THE DISPUTED LAND OF HISTORIC PALESTINE: A Critical Overview
The brutal uncanny attack on Palestinians in Gaza Strip, after weeks of continued tension between Israelis and Palestinians in East Jerusalem at a holy site, is nothing more than an open-ended murdering of humanity as a whole. Palestine needs to be freed immediately and urgently. The victims of war crimes and other atrocities needs to be protected on all humanitarian grounds. Their basic human rights needs to be preserved and justice needs to be served before peace, without any further delay.
Bombing children and innocent lives raises a huge question mark upon one’s virtues, values, practices and religion, when one loses their mind , suppressing and bombarding inferior groups/communities, refugees, their homes and holy places with constant ground attack threats and airstrikes. These suppressors do not belong to their own religion or any religion as such because ‘NO’ religion teaches one to threaten, harass, torture and kill innocents like this. This is nothing but clearly a resultant outcome of sick mentality. Religions and it’s people accumulate ‘ZERO’ to ‘NO’ value, when their very ‘Religion of Humanity’ has died within.
The violent clash between Israel and Palestine dates back to almost 100 years of generation struggle in the human history. The current cross-border violence is not only an outcome of contemporary world conflict but also a historical one. After World War I (1914- 1918) , when the Ottoman Empire (also called Turkish Empire) was defeated, Britain took control over Palestine.
The small strip of coastal land called Gaza Strip along side Mediterranean Sea was occupied by Arab Majority and Jewish Minority back then. Given this , Britain was asked by the International Community to set up a “National Home” for Jewish minority in Palestine. The Arabs and Jews both landed into a huge dispute as both of them claimed that the historical land of Palestine belongs to them. In between 1920s to 1940s, Jewish people in large numbers came to Palestine seeking refuge against the persecution and the holocaust going on around and this very thing stirred up the Arab majority living in Palestine and thus, led to the outburst of war.
However, Palestinians claimed that the East Jerusalem area belongs to them. This dispute over Jerusalem later led to the outbreak of an endless thread of violence and warfare . When Britain lost control over the whole situation, they simply left Palestine in 1948. Then the Jewish leaders declared the creation of the State of Israel and again this led to another war outbreak , in which neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan also participated. The war resulted in a huge forced evacuation of large number of Palestinians from their own land.
Geographically, the whole of Palestinian land is spilt into three regions ; first is “West Bank”(West) , the middle is entire “ Israel” and a thin strip of land is “Gaza Strip”(East) . Earlier, from 1949 to 1988 West Bank was occupied by Jordan and Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt, but later on after 1967’s six-day war both the territories got occupied by Israel. Now, Gaza Strip is ruled over by Hamas, which is considered by some countries as an Islamic military organization while by other countries as a terror organization. Moreover, countries like Argentina, China ,India , Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil ,South Africa, Turkey have considered Palestine as a state whereas countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, United Kingdom, United States, Spain have not considered Palestine as a state. The Palestinians and other refugees living in Gaza go through horrifying things every other day. They have been denied and deprived of basic human rights, natural resources, shelter and thus, have been subjected to constant fear, threat and violence over decades.
For instance; imagine the color “blue” denotes “Israel” and the color “green” denotes “Palestine”, so, now if one looks at the Historic Palestine Map of 1946 , one could very well locate Israel with few tiny “blue” patches of land and the rest Palestine by “green” color spread wide across, however, if one looks at the map today in 2021 , one could locate Palestine by small patches of “green” color as the whole land of Historical Palestine has been occupied by Israel illegally over years of warfare and violence.
On 6th May, 2021 , Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, underwent severe military attacks, where six Palestinian families were forced to evacuate their own houses by the Israeli forces just like their neighborhoods were evicted earlier and thrown out to streets , so that, the Israelis could settle in. Mosque Al-Aqsa in Old Jerusalem was stormed and attacked on 10th May, 2021 , during the holiest month of Ramadan. What significance or, power would the State of Israel draw by devastating innocent lives and by forceful occupation of the land which purely belongs to the Palestinians ? Isn’t this sick mentality? In a nutshell , this is clearly nothing other than an intentional and systematic genocide. After eleven days of constant border tensions, both the sides have agreed upon ceasefire, but this doesn't imply the end of the sufferings of Palestinians because end can only be met if and only if justice is delivered to them, immediately and at all costs.
Today’s morning I came across one of the documentaries based on Palestine by Vanessa Schlesier , where a Palestinian man named , Nidal, could be seen struggling to visit his family, who lives in Gaza City. The man has been living in Berlin, Germany since eight years from now and owns his own café shop and earns pretty good amount out of his small business as a large number of people can be seen visiting his café shop throughout the working days as well as on weekends. But the journey doesn’t seem easy. Nidal’s family which consists of his ten siblings including his parents has survived three destructive horrifying wars so far. It has been more than ten years that he hasn’t seen his family for which he needs quite a good amount of money to cover up his travelling expenses, meanwhile saving some penny for his family too. So, he has to sold his café and he has no idea about whether he will ever be allowed to return back to Berlin again.
Earlier in 2017, he had lost one of his legs during a severe clash between Palestine and Israel. There is a shortest route to fly from Germany to Palestine but because of the constant theories of conflicts in the past, new regulations have been imposed since 2000. According to this new regulation, Palestinians need to acquire a special permit to cross the border, which is almost like an imaginary thing. This is the reason for which Nidal has to travel first to Oman , Jordan, and then from thereon he will be crossing the West Bank and then through Israel until he makes it into Gaza. Unfortunately, Nidal’s application seeking the special permit to cross Israeli border has not reached the Israeli officials yet, so he has to wait for another long day in Jordan. However, after several trials, finally his application has been accepted now.
But trouble has not left Nidal’s back yet because as soon as he reaches the border with his permit request, he is told by the Israeli officials that once he enters the Gaza Strip, he won’t ever be allowed to leave the city again and will be kept under strict supervision. Now, he has no other option left in his hand except one. Thus, with a heavy heart and huge disappointment, he returns back to Germany and continues his living by repurchasing back his café.
In a subsequent documentary , written and directed by Roy Zafrani, an Israeli kid can be seen getting along with a Palestinian kid at the border line. There is a hole in the brick wall from where a ball falls down to the other side of Israel, when the Israeli kid is on his way back to home from school. He notices the ball and throws it back and it keeps on bouncing back and forth. It is actually this Palestinian kid on the other side of Gaza who is throwing the ball. Days passed by and they became real friends and began exchanging gifts through that small hole, which certainly acted as a ray of hope. The brick wall couldn’t break their beautiful friendship.
One day, everyone in the school of that Israeli boy were asked to rush back to their homes because of ground attacks. The Israeli boy left for the brick wall instead of his home just to see his Palestinian friend. He couldn’t find him anywhere. He returns back to his home praying for his friend amidst rising border tensions. At evening, as he sat down to watch the television with his parents, he came across the news that thousands have died on the border side of Palestine. He was deadly shaken within as tear drops rolled down his cheeks. He saw his father celebrating the symbol of triumph over the death of thousands of Palestinians , which bought a huge grief to the heart of this little kid. The other day, the kid went to the border line. He threw his ball to the other side but it never came back. He kept looking through the small hole, but no response came from the other side.
The following night of the recent attack on Gaza, a Palestinian father , who is by profession a youtuber, was seen comforting his two young daughters as they were deadly terrified while the airstrikes continued the entire night. Unfortunately, their father was killed in the violent clash the very next day.
Some countries and their countrymen might view such an issue as less significant. Nonetheless, we, the entire human entity live on Mother Earth, which is a shared planet. It has come upon our destinies more of a blessing in disguise. It possibly does not differentiate the existence of you from the existence of mine or either ways neither does it discriminates people of one religion from the other. The boundaries, be it national or international, has been designed very cleverly by the human being alone and it was not existent since eternity. In the beginning, we had one shared piece of land, one shared blue sky, shared water bodies and of course shared Mother Earth, with “no clear and distinct line of division”. In today’s contemporary world, we pretty much have the same shared land, sky, water bodies, and Mother Earth but with “a clear and distinct line of division”, devised very desperately in the thirst of the accumulation of abundant power. This thirst is something which can never be met as it keeps on increasing and gives way to more and more thirst. You probably guessed it right, it was “Colonialism” , which acted as the backstage character behind the scenes of this entire movie of warfare that we are watching today.
One might question, what is the point of this entire discussion? So, the focal point of this entire discussion lies in this sole core value that “either we need to disgrace the differences or embrace the differences, by virtue of which we could be able to , at least to some extent, if not to the fullest, follow the path of One Love and One Peace and following the path of One Love and One Peace is called nothing but humanity.” There is no bigger crime than being shut, keeping quiet and burying your voice, when there is a fire in the neighborhood and people are burning dead in that fire next to your house. So, let us pray for the well-being of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, let us pray for the protection of their families and let us pray for humanity to prevail and flourish once again.
Written By :
Varsha Rout
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