Orif is a village on Palestinian soil, which is close to the town of Nablus in the West Bank. Those who live in the village are Palestinians. They are farmers who live modest, unobtrusive lives. This weekend they saw the wheat fields they had readied for harvest set alight by occupying Israeli settlers from the area. They hurried to the fields and tried to get the flames under control to save their crops, but the attackers were determined. They opened fire on the Palestinians with their rifles. A Palestinian youth was rushed to the hospital with a bullet wound in the stomach. Nonetheless, the Israeli army contented itself with saying that it looked into the matter.
We understand from this event in the West Bank that the mentality of those who killed innocent people in the Mavi Marmara incident has not changed.
We are talking about a 5,640 square kilometer piece of Palestinian land — home to 1.75 million people — that has a water surface area of 200 square kilometers and is surrounded by Israel to the North, South and West and Jordan to the East. Within this area there are a total of 121 Israeli settlements that house 330,000 Israeli citizens. Since 1967 this area has been occupied by Israeli soldiers, and in the meantime Palestinian land is constantly being lost to the newly arriving settlers.
According to the “two-state solution” developed by the United States, 80 percent of the Israeli population will be able to stay in only 3 percent of the West Bank, meaning that 97 percent of the region will be under the Palestinian flag. That is the reason for the fight and why the settlers are resisting.
An Unexpected Development in Washington
Meanwhile, we owe the developments that will create a tragic ending for the Israelis to Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, an important name in the Congressional Jewish lobby. Kirk is a successful politician, who originally was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. In fact, in the year 2000, while stationed at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, he carried out intelligence flights over northern Iraq using an EC-130 aircraft.
In the strongest statement of his political career he remarked, “I’m OK with discrimination against young Arab males from terrorist-producing states. I’m OK with that.” In the draft resolution that Kirk presented to Congress, he asked the secretary of state to furnish a detailed report about Palestinians living in Western Asia and requested it state the actual number of people designated as refugees.
A Stinging Response!
The answer he received was shocking. The American secretary of state said for the first time that the Palestinian refugees in Western Asia number 5 million. In a statement, the Department of State called attention to the work being done by UN institutions that track the region’s refugees to stress the fact that the U.S. administration agreed with the figures provided by these institutions
This statement shows that the American administration tends to take the opposite position from Israel regarding the most sensitive topic related to the Palestinian issue. Tomorrow when Palestine is founded, the Palestinian diaspora still living in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and other Arab countries will earn the “right of return” to their homeland.
The powerful American Jewish lobby organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is up in arms.
The reality is that the Israeli settlers who are burning fields today can expect difficult days in the future.
Translator’s note: In the original article, the author used quotation marks for certain phrases without apparent intent to denote quotes or irony.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.