Since Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, they have implemented an apartheid and racist system of administration of the territories, violating countless international laws and UN resolutions.
After the tragedy of the Holocaust, Jewish people were granted a homeland in the land of Palestine when the British occupation there ceased. The new state of Israel, created in 1948, has, however, illegally expanded its territory since its inception. It now occupies many areas of the West Bank and continues to periodically occupy the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied territories wrote in a letter to Ariel Sharon: "The state of Israel commits war crimes and tramples over human rights, destroying Palestinian cities, towns and villages; expropriating land, detaining and executing without trial, conducting mass demolitions of houses, businesses, and public institutions; looting, closure, curfew, torture, prevention of medical care, construction and expansion of settlements -all these actions are opposed to human morality, and violate international treaties ratified by Israel."
News Blog RC has put together some facts regarding the Israel Palestinian conflict, the facts are not about Muslim or Jew but rather, right and wrong:
1. In 1918, when the Balfour Declaration was made, 90% of the population of historic Palestine were Arabs, with only 56,000 Jewish people residing there.
2. Palestinians are now living in 18% of their historic homeland. Israel is stealing 50% of this through settlements and building of the apartheid style separation wall.
3. Israel appropriates 80% of the natural water from Palestinians every year.
4. Non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in Israel.
5. The land now called Israel sits on the site of more than 531 (now destroyed) Palestinian villages. Palestinians in these villages were either massacred or fled for their lives during the 1947-1948 war between immigrant Jews (now Israeli's) and the native Arab Palestinians.
6. Israel has renamed almost every village and town to cover up all traces of the Palestinian heritage.
7. Israel's annexation of Jerusalem is illegal under international law and rejected by the international community. Despite this, Israel has surrounded Jerusalem with the apartheid wall and is now slowly demolishing Palestinian homes and 'Judaizing' Jerusalem.
8. Palestinians from Jerusalem who marry Palestinians from anywhere outside of Jerusalem lose their Jerusalem passports if they leave Jerusalem. Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza cannot move to Jerusalem to live. Thus, parents in Jerusalem are forced to check the ID cards of potential brides and grooms for their children, to ensure they are Jerusalemites.
9. There are 120 Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank. These road blocks divide the West Bank into 300 separate clusters and make everyday travel a long ordeal.
10. Cars owned by Palestinians are colour coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews.
11. Palestinian children who throw stones are imprisoned by Israel for approximately one year, in adult prisons, breaching provisions of UN Conventions. IDF soldiers have on numerous occasions shot and killed children for throwing stones.
12. Israel receives approximately $5 billion in aid from the U.S.A. each year, more than the whole African continent put together (minus Egypt).
13. Since Israel was created in 1948, combined US military and exonomic aid to Israel has reached £100 billion.
14. Israel claims to be building the separation wall between it and the Palestinian territories for its own security. Reports have shown that Israel is in fact using the wall to steal the most fertile West Bank land from Palestinians, by encircling villages with the wall and cutting the villagers off from their farmland. If security was the real concern, the wall would run along the pre-1967 internationally recognised green line border.
15. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, and it refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspectors from its sites.
16. High ranking military officers in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) have admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war (POW) were executed by the IDF. This is in breach of the Geneva Convention on POW.
17. During the January 09 conflict between Israel and Palestine, the IDF deliberately stopped ambulances from getting to wounded Palestinians during IDF incursions into Palestinian population centres. This occurred over 1,000 times.
18. During this time, over 200 ambulances were attacked by live gun fire, rubber bullets and stones from Israeli settlers.
19. During these attacks, 12 journalists were killed by Israeli forces and over 300 were injured due to physical assaults and/or gunshot wounds.
20. During the 22 day assault in Gaza, 960 civilians lost their lives, including 288 children and 121 women. 239 police officers were also killed; the majority (235) in air strikes carried out on the first day of the attacks. The Ministry of Health have also confirmed that a total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the assault, including 1,606 children and 828 women.
21. Israel is currently detaining as many as 7,500 Palestinian political prisoners in prisons with common criminals.
22. The unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip is 67% and in the West Bank it is 48%.
23. Between 28 September 2000 and May 2005, over 750 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces and settlers, including approximately 150 children who were on their way to or from school, or were sitting in school class rooms when shot by snipers.
24. It was not until 1988 that Israeli's barred "Jews Only" job adverts.
25. Four of Israel's Prime Ministers (Begin, Shamir, Rabin and Sharon) took part in either bomb attacks on civilians, massacres of civilians, or forced expulsions of civilians from their villages. Sharon was held responsible for the massacre of more than 2,750 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. The UN concluded it was an act of Genocide.
26. Palestinian Refugees make up the largest refugee population in the world.
27. In a report in 2005, the US Government concluded that there were now more Arab Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza than Israeli Jews. The Palestinian population numbers 5.3 million and the Israeli Jewish population numbers 5.2 million.
News Blog RC: Notwithstanding these sad facts about the occupied territories, Palestinians continue to endure their hardships on a daily basis and a sovereign state of Palestine continues to be inhibited. Israel continues to build its illegal settlements whilst the US, Western governments and the mainstream Western media continue to largely ignore these crimes. It is, therefore, of utmost importance that the plight of Palestinians is not ignored.
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