Fifty years of immoral occupation

This week the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has reached the milestone of 50 years that will be recalled in shame.

Fifty years that have dehumanized both the occupier and the occupied; years of failing to muster the courage to right the wrong.

Fifty years that bred nothing but hatred and contempt for the other; years of illusions trying to deny the other the right to a home of their own.

Fifty years of yearning for peace only to be crushed time and again; years of submission to hopelessness and despair.

Fifty years of pessimism, paralysis, and abdication of responsibility; years of fearing to grasp the only solution but choosing instead to hold onto self-delusion.

Fifty years of disingenuous engagement with one another for the worthiest cause of peace; years of mutual victimization and finding comfort in self-pity and stolen dreams.

Fifty years of occupation that transcends the pale of human decency, subjecting the Palestinians to dejection and despair; years of colonization, home demolitions, terrifying night raids, uprooting of olive trees; years of usurping Palestinian land, robbing them of their dream to be independent and free.

Fifty years of inflicting pain and anguish that spared but a few; years of constant fear of administrative detention and incarceration, with thousands of political prisoners languishing in jails; years of being deprived of their basic rights, not knowing what tomorrow will bring; years of outcry of Palestinian youth, born and reared under occupation with no hope and no prospect of being unshackled from the chains of dishonor and despair.

For fifty years, Israel denied the Palestinians self-determination, justifying it in the name of national security-but nothing threatens its security more than the continuation of the occupation. Breaching the moral law and flouting the Palestinians' human rights only nurtures another generation who live to resent, live to hate, and live to harm, for there is nothing left for them to lose.

For many Israelis, fifty years of occupation seems to pass as if it were normal, conditions to which they have simply become accustomed-never mind that moral erosion has infected the Israelis' social fabric, defying the moral principle on which the state was erected.

They have been led astray by corrupted leaders with no courage of conviction to change direction, exempting themselves of the moral obligation to be just and fair. They have become indifferent and complacent, blind to the light, with little concern about where Israel will be in ten or fifteen years if they do not end the inhumane occupation.

Israel has spent fifty years preparing its youth for the next violent battle, injecting the poison of hatred into their veins, and viewing the Palestinians as objects that can be dispossessed without any sense of moral culpability.