"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." 

--Moshe Dayan, former Commander-in-Chief of the Israeli Army and Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969

The occupation of Palestinian land by Jewish settlement has continued unabated ever since. According to a study by B'Tselem, an Israeli human-rights group, the West Bank settler population doubled in size during the seven-year Oslo "peace process" (1993-2000), and the settlements' territorial reach extended to cover nearly 42% of the West Bank. This huge expansion was achieved largely through the construction of settler-only bypass roads and military zones which serve to integrate the settlements with Israel proper (Economist October 31, 2002)  —roads that the local Palestinian population is not allowed to use. 

The Israeli settlement process has continued unabated ever since, with the building of more and more settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, displacing more and more Palestinians.

The net result is that Israel now occupies and controls the lion’s share of the West Bank, leaving little in the way of resources upon which a viable Palestinian economy can be built. In addition, Israel controls everything that flows in and out of Gaza and the West Bank, including people, money, foreign aid, medicines, construction material, water and electricity, and shuts these flows down whenever it wishes.

As would be expected, many Palestinians have resisted this process, just as Native Americans fought the conquest and colonization of their land by the expanding American population (another group of European colonizers). In the inevitable conflict, the Palestinian death toll has averaged 6 times that of the Israeli death toll (see table below).  By comparison, according the the U.S. Bureau of Census (1894), "The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians." —a ratio of 1.5 Indians killed for every white person killed in that struggle. While this ratio represents a conservative estimate (most scholarly estimates, however, are less than 2 to 1), it is significantly lower than that experienced by the Palestinians. This is due in part by the fact that the Palestinians can only muster rocks and small, largely homemade, rockets while Israel [ranked by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC) as the most militarized country in the entire world] responds disproportionately with among the world's most modern and sophisticated weapons in its arsenal, including Flechette-shell-darts, which are aimed specifically and indiscriminately at civilian populations.

SOURCE: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israel-using-flechette-shells-in-gaza

According to the Ministry of Information in Ramallah, 1,518 Palestinian children were killed by Israel's occupation forces from the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 through April 2013. That's the equivalent of one Palestinian child killed by Israel every 3 days for almost 13 years. The ministry added that the number of children injured by the Israelis since the start of the Second Intifada against Israel's occupation has now reached 6,000.

"The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers."

 —Catherine Cook (2004)

Meanwhile, Western leaders shuttle back and forth trying to limit the violence and repeatedly call for a settlement of the conflict. A successful settlement depends on both sides being able to (and wanting to) come to a territorial agreement. However, the Israeli Government is no more willing to compromise on its territorial ambitions than was the U.S. government in its conquest of Native American (and Mexican) territory.  Just as the ambition of successive American governments was to colonize the entirety of North America (even invading Canada twice during the War of 1812 in an attempt to incorporate its territories into the U.S.), so also has the goal of Israel always been to occupy the full extent of Eretz Israel (the Biblical name for all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea).

One only needs to read the statements made by successive Israeli leaders to see that their desire and willingness to establish a peace settlement with the Palestinians is highly unlikely.

David Ben Gurion, The first Israeli Prime Minister, stated in response to the UN establishment of two states in Palestine: one for Jews and one for Arabs:

"No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning . . . .  Our possession is important not only for itself . . . through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state . . . will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country."

"[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel." (comment in response to the 1948 UN vote to establish two states in Palestine: one Jewish and one Arab)

"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"

(Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121)

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'"

(Yitzhak Rabin, in a leaked version of Rabin's memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979)

Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (1978-1983) and later member of the Knesset:

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." - New York Times 14 April 1983.

Chaim Weizmann, first Israeli President:

"We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time . . . this is only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years."  (in a letter sent to Palestine-British High Commissioner in 1937) 

Golda Maier: Israeli Prime Minister (1969-1974):

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." they never existed." (The Sunday Times June 15, 1969)  

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."  --March 8, 1969.  

"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy." (Le Monde, October 15, 1971)

". . . the Jewish people have unchallengeable, eternal, historic right to the Land of Israel [including the West Bank and Gaza Strip], the inheritance of their forefathers," (1977)

" [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." --speech to the Israeli Knesset, New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky,

Founder of the right-wing Revisionist Movement (which eventually evolved into the post-1948 Herut Party, and later became the Likud Party, the party of Ariel Sharon, Menachem Begin and Binyamin Netanyahu whose father was secretary to Jabotinsky). Netanyahu considers Jabotinsky to be one of his strongest influences.:

"I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish State, with a Jewish majority, on both sides of the Jordan."

"If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf. ... Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces."

"The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively, they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them was only natural ..... There was no misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but a natural conflict. .... No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab; they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an 'iron wall,' when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement."  (1923)

"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."  --November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.

"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."  --in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times, April 1, 1988

Ehud Barak, Israeli Prime Minister (1999-2001), Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister during Binyamin Netanyahu's second term from 2009 to 2013:

"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...." -- quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000..  

Many in the Arab world referred to Sharon as "the Butcher of Beirut" after he oversaw Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon while serving as defense minister.  Sharon, a former army general then serving as Israeli defense minister, was held responsible by an Israeli inquiry in 1983 for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. He was forced to resign.

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."  -- addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours.  . . . Everything we don't grab will go to them."  --addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

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Of Related Interest . . .

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