"There
is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from Israeli sadism."
August 7,
2014
Amid all the
horrors unfolding in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israel’s goal is
simple: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm.
For the West
Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its illegal construction of settlements
and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of
value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting
them to repression and violence.
For Gaza, the
norm is a miserable existence under a cruel and destructive siege that Israel
administers to permit bare survival but nothing more.
The latest
Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a
settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian
boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That elicited little
attention, which is understandable, since it is routine.
“The
institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the West helps explain not
only why Palestinians resort to violence,” Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani
reports, “but also Israel’s latest assault on the Gaza Strip.”
In an
interview, human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who has remained in Gaza through
years of Israeli brutality and terror, said, “The most common sentence I heard
when people began to talk about cease-fire: Everybody says it’s better for all
of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war.
We don’t want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft
targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is
better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals, academics, ordinary
people: Everybody is saying that.”
In January
2006, Palestinians committed a major crime: They voted the wrong way in a
carefully monitored free election, handing control of Parliament to Hamas.
The media
constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In
reality, Hamas leaders have repeatedly made it clear that Hamas would accept a
two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been
blocked by the U.S. and Israel for 40 years.
In contrast,
Israel is dedicated to the destruction of Palestine, apart from some occasional
meaningless words, and is implementing that commitment.
The crime of
the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once. The U.S. and Israel,
with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed harsh sanctions on the errant
population and Israel stepped up its violence.
The U.S. and
Israel quickly initiated plans for a military coup to overthrow the elected
government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil the plans, the Israeli
assaults and the siege became far more severe.
There should
be no need to review again the dismal record since. The relentless siege and
savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of “mowing the lawn,” to borrow
Israel’s cheery expression for its periodic exercises in shooting fish in a
pond as part of what it calls a “war of defense.”
Once the lawn
is mowed and the desperate population seeks to rebuild somehow from the
devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire agreement. The most recent
cease-fire was established after Israel’s October 2012 assault, called
Operation Pillar of Defense .
Though Israel
maintained its siege, Hamas observed the cease-fire, as Israel concedes.
Matters changed in April of this year when Fatah and Hamas forged a unity
agreement that established a new government of technocrats unaffiliated with
either party.
Israel was
naturally furious, all the more so when even the Obama administration joined
the West in signaling approval. The unity agreement not only undercuts Israel’s
claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided Palestine but also threatens the
long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank and pursuing its destructive
policies in both regions.
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