This post is part of a long series about Palestine as a country, culture, and humans across multiple communities in hopes that I spread the word about Palestine and what is happening there.

The fact that I am an Arab obviously comes with perceived bias which is a perception that I accept considering that most of the people on this platform are not Arabs. As much as I believe it is something I am able to refute using my own history, I prefer to keep the focus of this series on Palestine itself and let the series speak for itself.

However, considering the aforementioned fact of my identity, I have challenged myself and limited myself to use mostly sources that are outside of the Arab world when it comes to facts. Therefore, all the events mentioned here come from non-Arab sources which you will be able to verify yourself by reading the sources below. In fact, I implore you to check out those sources regardless of the series.

In 1948, David Ben Gurion, the immigrant who spent his youth in Poland, said that not only he achieve his dream, but also became its founder, or as he was dubbed, "The State's Main Founder". That dream was described by him as a 100% Jewish country without Arabs. A completely pure society for Jews only. He also stated that any Palestinian who tries to disrupt this dream, he'd meet the same fate as Jerusalem and Haifa, destroyed villages, bombed ports, and streets filled with thousands of Palestinian corpses.

Those who were lucky enough to stay alive were expelled and lived as refugees all their lives, a status they passed on to their children and grandchildren by now. The slogan raised by the Zionist movement, "A land without a people for a people without a land", for the entirety of this series was an absolute slogan, one that accepted no compromise or presence of others, it's either us or them. That slogan is what Zionists held to even as Arabs made up 70% of the population and over 90% of land ownership.

75 Years After Ben Gurion

75 years after Ben Gurion declared the achievement of his dream, I believe it's only fair we assess that dream as we have with all other myths that led to it. 75 years later the Jewish community still maintains its purity equation, no matter the price others paid. Israel is a country where the Jews have all the privileges and Palestinians suffer from discrimination on all levels.

You must have heard the claim "Palestinians are second-class citizens" before, let's examine that claim and how it came to be as many people seem to believe they're going to find a text in the constitution that says "Arabs aren't to be equals". So, let's just simply examine this claim.

Israel's society can be easily summed by its current leader, Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens, according to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.

Again, to all the downvoters of this series, this is not even my word. This is Benjamin Netanyahu's statement, which you can find here.

The definition of democracy is "A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives." Arabs have never reached more than 3% representation in the Knesset. They have been fought, rejected, shut down, not financed equally, and excluded. But that's not even the topic of this post. This post is about the lives of the Palestinians courtesy of the "Only Democracy in the Middle East"

If you're a Palestinian, as in born in the historical land of Palestine, your life will be determined by your geographical location, of which, we have three categories: 48-Palestinians,, West Bank Palestinians, and Palestinians of Gaza. Let's examine the lives of each.

The 48-Palestinians

These are the people who currently live and reside in Israel, they are by definition Israelis. The 48-Palestinians are 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, they alone make up around 20% of the country, as mentioned above, they only have a maximum of 3% representation in the Knesset. But that's not even the issue here as the issue remains of them getting treated as second-class citizens.

For starters, they get fewer years of education than Israeli citizens, many communities can't even have a kindergarten, and many educational programs don't reach their schools. The Arabic language, a language spoken by 2 million people, 20% of the country, isn't recognized by the state. If you work hard and get promoted, you'd still be making less than the people under you.

Let's say, it's a life, right? They could just focus on making enough to live with their families. Well, they aren't allowed to request citizenship for their families who live outside Israel.

Let's say, okay, fuck it, they could just forget about their entire origin and just become Jewish. As late as early this year, A Muslim married a Jewish woman and STILL had his conversion rejected. This is not separate news Israeli Conversion Authority have said many times that Palestinians can't become Jewish. And even if they technically can, impossible hurdles would be put in front of them.

Tough life, no? It's better than the next category.

West Bank Palestinians

2.7 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under direct occupation of Israel. They live in a prison-like structure. Sectors of locked gates, moving from one part to another, or really one prison to another, require passing through numerous military checkpoints. A 5-minute walk can turn into an hours-long inspection. As you walk, you will be surrounded by 130 settlements, all illegal of course. Those settlements house over 500,000 thousand settlers.

Between 2017 and 2021, the Israeli army gave 33 permits for Palestinians to build houses. On the other side, the Israeli army demolished over 1150 homes and gave settlers 1100 build permits. The following video is a bit heart-wrenching, but it describes that situation a bit, there's no bloody scenes or anything, so don't worry.

The Palestinian whose home is demolished and thrown to the street, can't even put up a tent without permission from the army that destroyed his home which as evident by the five-year period mentioned above, he'd still be unlikely to get. Where would they go? I don't know, figure it out.

Here, you might think, "They're really tightening the tap on them", and you'd be correct in the most literal sense not just the metaphoric one. Water, a basic right for any human, gets delivered to settlers at the rate of 300 litres per day. Meanwhile, Palestinians have to wait for the water to fill their tanks once every 15 days the Israeli government and companies. The daily capacity rarely exceeds 80 litres per day, which is less than the 100 litres specified by the World Health Organization.

That's not the result of a water shortage, but an intended discrimination in distribution between Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinians in Gaza

If you were living in Gaza and read what I said above, your response would likely be, "Wait, you guys have water?". In Gaza, 2 million people live in an area of 360 square kilometres. You won't find barriers or gates like in the West Bank, but that's because the entire strip is fully besieged. No port, no airports, nothing connecting them to the outside world. Nothing gets in or out without the permission of the Israeli army. Google Gaza Diet and learn about how the army was even determining how much food goes into the city based on calories.

The strip's land mostly isn't suitable for farming, the groundwater is polluted, and 90% of it is not suitable for human consumption or even to farm. 80% of the population's food depends on international aid, bear in mind the aid which made 80% of the Gazans' only source of food and most of it has been blocked in recent times.

Gazans need 560 megawatts for electricity but only get 200. You can't even have power for a light that would show you how miserable the place has been at night. This environment has an employment rate of 50% and although children make up the majority of the population in Gaza, most schools have been destroyed. Even though Israel doesn't militarily occupy Gaza, it has definitely turned it into a barbarian open-air prison.

This is what the International Committee of the Red Cross considers a complete violation of the Geneva Convention.

According to Israeli academic Oren Yiftachel, Israel is an Ethnocracy, it is a state that only serves Jews. It is a system that works for the Jewish majority with the goal of harming the Arab minority. A system that, in order to affirm its purity and identity, can't exist without inflicting severe damage to others living in it.

Israel is an Apartheid State.

Realize that these aren't my words. These are the words of Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. And even if we call all of those biased, self-hating Jews, Anti-semites, anti-Judaism, racist, or any term to devalue the statement, realize these are also the words of the CURRENT Israeli Minister of Education himself. Israel is an Apartheid.

Everything I said in this series hasn't been an opinion, I will get to that in a later post. But, it also says that everything we've talked about so far since Zionism has been just an idea and until this moment says that Apartheid is the expected development of the original Zionist idea. Identity is what determines people's rights in apartheid and because of the Palestinians' identity, they'd be robbed of their rights. A world we wish it would end soon.

Palestinians deserve their rights, not because they are Palestinians, but because they are humans.

Previous Parts

Follow-up parts

The Tragic Story of Palestine - Responding to Arguments and Concerns
The Tragic Story of Palestine - "It Was A Hamas Base of Operation"
The Tragic Story of Israel
School Lessons From Gaza

Sources

The Arabs: A History - Eugene Rogan
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
Ten Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe
Palestine: ...it is something colonial (Decolonizing the mind)
One hundred questions and answers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Pedro Brieger
Tantura Documentary
Executions and Mass Graves in Tantura - Forensic Architecture
Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert
"Nakba Law" - Amendment No. 40 to the Budgets Foundations Law
Eye Witnesses Statments
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 1 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 2 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 3 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 4 | Featured Documentary
Anatomy of the Israeli mind
Collusion Across The Jordan: King Abdullah, The Zionist Movement, And The Partition Of Palestine - Avi Shlaim

The Tragic Story of Palestine - Final Part: The "Only Democracy in the Middle East" Myth