Unlawful, Unresolved: Israeli Settlers in Foreign Land

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=17398

Violence, abuse, non-accountability, hate, such is communal living today within the occupied West Bank, where some 518,974 colonisers sit within 200 illegal settlements. According to Noam Chomsky, "The settlements cover over 42% of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), not counting the Jordon valley, which they are taking over." Estimates of colonisation vary from the 42% reported by Chomsky and B'Tselem to that of Human Rights Watch who at 60% set the figure even higher.

Around half a million ‘settlers’ - more accurately, colonisers - now squat upon Palestinian soil, huddled within walled encampments upon stolen land, branded blue and white. Noisily perching upon hilltops, rooms with a view, or flourishing in verdant valleys, these settlements creep shamefully throughout the West Bank and the sacred city of Jerusalem.

Jimmy Carter said, “the occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land that doesn’t belong to Israel, the building of settlements on it, the colonisation of that land, and the connecting up of those isolated but multiple settlements, (there are some 200), with each other by high-ways on which Palestinians can’t travel and where quite often cannot even cross. The persecution of the Palestinians under the occupation [by the Israelis] is one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation.”