On 8 March, International Women’s Day – a day in which the lives and struggles of women are given particular focus and celebration the world over – Israeli occupation forces attacked an event at a women’s centre in occupied Jerusalem, or al-Quds as it is known in Arabic.
The event, celebrating Palestinian heritage, was held at the headquarters of the Mount Olive Club and co-organised by the al-Tor Women’s Centre of al-Quds. The centre’s director was arrested, and various exhibition items were seized.
The attack occurs in the context of the continuing and deepening occupation of Palestine. The broad objective of the Israeli state in the occupied territories is to replace Palesntinians with Jewish Israelis – to continue and complete the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine.
The date and nature of the event are no coincidence: on International Women’s Day, an event organised by a women’s centre was deliberately targeted. The purpose of such targeting is make Palestinian life unliveable in occupied al-Quds, and hence further extend Israel’s illegal occupation of all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Such practices further the “Jewish supremacist” ethnic cleansing of al-Quds and historic Palestine, as begun in 1948, which contravene the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and international laws governing the war-time occupations, which proscribe all attempts to change the demographic characteristics of an occupied territory.
