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Yair Wallach Profile picture
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28 Jun, 4 tweets, 1 min read
"Damascus Gate, the most beautiful of all the city's gates; through it enter the city's Pasha, its officials and nobility, as well as most of the Europeans princes and aristocrats [who came to visit Jerusalem]."

A. M. Luncz, the First Jerusalem Guidebook, 1876 (Hebrew)
Note that only 20 years later, Kaiser Wilhelm will enter Jerusalem not through Damascus Gate but through Jaffa Gate, and 20 years more, General Allenby will follow him.
In many ways, the changing fortunes of these two gates is the history of the entire country.
Gate of Damascus, David Roberts. 1839.

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More from @YairWallach

Yair Wallach Profile picture
29 Jun
1/ Recognising that Israel is a settler state is crucial because in 2021 Israel is still committed to an active project of expansionary Jewish settlement and Palestinian dispossession - as we see in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Beita, and Araqib.
2/ And that project is written deep into policy, budgets, and law.
Basic Law of Israel as a Nation State of the Jewish People:
7A "The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation"
3/ The state sees settling Jews (and removing Palestinians in the process) as its prerogative. The logic of settlement is not going to stop by itself, it's not going to go away by itself.
It has to be identified, confronted, and stopped.
Read 6 tweets
Yair Wallach Profile picture
29 Jun
Dr Weizmann, 1931: I don't like the demand for a Jewish majority... we don't need a majority to feel secure, or to develop Hebrew culture... the world would only read it as a plan to expel the Arabs... why would we make such a provocative demand.
17th Zionist Congress Image
Note: in 1931 Jews made up 17% of Palestine's population
Source - Doar Hayom, 13 July 1931
Read 4 tweets
Yair Wallach Profile picture
17 May
1/ Yesterday we saw forceful and vocal response from Palestinians worldwide to incidents in which people waving the Palestine flags targeted Jewish neighbourhoods in London with vile antisemitic harassment and threats.
The response below is one of many.
2/ Antisemitism in the Palestine activism scene in the West almost never comes from Palestinians, almost always comes from non-Palestinian activists. We should acknowledge the heavy burden this places on Palestinians, especially in this moment.
3/ So while they face bombing, attacks, displacement, and brutalisation in Palestine, Palestinians also now need to find the time and space to reject what some racist idiots are doing in the name of their cause.
Read 11 tweets
Yair Wallach Profile picture
17 May
RE that John Oliver segment. Clearly the conversation in the US is changing among liberals/progressives. But the US was also 43,000 votes away from a second Trump presidency, and while Biden has been pretty terrible on this so far, under Trump things could have been much worse.
The global hard-right ascendancy has provided the context for Israel's consolidating unequal-one-state solution. That ascendancy was blocked in the US but not globally. That has ramifications and risks for so many issues, including Israel/Palestine.
In my view - the risks in Israel/Palestine are extremely high, higher than they've been in decades. And I'm talking about mass expulsions and similar scenarios. That's what the Israeli right wing wants.
Read 4 tweets
Yair Wallach Profile picture
13 May
1/ It's a grim day in Israel/Palestine and more grim days are to come. In this moment we need to find new pasts that would make different futures possible.
And we can start where it all started this time, in Arab Sheikh Jarrah and its Jewish connection.
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2/ Sheikh Jarrah was a Palestinian upper class neighbourhood developed since the 1860s. It also housed the cave-tomb associated with ancient priest Shimon ha-Tsadik, Simeon the Just, a site of Jewish pilgrimage since the middle ages, purchased by the chief rabbi in 1876.
3/ The annual celebration of Simon ha-Tsadik took place in Lag ba-Omer (late April/early May). It was the largest Jewish public celebration in 19th-early 20th century Jerusalem, of Sephardim and Asheknazim, known in Arabic as "'Shathat al-yahudiyya", the festival of the Jews.
Read 11 tweets
Yair Wallach Profile picture
12 May
1/ Something about narratives:
For Jewish Israelis, the images of riots from "mixed towns" resonate with the Israeli narrative of 1948, which is about inter-communal strife, siege, and a sense of existential threat. Bear with me.
2/ This narrative will shock those who are familiar with the history of the 1948 Nakba, in which 750k Palestinians were made refugees and denied return, and their land and property taken away from them.
3/ But the Israeli narrative is not a fabrication. Rather, it highlights specific moments - January to March 1948 - the early months in which there was no clear Zionist advantage, and indeed the experience was of siege, strife, and lack of clarity on the eventual outcome.
Read 5 tweets

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