An account from a young Palestinian man encapsulating the recent history of Israel - Palestine; how 'Operation Protective Edge' - Israel's most recent military assault on Gaza - began; and his experience of life under Israel's military occupation - as discovered in readers' comments on the Facebook page for Haaretz, a major news publication in Israel, on July 26, 2014:
Destruction in Gaza July 26, 2014 (Haaretz.com)
Bashar Ahmaro:
Hamas isn't and has never been the problem. It's the consecutive Israeli
governments, you wished for a more peaceful Palestinian government and
assumed things would be a lot better if it existed, the problem is that there
is one!!!
Hamas doesn't control all the Palestinian territories,
Hamas only controls the Gaza strip, while the other main and bigger territory for
us is the West Bank,
and its under the Palestinian Authority that is controlled predominantly by the
Fatah faction.
The government there has been so eager for a peaceful solution
for the Palestinian people as the building of new
illegal settlements on our lands and the
killing of our people continued. Our President, Mahmoud Abbas, has expressed
thousands of times that he doesn't want to take the violence route, and he said
that he prefers negotiations for a lasting and just peace.
For 20 years he, and
his Fatah faction have been negotiating for a Palestinian state that is only 22% of
the old historical Palestine before Jewish people from around the world migrated
and lived in these lands in the 40's; the Palestinian state would be established on
the West Bank and Gaza.
But what did Israel do since the Oslo Accords in 1993
that preluded and made a foundation for peace between the two nations, which
contained a mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel?
There were only
100,000 settlers living illegally in settlements in the West Bank; 20 years later the
number has reach 600,000 new settlers through constant building of new illegal
settlements.
Israel didn't stop at that, it built a wall that runs through the middle
of our Palestinian towns and villages which made it even seen from most houses
in our towns like what I used to see from my school windows everyday, making
me feel like am living in a prison while I was growing up, annexing another 10%
of our lands in the West Bank, separating friends and families from each other
and making our daily life - education; business; transportation - a
nightmare.
Israel kept killing Palestinian children on a rate of 1 Palestinian every
3 days for 13 years, the last sequence of deaths happened in the previous 2
months:
-In 15/5/2014, 2 Palestinian teenagers were killed by the Israeli army: Nadeem
Nowara, 15 years old, and Mohammed abu Thaher, 16, in the West Bank -
A MONTH BEFORE THE THREE SETTLERS WENT MISSING
[link: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.598304. ].
This incident was
even captured by the CNN reporters on the minute an Israeli soldier shot his rifle
in the heart of one of the teenagers, this is the link for the CNN report if you
would like to take a look at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
o29CJRZEf4... ;
-Plus the 5 killed in the manhunt for the three Israeli settlers - a 13 y/o child and
a handicap among them [http://www.theguardian.com/.../palestinians-shot-
dead... ];
-Then Mohammed abu Khdeir that was burned alive by Israelis after the fate of
the three settlers was revealed! [http://www.theguardian.com/.../reported-
confessions... ]
Israelis had already killed 8 Palestinians before (which means Israel started)
and after the death of the three settlers, and notice that all these killings took
place in the WEST BANK where there is no Hamas and no rockets being fired at
Israel nor any violent movements like Gaza!!
All this leads you to a conclusion that Israel is a brutal occupation, and has been
making our lives miserable, through killing, torturing, and arresting our children,
and illegal settlements and walls, ((((whether there is Hamas or not!))) Israel
had the opportunity to make a long-lasting peace through 20 years but never
chose to, it chose occupation and land grabbing!
After 60 years of occupation violence met violence, Hamas gained strength and
decided to retaliate! It retaliated after the death of our two teens in Ramallah,
Nadeem Nowara 15 , and Mohammed abu Thaher 16, a month before the three
Israeli teens went missing ... that's how everything escalated, and that's why
Hamas is firing "primitive homemade" rockets into Israel ...
