Like Taweel, four of every five Palestinians have never known anything but the occupation – an evolving system by which the Israeli military and intelligence services exert control over 2.6 million Arabs in the West Bank, with one system for Palestinians, another for Israelis.
This summer, the Israelis will celebrate their near-miraculous victory in the 1967 war, when in just six days, they took all of Jerusalem and their armed forces crushed the Arab armies thrown against them.
On the other side, the Palestinians will mark a military occupation going on for so long that many Israelis barely seem to notice anymore, except the young soldiers sent to enforce it.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refers to it, when he speaks of it at all, as “the so-called occupation.”
Some of his fellow citizens say there is really no occupation, because all the Land of Israel was awarded to the Jews by God. Other Israelis argue that Gaza is no longer occupied, because Israel unilaterally withdrew from the coastal strip a decade ago.
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