Info on the Middle East Crisis by by Jim DeWall

 

The October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel at an Israeli music festival that killed 1,200 Israelis and numerous Americans was a horrible occurrence that led to the months-long Israeli Hamas war. Without a clear understanding of why this occurred, most people lay the blame solely on the Hamas Islamic Jihad terrorists. Even though the Hamas terrorists are clearly to blame for this atrocity, it is smart to be aware of what led up to it. Israel and Palestine were created in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II. The Palestinian people settled in the West Bank, adjacent to Israel. Today, there are 2.75 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza, which is 58 miles west of the West Bank and on the Mediterranean.

   Israel made the decision in the 1970s to begin to establish settlements in the West Bank, seizing and occupying land in Palestinian territory. By 1980, there were just a few thousand Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. By 1990, that number had grown to 90,000, by the year 2000 to 200,000, by the year 2010 to 300,000 and by the year 2020 to 400,000. Today, there are approximately 650,000 Israeli citizens who live in the West Bank on land taken from the Palestinians. There are 130 settlements or towns in the West Bank housing all the Israeli occupiers. People have been encouraged to move to the West Bank settlements by the Israeli government, which gives a tax incentive to its citizens to move there. The settlers have seized privately held Palestinian land and evicted the Palestinian residents who had been living there. The Israeli government has built freeways throughout the West Bank to connect the settlements, roadways which can only be driven on by vehicles with Israeli license plates. Many Palestinian farmers can't access their own farmland because the Israeli freeway divides the farm in half and the farmers can't cross the freeway.

 For years, the animosity between the two peoples has led to racial hatred and constant confrontations. Many Israeli settlers, in order to expand their settlements, have seized more land and cut down Palestinian olive orchards, the only source of income for many Palestinian farmers. Over 9,000 olive trees have been cut down in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers since August of 2020, according to the International Red Cross, trees that take decades to grow. Since 2013, there have been 45 resolutions adopted in the United Nations condemning the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Almost every nation in the world has approved these resolutions, with the exception of Israel, the United States and a few other nations. The United States has abstained on or vetoed all 45 resolutions in the Security Council or the General Assembly, always siding with Israel. It is not hard to understand why the 4.75 million Palestinians and the Palestinian Hamas terrorists hate the Israelis. These are some of the reasons for the terrible strife in the Middle East and why the Israeli Hamas war began.

Jim DeWall is a writer from Colorado.