For far too long, we have been told that Palestinians don’t want peace, when it is successive Israeli governments which have acted against peace. They have entrenched the illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, and moved more Israeli settlers – against international law – on to occupied land. What remains for Palestinians is a series of bantustans in the West Bank disconnected from Jerusalem and Gaza – and an inhumane and unlawful blockade of Gaza that is effectively imprisoning over 1.5 million Palestinian men, women and children.
The Knesset (Israel’s parliament) has passed a swathe of racist or anti-democratic laws. These include prohibiting the commemoration of the Nakba (the forced expulsion of Palestinians in 1948), and allowing Jewish residents to veto applications from Palestinians to live in the same neighbourhood.
