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The Israeli envoy to the UN, Danny Danon, sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, demanding that UNRWA cease its operations in the Israeli-occupied territories, including Jerusalem, by the end of January 2025.
“UNRWA is required to cease its operations in Jerusalem, and evacuate all premises in which it operates in the city, no later than 30 January 2025,” Danny Danon stated in the letter.
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At a recent lecture hosted by the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), Yasir Suleiman, professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge guided the audience through the intricate linguistic landscape of Jerusalem. Exploring the Holy City’s street signs, Suleiman revealed how these seemingly mundane markers act as silent witnesses to history and power struggles, charting the evolution of identity and conflict in the region.
“Language is important, not because it gives you information, but because it stands for something that is beyond language,” Suleiman explained. “Road signs, anywhere in the world, do tell a story. They present you with a narrative, a cultural map, a linguistic map, and a political map.”
Language Layers of Jerusalem
Jerusalem’s street signs have long served as a battleground for identity and political power, reflecting the city’s historical transformations, from the Ottoman period through the British Mandate and into the present day. Suleiman traced this history, showing how language has shaped and been shaped by competing claims over the city’s public space.
Before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, Jerusalem’s signs prominently featured Ottoman Turkish (written in Arabic script) alongside English and occasionally French. Hebrew was largely absent. For instance, an original 1892 sign at the Jerusalem-Jaffa train station displayed the name of “Jerusalem” in English and Ottoman Turkish, with Hebrew was only added post-1948.
This marked a time when Hebrew was largely absent from Jerusalem’s linguistic landscape, reflecting its limited presence in the population’s daily life, while Arabic script was present, but the Arabic language itself was absent.
However, the rise of the Zionist movement sought to change this, prioritising Hebrew revival as a cornerstone of its political and cultural agenda.
Three Languages, One Hierarchy
Under British Mandate, it was decided that English, Arabic and Hebrew were all required on street signs. Yet, their arrangement revealed the prevailing power dynamics: English appeared at the top, Arabic in the middle, and Hebrew at the bottom, as stipulated by British authorities.
This vertical hierarchy symbolised the ruling power, with English taking precedence and Arabic reflecting the majority population (around 90% of the people in Palestine were Arabic-speakers, including the Jews and Christians). Hebrew’s lower placement underscored its marginal status at the time.
The Zionist movement, unhappy with this arrangement, lobbied for horizontal signs, where all three languages appeared side-by-side. Even so, Arabic retained a visual advantage because its right-to-left orientation naturally positioned it above Hebrew in terms of linguistic flow, as any right-to-left script placed on the right takes visual precedence over one positioned on the left.
Three Languages, Three Names
Suleiman highlighted how different languages on street signs often tell different stories about the same location. For instance, the famous Damascus Gate is labelled in Arabic “Bab el-’Amoud,” referencing Roman pillars in the area, while in Hebrew, it is called “Bab Nablus,” acknowledging Nablus’s religious significance for Jews, and in English, it is “Damascus Gate,” reflecting the trade connexions to the Syrian capital. Each language offers a distinct historical or cultural claim to the place, underscoring the city’s layered identity.
Three languages, Two Boxes
The 1948-1967 Jordanian control of Jerusalem brought changes to Jerusalem’s signs. With almost no Jewish presence within the Old City’s walls, the Jordanian authorities only put street signs in Arabic and English.
Arabic was placed above English, with the English text mirroring the Arabic perfectly (e.g., “Al-Malak Road”). This reflected a shift in status: English was no longer the language of the ruling power but had become merely a lingua franca, while Arabic took precedence as the dominant language.
However, after the Israelis occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the linguistic order shifted again. New signs were introduced, with Hebrew taking the top position, symbolising Israeli sovereignty. Arabic and English were relegated below it, marking a significant reordering of visual and political priorities.
By 1980, when the Israeli Knesset declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the street signs further evolved to reflect political realities. A single box now contained all three languages, with Hebrew firmly at the top. Arabic began to diminish in influence, with English morphology increasingly aligning with Hebrew rather than Arabic conventions. For instance, “Ha-Malak Road” replaced “Al-Malak Road,” subtly asserting Hebrew’s dominance over Arabic.
Signs of Power
This dynamic became even more pronounced in 2018 when the Israeli Knesset stripped Arabic of its status as an official language. On modern street signs like “Nablus Road,” Hebrew now appears on top of the three languages and often in its fully pointed form, a form traditionally reserved for sacred texts, emphasising its elevated status in Israel’s narrative of Jerusalem.
Suleiman underscored how Jerusalem’s street signs are not just tools for navigation, they are symbols of power. “These signs are not about informing you where you are, they tell you who owns the place, who calls the shots.”
Street signs of Jerusalem have become a linguistic archaeology, with layers of history etched into their evolving forms. From the Ottoman period to the present day, they quietly tell the story of a city at the centre of competing claims over its identity.
This article was written by Sophie Constantin and appeared in the Jordan Times
CrossFireArabia
Israel’s consistent obstructions of all United Nations investigations into allegations of sexual violence since 7 October 2023 is profoundly concerning. These obstructions, coupled with substantial evidence indicating systematic and widespread acts of rape and other forms of sexual violence by Israeli forces against Palestinians, including prisoners and detainees, constitute grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. The grounds for the inclusion of Israel on the UN’s blacklist of entities suspected of perpetrating sexual violence in conflicts are compelling.
For the past 15 months, Israel has consistently refused to cooperate with all United Nations bodies with an investigative mandate to examine allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence arising from the attacks of 7 October.
It was disclosed last Wednesday that Israel has once again denied authorisation for an investigation by the UN Special Representative on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Pramila Patten. This refusal reportedly stems from concerns that a comprehensive investigation would expose Israel’s systematic use of mass rape against Palestinians, including women and children, as Patten had insisted that access to Israeli detention centres to investigate allegations against Israeli soldiers was a crucial requirement for the process.
Israel’s refusal is particularly striking given that Israeli civil society, until recently, held a generally favourable view of Patten, and even called on her to revisit Israel.
Patten’s earlier report, published on 11 March 2024, marks the only instance in which the Israeli government has provided information to a UN inquiry into allegations of sexual violence. However, as clearly stated in the report, the mission’s mandate at that time was not investigative. The report recommended that the Israeli government cooperate with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt), including East Jerusalem and Israel, as well as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to facilitate comprehensive investigations into all alleged violations, especially after Israel denied these entities access and cooperation, as highlighted in the report.
The Israeli obstruction of truth in this context was first evidenced in January 2024, when the Israeli government expressly prohibited Israeli doctors and relevant authorities from cooperating with the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, labeling the commission as “anti-Israeli and antisemitic”. Since then, the Israeli government has persistently maintained this obstructive stance, undermining the Commission’s efforts to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation, which constitutes a failure by Israel to comply with its obligation under international law to cooperate with UN bodies. Israeli is also denying victims on both sides their right to justice and accountability for the alleged violations.
“Israel’s repeated refusal to cooperate with all UN investigations into sexual violence highlights the Israeli government’s exploitation of the allegations of this grave crime as a propaganda tool to manufacture consent for its full-fledged, live-streamed genocide,” said Ramy Abdu, Chairman of Euro-Med Monitor. “Israel merely uses these allegations to shame and smear critics and deflect blame from its formidable crimes against humanity.”
Over the past 15 months, the Euro-Med Monitor team has documented numerous instances of Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence, including rape and other forms of sexualised torture, against Palestinian civilians, including individuals abducted to Israel’s Sde Teiman torture camp.
In at least one instance, a Palestinian detainee was subjected to rape by Israeli police dogs as part of their assault. In Sde Teiman, “the soldiers took off the blindfolds covering our eyes for the first time,” lawyer Fadi Saif al-Din Bakr, released on 22 February 2024 after 45 days of detention, told the Euro-Med Monitor team. “The soldiers later pulled a young man sitting to my right, forced him to sleep on the ground, and tied his hands and feet. Suddenly, the occupation soldiers let loose trained police dogs on the young man, who was subjected to rape by the dogs. Throughout the entire ordeal I endured, this was among the most awful things that I witnessed.”
Added al-Din Bakr: “Everything was a lot [to go through], and this was just one more [incident] added to the heap of torments. I was hoping to die so that this would not happen to me, but one of the soldiers told me to get ready. [Yet] something miraculous happened in the prison; the torture session quickly ended, and we were brought back to the barn.”
In some cases, Palestinians have been raped to death by Israeli army personnel. These documented incidents provide strong evidence of the systematic and widespread nature of such atrocities, revealing that Israel has weaponised sexual violence as a deliberate tactic to destroy the Palestinian population’s morale.
Among the at least 36 detainee deaths under investigation at Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman detention facility, one Palestinian man is reported to have died following a horrific act of rape with an electric baton. This brutal act, along with many others, is unlikely to be investigated or prosecuted within Israel, and will be prevented from international scrutiny as Israel continues to block investigations into such crimes.
Numerous reports from international, UN, and Israeli human rights organisations, including the UN Human Rights Office, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem, have documented Israel’s systematic and widespread use of torture and sexual violence against Palestinians.
In addition, the June 2024 report by the UN CoI on the oPt, including East Jerusalem and Israel reached similar conclusions. It documented a “significant increase in the range, frequency, and severity of sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by Israeli Security Forces (ISF) against Palestinians” since 7 October 2023. The report further stated that this increase was “linked to an intent to punish and humiliate Palestinians”.
Recently, the Euro-Med Monitor team documented horrific testimonies at Kamal Adwan Hospital regarding the sexual assault of civilians, including female medical staff and children. The victims were forced to remove their clothes and headscarves and subjected to humiliating body searches by male Israeli army personnel. One woman, forcibly evacuated from the hospital, recounted to the Euro-Med Monitor team: “A soldier forced a nurse to remove her trousers and then placed his hand on her genitals. When she tried to resist, he struck her hard across the face, causing her nose to bleed.”
The Israeli crimes involving the killing of Palestinians and the infliction of severe physical and psychological harm through torture, mistreatment, and sexual violence, including rape, are being carried out with extreme brutality and in a systematic nature that is clearly indicative of a specific intent to destroy the Palestinian people. These acts constitute components of the crime of genocide, as outlined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Euro-Med Monitor calls on the United Nations to include Israel on its blacklist of entities involved in sexual violence in conflicts. This call comes in light of substantial evidence documenting Israel’s systematic use of sexual violence, including rape and other forms of sexual abuse, as part of its broader campaign of annihilation against the Palestinian people.
Euro-Med Monitor emphasises the urgent need for international accountability and a comprehensive investigation into these atrocities to ensure justice for the victims and prevent further impunity. The Monitor affirmed that, over the course of several decades, Israel has consistently demonstrated both a lack of willingness and a lack of capacity to hold accountable or prosecute those implicated in crimes committed against Palestinians, with such individuals afforded judicial, political, military, and even popular protection.
The international community must take urgent and decisive action to address and halt Israel’s grave crimes against Palestinian prisoners and detainees. This includes the immediate and unconditional release of individuals being arbitrarily detained, the cessation of enforced disappearances that facilitate further atrocities, and the granting of access for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other competent local and international organisations to all Israeli detention facilities. Additionally, victims must be granted the right to legal representation.
Euro-Med Monitor further demands that these crimes be investigated promptly, impartially, thoroughly, and independently, in order for all perpetrators to be held accountable, and that all victims and their families be fully granted their right to truth, to effective remedies, and to comprehensive reparations, ensuring justice and dignity for those affected by these heinous crimes.
It is imperative that the international community support the International Criminal Court (ICC) in conducting a comprehensive investigation into these crimes, as well as ensuring their incorporation into the charges brought against Israeli officials before the Court, and ensure the accountability and prosecution of all those responsible for it.
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At least 12 Israelis were injured on Friday as crowds rushed to bomb shelters after a missile launched from Yemen entered Israeli airspace.
The Israeli army claimed to have intercepted the missile, but debris reportedly fell in the Modi’in area in central Israel.
The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation confirmed that air raid sirens sounded across the greater Tel Aviv area, the Mediterranean coastal region, and Jerusalem.
Residents reported hearing explosions in and around Jerusalem.
Israeli political and security institutions are reportedly struggling to devise a strategy to halt Houthi attacks as ongoing Israeli airstrikes on critical sites in Yemen have failed to deter the group.
Media reports suggest widespread frustration within Israeli leadership over the escalating threat.
The Houthis, in solidarity with Gaza, which has been facing an Israeli genocidal war since Oct. 7, 2023, have targeted Israeli cargo ships or those associated with Tel Aviv in the Red Sea with missiles and drones, expressing a determination to continue operations until the end of the onslaught on the enclave.
Since the beginning of 2024, a coalition led by the US has been conducting airstrikes that it said are targeting Houthi locations in parts of Yemen in response to attacks by the group in the Red Sea. The counterattacks have been occasionally met with retaliation from the group.
With the intervention of Washington and London and an escalation of tensions, the Houthis announced that they consider all American and British ships military targets according to Anadolu.
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BREAKING | The Italian court has ruled on Jerusalem’s status, deciding not to recognize it as the capital of ‘Israel’.
