LETTER: Israel's oppression a problem for all

SIR – Maerton Davis in their letter ‘Palestinians should look forward’ (July 20^th) claims that I have a problem in being anti-Israeli but fails to recognise that Israel’s Palestinian oppression is a problem for all.

Maerton has an address of Kfar Vradim a town built on land expropriated from residents of the nearby Palestinian village, Tarshiha, and land expropriated from Palestinians who fled in 1948. 

This city has suspended sales of properties to maintain ‘demographic balances’ because many of the homes were being bought by Arab families. Vradim and dozens of other Jewish communities were created in response to Land Day – explicitly to ‘Judaise the Galilee’.

The tradition of racism that is preserved by racist Israeli laws designed to control every aspect of Palestinians who account for a fifth of Israel’s population and are the remnants of the Palestinian people who were mostly expelled in 1948 from their homeland during the Nakba, the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’. 

Maerton Davis should consider how even Palestinians within Israel are treated as second class and even though their conditions are better than those under illegal military occupation surrounded by settlements on their stolen land, they deserve to be treated as equal human beings.

The here and now is that Palestinians have no state, and Israeli leaders have worked against them achieving true sovereignty or human rights in any part of Palestine. 

Israel’s PM Netanyahu states that settlements will never be removed and security through occupation will remain with Israel. 

The more Israel occupies and oppresses another people indefinitely while denying them rights, the more support it will lose.

The latest ‘peace plan’ is nothing but a pretence of peace as Israel continues illegally occupying and annexing more land leaving Palestinians with nothing left to form a successful state. 

Bob Storey,

Skibbereen.