The Illegitimacy of Israel’s Colonisation of Land in Arab East Jerusalem, the Palestinian West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights
‘If you buy fruit from Israel you deprive another human being of water and life’
Israel’s comparative economic success is essentially based on water stolen, since 1967, from Syria’s eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee – that provides Israel’s current primary source of fresh water. Rainwater from the Golan’s catchment area feeds into the River Jordan to provide about 30% of Israel’s current water supply.
Without this stolen water there would be no citrus fruit, melons, avocados or dates available for export under the label of ‘Produce of Israel’. And that is why the Netanyahu government is determined – with help from the U.S. Republican congress – to retain its illegally occupied land for as long as is possible.
Without the 400,000 illegal settlers in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank, Israel’s export economy would collapse unless it were able to cultivate the Negev desert that it currently utilises to develop and test its extensive, undeclared nuclear weapons program at Dimona, south of Beer Sheva.
The entire economic infrastructure of Israel is an illegitimate and unsustainable facade based on the illegal expropriation of land from the indigenous peoples of the region which is why it is increasingly condemned by the international community as a global threat to peace and a primary cause of instability in the Middle East.
Until such time as the Israeli state is compelled by the international community to return all land, and water, to its rightful owners, there will be a continuing threat of a regional nuclear war that would likely spread to Europe and around the world. Then there would be no oranges or dates and no one to eat them – even if there were some survivors still alive under the mushroom-shaped radiation cloud initiated by a Likud government operative …
The first step is for Jerusalem to now be declared an international city in accordance with UN GA resolution 181 with free access to all faiths – as confirmed, last week, by the U.S. Supreme Court. And then the return of all occupied land to its hereditary owners and the repatriation of all illegal settlers back to their homes in an Israeli state within its pre-1967 borders.
A nation state that exists only by the hijacking of essential water resources from its indigenous neighbours who now number over five million souls, is a national entity without integrity, honour or a sustainable future.