legitimate right of
a people to fight for its freedom, and for "liberation from colonial
control, apartheid and foreign occupation by all the means at its
disposal, including armed struggle", as confirmed, for example, by a <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184801/" target="_blank">resolution of the UN General Assembly</a> in 1990.</p>
<p>The use of force to achieve liberation is legitimate. The manner in
which force is used is governed by the laws of war, the main purpose of
which is to protect uninvolved civilians on both sides.</p>
<p>The Jordan Valley shooting did not target civilians, and cannot be
considered a terrorist act. It was an act of armed resistance against an
occupying power, on occupied land.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Jordan Valley shooting did not target civilians, and cannot be
considered a terrorist act. It was an act of armed resistance against an
occupying power</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Israeli regime and its dutiful echo, the Israeli media, treat
every action against occupation forces on occupied land exactly as if
they were actions targeting civilians in the heart of Tel Aviv: as
terrorist acts perpetrated by terrorists. </p>
<p>This conflation not only negates a legal or moral basis for the act; it is also contrary to the interests of Israel’s citizens.</p>
<p>The relevant laws of war are designed first and foremost to protect
civilians who are not participants in the cycle of violence and to limit
that violence to actual combatants.</p>
<p>Israel, however, recognises no such category of Palestinian
combatants; from Israel’s standpoint, any resistance, even nonviolent
resistance, to its occupation and oppression poses a danger to security
that is easily recognised as terror, as when Israel recently declared
the six most prominent <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-gantz-civil-society-terrorist-addameer-al-haq" target="_blank">Palestinian NGOs to be terror organisations</a>.</p>
<p>This is a two-way distortion by Israel. Just as it treats every
Palestinian action, even those directed against soldiers, as acts of
terrorism, so too does Israel paint any Israeli action taken against
Palestinians as legitimate, even when those Palestinians are civilians.</p>
<h3>A typical brutality</h3>
<p>For an especially outrageous example of this policy, consider the
final conclusions published by the Israeli army regarding the fatal
shooting of journalist <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/shireen-abu-akleh-killing" target="_blank">Shireen Abu Akleh</a>. The army initially claimed that Abu Akleh <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shireen-abu-akleh-killing-al-jazeera-journalist-footage-geolocation-disprove-israel-claims" target="_blank">was killed by Palestinian gunfire</a>, a blatant lie that was exposed by <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shireen-abu-akleh-israel-washington-post-investigation-soldier-likely-fired" target="_blank">a series of media outlets</a> that examined the evidence minutely. The revised version the army later published is also far from congruent with the evidence.</p>
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<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/A%20mural%20depicting%20slain%20Palestinian-American%20journalist%20Shireen%20Abu%20Akleh%20is%20illuminated%20with%20headlights%20on%20a%20street%20in%20the%20Arab%20town%20of%20Umm%20Al-Fahm%20on%20September%205%2C%202022%20%28AFP%29.jpg" alt="A mural depicting slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on a street in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, northern Israel, on 5 September 2022 (AFP)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="261"></p>
<font size="1">A mural depicting slain Palestinian-American journalist
Shireen Abu Akleh on a street in the town of Umm al-Fahm, northern
Israel, on 5 September 2022 (AFP)</font></div>
<p>The Military Advocate General announced that <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shireen-abu-akleh-israel-not-investigate-killing-palestinian-journalist" target="_blank">no investigation would be opened</a>,
despite the chilling admission that Abu Akleh, wearing a vest clearly
identifying her as a journalist, was shot to death by a soldier using a
sniper rifle's telescopic sight - which magnifies the target by a factor
of four. </p>
<p>Equally disgraceful was the Israeli response to the very minor
American request to "take another look at" the army’s open-fire
procedures in the West Bank.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-forbids-tel-aviv-green-line-maps-schools" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/A%20Palestinian%20boy%20walks%20past%20a%20moument%20showing%20a%20map%20of%20Mandatory%20Palestine%20in%20the%20West%20Bank%20town%20of%20Jenin%20in%20the%20north%20of%20the%20occupied%20West%20Bank%20on%20April%2012%2C%202022.%20AFP.jpg?itok=lxJk5Yhv" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="245"></a></p><p><font size="1">Israel forbids Tel Aviv municipality from posting 'Green Line' maps in schools</font></p>
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<p>Not that the army will stop murdering innocent people, God forbid,
nor that it will stop the endless invasions of West Bank cities, the
mass arrests, the midnight abductions of children from their beds - just
that it will exert itself a bit more, if it’s not too difficult, to
avoid any more such cases.</p>
<p>The mighty United States prefers not to find itself mired in such
cases because the victim happens to hold American citizenship, as was
the case with Abu Akleh.</p>
<p>Even the courtesy of paying lip service to this minor request was not forthcoming from Israel, which responded with <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/rebuffing-us-lapid-and-gantz-say-idf-alone-will-determine-rules-of-engagement/" target="_blank">typical brutality</a>. Prime Minister Yair Lapid hastened to tell the Americans that “no one will dictate open-fire regulations to us".</p>
<p>Defence Minister Benny Gantz, in the same spirit, stated: "The chief
of staff, and he alone, determines and will continue to determine the
open-fire policies."</p>
<p>In other words, Israel put the Americans, indeed the entire world, on
notice: no one will tell Israel how many, who, when, where or how we
will kill. And there the matter ends, until the next time.</p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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