Israel seeking demographic change

Reem Haddad

Maps depict Palestinian loss of land over several decades;
the third map from the left shows in green the Palestinian
territories Israel took in the 1967 war. (palestineportal.org)

Israel leaves no opportunity without exploiting it to bring new settlers to it. The Israeli government has prepared a plan to bring in French Jews in light of the significant decline in the number of Jewish immigrants from around the world in recent years.

In this context, Hebrew media revealed that the Israeli government is allocating a special budget in the general budget for the year 2023, as part of a plan to encourage French Jews to immigrate to Israel.

An expert on Israeli affairs, Ehab Jabarin, says, “The reason for targeting Jews in France in particular is due to the fact that many of them are of African descent, and they had arrived in France not long ago in an attempt to integrate into Western society. This fits perfectly with the extremist tendencies of the current government in Tel Aviv and its fascist settler ideology.”

The 1950 Law of Return enables any Jew from around the world to become an Israeli citizen entitled to numerous government benefits, including financial aid, tax breaks, free Hebrew courses, and a free flight to Israel. In 2015 alone, nearly 8,000 French Jews made what is known as Aliyah—ascent to the Holy Land—the largest number from any Western nation in a single year. Jabarin points out that those ideological components have always been a driver of the Israeli scene before any other consideration.

While Israel invokes the internal economic situation and the shortage of labor, 42% of the percentage of males between the ages of 17 and 24 are from the Arabs of the interior, whose number reached 2 million. They are unemployed!! These figures reveal the significance of the Israeli steps, which aim at purely demographic change, regardless of economic arguments.

Bringing in more settlers, giving them Palestinian land while at the same time making life nearly impossible for the Palestinians by segregating their villages, erecting barriers and pulling down Palestinian houses under the pretext that they do not have the right building license is only one of the many ways that Israel is carrying out in an attempt to change the demography of Palestine.

The Occupation - Palestine Portal
palestineportal.org

The Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories is most of all about land and the hunger for more land. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began with the Six Day War of June 1967; in 2017, the occupation becomes 50 years old. Yet in international law and practice, military occupations are expected to be temporary, until the final status of that territory is determined and a government established. During that time, the occupier bears responsibility for the welfare of the inhabitants of that territory and is forbidden to make any permanent changes to their land or to move its own citizens there as residents, which would constitute colonizing that land.

However, Israel’s actions since the occupation began have clearly demonstrated its intentions: that this occupation will not be temporary, but rather will lead to permanent possession of some or all of the Palestinian territory taken in the 1967 war.

The Oslo Accords, signed in the early 1990’s, established the Palestinian National Authority with the goal of soon resolving remaining issues between the two peoples and achieving self-determination for the Palestinians. Yet, since that time, Israel has hugely expanded its presence in and control of the West Bank and increased the number of Israeli settlers from about 260,000 in 1993 to 650,000 or more in 2017.

Growing a nation’s territory by force is strictly forbidden in international law, as the UN Security Council made clear in Resolution 242, which the UN SC adopted unanimously in November 1967 and which states “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

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Source: syriatimes.sy. Map & Photo: palestineportal.org. AWIP: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/aM8g