Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

The Israelis were not satisfied with the mere occupation of Palestine, the evictions of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their country, the annihilation of Gaza Palestinians through a choking economic siege and frequent aerial bombardments, and the continuous confiscations of Palestinian land and the demolitions of their homes in the West Bank, so they had developed a very oppressive anti-Palestinian children policies, that are aimed at intimidating, terrorizing and traumatizing Palestinian children, whose families dared to stay in the country. These policies, that seem to be part and parcel of the racist expansionist ideology of the state of Israel and of its army, aim primarily at driving Palestinian families out of the country for the sake of their children’s future, and secondary to traumatize and terrorize Palestinian children while very young so that they would not dare grow up into revolting young men.

Palestinian children, as young as 8 years old, have become the primary target for the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli occupying forces impose severe oppressive measures against Palestinian communities. These include barriers and check points between towns impeding access to schools, universities and markets. The army routinely demolishes homes, confiscates property, and forcefully evicts Palestinians out of their homes to give them to extremist settlers. When Palestinian young men demonstrate in the streets against such practices Israeli snipers target children in the head and upper body with live ammunition causing many fatalities. When using rubber coated bullets the Israeli soldiers break the casing of the bullet making it more fatal. When chasing children the soldiers use batons hitting heads and extremities to inflict permanent crippling damages, whose treatment pose severe financial burden on already impoverished families.

Adopting the Zionist expansionist scheme extremist Zionist Israelis are pushed to forcefully occupy Palestinian farm land and establish caravan settlements on top of hills overlooking Palestinian villages. They, then, start targeting Palestinian villagers and farmers especially their young children. The extremist settlers start by cutting down olive trees, burning harvests and shooting farm animals. At times they kidnap Palestinian farm children, who are attending flocks or tending crops, take them to their settlement, torture them for the duration of long hours, at times days, before releasing them.

A similar tactic is adopted in East Jerusalem. The Israeli government want to put its hands on Silwan; a Palestinian neighborhood adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in order to build what Israeli officials call “King’s Garden”. Palestinian homes in this neighborhood are being confiscated, their owners being evicted, and Israeli extremists moving in. At times Israeli extremists force their way into one room of the house and start harassing the Palestinian family owner. An Israeli settlement is being gradually built in the neighborhood. Such settlements in East Jerusalem constitute a violation of international law. These extremist settlers create tension and lead to constant confrontation and violent clashes. Israeli soldiers use these clashes as an excuse to raid Palestinian homes in the middle of the night, pull their children out of their beds, shackle and hood them, and literally drag them to police stations to be interrogated violently and abusively. An investigation conducted by the Israeli B’Tselem organization shows that within one year at least 81 Palestinian children from Silwan were arrested and tortured by Israeli Special Forces.

The Defense for Children International-Palestine section conducts interviews of cases of Palestinian children being violently abused by Israeli soldiers as well as by Israeli extremist settlers. Their website is full of testimonies by such abused children and eyewitnesses. A search on youtube.com for “IDF targets children” lists many videos showing such incidents. Breaking the Silence , an organization of former Israeli soldiers dedicated to publicizing the day-to-day actions of the Israeli army in the occupied territories, had published a booklet of testimonies of more than 30 former Israeli soldiers, who had disclosed their experiences of the treatment of Palestinian children during their arrests pointing to a pattern of abuse.

A routine operation of the Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank is called “Straw Widow”. This includes midnight or pre-dawn heavily armed raids on Palestinian homes, breaking down the doors, screaming and shouting at family members, detaining all family members including children in one room, and use the home as a military post for as long as they deem necessary, then leave the home fully trashed. Family members, especially children, feel terrorized, traumatized and severely vulnerable.

Another routine operation of the Israeli army, similar to “Straw Widow”, is the pre-dawn raids on Palestinian homes to arrest their children, where they drag the child out of his bed, tie-wrap his arms, blind fold or hood him, and literally drag him out to military jeeps while kicking, beating, and verbally abusing him. With face pushed to the floor of the vehicle the child is driven to a military interrogation center in Israel, thrown in a dark and very cold cell for hours and days before being dragged to a room to be harshly continuously interrogated by different officers for long hours while being tied to a chair in a stressing position. Such interrogation is accompanied by intimidation, humiliation, beating, verbal abuse, and threats of sexual abuse. The child is then led to incriminate himself by forcing him to sign a confession written in Hebrew, a language that is foreign to him. After long days and sometimes month of incarceration he is dragged to a military court with both hands and feet in shackles, where he is usually sentenced to months or years in prison plus monetary fines. All this time while his family is not aware of his whereabouts, is not being informed of his legal rights, and is not represented by a lawyer. Many children are initially jailed with Israeli offenders, who further beat, intimidate, harass, and at times sexually abuse him. At best he is thrown in a dark and crowded cell with many other Palestinian prisoners.

These traumatic abuses have a great impact on the child’s mental and psychological health and produce varying abnormal symptoms depending on the child’s age, the type of abuse subjected to, and the family support he receives after his release. The abuse does not impact only the children, but also their families. The families feel helpless, vulnerable, and unable to protect their children. They feel lonely without any legal or psychological help from any social or governmental organization. With their budget under the control of Israeli government the Palestinian Authority is broke and could hardly afford to pay its own essential employees let alone provide any legal or social services to its citizens.

Israel’s abuse of Palestinian children had become so dramatic a phenomenon that it attracted the attention of nine eminent English lawyers, who were led by Sir Stephen Sadley, a former judge of the highest British court, to visit Israeli courts to study their practices. The lawyers, then, published their findings in a report titled “Children in Military Custody”, in which they accuse Israel of grave violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children that include violation of article 2; discrimination, article 3; child’s best interests, article 37 (B); premature resort to detention, (C); non-separation from adult family members, and (D); prompt access to lawyers, and article 40; use of shackles. The Israeli arrest, detention and interrogation practices are in violation of paragraphs 36 and 37, and article 37(A) in the prohibition of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. Transporting a child prisoner from the occupied territories into Israel is in violation of article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The failure to provide translated military orders and alleged confession statements from Hebrew to Arabic is a violation of article 65 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In their report the lawyers criticized and greatly condemned the belief and attitude, that were advanced to them by the military prosecutors, that every Palestinian child is a “potential terrorist” similar to what the Nazis claimed when criticized for removing Jewish children at places like Dachau and Auschwitz. The report had prompted the British Foreign Office to reveal that it would challenge Israeli courts over their unconscionable practices and violations of the many articles of UN Convention in their treatment of Palestinian children.

The self-proclaimed humanitarian American administration and NATO, who carry the banners of “Obligation to Protect Lives” and “Providing Humanitarian Aid”, are ready to spare no financial funds and military hardware to attack and destroy countries in Africa, South East Asia, and the Middle East in order to affect a regime change, yet when it comes to protecting Palestinian lives from illegal Israeli occupation turn blind eye to the Israeli massacres, terror, annihilation, and grave violations of international laws and basic humanitarian principles. Sarcastically the American administration does not spare any of its tax payers’ money and military aid for Israel despite the fact that Israel refuses to abide by American restrictions not to use these weapons for aggression. Such generous American gifts allow Israel to continue its annihilation of Palestinians and its aggression against neighboring Arab countries. The American administration is giving Israel $30 billion of its critically internally-needed tax money for military assistance without having Israel abide by any humanitarian principles, international laws or standard of basic human decency. “Israel is killing Palestinian children with American tax money” Dennis Kucinich blasted in the deaf Congress.

The Chinese philosophy of Yang at its zenith turns into Yin applies to the situation here. The Israeli policy, of instilling fear and terror into the hearts of the young Palestinian children to keep them docile and subservient in their adulthood to the Israeli occupation, had succeeded only into turning such fear into angry courage to resist the occupation. The Palestinian children had proved to be stronger and more resilience in the face of the heavily armed terrorist Israeli army. We witness them facing Israeli war machines with mere rocks. Indeed, David had turned into Goliath while Goliath had turned into David.

If anybody is still having any doubt that Israel (government and citizens) is a terrorist state par excellence then the latest events during the last two months alone in occupied Palestine should convince him of this fact. For the last two year the Israeli government has been tightening its deadly siege against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army had violated the latest seize-fire agreement with its military raids into and bombardment of the Strip. The latest closure of Gaza, the tightest ever, is starving its 1.5 million Palestinians, depriving them of drinking water, and necessary fuel to keep their daily operations going. The Israeli government is conducting a meditative mass murder operation against Gaza residents while the whole world is silently and complicity watching and the American media is distorting the facts. (Watch the facts in Gaza).

Similar to their government, and adopting its ethnic cleansing policies, Israeli citizens, especially the extreme fundamentalist religious Jews, have been, since the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, attacking the Palestinian indigenous landowners, forcefully and collectively occupying Palestinian homes and evicting the owners out, murdering whole family members, burning their fields, poisoning their water wells, shooting their farm animals, totally razing whole Palestinian towns, and building their own colonies on top of their ruins. Encouraged by the American unconditional support and by the UN silence, armed and financed by the fundamentalist extreme religious Shas and Yisrael Beitenu Parliamentary Parties, and brainwashed by extremist Yishuv Rabbis, the Israeli settlers (terrorists) had escalated their terror attacks against Palestinians throughout whole Palestine; in the 1948 occupied Palestine and in the West Bank.

Last October extremist religious Jewish residents of the Palestinian city of Akka (Acre), who were forcefully implanted in the old town in the middle of Palestinian residents and in the suburbs around the city, had perpetrated a wave of attack against their Palestinian neighbors, fired at them with automatic weapons, and set fire to some Palestinian homes. All this was happening under the sight and protection of Israeli police and soldiers, who arrested any Palestinian trying to protect his home. Watch their terror in Akka here.

The most dangerous Israeli terrorists are those religious extremist colonizers (settlers) in and around the West Bank Palestinian city of AL-Khalil (Hebron). Some well-armed 500 – 600 extremists and Yeshiva (religious school) students had forcefully occupied a couple of buildings in the heart of Hebron city where about 200,000 Palestinians live. These terrorists are protected by thousands of heavily armed Israeli soldiers 24 hours a day. To guarantee their freedom of movement large parts of the town are made off-limit to Palestinians. Many other religiously fanatic Israeli terrorist had confiscated large areas of farm land around the city and built their own colony called Kiryat Arba.

The majority of the Israeli colonizers in the Occupied West Bank are followers of the teachings of the religiously extremist Rabbi Abraham Kook, considered the first Rabbi of Israel. He teaches that the Jews should hasten the coming of their awaited for Messiah through acts violence and bloodshed, permissible and encouraged by the Torah, to cleanse the “Promised Land” from all Goyims (non-Jews, Palestinians), destroy their homes of worship (AL-Aqsa Muslim Mosque), and to build the third temple for the Messiah to live in.

These teachings are allegedly based on the Talmud and are taught at the Mirkaz Harav; a Judaic religious college in Jerusalem. According to these teachings the Palestinians have three choices: life long total obedient slavery to Israel, complete transfer out of the country, “lest they remain a thorn in your side”, or the Old Testament-style total annihilation. Similar versions of these fanatic teachings are taught to Israeli youth in their elementary and high schools. Throughout the history of Israel, since the birth of Zionism, Israelis had adopted and followed these teachings.

Israeli colonizers in and around Hebron follow these teachings religiously. They sanctify their Sabbaths through violent attacks against Palestinian residents. Every Friday night and Saturday, these terrorist colonizers, accompanied with their children, fully armed and under the protection of the Israeli soldiers, descend on Palestinian neighborhoods, smash their cars, break their windows and throw Molotov bombs in their houses, break into shops and set them ablaze, shoot at every Palestinian they may encounter, vandalize homes, schools and institutions, steal properties, draw racial and hatred graffiti on walls and doors of homes, churches, and mosques,, vandalize Palestinian cemeteries and draw star of David on graves, and provoke Palestinians with hate slogans such as “Death to Arabs”, and “Mohammad is a pig”.

When Jewish cemeteries and temples are vandalized with graffiti, Jew around the world and the Western World cry anti-Semitism, yet when Israeli Jews draw hate graffiti on Palestinian mosques, churches, and cemeteries no body cry anti-Palestinian, anti-Christian, or anti-Muslim.

Such silence and complicity had encouraged the Israeli terrorist to keep attacking Palestinians. In 1994 the Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein, encouraged by such silence, did not hesitate to sneak behind Muslim worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and empty his machine gun in the back of Muslim prayers while kneeling in prayer. Last week hundreds of fanatic Yishuv (religious school) students were called on to occupy a Palestinian home in Hebron to stop the police from evicting some armed Israeli settlers, who forcefully occupied the home claiming its purchase. The Israeli High Court found the deeds a forgery and ordered the house evacuated. In response hundreds of Israeli terrorists descended onto several Palestinian cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, smashing cars and beating Palestinians. In Hebron, itself, Jewish terrorists attacked Palestinian residents, set their homes on fire, and injured many of them. Few days ago some of these armed settlers attacked Palestinian homes and shot some of them point blank. The shooter was released for only one night and was released next morning. To see the shooting incident and many other settlers’ terrorist attacks click here.

Another similar confrontation between Palestinians and extremist settlers seems to be imminent in the Palestinian city of Umm al-Fahm, home to about 45,000 Palestinians. The Jewish National Front, a far-right group closely associated with the Hebron settlers, has acquired a Supreme Court permission to march through the city. The group’s leader Baruch Marzel stated “We will march through Umm al-Fahm with flags to send everyone a message that the Land of Israel belongs to us”. Many of the marchers will carry their guns issued to them as settlers. Such provocation, scheduled for this Monday December 15th, will spark violent confrontation.

Driven by a crazy warmongering prejudiced god, who elevates one group of people over the rest of his creation, and who orders his chosen people to perpetrate a bloody genocidal cleansing of his promised land in order to build him a mundane house to live in, Israeli politicians are ready to do anything in order to accomplish their deluded dream of a pure Jewish Greater Israel, from Nile to Euphrates, without any Christian or Muslim Goyims.

The behaviors of these many Jewish fanatic groups are considered by any official laws and standards of any country in the world as terrorism. For the last sixty years the Palestinians have been faced with organized Jewish terror supported by major political and religious parties in the Israeli parliament. This is a state sponsored terror. It is a government policy that every Israeli leader supports and calls for. Their real intentions and policies become so transparent and apparent during election time, when all of them call for the expulsion of Palestinians. Just listen to what the Israeli Foreign Minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party, Tzipi Livni, addressing a high school students in Tel Aviv and promising that she would “encourage” those they call Israeli Arabs to move out of Israel to the state of Palestine once it is established.

Israel is a terrorist state. Many people recognize it as such. This is apparent in the international solidarity the Palestinians are receiving from all over the world. The international political bodies have yet to acknowledge this fact, and if they don’t one wonder what kind of ethics and morality that drives their sense of justice and freedom they claim they are fighting for.

The state of Israel was allegedly established to give world Jewry, in general, and “holocaust surviving” European Jews, in specific, a safe homeland. But the international humanitarian cry of “Holocaust, never again” has become so blind and so disillusioned that it has been, for the last sixty years, perpetrating the same thing it is trying to prevent, namely another holocaust, against another nation; the Palestinian Arabs.

The holocaust was perpetrated in Europe against Jewish Europeans by Christian Europeans. Arabs, who, for generations, received persecuted European Jews with hospitality, harbored and protected them, should not be made to pay their heartland, Palestine, for the sins of Europeans. Palestinians had never sinned against true Jews, but when Zionist militant Jews attack Palestinians, destroy their towns, massacre their families, forcefully evict hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes, and usurp their lands to build their terrorist Israeli state, Palestinians had no choice but to defend themselves with whatever means available to them.

Since the 1940’s organized Zionist terrorists have been executing a graduated deliberate well-planned genocide (holocaust) against the Palestinians. They terrorized and murdered Palestinian civilians in every Palestinian city; some had been completely wiped out such as the Palestinians of Deir Yassin, al-Tantura, al-Dawayima, and Saliha among many others. At least 450 Palestinian towns were completely wiped off existence in 1948. Palestine itself was wiped off the map and replaced with Israel. The theft and usurpation of Palestinian land is still going on until this very moment. Every day the Israeli army raids Palestinian towns, demolishes homes and evicts Palestinians out of their land to build illegal Jewish Israeli colonies.

When Palestinians exercise their basic human right of resisting occupation and defending their lives and the lives of their families, they are called terrorists, who must be killed. Israeli influential chief rabbis, such as Yisrael Rosen, Dov Lior, Shmuel Eliyahu, Daniel Satosbky, Eliyahu Kinvinsky, Israel Ariel and Yitzhaq Ginsburg among many others, routinely and blatantly call for the extermination (a complete wiping off) of all Palestinians without exception. Yet these genocidal religious calls are being ignored by international political institutions and all the Western media, who concentrate on and misinterpret Iran’s President Ahmadinejad’s statement that the “terrorist Israeli regime” should not be allowed to continue, as a threat to wipe Israel off the map.

Part of this Israeli graduated genocidal holocaust can, currently, be clearly seen in the Gaza Strip. Life in Gaza has been gradually and systematically getting worse beginning with the Israeli occupation in 1967 until it has presently become the worst ever. Gaza is now the theater exhibiting the extermination of Palestinians for exercising their Western-encouraged democratic right of electing a Hamas government. Since the 2006 Hamas election Gaza has been severed from the West Bank, and encircled with an eight meter high concrete wall to make it the largest ever open-air concentration camp in the whole world. It is extensively worse than the notorious Nazi Germany concentration camps in umbers and space. The Israeli army is the jailer controlling and restricting the passage of all life-sustaining goods into Gaza, and the punisher by death of each Palestinian contemplating any resistance.

Similar to the pre-Holocaust international apathy towards the fate of European Jews, the current international political apathy towards the fate of Gaza and its 1.5 million residents is encouraging Israel to close the noose yet tighter to finish them off. Israel has completely sealed off all crossings to Gaza preventing entry of necessary food, fuel and medicine. No one is allowed in or out of Gaza.

Due to Israeli blockade life in Gaza has deteriorated rapidly. The number of Palestinians in Gaza living in absolute poverty has increased sharply. Today more than 80% of Gazans are jobless. 95% of Gaza’s industrial operations are suspended because they cannot import raw material nor export products due to Israeli siege. Agricultural sector is paralyzed and about 40,000 workers, who depend on cash crops, have now no income. With the Israeli gun-boats patrolling the shores of Gaza and sinking or seizing every Palestinian fishing boat the fishing industry, many Gazans depend on for their living, has come to a complete halt. Many Gazans depend on goods that are smuggled through tunnels underneath the Egyptian borders.

Electricity and water service infrastructure are non-existent because of Israeli prohibitions of importing spare parts and fuel necessary to keep the systems running. Hospitals cannot generate electricity to keep their life-sustaining equipments running. Sewage and water treatment facilities had completely halted, thus people don’t have clean drinking water, and sewage has been pouring into the sea contaminating its water.

Schools have been closed due to lack of books and electricity and due to high students drop out looking for jobs. Illiteracy is increasing. Educational system is collapsing. Without schools and without jobs, poor, hungry and frustrated young Palestinians of Gaza have nothing to do except brewing more and more hatred towards Israelis, the cause of their misery, and contemplating more aggressive self-defense mechanisms in the hope to deter or at least to balance the daily Israeli terror they are facing.

Israel stated on Friday Nov. 21st it will maintain its closure of Gaza Strip despite all the international concern over the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the area. Israeli officials claimed that this decision came due to firing missiles at Israeli settlements. We should note that Palestinians had observed the cease fire agreement struck last June 19th, but Israel, who broke each and every previous cease fire agreements, had broken this one too when Israeli tanks rolled into the Strip, Wednesday Nov. 4th , and murdered several Palestinians. The missiles were fired as a response to the Israeli attack.

Since the year 2000, 3000 Gazans and 12 Siderot Israeli residents have been killed. Israel, an occupying power, is routinely and indiscriminately attacking Gaza’s civilians with the most sophisticated weaponry; tanks, fighter planes, drones, Apache helicopters and laser-guided missiles. When some of these civilians are forced to become militaristic in order to defend their families with whatever ingeniously they can manufacture such as rudimentary home-made rockets and mines, the pro-Zionist biased international political communities ignore all Israeli terrorist attacks, deny the Palestinians their right of self-defense and call them terrorists.

When the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), Javier Solana, stated in a New York press release in Nov. 22nd that the EU will not be able to do any more to break the Israeli blockade against Gaze, he is tacitly giving Israel implied acceptance and encouragement to continue its crimes. The international political bodies including the Arab League are just paying lip service confirming Israel’s right to self-defense while denying this right to Gazans, and are begging Israel not to launch a major military operation into Gaza.

Some Arab leaders are Zionist Arabs. Like Zionist leaders of WWII era, who ignored, encouraged, and benefited from the Jewish Holocaust, these Zionist Arab leaders are also ignoring the Gaza holocaust. Some of them, like Palestinian President Abbas and Egyptian President Mubarak, are actively contributing to this holocaust for a fistful of American Dollars. Abbas and his cronies in the Ramallah assigned government had opposed, plotted against, and attacked the democratically elected Palestinian government of Hamas in Gaza. Egyptian Mubarak’s government had repeatedly refused to give life to Gaza by opening border crossings into Gaza (a border between two Arab entities) citing international agreements and national security. The fallacy of these excuses were exposed when the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmad Aboul Gheit, disclosed last Wednesday 11th of November that the closure of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza comes for pure political reasons, and for the purpose of punishing one particular Palestinian side (Hamas). He explained that opening the Rafah crossing would mean recognizing Hamas as the legitimate Palestinian government. The speaker of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Husam Zaki, also declared that the closure came in support for Palestinian President Abbas, who requested the closure.

The head of UNRWA, Karen Koning Abu Zayd, warned: “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and –some would say – encouragement of the international community”.

The majority of Gazans are dependent in their livelihood on donations from the UNRWA. Such donations has been routinely interrupted due to Israeli restrictions and crossing closures. UNRWA representative John Holms warned, lately, that the situation in Gaza is dire and that the Agency will no longer be able to distribute more food to the poor due to the current Israeli closure.

Despite the many scientific analyses, study and research the European revisionist historians introduce and refer to as proof that the Holocaust is a hoax and had never happened, one must admit that many European Jews, like the rest of other people, had been murdered during WWII. The Holocaust is the only historical event, throughout the whole history of Man, whose study and research has been made a religious taboo and a punishable crime. Therefore refuting the revisionists’ evidence has been made an impossible task, making the Holocaust a controversial subject. Nevertheless, the murder of one family member constitutes a holocaust to the rest of the family. We should remember that 55 million people are estimated to have died in WWII, millions of them died to free European Jews from the “controversial” Holocaust. The surviving Jews are indebted to the Allied countries and not the other way around as Israel keeps implying.

Although history shows many documented evidence that total annihilation of populations, worse than the “controversial” Holocaust, had taken place to other nations throughout history, Jews in general, and Israeli Jews in particular, claim that they are the only perennial victims in this world, and after the Holocaust they feel they are justified to do any thing they want, even perpetrating other holocausts against other nations while denying the fact. Most of the Jews, who repeatedly cite the Holocaust to gain sympathy, and to raise it as a weapon to extort money and weapons and political support from Europeans, have no sympathy for Palestinian victims, who were driven out of their homes in 1948 and in 1967 and have been suffering from deliberate, well-planned holocaust, part of which is being now executed by their government in their names against 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

In almost every Western country one finds a Jewish museum of tolerance. Although many nations had suffered from worse than Holocaust-like massacres, none of them found a need to erect their own museums of tolerance and in such numbers. I wonder what is it that Westerners find intolerable about the Jews that they need such an amount of museums to beg their tolerance for the Jews!

The Israeli blockade policy has effectively destroyed the economy and all the infrastructures of Gaza. It had impoverished and starved the whole population of Gaza including all civilians, women, children and the sick, and even their farm animals. This policy is illegal under International Humanitarian Law and a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. This policy constitutes an indiscriminate collective punishment, a war crime, genocide, and a holocaust. This devastating holocaust is Israeli-made, but can easily be reversed if the necessary political will of the UN and/or the Arab League is exerted against the terrorist government of Israel. Isn’t time for the UN to assert its legitimacy, its dignity, and its respect by suspending and revoking rogue Israel’s membership for violating human rights, and for breaking the many UN resolutions and international laws? Isn’t it time for the UN to implement its solemn promise of “never again another holocaust” in the world starting with the most pressing Palestinian holocaust?

Gaza has been turned into a ticking bomb ready to explode any day. This started with US/Israel/Abbas trio conspiracy, according to Vanity Fair magazine, to topple the democratically elected Hamas-led Palestinian government. This resulted into Palestinian division and the isolation of Gaza Strip. To finish off Hamas leadership Israel had borrowed Nazi siege tactics of Warsaw Ghetto, and implemented a stricter version of it against Gaza Strip. Israel had gradually decreased the imports of all vital substances to Gaza, and since June 2007 had completely closed Gaza’s five border crossings, leaving all 1.5 million Palestinians to die from starvation, thirst, pollution, and lack of medicine. Israel had cut off all fuel supplies to Gaza including all UN agencies such as UNRWA; the agency devoted to provide health, education and food supplies to poor families.

Without fuel to generate electricity Gaza’s 32 wells had stopped pumping drinking water, 4 thousand other wells stopped pumping agricultural water causing the dry up of all major crops. Sewage treatment pumps stopped functioning allowing sewage to be spilled into the ocean leading to coastal pollution. Bakeries stopped functioning for the lack of flour as well as fuel. Fishermen could not sail their boats, and those who could were sunk by Israeli gun boats. All goods and food stuff are forbidden entry into Gaza. People are not allowed to leave Gaza by any means. 75% of the families live under the poverty line. With a total Israeli blockade of the area, Gaza has become the largest concentration prison throughout the whole history of mankind.

The word “blockade” is no longer adequate to describe the situation in Gaza, for Israel is implementing a graduated genocide against Gazans. Israel was not satisfied with turning Gaza into the largest concentration camp ever, but had sent its terrorist army to routinely raid Gaza’s cities, destroying civilian homes, razing fertile farm land, murdering civilians, and kidnapping young men. Latest major raid was conducted on Tuesday June 3rd where seven Israeli tanks and one military bulldozer crossed the northern border of Gaza, attacked farmers and razed their farm land. On Sunday June 1st ten Israeli tanks and five military bulldozers, covered with Apache helicopters, raided city of Khan Younes, razed large areas of farm lands destroying all crops, and withdrew after engaging Palestinian resistance fighters. On May 30th fifteen Israeli tanks and two military bulldozers invaded the Furta suburb of Beit Hanoun, razed its farm land destroying crops, rounded up men ages 16 to 60 years old in the center of town, and kidnapped at least 60 of them across the border. The Israeli terrorist army, air force, and gun boats shell Gaza’s cities daily. During the month of May alone the Israeli terrorist forces had murdered 45 Gazans mostly children under the age of eighteen.

Gaza’s children, comprising almost 51% of population after Israeli forces had murdered and kidnapped large percentage of the adults, suffer the most. They suffer from malnutrition, anemia and other incurable diseases. Hospitals are at full capacity and are lacking all kinds of medicine. Without electricity hospitals could not operate incubators and other machinery resulting in the avoidable deaths of many new born babies and other patients. It is estimated that 1600 patients; mostly children under the age of 15, were admitted to hospitals during the last year alone. 178 patients had already died due to lack of medicine.

Gaza Strip has been turned into a death camp, where death has become a daily incident.

Amnesty International has expressed great concern about the dire situation in Gaza, where families live on one dollar per day, and had condemned Israel’s collective punishment against people of Gaza. The EU’s External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner went on record speaking “against this collective punishment of the people of Gaza.” Javier Solana, the top EU foreign policy official, agreed in a letter statement to Electronic Intifada with the use of the term “collective punishment” describing Israel’s actions.

Other international officials such as John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, affirmed that Israel’s actions, including the murder and wounding of Palestinian civilians, and the siege of Gaza constitute serious violations of international laws.

Describing the situation in Gaza former US president Jimmy Carter said: “It’s an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It’s a crime … I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on.” He described Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth.”

In his fact finding mission to Gaza Archbishop Dismond Tutu, who in numerous occasions compared Israel’s policies with that of the apartheid in South Africa, also, called Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “an abomination”. He condemned the silence of the international community about Israel’s crimes saying: “My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all.”

Ironically this abomination; this genocidal blockade; this greatest crime was helped, directed, and managed by the same hypocritical Western countries, who preach freedom and liberty and protection of human rights, urging to send troops to Darfur to protect its people from massacres, had invaded Afghanistan to free its people from the religious extremists Taliban terrorists, had invaded Iraq and murdered two millions of its people under the justification of freeing them from a dictator, condemned China for its occupation of Tibet, and called for independent state in Kosovo. Yet they don’t raise a finger or utter one word against Israeli terror against Palestinians. On the contrary they justify these crimes and support Israel’s terror, describing Israel as a “light among nations.” For them Israelis, “God’s chosen people”, are above all the laws. If Europeans consider their support of Israeli crimes repentance for their own Holocaust against their own Jewish population, then it behooves them to understand that such unjustified shameful support is facilitating Israel’s committal of another Holocaust against the innocent people of Palestine.

Western countries overlook the fact that Israel, with the third most powerful army in the world, is the aggressor and occupier of Palestine, and blame Palestinian freedom fighters for their legitimate resistance. They cite the rudimentary rockets, fired from Gaza in self-defense against Israeli occupiers, as justification for Israel’s genocide of the 1.6 million citizens of Gaza. Their twisted logic purports that Hamas is a terrorist group intent on destroying Israel, who is defending itself. If that is the case, then why is Israel imposing blockades against the many Palestinian towns within the Western Bank when no rockets had been fired against Israel from the West Bank for decades? Israel is building its imprisoning wall around major Palestinian towns, had erected more than 600 military check-points in between Palestinian cities, and routinely raids Palestinian homes in the West Bank. During a fact finding visit to the West Bank cities, David Hammerstein, a member of the European Parliament, condemned, on Saturday June 1st, the poor humanitarian situations in Palestinian cities especially in Al-Khalil (Hebron), as barbaric, adding that the cities are living under the ugliest form of Israeli occupation.

The naked truth is that Israel, itself and not Arabs or Hamas, is intent on destroying Palestine and its people. Israel had wiped Palestine off the map, had totally wiped more than 500 Palestinian villages off existence, is continually destroying Palestinian civilian homes and organizations, is razing Palestinian farm lands, is usurping Palestinian land and building illegal colonies, and has rejected all peace agreement offers by the Arabs including the Arab Peace Initiative that acknowledges Israel’s right to exist peacefully within recognized borders. Israel does not want peace. Its successive governments are adamant on fulfilling the ultimate Zionist dream of building “Greater Israel”. Arab Peace Initiative would destroy such a dream.

Since its democratic election Hamas government had offered Israel multiple long cease fire agreements, but Israel had rejected all of these offers, and kept on attacking Gaza. Hamas made numerous attempts to reconcile with the Ramallah’s Fatah PA through the mediation of other Arab countries but Abbas’ appointed government made irreconcilable conditions. Hamas pleaded with Egyptian President, Mubarak, to open Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. When Egypt ignored this appeal Gazans used explosives to open passages through the fence and poured into Egypt to buy food and goods. Egypt responded by increasing their border guards, called in American contractors to build reinforced high wall at the border, and many of their officials and mouth piece media outlets accused Gazans of threatening Egyptian security and threatened to break the legs of every “infiltrator”.

Like Egyptian president other Arab leaders had joined in the blockade against Gaza. Their main goal is to keep their own citizens subdued and obedient. They do not want any national movement to wake up their sleepy citizens. As for their Palestinian brothers, they consider them citizens of another country. Some of the leaders lack the political will to help, others are under the mercy of foreign hostile pressures, while others are just as Zionist as the Israeli government.

Hamas orchestrated protests and marches towards border crossings demanding end of blockade but Israeli army met the peaceful marchers with live ammunitions and tear gas killing and wounding scores of them.

Worst from death itself is watching your young children, your old parents, and your siblings die of starvation, lack of medicine, and on the hands of Israeli terrorist army. Abandoned and pushed to die in a corner without any alternative Gaza Palestinians will not take it silently. They prefer to die struggling for their rights and for their freedom. This is the only choice left for them. So we have seen lately some military operations against Israeli occupation forces on border crossings. Soon every body in Gaza will join in and we could witness an armed Intifada. The imminent Gaza explosion is coming, and its effects will touch everybody; Israelis, Arabs, and internationals.