WEST BANK FACTS

     WEST BANK FACTS

One of the most egregiously false statements s that, since winning the defensive 1967 Six-Day War, Israel "began a military rule in the occupied territories that only grew more inhumane with each turn of the year." Inhumane? In an article in Commentary Magazine written in 2002, historian Efraim Karsh described the reality: During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world -- ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. [...] Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated. No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars. If,  the time for a Palestinian state is now,-- WHY DOES PALESTINIAN ARAB LEADERSHIP REFUSE TO COME TO THE NEGOTIATING TABLE.  Palestinian refusal to negotiate and propaganda points in another direction: THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY IS MORE INTERESTED IN DELEGITIMIZING AND DESTROYING ISRAEL THAN IN CREATING A STATE FOR ITS OWN PEOPLE. SPECIFIC POINTS:

• Israel's administration of the territories captured in the defensive 1967 Six-Day War is legal, humane and required by international law until a negotiated settlement can be reached.

• Israel has always wanted to live in peace with its Arab neighbors (its Declaration of Independence invites peaceful relations), but has been subjected to repeated military and terrorist attacks.
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• After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel tried to make peace but was met with the "three no's of Khartoum" -- no peace, no recognition, no negotiations.

• The Palestinian Authority educates its children to reject Jewish history in Israel and the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

• Ninety percent of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank live under the Palestinian Authority -- which suppresses civil liberties.

• All the residents of the Gaza Strip are ruled by Hamas, which seeks to impose increasingly Islamic rule on residents and terror attacks on Israeli neighbors.

• Palestinian Arab leadership has repeatedly rejected Israeli peace offers that would have created a new West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinian state.