When the point scoring dies down there’s no question that since the British colonial occupiers of Palestine decided to enable a Jewish State in that land that it has been a disaster for the resident Palestinians.
In 1948 the United Nations declared the new State of Israel under defined boundaries stimulated by the horrors of the holocaust in Europe. The new State of Israel defeated attacks from neighbouring Arab states and then set about forcing the removal of the existing non-Jewish Palestinians.
In the years since, Israel has expanded its borders to occupy large tracts of Palestinian lands not originally designated as Israel by the UN agreement. They have imposed discriminatory practices, built large ‘settlements’, demolished the houses of locals, imprisoned and killed many, including innocent women and children. They have denied the democratic rights of inhabitants of the occupied territories while their neighbours, Jewish ‘settlers’, get to vote in Israeli elections and drive on roads designated as out of bounds for Palestinians.
Israel must accept responsibility for rectifying the situation they have created just as Australia must accept responsibility for the impact of colonisation on the original inhabitants of this country.
Jenny Bush, Wilsons Creek
Read the letter in the Echo.