ISRAEL LUSTS FOR PALESTINIAN LAND

This is how it was in Palestine before the arrival of the Zionists with their imperialism and greed.

The key factor in the conflict of Palestine and Israel is veiled from the Western media by the use of very effective and planned-out propaganda. The conflict is not based on religion, as most in the West are made to believe, nor on the anti-Semitic feelings between the two cousins, Arabs and Jews.

At the core of the Israel-Palestine dispute is the question of land and who rules it. Since the war of 1967, Palestinians have come to accept the reality of Israel within the 1948 boundaries. The land dispute has increasingly focused on Israel's occupation of the remaining territories: the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338 stipulate that Israel must withdraw completely from these territories. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip on Sept. 12, 2005, but continues to build many Jewish settlements in the other territories, actions deemed illegal by virtually all other states.

Israel imports American armored Caterpillar bulldozers for use against Palestinian civilians. These machines not only result in total destruction of all things Palestinian but also many deaths because most of these attacks come in the middle of the night, unannounced.

Al Sho'bi family: Mahmoud Omar Al Sho'bi is from Nablus in the West Bank. In April 2002, a D9 bulldozer destroyed Mr. Al Sho'bi's family home without warning in an Israeli military attack in the middle of the night. His father Umar, his sisters Fatima and Abir, his brother Samir and pregnant sister-in-law Nabila, and their three children, ages 4, 7, and 9, were all killed. After the Al Sho'bi family home was demolished, the Israeli military kept the area under strict curfew for days, denying access to rescue workers, and it was not until a week later that the families' bodies were found under the rubble of the house by relatives and neighbors.

Imagine this monster waking you up at 4 am crashing through your home

with full intent of annihilation of you and your family!

Corrie Family: On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was killed by a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, Palestine. Rachel was attempting to prevent the home of a local pharmacist from being demolished while the family was still inside. Despite being in plain view and wearing a florescent orange vest, Rachel was crushed to death when the bulldozer drove over her.

The Oslo Accord (1993) and the "road map" (2003) have failed to reach a land agreement between the parties or to bring Israeli withdrawal.

The recent conflict, as it has been reported by a number of sources, including Rick Sanchez of CNN, began because Israel, and not Hamas, broke the cease-fire ~ by attacking Hamas soldiers on Nov. 2.

Property laws are revised or modified on a continual basis to confiscate land from Palestinians. According to the Wikipedia article "Land and Property Laws in Israel," these are some guiding principles:

"The imperative to physically acquire and colonize lands vacated by Palestinians who fled or were expelled, and to prevent their return."

"The necessity of legalizing such land acquisitions in order to pre-empt any future claims made by refugees or their descendants."

"The goal of proceeding with the nationalization/Judaization process in areas of the country where Arabs still predominated."

The Ministry of Agriculture's right to confiscate wasteland under the guise of cultivation.

Also, the Wikipedia article said there were several absentee property laws, which were introduced as emergency ordinances issued by the Jewish leadership but which after the 1948 war were incorporated into the laws of Israel.

British journalist and author Robert Fisk interviewed the Israeli custodian of absentee property in 1980. "When asked how much of the land of the state of Israel might potentially have two claimants ~ an Arab and a Jew holding respectively a British Mandate and an Israeli deed to the same property ~ Mr. Manor (the custodian in 1980) believes that 'about 70 %' might fall into that category. (Robert Fisk, "The Land of Palestine, Part Eight: The Custodian of Absentee Property," The Times of London, Dec. 24, 1980, quoted in his book Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War)."

Israel continues its strategy of expansion and settlement by evacuating and bulldozing Palestinians' property and forcing them to live in ghettos that pale in comparison with the ghettos of World War II where so many innocent Jews perished. Israel wants neighboring Arab nations to absorb these refuges, whereas Palestinians want Israel to honor United Nations resolutions for their right of return.

It is a huge fiasco for Israel, and it has found an answer in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The question is: Are we going to be silent about it as we were at the time of the Holocaust or take action to prevent it? Is there a way to force Israel to fulfill the UN mandate that it continues to violate?

I would wish that peace will come to the Middle East, but not through the hopeless leaders of the Middle East ~ political leaders of most of the countries choose to play devil's advocate ~ but through people themselves. I am hopeful when I see Israeli protesters on the streets of Israel protesting alongside the rest of the world, the movement of Israeli defectors known as Israeli soldiers of conscience and the preference of the daughter of the deputy director of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad for imprisonment rather than taking part in this genocide.

Israel's Balad party chairman condemned the attacks, accused Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak of trying to win votes in exchange for Palestinian blood and called for Barak to be tried for war crimes. This is a call that should have come from the U.S. leadership. President/President Elect Barack Obama chose silence. And then betrayal. WHY?