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It's disgraceful and an abomination...and illegal to boot

Whatever one might have read or seen on TV about the situation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, cannot prepare one for the reality of seeing for one self what is happening on the ground. The interminable lines and waiting at border-crossings, the separate roads for Palestinians and Israels (apartheid at its best!) the demolitions of houses [see here and here] and what is thrown up by the Israelis, in the most calculated and deliberate way, to make life difficult and irritating for Palestinians. A few things not widely reported:

  • making telephone calls into the West Bank, even to a large town like Ramallah, can be difficult, if not downright impossible
  • traffic lights at intersections configured so that in the direction Israelis are travelling the lights are green far longer than for Palestinians driving in the direction they do. Or roundabouts of Israeli and Palestinian roads where the roundabout is so designed to give Israeli drivers preference
  • at a demonstration at Bil'in the IDF using water-cannon to disperse the crowd - but using raw sewage instead of water in those cannons.
For a country which claims to be a democracy and a "light unto the nations" nothing could be further from the truth. The approach of the Israelis in the way they treat the Palestinians is scandalous, an abomination, disgraceful and disgusting.......and in most instances totally and utterly and unarguably against international and humanitarian law. All right-minded and decent people need to roundly condemn Israel.

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