How can Israel deal with the palestinians?

Byrnzie wrote:

Your first 3 points are meaningless. And your fourth point is ridiculous. Try harder!

Byrnzie wrote:

So you two both believe that the Palestinians and Israelis are on an equal footing?

As far as not being able to see the whole picture, I can see it perfectly. Israel is a wealthy country that the U.S supplies with $4 Billion in aid every year along with state of the art military equipment, including F16 fighter jets and bulldozers designed to destroy the homes of Palestinians.

This compared with:

Roadmap to Poverty

16 May 2003

By Louise Richards, chief executive War on Want


There is a place where UN agencies estimate that over half the population are living on less than $2 per day. Where over 1.3 million people are dependent on foreign aid to survive. Where chronic and acute malnutrition is widespread among children under five years of age and is increasing rapidly. Where the World Health Organisation has described the situation as "hidden hunger".

And where is this place? A forgotten corner of Sub-Saharan Africa? No, this is the illegally occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip where 3.5 million Palestinians are mired in poverty that rarely makes British TV screens, let alone the living rooms of Israeli families.

As Peter Hansen, Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency, the largest aid organisation working in the territories, recently put it: “No drought has hit Gaza and the West Bank, no crops have failed and the shops are often full of food. But the failure of the peace process and the destruction of the economy by Israel's closure policy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster.”

This week development charity War on Want launches a survey of the levels and causes of poverty in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that, if left unchecked, will blight a generation of young Palestinians as a result of creeping malnutrition.

The mental and physical development of a generation of Palestinian children is at stake. A study funded by the United States Agency for International Development found that four out of five children in Gaza and the West Bank have inadequate iron and zinc intake. These deficiencies cause anaemia and weaken the immune system.

Through close liaison with Palestinian project partners and a sweep through a vast body of information sources, War on Want argues that the appalling levels of poverty in Gaza and the West Bank can be laid squarely at the door of Israel’s continued occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land. In short, this is the story of a nation of people under house arrest.

Of course, TV footage rarely captures the incremental collapse of a society and economy that has witnessed the steady erosion of human and workers’ rights dating back 36 years since Israel’s occupation began in 1967.

In the UK, we are sadly accustomed to watching disjointed scenes of killing on Israeli soil where foreign media are free to film the carnage wreaked by suicide bombers. But is there sufficient coverage of Israeli operations inside the occupied territories where the media is often unable to roam?

Some journalists have taken huge risks trying to achieve a semblance of balance by filming the plight of everyday Palestinian families. Some have even paid the blood price such as British freelance cameraman James Miller who was shot dead in May by the Israeli army in the town of Rafah.

But the pendulum of killing that has come to characterise loss of life should be understood in a more historical context. As 26 Israelis and Palestinians were added to the death toll last week, the report details how the machinery of occupation has constricted the Palestinian people over a period of decades.

Poverty flows from an occupation characterised by curfews, checkpoints and closures. The denial of freedom of movement for Palestinians has made any semblance of normal life impossible. Collective punishment of this kind means people are unable to get to work, school or even hospital while the arbitrary and random nature of curfews is designed to make it impossible for people and civil institutions to make any plans.

There are over 120 Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which when added to roadblocks, divide the West Bank into 300 enclaves and the Gaza Strip into three separate sections.

Being unable to move freely has had enormous repercussions for employment and income. The report cites one estimate putting unemployment at 67% in the Gaza Strip and 48% in the West Bank. Until September 2000, about 70,000 Palestinians living in Gaza went to work in Israel. Today, only a couple of thousand workers are given a day permits to enter Israel and even those allowed to cross over are at mercy of checkpoint commanders and sporadic curfews.

As a result of the occupation, income losses stand at between $6 million and $8.6 million per day – far exceeding the total aid provided by the international community in attempt to fill the void. In addition, the Palestinian Authority has struggled to pay salaries to its 125,000 employees due in large part to the withholding of tax revenues owed to it by Israel. While payments are not being made, the IMF estimated total monies owed at $600 million in August 2002.

The threat of home demolition and the destruction of Palestinian property is also a driver of poverty in the Occupied Territories. During the first 15 months of the Intifada, physical damage amounted to $305 million and in the month-long invasion of the West Bank in March/April 2002, the Israeli Army destroyed and looted $361 million worth of property.

House demolition was a deliberate Israeli policy long before the current Intifada, but it has increased dramatically as Israel pursues its illegal practice of collective punishment. During 2002, in the Gaza Strip, 655 houses have been demolished in which 5,124 Palestinians lived.

Meanwhile, across the territories, 30 mosques and 12 churches were destroyed between September 2000 and February 2002, and 13,340 acres of Palestinian land has been bulldozed or burned according Israeli press reports earlier this year.

And while Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, talks up peace, his government literally ploughs ahead with the so-called Security Wall currently under construction in the West Bank.

Costing £1million per mile of fence and swallowing great swathes of Palestinian land, it is difficult to square with the parallel process for peace. It was left to an Israeli settler quoted in a major Israeli newspaper to sum up the situation and the wall. Describing himself as “very right wing” he said: “It’s an economic death sentence for the Palestinians. There are people here who want to make a living and it’s creating more hatred.”

Byrnzie wrote:

I've not said that the PLO are perfectly innocent. Therefore your lame accusation of my naivity is groundless.

Byrnzie wrote:

O.k then, let me ask you a question: Do you think that the Jewish resistance in world war 2 were guilty of committing crimes against the German army, and that they should therefore be condemned?

miller8966 wrote:

When obviously they cant keep it together.

Ahnimus wrote:

We could use the torah/talmud. God banished the Jews to live amongst the nations of the world, if they should try to return forcefully, they will fail.

That's Judaism, not my belief.

Zionism is to blame.