Additional detailed information regarding the deteriorating condition of Palestinian life under the occupation and during the years of the Oslo agreement is included in this report published by Stephen R. Shalom professor of political science at William Paterson University. The report also has background information that covers the conflict starting at the end of First World War. http://www.zmag.org/shalom-meqa.htm
The frustration of the dreams lost with an agreement that represented a real hope and produced misery at all levels exploded when Sharon violated the last symbol of dignity the Palestinian people had, their sacred Mosque.
The Israeli government handling of the situation after the incident added salt to injury.
On the sixth anniversary of the Intifada, the only statistics available cover the period from 29 September 2000 to 15 September 2005. The five years cost of human life estimated by Btselem, an Israeli human rights group at four thousand. The report details the loss of life on both sides; also, it identifies the age group if under eighteen.
A three thousand two hundreds and eighteen Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza including six hundreds fifty seven aged under eighteen, One hundred and eighty seven killed in extrajudicial executions and two hundred ninety six (including at least twenty nine aged under eighteen) killed in the course of assassination operations. Fifty-six more killed by security forces in Israel including one less than eighteen years of age. There was also forty-one killed by Israeli citizens in the West Bank and Gaza including at least three aged eighteen or under.
In the attached report, you will find many more categories of people killed since the beginning of the Intifada the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis is about five to one. Some foreigners also paid the ultimate price for being at the wrong place in the wrong time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4294502.stm
In an age where the numbers lost there meaning let me try to help you envision the picture. The four thousand killed are people left their homes in one morning or an afternoon and never came back. They are the sons, daughters of somebody or may be the fathers or mothers of little children somewhere.
They definitely had their own dreams their weaknesses, their strengths and their memories.
They loved, hated, laughed and cried. Some were religious some were not. Some were Muslims and others were Christians. The four thousand people were like us, they were like the three thousand we lost on September 11, but much poorer.
The Israeli forces or settlers killed people like us but live on $2.10 a day. The Israeli forces stop, search, and turn back or shoot people like us at well in checkpoints made on these people land. People like us are humiliated on daily basis through their forced unemployment, and their inability to provide to their own. They have no hope, and the only dream called Oslo turned slowly over seven years into a nightmare. This is when people like us rise against their captors that insist on killing or degrading them.
After six years of Intifada, the biggest loser understandably is the weaker party the Palestinians. They lost many lives, became poorer and now surrounded by walls in multiple separate and small patches of land, living under the continuous threat of tanks, rockets and fighter planes.
However, the whole world lost, you look around from Iran to Palestine to Somalia and Sudan new religious governments sprang up with more extreme views. Terrorism increased significantly in Israel, Iraq, London, Madrid, Indonesia, Afghanistan and many other places. I forgot to tell you that in July and August, alone six thousand and eight hundred Iraqis killed, but this is another story.
The sixth anniversary of the Intifada is a very sad memory of how the world failed and how it is paying the price.
I am an Egyptian American born in Alexandria. I immigrated to the US in the late eighties, during this time lived in many places in US and Europe. I work as an IT manager and love it. I love to travel, it makes me feel young, and it awakes in me sense of adventure and curiosity. I love knowing people from different cultures; it never fails to amaze me how we all live in our little worlds that never meet. History is my second amazement, it always differ depending on who is winning, that leads me to my third hobby, politics is it history or human nature that is the culprit?
