Palestine:  Occupation Without End; An Occupation of Infamy

by Stephen Lendman

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
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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.