Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency has an article about how difficult life is with Israeli checkpoints, claiming that Israel wants to "strangle" the Palestinians:
The Israeli occupation authorities are trying to subjugate the Palestinian citizen, imposing him, arbitrarily, on the military barriers and iron gates that make it difficult for him to carry out the simplest tasks, and confuse his planning for his life. Will he be able to arrive at the appointed time or not?Besides the fact that the numbers seem hugely exaggerated, the timing of this and similar articles is curious.
The West Bank barriers and gates were divided into 100 cantons, and its goal is to generalize the apartheid regime and prevent the establishment of a connected Palestinian state...
The occupation forces install about 165 iron gates on the entrances of villages and cities, and on the roads connecting them, half of which are closed in normal conditions, while about 600 military barriers, dirt berms or cement blocks control the lives of citizens, which restrict the movement of vehicles and pedestrians alike, and they erect gates at the entrances to the villages which aim to isolate any village within a few minutes when the occupation decides.
After all, if anything, the checkpoint situation is better today than at any time in the past 20 years.
This seems to me to be a way for Palestinian leaders to misdirect both their own people and the world by starting a campaign against Israeli security measures.
They want to proactively stir up anger because there is a simple solution to the checkpoint problem, as well as the "canton" problem and most of their other complaints: Accept the "Peace to Prosperity" plan!
Every single checkpoint, except those into Israel, would be dismantled under the plan.
Palestinian propagandists realize that they need to change the focus away from the plan and towards their usual posture of playing the innocent victim of Israeli evil. They know they can't have it both ways - complain about how terrible life is and also complain about how terrible a plan that solves all their every day problems is as well. So they will complain about specific aspects of the peace plan they don't like and try as hard as they can to distract people away from the parts that would solve their major everyday issues.
The proper response to all of these types of articles and tweets is - if things are so bad, then a peace plan that solves those issues is a good idea.
