Here're the facts:
- In 1948 Britain proposed the creation of Jewish state of Israel within the borders of Palestine, despite the fact that the population living in the region were 95% Arab
- Before the 1948 British proposal of Israel. Several Jewish zionist extremist groups such as the Lehi, Irgun and Hanagah, carried out assasinations, bomb attacks, and various other acts of terrorism against the British and Arabs. Their intention was to evict the British authority out of Palestine through terror, thus allowing the creation of Israel.
Lehi, Irgun and Hanagah were all universally recognized as dangerous extremist terrorist groups. Today, Lehi founders and members are remembered and honored as Israeli national heroes
- Palestine has been land and homes to the Palestinian arabs for approximately 1,700 years since the Jewish Diaspora in 70 C.E
- Since the UN agreement of the Israeli borders in 1949, Israel has expanded its territory illegitimately by as much as 40% through several military campaigns in Palestine
- Today, there are approximately 7 million registered and unregistered Palestinian refugees living in refugee camps scattered around in the remanants of former Palestine: Gaza strip, West Bank, Golan Heights, and neighbouring states such as Syria and Lebanon. Of those, 850,000 Palestinian refugees are created by what UN recognized as ethnic cleansing by the Israeli forces.
More than 63% of these 7 million refugees have no running electricity, running water, housing or education. Their only source of food is supplied regularily by UN and various other humantarian groups
- (Taken from the UN website): [A study on the demography of Israel] shows that 78% of Israelis are living in 14 percent of Israel and that the remaining 86% of the land in Israel is mostly land that belongs to the refugees on which 22% of the Israelis live. 20% [of the Israeli population] lives in city centers, which are mostly Palestinian such as, Beer Al Saba', Ashdod, Majdal, Asqalan, Nazareth, Haifa, Acre, Tiberias and Safad. As for the remaining 20%, they live in Kibbutzes and Moshavs.
- (Taken from Amnesty International): More than 2650 Palestinian houses have been destroyed since 1987 by Israel in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, on the pretext of not having building permission. Further thousands of acres owned by Palestinians have been confiscated to build settlements in the occupied territories in contraventions to the 4th Geneva convention Article 49 stating that the "Occupying Power shall not transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Thank you very much guys, but I have studied the middle east conflict for the entire semister for my undergrad history course and I don't need anymore facts.
As for the current rocket attacks in Gaza, I recommend you read this:
(Taken from the Canadian Justice and Peace in the Middle East website): Since 2001, Palestinian militants have been launching small rockets – typically referred to as “Qassam Rockets” – from Gaza toward nearby Israeli population centers, notably Sderot and Ashkelon.
As of April 27, 2008, a total of 13 Israelis have been killed by Qassam rockets since the attacks started in 2001.1 As indicated in the graphs at the right, for every Israeli killed by Qassam rockets, Israel has killed about 100 Palestinians through various means.
For the full report,
http://www.cjpme.ca/documents/35 En Qassam Rocket Attacks v.1.pdf