Somehow, I’m not convinced you read any of the links. Did you know over 250 thousand Palestinians were forcibly displaced before Israel declared independence?

Between 1948 (when Israel declared independence) and 1966, Palestinian citizens of Israel were subject to military rule. After 1966, martial law was lifted but to this day they continue to suffer from widespread, systematic and institutionalized discrimination affecting everything from land ownership and employment opportunities to family reunification rights. Today, there are approximately 1.9 million (Updated December 2019) Palestinian citizens of Israel, comprising about 21% of Israel’s population.

There are more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. directly or indirectly, based solely on their ethnicity, rendering them second or third class citizens in their own homeland.

By August 1937, “transfer” was a major subject of discussion at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. Alluding to the systematic dispossession of Palestinian peasants (fellahin) that Zionist organizations had been engaged in for years, David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first prime minister in 1948, stated: “You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.” He concluded: “Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale.”

By the time the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, more than 200 Palestinian villages had already been emptied as people fled in fear or were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces, and approximately 175,000 Palestinians had been made refugees. By 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees, losing their land, homes and other belongings in what became known as the “Nakba” (“catastrophe”). Their flight was accelerated by massacres such as the one that took place on April 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, where approximately 100 Palestinian men, women, and children were murdered by Zionist paramilitaries. Today, refugees displaced during Israel’s creation and their descendants number approximately 7.1 million people.

Military administrative government was in effect from 1949 to 1966 over some geographical areas of Israel having large Arab populations, primarily the Negev, Galilee, and the Triangle. The residents of these areas were subject to martial law. The Israel Defense Forces enforced strict residency rules. Any Arab not registered in a census taken during November 1948 was deported. Permits from the military governor had to be procured to travel more than a given distance from a person’s registered place of residence, and curfew, administrative detentions, and expulsions were common. Although the military administration was officially for geographical areas, and not people, its restrictions were seldom enforced on the Jewish residents of these areas. In the early 1950s, martial law ceased to be in effect for those Arab citizens living in predominantly Jewish cities of Jaffa, Ramla, and Lod, constituting a total of approximately 15% of the Arab population of Israel. But military rule remained in place on the remaining Arab population elsewhere within Israel until 1966.

The documents describe detailed preparations that were made in the military in the years before 1967, with the intention of organizing in advance the control of territories that the defense establishment assessed – with high certainty – would be conquered in the next war. A perusal of the information indicates that the takeover and retention of these areas – the West Bank from Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria – were not a by-product of the fighting, but the manifestation of a strategic approach and prior preparations.

Following the 1967 war, in which the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights in Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, martial law over the Palestinian population as well as the Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian populations in these areas was put in place. In 1993, the Oslo I agreements facilitated limited self-rule for Palestinians under the Palestinian National Authority. Officially, only parts of Area C in the West Bank are under martial law.

The first intifada erupted 25 years ago. What started as local demonstrations snowballed into a sweeping popular uprising that did not die down until the convening of the Madrid peace conference at the end of 1991. The intifada reinvigorated the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was at a low ebb in its history after its forced evacuation from Lebanon and the concomitant loss of the military and political option. More important, the intifada shifted the focal point of the Palestinian national struggle from the “outside” to the “inside.”

The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a major uprising by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation, characterized by a period of heightened violence in the Palestinian territories and Israel between 2000 and 2005. The general triggers for the unrest are speculated to have been centered on the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit, which was expected to reach a final agreement on the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in July 2000. An uptick in violent incidents started in September 2000, after Israeli politician Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa compound, which is situated atop the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem; the visit itself was peaceful, but, as anticipated, sparked protests and riots that Israeli police put down with rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tear gas. Within the first few days of the uprising, the IDF had fired one million rounds of ammunition.

The “great march” entailed weekly demonstrations by Palestinians near the fence that since 1996 has separated Gaza and Israel (along the Green Line traced by the armistice agreements of 1949), demanding that the blockade imposed on Gaza be lifted and the return of Palestinian refugees. Prior to the first demonstration, Israeli forces reinforced their positions at the fence with additional troops, including more than 100 sharpshooters. They dropped leaflets in Gaza and contacted Palestinian bus companies to warn against participation. At the demonstration sites, they strengthened the separation fence and its underground barrier (to prevent and detect cross-border tunnels), installed kilometres of barbed wire coils on the Gazan side as additional barriers, cleared vegetation on both sides, dug deep trenches on the Israeli side and erected a battery of earth mounds or berms onto which snipers were positioned for better visibility and shooting accuracy. The rules of engagement apparently permitted live fire at demonstrators as a last resort in the event of imminent threat to life or limb of Israeli soldiers or civilians. They permitted snipers to shoot at the legs of “main inciters” as a means to prevent a demonstrating crowd from crossing the separation fence, because the Israeli forces viewed crossing as a potential imminent threat, in part because the crowd might include militants. The rules also permitted the use of lethal force against any demonstrators ”directly participating in hostilities”, such as an armed attack against Israeli forces.