The depth and the virulence of this hatred is inexplicable to most mainstream analysts, and they assume that it’s because of Israel’s putative atrocities. In reality, its roots are far different. This will be the focus of my next book, Fatal Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, which will be out later this year from Bombardier Books.
“Palestinian-American sentenced to life in prison with hard labor for selling a Jerusalem home to a Jewish organisation,” Associated Press, January 1, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
A Palestinian court on has sentenced a American-Palestinian man from east Jerusalem to life in prison with hard labor for trying to sell property in the Old City to an Jewish settler group.
The court said Monday that Issam Akel, who has dual Palestinian and American citizenship, was convicted of ‘attempting to cut off Palestinian land and sell it to a foreign country.’
The ruling underscored an increasingly visible battle in the city’s eastern sector that has emerged following President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital a year ago.
Since then, Israel has been taking steps to cement its control over the contested area while the Palestinians have attempted to push back to maintain their limited foothold.
One of those steps has been trying to prevent Palestinians in east Jerusalem from selling their properties to Jews – a major taboo that the Palestinian Authority is largely powerless to prevent.
The Palestinian Authority, which is barred by Israel from conducting political activity in Jerusalem, arrested Akel in Ramallah in October. Officials say he confessed to attempting to sell property in the Old City of Jerusalem to a Jewish settler group.
Living in east Jerusalem, Akel has Israeli residency rights and is permitted under Israeli law to sell his property to whomever he wants.
But the Palestinian Authority, which claims east Jerusalem as its capital, considers land sales to Israeli Jews to be treason and even punishable by death….