The conflict between Palestine and Israel is a tragedy. I used to have a lot of sympathy for Israel, whose people suffered terrible oppression during the Second World War. I have wondered how a previous generation could have stood idly by and let it happen. It was very difficult for the Israeli people to establish the state of Israel and their battle for nationhood was strung with grief, but the Israeli people who were once oppressed have become the oppressors. When the conflict between Israel and Palestine was explained to me in detail and I began to read about events and how the people of Palestine were being treated, it became clear that we had to reach a resolution of the conflict and the Palestinian refugee crisis. I do not want to be told in one or two decades' time that we stood idly by and watched as a people were banished off the face of the earth.
In recent years there has been a focus on the war in Syria and the resultant refugee crisis. However, the Palestinian refugee crisis is one of the longest lasting episodes of forced migration in modern history. Millions of Palestinians have been exiled from homes and lands that their families inhabited for generations. They are stateless. Many still suffer the penury and insecurity that are the legacy of their dispossession. Human rights violations, including house demolitions, land confiscations, forced displacement, restriction of movement and violence against civilians, occur on a regular basis. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, almost one third of registered Palestinian refugees, comprising more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognised Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank, including east Jerusalem. The remaining two thirds live in or close to cities and towns in host countries, on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, often in the environs of official camps. The Gaza Strip is home to approximately 1.9 million people, 1.3 million of whom are refugees. Over 500,000 people live in the eight recognised Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, which have population densities which are among the highest in the world. Approximately 70% of Gaza's 1.9 million people rely on humanitarian assistance.
The land, air and sea blockade imposed by Israel following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2017 which is exacerbated by Egypt keeping its border with Gaza largely sealed continues to have a devastating effect as access to markets and people's movements to or from the Gaza Strip remain severely restricted. A report published in September 2015 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development on assistance to the Palestinian people warned that the Gaza Strip could become uninhabitable by 2020 if the economic trends in being at the time persisted.
According to Human Rights Watch, Israel's restriction on the delivery of construction materials to Gaza and lack of funding have impeded reconstruction of the 17,800 housing units severely damaged or destroyed during Israel's 2014 military operation in Gaza. Approximately 29,000 who lost their homes remain displaced. Conditions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are far below an acceptable standard of living. Decades of conflict and denial of human rights take their toll, as people struggle to make ends meet. However, while it is abundantly clear that more needs to be done to help the Palestinians and improve basic living conditions what is also required is the complete halt to rocket attacks and random knife attacks by Hamas and other Islamic military groups and the cessation of all military strikes by Israel. That is a necessary precondition to functioning negotiations and trying to establish a peace process. The refugees and the Palestinian people need us to stand up for them at this time. We need a two-state solution in that part of the world and it needs to happen now.