A Palestinian boy at a demonstration protesting the closure of checkpoint.
(Image by cpt palestine) Details DMCA
Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, Israel's current Prime Minister, is still fuming over the December 23, 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, passed unanimously on December 23, 2016.
Netanyahu says he is going to huff and puff to incoming President Trump and "reveal hard evidence" that Obama was behind the latest United Nations resolution".
In a bizarre announcement President Obama vehemently denied supporting 50 years of international law. Instead of using its veto power, as the US usually does to defy the United Nations, the US abstained from the voting, which then passed 14 to 0.
Israel has been in defiance of the United Nations Charter and international law for half a century. Resolution 242 passed in 1967 and called for Israel to withdraw from occupied Palestine, and behind Israel's pre-1967 war border.
Instead Israel has confiscated more Palestinian land, built over 120 illegal Jewish-only settlements; modern suburbs, villages and cities really. Complete with shopping centers, golf courses, trimmed watered lawns and swimming pools. While Palestinians are rationed to 70 liters of water per person per day, less that the 100 the United Nations says is necessary for health and sanitation.
Over 400,000 Israeli's now officially live in modern California-style houses, villas and condominium. Many of the building have red tile roofs and distinctive markings, allegedly so that Israeli bomber pilots will know which building to avoid in the future. Each settlement is guarded by a huge military presents which takes over more Palestinian land, farms and villages.
The illegal Israeli settlements are connected to each other, to Jerusalem, to Tel Aviv and to other Israeli cities by high-seed superhighways that are for Israelis only. Palestinians are forbidden to drive or even walk on Israeli roads. The segregated highways are easily enforced with different color license plates for Palestinians and military patrols. The highways and security zones around them illegally take more land.
The network of Israeli-only superhighways has dissected Palestine, cutting off travel for Palestinians to families, friends and commerce. Palestinians have to drive on potholed back roads, some cutoff by dead ends due to settlement construction, Israeli declared military zones, and hundreds of military checkpoints. Palestinians are often turned away from checkpoints because they are closed or they are made to wait for hours to pass. The Israeli Occupation Force rules are arbitrary and unpredictable.
The illegal infamous Apartheid Wall cuts through cities, villages, farms, and olive groves further isolating Palestinians to an open outdoor prison. Palestinians in the West Bank cannot travel outside the Apartheid Wall and military checkpoints without permission of the Israel. East Jerusalem is off limits except to those with residency status.
Anyone who approaches the apartheid wall or a military zone risks being shot on sight. As the Israeli Jews-only settlements grow, more Israeli only highways are built, the Apartheid Wall continues to snake through the West Bank, a larger military presents grows increasing the militarized zone. Palestinians are being squeezed tighter into isolated ghettos.
It does not take much imagination for an observer to imagine the Palestinians eventually imprisoned in isolated Gaza-like apartheid Bantustans . The noose is tightening around Palestine and now Netanyahu wants to retroactively "legalize" settlements already built with a proposed Israeli law, and he wants to speed the ethnic cleansing and genicide of Palestinians with more settlements, more militarized zones, more, more, more.
Netanyahu is furious because the international community has said "No" to his planes: no to further construction, no to past construction and no to the continued illegal occupation of Palestine. Palestine exists, it is a member nation of the United Nations, and it deserves justice and fairness.
Resolution 2334 is a lot more than what was typically reported in the main stream media, which was that it "requires Israel to halt" the construction of settlements.
The following are the 13 points that the UN Security Council resolution says verbatim:
1. Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
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