The Root Cause of the Conflict is the Israeli Occupation
For the last 16 years, Gaza has been under siege by Israel turning the area into an open air prison. During those 16 years, Israel waged unprovoked five full military scale wars on Gaza killing thousands, injuring and displacing tens of thousands, killing the hopes of any good future for the Gaza residence, especially the youth.
In the last year, the far-right coalition government of Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu tightened the grip on Gaza, allowing little shipment of food and essentials into the area, cutting electricity supply and destroying the water desolation plant.
In the West Bank Netanyahu government had increased the settlements expansion, invading major cities committing massacres in the cities of Jenin, Nablus, Hebron and others, confiscating Palestinian land and demolition homes, ethnically cleansed 25 families in Masafer Yatta,allowing Jewish settlers to attack Palestinian villages and storming the Al-Aqsa mosque preventing worshipers from praying and limiting the Christian worshipers who can visit the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Israeli military and settlers have killed over 280 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank since the January this year.
Those actions and others for the last 56 years of occupations by Israel were the recipes for today’s Palestinian resistance forces attack on Israel from Gaza as a self defense measures. The attack caught Israel and the Biden Administration by “surprise”, as if the resistance forces are obligated to tell them of the plan before it was carried on. Netanyahu declared a state of war and vowed to bring peace to all citizens of Israel! So far over 370 Palestinian civilians have been indiscriminately killed and close to 2200 injured in Gaza and scores became homeless. According to Israeli sources, around 600 Israelis have been killed and almost 2500 injured. We do not condone any civilian killings; however, Israel bears the full responsibility of the killings of all civilians on both sides, by maintaining 56 years of occupation of Palestinian land, expanding the illegal settlements and increasing the settlers to about 800 thousand in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, killing all prospects of peaceful settlement to the crises.
If Israel wants to have peace with the Palestinians and end these cycles of wars, it must withdraw from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, allowing the Palestinians to have their own state in the West Bank, Gaza strip with East Jerusalem its Capital as signed on it by all members of the United Nations Security Council (including the United States) resolutions 242 and 338 like all other people of the world.
The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves, and to fight the occupation with all means available as stated in the UN charter that Israel accepted when it became a member. We salute the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and its resistance.
End the Israeli occupation!
