Published: 28 October, 2009, 01:52
Edited: 19 November, 2010, 16:59
Israel is genuinely scared of Palestinians. Their approach to the Arab population and the Palestinians cannot be called anything but the “Palestinian Question.” The policies that Israel enacts are aimed at decreasing the quality of life in Gaza and other Muslim dominated areas for one reason only – to decrease the birth rate of Palestinians and decrease the available land in order to contain the birthrate and eventually make the Palestinians a marginal people in the country.
Why is this Israel’s main concern? That’s an easy question to answer. The Palestinians are born more often than Israeli Jews. The current article will not be about the reasons for disparity in birth rates, but about how Israel deals with this. It is mindboggling to see how low a civilized state is willing to go in order to push through an agenda that is racist and discriminating.
Amnesty International – an organization that I, personally, do not particularly like --released a report recently that states that Israel restricts the flow of water resources to Palestine and other Muslim-dominated areas. Considering that Israel is located in an area where there is not much fresh water – it is essential to life.
Palestinians are part of Israel, currently. Yet the Israeli government discriminates by allocated this vital resource to the Jewish population and restricts its flow to the Arab areas. There is a minimum level of water that has to be consumed by a single person in order to survive. The Israeli government has calculated the rate of water that is to be allocated to designated areas in order to curb the birth rates and the standards of living. This is a particularly low blow that should definitely be investigated by international agencies. Under everyone’s noses, the people that themselves were discriminated against are enacting racist policies themselves.
The Israeli government is bringing in large numbers of Jews from around the world into the new settlements in the West Bank and other areas. Why is this relevant and how does this help? Of course, the most evident reason is that this pushes out the Arab population and confines them into an increasingly smaller area.
However, there is more to the settlements than that. The settlers are armed. They are not government officials and are “allowed” to settle disputes with the Arab neighbors in their own ways. The actions are simple – destroy the olive orchards, destroy the gardens, get the most water, etc. Numerous incidents have been reported by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), but no action has been taken on any level.
The Palestinians are left to fend for themselves. If the Palestinians arm themselves, they will be considered terrorists and radicals and prosecuted under Israeli law. The law looks the other way when the settlers, wielding weapons, move into the Palestinian area and push out the local population.
The last thing that I would like to mention is that Israel restricts deliveries of almost all medical supplies into Gaza and other areas. This is a story that I heard from an ISM volunteer. When the Israeli IDF moved into Gaza and began bombing the strip, ISM had a ship loaded with supplies coming out of Cyprus. The ship was loaded with medical supplies and volunteers.
The Cyprian government officials signed a document stating that the ship had been checked for weapons and that the there was nothing onboard that would be used to arm terrorists and support them in their cause. The ship was ordered to turn around when it entered Israeli waters. After refusing to do so, an Israeli ship actually got an order from the top officials to ram the ISM ship. The ship, after being severely damaged, had to turn around to go back to Cyprus.
To date, the Israeli government does not allow any organization to bring in large quantities of medical supplies and volunteers to any area such as the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, where primarily Arabs live. This is not to say that different organizations don’t use illegal means to smuggle in the necessary medical supplies, but when caught, everything gets confiscated without explanation or chance of getting back the supplies.
The purpose of this article is to bring attention to the violations and double standards of the Israeli government. The fact that a state that was created for those that have been brutally pursued and killed is behaving in a racist and indiscriminate fashion is simply unacceptable. Israeli soldiers go unpunished when they perform crimes against the civilian population in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Israeli government is afraid that the Arab population will get too large to be able to contain, and so the policies of Tel Aviv are becoming increasingly aimed at diminishing the quality of life of the Palestinians and other Arabs, in turn hoping to decrease birth rates and population numbers. The new settlements call on anyone that wants to live there that is not Muslim in order to push out the Arabs.
Anyone with even a slight hint of Jewish heritage is allowed to settle in the West Bank and other areas. I do not support the ways of terrorist organizations that fight Israel. I also do not support the racist and discriminate policies of Israel. Both sides need to peacefully sit down and talk. The current means of policy enforcement is not the way that differences are solved in a civilized world.