60 years after Partitioning of Palestine, residents stranded between checkpoints, Wall & settlements

Feature translated by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC - Saturday, 02 December 2006, 03:12

by Palestine News Network Last Wednesday, November 29, was the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, the UN Partition Plan for partitioning Palestine of November 29, 1947. It was considered the first decision that called for partitioning Palestine and the creation of two Arab and Jewish states. Thirty-three countries approved the decision, 13 voted against it and 10 countries abstained. Now, as 2006 is passing away, the Palestinians are living between checkpoints, isolated behind the huge concrete Walls and more than 160 settlements hotting several hundreds of thousands o settlers have bee constructed. Qalqilia city, in the northern part of the West Bank, lived and still living the partitioning resolution, as it lost lands to Israel in 1947, then lost more lands in 1967 and now is losing what is left for the construction of the Annexation Wall. Resident Abdullah Amin J'eidy, was born in Qalqilia in 1920, he lived the different stages Palestinian had to go through, he was 27 when the partitioning resolution was passed, and now he is living in Qalqilia that became totally isolated by the Wall. “We heard about the resolution, but we never saw it”, J'eidy said, “and in 1948 we felt the true loss of our land after Israeli occupied the historic Palestine”. “They stole my land, and they barred me even from seeing it again, I still have papers proving my ownership, but they don't' care”, he added, “Now am here, I will not move from what i have left, I will not give my land away”. He still remembers his lost land, he still remember the first Kibbutz installed there, his old neighbors and every details of what he lost. Qalqilia municipality said that after the Partitioning order, 80% of the farmlands were annexed to Israel, and that Qalqilia used to be 50.000 Dunams, but now only 10.000 are left. Dr. Ali Abdul-Hameed head of the Regional and Civil Planning center in Al Najah University in Nablus, said that the Partitioning order was theoretical and was never implemented. “Now, sixty years after it was approved, the Palestinians are living in isolated cantons, separated by settlements and checkpoints blocking the entrances of the cities and villages”, Abdul-Hameed stated, “the plan Sharon presented in the early eighteens aimed at dividing the West Bank into five sections, now it is implemented with 620 checkpoints spreed all over the West Bank”. Professor Ibrahim Abu Jaber, head of the Studies Center in Um Al Fahim, said that the Partitioning resolution gave the Palestinians 70% of the land to the Palestinian and 30% to the Jews. “Although i reject the resolution, it is still better than what is going on today, now Israel is also expelling the Bedouins from the Negev, and the Arabs from several areas”, Abu Jaber said, “I am an Bedouin from the Negev, my family and I were expelled, and we are living in Kafer Qassim after Israel issued a military order annexing all of the agricultural lands to use them for military proposes”. “After the Partitioning resolution was passed at the UN, I became a refugee in my own land”, he added. The UN Partition Plan for Palestine (Full text)

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