5.1 Palestine
What comes to the mind upon hearing the word "Palestine" is war crimes, killings, and wounding by the occupying Israelis. The Arab/Israeli or Palestinian/Israeli conflict has been an ongoing struggle since the creation of Israel in 1948, as many may already know. But what many may not know is that every day, Palestinians are subject to human rights violations that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel has been in violation of international law since 1967, when U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted in November of that year, which condemned the seizure of land through war and called for Israel to withdraw its occupying forces to the June 1967 borders. Since, the international community (except the occupying power) considers the Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, to be "occupied territories."
Palestine: Jerusalem
There will be no peace in Palestine until the problem of Jerusalem is solved. Together with the fate of the Palestinian refugees of 1948, it is rightly called the heart of the conflict. But it is a heart shared by conjoined twins. Both Israel and Palestine say that they cannot live without it. So any operation designed to separate Israel from the Palestinians must be exceptionally sensitive and delicate. Worse, it must be performed from the outset in the knowledge that complete separation is out of the question. In Jerusalem at least, Israel and Palestine are doomed to remain perpetually entwined. This would of course make the conflict more persistent and difficult to settle and thus Palestine would remain the hot place in Asia for good.
5.1 Palestine
Palestine: Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war
One major problem resulted from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian is the Palestinian refugees. They are people who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. The number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel following its creation was estimated at 711,000 in 1949.
The issue of Palestinian refugees remains the basis of the conflict in the Arab region and will continue to ‘haunt Zionism’ for as long as the term ‘refugees’ remains in the political lexicon and the refugee camps remain in the countries surrounding Palestine.