ROME - For many Palestinians who have struggled for decades for the right to self-determination, the end of the tunnel is endlessly delayed. For 73 years, these people have only demanded justice and dignity, freedom and the end of the military occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

  But what has been accomplished during all these years? The continued confiscation of their lands in the West Bank, the construction of illegal settlements inhabited by settlers, and an apartheid system that discriminates against Palestinians, preventing them from moving between their villages. There are roads for the exclusive use of settlers and blockades scattered throughout the territory to control any movement of Palestinians in their own territory.

  A statement which no democracy could tolerate, but which seems a trivial detail to some.

  And in Gaza what do we have today if it is not an open-air prison? On the pretext that during the 2006 elections the political choice of the population was not appreciated, it was decided to isolate the city, besiege it and starve it. Every two years it is attacked and bombed, killing innocent civilian victims.

  On the contrary, a just peace requires the end of the occupation and the dismantling of the racist system set up by Israel, an independent Palestinian state with territorial and geographical continuity, with East Jerusalem as the the capital, as enshrined in the international law and UN resolutions.

  Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their land, a right reaffirmed in UN resolution 194, as well as the recognition by Israel and the international community of the great historical injustice perpetrated against the Palestinian people, the Nakba, the expulsion from their own land with the birth and founding of the State of Israel.

  Only with the recognition of history and the legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative will it be possible to think about reconciliation and build peace together.

  Sadly, at the moment this seems too far away.

 mr-ol