Palestine, June 6, (Pal Telegraph) - Israel's 42-year occupation of the Palestinian territories that continued following the 1967 Six Day War shames the world, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said on Friday, as Israeli troops killed a Palestinian during a protest in the West Bank.
"It is a shame upon the international community to have tolerated the continuation of the most hideous colonization for 42 years as this occupation continues to consolidate itself with the construction of a wall, of barriers, and of settlements," Erakat told journalists.
He was speaking on the anniversary of the Arab-Israeli war, which broke out on June 5, 1967. During the six days of fighting, Israel seized the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria.
Today, "forty percent of the West Bank is under the control of the Israeli empire's colonization," Erakat said.
He said that since Israel occupied the Palestinian territories, it destroyed more than 23,000 homes and expelled more than 8,000 Palestinians from east Jerusalem.
In addition, he said Israel had carried more than 650,000 arrests of Palestinians from the time of the occupation and that another 4,000 were killed since the beginning of the second intifada, or uprising, in 2000.
Erakat hailed Barack Obama's address to the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday, in which the U.S. president expressed support for the creation of a Palestinian state and he sharply criticized Israel's reaction to the speech.
"Israelis have said nothing about a two-state solution or a freeze of settlements," Erakat said, referring to an existing U.S. policy that Obama reiterated.
In related news, a Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli police during a protest in the West Bank village of Nilin against Israel's separation barrier, Palestinian medics said.
Aqel Srur, 35, died after suffering a gunshot wound to the heart, the medics said.
An Israeli military spokesman insisted the troops used "riot dispersal means". A term used to include rubber-coated bullets, although not live ammunition.
Another protester, aged 15, was wounded by the Israeli forces, the medics said.
About 200 people, including Israeli and foreign activists as well as Palestinians, took part in the demonstration. Activists protesting against Israel's construction of the West Bank barrier have clashed with soldiers nearly every Friday outside Nilin and nearby Bilin for more than two years.
Israel says the projected 723 kilometers (454 miles) of steel and concrete walls, fences and barbed wire is needed for security. The Palestinians view it as a land grab that undermines their promised state.
To date Israel has built 57 percent of the projected barrier, most of it inside the occupied West Bank.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a non-binding resolution in 2004 calling for parts of the barrier inside the West Bank to be torn down and for further construction in the territory to cease.
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