Officials close schools, send kids to 'Day of Rage'

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Palestinian officials closed their schools for one hour on Tuesday to send children to a "Day of Rage" protest that was called when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as "inconsistent with international law."

Fatah Movement Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen called it the beginning of a comprehensive campaign of struggle in response to the U.S. stance, according to Palestinian Media Watch.

The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education emphasized said studies would be stopped from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. to allow participation in mass marches and activities organized "against these unfair decisions."

PMW said comments by Fatah Deputy Chairman Al-Aloul may also be interpreted by Palestinians as a call for violence. He said Fatah and the national forces have planned "activity on the ground at all levels in order to escalate the struggle."

Al-Aloul recently explained that negotiations with Israel are only effective if there is simultaneous "resistance," which PMW noted is a a term used by the PA leadership to refer to everything from peaceful protest to violence and terror.

"Al-Aloul said that this is the start of a permanent program, pairing the PA leadership's 'political activity' with the people in the streets' struggle against the occupation and its settlers' – something that Al-Aloud wants to be 'permanent.' He added that he wants this street activity to take place 'in all districts of the homeland,' – meaning he is encouraging Israeli Arab participation as well," PMW said.

The Palestinian leader alleged Americans and Israelis both have reached the point of murder to demonize Israeli and American governments, PMW said.

After Pompeo's announcement, Fatah Central Committee member Rawhi Fattouh charged the U.S. is "the real occupier."

"After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate … the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law," Pompeo said.

Muwaffaq Matar, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, wrote: "The Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) was the first historical crime, when the colonialist empire, Great Britain, gave the land of Palestine to the Zionist movement in order to establish a state for the Jews of the world. The second crime, which [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu viewed as the correction of a historical mistake, is the granting of a 'certificate of validation' from [U.S. President Donald] Trump to the Israeli Jewish settlement enterprise in the Palestinian territories that were occupied in the 1967 war.

"The decisions of the Trump administration and Pompeo, as severe as they may be, are not worth the paper they were written on. We can compare them to the venom of a cobra snake, whose strengths and weaknesses must be known before and while we go out against it. This two-headed cobra – one [head] is Trump’s and one is Netanyahu’s – will kill us if we do not succeed in overcoming it and surrounding it with precise maneuvers before it succeeds in harming us and directly biting our arteries and veins. Even so, we can intelligently and bravely control our tempers – as our political leadership has accustomed us while dealing with critical and crucial moments such as these – and make the American cobra empty its venom on the rock of our resolve and rationality, such that it will have no more effect than polluted water that can easily be cleaned off."

The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild declaring,"His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

In 1922, the League of Nations adopted it and created the British Mandate "responsible for putting into effect the declaration," which led to the U.N. vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. In response, Britain ended its mandate on May 15, 1948, and the Palestinian Jews, who accepted the Partition Plan, declared the independent state of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and together with seven Arab states attacked Israel, in what is now known as Israel’s War of Independence.