What sort of state drives people out of their homes in order

What sort of state drives people out of their homes in order to conduct live-fire military exercises?

An International Women's Peace Service (IWPS) report (http://iwps.info) on the Israeli Army's terrorising of a Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley tells of a continual programme of Israeli military training in the village of ‘Atuf. IWPS report 459 / 9 April 2013 describes how Israeli military training in the village forces 22 families, that is 172 people, every week to evacuate their homes from 4am to 5pm while the Israeli military conducts live-fire exercises. This has been going on since 1967 and whole families and their livestock are displaced to outlying fields to the sound of gunfire and explosions. Israel has declared the area a 'closed military zone' where nothing is allowed to be built or improved and a valley of fertile farmland lies uncultivated while the nearby Israeli Occupation settlement of Beqa continues to spread itself ever further. In both ‘Atuf and neighbouring Tamun, countless houses have been demolished by the Israeli Army and many more are under demolition orders.

Since 1970, 14 people have been killed and 30 have lost limbs due to exploding abandoned Israeli Army ordnance. The explosives can be as small as a pen, easily mistaken by children as harmless. The continual explosions and gunfire have caused many cases of psychological trauma, especially to children, and the only school in the district is within earshot of Israeli military exercises. What sort of state drives people out of their homes in order to conduct live-fire military exercises? The US-armed nuclear power, pandered to by the West, continues to demand recognition of what it calls its special need for security while brutally denying the Palestinian people any vestige of peace and safety for themselves.

According to the New York Times, when talks between Iran and six world powers ended earlier this month, with no apparent progress towards an agreement on the easing of damaging sanctions on the Iranian economy, Israel's minister of strategic affairs, Yuval Steinitz, commented: “The time has come for the world to take a more assertive stand and make it unequivocally clear to the Iranians that the negotiations games have run their course.”

The world should recall the minister's words every time President Obama asserts, on Israel's behalf, that the only path to peace open to the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations with Israel. Substituting only one word, 'Iranians' and replacing it with 'Israel', the quote would read, the time has come for the world to take a more assertive stand and make it unequivocally clear to Israel that the negotiations games have run their course. Decades of deferential treatment and 'dialogue' have served only to convince the occupying power that it enjoys total impunity. The time to face UN-imposed sanctions is long overdue for Israel.

Leslie Bravery

Palestine Human Rights Campaign www.palestine.org.nz

ENDS

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