Israel has been criminally occupying Palestine and violently oppressing Palestinians for 50 years
Recent headlines have emerged regarding the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. When these articles are given a critical evaluation, however, they demonstrate how the Israel-Palestine conflict — particularly Israel’s efforts to conceal its reality — is one of the most successful public marketing campaigns ever run. In the West, we are given an extremely distorted view of the Israel-Palestine conflict because the USA is one of Israel’s biggest allies. This makes it important for discussions of Israel-Palestine to be given a more comprehensive overview. I am often frustrated by the inaccurate representation of the Israeli occupation, and so my goal here is to try and present the “other side” of the story.
One should appreciate that the land of Palestine was originally offered to the Jews by Britain in a one-paragraph letter — the (in)famous Balfour Declaration (1917) — which said that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” This declaration ignored the large population of Palestinians inhabiting Palestine at the time. Nevertheless, there is an internationally recognized area of Israel that is not under contention: the Pre-1967 borders, established by United Nations Resolution 181. However, since 1967, Israel has constantly and violently taken additional land from Palestinians.For a thorough description, see Avi Shlaim’s book, Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations. Shlaim’s book also details how, along with military action, Israel has been not-so-slowly building illegal (by United Nations’ and international standards) settlements on Palestinian land, thereby edging out the local Palestinian inhabitants.
Israel has created millions of refugees who have been driven into progressively smaller lands; Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the region. Israel’s current plan seems to be to establish their presence on the land so that anytime negotiations happen they will need to take into account that Israel has now developed these areas. It’s like expanding your house onto your neighbour’s property, and then when they take you to court, the judge says, “Well, yes the addition is illegal, but it’s already there now… so we may as well leave it.” For more on this idea, see Avi Shlaim’s book listed above, as well as many books by Noam Chomsky, including Failed States and The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians.
The fact that much of this information would be surprising to many westerners reflects the success of Israel’s marketing campaign and the unwillingness of the media to report the reality of Israel’s occupation. Indeed, as Israeli historian Benny Morris, notes, “Israelis like to believe and tell the world that they were running an ‘enlightened’ or ‘benign’ occupation… like all occupations, Israel’s was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation.”
One recent article published by Gulf News is a very brief and vague description of the massacre of peaceful Palestinian protesters. There were 15 Palestinians killed and over 1500 injured. The article mentions that these protests have been dubbed the “Great March of Return,” but fail to make clear that the “Return” refers to the Palestinians trying to return to their homes from which they were forcibly expelled. The end of the article, seemingly as an afterthought, reads, “This is a serious violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.” To me, this last sentence should be the headline of the whole article. The fact that a government can perform such a criminal act and receive such little attention makes me feel like the West fails to appreciate its severity.A few days after this article was published, another article was released by Global News which highlighted the rising death toll of Palestinians in these protests. The title of the article, “Villagers on Israeli side of Gaza border unmoved by Palestinian protests,” unambiguously states the lack of Israeli sympathy for their internationally recognized crimes against humanity. An Israeli farmer, Daniel Rahamim, is quoted saying that, “the situation is very, very difficult.” But rather than using this to tell the truth about why things are so difficult, the author, Dan Williams, attributes Rahamim’s comment to the “economic hardship in Gaza,” which is “a Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas, an Islamist group that advocates Israel’s destruction.” These authorial judgments serve only to minimize that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the region due to the shrinking boundaries and constant influx of refugees. It it also worth noting that Hamas is not a militant group bent on the destruction of Israel, but rather a democratically elected organization created in response to Israeli crimes.Finally, in this same article, a quote from a local citizen, Ahuva Avraham, is emphasized: “I would be happy if we could live in peace, but they don’t want to sit and talk with us.” This quote is in reference to the Israeli government rejecting the United Nations’ and the European Union’s calls to investigate Israel’s killing of peaceful Palestinian protesters. In reality, however, it is almost beyond reproach that Israel has been the barrier to peace. In my opinion, and the opinion of other experts including Noam Chomsky and Avi Shlaim, Palestine has long been willing to accept less land than they are rightfully entitled to — based on United Nations Resolution 181 — in order to achieve peace, but Israel appears to want nothing less than the complete destruction of Palestine.
While I am just a PhD student in biology and am no expert in the field of geopolitics or Middle Eastern history, I have been interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict for years. I have educated myself by reading many books and have been trying to keep up-to-date with current affairs. Ultimately, I hope this article offers an alternative view to the westernized idea that Israel is the righteous party of the Israel-Palestine conflicts. My hope is that this information raises greater awareness of how Israel has been committing crimes against humanity for over 50 years.