Forwarded from Mine (On the Israeli oppression of Palestinians)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Al-Ahram Weekly On-line
28 Dec. 2000 - 3 Jan. 2001
Issue No.514

Full article at: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/514/op2.htm

Up in arms against apartheid

By Abdul-Jawwad Saleh*

At the end of the second millennium, three million Palestinians are
imprisoned in ghettoes by the very man whom the Palestinian leadership
hailed as the saviour of peace. Netanyahu had driven the
peace ship off course. Barak scuttled it.

For the past 12 weeks, collective punishment, in every form, has been
imposed on the inhabitants of these ghettoes -- the Palestinian people.
Five hundred settlers in Hebron impose a curfew on 40,000
Palestinians.

Under a racist colonial policy of separation, the Israeli occupation forces
are digging deep trenches in bypass roads to prohibit the Palestinians from
using them to escape imprisonment. Over 200,000 labourers, the products of
Israel's policy of dependency, are unable to reach their places of work in
Israel. Movement into and out of these ghettoes is restricted. Muslims and
Christians are prohibited from praying in their holy
shrines in Jerusalem. Women in labour, especially those travelling from
villages, are stopped at Israeli military posts and prevented from reaching
the hospital. Wounded children and young men are left to bleed to death.
Ambulances are shot at, and their drivers are killed.

The colonisers, backed by the army, are impoverishing and starving the
population of the rural areas, preventing the population from harvesting
their olive crops. They have uprooted 23,465 fruit trees so far.
Greenhouses have been destroyed by bulldozers and homes have been razed,
leaving whole families with no shelter under the barren cold skies. Schools
are closed, and classes are held in tents, without desks or chairs.



Mine

Louis Proyect
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