*Where is the voice of the day?*
So that valley has had repeated home demolitions.
It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here,
when I sit down to write back to the United States,
something about the virtual portal into luxury.
I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed
without tank shell holes in their walls,
and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons.
I think, although I'm not entirely sure,
that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere."
It was Sunday afternoon in Charlotte, about noon, actually,
and I received a phone call.
Rodina, herself, has lived through two home demolitions.
And my son-in-law, Kelly, was on the phone.
And he asked if Craig was there.
And something about the way he asked made me realize...
I felt right away that something was wrong.
And then I asked, "Why, Kelly?"
And he hesitated for a minute, and he said:
"We've had some very sad news."
And then my daughter, Sara, I could hear her in the background,
and she got on the telephone, and she said, "Mom, it's Rachel."
And I think the first words out of my mouth then were, "Is she dead?"
They are living now in their third house.
We were opposing the demolition of farmland and other property, Palestinian property,
Joe Carr ISM Activist
by Israeli destruction force bulldozers.
And a bulldozer drove up, and it kept going, and she tried to move back,
but she couldn't move back, and she got caught underneath.
She got caught underneath the bulldozer.
Many other internationals began to surround the bulldozer and yell at it
and tell it that there is somebody there, and it did not stop.
Where Rachel was killed, she was protecting a doctor's home.
And that's important to realize, and the three children and his wife.
A bulldozer arrived with soldiers
She knew that family, and that doctor felt that Rachel was like a daughter to him.
He bought that house, it was in the middle of a neighborhood.
There were other rows of houses between his house and the border.
Those other homes, those other streets, were all destroyed and now it was his turn.
And I've had people say: "Well, she was in a war zone."
And somebody points out, that war zone is people's neighborhoods.
Those are children.
I'm here for other children.
I'm here because I care.
I'm here because children everywhere are suffering,
I was totally shocked and began to
Rachel Corrie 5th Grade Speech
and because 40,000 people die each day from hunger.
I'm here because those people are mostly children.
We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring them.
We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable.
We have got to understand that people in third world countries
think and care, and smile, and cry just like us.
We have got to understand that they are us; we are them.
My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.
My dream is to give the poor a chance.
argue with them not to demolish my home
My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.
My dream can, and will, come true, if we all look into the future
and see the light that shines there.
Rachel Corrie died at the age of 23.
The U.S. Congress has refused her parent's request to conduct an independent investigation into her murder.
As Israel completed its withdrawal from Gaza,
the following day, it issued orders to confiscate additional Palestinian land from the West Bank
and continue the construction of a separation wall.
This wall is twice the height of the Berlin Wall and four times longer.
It rips through villages,
so they began to beat me
severing travel for work, health care, and education,
separating farmers from their lands, and families from loved ones.
An Israeli study revealed that the barrier's route was chosen in order to confiscate land
intended for illegal settlement expansion, not for security reasons.
Here you have this huge wall being constructed, right in the middle of the West Bank.
Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor - Tikkun Magazine
How can anybody believe that there is going to be the creation of a real state?
It's a symbol and a reality of oppression.
Anybody outside of Israel who supports a two-state solution has to be very careful
because what they mean in a two-state solution is that 90 percent of historical Palestine will be Israel.
and pull my hair.
Illan Pappe Israeli Historian and analyst
In the remaining 10 percent, you'll have two huge prison camps.
One in the Gaza Strip and one in the West Bank.
There are currently over 420,000 Israeli settlers living inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem
Over the coming years, Israel intends to expand that number by the thousands.
Maj. General Ya'ir Naveh, head of Israel's West Bank occupation forces:
"We have no intention of leaving Jedea and Samaria [West Bank]. We will remain here in one way or another for hundreds and thousands of years."
- Foundation for Middle East Peace Settlement Report Nov-Dec 2005
The people who fought in the war were also the people who wrote the history books of the war.
And they already had the story that they made up about what had really happened.
As the bulldozer was to begin the demolition
And that story was integrated in the Israeli education system.
It was integrated in the media, in the political discourse.
Some of us who work as Jewish educators have been admitting,
Rabbi Rebecca Lillian Jewish Peace Forum
over the last maybe ten years, that it is propaganda.
Israelis don't understand what's going on. They don't know the occupation.
We began to educate ourselves.
Gila Svirsky Coalition of Women for Peace
And the first thing we did was invite women, Palestinian women, to come into our homes and talk to us,
and tell us what exactly was the problem, as they saw it.
I remembered that my
And little by little, we learned about their lives.
We learned about the suffering, they encountered on a daily basis.
We learned about the killing going on there,
about the lives that were completely circumscribed by an occupation that they had no control over.
I'm one of the few Israelis not in uniform and not a settler
Rabbi Arik Ascherman Rabbis for Human Rights
that's been in the territories in the last nine months.
You just see that the army was actually waging a very cruel war.
On the Israeli side, there seems to be no understanding that this how you create terrorism.
If you are so repressive on a people, you give them the sense of having no options,
*Where is the voice of the people?*
son was sleeping inside
and that's a very dangerous place.
In fact, there's a very clear correlation between the kind of human rights abuses
Peter Boukaert Human Rights Watch
that Israel commits in the West Bank and Gaza
and the Palestinian militant response to those abuses.
A report that examined the background of 87 suicide concluded:
"Suicide bombers often experience personal trauma related to the Israeli forces prior to their volunteering, such as the death or injury of a family member."
Most Israelis have very clear views. This is a very political country.
And when you talk to somebody, you can argue all night,
and you can go red in the face, or blue in the face,
so I ran towards the house to get him
Peretz Kidron Yesh Gvul - Soldiers who refuse to serve
or whatever color, you won't get anywhere.
But when somebody says:
"I refuse to do this. This is wrong.
For me, for us, for our country.
This is immoral, and I'll go to prison rather than do it."
And one guys does it, five guys, then 50, then a hundred.
And people say, "Hey, what's going on here?
These aren't cowards. These aren't traitors."
Most of them are officers, by the way.
as I ran the soldiers tried to hold me back
"So, if these guys are refusing, there must be something wrong here."
Currently 1674 Israeli Soldiers refuse to serve the occupation.
At least 323 have been imprisoned for objecting.
Nobody can argue with what I've seen. I mean, they may not like how I say it.
Or they may not like all the facts that I convey.
Thomas Getman Director, World Vision Jerusalem
It may sound like I'm imbalanced.
But the fact is, when you're dealing with oppression, there is no balance.
Even someone with a 20 percent open mind
Richard Falk U.N. Human Rights Fact-finding Commission
They began beating and kicking me
would reach the same conclusions that our commission reached.
You could be pro-Israel and still, if you saw these realities,
you'd have to have a completely closed mind not to come to the same conclusions that we reached.
So the violence begins with the occupation.
The opposition is resistance to the occupation.
Resistance to violence is legitimate in any country in the world.
I may disagree with some of the acts of resistance.
Peretz Kidron Yesh Gvul - Soldiers who refuse to serve
I think some of the tactics are stupid.
Attacks on Israeli civilians are stupid, immoral, and counterproductive.
and pulled my hair
Rashid Khalidi Professor of Eastern Studies - Columbia U.
They should be stopped.
We should not use violence, whatsoever
Dr. Iyad Sarraj Prominent Child Psychologist in Gaza
because it really destroys our intentions.
And it destroys our position
which is in the higher moral standing
we are the victims
and the world should now understand
that we are the victims.
I managed to push one to the ground
Criticizing the Israeli government policy for assassinating people,
or for shooting children, and maiming them, for thousands of children...
That's not anti-Semitic. That's humane.
Allegra Pacheco Israeli human rights lawyer
We have to tell the truth about what's going on, and say, as clearly as we can
"If you keep going down this path, you're going to destroy yourselves.
No enemy will have to destroy you.
You're rotting from within
because of the methods you're using against innocent people."
I don't think, even with the best video that you can make,
and ran inside to my son
Americans will really understand what it is like to be a Palestinian under occupation.
Doug Hostetter Fellowship of Reconciliation
I guarantee you, if you spend one week in Gaza,
or in the West Bank,
you will understand it in a very profound way.
All the wars of independence
Hava Keller Committee for Women Political Prisoners
you can start if you want with
war of independence of the United States
They said: "No Taxation Without Representation"
and carried him out like this.
and we demand taxation
from the Palestinians
and don't give them
any representation
It is the same all over the world
and nobody wants to be under somebody's occupation.
As an Israeli, we go to India, and to South America, to meet the Native American Indians.
Neta Golan Israeli Peace Activist
We're looking for these, like indigenous people with some kind of more rooted wisdom, you know?
And they're right here. They're right here, right under our noses.
Rodina and her children were once again homeless,
Nobody ever comes here.
You know, the "Felaheen," for me, the Palestinian "Felaheen"...
It's like, everything that people go looking for,
People with deep, deep roots, really connected to the Earth,
with this romance with their land, you know?
And just incredibly wise and open-hearted, and simple, beautiful.
And Israelis never see them unless it's through
a target.
I wish that people knew what was really going on here.
And I wish that people could see these people through my eyes.
and had to endure living in a tent for many months.
That's what often I'm looking at people, and they're so incredibly beautiful.
And I'm just thinking, "I wish that Israelis could, for one minute, see them through my eyes."
Rachel Corrie's final thoughts, emailed to her mother prior to her death:
No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing,
and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here.
You just can't imagine it unless you see it.
This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world.
This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world.
This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me.
This has to stop.
ALGERIA
Her husband, Ata, was even imprisoned for protesting the destruction of their home.
I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop.
The real battle for justice in the Middle East has to be fought and won here in America.
This is an American issue
because this is an issue of American foreign policy.
Israelis are talking about this,
and I think it's time for Americans to realize that they're the only ones not talking about it.
It's actually very dangerous for their own interest and for the interest of Israeli Jews here.
I mean, we're not going to be tossed in jail.
We're not going to be tortured.
We're not facing what people in the occupied territories are facing.
As I was cooking for my children
And if we decide we don't want to do it, fine.
But then, try to look yourself in the mirror
and say, "I'm a murderer."
It's really high time for Americans to step up to the plate,
to do whatever we can, encourage our government to take a strong initiative to end the occupation.
Those who really care about the interests of Israel should exert all the pressure possible
in order to force Israel to stop the aggression, stop the repression, end the occupation.
And the just solution has to be ending the occupation.
Ending the occupation is Step Number One.
Justice is the best way of bringing about security and peace.
I noticed that one of my daughters
There'll be no security for Israel as long as this kind of oppression continues.
*Close my eyes tonight*
*My conscience by my side*
*It's hard to live this lie*
*When truth begins with light*
*So I won't sleep*
*I will stay awake*
*'Cause if I dream*
*Then they'll take their claim*
*Oh, I try, oh, I try to fight*
had tied a rope to a tree and around
*To stay awake tonight*
*Palestine, Palestine, Palestine*
*Always on my mind*
*Truth is where desire ends*
*A meaning to an end*
*I search myself all the time*
*To change what's in my mind*
*So I won't sleep*
*I will stay awake*
her neck to attempt to hang herself
I asked her "What are you doing?"
she said "how can we live outside
in the sun like this?
I don't want to live. I'd rather to die."
It was a miserable time for us
INDIA
imagine a mother seeing her own
child trying to kill herself.
Their mental condition ia awful!
They don't even sleep at night
they ask: "mommy! What's that?
Check if it's the army!"
3 days ago, the army came at night
and my children began screaming
from all directions
and the soldiers are yelling for my ID
AMERICA
in the middle of the dark
I tell them not to be fearful
and try to calm and console them
but I'm even more afraid than they are.
Here, you have Palestinians that have no input whatsoever in the policies that are made.
Jeff Halper Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition
They're not on the City Council.
They're not in any of the decision-making bodies on the West Bank or Gaza.
They're certainly not in the government.
The policies are made in order to ensure Israeli control.
Malcom X: *They attack all of us* *for the same reasons.*
So the law is designed in a way, in a very cynical way
to prevent Palestinians from building, and to keep them confined in little islands.
So that most of the land of the occupied territories is free for Israeli settlement.
These are armed settlements, about 190 of them,
Richard Falk U.N. Human Rights Fact-finding Commission
spread all over the West Bank.
Settlements are strategically built colonies of Israel
that are connected by a network of roads
which separate each Palestinian community from the next
and confine their ability to expand.
*All of us catch hell from the same enemy.*
They are often constructed around the best farmland and water resources.
They are surrounded by barbwire.
They are armed inside.
Settler residents are required to be armed by the Israeli military.
And they are defended from the outside, by the Israeli military itself.
The purpose of these settlements today,
number one,
is to continue the Israeli control and domination of the occupied territories.
Allegra Pacheco Israeli human rights lawyer
And the bottom line in all of this is to make Palestinians leave the country.
*We're all in the same bag,* *in the same boat.*
It's a very hard term, I know, but in a sense, it's a kind of ethnic cleansing.
The Israeli government and the Israeli army is not dealing with people as equal.
I mean, I think that that's the main problem that Palestinians are not considered,
Yael Stien B'tselem - Israeli Human Rights Group
or not perceived as equals to Israelis.
There is no specific discrimination against Palestinian Christians
Douglas Dicks Catholic Relief Services
as opposed to Palestinian Muslims. It's a shared suffering.
Christians see themselves very much a part of the Palestinian national movement.
Father Drew Christiansen United States Catholic Conference
*We suffer political oppression,* *economic exploitation,*
They identify with the Palestinian people as being their people.
Palestinian Christians have difficulty getting to churches on Sunday morning
if they wanted to come to Jerusalem,
because they don't have that permission, or that legal right,
according to the Israeli government, to come to Jerusalem, for worship.
This, I picked up in a home of a wonderful Christian family in Beit Jala.
Thomas Getman World Vision International - Jerusalem
And this is the kind of armor-piercing weaponry
that's being used against civilians, innocent civilians.
It's not easy to tell everything, you know
*and social degradation.*
it's easy to say some words
but you can't tell how do you feel
As every body I want my children to be happy
to live their right life as children
we just think about one thing
where can I put my children
while they are shooting?
They didn't want to go to school
because they are scared to come back
and there is no house
*All of them from the same enemy.*
they don't want to go without me
and their father because
they think they will lose us.
What about the children?
Why they are going to the streets?
They don't think let's go to swim
because I'm sure they
have no right to swim now
Why?
Because we are Palestinian
SOUTH AFRICA
Thanks God.
I don't imagine that there is a woman
in all of the world
can send her child
or her man, just go to die.
Do you think we are working all of this life
to give them something and to let them die in a minute
Can you?
The suffering, the persecution of Christians, they've been robbed of their heritage.
They've been robbed of their ancestral lands.
Mandela: *It is useless and point futile*
They've been robbed of their culture.
Some of the first converts to the teachings of Jesus were Palestinians.
Dr. William Baker Former Professor of History and Biblical Studies
So that's how long Christians have been in that land.
Their quarter, the Christian quarter has been really really decimated
and taken over and sliced up.
That has really bled the Christian communities,
Bishop Allen Bartlett Diocese of Washington
to where they're less than two percent of the population now.
The presence of a Christian community, within the Holy Land, Can you imagine?
*for us to continue talking peace and*
Where Jesus first stepped foot, will no longer be there.
I know both from the moral sense, and from the practical sense,
that the only way to stop the violence
Adam Keller Gush Shalom - Israeli Peace Group
is to treat the root cause from which the violence has started.
Root Cause of the Conflict
The number one myth that Westerners have about this conflict
Douglas Dicks Catholic Relief Services
is that Arabs and Jews have been fighting for thousands of years
and they're going to continue to fight.
*non-violence against a government whose*
This is really quite bizarre
because all it takes is a little bit of reading of history to find out that this just isn't true.
James Akins U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia - 1973 - 75
There is no congenital, historical enmity between the Arabs and the Jews.
The Jews flourished in the Arab world,
at a time when they were being persecuted throughout all of Europe.
At the end of the 19th Century, because of antisemitism in Europe,
Rashid Khalidi Historian - Columbia University
European Jews began to try and figure out a solution to the Jewish problem.
A very small minority adhered to Zionism,
*reply is only savage attacks on an*
the idea that the only place in which they could be safe is within a Jewish state.
Zionist Jews actually had a design on the land of Palestine,
the idea of creating a homeland for Jews in the land of Palestine.
And this is really the beginning of the conflict.
The mainstream Israeli Jewish society
believe, because that's the way they have been educated,
Ilan Pappe Israeli Historian - Haifa University
That Palestine was empty, had been empty
when the Jewish settlers came there.
Who paid the price when they settled there?
*unarmed and defenseless people.*
Is it really true, that Israel was a land without a people for a people without a land?
Phyllis Bennis Institute for Policy Studies
Palestine was not empty. It was a land populated by Arabs,
who had a high level of culture, a high level of education.
With farms and markets and towns and villages and roads
and commerce and lots of interaction with the rest of the world.
The population was overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly Arab.
Population Distribution in 1878: Total = 462,465
Muslim & Christian Arabs = 96.8 % Jews = 3.2 %
1882 - 1914 immigration of 65,000 European Jews
*This year will be a year of violence.*
Jewish immigration increased under British rule following World War I
when Britain implemented the Balfour Declaration, promising a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
This measure conflicted with Britain's previous promise of self-rule
for Arab inhabitants throughout the region.
Britain was basically extremely supportive of the Zionist movement.
It helped to establish all of the structures of a state.
At the same time, the Arabs of Palestine were denied the right of self-determination.
Population Distribution in 1922: Total = 757,182
Muslim & Christian Arabs = 87.6 % Jews = 11 %
The Palestinians saw a European power decide the future of a non-European territory
*This year coming, the keynote is violence* *and the slogan is attack!*
in flat disregard of both their presence and wishes.
In the 1920s, as land was being stripped away from local residents,
the first clashes between Palestinians and Jews began,
and would continue on for years to come.
1920 - 1931 108,825 additional Jews immigrants arrive
Until the early 1930s, the Jewish population of Palestine remained under 17 percent.
Population Distribution in 1931: Total = 1,035,154
Muslim & Christian Arabs = 81.6 % Jews = 16.9 %
Hitler's rise to power in Germany completely changed that.
In just five years,
*I am minded of young David.*
174,000 Jews flooded into Palestine, doubling their population.
1932 - 1936 174,000 additional Jews immigrants arrive
1937 - 1945 119,800 additional Jews immigrants arrive
As the world attempted to make amends for the horrors of Nazi genocidal policies,
efforts to make Palestine a Jewish homeland increased.
The Palestinians, they were not the Nazis.
They were not responsible for the Holocaust.
But they were the ones who paid the price.
In 1947, with the conflict spiraling out of control,
Britain decided to turn the problem of Palestine over to the United Nations.
HOLY LAND
The UN, under pressure, proposed to divide the land into two states:
An Arab state and a Jewish state.
Arabs were to be given 43 percent of the land,
despite the fact that they made up more than two thirds of the population
and owned over 92 percent of the land.
Jews were to be given 56 percent,
although they comprised only one third of the population
and owned less than eight percent of the total area.
Nevertheless, they were given not only most of the land, they were given the most fertile land.
Zionist leaders took advantage of their superior military preparation
*I am minded of young David,* *the shepherd boy.*
and immediately began occupying major Arab cities in Palestine.
I was among the people that conquered Acre
we were walking around
we entered a flat
Hava Keller Israeli Soldier 1948 War
there was a pair of shoes
of a small child, maybe 2 years old
they didn't have time to put on the shoes
so they left the shoes and they run away
they left everything
*Who stood up before the great warrior* *of the Philistines.*
we found out there was a systematic expulsion of Palestinians
and there was, as I said, there was an
Ilan Pappe Israeli Historian - Haifa University
ethnic cleansing operation taking place.
The most infamous campaign was the massacre at the village of Deir Yassin
where over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered.
Me, my children and my brother were hiding in this house.
My brother spent the night in order to keep us company
They threw bombs at our home and my children an I got wounded
when things calmed down the Jews broke the door down and took us out
*Young David having all the courage!*
they started to beat up my brother Musa severely
I gave a solder some money so that he wouldn't kill Musa
he took the money and said: you are kind-hearted. I will show you
what I will do to your brother
he threw him to the ground and my brother fell down like this
the soldier then pointed his gun to Musa's head and shot him five times
The majority of her family members and relatives were killed.
Which include her two sons and one stepson, her father and mother,
her two brothers, her grandparents, her uncle and aunt and their children
The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin drove fear and panic into the Palestinian population
*There must be someone somewhere.*
and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country.
As a result, maybe three hundred-or-so-thousand Palestinians had already been expelled
before the first Arab soldier entered Palestine.
Some of the neighboring Arab armies finally intervened after May 15, 1948,
when Israel officially announced its statehood.
Although there was a lot of war rhetoric on the arab side
very few Arab soldiers were sent into the battle field.
And actually for most part of the war
there was superiority on the side of the Israeli army.
Arab Soldiers Total: 68,000 Jewish Soldiers Total: 90,000
*There's got to be somebody* *somewhere that cares.*
The Israeli army cleansed much of the territory
Noam Chomsky Middle East analyst and author
and took over a large part of the designated Palestinian state.
The new state of Israel encompassed 78 percent of the total land of Palestine.
The West Bank came under Jordanian control
and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian dominion.
Although a truce was declared between Israel and the Arab states,
true peace remained elusive,
as over 700,000 Palestinian refugees languished in nearby camps,
often in sight of homes to which they still held the deeds and a deep desire to return.
*Young David took that one small stone*
Most of the deserted and evicted
Palestinians villages were erased from
upon the earth and were either turned into
Jewish settlements or into fertile land.
Of the 500 Palestinian villages, in what became Israel in 1948, 400 were destroyed.
These efforts to destroy the possibility of their returning home
were countered by the United Nations,
which continues to affirm their human right
enshrined in international law and morality, to return.
A Palestinian who had lost her land, or lost his land,
*and the faith of his God*
as the result of the creation of Israel in 1948,
cannot come back even for a visit.
I can go back to Israel as if I were returning
Phyllis Bennis Institute for Policy Studies
and claim immediate citizenship, having no historic tie, speaking no Hebrew,
knowing no one in the country, having no family who ever was there.
All that one needs is being Jewish, a religious group, like any other.
I am from Al-Quds (Jerusalem), I am a witness
I know the Arabs, the Arabs are very good
no problem until the Zionist movement start
*and slay the giant Goliath!*
my grandmother tell me
before the Zionist movement start
they baby sitting each others' kids
they borrow both from each other
like brothers
the idea of Zionism, you take away land
from the Palestinians, from the Arabs
started all the fighting
not Arabs the problem
not Jews the problem, not Judaism
*Cry out!*
not Muslim
only Zionism
The events of 1948 were a defining moment for the Middle East,
and from that point onward, created instability throughout the region.
Violent tensions continued and led to another war in 1967.
In that war, Israel occupied the remainder of historic Palestine,
what is known today as the West Bank and Gaza.
Another myth was that Israel was about to be pushed into the sea.
James Akins U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia - 1973 - 75
But I was working in the State Department at that time.
Any violence by a large population
Occupation 101 .
There was no question of Israel being pushed into the sea.
The question was just the rapidity of the totalness of the Israeli victory,
and the victory was crushing.
During the 1967 war, Israel displaced more than 400,000 Palestinians
half of whom were 1948 refugees, displaced for a second time, in less than two decades.
It became clear that the world was not going to address their plight.
Palestinians in Israel lived as third class citizens of a state whose core identity excluded them,
while those in the newly occupied territories and abroad continued as dispossessed refugees.
The United Nations passed resolution after resolution, affirming their rights.
Leaders of surrounding Arab nations verbally championed their cause but failed to take action.
Occupation 101 voices of the silenced majority
Finally, Palestinians took matters into their own hands.
There was a mass uprising, in Arabic, an "Intifada," "shaking off",
as people throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip rebelled.
The Israeli government adopted a strategy in the words of Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin,
of "might, power, and beatings"
which became known as the "Break the Bones Strategy."
Thousands of Palestinians were rounded up and imprisoned; since 1967, over 400,000.
Many were held without any charges whatsoever, under harsh conditions,
where physical abuse and torture were rampant.
During the first Intifada (Uprising) Dec 1987 to Dec 1993
1947 *A Pathe dispatcher shows the scene in Jerusalem*
Palestinian civilians killed = 1,100 250 of them were minors.
Jewish civilians killed = 114 5 of them were minors.
By the end of 1993, the first intifada began to wind down.
For the next seven years the Palestinians entered into a peace process with Israel.
Today, we bear witness to an extraordinary act
in one of history's defining dramas.
The Oslo process begins officially with the handshake on the White House lawn.
I think the main misconception is the years of Oslo were years of peace.
Amira Hass Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz
And in that period, when there was supposed to be a peace process underway,
*as Jewish and Arab mobs* *clashed in the center of the city.*
in fact, the daily lives of Palestinians, throughout the occupied territories
got worse and worse and worse.
The reality, and I saw it with my own eyes
that this was a new form of Israeli domination over Palestinians.
Economic and social rights, which are rights to health, education, work, etc.
Roger Normand Center for Economic and Social Rights
these areas are the areas that declined the worst for the majority of Palestinians,
almost all Palestinians.
All the economic indicators turned for the worse under Oslo, during this peace process.
Allegra Pacheco Israeli Human Rights Attorney
*It remains to be seen*
Moreover, Israeli settlements have continued to expand throughout that period.
Israeli settlements doubled in size and population.
The number of Jewish settlers increased from 200,000 to 400,000.
At the same time that Israeli control was expanding
the Palestinian authority was given the trappings of power
over the shrinking and noncontiguous Palestinian land
being held out as a future Palestinian state.
The challenges of governing, for the Palestine authority, are extraordinarily complex.
This is an authority that has very little authority.
It has virtually no power. Its power is derivative.
*whether a threatened full-scale war will materialize.*
It has the power that is given to it by Israel.
And, at any moment, any of those powers can be taken away.
It was very convenient to believe that there is no occupation, that the occupation is over.
How many aspects in your life somebody else determines for you?
This is occupation.
And Israel could determine, in the last ten years, could determine everything.
But everybody heard Arafat saying ten times, a hundred times,
that Ramallah is liberated and Gaza is liberated.
How can it be liberated if there is an army around it?
Amira Hass Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz
2004 *Soldiers take over homes and*
The Palestinian officials spoke very warmly about the situation, about the reality,
and they were hiding the fact,
that for the great majority of the population, these years were a disaster.
Those abuses, those violations of the public trust, had been happening regularly,
since the Oslo process began.
Palestinians who would protest against Oslo were labeled as terrorists.
The authority would not allow it, The PA.
Instead of having a real national authority, you had this corrupt institution,
whose main task, as far as Israel was concerned, was to police the Palestinians
and prevent them from resisting the continuing occupation.
*snipers don't hesitate to shoot at*
It has wasted a lot of the money the international community has given it.
Richard Falk U.N. Human Rights Fact-finding Commission
One sees the villas of leading Palestinian officials
and the poverty with which the Palestinian masses are living in.
The performance of the PLO in running the Palestinian authority
Rashid Khalidi Professor of Eastern Studies - Columbia U.
and its failures in negotiating with Israel,
have very much diminished support for the PLO leadership.
In January 2006, elections were held and the Palestinians voted PLO led government out of office
giving Hamas the required seats to form a majority government.
*anything that moves in front of them*
While Americans were being told by the media that a peace process was moving forward,
Israel continued its policy of home demolitions.
Since 1967, about 12,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished.
More than 740 of those homes were demolished during the Oslo Peace Process.
What you've got to have, and I think it's a fair demand on the part of Palestinians, that
Edward Walker U.S. Ambassador to Israel (1997 - 1999)
during the process of negotiation, you're not turning over more and more territory to Israeli settlers
and changing the character of the land that you're supposed to be negotiating about.
The notion that this is going to be a negotiable question
does not ring true to any Palestinian who lives up against one of these settlements;
*which includes journalists as well.*
which are continually expanding.
And what does it mean to expand? It means you steal more land.
Abdul Jawad is a Palestinian farmer whose family has lived there and tended the land for centuries.
The Israeli authorities have confiscated countless acres of their farmland.
Look at the beautiful trees
that used to be in this area.
Basically I had cultivated a
garden of heaven on earth.
And look, instead of this heaven what they have done
I wish you can just see what they've done here
is not because these people are more violent than any other.
As a journalist,
Jewish Settlement
Look how the trees continue to grow underneath the rocks
Isn't this a sin!
How can a human being that mentions God, do this?
This here is our food supply
we don't have anything important from anywhere.
And we wait for God's mercy! what else can we do?
These settlers live and prosper at the expense of the Palestinians,
Amira Hass Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz
and the Palestinians' well-being, present well-being and future well-being.
the more you look into the issue of Israel and Palestine,
And they don't see this horrible, disproportionate allocation of resources
Rabbi Rebecca Lillian Jewish Peace Forum
where Jewish settlers get water and electricity and gas, garbage pickup,
all kinds of things that their Palestinian neighbors don't get,
because of the military occupation.
That village over there isn't allowed to visit us
Look, do you see anyone outside?
Not even one Arab is outside!
If this car wasn't Israeli
it wouldn't allowed on the road
the more you sense that something is not quite right.
They lost the middle of the valley for a bypass road which is now an Israeli-only bypass road.
They can't drive on it to go to their homes.
The thing is extremely ugly to watch.
Noam Chomsky Middle East analyst and author
This is just day to day life. I'm not talking about the fighting here.
I mean, you walk through Hebron; you've got an Arab city;
100,000 Arabs; a couple hundred Jews;
and settlers walking around with rifles, you know?
Looking as if they own the place.
The settlers can go in a Palestinian village and burn the fields there,
Alison Weir Journalist & founder of "If Americans Knew"
destroy the house, hit Palestinians, even shoot Palestinians.
Several of the women have been beaten by settlers on different occasions.
In each of those cases, we were just being a nonviolent presence on the street
Kathleen Kamphoefner Christian Peacemaker Team
observing when settlers were acting out.
And they just attacked different ones of us.
From what we've told you, we only
mentioned a fraction of what happens
The Israeli government is not doing anything
to try and stop the settlers from violating Palestinian rights.
The images and the narration are out of synch,
From all the cases that settlers actually killed Palestinians, very few were accused of murder,
but then the president came and gave amnesty or shortened the punishment
that they received from the court.
And, in some cases, they cooperate with them. They guard there.
Yael Stien B'tselem - Israeli Human Rights Group
Like one case, the settlers went and took a house, Palestinian house,
and just said, "Well, now it's ours."
So the border police stood down there to protect them, because the Palestinians were angry;
so the border police just stood there and protected the settlers,
instead of, of course, arresting them, just saying it's illegal.
a little like a foreign film that has been awkwardly dubbed.
The bottom line is to make things so difficult for the Palestinians
Jeff Halper Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition
that anybody that wants a future for their children,
anybody that wants to get ahead in life,
anybody that wants a normal life, will leave.
Why would anyone who owns a heaven like this
abandon it and leave?
Where else would we go?
The Jabber family continues to live under constant harassment.
Most recently, Abdul Jawad broke his leg
*Damaged homes and roads destroyed*
while trying to protect his grandchildren from settler attacks.
Many of us feel hostage, that we're held hostage to the settlers.
Jeff Halper Professor of Anthropology - Ben Gurion U.
Because I think the vast majority of Israelis don't care about the occupied territories.
But we're held hostage to the settlers
that have enough political power within the Israeli political system,
that they can frustrate any attempt to get them out.
And as long as they're there, the Palestinians can't possibly make peace.
There are two kind of settlers basically
Adam Keller Gush Shalom - Israeli Peace Group
*and only skeletal remains of cars*
there are the ideological settlers
who feel that these territories
have been promised to the Jewish people by God.
And they feel that every place
which is mentioned in the Bible
they have not only the right but
a scared duty to come and to build
a modern Jewish settlement and if
Palestinians who live on that spot
have other ideas than they have
*even food and medicine are ever scarce.*
the right to break their resistance
by force or to call in the army.
And the other kind which are the majority
of the settlers are in fact ordinary
Israelis who came there simply because
the government was offering them
very cheap housing and when you go
to live there most of the money
you get as a government loan and
if you stay there ten years then
As you look into it for yourself,
you don't have to pay back the loan.
Only 10% of the West Bank is populated with Jewish settlers
yet they enjoy superior privileges at the expense of the native Palestinian population.
Well, I think the unpleasant and unavoidable comparison
Richard Falk U.N. Human Rights Fact-finding Commission
is with South Africa during the apartheid period.
And I must say that, having visited South Africa,
that they were much better off than the Palestinians living in the refugee camps.
We went to jail because it was impossible
to sit still while the obscenity of the apartheid system
It's an alarm, it's a sign, it's a signal
you begin to suspect that there is something extremely odd going on.
was being imposed on our people.
The United States is seen, quite correctly, as being the sole supporter of Israel,
James Akins Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
and that Israel would not be able to do what it is doing without American green light.
The US-Israel relationship is really unique on Capital Hill.
In my 22 years that I served there, there was never a moment
Paul Findley Former U.S. Congressman
when there was really a debate about US policy in the Middle East.
It was always, "What does Israel want?"
And almost always, Congress gave them exactly what they wanted without any debate,
The more you look into it, the more you begin to feel it is not just odd,
without any amendments being considered.
This type of policy exists as a result of a number of factors.
First of all, there is the lobby, the US lobby, for Israel:
AIPAC, American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
It has a multi-million dollar budget.
It has a highly professional group of people working on Capitol Hill.
They know the legislative process, they know the personalities,
and therefore, advance what's best for the state of Israel.
Congress seems to think that if you oppose what Israel wants
you'll be defeated in the next election.
it is deeply disturbing.
From 1978 - 2006 Pro-Israeli Political Action Committees
have contributed $43,724,035 to candidates who vote in Congress according ti AIPAC's recommendations.
Another factor is the fundamentalist Christian community.
Fundamentalists are often represented by the televangelists that are on TV.
They believe that a strong Israel is a part of God's plan.
They believe that the day will come when a battle will occur
on the plain of Armageddon in the Middle East.
There will be the forces of truth and righteousness on one side,
the force of evil on the other side.
And in that struggle, the Christian forces, led by the second coming of Jesus Christ, will prevail.
Our media portray Mid-East violence
All of the Jews will be either destroyed or converted instantly to Christianity.
It may sound, to the viewer, as a very far-out notion.
Paul Findley Former U.S. Congressman of 22 years
But, believe me, it is widely held and supported by millions of Americans,
whose doctrines really, in the ultimate, are hostile to the survival of Jews;
but nevertheless, the supporters of Israel see this vast body of American people
as being a great asset at this time, so they embrace them.
And Mr. Robertson, who said:
"I had a vision from God that we have to support Israel.
And no matter what happens, and what they do,
as though it's an inherent part of the culture and region,
this is the will of God because they're God's chosen people."
A couple of weeks later, he added:
"And that's when this ministry started really being blessed, when we made that commitment to Israel."
Not the commitment to God, or Jesus Christ's teachings,
but to Israel.
And we have come from all the nations of the Earth, to say to the people of Israel
Pat Robertson Founder and Chairman, The Christian Broadcasting Network
we're your friends, we're with you, and we believe that you're called by God to posses this land.
I, as a Christian, and a Christian pastor, object, not in my name
Dr. William Baker Former Professor of History and Biblical Studies
implying that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an ancient problem with little hope of solution.
and not in the name of over 115 to 120 million Christians,
do you dare say that we support injustice and deceit.
We do not.
The citizenry of this democratic society is systematically deprived of access to the real facts.
The American media play a major role in continuing US support for Israel,
through leaving out vast swaths of information.
It is the classic case of lying through omission.
Major statements by American diplomats, senators, military leaders, are going unreported.
Sentences are being removed from news stories.
Information is being manipulated.
*Israeli soldiers reign destruction*
Those are the three factors that work together on Capitol Hill
and lead to such total bias, such total absence of free speech, of open debate,
that is, I think, very destructive to our institutions, and to our best interests in world affairs.
So Israel, for example, does not abide at all by international law.
The entire occupation is illegal.
It's a violation, in particular, of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
By the rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention, you're not allowed to build settlements,
you're not allowed to build roads, you're not allowed to expropriate land,
you're not allowed to deport people, you're not allowed to restrict their freedom of movement,
you're not allowed to harm their economy, you're not allowed to make them unemployed and impoverished.
*in all areas of the West Bank.*
Everything that Israel does in the occupied territories, US taxpayers are paying for it.
Noam Chomsky Middle East analyst and author
The US gives the financing, it gives the military support.
Israel receives as much foreign economic assistance as all the countries combined in the world.
Richard Falk Professor of International Law - Princeton
The caribbean + Sub-Saharian Africa + Latin America
Total US Aid from 1949 - 1996 $ 62.5 Billion
Israel
Total US Aid from 1949 - 1996 $ 62.5 Billion
Population: Israel = 5.8 million
*The "City of Peace" is under siege*
Population: The caribbean + Sub-Saharian Africa + Latin America = 1.05 Billion
US Aid Dollars Spent per Person Israel = $ 10,775
US Aid Dollars Spent per Person The caribbean + Sub-Saharian Africa + Latin America = $ 59
Of the total aid the US gives annually Israel receives one third
There are currently 191 independently recognized countries in the world
In March 2003, the US government approved $10 Billion in aid for Israel
At the same time, it withheld a $3.5 Billion grant to upgrade the training of first responders
those who be the first to respond to a terrorist attack
Spent domestically that $10 Billion could buy health care coverage
for 4,202,251 children without proper coverage
*and the Church of Nativity is under*
Or pay for 1,445,573 American children to attend "Headstart" child development programs
to prepare them for school
Or simply help states offsets the costs of one of the worst fiscal crises in half a century
From 1949 to 2006 US Aid to Israel amounts to: $108 Billion
Today it averages $2 to $3 Billion per year
or $6 to $8 Million per day
Israel is currently the most extensive violator of UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS
The United States has used its Veto power more than 40 times in the U.N.
To defend Israel violations of international law.
And one of the reasons that the American commitment to Israel is so strong,
that something is wrong in the treatment of this population.
*fire by heavy military artillery*
that it's not only reflecting the impact of well-organized, pro-Israel lobbies,
but it also represents the views of the Pentagon, that sees Israel now as an indispensable strategic ally
Richard Falk U.N. Human Rights Fact-finding Commission
in the effort to control and exert influence throughout the region.
The main concern for the United States, like the world, is the oil producing regions.
Noam Chomsky Middle East analyst and author
And in order to control that, you need a way of doing it.
Desperate for a peace that would finally end occupation,
Palestinians again came to the negotiating table in 2000.
People think, look, Israel was very forthcoming.
*Hundreds of citizens are stuck inside*
It offered 95 percent of the West Bank of the occupied territories
to the Palestinians and they rejected it in violence.
The assumption of that 95 percent argument is that
getting 95 percent of the land gives you 95 percent sovereignty.
Jeff Halper Professor of Anthropology - Ben Gurion U.
A sovereign country.
But I think it's very useful to think in terms of a prison.
If you look at a blueprint of a prison, it looks like the prisoners own the place.
And the prisoners have 95 percent of the area.
They've got the living areas. They have the exercise yard.
*the church without any food or medicine.*
They have the cafeteria. They've got the work areas.
All the prison authorities have is five percent,
is the control.
The average Palestinian didn't think they were throwing anything away
Rabbi Arik Ascherman Rabbis for Human Rights
because there was nothing to throw away.
They had tuned out what Barak and Arafat were talking about,
because, on the ground, there were ongoing land expropriations,
tree uprooting, road building, unfair water allocation;
leaving many Palestinian families, in the summer and fall, with two hours of running water a week,
These mis-perceptions come from the fact that we're only hearing a fraction of the story.
when next door you have a settlement with a swimming pool and green lawns.
So what do you expect people to think?
And it was that pressure, that sense of being squeezed
Phyllis Bennis Institute for Policy Studies
that finally exploded in September of 2000, in what became The Second Intifada.
What is called "The Second Intifada" is essentially a mobilization of resistance
against this structure of occupation and oppression.
Israel, from the very beginning of these demonstrations, had indeed relied on excessive force.
Richard Falk U.N. Human Rights Fact-finding Commission
They had used live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators,
You are about to witness images and testimony, largely hidden from mainstream America.
had inflicted several deaths...
...and hundreds of causalities in the opening days of the Intifada.
In the first 10 days of the uprising alone
The Israeli security forces killed 74 Palestinians and injured nearly 3000.
Sometimes, the Israelis are speaking about rubber bullets they used.
By the way, it's not rubber. It's steel coated with rubber.
This bullet, it killed many of the kids who are demonstrating
Red Crescent Hospital
and who sometimes while they are throwing stones.
As this case, I'll show you what happened.
This place draws many people, whether they're Jewish, Muslim, or Christian.
He is a 14-year-old from Khan Yunis.
He was shot with one like this, and it entered here,
and he died.
A lot of the deaths have been children, and we do have some documentary evidence
Sharon Burke Amnesty International
that security forces are firing on crowds of children.
The soldiers weren't at risk. They're heavily armored.
Thomas Getman World Vision International - Jerusalem
They have all this high-powered weaponry.
And no child with a stone is going to be a risk to them.
Kathleen Kamphoefner Christian Peacemaker Team
Most of the Palestinian abuses involve shooting at settlements,
Peter Boukaert Human Rights Watch
ambushes on settler cars, and, obviously, the suicide bombings inside Israel.
There are some risks to Israeli life. Many Israelis have been killed.
When there was this horrible suicide bombing, at the pizza place in Jerusalem,
I went to visit some of the kids who survived that blast, in the hospital.
Rabbi Rebecca Lillian Jewish Peace Forum
It was horrible. It was horrible to see what happened to these children.
You see the blood, you see the agony of the family. This is what the world sees.
But one cannot take it out of the general context.
This is a holy place to significant numbers of us, in the world.
And the context is of an Israeli occupation, which is...
Amira Hass Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz
It seems not to be so brutal, but it's very brutal.
It really makes people's lives unbearable.
The use of suicide bombers is an act of desperation.
Richard Falk U.N. Human Rights Fact-finding Commission
It's the weapons of the weak.
Israel doesn't do it. Never.
Hava Keller Committee for Women Political Prisoners
Because it has airplanes and helicopters.
We all have an interest in sort of seeing what is this land, and what's the situation here.
Why should they send anybody to make suicide?
I think we have to change our conception of what Israel is.
Israel likes to present itself as this little country surrounded by a sea of hostile Arabs,
and we just want peace, and they're violent.
Israel is the fifth largest nuclear power in the world.
It's got between two and three hundred nuclear warheads.
So the reality is that Israel is a regional super power.
For the first time, the resistance to that occupation had, to a very small extent, an armed component.
There was nothing close to equal force.
Israeli Tanks 3930 Palestinian Tanks 0
And, once you come, if you open your eyes at all,
Israeli F-16 Jets 362 Palestinian F-16 Jets 0
Israeli F-16 Jets 362 The largest fleet in any country in the world behind the US
At every stage, they had used grossly excessive force
against a completely defenseless civilian population.
The victims have been overwhelmingly Palestinian civilians.
Sharon Burke Amnesty International
Overwhelmingly.
Not armed groups or armed individuals.
From September 2000 to February 2007:
Palestinians killed by Israelis: 4,009 Israelis killed by Palestinians: 1,021
*Where is the outcry?*
you can't miss the problems and the patterns that are here.
More than 935 children were killed during the current conflict:
816 Palestinian 119 Israeli
Israel has established all of these checkpoints within the West Bank,
which require Palestinians to wait hours and hours to go very short distances.
Just the freedom of movement, that's something that Palestinians are denied on a daily basis.
Douglas Dicks Catholic Relief Services
The access to Jerusalem, the access to health care,
the access to hospitals, clinics, and schools.
We're talking about three million people who've had the freedom of movement totally stopped.
It's a violation of international law.
I think it's hard to understand what occupation is.
That the right to freedom of movement is a fundamental right in the Declaration of Human Rights.
Sharon Burke Amnesty International
What you have is young Israeli conscripts who look bored.
These guys are sitting out there, and they're watching thousands of Palestinians go by.
They have *carte blanche* to pull anyone over and harass them, for whatever reason.
They can detain them for hours.
And it's a dangerous situation.
The main population that are being affected by Israeli policies is the civilian population,
the population that is not being involved in any attacks against the Israelis, civilians or the army.
During this time of closure, unfortunately, there have been lots of bombings, lots of attacks.
I think it's a foreign concept for many Americans; what it's like to live under military occupation.
The closure is not meant to deter suicide bombings.
It's meant to punish and put pressure on three million civilians.
People do not earn any more
because the majority of the Palestinians used to work in Israel.
And the majority of the Palestinian economy was based on the income of people
who were working inside Israel.
Now they cannot go into Israel,
so tens of thousands of families just lose the source of income that they had.
According to World Bank Estimates:
Unemployment is now reaching 53% of the population 75% of Palestinians live in poverty (less than $2 a day)
The definition of an occupation is when a foreign army
The education system is also affected by that.
Students cannot go to the university.
Birzeit University was subject to army closures for something like 18 times.
The longest closure was during The First Intifada.
For five years, we could not set foot on campus.
Dr. Albert Aghazarian Bir Zeit University
During this period, we organized what the Israeli army called
"cells of illegal education".
We were teaching in apartments, in rented flats,
in churches, in mosques, in gardens, in cars.
occupies your land physically and controls your life.
And we kept our infrastructure, even this attempt,
to minimize the damage and to keep the university going.
They attempted to crush it.
I went to college in the States and I found it very different.
Bir Zeit University Students
Your biggest worry in the States,
is if I'm going to pass in class or, "Oh, I hope I have a lot of friends."
Over here, it's totally different.
You have to worry, "Oh, my God, would I be able to get to school?
Is there going to be a checkpoint? Is there going to be a demonstration?
In addition, Palestinians under occupation,
Am I going to get shot at? Is there going to be tear gas?"
So, it's like, completely different.
And here, it's just like you don't know if you're going to live
or you're going to die, you know?
It's... You're going to school as if you're going to fight a war.
You don't find a tank in the middle of the road on your way to college.
Just the other day, there were two tanks and an army Jeep.
And they're standing there checking your passport, and, you know,
your student visa and all this stuff.
And it's just like, "We want to get to school. We want an education.
Allegra Pacheco Israeli human rights lawyer
We're humans, and we have a right to our education.
In places like the United States, people cannot understand what's going on,
because simply, the experience is beyond their frame of reference.
I can't study at night because my bedroom light is going to be on,
and it's across the street from a settlement.
They shot at me. I was reading my biology book.
I was studying for my mid-term.
And my mom and dad are like, "No, get out of the room,"
because they started shooting.
I was like, "No, Mom, I want to get an "A" in the class. Let me study."
- and this why there's so much struggle against the occupation -
So I'm sitting there and all of the sudden,
you hear something on my bedroom window.
And I was just like, "Okay, maybe I should go downstairs."
I couldn't study for my test.
It's like... I tell my American friends:
"It's like, do you understand what I'm going through?"
The amazing thing is not that you have cases of suicide in students.
The amazing thing is the bulk of them, they try to carry on in the middle of this mess,
as if life is normal, as if they want to celebrate their graduation,
and they want to build their life, and they want to carry on.
they're not citizens. They don't have rights.
That's the other part of the coin.
The root problem here is occupation. Everything else emanates from there.
The most severe problem is people who need medical care.
We've documented numerous cases, cases where people have died.
In fact, I believe that one of the last cases we documented was a woman who was in labor,
who was not allowed to get to the hospital, and she and the baby both died.
If people like that, people who are really sick and really need to go to hospitals, cannot do that.
So I think you can imagine what happens to regular people that just want to go to work,
just want to go to do some shopping, or even just visit friends.
It's like living in a prison, a gigantic prison.
They don't have civil rights. They're under a military rule.
Haaretz, the intellectual newspaper in Israel,
ran a whole, like a four-page magazine article on the refugee issue.
It had a picture of Tel Aviv University now
and what was there before Tel Aviv University, a Palestinian village.
And those refugees are in Gaza.
Gaza is one place that's seen hell
No lie, I swear Gaza is even worse
than what we've experienced!
Gaza is much worse!
I think that Gaza is a main problem.
IRELAND
This is a particular kind of occupation, that's both military and settler occupation.
There are lots of violations that you will not see in the West Bank, you will see in Gaza.
We find it hard to monitor the human rights situation in Gaza
because the Israeli army do not let us in.
Palestinians in Gaza had been under Israeli military control for over 38 years,
where 1.3 million Palestinians were crowded together to make room for 8,000 Israeli settlers.
In August of 2005,
Israel dismantled its settlements and military posts inside Gaza and relocated its settlers.
The media, along with Israeli politicians, portrayed this as an unprecedented sacrifice.
In reality, it was simply a matter of Israel finally complying with international law.
The evacuation of settlers from Gaza constituted only 2% of the entire Israel settler population.
Phyllis Bennis Institute for Policy Studies
Each illegal settler was promised an estimated $227,000 to relocate
A total cost of $2.2 Billion an expense Israel has asked the US to pay for.
Although Israel's presence inside Gaza is no longer visible,
Israel will still retain ultimate control over Gaza's borders,
coastal waters, and air space, creating a virtual prison.
The refugee camps, even if there was no conflict with Israel, are just humanly horrible.
They're so overcrowded.
And you have 14 to 25 people living in a space.
There's no place for children to be. There are no streets.
They're little alleys. No trees. Nothing.
Bishop Allen Bartlett Diocese of Washington
Many generations of Palestinians have grown up and continue to live in refugee camps throughout the region.
In 1948, they numbered over 750,000
Today, those who continue to live in refugee camps number 4,255,120
Could you live here? Could you?
You couldn't because the conditions are horrible
and you'd be afraid whenever the missiles strike
and the walls begin to crack!
The shelling struck the window
everything broke and got burnt.
Why did they break my things
Settlements are areas of Palestinian land which are selected,
and break my toys?
I lost a lot of my stuff.
We threw it all in the garbage
We also got rid of our clothes
We beg from our neighbors for clothing to wear.
The food we eat smells like gas
We don't want to get rid of our clothes
even though they smell like gas
Only if you would smell our clothing!
Let the Israelis come and smell our clothes
and whatever is there, whether it's roads, or whether it's villages, or homes,
and see our home.
Whenever we go to take a shower
or do anything at home
the smell of gas suffocates us to death!
Come and look at my clothes.
Smell them. It's gas.
What can I do?
I didn't even get to enjoy the
sunglasses that my dad gave me
even the bracelets and necklace
they are bulldozed, and then a new town is built on the hilltop.
that my mom gave me.
I didn't even get to enjoy my rings.
How am I supposed to enjoy all of my belongings?
How? Enjoy our things with what?
Our children can't even live
We don't even know how to live.
We live in constant fear.
We live in fear and terror!
On my way to school I hear gun shots.
I get so scared from the shooting
One very good friend is Rodina Jabber.
I begin to tremble all over.
This is what has been fired on this neighborhood.
This is a civilian neighborhood. There are no soldiers here.
Thomas Getman Director, World Vision Jerusalem
There are no military installations here.
This is strictly harassment, to get these people to move away from the border,
so that the Israeli tanks can move at will.
The want these people cleansed from this area. It's that simple.
And it's a way to get people to be humiliated and destitute again.
In Gaza, you can see also the extent of house demolitions,
She and her husband, Ata, have landed in a rural valley near here called the Ba'a.
Yael Stien B'tselem - Israeli Human Rights Group
much more extensive than in the West Bank.
Whole neighborhoods have been demolished.
Hundreds of people do not have any houses any more,
because they are next to settlements or next to the border,
which is, of course, a clear violation of humanitarian law.
People have no chance to get their personal items out.
They have no chance to call for help.
And this is far away from most media outlets.
You are amongst the very few journalists who have even seen this.
And it's pretty clear these settlements want this land.
European or American journalists who have even been here.
Because people are afraid to come or it's too hard to come.
One of the things we were told in Gaza by a very respected Palestinian psychologist
who had just completed a study of a thousand Palestinian children,
was that they had discovered that many of these Palestinian children
no longer had a will to live,
that they were so dehumanized and so affected
by seeing their fathers, particularly, beaten by Israeli defense forces,
that the psychological condition is one of the dimensions of the conflict
that is not widely understood.
It's some of the best agricultural land around here.
Palestinians called for an international observer force that would stop the violence,
but this action was blocked by Israel.
Finally, a group of Palestinian and Israeli human rights activists, together
created the International Solidarity Movement,
which has brought people from around the world, of all ages and backgrounds,
to provide a nonviolent, international presence, to try to fill this need.
Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American student,
went to Gaza to join in these efforts, sending back e-mails to her parents.
"I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now,
and I still have very few words to describe what I see.
The greatest enemy of knowledge in not ignorance . .
The greatest enemy of knowledge in not ignorance it is the illusion of knowledge. .
The greatest enemy of knowledge in not ignorance it is the illusion of knowledge. Stephen Hawking