Today, April 10, our campus celebrates "Israel Day." Amidst the joy and rapture savored during this day, a sentiment equal in magnitude but opposite in nature tends to be neglected.
To Jews and Israelis, Israel is the epitome of pride, valor and statehood. Yet, for Palestinians, Israel Day serves as a reminder of half century of statelessness, occupation, displacement and dispossession. How Israel came into existence, and how the Jewish people formed a majority in historical Palestine, are facts that are often and purposely overlooked -- for good reason, since the truth is not as legendary as the myth.
Over the past century, the demographic balance between Jews and Palestinians in the area which now constitutes Israel and the occupied territories has shifted significantly. The percentage of Palestinian presence fell from 95 percent in the early 1900s to 40 percent today. Increased Jewish immigration accounts for a portion of this demographic change. Nonetheless, the displacement of the Palestinian people amounts to a significant share of this shift.
On April 9, 1948, 54 years from yesterday, and one month prior to Israel's Declaration of Independence, the Irgun and Stern groups attacked the Palestinian village Deir Yassin and massacred its inhabitants. Many Palestinians from other villages fled their homes. Some feared similar future attacks, while others were forced out.
They believed that this wave of violence was soon to end, and expected to return to their homes soon after. Unfortunately, similar to the destiny of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars, they were -- and still are -- denied of their rights to return to their homes.
Since 1948, 418 Palestinian villages such as Deir Yassin have "disappeared" with the creation of Israel. Although the villages' names no longer exist on today's maps, they will always have a bittersweet nostalgia in the hearts of the 4 million refugees.
To this very day, Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip continue to be demolished to make way for the construction of roads and settlements built exclusively for Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. Palestinians in Jerusalem continue to be denied residence and thus forced out of the city: yet another strategy to artificially decrease the population of Palestinian Arabs. The Israeli government and leadership has had and continues to have a policy of systematically driving out the indigenous Palestinians in order to implement or maintain a synthetic Jewish majority.
Today, Palestinians are living under one of the worst phases of the brutal military occupation of their lands at the hands of the Israeli army. Villages across the West Bank have been re-reoccupied. Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter jets, Merkava tanks and thousands of soldiers are terrorizing the Palestinian population. Stories of massacres of Palestinians have emerged from Ramallah, Jenin and Nablus. The priests in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, along with 200 other Palestinian men, women and children seeking refuge speak with fear of the threatening Israeli troops and tanks that currently surround that church.
Palestinians have been made prisoners in their own homes by days-long curfews imposed on them by the Israeli government. They are denied basic medical services, since the Israeli army is forcing even ambulances to abide by the curfew. Those ambulances attempting to rescue the injured have been shot at by Israeli soldiers resulting in the deaths of doctors and nurses.
Palestinians are dying due to otherwise easily treatable medical complications such as bleeding, childbirth and even choking. These actions are all in clear breach of a long list of various human rights law. Moreover, it is in violation of the most basic threads of humanity that should bind all human beings, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity.
One can hope that the harsh realities of today will be transcended, giving way to a brighter future. For the well-being of the lives of both peoples, the Palestinians and the Israelis, a viable and peaceful solution mush be agreed upon and abided by on both sides of the green line.
The people of Palestine desire an end to the humiliation and deadly occupation. They desire to experience the joy and rapture savored by celebrating "Palestine Day."
Until that day, days like today are particularly painful for Palestinians because they serve as a reminder -- and even worse -- a celebration, of the painful past, the painful present and possibly an even more painful future.
"The old will die, and the young will forget." This was David Ben Gurion's, the first prime minister of Israel, solution to the Palestinian refugee issue.
No, let us assure Mr. Ben Gurion and whoever deems his proposition viable, that we, the stateless people of Palestine, that we, the occupied in Palestine, that we, the refugees of Palestine, and that we, the next generation of Palestine, will not and cannot ever forget.
Michel Khoury is a sophomore Politics, Philosophy, and Economics major from Bethlehem, West Bank.
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