What follows are my own personal opinions, as are all expressed in this web site, and completely free of connection to any agency or person mentioned herein.
Stopped down after 6 weeks in Lebanon to do some work here in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I was here in 2002, during the height of the intifadah, and it’s hard to imagine, but things have actually gotten worse. In Gaza, they’ve gotten much worse. The current sanctions by the US, Israel, and the EU – along with the closures of the Gaza borders by Israel – have Gaza on the ropes. No one can work in Israel now, since Hamas came to power early this year, which effectively cuts the lifeline to employment that most in Gaza depend upon. Unemployment is now at 65% there. 75% of Gazans live below the poverty line. In the West Bank, Israel is building a Barrier Wall that’s 703 kilometers long, and as high as 25 feet tall. It seperates the West Bank from Israel itself – for security the Israeli’s say, but it’s much more than that, as things often are in this region. The Barrier Wall snakes as far as 20 kilometers into the West Bank, east of the Green Line established in 1967, the defacto border of Israel, though Israel will argue that – to take in most of the Israeli settlements built, illegally, in the West Bank in that time. One Palestinian NGO I spoke with in the West Bank estimates that, all told, between the wall itself, and the many access roads, settlements, and no-go areas for Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories, that 48% of the West Bank is off-limits to Palestinians. There are more than 500 checkpoints and barriers in the West Bank, imposed by the Israeli Defense Force, that West Bank residents must navigate every day, choking movement within and throughout the region. But we don’t hear about any of this in the United States.
This region is complicated, and layered in a deep and bloody history so complex that it defies casual description or summation. But it also demands some explanations – and most of all it demands that the truth about what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza be disseminated – which it is not, especially in the US media. Having traveled to more than 45 countries around the world now, I have never been so angered or frustrated by my experiences anywhere as I have here. For anyone who reads this, please take this strong advice: learn the truth about what’s really going on in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. As Americans, we have a responsibility to know what our money supports, and how it reflects on us as a nation, and as people within that nation. I believe that Israeli’s have the right to live in peace, within secure borders. And I believe that Palestinians, also, have the same right. What we don’t see in America, because the message is not allowed by a stringent and aggressive Israeli media machine to reach us, is that those rights are daily being subjugated by the Israeli military who occupy the West Bank and Gaza. The injustices perpetuated daily there only inflame the situation, and stoke the fires of a new generatioon of radicals that the US then uses to justify our total and unfliching support of Israel.
We need to know this because it’s our money, as Americans, that supports it. Israel is the largest single recipient of US aid money – by far – in the world – more than $1.5 billion a year. Couched now in the guise of “countering terrorism,” it would seem Israel has carte blanche to continue its efforts in Gaza and West Bank – efforts that have repeatedly over the years been sanctioned and condemned by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice as illegal, and as many times completely ignored by the Israeli government, almost always with the backing of the United States.
I am not naive about this situation. There are elements in Palestine who seek the destruction of Israel, and every legitimate state has the right to protect itself from such elements. But it’s time we learn the truth about this dynamic, and stop as a nation being international apologists for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – and worse, strong financial backers of it. A two state solution for both Israel and Palestine is the only solution. Let’s stop blindy supporting the injustices that perpetuate the current stalemate and use what little international clout we have left as a nation to solve this problem before another generation of Palestinians, and Israeli’s, grow up with the hate they are each taught from birth to feel towards the other.
September 25th, 2006 | by David in Humanitarian Aid, Travel
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
