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FREE PALESTINE

End Israel's Occupation: 40 years too many

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MAP 6: 2007-? OCCUPATION & APARTHEID

Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land has been accompanied by large scale transfer of Israeli settlers into the occupied territories. Israel enacts different military laws to regulate civilian, economic and legal affairs of the Palestinian population, openly discriminating in favour of the settlers who are governed by Israeli law. This web of nationality and residency laws, with IDs and passes discriminating between Jews and Arabs in the occupied territories is a form of apartheid that has strangled the Palestinian economy and increased its dependence on Israel. While the Wall and other security barriers restrict and/or imprison the occupied Palestinians, it is porous for the Israeli settlers/civilians who come and go without restriction via the exclusive highways built on Palestinian land to connect the settlements to Israel.

The restriction on Palestinian movement by over 500 checkpoints, many appearing at random and closing unpredictably, mean the roads and proposed tunnels to connect the increasingly fragmented Palestinian enclaves will serve to continue this outside control. Even if a Palestinian state were to be established, Israel has ensured that it will be one in name only and one that will be dependent on the mercy of Israel. Israel has ensured that it will have complete control over Palestinian access to the outside world.

The Palestinians who were the indigenous population of Palestine have been dispossessed of much of their land. Even those that remained in what is now regarded as the state of Israel and now comprising 1.3 million - 20% of Israel’s population - have incomplete suffrage as the Jewish state is defined as not “a state for all its citizens” but as a state for its Jewish citizens only. This has meant that 93% of the land inside Israel is held in perpetuity for the Jewish people, which excludes Israel’s non Jewish Arab “citizens”. These so-called Israeli-Arabs are treated as intrinsically suspect which affects their employment prospects and they suffer discrimination in the per capita expenditure on education and other health and infrastructural costs and certainly in building permits. Although having a vote and being represented in the Knesset, Arab-Israelis have to swear allegiance to a “Jewish State” – one that has enshrined in law their status as second class citizens. The 3.5 million Palestinians who live under occupation in the occupied territories are discriminated against in their freedom of movement, in marriage laws that prevent them from living in Israel should they marry an Israeli citizen and daily suffer humiliations and controls in nearly every aspect of their lives. To date, they are still awaiting an end to their occupation and to be granted their right to self-determination.

 

 

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© 2007 Women For Palestine