40 Years of Israeli Occupation

Discussing how Israel should respond to rockets being launched by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip Shmuel Eliayhu, chief rabbi of Safad, Israel, was quoted in The Jerusalem Post on May 30, 2007 as saying, “If they do not stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

The same article notes that Eliayhu’s father, Israel’s former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliayhu “ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.” He presented this ruling in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a letter that has been widely circulated throughout Israel.

While shocking because they constitute an open call for genocide, the Eliayhus’ quotes in the Jerusalem Post are hardly surprising – they are the logical conclusion of the official Israeli state policy of collective punishment of the entire Palestinian people.

June 6 marks a grim anniversary – the fortieth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. Activities around the globe are being held to mark the anniversary and to highlight to the world the crimes that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people. [For information on activities planned in Winnipeg, see story in this issue]. The occupation has continued for 40 years, in violation of all international laws and norms. Two generations of Palestinian children have been born into occupation and still it continues.

For the Palestinian people, the occupation has been an attempt to crush their national aspirations. It has meant 40 years of imprisonment, of colonialism, of national humiliation and degradation. It has meant, literally, death, famine, disease, poverty and injustice. It has meant that families have been separated, farmers cut off from their land, workers from their factories, shopkeepers from their shops, through a brutal system of checkpoints and the construction of the separation wall which runs like a jagged scar through the heart of the occupied territories.

According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, in the last six years alone, on average, two Palestinians have been killed by the IDF every day; the vast majority of these deaths are of civilians. Ten thousand Palestinians are being held as political prisoners in Israel, including over 400 children. Long before the image of prisoners in orange jumpsuits being held illegally by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay galvanized world public opinion against the so-called U.S. war on terror, Palestinians have been treated as “enemy non-state combatants”. Over 1,000 Palestinians are being held in detention without ever having been charged with an offence, without even the pretext that they have any human, civil or political rights. This in the country which describes itself repeatedly as the only democracy in the Middle East.

Since 1967, the IDF has demolished over 12,000 houses in the occupied territories, leaving 70,000 Palestinians homeless. Besides housing demolitions, the Israeli settlement policy has meant 40 per cent of the land within the occupied territories has been illegally appropriated and distributed to settlers. The average settler has a standard of living 43 times higher than the average Palestinian. Settlers are guaranteed access to running water, health care, and education. They travel on “Israeli-only roads” which are well maintained and make travel between the settlements easy and swift.

In stark contrast Palestinian families living in adjoining villages often wait years to see each other, as travel within the occupied territories is extremely difficult and requires permission from the IDF. The entire settlement system is financed by the Israeli state, which invests millions each year in maintaining and expanding the settlement infrastructure which has been constructed in clear violation of international law.

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