The Ongoing Colonization of Palestine

A person holds a Palestinian flag at the rally. Dozens of people gather outside City Hall.

Image caption: A person holds a Palestinian flag at the Great March of Return solidarity rally.

By Ayah

Colonialism is not a thing of the past. Zionism is a blatant form of racist settler colonialism; a system of Apartheid, where your ethnic background decides where a person stands in the state and how they are treated by the institutions within the state.

Palestinians are treated comparably to the way apartheid South Africa treated its black citizens. A United Nations report, “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” called it “an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people.”

One aspect that the report looked at is the “demographic engineering” policy of Israel which  pushes out Palestinian civilians and replaces them with Israeli settlers. A slow and painful cleansing of the Palestinians started in 1948 when over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in historical Palestine merely because they were not Jewish. To create a Jewish state the indigenous Palestinians had to be removed. Today, the West Bank is riddled with settlements and roads that Palestinians are legally not allowed to use.

The UN report even called for support to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement and encouraged governments to support such initiatives. BDS is a movement created by Palestinians to put pressure on Israel to comply with international law.

The state of Israel actively supports settler colonialism through funding settlers in occupied Palestinian territories. Palestinians face ethnic cleansing from settlers on their land. The settlements that still exist inside of the agreed upon borders are an illegal encroachment on the land and resources of the Palestinians that live there.

Dozens of people march in the street. Many are holding signs.
Protesters fill the streets as organizers speak on the occupation and colonization of Palestine at the Great March of Return solidarity rally. City Hall looms in the background.
Protesters rally at Thomas Paine Plaza to hear organizers speak.
A lone police officer films as protesters file past.
Cute and fierce looking dog.

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