Palestine and Middle East Quiz - II

Your success in answering these questions will tell you if your opinions about the Middle East and Palestine are based on factual knowledge or misconceptions.

Be sure to answer the first Palestine and Middle East Quiz: The Palestine Quiz 1 as well.

1. Life expectancy in besieged Gaza is:
a. Longer than in Egypt, Syria, or Turkey: Over 73.4 years;
b. Longer than in Sweden -  over 88 years;
c. Longer than in most countries;
d. The worst in the Middle East - below 60 years;
e. Declining noticeably.

2. Dalal Moughrabi was honored as a Palestinian martyr and heroine by the Palestinian authority because she:
a. Withstood an attack by a platoon of the Israeli Army;
b. Was killed in 1975 by settler religious fanatics from Brooklyn who were destroying her family olive grove;
c. Founded an institute for teaching nonviolent resistance;
d. Led a terror attack, the coastal road massacre, in which 38 civilians including 13 children and an American tourist were massacred;
e. Prevented the Zionists from confiscating Palestinian land.

3. As its name suggests, the raison d’etre of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) is to liberate Palestine. Accordingly, the PLO has fought to establish its independent state at different times in:
a. The whole of Israel, starting with the West Bank and Gaza;
b. Sovereign Israel alone, rejecting any claim to the West Bank and Gaza;
c. Jordan (in the late 1960s and early 1970s)
d. Lebanon (from the mid-1970s until 1982);
e. All of the above.

4. The goal of the PLO, as claimed by them and their supporters today, is to liberate ‘the occupied territories’ which Israel captured in the Six Day War (5^th-10^th June 1967).  This claim is proven or disproven by the fact that the PLO was founded
a. In Ramallah, the biggest city in the West Bank, a month after the Six Day War;
b. In Gaza City, which has traditionally been a center of Palestinian nationalism, on the first anniversary of the Six Day War;
c. 3½ years before the Six Day War, on  January 1, 1964, in Cairo (the capital of Egypt).
d. On the 10th anniversary of the Six Day War, in June 1977, in Hebron;
e. As a response to the establishment of the first Israeli settlement in Hebron in 1969;

5. Palestinian advocates are expansive on the benefits of the "Secular Democratic State." Palestinian Basic Law (the "draft Constitution")  declares that:
a. Palestine will be a secular democratic state;
b. Palestine will not allow an establishment of religion;
c. Islamic Sha'aria law will be a major basis of legislation in Palestine; Islam is declared to be the official religion.

6. Israel has often been accused of “ethnic cleansing” oaf the Arabs in the “occupied territories”.  Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza has:
a. Plummeted from 6,500,000 in 1967 to 3,000,000 in 2009;
c. Remained steady at 3,000,000, despite huge natural growth in the rest of the world;
d. Increased at one tenth of the pace of natural population growth;
e. Plummeted from an estimated 5,000,000 in 1967 to less than 2,000,000 in 2009;

7. Israel has also been accused of “ethnic cleansing” of Arabs who are citizens of the state, and deliberately enforcing policies designed to keep the Arab population small. Israeli Arab population has:
a. Dropped from slightly over 1,000,000 (40% of the overall population. in 1948 to 750,000 (20% of the population) in 2009;
b. Remained at a steady 1,000,000 from 1948 to 2009, while the overall population has increased seven-fold;
c. Increased from 500,000 in 1948 to 1,000,000 in 2009, representing a drop from 35% of the overall population to just 12% in 58 years;
d. Increased from 150,000 (15% of the overall population) in 1948 to about 1,420,000 (22% of the overall population) in 2009.
e. Decreased steadily by 2% per year from 1948 onwards;
 

8. As of 2009, there are five universities (the Islamic University of Hebron; Bir Zeit University; Bethlehem University; Al-Najah University in Nablus; and Al-Azhar in Gaza., and five religious higher education academies in the Palestinian areas. These institutes are:
a. Founded since the Israeli occupation of 1967, under Israeli auspices, the oldest one being the Islamic University of Hebron, founded in 1971.
b. Some of the oldest in the Arab world, with the Islamic University of Hebron having been founded under the original Caliphate in the 8th century;
c. Forced to operate secretly, because the Israeli authorities have banned them;
d. Barely tolerated by the Israeli authorities;
e. All that remain of 25 institutes of higher education, the others having been destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces;

9. Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, nine Palestinians have been sentenced to death by the courts and judicially executed. All of them, without exception, were executed:
a. By the Israeli military occupation authorities;
b. Since September 1993 by the Palestinian Authority in the autonomous zones;
c. By the Israeli army after military courts-martial;
d. By the Israeli civil administration, following criminal trials in civilian courts;
e. By Israeli civilian courts, acting under special emergency regulations.

10. In early October 2005, about 650 people charged the security fence/separation barrier, and an estimated 350 succeeded in crossing it. Security forces responded with bayonets, shotguns, and rubber bullets, killing between ten and fifteen people and injuring dozens more. This incident was given minimal media attention, and has been entirely forgotten. This might be because:
a. World media are biased in Israel’s favor;
b. A dozen Palestinians killed is so commonplace, it is not even newsworthy;
c. The Israeli authorities imposed a media blackout;
d. Jewish settlers intimidated the journalists and photographers into silence;
e. The incident occurred along the security fence in Morocco, separating sovereign Morocco from the Spanish Sahara.

Answer key and explanations for the Palestine Middle-East Quz-2

---

 

Adapted from articles by Daniel Pinner:

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9249

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9250

 

This version is posted at http://zionism-Israel.com/middle_east_qiuz.htm

 

Additions and changes copyright 2011. Please forward this quiz with the original URL and credit to the author. Feel free to adapt this material to your needs - ut give credit to the original authors

 

General History of Zionism - Zionism and the Creation of Israel