Responses to Quotes that try to make the Occupation and Genocide of the People of Palestine seem legitimate !

Here are responses given to what is quoted


"It is not unusual for nations to guard their borders and to establish checkpoints to prevent people from illegally entering their countries. The United States has checkpoints at its borders and airports and, as Americans saw on September 11, these are necessary but not foolproof security precautions."

In fact, it should be pointed out the distinction between checkpoints that are located ‘between’ the West Bank and Israel and those that are located between villages, towns, and cities that are completely interior to the West Bank. This assembly of “facts” distributed by the Israel Action Committee unfortunately runs roughshod over this distinction and implies that all checkpoints are along the ‘border’ (in fact, there is no state border between Israel and the West Bank because Israel has never declared its own borders–there is only the Green Line, which is recognized by the international community, and the newly constructed Wall, which runs on the Palestinian side of the Green Line).


"In the case of Israel, the necessity for checkpoints has been created by the Palestinians. By pursuing a violent campaign of terror against Israel’s citizens, they have forced Israel to set up barriers to make it as difficult as possible for terrorists to enter Israel or travel through the territories to carry out acts of violence. The checkpoints are an inconvenience to innocent Palestinians, but they do in fact prevent terror and save lives."


Actually, the necessity for a vast majority of these checkpoints has been the ongoing and illegal construction of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank. These checkpoints are strategically placed to protect those settlements, and Israeli citizens do not have to go through them. They have special ‘bypass roads’ access to which is restricted to Jewish Israelis.


I once saw a flyer that presented 3 anecdotes of Palestinian attacks on checkpoints or Palestinians being caught with weapons at checkpoints. Little information is given regarding the location of the checkpoints in question (except the second one from The Jerusalem Post, which is located at a border crossing between the West Bank in Israel at Tulkarem) so it is impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions. If the persons were stopped at checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank, then this is not what could cause a protest in the first place. These are not the checkpoints to which people object. If, however, the incidents occurred at checkpoints within the West Bank: (1) the suicide attack was just that–an attack on the position of an occupying military force, (2) the Palestinians stopped with light arms [pistols, ammunition] do, in fact, have a right to arms and it is not within the rights of an occupying power to disarm the people that are occupied, and (3) considering that all Palestinians who want to move beyond their homes must at some point travel through one or more of these checkpoints, overlooks the fact that these 3 incidents do not speak for the vast majority of Palestinians.


"Commercial goods, food, medicine, ambulances, and medical crews continue to circulate freely, hampered only by continuing attacks. Palestinian workers going to jobs in Israel also may pass through the checkpoints with the proper identification; restrictions are only imposed when necessitated by the security situation."

This, actually, contradicts fact that has been well-documented by more honest and noble organizations like B’tselem and Machsom Watch.


Barriers are not set up to humiliate Palestinians, but to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens. Unfortunately, every time Israel has relaxed its policy and withdrawn checkpoints, Palestinian terrorists have taken advantage of the opportunity to launch new attacks on innocent Israelis.


Whether or not they are intended to humiliate Palestinians, they do. The occupation and checkpoint systems in and of themselves are humiliating, and they have a suspicious relationship with the expansion of settlements and other illegal activities Israel has taken upon itself. This hand-out unfortunately implies that checkpoints equal security and that they are the only option–the others, of course, are for the Israeli government to make an honest and effective effort to end the occupation and the settlement enterprise.