by Editor (Editor's Desk, Crescent International Vol. 45, No. 10, Rabi' al-Awwal, 1438)
The Zionists are continuing to create facts on the ground by a furious campaign of illegal settlements on lands stolen from the Palestinian people.
The Zionists have a habit of stealing Palestinian lands. There are usually a few mild protests that the Zionists dismiss and then the theft begins in earnest. This is what was proposed last month when it was announced that the Zionist regime plans to build 30,000 new illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.
Israel’s ministerial committee for legislation approved a draft bill aimed at legalizing the settlements constructed on private Palestinian lands. The bill “allows” the Zionist regime to indulge in such theft under a thin veneer of legality. As a sop to Palestinians, the bill also says they would be compensated. What if the Palestinians refuse to sell or vacate their lands?
Both international law and the UN Charter prohibit confiscation of Palestinian lands. Such acts are illegal but Israel has never been constrained by such niceties. Their very presence in Palestine is illegal, having evicted Palestinians from their homes through a campaign of terror since 1947.
After their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in June 1967 (the Zionists abandoned Gaza in 2005 because they found their occupation of the tiny strip untenable), the Zionists embarked on a furious ethnic cleansing construction spree in the West Bank. More than half a million illegal Zionist squatters (aka Zionist settlers) live in some 230 colonies there.
The Zionists’ aim is to create facts on the ground and prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state even in the distant future.