The sacrifices made by the Palestinian people over the course of a century were not few to last throughout this period, and end to this miserable situation in the Palestinian and Arab world. The Palestinian people tasted the two things because of the Jewish presence in Palestine, and the subsequent occupation of the Palestinian land and the establishment of the Zionist entity on it, and endured because of it The most severe suffering and the darkest conditions, until the Palestinian issue became the mother of regional and international issues.

The name “Palestine” and “Palestinian” became equivalent to asylum, diaspora, exile, camps, occupation, resistance, suffering and tragedy in its ugliest form, and a rich material for poets, writers and preachers, both politicians and non-politicians. Despite this, the Palestinians are still walking in the same dark tunnel, the impossible tunnel of peace, insisting on reaching its end, knowing with certainty that it is endless and that they will reap nothing but bitter after bitter.

100 years of asylum, diaspora, exiles, camps, occupation, resistance, suffering and tragedy in its ugliest form, and the Palestinians are still walking in the same dark tunnel, the impossible tunnel of peace, insisting on reaching its end, knowing with certainty that it is without end, and that they will reap nothing but bitter after bitter.

The bitter harvest

We need a quick review of the history of the sacrifices and suffering of the Palestinian people, so that it becomes clear to us and the new generations the size of the bitter harvest that the Palestinian people have reaped, and so that the Palestinian leaders, cadres and elites can be brought up again; The extent of the negligence issued by them against their people, and the extent of their need to correct the course in all directions, and the start of a new stage in which they will be as responsible as the stage they have reached on the Arab and international levels.

We can divide this bitter harvest into 5 tracks, in this article we talk about the military, economic and social, as follows:

First: the military harvest

These confrontations left hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, in successive waves of destruction, forced displacement, horrific asylum and displacement, the most prominent of these confrontations:

  • Confronting the armed Zionist gangs that were active after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, and these confrontations resulted in the martyrdom of hundreds of resistance men, and hundreds of residents whose villages were plundered, their properties were plundered, and forced to flee to the neighboring Palestinian villages and cities.
  • The Nakba War, which followed the Zionist movement’s declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, resulted in the defeat of the humble Arab forces, which consisted of 22,000 soldiers who lacked the necessary weapons, in exchange for 100,000 Zionist soldiers armed with the latest weapons at the time, including planes, tanks, artillery and machine guns. In contrast to 5,600 Zionist dead in the war, the number of Palestinian and Arab martyrs reached about 15,000 Palestinians and 5,000 from Arab armies, and about 750,000 Palestinians - nearly half of the population at that time - were displaced towards the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Zionist forces seized most of The northern coast up to the Gaza Strip, and over most of the Negev in southern Palestine.
  • The setback war of June 1967, which was carried out by the Zionist entity after 14 years of the tripartite aggression against Egypt with the participation of Britain and France, and the setback war ended with the Zionist entity taking over the rest of historical Palestine, in addition to the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the Syrian Golan Heights, and about 16,000 martyrs from the Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces, compared to less than a thousand dead from the Israeli forces.
  • The Battle of Dignity in 1968 on the Jordanian-Palestinian border, in which 250 were killed for the Zionist entity, compared to 178 martyrs of the Palestinian and Jordanian forces.
  • The war of attrition, on the Egyptian and Syrian borders with the Zionist occupation, lasted from 1967 to 1972.
  • The Black September War of 1970-1971 between the Jordanian forces and the PLO forces in Jordan ended with the expulsion of the Palestinian forces to Lebanon, in which about 4 thousand Palestinian forces were killed, about 110 Jordanian forces and 1,300 civilians were killed.
  • The October 1973 War, in which the Egyptian and Syrian forces regained part of their lands occupied in 1967.
  • The Lebanese Civil War 1975-1990, which killed about 150,000 dead, 300,000 wounded, and 17,000 missing from the Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians, as did the massacres of Tel Al-Zaatar and Sabra and Shatila, which killed about 8,000 Palestinian refugees.
  • The Zionist aggression on Lebanon 1982, during which the Sabra and Shatila massacre occurred, in which more than 3 thousand Palestinian civilians were killed, and the war ended with the exit of Palestinian forces from Lebanon, the transfer of the Palestinian leadership to Tunisia, and the distribution of forces to several Arab countries.
  •  The Zionist aggression on Lebanon 1982, which ended with the exit of the Palestinian resistance from Lebanon, the transfer of the Palestinian leadership to Tunisia, and the distribution of Palestinian forces to several Arab countries.
  • The second intifada 2000-2005 inside the occupied Palestinian territories, and resulted in the death of more than 4,400 Palestinians and the injury of about 50,000 others, in which 1,100 people were killed and 4,500 wounded for the Zionist entity, and resulted in the destruction of the institutions of the Palestinian Authority that moved to the Palestinian territories in 1994 following an agreement. Oslo, which the Palestinian leadership signed with the Zionist entity in 1993.
  •  The war on the Gaza Strip in 2008, which lasted for 25 days, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinian martyrs and about 5,400 injured, with almost complete destruction of infrastructure, more than 11,000 homes, about 600 public institutions, 7,000 commercial establishments, and 650 vehicles. 4000 industrial establishments were out of work, as well as uprooting about 400,000 fruitful trees, 52,000 non-fruitful trees, and destroying one million dunams of vegetables.
  •  The 2014 war on the Gaza Strip, which lasted 51 days, killed about 2,200 martyrs, injured 11,000 others, destroyed 13,000 homes, 170 mosques and 11 cemeteries, and destroyed 50% of the water networks and 55% of the electricity networks.

    Second: the social and economic harvest

  • These military confrontations have left very severe suffering on the level of Palestinian civilians, in the occupied territories and in the diaspora countries. The report of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) submitted to its meeting in Beirut in June 2018 - a committee affiliated with the Economic and Social Council was presented. Of the United Nations - Aspects of suffering under occupation, so that there is no need to research other reports and studies needed for this place, and the following is a summary of the most prominent of what was stated in it:

  • Grab the land
    •  Annexation of East Jerusalem in addition to the 70 square kilometers around it.
    • Settling about 640,000 settlers in 257 settlements until 2016, on an estimated land area of ​​540 km2 in the West Bank, excluding occupied Jerusalem.
    • Annexation of territories by force

       2. Land confiscation

    • By the year 2017, the area of ​​land confiscated by the Zionist entity reached 1,400 square kilometers, representing a quarter of the area of ​​the West Bank under the pretext that it is state land.
    • Since 1967, the Zionist entity has seized more than 31 square kilometers of Palestinian land for military purposes.
    • Since 1967, the Zionist entity has put its hand on about 430 square kilometers under the pretext that it is absentee property and has become state land.
    •  Confiscating lands under the pretext of public interest to build roads, infrastructure and protect settlements.
    • Confiscating more than half of Area C in the West Bank; That is, about a third of them, under the pretext that they are closed military areas.

       3. Displacement

    •  Cancellation of residence permits

    The Zionist entity canceled the residency permits of more than 250 thousand Palestinians before the coming of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, and until May 2017 it canceled the residency of about 15 thousand Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem, and a law was issued allowing the Minister of the Interior of the Zionist entity to cancel permanent residency in occupied Jerusalem for those suspected of carrying out work Against the state security of the Zionist entity.

    •  Demolish buildings
    • From 2009 to 2017, the Zionist entity destroyed 5,413 buildings and houses, and displaced about 9 thousand people who lived in them.
    • Building permits are rejected for more than 94% of the applications submitted by residents of occupied Jerusalem, which exposes about 100,000 people there to displacement due to the demolition.

    4- Funnel

    • Excessive use of force:
    • Thousands of civilians were killed and tens of thousands of buildings and homes destroyed, in addition to infrastructure.
    • Arbitrary detention, in which more than 800,000 Palestinians were arrested between 1967 and 2016.
    • Collective punishment, complete closure, revocation of work permits, and cuts to food, electricity and fuel.

     5. Gaza blockade

    • Restriction of the movement of people, travel and trade.
    • Preventing dual-use items, which are civilian items that can be used for military purposes, and the list includes 64 items banned in all the occupied territories and 138 items banned in Gaza specifically.
    • Restriction of movement on land and at sea.

     6. Economic implications

    • Half of the population of occupied Palestine is in need of humanitarian aid, or 2.5 million people, 80% of whom are residents of the Gaza Strip.
    • Low per capita GDP.
    • The rise in the unemployment rate in 2017 to about 28%.
    • The poverty rate increased from 26% in 2011 to 29% in 2017, and in the Gaza Strip it reached 54%.
    • The number of people receiving food aid increased from 80,000 in 2000 to about one million people in 2017.
    •  23% of medicines and 19% of medical supplies are not available.
    • More than 1.8 million people need basic assistance in water and sanitation.
    • Only 10% of Gazans have access to improved drinking water.
    • About one million children suffer from access to quality education in a safe environment.
    • Uprooting fruit trees, destroying farmland and putting obstacles in front of farmers.

    (Continued…)