SBS Greek ‘economic news’

Last week I told you about Israel′s withdrawal from Gaza not for some peace initiative, but in order to leave a piece of useless hostile land in order to gain West Bank. The illegally occupied by the Israelis West Bank.

Sharon had decided to take West Bank away from the Palestinians. To cut it in small little pieces and to keep the best of those pieces. In those little pieces of land Palestinians will not be allowed to live a normal life let alone to establish a state.

I will give some examples...

You must have heard of the huge wall constructed by Israel in West Bank, a huge concrete wall, in order, as Israel claims, to put an end to the suicide attacks in its territories. If the Israelis wanted to build such a wall for security reasons they could have erected it in their own borders with the West Bank. They don′t do it.

It is worth to have a look at the map to see where they are erecting it.

They build that concrete monster inside West Bank in such a way that it divides Palestinian communities in two.

For Palestinians to visit their friends and relatives who are on the other side of the wall, they have to travel kilometres away in order to reach the closest gate. There they will have to undergo humiliating searches. In Kalkilya area, Palestinian farmers cannot even go to their own farms. And we talk about 6 thousand hectare farms.

They don′t have access to their properties because Israelis built the wall to stop them doing so. The Kalkilya farms are bound from one side by the Israeli borderline and from the other by the wall.

Their farms are like cheese in a sandwich.

The Israeli army considers the area as a military zone, which means - according to Israeli legislation - that a special visa is needed by the Palestinians who want to go to their land. This visa is issued by the Israeli army and are subject to non validation according to Israeli will. When the wall is completed, one hundred thousand Palestinians will be between Israel and the wall and will need this special visa to live in their own houses.

To obtain this visa is as difficult as to get a green card to work in the USA... the difference is they don′t get this visa in order to migrate but to remain in their own land, in their own homes....

The farmers who need to pass the wall so they can cultivate their land or to carry their produce to the market, live with the everyday anxiety to have sufficient time to go through. First to go through to work and then again to go back home... Here comes the interesting part.... It is sadism.... The gates open two times daily, one in the morning and one in the afternoon only for half an hour. Whoever comes first! Now try to pass with your tractor, your produce, your workers! Imagine the queue and the disappointment of the majority, when after the passing of half hour the Israeli soldiers shut the gate.

On the other hand, the Israeli citizens and all the Jews of the diaspora have the right to go in and out of this Palestinian land... Freely and whenever they wish!

And the most atrocious fact: If the fields are not cultivated systematically, according to Israeli law, they become property of the State of Israel which can use those fields at will. For example to give them to Israeli citizens!

Can you comprehend this crime? Can you see Sharon′s venture in the West Bank? First, they build a Wall in order to surround and isolate the Palestinians from the land they want to steal from them. Second, they make their lives unbearable by not allowing them to cultivate their land. Third, they declare this land as abandoned and since none cultivates it, it belongs to none! So it is ours.

Lovely logic! How do you like it? And it is not only that.

The crime expands even within the areas surrounded by the wall. In the heart of the West bank, Israel had built hundreds of Israeli settlements. In a Palestinian land... A land they took by force from the Palestinians 20-30 years. Those settlements are usually situated on hill tops so they can observe Palestinian movements. The surrounding land has been flattened and cemented, the olive trees uprooted, Jewish houses in those settlements remind one of Switzerland. Swimming pools, internet, gardens. The Jewish settlers who live in this stolen land surrounded by rug dressed Palestinians, have at their disposal super modern highways connecting them with Israel.

No Palestinian is allowed to use those highways.

On the other hand, Palestinian villages are either isolated by each other, or are connected with dirt paths which are controlled every thousand meters by Israeli road blocks. People have to stop and undergo humiliating searches. In their own land. In their own homeland.

The rest of the world says nothing. And they just wonder when some of those Palestinians loads himself with dynamite and blows himself up. However, this status quo in the West Bank needs a lot of army and money in order to continue functioning. It brings Israeli economy to its knees. That′s why the Israelis withdrew from Gaza. In order to save money and personel. In order to complete their crimes against humanity, in the West Bank. In order for a Palestinian State never to exist.

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