The Palestinian Story – Facts, Reality and the Way Forward

In her remarks, Ambassador Taghrid Senouar outline that, more than 5 million Palestinians are denied equal rights by the state of Israel under a system of apartheid, a deliberate policy of racial or ethnic segregation. Under Israeli military occupation, millions of Palestinians live in inhumane conditions.

Israeli apartheid is a two-tiered system of favoritism and privilege for Jews compared with deprivation and discrimination against Palestinian Arabs. It covers many facets of political, social, and economic life, including standard of living, education, housing and development, access to water and roads, an unequal system of justice, land ownership, and freedom of movement. In addition, it has many special features, such as the absolute control that the Israeli military ultimately exercises over all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the recent construction of a Separation Barrier or Apartheid Wall. This wall is meant not only to confiscate land from Palestinians to expand illegal settlements but also to make it impossible for Palestinians to have a contiguous and viable state of their own.

About 1.2 million Palestinian Israelis, who make up 20 percent, or one-fifth, of Israel’s population, have second-class citizenship within Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews.

Millions of Palestinians remain refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, unable to return to their former homes and land in present-day Israel, even though the right of return for refugees is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the Occupied Territories, 66 percent of Palestinians live in absolute poverty, defined as income of $2 or less per day. By contrast, Israelis enjoy an average per capita income of nearly $60 per day. Worse yet, 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on international food aid for day-to-day survival, and 33 percent of all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are dependent on international food aid for survival.
Israel is the only country in the world that distinguishes between nationality and citizenship. Israeli nationality is guaranteed only to those determined to be of the Jewish religion. Only Jews have full rights in the state of Israel, which is defined as a Jewish state under the Basic Laws that substitute for a written constitution.

Mr Chikanda urged the UN to redouble its efforts in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He said that, “we continue to believe that a two-state solution is absolutely vital for not only peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but for the long-term security of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.”