Israeli- Palestinian Conflict. I chose this topic due to my personal connection with the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. My grandparents, who were born and raised in Palestine, were forced to relocate and move the neighboring country of Jordan in order to

The world has grown apathetic to the issue, and in some cases, exacerbated it. We tend to disregard problems in regions that do not affect us as a nation, but the United States very much has to do with peace in the region. The United States (and the United Nations) does not recognize Palestine as a country and the lack of recognition has delegitimized any peace process between Israel and Palestine, as there is a lack of equality. The U.S. is a strong ally of Israel, giving them approximately $3 billion in aid annually. The number often fluctuates; in 2005, the U.S. handed over $154 billion in weapons to the Jewish state, who currently boasts the sixth strongest military in the world. This foreign aid has helped spur violence in the cities and towns of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, and have resulted in massive suffering and death for the Palestinian populations. As billions of tax dollars are spent we should ask ourselves: What exactly is it we are funding? We are endorsing the continuation of violence, and “the humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health”

Also exacerbating the problem are Palestinian terrorist organizations, particularly Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Instead of trying to regain land and form an independent Palestinian state peacefully, they are resorting to terrorism and violence as means to achieve their political goals. Following extreme Islamic ideology, these terrorist groups are militant anti-peace process organizations fighting to completely eradicate the Israeli State and establish an independent Palestinian nation. Hamas specifically, has been responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks that have occurred since the signing of the Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993.  Attacking soldiers and Israeli civilians alike, these terrorist organizations are doing nothing to help their cause and are only making matters worse. The recurring loss of human life at the hands of evil, violence and hatred is unspeakably terrible. Together, Palestinians and Israelis must set their differences aside and tolerate one another to stop this futile decimation of lives.

Due to this conflict, over 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since 2000, and a little over 1,000 Israelis have been killed, most of which were members of the military. About 1,500 Palestinians children have been killed since 2000; for Israel the number is 125. This obvious inequality only fuels the anger of Palestinian civilians, who fear that their government will cave to Israel’s demands easily during the peace negotiations in order to stop further casualties in their country.

After the creation of the Israeli state and the plethora of violent wars and bloody decades later, the area remains in chaos, specifically in Gaza, where the Israeli military is continually committing crimes against humanity and violations of international human rights. This remains highly unseen to the Western world, as humanitarian aid and reporters are not allowed in the region. As humanity continues to be idle – which is somewhat due to the deliberate media coverup of Israeli sponsored crimes and atrocities--, thousands of Palestinians and Israelis continue to die annually.

The genocide of Palestinian civilians has been going on for many years and the world has done nothing to stop it. Every single casualty that has resulted from this series of war is a reflection on the failure of humanity to be able to create a nation where two different groups are able to coexist peacefully. To this day, territorial disputes over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are a source of violence and civilians suffer from atrocious living conditions in the region. It is a shame that innocent lives, Palestinian and Israeli alike, are continually shed over futile territorial disputes, and an even larger shame that the world has done nothing to stop it.