Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There were scattered protests in the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River and many merchants closed their shops in both areas. Palestinian nationalist groups ordered another general strike in the occupied territories for three days starting Monday and said it would be enforced by patrols...
After digging through the rhetoric, the posturing, the lists of atrocities, there shines one fundamental truth regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict--the Israelis have a state, the Palestinians do not. Common sense would dictate that if there is ever to be peaceful coexistence, the national aspirations of the Palestinian people must be achieved. Palestinians, like the Israelis, deserve a homeland...
Israel's violent response to the 10-month Palestinian uprising, however, has made it clear to Americans that our perceptions were somewhat skewed. Most everyone agrees that we should continue to support Israel, to defend its existence as well as its integrity. It does not necessarily follow however, that this support should include such massive funding of its brutal occupation and human rights violations. Most Americans now realize that Palestinians are the victims, not the oppressors; the occupied, not the occupiers...
Question 5, the Cambridge-Somerville referendum, is a product of this changing attitude in America. It calls for an end to Israel's human rights violations, stopping "all expenditure of U.S. taxpayers' money for Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza," and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with peace for all states in the region including Israel. Question 5 is a product of the realization that the national aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians must be met before there is ever to be peace in the Middle East...
...more importantly, it expresses an understanding that American foreign policy must be readjusted to facilitate that goal. America must refuse to pay for an occupation which not only frustrates hopes of Palestinian nationalism, but also erodes Israeli democracy and encourages the growth of racism. For as long as Israel continues to deny fundamental rights to the non-Jewish population of the West Bank and Gaza, Americans cannot in good conscience claim that Israel is a democracy. Nor can we sit silently and continue to financially enable the human rights violations that America has so proudly attempted to eradicate the world...