The Strip's borders were originally defined by the armistice lines between Egypt and Israel after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which followed the dissolution of the British mandate of Palestine. It was occupied by Egypt until it was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Around 1.37 million Palestinians and about 8,000 Israelis live in the Gaza Strip. The majority of the Palestinians are direct descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Egypt was there from 1948 until 1967 when Israel took over the territory. So, to be clear, the settlers came in and took land from the existing Palestinian residents.
Alright, that's the background.
While reading the latest world news on the Internet, I come across a very good comment, one which verbalizes quite effectively the exact same questions and concerns I have felt while observing the medias' presentation of the current situation in Gaza over the last few days.
Here it is:
The past week, the media has been full of close-ups of grieving Israeli settlers mourning the loss of their government-built illegal homes. The coverage is almost exclusively from the point of view of the settlers, even though they have stolen the land their houses were built upon, even though the settlements are illegal under international law, even though their Palestinian neighbours live in shacks that can be bulldozed at a moment's notice by the IDF, even though they are being well-paid to "give up" the houses, even though they will be resettled in new illegal homes on the West Bank, and even though the whole thing is being orchestrated to portray Ariel Sharon as a man of peace.
Which has to make you wonder why the Israelis are always being favoured in the press and why the Israelis are always being supported by the US.
Courtesy: Signs of the Times
Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Israel,
Media, Palestine,Politics, Zionist
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