By María Josefina Arce

The international community observes with concern the escalation of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the longest and bloodiest in the Middle East and with no immediate resolution in sight.
    
There are numerous victims on both sides, following the offensive by HAMAS, the Islamic Resistance Movement, against Israel and the Zionist attacks against the Gaza Strip, blockaded since 2007 by the Tel Aviv regime and which has left some two million Palestinians isolated.
    
Governments around the world are calling for a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the decades-old conflict that has led to the expulsion of millions of Palestinians from their land and a humanitarian tragedy.
    
This has been a year of great violence in the area. The ever simmering tension rose with the Zionist military raid on Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank last February and the early April assault on the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during the month of Ramadan.
    
Now the clashes between the two sides have hardened the conflict and complicated the situation, the solution of which has always clashed with Tel Aviv's refusal to return to the Palestinians the territories it took from them.
   
On the contrary, the Zionist regime has encouraged the settlement of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, which it annexed in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
   
Under international law this colonization policy is illegal and condemned by the international community. However, it has been a practice of all Israeli administrations, but one that the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reinforced.
   
A June 2022 report by UN human rights experts states that ending Tel Aviv's occupation of the Palestinian territories is crucial to ending the persistent cycle of violence and protracted conflict.
   
Another point of disagreement is Jerusalem, considered a holy city for Judaism, Catholicism and Islam, and disputed by the two sides. The Palestinians consider East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, which should be shaped according to the pre-June 1967 boundaries, before the so-called Six-Day War, something that Israel rejects.
    
More than 70% of UN member countries recognize Palestine as a state. In 2012 it was granted non-member observer state status at the UN and in the same year was admitted as a member of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
   
However, Israel insists on violating the Palestinians' right to their land and has intensified repression against the Palestinians. Last year, Israeli occupation forces killed more than 150 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
   
The prospect of a lasting peace between the two sides seems increasingly remote, especially as the current Israeli government has a strong far-right tendency, which points to an increase in violence and tensions.