“We staged these strikes because of prices, tax rates and the fact that the Palestinian Authority steals tax revenue……..We pay double taxes, both to the Transportation Ministry and to the Ramallah municipality. Why is that?”-West Bank taxi driver

15 September 2012, people in the United States don’t understand life in the slow motion death camp known as West Bank.  Unfortunately for many people in the United States they see nothing wrong with double or even triple taxation (local, state and federal taxes for the same things, like fuels, roads and education)!

Unlike the Gaza Strip, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) routinely use Palestinians as target practice on a weekly, if not daily basis (never reported in U.S. main stream media), the Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to extreme economic controls (similar to what the NAZIs did to the Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War 2).

Many West Bankers (which include Palestinian Christians and Jews, not just Muslims) are blaming the Palestinian Authority (PA), the political party in charge within the West Bank.  The PA has a policy of trying not to piss off its Israeli masters.  Many taxes collected by the PA end up going to the Israeli government, after PA officials skim off what they can for themselves!

It’s gotten so bad that commentators on West Bank TV recently tried to criticize the PA, live on television, their audio was cut off.

A veteran Palestinian ‘peace negotiator’ stated that the only way for West Bank Palestinians to rise up against Israel is to get rid of the PA.

One of the games Israel has been playing is to hold back on tax reparations, calling it “measured assistance”.  Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says this is the only way to control the West Bankers.  Measured assistance also creates an economy so bad that West Bankers are willing to work for peanuts inside Israel, if the Israeli government will let them.  Recently the Israeli government approved 5,000 work permits for desperate West Bankers.

According to the World Bank there are almost three million people living in West Bank (many international organizations say it’s much more), which is 5,628 square kilometers (2,173 sq mi) in size.  But the Palestinians are being squeezed out almost weekly.  For the past few years the Israeli government has authorized the building of hundreds of internationally illegal settlements in West Bank, which means illegally evicting the Palestinians.  Many Israelis are evicting Palestinians on their own and building their own settlements without government authorization.

On 12 September Israeli courts allowed the expansion of one settlement onto private Palestinian land.  The settlers had used an old military order to justify their expansion.  However, that order was modified in 1979, to state that the military can not take land for civilian use.  The courts claim that Palestinians will be compensated for the land, but, where can they go after they’re forced to sell it?

West Bank just saw the end of a week of protests against the economic conditions there (did you see mentions of it in the U.S. main stream media?), now more protests because of a anti-Islam movie, made by a pro-Israeli right wing U.S. christian con artist.  Will there finally be intifada against the Israeli puppet Palestinian Authority?