Thursday 25 February 2010

Protests grow in Hebron

There was a major protest today in Hebron, which comes after a couple of days of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in the city. Many of my students in Abu Dis have gone to the protests and teachers in the Arab Institute who live in Hebron went home early because of increased checkpoints.

The immediate cause of the protests is the decision by the Israeli government to annex the Ibrahimi mosque and designate it an 'Israeli heritage site'.

The fact that they announced this days before the annual protests to remember the 1994 massacre of 26 Palestinians in the Ibrahimi mosque by an Israeli settler, makes it even more inflammatory.

As an aside, i notice an advert on the website of the Israeli paper Haaretz advertising 'Israel's favourite charity - make more Jewish babies'. For which read: If we slack off we might be overrun by those pesky, uncivilised Arabs. Don't we normally call that racism?

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