Forty
Years Of Occupation
By Stephen Lendman
23 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
This
June will mark an anniversary that will live in infamy for the people
affected by the event it commemorates following a far greater one 19
years earlier on May 14, 1948. On June 5, 1967, Israel launched its
so-called "Six-Day (preemptive) War" against three of its
neighboring Arab states - Egypt, Jordan and Syria - claiming it was
in self-defense to avoid annihilation Israeli leaders later admitted
was spurious and false cover for a large-scale long-planned, calculated
war of aggression it believed it could easily win and did.
The New York Times quoted
Prime Minister Menachem Begin's (1977 - 83) August, 1982 speech saying:
"In June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations
in the Sinai approaches do not prove that (President Gamal Abdel) Nasser
(1956 - 70) was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves.
We decided to attack him."
Two time Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin (1974 - 77 and 1992 - 95) told French newspaper Le Monde in February,
1968: "I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which
he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an
offense against Israel. He knew it and we knew it."
General Mordechai Hod, Commander
of the Israeli Air Force during the Six-Day War said in 1978: "Sixteen
years of planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived
with the plan, we slept on the plan, we ate the plan. Constantly we
perfected it."
General Haim Barlev, Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF) Chief told Ma'ariv in April, 1972: "We were
not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had
never thought of such a possibility."
Other Israeli leaders and
generals voiced the same sentiment that in June, 1967 Israel was under
no threat, yet preemptively undertook a war of aggression falsely telling
the world it had no other choice. It had a clear one. It could have
chosen peace, but didn't and never did earlier or since to the present
because discretionary aggressive wars of choice serve Israeli interests
as they do its US imperial partner.
In 1967, it was the Jewish
state's third major aggressive war that grew out of the founding of
Zionism in 1897 by Theodor Herzl aiming to establish a permanent Jewish
state. He planned the first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland,
became its first president, and envisioned a permanent Jewish homeland
in Palestine justified by what Professor Norman Finkelstein called the
"colossal hoax" Jews got there first establishing their ancestral
home on "a land without people for a people without land."
It became the state of Israel in May, 1948 during the new Jewish state's
first preemptive aggressive so-called "War of Independence"
Palestinians call "al-Nakba" - the catastrophe.
From it, Jewish forces seized
78% of British Mandatory Palestine establishing the state of Israel
May 14 when the Mandate ended. It was 40% more territory than UN Resolution
181 of November, 1947 allowed with a 56 - 44% division that already
gave Israel most of the fertile land, nearly all urban and rural territory,
and 400 of over 1000 Palestinian villages their residents lost by UN
mandate, with no right of appeal, to the Jewish population comprising
one-third of the total at that time.
The 1948 negotiated cease-fire
line became known as the "Green Line." Egypt occupied Gaza,
and Jordan controlled the West Bank. It was Israel's moment of triumph.
The war lasted six months, expelling and killing about 800,000 Palestinians.
It destroyed 531 Palestinian villages, 11 urban neighborhoods, and was
a clear case of ethnic cleansing international law calls a crime against
humanity. Guilty Israeli leaders were never held to account for it or
forced to admit what, in fact, they indisputably did according to recently
declassified Israeli archival material Israeli historian Ilan Pappe
used for his important new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Noted British journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger calls
him "Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian."
In his book, Pappe documented
Israeli crimes including cold-blooded mass-murder; destruction of homes,
villages and crops; rapes; other atrocities; and massacres of defenseless
men, women and children shown no mercy. It happened because British
Mandate forces did nothing to stop it, and when neighboring Arab states
finally intervened, they acted pathetically without conviction against
a superior Israeli fighting force easily able to defeat the small, ill-equipped
and unmotivated token forces matched against it.
Israel's second war of aggression
was launched along with Britain and France October 29, 1956 against
Egypt following President Nasser's decision to nationalize the Suez
Canal. Invading forces gave in to US and Soviet pressure to cease fighting
eight days later, and after the Federal Reserve began selling large
amounts of British pounds undermining the dollar-pound exchange rate.
It ended when Israel withdrew its last troops March 8, 1957.
On June 5, 1967, Israel launched
its third major war of aggression but hardly its last with another one
always planned and ready to unleash on the flimsiest pretext almost
no other nation could get away with. It did it for the usual reasons
nations go to war when under no external threat to do it - territory,
resources (for Israel Golan's water was key), and a desire for unchallengeable
regional dominance. As it always did since, Israel falsely claimed its
security was threatened by creating myths Syria was shelling Israeli
farmers; legitimate, non-threatening Egyptian military exercises masked
a preparation for war; and that "incendiary Arab rhetoric"
proved it. With plans set and a date picked, Foreign Minister Abba Eban
flew to Washington May 26 to inform Lyndon Johnson of Israel's intentions
and was assured the US backed them.
The war began preemptively
June 5 and proved to be an impressive display of overwhelming power
with Israel destroying 90% of Egypt's 300 + aircraft on the ground and
two-thirds of the Syrian Air Force the first day. After 24 hours of
conflict, Israeli Air Force (IAF) Commander Mordechai Hod announced
the combined Arab air forces were destroyed, and the devastating toll
on them proved it. Israel lost a mere 19 fighter aircraft while Egypt
lost about 300, Syria 60, Jordan 35, Iraq 15, and Lebanon one or more.
The Palestinians were about to lose much more - the remaining Gaza and
West Bank parts of their nation leaving them stateless.
On day 2, Israel invaded
Gaza and the West Bank; on day three Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered
northern Sinai, devastated Egyptian brigades, captured Jerusalem, and
got Jordan to surrender. On day four, the IDF invaded Haram Al-Sharif
and central Sinai, and by day five had advanced to the Suez Canal, taking
all of Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights. The war was practically over
before it began, but Israeli forces showed no mercy using their unopposed
air power to massacre thousands of defenseless Egyptian troops on the
ground. It was a turkey shoot made possible largely because Washington
supported it providing Israel with the latest munitions including tarmac-shredding
explosives preventing undamaged planes from taking off making them sitting
ducks to follow-up attacks. In addition, a US carrier group provided
intelligence and communications help standing ready to intervene if
needed.
Though nothing like today,
even then Washington showed its commitment to Israel, and ignoring and
covering up the USS Liberty incident highlights it. The intelligence
ship was in the Mediterranean about 13 nautical miles off the Sinai
Peninsula when Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked it with full
knowledge it was a US vessel as the senior Israeli lead pilot later
admitted. Thirty-four on-board were killed after which Johnson Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara ordered an inquiry that concluded the incident
was a case of "mistaken identity" despite knowing full well
it wasn't. Later, retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Thomas
Moorer said the incident was "one of the classic all-American cover-ups"
for a close ally Washington has made excuses and allowances for ever
since along with providing huge amounts of financial aid and modern
weaponry and munitions in near-limitless amounts.
Israel used what it got then
for its one-sided blitzkrieg ending June 10 with Israeli forces completing
the job left unfinished following their 1948 "War of Independence."
They took the remaining 22% of ancient Palestine comprising Gaza and
the West Bank, and on June 6, 2007 will have held the territories for
40 repressive years of the longest continuous illegal occupation in
the world under which Palestinians (including Israeli citizens and Palestinian
Christians) lost their personal, political and economic freedoms under
Israeli rule affording those rights only to Jews.
Worldwide Solidarity
Actions
Opposing the Illegal Occupation
To commemorate this infamous
anniversary, the International Coordination Network on Palestine (ICNP)
was launched at the annual UN civil society conference in 2006. It supports
the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people under their banner,
"The World Says No to Israeli Occupation." ICNP called for
global days of protest June 9 - 10 demanding an end to the occupation;
the realization of the Palestinians' inalienable rights including their
right to self-determination; their Right to Return to their homeland;
and to establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state with its
capital in Jerusalem where it rightfully belongs.
ICNP is building nonviolent
global action campaigns for boycotts, divestment and economic and political
sanctions. In addition, it engages in a wide range of educational and
cultural activities with the same aims in mind. It insists governments
across the world stop providing Israel economic, political and military
support and work instead together to end an occupation that never should
have been tolerated in the first place. It wants it replaced with a
"just and lasting peace."
Hundreds of other organizations,
networks and groups across the world are also mobilizing for a global
protest day June 9. One of them is the "Occupation 40" coalition
calling for "six days" of actions (from June 5 - 10) marking
40 hellish years of occupation. In addition, a Global Day of Action
was called for on Saturday, June 9. The coalition is comprised of grassroots
Israeli groups and organizations, peace activists, artists, student
groups, internal Palestinian refugees, anarchists, animal rights activists,
and leftist groups including socialists and communists. There will be
a six-day convergence in Israel including demonstrations, direct actions,
discussions and cultural events.
"Occupation 40"
is also calling for international direct actions against the illegal
occupation from June 5 - 10 including economic punishment against corporations
profiting from an occupation that cost Palestinians their homeland.
The planned agenda for these days is as follows:
-- June 5: An international
action day against militarization, wars and occupations in advance of
the June G-8 summit in Germany.
-- June 6 - 8: Protests against
the G-8 by Palestinian and Israeli activists and Palestinian Solidarity
groups across Europe where German authorities are already cracking down
in advance of the June 6 - 8 summit of world leaders taking place at
the German resort of Heiligendamm in the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen
on the Baltic coast.
Wherever George Bush travels,
unprecedented levels of security are needed the result of intense worldwide
anger against him and his administration showing up in mass public actions
justifiably protesting his presence. As a result, the Heiligendamm resort
is being turned into a luxurious armed military fortress with a huge
protective wall around it costing $17 million a German newspaper called
"the equivalent of a maximum security prison (in reverse) to keep
people out."
In addition, the Baltic Sea
surrounding the resort will be patrolled by nine naval vessels supplementing
16,000 local police and 1100 soldiers guarding the area to keep protesters
several miles from the meeting. Add to that the police state-style raids
now ongoing targeting global justice and leftist organizations across
the country on the phony pretext they're involved in the "creation
of a terrorist organization."
-- June 6 - 12: Protest action
days against the occupation in Palestine, Israel and internationally.
-- June 9: A mass rally in
London along with a Global Day of Action Against the Occupation.
-- June 10 - 11: A protest,
teach-in and lobby in Washington, DC.
All these actions across
the world are intended to send Israel, G-8 governments and all nations
around the world "a message they cannot ignore."
Life in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (OPT)
IDF occupation forces continue
assaulting Palestinian civilians and property daily in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (OPT), and while November 8, 2006 wasn't typical,
it shows how horrific some attacks have been. It began November 1 with
Operation Autumn Clouds when Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attacked Beit
Hanoun in northern Gaza launching their largest assault on the territory
since the late June Operation Summer Rains deadly one killing at least
240 mostly civilian men, women and children. In one November, 2006 week,
80 innocent civilians were dead, hundreds wounded, and many bodies afflicted
with terribly disfiguring cuts, burns and hard to explain loss of limbs
unseen before that had to have been from experimental bombs and shells
likely containing radiation or other chemical materials able to burn
human flesh. More on this below.
The attack culminated November
8 when Israeli tanks shelled Palestinian homes killing at least 20 and
wounding 60 more in what's now called the Beit Hanoun massacre. Ironically,
or maybe intentionally, it happened the day after IDF forces withdrew
following the week-long Operation Autumn Clouds operation that already
devastated the town and its people. The Beit Hanoun massacre wasn't
typical. But it highlights how, on any pretext at any time, Israeli
forces freely attack defenseless Palestinians with unrestrained viciousness
maybe just to show they can get away with almost anything.
Mel Frykberg in the April
26 - May 2 issue of Al-Ahram Weekly reports some of the worst of what
Israel is doing (unreported in the West) in his article called Israel's
lab in Palestine. He wrote about Gaza-based doctors recently reporting
severe wounds clearly made by horrific experimental weapons inflicting
shocking damage with graphic web site pictures painful to view:
-- disfiguring burns caused
by intense heat requiring amputation;
-- legs sliced from victims'
bodies "as if a saw was used to cut through bone;"
-- the absence of shrapnel
in or near wounds but the presence of a powder-like substance on victims'
bodies and internal organs identified by lab analysis as carbon and
tungsten (microscopic shrapnel) with many affected patients dying several
days later; and
-- internal organs severely
burned in the absence of external wounds.
The article further explained
Italian RAI News 24 satellite TV reported on a laboratory analysis of
substances taken from victims alleging Israel used "dense inert
metal explosives (DIME)" last summer in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories (OPT) and that a high concentration of carbon, copper, aluminum
and tungsten points to a DIME weapon this time. RAI News 24 indicated
military experts said DIME weapons are "carbon-encased missile(s)
that shatter on impact into minuscule splinters (simultaneously exploding
with) blades of energy-charged, heavy metal tungsten alloy (HMTA) powder
(like) cobalt and nickel or iron, with a carbon fibre casing. It turns
to dust on impact....burning and destroying....everything within a four-metre
range."
In addition to causing severe
disabling and dismembering injuries, DIME weapons leave carcinogenic
fallout (like depleted uranium - DU - or other toxic chemical pollutants)
in areas targeted by them resulting in environmental contamination with
virtually certain large increases in future cancers for people living
close by and exposed.
The Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights (PCHR) on the ground in the territories documents it all
daily, and its weekly report ending May 17 reads like all others depending
on how horrific each week is with some hugely more so than others as
Palestinian victims can attest. PCHR (and other groups) publish an account
of daily incursions, assaults, shootings, targeted assassinations, aircraft
intrusions and attacks, arrests, torture, home demolitions, restrictions
on movement, crop destruction, land theft, and countless other types
of harassment and humiliations making life in occupied Palestine repressive
and unbearable for its residents who somehow resist and endure.
In nearly all cases, Israeli
actions are unprovoked or barely so like responding with overwhelming
force to children throwing rocks or Palestinians defending their homes,
neighborhoods or communities from repeated IDF incursions. Palestinians
only have crude and light weapons against the world's fourth most powerful
military with nearly every imaginable modern weapon including sophisticated
nuclear ones and delivery systems to use them effectively. Specifically
during this one week, IDF ground forces killed six Palestinians in Gaza
and a baby in his mother's womb in the West Bank. They also wounded
36 Palestinians and a French solidarity activist.
In Gaza on May 15, IDF border
forces killed a Palestinian National Security Forces officer fleeing
Fatah-Hamas armed clashes with US and Israeli fingerprints all over
this renewed fighting aimed at toppling the unity government. To do
it, Fatah security forces were supplied with millions of dollars in
funding, weapons and Egyptian-based training for this type operation
ebbing and flowing with renewed fighting erupting on any pretext when
cease-fires break down.
On May 16, Israeli forces
killed three Executive Force members of the Palestinian Ministry of
Interior. They also wounded 27 other Palestinians (including two journalists
and a civilian bystander) by Israeli air attacks on a Rafah Executive
Force site. On the same day, two Hamas members were killed and three
others wounded by air attacks in northern Gaza. Earlier on May 10, IDF
forces near Khan Yunis burnt large areas of Palestinian agricultural
land in Khuza'a village in a deliberate act of military vandalism.
Also, on May 10, the IDF
attacked Israeli solidarity and Palestinian civilian and international
activists' peaceful demonstration protesting the construction of the
Annexation/Apartheid wall in Bal'ein village west of Ramallah wounding
three Palestinian adults, one child and a Swiss solidarity activist.
On May 13, an Israeli settlement guard shot from "zero range"
wounding a Palestinian taxi driver.
From May 10 - 17, IDF forces
conducted at least 26 military incursions into Palestinian communities
in the West Bank arresting 41 civilians including seven children. That
brings the number of Palestinians arrested in the West Bank alone this
year to 1,164. Israeli forces also demolished one home and arrested
two Palestinians in Gaza. Throughout this period, the IDF continued
imposing a tightened siege on the OPT severely restricting movement
including in occupied East Jerusalem and at border crossings through
which essential humanitarian goods and services must have access but
often don't when most needed.
The important Rafah International
Crossing Point has been closed since June 25, 2006 except for three
days. Because of this and other crossing point restrictions, markets
aren't getting food, stores aren't getting goods, and hospitals don't
have vital medical supplies, with most Palestinian patients unable to
travel to them in Israel or the OPT anyway as needed. In addition, Palestinians
have been prevented from fishing in the Mediterranean for nearly one
year depriving them of their livelihood and the people of the food they
harvest from the sea.
In recent days, Israel launched
heavy air strikes against Hamas government Gaza targets killing 36 mostly
Palestinian civilians and wounding 97 others through May 21 as well
as destroying dozens of homes and parliamentary sites. This is on top
of renewed Israeli-instigated Fatah-Hamas armed clashes in Gaza killing
47 and injuring scores more through May 19. On May 18, independent Palestinian
writer Laila El-Haddad wrote on the Electronic Intifada web site of
a recent "terrifying 24 hours (with) sporadic gunfire and ghostly
streets."
She mentioned a phone call
from her father describing a (US-supplied F-16-caused) "tremendous
explosion (sending) intense shockwaves through our house....so powerful....it
blasted off the windows from my cousin's home in the neighbourhood behind
us. This attack was followed by another then another, and then another."
There were six Israeli (F-16) air strikes in one morning with "Israeli
tanks....amassing at Gaza's northern border, and unmanned Israeli drones
whirring menacingly overhead in great numbers patrolling ghostly skies....preparing..for
yet another strike against an already bleeding, burning, and battered
Gaza" from Israeli terror attacks.
Tony Karon, writing in the
Electronic Intifada May 15, notes the current conflict "has assumed
a momentum of its own" Palestinian leaders are unable to contain
because Washington and Israel want it that way in the wake of Hamas'
victory in the January, 2006 elections. He then adds ominously this
may end up "turning Gaza into Mogadishu" just the way the
Bush administration is now "busy turning Mogadishu into Mogadishu
all over again."
The "If Americans Knew"
web site also publishes and keeps current shocking information on the
daily toll in the OPT. Some of its disturbing figures affecting Palestinians
from September 29, 2000 (the first day of the Second Intifada) to the
present at the hands of Israeli forces are as follows:
-- 934 Palestinian children
have been killed in most cases while engaging in normal daily activities
like going to school, playing, shopping, or being in their homes. PCHR
reports a total of 4284 Palestinian deaths through March 23, 2007.
-- A known total of 31,307
Palestinians have been injured, mostly civilians, and mostly under the
same circumstances children were killed. The B'Tselem Israeli Center
for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories reports these numbers are
extremely conservative while the internationally respected Palestine
Red Crescent Society reports much higher totals that are likely more
accurate. In addition, these figures exclude large numbers of Palestinians
who die when unable to reach medical care in time because of Israeli
checkpoints, road closures, curfews and other restrictions on mobility
in the OPT. Also, no accurate records are available on the large number
of avoidable Palestinian deaths resulting from deprivation and/or disease
following the first time ever imposition of sanctions on an occupied
people from early 2006 to the present.
-- The cite reports US financial
aid to Israel is $7,023,288 per day, but the true number is far higher
including:
- around $3 billion or more
annually in direct aid;
- billions more in loans
as needed;
- millions annually for immigrant
resettlement;
- multi-billions in waved
loan repayments;
- billions more in military
aid, financial help to develop Israel's defense industry, transfer of
state-of-the-art technology and the latest US weapons, and US guarantees
for Israel's access to oil;
- $22 billion Israel got
over the past 50 years through the sale of its below-market paying bonds
that have financed half its development - meaning the colonization of
annexed Palestinian land; military aid for its imperial aggressive wars;
and still more as needed and requested.
Tiny Israel today (with six
million Jews) gets more US financial aid (in all direct and indirect
forms) than all other countries in the world combined.
In addition, a 2006 "Washington
Report" piece by Shirl McArthur estimated the minimal amount of
US aid to Israel since 1948 in an article titled "A Conservative
Estimate of Total US Aid to Israel: $108 billion." Again, the true
number is far higher. Over the same period to the present, US aid to
the Palestinians was "zero" except what's supplied for "security"
for Israel and now to aid quisling Fatah forces fight the democratically
elected Hamas government Israel, Washington and the West won't recognize.
-- Israel has been targeted
by at least 65 UN resolutions ignoring them all. The Palestinians have
been targeted by none.
-- One Israeli corporal is
held prisoner by the Palestinians. At least 10,756 Palestinians are
now imprisoned by Israel, most held on "administrative" or
no charge, and according to the B'Tselem Center for Human Rights in
the Occupied Territories the great majority of them are abused or tortured.
PCHR reports from 1967 through 1994 alone, 775,000 Palestinians were
imprisoned for periods ranging from one week to life.
The Israeli human rights
organization HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual confirms
this in an April, 2007 report it jointly published with B'Tselem titled
"Utterly Forbidden - The Torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian
Detainees. It's based on testimonies of dozens of Palestinians arrested,
interrogated and tortured by Israel's ISA, formerly known as the General
Security Service. In addition, even Israeli authorities openly admit
using "exceptional" interrogation methods and "physical
pressure" against Palestinian detainees that translated means "torture."
However, B'Tselem reports the State Attorney's Office "covers up
these illegal acts, thereby assisting in the breach of international
law and of High Court of Justice's prohibitions."
It hardly needs mentioning
international laws ban torture for any reason, but it never deterred
Israel or the US from using it freely. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights outlawed it in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention banned
any form of "physical or mental coercion" in 1949 requiring
detainees at all times to be treated humanely. The European Convention
affirmed this in 1950, and in 1984, the UN Convention Against Torture
became the first binding international instrument dealing exclusively
with banning torture in any form for any reason. Israel and the US both
have contempt for international law mutually affirming the other's right
to act as it pleases with no protests heard in the West or hardly anywhere
else.
-- 4170 Palestinian homes
have been demolished according to a B'Tselem November 15, 2004 report
titled "Through No Fault of Their Own." The Israeli Committee
Against House Demotions (ICAHD) reports a far larger number calling
them "the hallmark of the Occupation." It cites the demolition
of around 12,000 Palestinian homes (on their own land in their own country)
since June, 1967 to the present, leaving about 70,000 Palestinians "without
shelter and traumatized."
B'Tselem reports
three types of demolitions:
-- 1. As "clearing operations"
to meet Israeli "military needs."
-- 2. Administration demolitions
of houses built "without a permit" meaning Israel won't let
Palestinians build homes on their own land.
-- 3. Demolitions for punitive
reasons against Palestinians "suspected" of attacking Israeli
(occupying) soldiers or civilians. In many cases, adjacent homes are
destroyed as well.
PCHR reports other destruction
of land and property from September 29, 2000 through June, 2005 including
31,500 dunums (31.5 million square meters) of mostly agricultural land
in Gaza or 10% of the territory's arable land total. Israel seized the
land for illegal settlement development. In addition, 656 businesses,
factories and schools were either destroyed or damaged over this period.
-- World Bank data estimates
Palestinian unemployment at 40%. The true figure, however, is much higher,
at least 70% and likely higher still, while available employment is
grossly inadequate to meet essential human needs in most cases. It's
the result of Israeli and western political and economic sanctions imposed
on the democratically elected Hamas government after January, 2006.
It was the first time ever an occupied people were put under a virtual
midieval siege in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention obligating
the international community to protect an occupied civilian population.
Instead, a state of belligerency was imposed causing chaos and mass
human misery, deprivation, starvation, illness and disease so far unaddressed
and worsening. Almost none of this is reported in the dominant western
media.
As early as June 28, 2002,
PCHR reported 40 - 50% of Palestinians were living below the internationally
recognized poverty line of $2 a day with the figure in Gaza 81%. Two-thirds
of them were called the "new poor," having been impoverished
since the outbreak of the Second Intifada September 29, 2000. Nearly
five years later, the figures are far higher.
-- Israel currently has over
400,000 Jews living in 121 Jewish-only settlements and 102 "outposts"
on stolen Palestinian land violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention stating "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer
parts of its own civilian population in the territory it occupies."
The number continues growing with deputy Jerusalem mayor Yehoshua Pollack
announcing in May 20,000 new homes will be built in Arab East Jerusalem
on more land annexed from its legal residents Israel is systematically
ethnically cleasning toward making the entire city 100% Jewish.
In addition, 500 more houses
will be built in Abu Dis village, southeast of Jerusalem with new home
construction aimed at creating territorial continuity between Jerusalem
and "Gush Etzion" settlement bloc, south of Bethlehem, and
between Jerusalem and "Beit Eil" settlement, north of Ramallah.
Toward the same end, the Israeli government allocated $1.5 billion in
US taxpayer aid May 13 to developing Jerusalem settlement neighborhoods
to reduce an increasing Palestinian population in the city.
At the same time, Palestinians
in Salama and Fqaiqees villages, east and south of "Noghohot"
settlement, west of Hebron, were ordered to stop building 10 houses
and a mosque on their own land in their own country. Then on May 11,
Israeli settlers in "Sousia" setttlement, south of Hebron,
attacked Palestinian farmers on their agricultural land near the settlement
without provocation.
End the Illegal Occupation
Now
For 40 years under occupation
on one-fifth of their original land and nearly 60 years after the "Nakba,"
Palestinians are forced to endure the most appalling repression no one
should have to face for a single day. Five million of them, including
1.4 million Israeli citizens, are denied all rights afforded Jews only
and are subjected to daily abuse and neglect along with regular IDF
assaults against which they're defenseless. The Palestinians suffer
for it, and the world community is silent except, like Israel, to shamefully
call the victims the victimizers.
Then there are the five million
refugees in the Palestinian diaspora (by some estimates the number is
seven million) including 260,000 internally displaced and living inside
Israel. Those outside the country are denied the absolute universal
"Right of Return" affirmed in UN Resolution 194 passed in
December, 1948 resolving that "refugees wishing to return to their
homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to
do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should
be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss
of or damage to property....made good by the Governments or authorities
responsible."
This "Universal Right"
was also established in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights as well as various Geneva Conventions Israel won't recognize
just as it ignores over five dozen UN resolutions condemning or censuring
it for its actions against the Palestinians or other Arab people, deploring
it for committing them, or demanding, calling on or urging the Jewish
state to end them. One of them was UN Resolution 273 passed May, 1949
giving Israel UN membership conditional on its implementing Resolutions
181 of November, 1947 partitioning Palestine 56 - 44% in its favor and
194 passed December, 1948 giving Palestinians their absolute universally
accepted "Right of Return."
From 1948, when Palestinians
lost 78% of their homeland, to 1967 when they lost the rest to a hostile
foreign occupier, to the present, life in the OPT has been oppressive,
intolerable and criminally imposed on a defenseless people helpless
against it and unsupported ever since in their courageous struggle for
liberation one day they'll achieve because they'll never give up till
they have what they rightfully and legally deserve. For 40 years under
occupation they have no recognized state of their own, no right of citizenship,
and no power over their daily lives.
They live in a constant state
of fear in the virtual open-air prisons of Gaza and the West Bank under
Israel's racist apartheid laws even the Israeli High Court shamefully
upholds. They're strangled economically and politically; denied free
movement in their own country from a structure of roadblocks, checkpoints,
electric fences and a land-grabbing "Apartheid Separation wall"
the World Court in the Hague ruled (14 - 1) is "contrary to international
law" because it "destroyed and (illegally) confiscated"
property, it greatly restricts Palestinian movement, and it "severely
impedes the exercise by the Palestinian people of (the) right to self-determination."
For its Jewish citizens,
Israel is nominally democratic, although far from perfect at the least.
For its Arab Muslim and small Christian population, it's a daily struggle
for survival under the harshest conditions of all kinds imaginable those
outside the territories and most Jews in Israel can't possibly understand
and too few even try. For 40 brutal years, Israel has illegally controlled
all aspects of Palestinian life in the OPT with an iron fist it freely
swings on the slightest pretext. It cantonized the indigenous population
under deplorable conditions in refugee camps and bantustans surrounded
and cut off from all other ones. It rules defenseless people by intimidation
and repressive military might. It denies Palestinian people their right
to a truly sovereign independent state and won't allow Muslims, Christians
and other non-Jewish legal residents in greater Israel the same rights
as Jews including the right of citizenship and safety under one sovereign
nation for everyone entitled to it.
Israel claims it wants peace
but never negotiated in good faith to get it. The current so-called
"road map" is a cruel hoax going nowhere. It's as fraudulent
as all other phony peace efforts before it. Beginning with Camp David
in 1978, the US bribed Egypt with billions in "baksheesh"
in return for peace with Israel leaving Palestinians out in the cold.
The predictable result was festering anger that exploded in what became
the First Intifada in 1987 killing hundreds of Palestinians that finally
led to the Oslo Accords and their so-called Declaration of Principles
in 1993. Under them, Israel got what it wanted giving back nothing more
in return than the right of Palestinians to be Israeli enforcers in
their own land. So highly touted and praised when signed, it offered
no Right of Return, no independent Palestinian state, no portion of
Jerusalem as a capital, and no Palestinian control over their own daily
lives free from a foreign occupier. From then till now, things only
got worse.
Oslo I led to Oslo II in
1995 that divided the West Bank into the way it exists today in Areas
"A," "B," "C," and "D"; "H-1"
and "H-2" in Hebron; nature reserves (in the OPT) for Jews
only; closed military areas; security zones; and "open green spaces"
for Jewish-only housing developments in over half of Arab East Jerusalem
(slowly being stolen entirely) leaving Palestinians confined to unconnected
cantons surrounded by growing Israeli settlements, restricted roads,
and all kinds of impediments restricting free movement preventing any
semblance of normal daily life.
So-called "permanent
status" talks then began in July, 2000 at Camp David resulting
in another insulting betrayal. Portrayed in the West as a generous offer
in good faith, it was, in fact, just another example of US-Israeli duplicity
leaving out entirely what Palestinians most want - a free and sovereign
state or a single multi-ethnic one with Jews and Palestinians having
equal rights, the Right of Return, a portion of Jerusalem as a capital
or the entire city as capital for both, and an end to foreign occupation.
All that was offered in exchange for "peace" Israeli-style
is what they now have - life locked down in unconnected cantons on mostly
scrub land in virtual open-air prisons surrounded by expanding Israeli
settlements continuing to encroach on Palestinian lands fast disappearing
as Israelis take what they want dunum by dunum.
Again justifiable festering
anger erupted into the Second (al-Aqsa Mosque) Intifada in September,
2000 following former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's provocative visit
to the holy al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem (the Noble Sanctuary
for Muslims and Temple Mount for Jews and Christians). It became far
worse following elections for Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)
seats on January 25, 2006 when, fed up with years of Fatah-led corruption
and betrayal, Palestinians democratically elected a Hamas government
Israel, Washington and the West acted savagely against since to destroy
because its leaders won't act as a quisling government the way Fatah's
Yasser Arafat and current Fatah Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas,
and his powerful National Security Advisor and "Gaza warlord,"
Mohammed Dahlan (controlling Fatah security forces), were always willing
to do and Abbas and especially Dahlan still are. For Hamas' courage
and dedication to their people, the Palestinians have paid dearly ever
since and still do. This must end.
It's long past time people
of conscience everywhere take a public stand and demand 40 years of
illegal repressive occupation end so Palestinians can finally have what
all people have a right to expect and demand - to live freely in their
own land the way international law mandates with nations supporting
it accepting nothing less.
Palestinians and their legions
of supporters worldwide aren't waiting for conflict resolution that
won't ever come unless enough committed people everywhere demand their
leaders act on it. A growing effort is building to convince them by
calling for an organized global campaign for boycott, divestment and
political and economic sanctions against Israel the same way they developed
in the 1980s against the South African apartheid state that finally
brought results.
It must include a demand
that the world community of nations ends the "last taboo"
of silence when it comes to Israel. It must be willing to expose and
denounce what no longer can be tolerated that current South African
Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils calls worse than apartheid saying
Israel "behav(es) like fascists when they do certain things (like
attacking Palestinians with helicopter gunships and tanks)." What
better time to do what Kasrils is surely calling for than on the 40th
anniversary of the longest continuous occupation in the world that no
longer can be tolerated.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen each Saturday
to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com
at noon US central time.
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