5/7/23

By Aditi Jha

The Israel-Palestine conflict continues to escalate as Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians on Saturday. For context, the conflict is ongoing over an area of land which both Palestinians and Israelis claim. There have been several attempted agreements to split the land into two countries, but they have always been rejected by Palestinians. The conflict started around World War II, when Jews fleeing Europe and the Nazi regime decided to create a Jewish state in a territory that was mostly populated by Arabs. The Arabs refused, because they perceived the land as theirs. The United Nations tried to give each group part of it, but that didn't work out. This resulted in several wars between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries over the land. The two most important wars took place in 1948 and in 1967. The one in 1967 gave Israel control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which are largely populated by Palestinians. Right now, the West Bank is controlled by the Palestinian Authority but Israeli troops enforce security restrictions there to limit Palestinian activity and Israeli settlers are making illegal communities in the area. Gaza doesn't have ground troop occupation but it is under blockade. The reason why Israelis believe that the land belongs to them is because they believe it is their ancestral homeland. This movement is called Zionism. Vox magazine says that Zionists believe the land belongs to them "the same way the French people deserve France or the Chinese people should have China." The main reason that Jews immigrated to the territory of Israel/Palestine is because of the belief that Jews needed a country of their own, and by the time Hitler came to power in Germany, the number of Jews in the Israel/Palestine territory increased eightfold. However, Arabs and Palestinians believe Zionism is a form of discrimination. Arab states passed a UN General Assembly resolution that stated Zionism is "a form of racism and racial discrimination." This is because there are some privileges given solely to Jews in Zionist law. For instance, any Jew can become an Israeli citizen, though this does not hold for any other group. The resolution was later repealed in 1975. Settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, but this does not stop Israelis from moving there. Sometimes settlers move to claim the land as theirs, and sometimes they move because the housing is cheaper. Around 500,000 Israelis live in the settlements, with about 75 percent of settlers living near the border. Settlements are blurring the lines of Palestinian borders and they could violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which doesn't allow the transfer of population into occupied territories. One of the big issues is the military occupation that is needed to defend those settlements. It leads to several security checkpoints that Palestinians must go through, and an exclusion from Israeli-only roads. As it turns out, 83 percent of the world's countries recognizes Israel, though a BBC poll reported that Israel was the fourth most disliked nation after Iran, Pakistan and North Korea. There are two main solutions to this conflict, which are a "two state solution" where Palestine receives Gaza and a majority of the West Bank, or a "one state solution" where all of the land goes to either Israel or Palestine. Going back to the killing of the two Palestinians yesterday, the military said that the raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp was to apprehend the suspected shooters from an attack on Israelis on Tuesday that injured an Israeli civilian. The shooting took place in Avnei Heftz, which is an illegal settlement. While the Palestinian health ministry said they were "two martyrs," the army statement said that "the two gunmen were shot and killed after attempting to flee the scene."

A shooting took place on Saturday in Allen, Texas, at a mall. Eight people were killed and at least seven others were wounded. The Texas Department of Public Safety reported that the man had been identified as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia. This is just one of the 202 mass shootings that have happened in the US just since January. On Wednesday, a man opened fire at a Midtown Atlanta medical building, killing one person and injuring four others. On Wednesday night, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said "This was a horrible act of gun violence, but equally horrifying is that we know that this is not unique in our country. We need more actions (for) the rights of our citizens to go about their lives, to be able to go to a doctor's office, to a supermarket, to a gas station or to their school without the threat of being gunned down." A survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that almost 1 in five adults has had a family member killed by a gun and around 1 in 6 have witnessed an injury caused by a gun. In a few weeks, it will be a year since 19 students and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. 

That's the news for today! Stay safe!