Palestine- A Conflict or Colonization?

Up until the early 1900s, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire, a religiously diverse land for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as they used to live alongside each other. Then the Zionist Movement started in Europe and they started asking for an independent Jewish country, Ideally in Palestine.

The first wave of Jewish settlers started moving towards Palestine at the time. In 1917, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed in WWI, Palestine came under British rule and they supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine and as a result, the number of Jewish settlers grew in the country. This caused tension among Jews and Arabs resulting in rising conflicts and ultimately Britain handed over the issue to the UN and the final decision stated that 56% of the country’s land will be under Jews and Israel was founded. However, neighboring Arab countries did not accept it and the first Arab Israel war started, which was won by Jews and they occupied 78% of the country and 700,000 Palestinians became refugees and the day is remembered as Al-Nakba.

As the leftover 22% of the country was under the control of Jordan and Egypt, so after a six-day war in 1967, between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, Palestine got fully occupied by Israel. This started the Jewish settlers to move towards Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine as well (as they were previously under Egypt and Jordan). This caused the rise to PLO after a long Israeli-Palestinian struggle, and it finally agreed to divide the land into two states of Israel and Palestine.

In 1993, Oslo Agreement was signed and even the west bank was divided into three sections again limiting the area of Palestine and converting it into Israel. The major issue created was that all the natural resources were under the control of Israel and Palestinians has limited access to them, which made it tough to live for Palestine and they started fighting against it. Israelis withdrew from Gaza but they started increasing settlers in the West Bank, along with restricting any kind of movement in the city via air, land, or sea.

Although these settlements were condemned by the UN, they never took any action against them. Israel has now created settlements of the size of massive cities with a population of 60,000 settlers or more. Israel is growing the settlements day by day and has an aim to take over the complete west bank. For this purpose, they have been continuously torturing the native people to leave their homes. Israel has a complete defense system with a large army along with weapons worth billions of dollars. However, Palestine has no defense system, army or weapons, and stands for itself.

Israel has been bombing Gaza and killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands injured behind. International media is showing its biasness along with the powerful countries like the US by supporting Israel and their illegal occupation along with the massive genocide they are doing.

However, countries all around the world are supporting Palestine by doing protests (e.g. the massive protest in London), giving official statements from high government officials, and boycotting Israeli products. Although there are a number of solutions on the table the only option Israel can see is the massacre by attacking innocent people and killing children.