Since the tragic war of 1967, the people of Palestine, have come to terms with the reality of Israel. They have accepted it is as a part of the world community within its 1948 boundaries.
IF YOU thought that South Africa was the last country where apartheid was practiced – you are wrong. If you believe that with the rise of the charismatic statesman, Nelson Mandela, and the consequent collapse of the white regime of the Bothas, the last vestiges of discrimination were relegated to folklore, you are wrong. There is place upon earth – the holy of the holiest of lands for all the major monotheistic religions – where the darkest and harshest of crimes against humanity were committed in the name of belief and with the active support and connivance of the modern State – a darling of the West. It is a place where the self-proclaimed victim of Hitler’s atrocities and suicide bombers, assumes the mantle of a monster of defiance, cruelty, indifference, suppression and hate, all welded together, to deny justice to the hapless people of Palestine. It is the modern state of Israel.
Since the tragic war of 1967, the people of Palestine, have come to terms with the reality of Israel. They have accepted it is as a part of the world community within its 1948 boundaries. That abject surrender by Arabs doesn’t suit the designs and strategies of Israeli governments. They are actively involved in building the so-called ‘security fence’ which divides the Palestinian land like the cracked wind shield of a car. They are regularly building ’outposts’ and ’settlements’ in occupied territories which are in flagrant violation of international law. Jewish settlers believe that they have a God-gifted mandate to settle anywhere in the Holy Land. According to them, it’s a precondition to their Messiah’s arrival. So, the others should bow to their whims and make sacrifices to ensure the fulfilment of the promise made to the Jews.
Israel has a right to exist; it has the right also to protect itself. What is wrong, however, is its occupation of a land that doesn’t belong to it. There is no end to its “perceived need for safety.” It is a case of putting the cart before the horse and not the horse before the cart. The government and Israeli public know that these settlements gravely upset every Palestinian. They are like the red rag before the bull. These outposts and the military boots, feed the undercurrent of resentment that ultimately explodes into hatred and violence; this environment is responsible for moulding the mind of a suicide bomber.
With the erection of safety fences, outposts and settlements, Israel is trying to create new geo-political realities. Israel is colonising the Arab land in order to consolidate the demographic and geographical changes it is engineering. It is a well thought-out strategy to thwart the birth of any viable Palestinian state. It is intended to neutralise the facts of the case – when was the community in question established? Was it a Palestinian habitat or an Israeli outpost? These questions are bound to haunt the Israeli State as and when the world community feels the moral compunction to force the errant State to sign a permanent status agreement with Arabs.
Israel knows very well that to stop this vicious circle of violence, it has to dismantle old settlements and outposts; it has to withdraw its military support to settlers and it has to allow them to return as original inhabitants. The ‘safety fence’ is nothing but a de facto annexation of Palestinian territories. By building the wall and settlements, it has indirectly retained the rights and powers to control all important Palestinian economic areas, agricultural grounds and natural resources, including water.
Do you know that the West Bank settlement domestically consumes 280lt of water per person per day, as compared to 86lt of water pppd by poor Palestinians. According to the WHO, 100lt pppd is the average water requirement of a human being. Israel pulls up that water in the name of domestic requirement and squanders the water resources; a natural property of Palestine is being used for Israel’s farming and industrial development. The so-called ‘Green Revolution’ is a farce to steal, plunder, and confiscate Palestinian assets. Apart from the safety fence that cuts across Palestinian agricultural and industrial land, today there are 122 Israeli settlements and 102 outposts established by the ’Democratic Republic of Israel’. Settlements are built on less than 3 per cent of the area of the West Bank. But due to the presence of an extensive network of roads and restrictions on Palestinians accessing their own land, Israel dominates 40-45 per cent of Palestinian lands in the West Bank.
It seems, with the advent of President Obama’s pricks of conscience, the world is waking up to this travesty of truth and injustice, where Israel, in fact a perpetrator, successfully portrays itself as a victim of atrocities. With the clandestine backing of the West, Israel has so far flouted each and every resolution of the UN Security Council. It needs to keep a certain level of irritation going, so it provokes reactions and outbursts of violence so that it has an excuse for crying – “We are victims ! We are being attacked ! We are innocents ! Please support us !” The truth is otherwise.
