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Follow Us on TwitterDora McPhee (VIC) responds to Koutsoukis’ “Prospect of peace an illusion on streets of the West Bank” The Age, 4 Sep10 September 4, 2010
The Age: “Prospect of peace an illusion on streets of the West Bank” by Jason Koutsoukis, 4 September 2010
Jason Koutsoukis uses the words of David Wilder, the public face of a group of militant Israeli settlers to tell us that “(t)he terrorists will keep attacking us and attacking us” pointing out that the 800 Israeli settlers that have taken over Hebron’s old city are surrounded by 170,000 Palestinians. Clearly the message is the Palestinians are the threat to the Israeli settlers and not the other way around. Yet what are these heavily armed and IDF protected illegal settlers doing there in the first instance but ensuring the ongoing destruction of Palestinian ties to their land in favour of illegal Jewish colonisation of that same land.
Having ethnically cleansed the majority Palestinian population from 78 percent of Palestine the state of Israel has sanctioned the relentless and systematic growth of settlements in the remaining illegally occupied 22 percent of Palestine ensuring the fragmentation of Palestinians into Bantustans virtually annihilating the possibility of any fair two-state solution. The policies successive Israeli governments have employed to control the occupied Palestinians form a system of apartheid denying Palestinians their most basic human rights while land and resources theft by the state continues unchecked. These actions do not indicate a desire for peace and serve only to deny the indigenous Palestinians their inalienable human rights.
Thank You.
