The Road.....

Below is an attempt to give a brief overview of the necessary context required to give readers some understanding of current events.?

The name PALESTINE derives from Philistia, which dates from around 1185 BC comprising approximately current Israel/Palestine and Jordan.? During Roman rule, a new province was named Palaestina.

The Turkish Ottoman Empire (1299-1918) named the province Filistin.

ZIONISM, a nationalist ideology on which the state of Israel is founded.

1897:? ?As a reaction to anti-Semitism and the pogroms against Jews in Northern and Eastern Europe, Theodore Hertzl founded the Zionist nationalist movement based on the principle that the Jews were a nation and should have national sovereignty. The location of this sovereign state should be the Land of Israel which Jews regarded as their ancient homeland

“A land without people for a people without land”?

The Zionists coined this phrase referring to Palestine, to which they referred as “Eretz Israel” (the land of Israel), ignoring the fact that the country had a population of over half a million.?

In 1895, Hertzl had voiced his support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians:? "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

Not all Jewish people were Zionists.?

Many Jews were Bundists, a secular socialist movement whose ideology was to remain in their countries of birth to struggle with others for a more equal and just society.

Orthodox Jewish communities rejected Zionism (and many still do) as they believed only the Messiah should lead the Jews to Israel.????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Today there are still many Jewish people who oppose the ideology of Zionism.

1901:? The Jewish National Fund was formed, a charity whose aims were to purchase land for Jews in Palestine.? Once bought, the land could not be sold.? Following Israel’s independence in 1948, the JNF also acquired the holdings of Palestinian refugees who had fled.? Today, the JNF is still actively in operation and owns 13% of land within Israel.

FIRST WORLD WAR 1914-1918?

Turkey sided with Germany and its empire (the Ottoman Empire), of which Palestine formed part, disintegrated.?

1916:? The secret Sykes-Picot Treaty between Britain and France decided on the post-war division of the Ottoman Middle Eastern countries, with Britain administering Palestine.

1917:?? Britain drew up the Balfour Declaration pledging to to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.? The declaration also stated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”?

At the time, the population of Palestine - three quarters of a million - comprised Muslims, Christians and Jews.? Most of the Jews had lived there for many centuries and were integrated into the population.

1918 ???World War I ended. The British took control of Palestine.

The British referred to the population, regardless of religion, as “Palestinian citizens and British protected persons.”? Palestinians received passports and the name ‘Palestine’ appeared on official documents, the currency and state institutions.?

THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER PALESTINE

1922:? The League of Nations (the predecessor of the United Nations) mandated that Britain should be responsible for the administration of Palestine

The Mandate accepted the Balfour Declaration’s promise to the Zionist movement of a Jewish national home in Palestine, but added that "No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language.” (Article 15)

1923:? THE LAUSANNE TREATY settled the legal status of Palestinians internationally. stating that Ottoman subjects residing in Palestine under the British Mandate officially became Palestinian citizens.

Meanwhile, the British facilitated Jewish immigration and the acquisition of Palestinian nationality for Jewish immigrants.

1930s: Jewish immigration to Palestine increased greatly during this period.

Hitler’s rise to power and his party’s virulently anti-Semitic policies resulted in increased Jewish immigration to Palestine.?

Compared to 100,000 immigrants in the 1920s, Palestine received about 232,000 legal immigrants in the 1930s. By 1939, the Jewish population numbered over 445,000 out of a total of about 1,500,000 – compared with less than 10% 20 years before.?

Land ownership:? By the end of 1939, Jewish holdings of land had risen to almost 1.5 million dunums of the total area of 26 million dunums, compared with 650,000 held at the start of the Mandate.

1936-39:?? Growing resentment by Palestinians to the Zionist drive to establish a Jewish state in Palestine erupted into the Great Arab Revolt - a violent resistance which was repressed brutally by the British rulers.?

1937:?? Palestinians rejected a British proposal to partition Palestine into a Jewish and a Palestine state while the idea was accepted by the Zionist leader, Ben Gurion who believed a Jewish state could expand the territory assigned to them.

Palestinians believed, in common with Arab populations in other Middle Eastern countries that they had the right to national independence and self-determination in their country.?

1939 White Paper (cmd 6019):? The British imposed a limit of 75,000 over five years on Jewish immigration to quell the discontent of the Palestinian population and changed the terms of the Balfour Declaration.

The paper called for the establishment of a Jewish national home in an independent Palestinian state within 10 years, stating that the British government “would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, … that the Arab population of Palestine should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will …”

1939-1945:? THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND THE HOLOCAUST

During this period, the immigration limits to Palestine set by the British were put under pressure by the hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing for their lives from the Holocaust. ?Many countries closed their doors to these refugees, or imposed strict limits.

1946 Jewish paramilitary terrorist organisations?

Mainly as a result of the change of British policy in 1939, Zionist paramilitary groups (the Haganah, The Irgun and the Stern Gang) waged a guerrilla war to drive out the British, conducting terrorist attacks while formulating plans to create a Jewish state.

At the same time, illegal migration became the main form of immigration of Jewish Holocaust survivors fleeing Europe, with 40,000 illegal immigrants arriving during the last three years of the Mandate. The Jewish population of Palestine reached 33% of the total.

1947

February:? The British handed over the question of Palestine to the newly-formed United Nations and announced they would leave in 1948.

November:? The UN decreed to partition Palestine, awarding the Zionists a state comprising over half the country, against the wishes of the indigenous majority population.? Violence broke out between Palestinians and Zionists.

1948

January:? ?Armed forces of around 5,000 Arab volunteers from Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt began operations in Palestine against Zionist forces. They were defeated.

March:?? Plan Dalet, a Zionist plan to systematically ethnically cleanse Palestine from vast areas of the country was put in place to ensure a Jewish majority in the future Israeli state.? Villages were attacked and their inhabitants driven out or murdered.? Other Palestinians fled through fear.

As the future Israeli prime minister, David Ben Gurion, had written to his son, Amos, in 1937:? “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. ”

The Nakba:? 1948-49?? ?By 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees, losing their land, homes and other belongings.? ?Their flight was accelerated by massacres such as the one that took place at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, where approximately 100 Palestinian men, women, and children were murdered by Zionist paramilitaries. ?This ethnic cleansing became known as the "Nakba" ("catastrophe").

Zionist forces took more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed or took over about 530 Palestinian villages and cities. Lands belonging to Palestinians who had fled were taken over by the Jewish National Fund (see above).

About 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel, many of them internally displaced. They and their descendants now number over two million, comprising 21% of ?the Israeli population.? They were never allowed back to their homes.

14 May 1948:? The British left Palestine and the State of Israel came into being.

December 1949:? Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on condition that it complied with all previous UN resolutions, including Resolution 194 that stated “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date…”?

Israel’s UN ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban, promised his state would honour its obligations.?

The Right of Return is a universally recognized right in international refugee law, human rights law, the law of nationality, and the law of state responsibility. It is also provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

No Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

To this day, Israel has never allowed the Palestinian refugees the right to return to their land, thus violating international law.

On 28 July 2023, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s current ambassador to the UN stated: “Let me be clear, there is no right of return. You all know this.? The demand of millions of descendants of refugees returning to obliterate the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and this will never happen.”

The Palestinian refugees and their descendants now number 5.9 million.? Still stateless, they live, often in slum-like conditions, in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank (administered by Jordan in 1948) and Gaza (administered by Egypt in 1948).

Israeli Citizenship

On obtaining independence, Israel ignored the international convention that when one state succeeds another, all of the habitual population with genuine links to the territory should be granted citizenship of the new state.?

To justify refusing the right of return to the Palestinian refugees, Israel changed the term ‘Palestinian’ to ‘Arab’ to negate Palestinian national identity.? For example, Prime Minister Golda Meir declared in 1969:? “There was no such thing as Palestinians,”? while in March 2023, government minister, Bezalel Smotrich announced:? “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.? There is no Palestinian history….”? ??

The internally-displaced Palestinian population was granted Israeli citizenship, although they were subjected to military rule until 1966.

Nationality:? Israeli nationality does not exist

Violating international principles regarding nationality, Israeli citizens are ‘nationals’ only in terms of their ethnicity or religion, with the Jewish population enjoying superior status in legal entitlements.? Muslims, Christians and Druze do not enjoy the same rights as Jews.

In 2013. The Israeli High Court rejected a petition by 21 Israeli citizens of different religions to be registered as having Israeli nationality to ensure equality for all citizens before the law. The grounds for rejection were that such a change would endanger Israel’s founding principle:? to be a Jewish state for the Jewish nation.

Israeli laws

There are over 60 laws that discriminate against non-Jewish citizens, that is, mainly the Palestinians (but also the Druze, Bedouin and Circassians). Here are three examples:

1950 Law of the Right of Return was one of the first discriminatory laws. It grants automatic citizenship rights to every Jewish immigrant, whereas citizenship rights are only granted to those non-Jews (virtually all of them Palestinians) who were registered as residents in Israel before 1952 (and their descendants). Palestinians who fled the country during Arab-Israeli war have no right of return.

Land tenure:? Palestinian citizens of Israel form?21 percent of the country’s population. However, the majority live in less than 3% of all land in Israel.? Some Palestinians live in “mixed cities” like Haifa and Acre, although often in separate areas within the cities.

2018 The Jewish Nation-State Basic [constitutional] Law enshrines Jewish supremacy over non-Jewish citizens and establishes discrimination as a constitutional value. There is no democratic constitution in the world that designates the constitutional identity of the state on racial grounds, as serving one ethnic group.

Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People (extracts)

1 — Basic principles

A. The Land of Israel is the historic national home of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

B. The State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish people, in which it exercises its natural, cultural, and historic right to self-determination.?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????

C. Exercising the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people

2. — Jewish settlement?

The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and will act to encourage it and to promote and to consolidate its establishment.

Examples of Jewish settlement within Israel are the Negev desert, where Israelis are driving out the long-standing Bedouin communities, and in the Galilee which has a large Palestinian population and where the Israeli government plans to “save Jewish settlement” by encouraging Jewish families to move there.

1964? :? The founding of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO),?

A coalition of organisations with the purpose of liberating Palestine, achieving Palestinian self-determination, and securing the return of the refugees. Initially, some PLO organisations resorted to terrorist violence, killing 12 members of the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. ?

14 October, 1974 The United Nations General Assembly recognised the PLO, headed by Yasser Arafat, as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.

November 15, 1988:??the PLO declared Palestinian independence from their base in Algiers,??

December, 1988 the PLO recognised the existence of Israel in its 1967 borders.

June 1967:? The Six-Day War

Following years of diplomatic friction and skirmishes between Israel and its neighbours, Egypt closed the Tiran straits to Israeli shipping, Jordan formed an alliance with Egypt and Syria supported Palestinian guerrillas.

Israel then staged pre-emptive strikes followed by successful ground offensives seizing: -? the Sinai Peninsula (returned to Egypt in 1979 following a peace treaty with Egypt)

-? the Gaza Strip from Egypt, (still largely controlled by Israel by a blockade)??

-? the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, ?(still occupied by Israel)?

- ?the Golan Heights from Syria?? (still occupied by Israel)

November 1967:? The UN Security Council passes Resolution 242 calling for Israel’s “withdrawal … from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”? Israel has never complied with this resolution.

The occupied territories:? the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights

Settlements:? Grab the hilltops and stake your claim. Everything we don't grab will go to them [The Palestinians]" ?Ariel Sharon (1928-2014), Israeli General & Prime Minister, 1998

-? Since Israel occupied these three territories, the Palestinians have been steadily dispossessed of their land for Israelis to build settlements as well as special roads to reach the settlements.? (Settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention) ??

-? In recent years the settlers themselves, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, have been attacking Palestinian and Bedouin villages, stealing land, and destroying their crops and olive groves to drive away the inhabitants.?? Israeli settlers are now fully armed.????????????

-? In 2023, there are now 144 Israeli settlements and 128 outposts in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and these are increasing in size and number. In the Golan, there are 30 settlements.? Settlements in Gaza, were vacated in 2005.

-? There are over 700,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and 26,000 in the Golan.? (The Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank is 3m, of which 222,000 live in East Jerusalem. 25,000 Syrians and Druze live in the Golan.)

IDF Military Firing Zones in a large part of the eastern occupied West Bank are causing the eviction of numerous Palestinian herding communities living there.

House demolitions : ?While settlements are expanding apace, it is almost impossible for Palestinians to receive planning permission to build new homes or even erect agricultural outbuildings.? Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have demolished over 60,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories. ???

Some homes are demolished as collective punishment of families whose member or even neighbour is suspected of certain crimes. This is illegal under The 4th Geneva Convention.?

Legal systems:? in the occupied West Bank, the indigenous Palestinians live under harsh military law, whereas the Israeli settlers who are Israeli citizens are governed by civil law.

1973:? The Yom Kippur War

This war was started by a surprise attack by Syria and Egypt to force Israel to the negotiating table to return the Golan Heights to Syria and Sinai to Egypt.? A UN-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting a few weeks later.

1978:? The Camp David Accords:?? Egypt and Israel signed a treaty in which Israel agreed to withdraw from Sinai and Egypt opened the Suez Canal to Israeli ships that had been previously blocked.

1982:? Lebanon War

In the 1980s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was a coalition of Palestinian nationalists that had been exchanging fire with Israeli forces along the Lebanese border Israel invaded southern Lebanon, conducting a prolonged siege on the Lebanese capital of Beirut that led to many civilian casualties and widespread destruction.?

Israel was supported by Lebanese Christian militias.? Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defence Minister invited the Christian militias to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Shatila and Sabra to root out the PLO. ??They massacred between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians while Israel stood by.?

The First Intifada 1987-1993? was a sustained series of protests and violent riots carried out by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It was motivated by collective Palestinian frustration over Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

According to Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian American clinical psychologist, the Intifada was a protest against Israeli settlement expansion and repression including "beatings, shootings, killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial. [Administrative Detention]"??

1993 and 1995:? The Oslo Accords

The Oslo Accords, signed by Yitzak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, represented by Yasser Arafat were supposed to set the stage for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine within five years to fulfil the right of Palestinians to self-determination. But an independent Palestinian state has never come about.

Agreements made

Outcomes

The PLO agreed to recognise the state of Israel &? Israel agree to recognise the PLO.?

The Israelis should withdraw from Gaza and Jericho within four months

The Israelis left Gaza in 2005, while still exerting control over its borders, air space and access by sea.

In the West Bank, Israel undertook to transfer power to ‘authorized Palestinians’ in education, health, social welfare, direct taxation, and tourism.

The Palestinian National Authority oversees education and social welfare, but only a small amount of taxes.

The withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian centres of population.

The Israeli army still enters Palestinian cities, towns and villages at will.

The temporary division of the West Bank into three areas – A, B, and C – while plans are negotiated for an independent Palestinian state five years later.?

Area A (18%)? under Palestinian control by the Palestinian National Authority as agreed in Oslo,

Area C (60%) under exclusive Israeli control, and in

Area B (22%) the Palestinians exercise civilian authority while Israel continues to be in charge of security.

The divisions still exist, but the Israeli military enters all parts of the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority still exists, but in Areas A & B Israeli settlers and the army attack Palestinians, their lands and homes.

In Area C, Israel has been evicting Palestinians from their homes and villages in order to take the land for themselves.?

Settlements are expanding exponentially.? Many Israeli politicians talk of the (illegal under international law) annexation of the West Bank.

Taxes:??? Formally, the Palestinian Authority is entitled to collect taxes from Palestinians working within the Palestinian territory.

Israel collects some 75% of PA's total tax revenue on behalf of the PA which is supposed to be transferred to the PA on a monthly basis.? However, Israel often withholds these payments.

Water:? For the time being, Israel would continue to own 85% of the West Bank aquifer, while the Palestinians would have 15%.

Negotiations on water rights would be deferred until permanent status negotiations, due to take place in 1999.

Israelis, including settlers in the occupied West Bank, consume of 247 litres daily per person;? Palestinians consume 82.4 litres per person the West Bank and 47% receive water less than 10 days a month. The Israeli army and settlers destroy or steal Palestinian natural water sources.

Within two years, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to commence negotiations on the final status of the territories in order to create a Palestinian state at the end of five years.

This agreement was never fulfilled.

The Accords were accepted by the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) in October 1995 by a majority of one.? Likud, the opposition party, led by Binyamin Netanyahu was bitterly opposed to the Accords. A month later, Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by a religious-nationalist Jewish fanatic.? He was followed by Shimon Peres who remained in power for a year.

In 1996 Netanyahu took power and the Oslo Peace Accords were effectively scuppered.

The Second Intifada 2000-2005

Causes:? The Israeli opposition leader at the time, Ariel Sharon, triggered the uprising on 28 September 2000, when he stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque – the third most sacred Islamic holy site - in occupied East Jerusalem. With him were more than 1,000 heavily armed police and soldiers.? The following day, the uprising started in the occupied West Bank and the then-occupied Gaza Strip.

Since that date to the present, Israeli settlers and soldiers have been storming the al-Aqsa Mosque with increasing frequency, sometimes desecrating buildings and attacking worshippers.? In 2023, such incidents are occurring almost daily.

Another cause has been said to be the failure of the recent Camp David negotiations between Israeli PM Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat to establish the two-state solution.? Since the Oslo Accords, Israel had shown no inclination to prepare for this outcome.? For example, since 1993, Israel had continued building new illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza (on land stolen from Palestinians) and expanded the existing ones by 52%. By 2000, the settler population grew to nearly 200,000, a rise of 85,000 since 1993.

The uprising

Most Palestinians took the route of popular resistance, such as mass demonstrations and stone throwing, to which Israelis responded with live ammunition and rubber bullets.?? Some factions deployed guerrilla war techniques such as suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis who in turn carried out raids, air strikes, demolitions, no-go zones and curfews.

The ‘Apartheid’ Wall separating Israel and the occupied West Bank

In 2002, at the height of the second Intifada, Israel started constructing a wall, slicing through Palestinian communities, agricultural fields, and farmland in the occupied West Bank, rather than along the internationally-recognised 1967 boundary, known as the Green Line. Israeli officials described the wall as a necessary security precaution against “terrorism”. It ushered in a period of suicide bombings and shooting attacks by Palestinians, and Israeli air strikes, demolitions, no-go zones and curfews.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has deemed Israel’s separation wall to be illegal.

2004:? Yasser Arafat, Head of Fatah (and also of the PLO) died.? He was succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas who won the Palestinian presidential elections of 2005 and also became Head of the PLO.

Hamas

The Hamas movement was founded in Gaza in 1987 during the first Intifada.?? The movement started as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and created a military wing, to pursue an armed struggle against Israel with the aim of liberating historic Palestine. It is considered to be a terrorist organisation by the US and European countries.

Hamas’ 1988 founding charter called for the takeover of all of mandate Palestine, including present-day Israel.?

Hamas also offered social welfare programmes to Palestinian victims of the Israeli occupation.

In 2017 Hamas said it would accept the 1967 borders as the basis for a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital and the return of refugees to their homes.? The 1967 borders refer to those that existed before the Six Day War.

In 1981, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, a former Israeli military governor in Gaza stated to the New York Times that his government had been aiding Hamas financially, viewing it as a "counterweight" to the secularist Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat.?? In 2009, Avner Cohen, who worked in Gaza for over twenty years, told the Wall Street Journal, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”

Gaza (The Gaza Strip)

Background:? Gaza is one of the most densely-populated parts of the planet. ?A strip of land 25 miles long and 5 miles wide at its narrowest point and with 2.3m inhabitants, it is about one quarter the area of London. ?Gaza's length is about the same distance as from Heathrow Airport to London City Airport. Its width is the distance from Kensington to Brixton.? The strip is bordered by Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea,

75% of Gaza’s population are refugees and their descendants from the 1948 Nakba.? One half of the population are children.

Before 1967, Gaza belonged to Egypt. It was captured and occupied by Israel during the Six Day War of that year.

Until 2005, as in the occupied West Bank and the Golan Heights, Israel administered the territory and confiscated Palestinian land to build Jewish settlements.

2005:? Israel withdraws from Gaza

The Israeli administration pulled out of Gaza.? 21 Israeli settlements, covering 40% of the territory were dismantled and the homes destroyed. ?The 9,000 settlers were made to leave.

Reasons:? ??There have been various reasons suggested for the Israeli withdrawal.????????????????????????????

(1)?? ?To end any possibility of a Palestinian state. ?“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process . . . . Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.” (Dov Weisglass, Senior Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

(2)?? To consolidate gains in the occupied West Bank, making that territory easier to administer, as well as to confiscate more Palestinian land to build more settlements there.? The 9,000 settlers from Gaza would move to the West Bank. (United Nations report) ?

(3)??? Demographics: ??Statistics projected that by 2020, Palestinian Christians and Muslims would become a majority in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.? ?If Israel wanted to remain a “Jewish state,” it would be very difficult to maintain its Jewish identity if an ethno/religious minority continued to rule over an ethnic majority. (United Nations report)

To this day, Israel retains effective control over Gaza despite disengaging from the territory in 2005. ??Therefore, the United Nations still refers to Israel as the occupying power over Gaza.

(1)?? Israeli armed forces retain the ability and right to enter the Gaza Strip at will?

(2) ??Israel retains direct exclusive control over Gaza’s airspace, maritime borders, and (currently) two border crossings. ?Israel maintains a military present at the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing in the south. Gaza has no airport or sea port and access to the sea for fishermen is limited to 6 nautical miles from the coast.

(3) Gaza remains dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, sewage, its currency and its ability to trade as Israel controls the movement of goods (including food) and persons in and out of the territory.

(4)? Israel also has sole control of the Palestinian Population Registry, through which the Israeli army an regulate is classified as a Palestinian and whether that person is a Gazan or from the West Bank.????

2006 Palestinian Elections

In January 2006, Palestinian legislative elections took place to choose members of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.? The turn-out was 74%.

Hamas won the elections by a large majority of 74 out of 132 seats.? The Fatah Party, strongly supported by the USA and having ruled for 40 years, was seen by Palestinians as corrupt and gained 45 seats. Ismail Haniyeh was nominated as Prime Minister on 16 February 2006

An 84-member international observer team monitored the elections and judged them to have been peaceful and well-administered.

June 2006:? The Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was kidnapped near the border with Gaza in a bid for Israel to free female and under-age Palestinian prisoners.? Israel launched a series of raids into Gaza and the West Bank destroying civilian infrastructure and arresting dozens of Hamas supporters, including elected cabinet ministers and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and Parliamentarians.

Economic sanctions were imposed against the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority by Israel and the Middle East ‘Quartet’ (the UN, the European Union, Russia and the USA).

Following an attempt to form a unity government with Fatah, Hamas took Gaza in 2007, following Abbas’s attempt to place Gaza’s security forces (with the help of the US) under Fatah’s control.

Abbas, in turn took control of the occupied West Bank.

The Israel Blockade of Gaza 2007-2023

Following the establishment of a Hamas government in Gaza, Israel imposed a strict blockade over Gaza, tightening the restrictions described above.? It reduced greatly, sometimes dramatically, the number of goods allowed into the territory, including food, humanitarian aid, spare parts for repairing infrastructure (such as water purification equipment, construction materials, electric generators, medicines and medical equipment and fuel.

Exports were strictly limited and exit visas (mainly for patients with serious illnesses requiring treatment in specialised hospitals in Jerusalem and family members accompanying them), were cut back severely.

High prices, poverty, food insecurity, insufficient clean water, a much reduced electricity and gas supply, a deficient sewage system became the order of the day.

The United Nations, the European Union, Turkey , the United Kingdom, among others have all condemned the blockade. ?David Cameron has called Gaza a “prison camp.”?

Israel’s attacks on Gaza before 2003:

December 2008 – Operation Case Lead:? Israel launched a 22-day military offensive in Gaza after rockets were fired into Israel to protest about the tightening of the Israeli blockade.? The Israelis used white phosphorus as a weapon. 83% of deaths were civilians.

November 2012 – Operation Pillar of Defence:? Israel killed Hamas’s military chief of staff, Ahmad Jabari, followed by eight days of Israeli air raids on Palestine, bomb civilian infrastructure.

July-August 2014 – Operation Protective Edge:? The kidnap and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank and a reprisal killing of a Palestinian teenager who was burnt to death, led to a seven-week war in which more than 2,100 Palestinians are killed in Gaza along with 73 Israelis. Israel bombed homes and much civilian infrastructure. ????????????

March ?2018 – The Great March of Return:? Palestinian non-violent protests began at Gaza’s fenced border with Israel and Israeli troops opened fire to keep them back. More than 170 Palestinians, including medics, were killed in several months of protests, prompting fighting between Hamas and Israeli forces, including 67 soldiers.

May 2021 –During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli Security forces accompanying Jewish settlers, injured hundreds of Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound while evicting Palestinians from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem. Hamas gave an ultimatum for Israel to withdraw security forces and cease evictions and then fire rockets into Israel which launched air raids on Gaza in response. The fighting continued for 11 days, at least 260 people were killed in Gaza and 13 died in Israel.

August 2022 – Operation Breaking Dawn:? ?More than 30 Palestinians were killed in new air attacks carried out by Israeli planes. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose two commanders were killed in Israeli air strikes in Gaza, following Israeli army raids on Jenin in the West Bank, fired dozens of rockets into Israel in response.

October 2023 –

‘Mowing the lawn’

Israeli generals talk about their military incursions into Gaza as “mowing the lawn” which implies a task that has to be performed regularly and mechanically and that there can be no lasting political solution to the situation in Israel-Palestine.? The next war is always just a matter of time

ISRAEL AND THE UNITED NATIONS

The US has vetoed 53 UN Security Council resolutions that are critical of Israel, including at least four UNSC resolutions condemning Israel’s settlements on Palestinian land, which are considered illegal under international law.

Despite its obligations to cooperate with the Special Rapporteurs and facilitate their UN-mandated work, since 2008 Israel has refused to grant entry to the UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.

The United Nations Works and Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) was created in 1950.? Still working in the camps for set up for 1948 refugees from Israel, UNWRA ?has been administering refugee services, such as welfare, health, education, infrastructure and emergency responses in times of armed conflict.

Currently, Israel is refusing visas to all UN officials following the UN Secretary’s criticism of Israel’s conduct during the current war in Gaza, in addition to saying that Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 (killing 1,200 Israeli civilians) did not happen “in a vacuum” as the Palestinians have been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”.

Israel and International Law

Israel has violated international law in a multitude of ways during its existence.? Some of the areas in question are:

-???? official discrimination and apartheid against citizens and subjects;??

-???? annexation of territory;?

-????Israel’s legal responsibilities as occupier (eg. building illegal settlements, not protecting the indigenous population);?

-???? water distribution to Palestinians;

-??? treatment of children and minors;

?-???? war crimes (eg. collective punishment, use of white phosphorus, the targeting of civilians);??

-???? human rights, cruel and degrading treatment against detainees;?

-???? imprisonment without trial (‘Administrative Detention.’) ?

Israel is undeterred by international law due to its extremely strong relationship with the United States that consistently vetoes UN Security Council resolutions on Israel’s conduct in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, preventing other UN countries from taking a stand.