Wednesday, August 31, 2005

To have a better understanding and empathy for those Palestinians, this Zmag article talks about the situation around a few small former Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Around the former settlements of Ganim and Kadim (population: 300) lie the Palestinian city of Jenin and many smaller satellite villages.
As the article says: "According to a map made by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are currently five major trenches, three fixed checkpoints, two earthen mounds, and three roadblocks in the area – all barring Palestinian freedom of movement between villages as well as the city of Jenin, all purportedly to protect of the tiny settlements of Ganim and Kadim. "

What this means essentially is that tiny Israeli settlements exist at the expense of larger Palestinian towns around them as everything is geared towards the luxury and protection of the Israeli settlers while larger numbers of neighboring Palestinians are made to suffer from isolation and poverty due to lack of access to surrounding areas including fertile land, long waits through checkpoints for travel, poor infrastructure, barren land and general poor economic and physical conditions.