Is it true that Israelis cover 42% of West Bank?Jerusalem - An Israeli human rights group says settlements control more than 42% of the West Bank. The B'Tselem group also says one-fifth of the land occupied by settlements was seized from private Palestinian landowners. It claims that much of the confiscation took place after Israel's Supreme Court... | |
42% sounds rather high. I recall an article in TIME magazine in 2002, when Israel invaded theWest bank, and a map showed all the Israeli settlements, which were less than 200,000 Israeli settlers. And since then, the settlers in Gaza have ALL been forced to return to Israel proper, which they weren't happy about.
I saw a Charlie Rose interview of Bernard Lewis about the same time (a Princeton professor and Palestinian conflict authority).
http://charlierose.com/view/intervie...
Lewis said that the Jordanians were far more cruel to the West Bank Palestinians than the Israelis, and were actually happier under Israeli annexation from 1967 till the late 70s. The opposition began when the Israelis began settlement in those areas, instead of just patrolling these military buffer regions.
While I support the Israelis' right to protect themselves and their territory from terrorism, I think they should move all settlers back into Israel proper, and again limit themselves to protectively patrolling the West Bank, not settling it.
If Israel did this, I'd consider them to have the moral high ground in virtually all other aspects of the conflict.
(Israel Palestinian conflict in maps: )
http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/vie...
and even more clear:
http://jewishagency.org/JewishAgency...
Israelis cultivated the land, introduced irrigation techniques and made it fertile again, built factories, and those resources drew Palestinians into what was previously a barren and largely deserted backwater region of the Ottoman empire. Prior to Israeli settlement, it was not a nation of "Palestine" it was occupied by the Ottoman turks, and many other empires prior to the Ottomans.
In 1956, after a decade of raids into Israel, the Israelis (backed by the British and French) routen the terror camps and occupied the entire Sinai Desert, Gaza and West Bank, and could have kept it then if greed and aggression were their goal. But their goal was self-defense, not terretorial gain. And so Israel gave that land over to U.N. inspectors who were supposed to maintain it as a buffer zone and protect Israel from further attacks.
But instead in 1967, the weapons inspectors just left, and abandoned Israel to imminent invasion! Israel did a first strike on the forces positioned to invade Israel --defensively-- and won the Six-Day War. When they in this war again captured the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai, they opted not to trust the U.N. who had betrayed them, and kept these regions as a protective buffer-zone.
In 1982, Israel gave back the Sinai (an area more than three times the size of Israel) in the interest of peace, taking only the assurance that the Egyptians would not move troops into the Sinai, and would leave it a buffer zone between Egypt and Israel. Almost immediately after, Egypt broke its word, and re-militarized the Sinai right up to the Israeli border.
Israel is a tiny piece of land, about 6,000 square miles. The Palestinians have the entire Middle East. And even in the so-called former "British Mandate" the Palestinians have more than 75% of THAT territory!
Further the Palestinians who did not flee in 1947-1948 (20% of the VOTING Israeli population) still live in Israel and enjoy the same rights as Israelis.
The Palestinian "Martyrs" are those who sought to take what little was left to the Israelis by force, and the Israelis defended themselves, and 100,000 Israelis (10% of the nation) died in that 1948 conflict.
Those Palestinians who remained in Israel were not slaughtered, as the Israelis would have been if they lost. And those Palestinians (again, 20% of Israel) remain to this day. Not as slaves or the opressed, but as voting citizens of Israel.
A lot else can be alleged, but these are the facts.
It is true but it is wrong to claim it is Israelis who cover that land. I worked in Palestine for several months and the Israeli army was exasperated by the settlers, at least as much as the Palestinians were. Because every day settlers in the West Bank build illegal structures outside of their settlements in an attempt to literally steal Palestinian land. The army attempts to remove them and settlers scream and cry and curse them. It happens so often its rarely reported.
A more worrying percentage is how much of the watersupply Israel has grabbed by building the seperation barrier. If you look at the area west of Ramallah near the village of Aboud a 'bulge' in the barrier exists that doesn't follow the defensible high ground but leaps out to grab the water table which holds over a quarter of the West Banks potable supply.
It is not only one-fifth of the Arab Palestinian land is occupied, it is the whole Arab Palestine from the Mediterranean sea until the river of Jordan and from the Lebanese boarders until the Egyptian borders. All these are Arab/Palestinian land that is occupied by Israel since 1947 until now.
Don't forget thousands of martyrs who were killed by the Israeli army, gangs and settlers.
Also, don't forget over 12000 Arab palestinians in the israeli jails.
Not mentioning our air they breath, our water they stole and ravishly use, our olive trees they cut, our land they spoiled.......
see for you self and know about Arab Israeli conflict.
there will never be peace in the middle east. too much anger and lack of tolerance. one generations hatred fuels the next. jews hate muslims... muslims hate jews and christians and other muslims.
Now I know to avoid West Bank
Israel left Gaza part of Palestine in 2005 and got rockets back for a thank you
The land belongs to Israel,why wouldn't they occupy it?
