http://www.zmag.org/shalom-meqa.htm
The frustration of the dreams lost with an agreement that represented a real hope and produced misery at all levels exploded when Sharon violated the last symbol of dignity the Palestinian people had, their sacred Mosque.
The Israeli government handling of the situation after the incident added salt to injury.
On the sixth anniversary of the Intifada, the only statistics available cover the period from 29 September 2000 to 15 September 2005. The five years cost of human life estimated by Btselem, an Israeli human rights group at four thousand. The report details the loss of life on both sides; also, it identifies the age group if under eighteen.
In the attached report, you will find many more categories of people killed since the beginning of the Intifada the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis is about five to one. Some foreigners also paid the ultimate price for being at the wrong place in the wrong time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4294502.stm
In an age where the numbers lost there meaning let me try to help you envision the picture. The four thousand killed are people left their homes in one morning or an afternoon and never came back. They are the sons, daughters of somebody or may be the fathers or mothers of little children somewhere.
They definitely had their own dreams their weaknesses, their strengths and their memories.
They loved, hated, laughed and cried. Some were religious some were not. Some were Muslims and others were Christians. The four thousand people were like us, they were like the three thousand we lost on September 11, but much poorer.
The Israeli forces or settlers killed people like us but live on $2.10 a day. The Israeli forces stop, search, and turn back or shoot people like us at well in checkpoints made on these people land. People like us are humiliated on daily basis through their forced unemployment, and their inability to provide to their own. They have no hope, and the only dream called Oslo turned slowly over seven years into a nightmare. This is when people like us rise against their captors that insist on killing or degrading them.
After six years of Intifada, the biggest loser understandably is the weaker party the Palestinians. They lost many lives, became poorer and now surrounded by walls in multiple separate and small patches of land, living under the continuous threat of tanks, rockets and fighter planes.
However, the whole world lost, you look around from Iran to Palestine to Somalia and Sudan new religious governments sprang up with more extreme views. Terrorism increased significantly in Israel, Iraq, London, Madrid, Indonesia, Afghanistan and many other places. I forgot to tell you that in July and August, alone six thousand and eight hundred Iraqis killed, but this is another story.
The sixth anniversary of the Intifada is a very sad memory of how the world failed and how it is paying the price.
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