RAMALLAH: The head of the Islamic Movement in northern Israel, Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, said that the Israeli attempts to “pressure Palestinians by demolishing their homes in occupied Jerusalem would never force them to recognize the Israeli occupation as a Jewish state.”
Salah said in a press statement that the “Palestinian people would not compromise their Arab and Islamic historical presence in the occupied Palestinian lands.”
“This land has been and will continue to speak Arabic, and whatever your are trying to Judaize the names (of Palestinian streets, neighborhoods and areas), your attempts will be doomed to failure,” he said referring to the Israeli decision that the English and Arabic names of roadside signs across Israel’s highways would be a direct transliteration of Hebrew.
Salah also deplored the Israeli decision to remove the word “Nakba” (catastrophe) from textbooks, stressing the Palestinian people “would stop commemorating this occasion only when the occupation ends and five million refugees return to their homeland.”
Salah remarks came two days after the leftist Jerusalem lobby group Ir Amim published a report criticizing “Municipality of Jerusalem Construction plan 11555”, which has never before been brought up for public discussion and which calls for the destruction of an entire neighborhood in Silwan in Arab-dominated eastern Jerusalem.
The organization insists in its report titled “Shady Dealings in Silwan” that “government bodies” are involved in improper proceedings in “cooperating and transferring control of public and Palestinian properties to settler organizations.”
Some 40,000 people live in Silwan, which was built on a site, which Israeli archaeologists claim was once the biblical Shiloah.
Silwan lies in East Jerusalem, which the international community regards as occupied territory, but Israel insists is part of its indivisible capital.
