I hold no candle Hamas, their violence, religious fundamentalism, intransigence and refusal to recognise the de facto existence of Israel.
Their recent military attack on Israel and targeting, in instances, of civilians is reprehensible – as is the disproportionate retaliation by Israel which allows for no discrimination between civilian and military targets.
At least 700 Israelis and 500 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured.
More than 123,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza, mostly to schools which will not necessarily be immune from further retaliatory bombing. Israeli civilians in adjacent cities and towns are either staying in underground shelters or have relocated.
As the humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate, Israel has announced that they will now lay a complete siege on Gaza and cut food, water and fuel. This represents a grave violation of international law.
The fighting must stop immediately. The events are going to have long-term humanitarian consequences on Israeli and Palestinian civilians involved.
That said, I do think we need to address the elephant in the room: the increasingly difficult and inhumane conditions Palestinians endure in both Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. ‘Occupied’ being the key word.
Let me provide some examples of the ongoing occupation:
Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. They are denied national membership as non Jews, and state membership given Israel's legal, political, and social self-definition as a state for the Jewish people. Additionally, most Palestinians in Jerusalem have Israeli residency rights, which allow them to work and travel and provide access to Israeli social services, but not full citizenship, which would allow them to vote.
Palestinian citizens of Israel who comprise about 19% of the population, were subject to constitutional law in 2018, which, for the first time, enshrined Israel exclusively as the “nation state of the Jewish people”. The law also promotes the building of Jewish settlements and downgrades Arabic’s status as an official language.
In the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel has controlled the population registry since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship and most are considered stateless, requiring ID cards from the Israeli military to live and work in the territories.
Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who were displaced in the 1947-49 and 1967 conflicts, continue to be denied the right to return to their former places of residence.
Israel’s exclusion of refugees is a violation of international law which has left millions in an ongoing state of forced displacement.
Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem are granted permanent residence instead of citizenship.
Since 1967, more than 14,000 Palestinians have had their residency revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of the Interior, resulting in their forcible transfer outside the city.
Since the mid-1990s Israeli authorities have imposed increasingly stringent movement restrictions on Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). A web of military checkpoints, roadblocks, fences and other structures controls the movement of Palestinians within the OPT, and restricts their travel into Israel or abroad.
A 700km fence, which Israel is still extending, has isolated Palestinian communities inside “military zones”, and they must obtain multiple special permits any time they enter or leave their homes.
In Gaza, more than 2 million Palestinians live under an Israeli blockade. It is near-impossible for Gazans to travel abroad or into the rest of the OPT, and they are effectively segregated from the rest of the world.
There are 645 physical movement obstacles and checkpoints in Israel and the OPTs, an increase of about 8% compared with the 593 obstacles recorded in January-February 2020.
In 2022, Israeli forces also deployed an average of four ad hoc 'flying' checkpoints each week along West Bank roads.
In addition, the 700 kilometre-long Israeli Barrier (65% of which is built) runs mostly inside the West Bank. Most Palestinian farmers with land isolated by the Barrier can access their groves through 69 gates; however, most of the time, the Israeli authorities keep these gates shut.
Palestinians' access to the about 10% of the West Bank lying within the municipal boundaries of Israeli settlements, is also prohibited by military order; many farmers can only reach their private land within or around settlements twice a year at most, subject to approval from Israeli authorities.
While the fighting must stop immediately, so must these 14 points of human rights transgressions against Palestinians. If not, the cycle of war will be perpetual and geo-political power plays versed in war by proxy will continue to wreak havoc.
It is therefore incumbent on the international community instead of shrouding key sites in lights bearing the Israeli flag to finally address the root causes of the conflict including not least, ending the occupation of Palestinian territory.
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