Transcription
Years ago, I moved to research, which I like more. More and teaching is fun, but, you know, luckily, you know, I went to research and I got SI. Three years ago was good. I was teaching with a wheelchair. Very, uh, first, actually, I would like to thank Dr. GRE morning, cuz I think he's doing a tremendous job in raising the voices of indigenous people all over the world. I think a lot of us who came here belong to nations that were either wiped out, oppressed, or are in the process of being wiped out. So it's very important for us to get together, learn from one another's experience, and try and come up with a strategy, hopefully, to prevent such things from happening in the future.
Now, I know it's not easy, cuz human nature unfortunately is, I would say, greedy. Life force wants to take over other lands. That's natural, you know, and we have to take that into perspective. Humans naturally have violent tendencies. So it's important how we can work together to try and limit these tendencies or, like, limit these actions and hopefully prevent them. Which, I mean, you can't do that. Throughout history, nations fight and mill each other, mill one another. So, um, so today I want to present a paper. It's entitled "The Gaza Genocide and a New Economic Reality." However, before I start presenting my paper, I would like to give you a brief background. First, a geographical background, and then a historical, a brief historical background about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And then, hopefully, if I have time, I'll delve more into the paper and what I was trying to say and how it concluded. So, like, you know, you can stop me after, like, when I have like four or five minutes before I end, five minutes, so I can wrap up from taking too much.
So let's first start with geography, okay? So, of course, you know, especially economics is important. You have to know where you are first, right? So what does Palestine mean? Palestine lies in the historic land of Palestine, I should say, where now is Israel. It lies in the Middle East, surrounded by Arab nations, Arab countries, where we have Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. And then in the middle, you have the historic land of Palestine. Now, inside the historic land of Palestine, now this is very important, we can split it into three parts. One is the Gaza Strip, which is on the coast of the Mediterranean and bordering Egypt. And on the other side, we have the West Bank, which is, it's called the West Bank. There, there used to be a river. It was a big river for the Israelis. Like, they took the water and that was very small, actually. But it was called the West Bank. That's why it was called the West Bank, west of the river, right? And inside the West Bank, Jerusalem belongs to the West Bank. And then in between Gaza and the West Bank, sorry, the rest of the historic Palestine.
Now, after getting the geography out of the way, now we go to the history. How did it all start? Now, it all started, of course, before long time ago, but we can see that it started after the end of World War I. Now, of course, there were a lot of seminars or a lot of things that led up to that, but let's take that. Let's start over there because I don't want to go back to history because we don't have much time. So we're going to start at the end of World War I. At the end of World War I, what happened? The Ottoman Empire had collapsed. They were defeated cuz they were allied by the Germans. The British and the French, of course, won World War I. So they decided, right, they want to divide the Middle East. You know, the Middle East was one big chunk, and it caused a lot of problems for because one time we attacked Europe from the west, took over Spain, Portugal, and, you know, were defeated in France. And the other time we attacked from the other side, were defeated in Vietnam. So they realized, what can we do? Divide them, right? Very smart, actually. So the, the French got together, and there was a treaty called Sykes-Picot, where the British and the French divided the, the land into small parts, and each took a part. Part. Now, the historic land of Palestine was under the British Mandate. The British took it. Now, at that time, Palestinians didn't know what occupation was. Of course, we are ignorant people. We have to say that. So we are to blame too, um, for most farmers. A lot of us used to serve in the military during the Ottoman Empire. Of course, no education. We did not know what the United Nations were or any of that stuff, right? Now, most of us, I'm saying, of course, there were elite education, but the elite were educated, but the rest of the people, we didn't know what was going on. So to us, being under the British occupation is not a big deal. Who cares? So what's the difference? What's the victory, right?
So after they put us under the British, uh, mandate, there was another declaration which the Palestinians didn't know about, nor the neighboring Arab countries. It was called the Balfour Declaration. Now, the Balfour Declaration gave the Jews the right to establish a state inside the historic land of Palestine. And remember, that was after World War I. We're talking about 1917, right? Somewhere around that period, right? So later, after the Balfour Declaration, the elite Palestinians knew about this, and an uprising happened before World War II. However, the British were able to oppress our people, and with the help, of course, of other nations, and the rest of the Arab world was under occupation. So now it was the Palestinians. So the British were able to keep them in control and prevent further escalation. Of course, World War II came about. The leaders of the Palestinians tried to ally. Actually, we allied with the Germans to try and get rid of the British. However, things didn't play well, and the Germans were defeated. And after the defeat of the Germans, the British, the British Mandate came to existence. And in 1948, the state of Israel was created on the land of Palestine. Land of Palestine. Of course, in 1948, the Palestinians fought. However, there was no, um, there were, there was not a match to the Jews' trained and well-equipped, um, military. Even though the Arabs all helped the Palestinians, but still they were very weak and technologically, of course, we had no technology at that time. So they were able to defeat all the armies, the Arab armies, including the Palestinian armies. And the Jews did something smart. They massacred a number of villages. Most famous is a village called Deir Yassin, and spread the word. So what happened? You massacre somebody, spread the word, you run away. And that's Nakba. Massive migration occurred. 700,000 Palestinians fled the territories that the Israelis took over. That was 85% of the population of that land. And of course, they got the land with no people, which is not what they wanted. So they did a good job, and we fell into the trap.
So after 1948, the state of Israel was established, and Palestinians were left with the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. There was a stronghold on those two positions, and the Jewish armies couldn't penetrate these two points. So they were kept with the Palestinians. Of course, it was divided. West Bank was given to Jordan. Gaza Strip went with Egypt under their rule. Now, of course, in the coming years, they tried to fight hard to regain the land that was lost. And of course, refugee camps were established all over the Arab world to keep our identity. They could take us, and we can become like them, but they said no, let's keep in refugee camps so we can keep the identity. Now, the Israelis kept spreading. They did not stop at that point. Palestinians were trying to regain the lost lands, and Israel was looking to expand the lands. And that's exactly what happened later on. In 1967, the Palestinian land was banned, and the Gaza Strip. But this time, we are smarter. We learned the lesson, you know, start getting educated, start learning more. So we learned, you should not migrate and run away. It's okay if they, some of you let, most of you stay. We either die or you live a good life. But if you run away, you're done. And that's in 1967 when the Palestinians lost the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There was no mass migration. They mass people here and there, but everybody stayed. Of course, some people run away. These people always run away, you know, can make money and migrate. People run, but the majority stayed.
However, right, it's great to get over now. When we stayed and would not run away, and they took it over, of course, they're smart too, you know. They said, okay, they stay, right? So let's do two things. Give them a hard time so they leave, right? Make it impossible for them to live. Two, it's like what they did in America. That's settlements. And the day of settlements started, they started next to every village in the West Bank and Gaza. They built in the settlements and they bring more Jews from all over the world. They give them money, they give them wealth, they give a lot of economic incentives to come and live in these settlements because, you know, nobody wants to live there. Why would you want to live in a very hostile place unless you're very religious and really believe in that stuff, which most of us are not. And the other way to get people is money, right? Give me money, give me a free run, give me money, I'll come, right? Most of them. And that's what happened. They started building settlements, and the settlements would expand more and more and more, take out more lands. And of course, they picked the strategic locations in the West Bank and Gaza. The fixed locations where there's water and the settlement can survive even if all the surrounding areas are hostile. Of course, but they had the strong military, they can protect their citizens. But at that time, we were still like very unwilling to, let's say, fight them that hard. Most resist from our side.
Now, 1988, the approach had changed. Said, okay, we can't keep fighting for land because it's useless. A big uprising should happen from inside, and this would be better. Would be better off. And that's exactly what happened. The first Intifada, an Intifada meaning a big uprising, happened. And all the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, they rose up against occupation to try and get us a free Palestinian state. However, what we got in 1994 is also an agreement, and we got a semi-independent state, and the Palestinian Authority was formed, giving us partial control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, right? But of course, no control on the borders. No real control on the borders. They kept control of the borders, natural resources. They kept control of the sky, land, under the ground, they have control of, right? Jerusalem kept with them. It stayed with them. They didn't give us any control of that. And they give us partial control here and there. And they give us an airport in Gaza. We out to get an airport in Gaza and a seaport in Gaza Strip. However, the airport was very limited, you know, they kept security over there. And the seaport, they had a strong iron grip on the seaport, the airport, the borders. So they didn't really give a lot of, um, lot of independence. But they give, I would say, I would call it a semi-independent economy and a semi-independent state. That's what they gave us. An economy, and we broke away from the economy, but our economy stayed dependent on their economy. They kept control of three, three aspects which kept us dependent on that: the borders, currency, and our mobility. And with those three, they were able to, of course, to control everything. They can always turn the switch whenever they get, when they want. But in 1994, we accepted. We agreed. We said, okay, something better than nothing, right? And that's what we all want. And hopefully, this is going to give us a state. And that's what was agreed on in '94. Initially, you start with the West Bank and Gaza, slowly, slowly they pull out, we get our free independent state, and we're done. And we're done, you know, they get their own state, we get our own state, confidence over, and we all can relax. Now, some of us would not, for us, want the whole thing. They can keep fighting. But what most of us will settle down, right? And that was, now, of course, that was our plan, but that was not their plan. You know, they kept instigating, instigating after '94. They kept pushing, pushing, pushing. They pushed us to a point, of course, they know how to push us, right? They pushed us to a point where we rebelled, and we had the second Intifada. And it started in 2000. This time, we're stronger. They are smarter, but we're also learning. Every time we learn better, right? And we're more, we're stronger. Stuff. First Intifada, we had rocks, we throw stones and rocks and stuff like that. They said, no, we had, we had weapons. We had some weapons, of course, not can't match their weapons. They have there, nuclear power, they have tanks, they have helicopters, they have, like, you know, best Air Force in the Middle East. Of course, all backed by the US. But this time, we had guns. So we're not actually only with stones. We had M16, not M16, classic, cuz the Russians and Chinese used to have. So we have the Russian type, uh, Kalashnikov. Of course.
So the second Intifada started in 2000. Of course, they erupted it by Sharon entering Jerusalem. They said they want to take over Jerusalem. And they know that they know how to get us going, you know. It's very easy for them to know. They know how to press our buttons, like they. And that's what they, we rose up from the year 2000 to 2003. Now, in 2000, start the Palestinian semi-independent West Bank, Gaza, right? Airport, seaport, limited area, of course, but some area to airport and seaport, right? Now, West Bank, no airport, no seaport. Settlements are, are continuing to expand. End of the second Intifada, what happens? Airport, the airport is gone. No more. They destroyed it. Although they paid for it too. It was all paid by the Europeans and the Americans, but it's destroyed. No one said anything. They don't care, right? Um, no airport, no more airport, no more. So that limited our mobility. We're back to, if you want to travel, we have to cross the border. The Gaza, they from Egypt. West Bank, we will cross from Jordan and we fly from there, going to have access to airports, right? Secondly, they weakened the Palestinian Authority. They said, okay, this regime, we'll weaken them so they can't even fire a bullet next time. And that's what they did. They killed everybody who was willing. And an example is the Palestinian Authority had a strong hold, control on the refugee camps. Now, the resistance mostly always at hardest from the refugee camps. Why? Because refugee camps, those are people who were displaced from 1948. So they have more to fight, and they're still the displaced. They want to go back to their homes. So usually refugee camps, I would say, is the mobile or the source of most of the resistance, cuz these people are more desperate to fight than the rest of the Palestinians who are on their land, you know, and they never left their home. So the, the Palestinian Authority had a strong control of the refugee camps. And one of the most hardest refugee camps who always get trouble to the Israelis is Jenin refugee camp, which under was under the leadership of a guy called Abu Ali. Now, what they did is they surrounded the camp and they asked him to surrender. Now, of course, they know he wasn't going to. So he fought to death. And then with his death, the Authority had lost the control of the refugee camps. So no more control, and it was weakened dramatically. All the people who were strong and charismatic leaders were gone, including the head of the, the Authority, Yasser Arafat. He was, of course, they say he was, he was, he died by himself from food poisoning. Nobody knows how he got to poison. But, you know, we all know how they work. They have poison, they work with sicknesses, they spread, you know, they can do things which does not look all that. So including him, he was gone.
So now you had a weakened Palestinian Authority, lost control of a lot of things. Of course, the treaty, the Oslo treaty, 1994, giving an independent state was gone. No more. We're not talking about that anymore. And the conflict remained. And, you know, they, they like, you know, they delay us with peace plans here, roadmaps to a peace plan. And, you know, time spent like that. Now, with a weakened Palestinian Authority, you create a vacuum, right? When the vacuum was created, another faction rose up, which was Hamas, and was able to take control of the West Bank. Oh, I'm sorry, Gaza. So they knew that, so, okay, that's divide and conquer, easier, right? So that's what happened. Now you have, we had two rival governments, one in the West Bank and one in Gaza. Two Palestinian rival governments. And in between is Israel. And on the border, Israel maintained an iron grip on both areas, right? Now, each has a different philosophy. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank believes in peaceful negotiations. Now, we're going to get our state by peacefully negotiating with the Israelis and the world. And of course, the US backs us, backing up. So if you convince the US, we can get a state. So let's try and convince the US, Israel, and Europe, and the rest of the world. Now, of course, the rest of the world, you can convince, but US and Israel, and we get our own state. Now, the other government in Gaza said, no, no, that doesn't work. We're going to fight. We're going to fight till the end. And these people don't know how to talk. The only way they know how to talk is by police and fighting. Now, of course, we're not much for the military anyway. We have no chance. But let's go and do that. That's a lot better, right? So each took different paths.
Now, in the West Bank, of course, peaceful negotiations doesn't lead anywhere. We got nowhere. On the contrary, our settlements kept expanding and expanding and expanding. Now we have maybe close to 600,000 settlers inside the West Bank. Now, I'm saying that including Jerusalem, right? Before we had maybe at the beginning, we have like 100,000, but they keep expanding, expand. 100,000. Now we have 600,000 inside the West Bank. So now it's the reality where those 600,000 are going to go. The Jews can't throw them out. So on the other hand, but we have a good life, you know, economically, a little bit better. Okay, Gaza Strip, poverty, right? Um, no settlements. They took out settlements. That's a good part cuz they're, they want to fight, so no one wants to be around them. However, borders are controlled. They live in a big prison. And it's a crappy prison, not even a good prison. Like, we live in a nice big prison. It's a nice prison, five-star hotel prison. We have like nice roads, we have nice buildings, you know, we have a good standard of living. But we live in a big prison. State. Now, big prison, right? Uh, no roads, very poor, high level of poverty, more than 30% unemployment rate, right? And desperate people, and no freedom. They can't go anywhere. If they want to leave the Gaza Strip, they have a very hard time because they have a lot of control on the border. So you can't just say, oh, I want to leave tomorrow. No, you can't do that. Before you have to give permission to the Israelis, Egyptians, and Hamas for us to even leave, you know, if you. So that situation is pretty bad, and economically they're very poor.
So now, given those two situations, of course, no seaport. They don't have access to. They're on the beach, Mediterranean coast, but they don't have access to any seaport, no airport for Gaza, right? And they just were there, and a strong iron grip on them. Nothing can go in, nothing can go out. However, they were unprepared. So they built tunnels, they dug in underground. And on October 7th, 2023, they attacked Israel. They infiltrated. They wiped out all the military that was surrounded. Now, they did that. Why? They want their land, and they want freedom. They didn't do it because they don't like Israel. That's not it. Or didn't do it because they're having a good life. They want no. They did it out of desperation, and they did it thinking that this act would lead them to freedom and end years of occupation, and end the economic embargo on them, and they can have their own state on the Gaza Strip. Now, first, on the other side, not there, right? So they did that. Now, what they didn't know is two things. One, their natural gas was covered on the coast of Gaza. So money, you know, as usual, more economic resources. Gaza now looks good. There's a lot of natural gas. So if, if it expands and say, let's say together, that's more money, that's good, right? They didn't realize that. And now Israel wants the coast, wants the whole coast, right? The other thing they didn't realize is the world doesn't care that much about genocide that much, you know. We can overlook it. It's okay. And they took refugees. What they did, they said, okay, if we do that, they're going to bomb us, right? They can nuke us with nuclear weapons. So we're going to take Israeli refugees and keep them in there with us so they can't harm us. Otherwise, they nuke us, they come with planes and tanks and bombs and bombers. Nothing. So that they launched. They took, I think, around 200 Israelis hostages. And they said, okay, we're ready to negotiate. I want freedom. Give us freedom, we give you back all the hostages, and we're done, right? But Israel responded in a very hard way. It was actually, I think, when I look at now what happened, this is what they wanted. They want to expand and get rid of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians. Of course, not the land. They want the land, but they want land with other people. So, hey, they get prisoners. And that's the look. That they launched the attack and they started killing people left and right.
Now, what happened is from October 7th till August 27th, October 7th of 2023 till August 23rd of 2024, 4,476 Palestinians were killed, mostly women, children, and elders, right? 93,700 injured. Now, injury of that's small injury, no leg, no arm, this, right? And 10,000 missing under the rubble. Now, not only that, they destroyed all the infrastructure, roads, buildings, hospitals, sewage, water, right? So they created a situation where the place is unlivable anymore, okay? So you can die from the bombings or the tanks. If you don't with a certain structure, and no more health services, what happens? Gaza Strip is overpopulated. It's 2 million and I think 400,000 people, right? With no proper sanitation, no water. Happens very easily, right? Would come out, right? And you die naturally by yourself. No need to kill you anymore. Now, a lot of diseases are spreading, right? That are coming from just lack of sanitation, lack of proper water, and lack of sewage. And, and in the result, all you have to do is surrender and stop. Now, to do that, you know, if you do that, you're going to go under the control side, and you do it anyway. So what would you going to do that too? Okay? Now, the only way is you run away, right? And that's why 1.9 million, two and a half, there are 2,400,000 who still alive are still like in good health. Of course, rich people left. Oh, rich people, people are educated, right? So they just move from one area to another. And that's because each is closing the border, not allowing them to all run away, otherwise they all run. More run away. So now you have 1.93 million people, 85% of the Gaza people live in the Gaza Strip, moved from this place to another place, right? Now, my university, university, we have six campuses in Gaza. They're all like bombed. They're down. And what's left of them is, you know, just put people, people are homeless. And for all people who run away, now they live in the camps or they like they created like sales zones, they call them in schools and universities, what universities were. And people are so now, given this background, now what's my paper? I'm arguing that what I said is nations usually expand to gain economic resources, right? And I'm looking at, of course, this conflict has a lot of dimensions. In my paper, I look at the economic dimension of it. I try to overlook the political, religious, and all the other dimensions. I look at the economic dimension. And Israel wants to expand. They want to expand. They want the land, the natural resources that are now on the coast of the Mediterranean. So let me wipe out the indigenous people of the land and take the land, right?
Now, in my paper, of course, course, you know, we economists, we like to use math. Makes us feel good when we do that. I prove that mathematically, using complicated, going to here, that two nations or two diverse populations can coexist in the same inhabitant. Okay? I can say it in a simpler way. Two competing species can coexist in the same inhabitant. It can happen. One species doesn't have to wipe out the other one for both species to exist. They can exist. And of course, I prove it in my paper mathematically that it can happen. So there's no need to wipe me out for you to exist, right? We can both exist and have a somewhat of a good life, right? So there's no need for Israel to wipe out the Palestinians in Gaza to take control of the natural resources. And the right, if we allow this to happen, you create a new economic reality, what I call now a created reality, where I'm allowing, I'm not saying this didn't happen. I'm not saying that, but what I'm saying is if you create it, if you allow it in this century to happen another time, that you're allowing nations to say, okay, I want to expand, but I want for, I want to expand. I want the people. I want to learn. Most of the time, so let me more about the indigenous people and not get that out done. How much do I have? Okay, yeah, that's my all.