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Israel alone is responsible

Oct 15,2015 - Last updated at Oct 15,2015

Israel alone is responsible for the current wave of violence in the occupied Palestinian territories.

And while one is not sure whether the events there are the spark of another Intifada, it is certain that the tragic events that are unfolding in front of our eyes are the direct result of Palestinian desperation and of Israel’s continued provocation, oppression and colonisation of Palestinians.

Israel is making it impossible for the Palestinians to stay put.

The Israeli government is building more settlements and expanding existing ones. This requires more land, which Israel is usurping from Palestinian inhabitants.

It is also demolishing houses, imprisoning people for the most trivial reasons, disrupting daily life in mean ways through its numerous checkpoints, and provoking and killing motorists and pedestrians in cold blood.

Its lawless settlers are burning houses and murdering peaceful Palestinian children, men and women. And its religious extremists are transgressing and endangering the holiest Islamic site in Palestine, Al Aqsa Mosque, under the very eyes and protection of Israeli politicians and police.

Beyond this, Israel has deliberately sabotaged the peace process in an attempt to destroy the Oslo Accords, the idea of a two-state solution and the various UN resolutions which guarantee Palestinians their right to liberty and full statehood.

Towards this end, it has done its utmost to make the Palestinian Authority, which has been trying to negotiate with Israel in good faith and consistently advocated a peaceful approach to resolving the Palestinian issue, look both foolish and irrelevant.

Also towards this end, it is using Hamas, which it has been fighting and calling a terrorist organisation, but with which it has also been negotiating in secret, thus privileging and strengthening it, as a pretext to bypass the PA and all peace obligations.

In the meantime, the Palestinian leadership has its arms tied and is unable to either make some concrete progress towards peace or to protect its people from the Israeli destruction and death machine.

Under these dismal circumstances, some Palestinian civilians are taking matters into their hands, resorting to desperate measures to protect themselves.

The solution is solely in Israel’s hands.

Just as it is deliberately creating problems for Palestinians, it can — if it wants — take measures to defuse the tension and end the violence.

More than anything else, Palestinians want to live in peace.

Israel is not only refusing to end its brutal occupation, which is the ultimate solution to all problems in the holy land, it is also ruthlessly disrupting Palestinian daily life, provoking Palestinians to extreme reactions and exercising unprecedented violence against them in broad daylight.

There will be no end to the violence that has been going on for decades without Israel living up to its treaty obligations.

What is required now, to end the current tragedy, is not a resumption of negotiations, as some have been intimating, but an immediate, unconditional implementation by Israel of the agreements it signed with the Palestinians and which it has been ignoring for decades.

Israel or analysts are neither wise nor correct to announce the death of Oslo and the two-state solution.

The Oslo agreement and the two-state solution are both timely and relevant. Oslo must be implemented in full, and without delay.

Israel needs to end its hegemony over territories dubbed Area A in the Oslo agreement, and withdraw totally from areas B and C.

Palestinians need a safe state of their own. This right has already been guaranteed by countless UN resolutions and by Oslo.

Israel must live to its side of the bargain. This is a basic premise in human dealings, political or otherwise.

 

If this does not happen, the result is what we see: more Palestinians and Israelis will lose their lives (of course, more Palestinians than Israelis) and the chaotic situation will spiral out of control.

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