The general unease Shadi expressed is shared by dozens of activists, analysts and ordinary citizens with whom EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA of the Prensa Ibérica group met in the West Bank. No one expects anything to change after the parliamentary elections in Israel on Tuesday, November 1st. So are Western diplomats in the region.
Polls give advantage to bloc of right-wing, far-right, Zionist and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties led by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Opposite, a combination of left, right and Arab parties led by the current prime minister Yair Lapid. Two dozen parties are vying for 120 seats in an atomized Knesset where government formation talks are diabolical. Israel held five elections in three and a half years.
Messages about the economy and inflation dominated the campaign. In the media and political debate, the cost of living occupies the space that dominated the security issue and relations with the Palestinians a few years ago. And that’s despite the West Bank experiencing its worst wave of violence in more than a decade in recent weeks. At least this year so far 120 Palestinians killed by Israeli Army While there was a wave of settler attacks on Palestinians, at least 20 Israelis lost their lives in the aftermath of the Palestinian attacks.
“As the elections draw nearer, the Israeli Army is more aggressive; But for Palestinians, it doesn’t matter who rules in Israel,” he says. Mustafa Barguti Palestinian doctor, activist and politician. Barghouti is a 68-year-old man with 35 pieces of shrapnel in his body, he says, as a memory of the fire opened by Israel many years ago while treating a wounded man during a clash with the occupying forces. For two decades, it has spearheaded a sort of Palestinian third path, an alternative to Fatah, the governing party, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Intellectual Edward Said founded his party, the Palestinian National Initiative. It now provides medical aid to nearly one and a half million Palestinians through a health NGO. It promotes the establishment of a Palestinian state, but invites Israel, if it does not want to accept it, to assume its responsibilities and create a state in which Palestinians have full rights. “Israel has systematically destroyed the two-state solution and replaced it with an apartheid solution. [sistema de segregación racial]. The answer should not be to accept being a slave, but to demand equal rights in a single democratic state.
Palestinians Haven’t had a choice since the failed 2005 and there is a conflict between Fatah and Hamas. They say the biggest obstacle is Israel’s refusal to let them do this in East Jerusalem, where half a million Palestinians, including one in ten, live.
The Battle of the Textbooks
In the occupied Palestinian territories, the conflict with Israel is constant and on almost every issue. Shocks occur in all areas of life, with varying degrees of severity. An Israeli soldier may throw a Palestinian child’s bike into the trash for no apparent reason, stones may be thrown at them during military operations, or a group of Jewish settlers may attack Palestinians in the streets. Deadly raids have become common in recent weeks Israeli army in the West Bank. They claim they are looking for terrorists. Also the killing of Israeli soldiers by Palestinians. There is a high level of struggle at the diplomatic level and a low level in some textbooks to respect the agreed lines in an international negotiation.
A month ago, 150 Palestinian schools went on strike in East Jerusalem. They were shut down to protest Israeli textbooks getting into their classrooms. Israel threatened to withdraw licenses to several centers Unless they stop using those approved by the Palestinian Authority instead of those permitted by the Israeli Government. Palestinian family associations and teachers say Israel wants to indoctrinate them with the narrative of the conflict and forbid them to talk about the 1948 Nakba (day of disaster) when nearly a million Palestinians were forced to leave their land in the midst of it. From the war with the Jews. The Tel Aviv government claims that textbooks approved by the Palestinian Authority fuel anti-Semitism and glorify violence.
The problem complicates the life of UNRWA, the United Nations organization that manages hundreds of schools in the Palestinian refugee camps that populate the area. But the main obstacle remains constant violence. “This building used to be an education center, but too close to the partition wall [construido por Israel] and we had to move it”, explains Adam Bouloukos, UNRWA’s director in the West Bank. He speaks on the roof of one of the organization’s buildings in the Aida camp near the city of Bethlehem, the size of the huge concrete wall that runs through hundreds of kilometers of Palestinian land. “And here there are about 12 raids a week where bullets or tear gas are fired. You don’t want to have kids in between.”
1948 – 2022
Palestine consists of Gaza and the West Bank itself—including East Jerusalem—about 6,000 square kilometers. A similar extension to the province of Alicante. As the Occupying Power, Israel controls approximately 75% of the Palestinian territories. It occupies it with colonies (small walled towns at the top of the hills), military bases, and roads for private Israeli use, as well as areas designated as a nature preserve and also under Tel Aviv’s control. The Palestinian Authority controls only 18% of the West Bank’s land bordered by the so-called “green line”. actual Internationally recognized. In Gaza, the Islamist Hamas party leads.
In 1947 the United Nations proposed a partition plan for historic Palestine (which later became a British protectorate): 55% of the territory would be a state for the Jews, 45% for the Arabs, and the holy city of Jerusalem would be under international control. . The Arabs, who at that time made up a large part of the region and accounted for seven out of every ten inhabitants, refused partition. In 1948, war broke out in which the Zionist forces won. A year later, a ceasefire with borders was reached on that green line. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left Palestine and hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the world began to flock to the powerful new state. In 1967 the war resumed. Israel occupied Syria’s Golan Heights, Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. In the 1990s, the region reached its closest point to peace. It began with the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and ended with the 1993 and 1995 Oslo accords. What is defined there is the framework on which the international community clings to define the policy of two states on both sides of the Green Line. But the story continued for two decades with the breach of agreements and the escalating momentum of invasion plans, especially under Israeli leader Netanyahu, who is now trying to return to the head of government.