In 1995 the Guardian Education supplement ran an article by Jop Glanville ‘A taste of freedom’, which looked at Israeli troops leaving from towns on the West Bank, an area which they had occupied by force since 1967. At this time the figures quoted by Jop Glanville incidated that the number of UN registered refugees by areas were:
| Total West Bank |
504,070 |
| Gaza |
643,600 |
| Lebanon |
338,290 |
| Jordan |
1,193,539 |
| Syria |
327,288 |
|
2,502,717 |
In 2010 the figures were:
almost a 100% increase in Palestinian refugees.
So what is the situation today on the West Bank? Well today’s figures, nearly 22 years later, make harrowing reading:
| Total West Bank |
779,000 |
| Gaza |
1,100,000 |
| Lebanon |
425,000 |
| Jordan |
1,900,000 |
| Syria |
427,000 |
|
3,852,000 |
According to the IRIN, ‘Such is the scale and uniqueness of the Palestinian refugee problem that the UN has one agency for Palestinian refugees in the Levant countries and another for all other refugees across the world’…
But what is worse, is that systematically Israel is closing down the West Bank to Palestinians, there is no ‘taste of freedom’ as Jo Glanville wrote about in 1995; in February 2017, Israel authorised 3,000 more settler homes in the West Bank. According to Aljazeera, Israel, in practice, has confiscated Palestinian since its military occupation of the West Bank – including Jerusalem – and the Gaza Strip which started as a result of the 1967 Middle East war.
The following picture tells a more bleak picture of what Israel is doing:
(Palestine Awareness Coalition)
In effect it is systematically depopulating and land-grabbing the West Bank – it is further isolating Palestinians from other parts of the world, an example being the law passed by the Israeli government on March 6th, which gives Israeli officials authority to deny entry to foreign nationals who have called for, or belong to organisation which have called for a boycott of Israel or Israeli settlements.
Palestinians are a race without a proper home, under continuous threat, and the world needs to take notice and help resolve this problem, which was created by the Western powers walking away from their responsibilities to both Palestinians and Israelis!
Further reading:
- Israel/Palestine Events of 2016 – Human Rights Watch
- Palestine Refugees – UNRWA
- The United Nations and Palestinian Refugees
So George Osborne is to become the Editor (for two days a month at a unknown salary, which I am sure is not a pittance)which if this was his only role would not raise an eyebrow from anyone; however he is a sitting MP with responsibilities to his constituents (especially in these dire times with Brexit on the horizon – we are just waiting for the ‘HARD’ date), so is there a conflict of interest?
It is interesting to read this article, as it reflects the things that I have been writing and talking about over the last 20 years – of course I have been writing about Big Brother and the loss of civil liberties in part, and this is now encompassed in the world wide web and how government is using it to monitor and control what we do, see and hear. I make no bones about the fact that I distrust government in its attitude and continued use of phrases about we need CCTV to control terrorism, for your protection etc. That we don’t need personal encryption, as if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, and we won’t maintain personal data longer ‘that is necessary’. There ares lots of more glib phrases, but they all come down to government control, and you losing your civil liberties 