World Media on Gaza and Israel Part 2
New Age Islam Edit Desk
17 July, 2014
Articles:
• Pounding Gaza with impunity
By Vijay Prashad
• This Conflict Is About Palestine’s Existence, Not Israel’s
By Chris Doyle
• The Cycle of Violence in Gaza Cannot Go On
By Khaled Almaeena
• What Is Hamas Trying To Achieve?
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
• Abbas Powerless To Stop Gaza War
By Daoud Kuttab
• In Gaza, Israel Blinded By Hamas
By Akiva Eldar
• Gaza's Border Becoming a No-Man's Land
By Mohammed Othman
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Pounding Gaza with impunity
By Vijay Prashad
July 17, 2014
On July 9, the second day of the Israeli assault on Gaza, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, had three Palestinian Members of Parliament removed from the room: Ahmed Tibi of the Arab Movement for Change as well as Ibrahim Sarsour and Masud Ghnaim of the United Arab List. Their crime: being critical of the Israeli attack on Gaza, which has by now claimed close to 200 Palestinian lives and injured almost a 1,000 Palestinians. Mr. Feiglin, who has said that Arabs are “a gang of bandits,” then offered his own military strategy. The Israeli government, he said, should cut off electricity to Gaza so that its hospitals would be paralysed. “The blood of a dialysis patient in Gaza,” he said, “is not redder than the blood of our IDF [Israel armed forces] soldiers who will, God forbid, need to enter [Gaza].”
Mr. Feiglin is not alone. During Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel needs “to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima — the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki too.” This year, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that it was time to “eradicate the Hamas regime in Gaza.”
Hibernation of Terror
Israel justifies its actions by saying that Hamas has a “culture of death,” which can only be confronted by death itself. Hamas, however, denies that it had anything to do with the abduction and murder of the three Israeli teenagers and says that it has not violated the 2012 ceasefire. Its rockets fired after Israel began its aerial bombing of Gaza. Israeli politicians have rhetorically conflated Hamas with everything bad that ever happens in the region — “Hamas” has come to stand for the devil. With Gaza reduced to Hamas, 1.8 million people who live on the Gaza Strip (140 square miles) are made responsible for Hamas. This is a classic definition of the doctrine of collective responsibility, illegal by international law.
What does the language of “flatten” and “eradication” mean in the context where a politician calls for dialysis patients to be killed and hospitals to be bombed? So far, Israeli bombs have hit al-Wafa hospital, which is why international solidarity activists have now moved in as a human shield to protect the facility. Israeli bombs also flattened the Center for Disability in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, killing two disabled girls. At least forty children are confirmed killed by Israel strikes over the first four days of the Operation.
Hospitals are not the only sites that have been hit. The U.N. agency that runs schools in Palestine, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, reports that nine of its schools have been hit in Gaza City, Middle Area, North Area, Khan Younis and Rafah. The UN’s organisation for humanitarian affairs, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), provided numbers of the dead and mentioned that because the water and sewer infrastructure has been struck, 350,000 Gazans have lost these services. Three quarters of Gaza has no electricity — Feiglin’s hope is close to realisation. Jens Laerke of UNOCHA said, “Our aid workers on the ground report that people in Gaza are gripped by fear, the streets are empty and the shops are closed.” Gaza, in other words, has gone into the hibernation of terror.
The U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that Gaza is on the “knife edge,” as the Security Council met for half an hour on July 10 without any action. The United States has blocked all moves by Jordan, on behalf of Palestine, to call for an immediate ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the international criticism, which was evident in demonstrations from Tokyo to New York City, saying, “No international pressure will prevent us from acting with all power.” The phrase “all power” is chilling, and indeed a good description of the way Israel is already prosecuting the war. It is a one-sided barrage (there are no Israeli fatalities).
Egypt’s ceasefire proposal came without any substantial conversation with the Palestinian factions or with Israel. Hamas’ Qassam Brigade said that they had heard about it from the media. Israel seized the public relations opportunity to say that they would abide by the ceasefire, which last only a few hours. A massive Israeli barrage on Khan Younis announced the return of “all power.”
No Accountability
U.N. Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay cautioned Israel to “avoid” killing civilians. She has not made any remarks about the dangerous language coming out of Israeli politicians — words like “eradication” and “flatten” suggest a crime against humanity. The Gaza destruction is already immense. The only time the international community came close to asking for Israeli accountability for its actions against Palestine was in 2009, when the U.N. empanelled the Goldstone Commission. Its report intimated that Israel has committed crimes against humanity (perhaps even war crimes), but the report was shelved. There was no price paid by Israel for its use of chemical weapons and to attack civilian infrastructure (including hospitals, religious buildings and schools). A failure to demand accountability allows Israel impunity — it shrugs off international pressure because this is of no heft.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, will have to pick up the pieces, with aid from the U.N. agencies and from the Arab states, and from their own resilience. It is a testimony to the human spirit that the Palestinian people remain resilient and hopeful, looking beyond the last sky for a chance to live dignified lives, or just to stay alive.
Vijay Prashad is Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut
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This Conflict Is About Palestine’s Existence, Not Israel’s
By Chris Doyle
16 July 2014
Gaza. Here we go again? Another round. It is a cycle of violence, a tour de farce on a road map to more death and destruction. Sadly, it was all too predictable. To most outside observers, nothing positive or constructive has been achieved by nine days of Hamas rocketing and Israeli bombardment. The Israeli war camp faces off against Hamas and other Islamist groups and all are more than content to up the hostilities if for no other reason than to weaken Fatah and the Israeli left who have favored talks. Hamas have dutifully played into Netanyahu’s hands by escalating the crisis just when international pressure on Israel over settlements was beginning to build a modicum of momentum. Two months ago, international players were scratching around to rescue a failed peace process. Now they are struggling just to cobble together a ceasefire.
But after three major Israeli military operations in five years, what can be done to transform an eventual ceasefire into a meaningful political process that has the chance of delivering a permanent political solution?
On past occasions, it has been “ceasefire and forget.” The major powers miss the opportunity created by the crisis to alter the fundamentals. A ceasefire allows Israelis to return to normal life, but Palestinians only get to return to their ritual of daily struggle for survival. In Gaza, over 70 percent remain dependent on aid handouts with few jobs. About 90 percent of the water is not fit for drinking. As the head of the Israeli water authority told me, “Don’t drink the water in Gaza. It’s either s*** or sea water.” Israelis will be jetting off on the summer holidays, whereas the only airplanes Palestinians in Gaza get to see are watching them or bombing them from the skies. Israelis tour the world; Palestinians tour their prison and cannot even approach its edges for fear of being shot.
So, How Is The Cycle To Be Broken?
The existing reality needs to be defragmented. For the last decade at least, the Israeli strategy, the chief architect of which was Ariel Sharon, was the division and fragmentation of Palestine and Palestinians. The West Bank and Gaza were separated. Jerusalem was separated from the rest of the West Bank. Palestinians could not travel between these areas. The West Bank was further fragmented into over 227 Palestinian areas by settlements, checkpoints and the barrier. The geographic and demographic fragmentation was matched by the political fragmentation of the Fatah-Hamas split.
Only be reversing this will there be hope of progress. The rulebook of Middle East crisis management and peace brokering must take a trip to the shedder. The EU in particular will need to become a player not just a payer and be prepared to use its considerable trading power for political leverage.
Options for the International Community
The following options for the international community will not resolve this conflict but are part of an approach designed to create the framework in which a final deal might eventually come about.
Firstly, the world must realize this is a crisis over Palestine not Gaza, about whether Palestine should exist, not Israel whose existence is assured. Time and time again events in one or the other of these two areas of the occupied territories lead to a crisis in the other. The proximate trigger for the recent escalation occurred in the West Bank with the killings of Palestinian and Israeli teens. Yet the West Bank has barely merited a mention since the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza started as if it was somehow in another world. International statesman must stare down the Israeli rejectionists and recognize Palestine, restate that the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip are one single unit under occupation and insist that trade and travel between the two is facilitated. International powers should make clear that the West Bank and Gaza Strip based on the 1967 lines form the state of Palestine, a reality which can only be changed with the mutual consent of both parties. Israeli ultra-nationalists must be put on notice that, just as Palestinians have been expected to recognize Israel, they too must recognize Palestine and Palestinian rights. This includes Netanyahu, whose much heralded conversion to supporting a Palestinian state in 2009 was clearly exposed as a sham when he stated clearly on July 11 that “there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”
Secondly, we should support one united Palestinian political authority. The entire crisis almost certainly originated in a desire to smash April’s Fatah-Hamas unity pact. Whoever kidnapped and killed the three Israeli teenagers on June 12, wanted to provoke Israel. Netanyahu duly obliged. His forces arrested over 1,000 Palestinians and trashed institutions throughout the West Bank. Hamas responded through rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza. The international community must try to get a Fatah-Hamas deal back on track, leading to the Palestinian elections that were included in the pact. This will be tough but failure will reward the spoilers who do not want peace. These two movements will have to sort out their differences but should be allowed to do so free from the meddling of external powers, including Israel and Egypt.
Thirdly, political, economic and security issues should be considered together, not separately. Israel routinely insists on a security-first approach but without simultaneous political and economic progress, it fails. Maintaining the blockade and occupation puts Israeli security at risk, and international statesmen should start spelling that out.
Fourthly, the international community must insist on a non-violent, law-based approach to this conflict. To reduce the chances of a future conflagration, verification and monitoring mechanisms are essential - perhaps an International Presence that was originally envisaged in the Oslo Accords is a good idea. Those who violate international law or break the ceasefire must be held accountable.
Pro-Palestinian Movement Has To Be More Vocal
To reinforce this, the global pro-Palestinian movement has to be more vocal about the rocket attacks as they are so damaging to the quest for Palestinian freedom, as were the suicide bombings. These rocketing of Israeli civilian areas have achieved nothing for Palestinians, offered no defense to any single Palestinian as well as being illegal attacks on civilians. Instead of deterring Israel, it provides Israeli hawks with their dream opportunity to visit further hell on Palestinians. Criticizing the rockets does not excuse Israel for the crimes it has committed.
Finally, a new broker for final peace deal has to be found. The Quartet’s usefulness expired years ago and should be disbanded and its representative, Mr. Blair, given overdue retirement. The U.S. has a key role to play but must accept that its own domestic politics preclude it from being impartial and a more neutral mediator should be given a chance. This is a core part of rebalancing the approach to this conflict that sets a more even stage for proper negotiations.
Alternatively, around December 2016 - in the final weeks of the Obama Presidency - is as sound a bet as any for the next Gaza conflict.
Chris Doyle is the director of CAABU (the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding). He has worked with the Council since 1993 after graduating with a first class honors degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. As the lead spokesperson for Caabu and as an acknowledged expert on the region, Chris is a frequent commentator on TV and Radio, having given over 148 interviews on the Arab world in in 2012 alone. He gives numerous talks around the country on issues such as the Arab Spring, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Islamophobia and the Arabs in Britain. He has had numerous articles and letters published in the British and international media. He has travelled to nearly every country in the Middle East. He has organized and accompanied numerous British Parliamentary delegations to Arab countries. Most recently he took Parliamentary delegations to the West Bank in April, November, December 2013 and January 2014 including with former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/07/16/This-conflict-is-about-Palestine-s-existence-not-Israel-s.html
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The Cycle of Violence in Gaza Cannot Go On
By Khaled Almaeena
16 July 2014
The relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza for the past few days goes unabated. In fact, it is increasing by the hour and the death toll is rising. Most affected are children and women.
What is different from previous airstrikes using supplied sophisticated lethal American weaponry is the precision targeting of civilian homes, charity organizations, hospitals and dispensaries.
There is no end in sight as Prime Minister Netanyahu stated “we do not know when this operation will stop. Over 185 Palestinians have been killed as Israelis pound what is described as the largest open prison camp.
Refugees have fled to United Nations Relief Work Agencies (UNRWA) shelters on cars, scooters and donkey carts.
It was hell, said a Norwegian doctor working in the camps. Neither the United States nor its closest European ally Britain has said anything constructive. On the country, bland statements calling on both sides to exercise restraints were made after both countries stated loud and clear that Israel has a right to defend itself.
Gaza Is A Concentration Camp
The question is: defend itself against whom? The Gazans have been blocked from all sides. Gaza is a concentration camp. Its tragedy is its people want to live freely. They cannot.
Adding to their woes is the impotence of the Arab countries, each of which is embroiled in its own miserable condition.
And the Western media also has as usual covered up the Israeli atrocities. The BBC and CNN are the main culprits. Their allegiance to Israeli interests contradicting all honest journalism ethics has gone beyond the pale of decency.
In fact they are “open mouth pieces of the Zio-Nazis of Tel Aviv,” said a Western diplomat.
What Can We Do?
What can we do to help the people of Gaza? Through personal appeals to our friends in the West and relaying to them pictures of the horrors inflicted on the Palestinians, making our voices heard through the Arab communities in the diaspora and boycotting some of the goods – this is all that we can do.
We should strive to let the people of Gaza know that while Arab officialdom is helpless, we as a people are not. So let us not talk but contribute all what we can. However, much we do we cannot wipe away the scars, the trauma and the hurt of the people of Gaza.
As for Israel, the more they continue their murderous policies, stray away from the path of peace and indulge in bloodletting the more they will become vulnerable. They should expect car bombings, suicide bombings, killing of innocent civilians and a host of other retaliatory actions. “We improvise our own delivery systems as we don’t have F16 warplanes and missiles,” said a Gazan. The Israelis have no one to blame but themselves then.
For what goes around comes around.
Khaled Almaeena is a veteran Saudi journalist, commentator, businessman and the editor-at-large of the Saudi Gazette. Almaeena has held a broad range of positions in Saudi media for over thirty years, including CEO of a PR firm, Saudi Television news anchor, talk show host, radio announcer, lecturer and journalist. As a journalist, Almaeena has represented Saudi media at Arab summits in Baghdad, Morocco and elsewhere. In 1990, he was one of four journalists to cover the historic resumption of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Russia. He also traveled to China as part of this diplomatic mission. Almaeena's political and social columns appear regularly in Gulf News, Asharq al-Aswat, al-Eqtisadiah, Arab News, Times of Oman, Asian Age and The China Post.
Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/07/16/The-cycle-of-violence-in-Gaza-cannot-go-on.html
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What Is Hamas Trying To Achieve?
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
17 July 2014
To an ignorant observer, the recent escalation between Israel and Gaza might seem like just the latest episode in a human drama that we have become accustomed to in the Holy Land. And, though perhaps not for quite the expected reasons, that observer would probably be right. Israelis would claim that this recent episode ostensibly arose out of the heinous murder of three Jewish teenage boys. On the other hand, Palestinian sources would trace it back even further to similar murders of Palestinian teenage boys, earlier in the year. But ultimately, and without meaning to diminish the human tragedy in any of these singular events, they are not the root causes of what is happening now. Instead, they seem to be just a convenient pretext to deeper local politics. And that is the real tragedy of this latest Gaza story.
Allow me to explain. On my recent trip to Israel, I met both senior Israeli and Palestinian officials including current and former members of their respective cabinets. I learnt from my Palestinian sources that Hamas is essentially bankrupt. They have been unable to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of their staff for a while now, according to my sources. They were heavily reliant on support from Syria, Iran along with the Rafah crossing and hundreds of smuggling tunnels from Egypt to sustain them all of which have diminished recently.
When the Hamas leadership reached their financial limit, the Palestinian Authority agreed to step in and pay all salaries of the civil administrators and social workers in Gaza, my sources said. In exchange, the Palestinian Authority (PA) asked Hamas to make many concessions, including modifying its charter towards a more moderate and functional position. For example, the PA asked Hamas to recognize the State of Israel, according to what I have been told, and also form a unity government with the PA .
The problem with this is that it presents an existential threat to Hamas. Hamas arose as a radical, direct action alternative to the perceived weakness and failures of the Palestinian Authority. It is supposed to be, by definition, the active revolutionary cure to the sclerotic, corrupt and “self-defeatingly” compliant PA. If it is tamed, if it is brought into the fold of conciliatory, moderate politics, it loses its raison d’etre. In other words, Hamas’s real and somewhat justified fear is that if this course of events continues in this manner, it will simply be absorbed into Fatah and will have no further, independent purpose.
Why the Rockets?
So where do the rockets fit in? Hamas is therefore playing a cynical game by firing completely useless and militarily insignificant rockets into Israel. The purpose of these wanton attacks, that cannot hope to penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome, cannot reasonably be other than to provoke Israeli retaliation. As we know from history, this will be overwhelming and disproportionate. And this could be just how Hamas wants it.
Their hope is likely to be that this will lead to significant sympathy around the Muslim world, particularly in the month of Ramadan. This will see money pouring into the various global charities of Hamas, from a wide variety of sources. The idea seems to be that this might rescue Hamas financially, and save them from their ideological extinction too. Many observers have now looked at this situation and the question must be asked: what is the purpose of Hamas firing so many rockets into Israel? The perverse reality seems to be that Hamas expects the typical Israeli over reaction, and is baiting for it, with no further strategic aims. And at this very moment, when the very existence of Hamas hangs by a thread, the reality is that the more severe a reaction we see from Israel, the better the future looks for Hamas. Netanyahu, who is regarded as a “very weak” and “a do-nothing” prime minister by many officials I met is more than happy to comply with the unnecessary violence Hamas expects.
And now we come back to our ignorant observer. This seems to be, once again, just another typical episode in the human drama in the Holy Lands. One in which the power interests of some Palestinian leaders, and some Israeli leaders too, play off each other in a casual, monstrous way while a few more hundred Palestinians die. Will we hold these leaders to account this time, or will we divert our attention away, once again, from the morally intractable problems of our Middle East?
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College and Lecturer in International Security at the University of Chicago. He completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge and served as an International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a World Fellow at Yale. Over the years he has met and advised numerous world leaders on policy development and was ranked as a Top 100 Global Thinker by the European Social Think Tank in 2010 and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/07/17/What-is-Hamas-trying-to-achieve-.html
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Abbas Powerless To Stop Gaza War
By Daoud Kuttab
July 15, 2014
The current war on Gaza is sure to have some unexpected consequences. It will likely weaken the PLO-led Palestinian government and place in hibernation the PLO-Hamas reconciliation agreement.
For years, two contradictory strategies have been considered by the Palestinians. On one hand, the peace route has been endorsed by President Mahmoud Abbas, who has fought hard to keep it going, to ensure that security coordination with Israel takes place and at the same time sought to bring about change in Gaza through elections. On the other hand, Hamas and Islamic Jihad believe that liberation will only come by way of military resistance.
Abbas’ strategy ran into difficulties after the Netanyahu government refused to release the last tranche of veteran prisoners as part of the deal to conduct the recent peace talks, and increased illegal settlement activities. Nevertheless, Abbas kept hopes alive for some kind of intervention from the United States and the international community to get the talks back on track. But before this intervention took place, the Ramallah leadership faced a new problem with the kidnapping of three Israelis followed by the unsupported accusation by Israel that Hamas was behind it.
This led to the suspension of some aspects of the reconciliation, although the unity government has continued to work. Abbas’ strategy for Gaza was bent on the idea of a gradual change from the current Hamas’ military control to civilian control that would be determined through the ballot box. Elections were to take place at least six months after the start of the unity government in May.
While the international community largely welcomed the Hamas-less unity government, Israel has been vociferously opposed and seemed to have found a way to destroy the agreement by pinning the killing of the three Israelis on the Islamist movement. It is unclear where the relationship between Gaza and Ramallah will end up when the current war ends.
Hamadeh Faraneh, a former elected Jordanian member of parliament and a close adviser to the Palestinian leadership, told Al-Monitor that Abbas would become stronger after Hamas accepted the Egyptian cease-fire, which was the only game in town. He said that the international community and even Israel would want to have Abbas and the Ramallah-based government and security involved in Gaza, especially on the Rafah crossing. Faraneh said that the Presidential Guards, along with the European advisers, were likely to return to Rafah as part of the 2005 border crossing agreement.
Faraneh’s argument notwithstanding, recent developments have shown Abbas to be largely irrelevant with regard to what is happening in Gaza. His relations with Hamas, despite the unity government, have not given him the kind of leverage to curtail or stop the rockets coming out of Gaza. Fatah sources in Ramallah told Al-Monitor that since the war on Gaza began, few world leaders have actually sought the help of the Ramallah leadership because they know Abbas has no influence on Hamas’ military wing.
Short of a total Israeli occupation of Gaza, the current assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will neither end the Islamist movement nor permanently stop the launching of rockets against Israelis. This eventuality means that Abbas still has few options, such as ending security coordination with Israel and pursuing membership of the International Court of Justice.
Those betting on the end of Hamas will be disappointed. Unless Israel carries out a full reoccupation of Gaza, Hamas will be able to leverage its military power to gain political importance. Without a political horizon, those supporting a military option will continue to gain importance and credibility.
Hazem Kawasmi, the chairman of the Freedom Forum in Palestine, told Al-Monitor that the assault on Gaza has blocked the possibility of a return to the peace talks. “The only realistic option left to the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] is to join the International Criminal Court, an act that will certainly anger right-wing elements in Israel, who will want to further weaken the Palestinian government.”
Mohammad Abu Arqoub, a professor at Bir Zeit University, told Al-Monitor that Palestinians would be faced with a difficult phase after the end of the Arafat-Abbas chapter. “Currently, there is still a sort of consensus around Abbas, but once he is gone from the political scene it will be difficult to find a leader who will be able to reach a minimum of unity the way Arafat and Abbas have,” he said.
Abbas’ Fatah movement is due to hold its seventh general congress on Aug. 4 in Ramallah. The congress is sure to usher in new leadership, mostly representing the inside population as opposed to what is often called the "Tunisian leadership," which came with Yasser Arafat after the Oslo Accord. Ironically, one of the leading figures who will compete for leadership, Jibril Rajoub, has good relations with Hamas. Rajoub, whose brother, Naif, is a Hamas leader in the Hebron area, forged strong ties with Hamas when he was in an Israeli prison.
Arqoub believes that the post-Abbas phase will witness much greater intervention by outside forces, especially Egypt and Jordan.
While the outlook doesn’t look good at present for moderate elements and the leadership of Abbas, the situation is not so bleak as long as the Ramallah leadership still holds the checkbook for Palestine’s largest group of workers: the public sector. But such leverage is not the basis for a national leadership that is hoping to be the lead party in fulfilling the national demands of millions of Palestinians who want to be free and independent.
Source: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/mahmoud-abbas-gaza-war-israel-hamas-palestinians.html
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In Gaza, Israel Blinded By Hamas
By Akiva Eldar
July 16, 2014
My colleague Ben Caspit complained here on July 11 that Israel does not aspire to bring Hamas down. A senior political figure told him, “The vacuum that will be created [by the collapse of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip] will turn into a magnet for a more radical organization.” That is why Israel is striking at Hamas with one hand, while providing Gaza with electricity, water and vital staples with the other.
Caspit believes that this is a “totally insane situation.” According to him, not a country in the world would accept “a routinely nonstop, low-keyed trickle of rockets and mortar shells on its southern towns and communities.” It was in this spirit that he wrote in the weekend supplement of Maariv on July 14, pointing out to the Israeli reader, that, “The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] should go in and finish the job.” After reading that, one might mistakenly believe that it all started when the leaders of the "Hamas-Gaza land" woke up on the wrong side of the bed last week and decided to clear out their stockpile of missiles by firing them at Israeli civilians, just like that, because the missile is the messenger.
So, here is a reminder of what happened on the days leading up to the barrage of rocket attacks. During the first week of the military operation known as Brother's Keeper, which was ostensibly intended to rescue the three abducted teens (even though the political and military echelons knew with quite great certainty from the early days that they had been murdered), two young Palestinians were killed July 1, one of them about 15 years old. Although the murderers of the three Israeli teens have yet to be caught, the IDF raided about a thousand homes throughout the West Bank and arrested 370 Hamas activists, the vast majority of whom were not brought before a judge. The army struck at the movement’s institutions, and also closed down the Arab American University of Jenin and Birzeit University.
And from Operation Brother's Keeper we return to Operation Protective Edge. Caspit has determined, “All the members of Hamas deserve to die.” But is that also true of their young children, who have no air-defense Iron Dome system to protect them from Israeli bombs? Do they also deserve to die? What about their wives and grandmothers, who have no “protected space” shelter? Do they deserve to die, too? According to figures released by the UN, the number of casualties in Gaza at the time of this writing was 178, including at least 138 civilians (sometimes described as “collateral”), among them 36 children. Whole families have been wiped out. In addition to all that, an additional 1,361 Palestinians have been injured, including 386 children and 249 women. Some 1,255 homes in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or suffered severe damage, about 17,000 local residents have been forced to abandon their homes and seek shelter in UNRWA schools, and 600,000 people are in danger of losing access to water.
According to Caspit’s definition, anyone who identifies with the suffering of these people (as does the author of this article) is either a “radical leftist,” “delusional,” or just a “plain idiot” who does not understand that we are talking about a clash between “a nation that sanctifies life” and “a population with a segment that sanctifies death.” According to him, identifying with the suffering of others is what differentiates us, because “that is what ascribes us on the side of civilized people.” It’s a good thing that there are still a few Israelis, who are willing to get beaten up by those civilized people from the extreme right, who charged at them, chanting “Death to the leftists!” and cursed those Jews who dared to think that setting the Palestinian child of Shuafat on fire and burning him to death was an act worthy of condemnation. This is what happened at the left-wing demonstration in Tel Aviv on July 12.
Caspit is well aware that poverty, hatred and incitement rule Gaza. All of the Palestinians’ efforts, he writes, are focused on, “harming Israel, destroying it with wars or terrorism or propaganda.” He also knows that “if, God forbid, they win just once, they will proceed to slaughter us. That is the entire law on one foot.” But for those who want more than just “the law on one foot” or generalizations, I would recommend reading the manifesto of a youth movement in Gaza called Gaza Youth Breaks Out.
Among other things, it says that Hamas “has spread in our society as a malicious cancer disease, causing mayhem and effectively killing all living cells, thoughts and dreams on its way as well as paralyzing people with its terror regime, … doing all they can to control our thoughts, behavior, and aspirations. … [We are] sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in.”
“We do not want to hate, we do not want to be victims anymore,” these young people from Gaza write. They scream out, “ENOUGH! Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering, enough control, limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart-aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want! We want three things. We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace.”
The senior Israeli official was right when he pointed to the dangers that a vacuum in Gaza would create, and how destroying the Hamas regime would turn Gaza “into a magnet for a more radical organization.” But he should have added that Israel, more than any other element in the region, has the capacity to ensure that this vacuum becomes a magnet for moderate organizations that advocate a two-state solution. Of course, that will never happen as long as the current government includes “senior political officials,” who do not recognize the moderate powers in Gaza, the rights of these young people and of their brothers and sisters in Hebron to freedom, normal life and peace.
Source: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/gaza-idf-iaf-protective-edge-hamas-unrwa.html#ixzz37enbF4oA
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Gaza's Border Becoming a No-Man's Land
By Mohammed Othman
July 16, 2014
Ahlam Ahmad, 32, fled her house in Beit Lahiya's Salatin neighborhood, in the northern Gaza Strip, after it was subjected to direct risk from the mounting number of Israeli artillery shells fired continuously and at random.
Ahlam told Al-Monitor that the shelling that hit the area came from Israeli gunboats anchored off the coast of the Gaza Strip, in the Mediterranean Sea. "In addition to artillery shelling, Israeli navy boats were sporadically targeting their missiles at our homes, thus scaring our children,” she said, adding that Israeli warplanes used other ways also to terrorize citizens in those areas — by dropping thousands of leaflets instructing people to flee and inciting them against the Palestinian resistance, thus leading to their displacement.
Rana Sultan, 24, now lives in one of the schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). She left her house with her two children and headed to her family's home to escape the continuous Israeli bombardment, but the missiles reached the area, which is relatively far from her home in Beit Hanoun.
Rana fled without taking anything with her, not even money, while her husband decided to stay behind to guard the house. She told Al-Monitor: “We came to my parents' house without any money, clothes or children's necessities. I then left my family’s house and headed to the UNRWA school to escape the shelling that reached a few meters away from us.”
Residents of the northern Gaza Strip, on the border with Israel, are displaced during every war and whenever the Israeli madness intensifies. Many residents fled during the night after their homes were hit by rocket-propelled grenades as they slept.
Khalid al-Sultan, 19, also a resident of Salatin neighborhood, fled with his large family about 3 a.m. on July 12 after Israeli missiles hit their area while the family was asleep. This prompted Khalid’s father to take the decision of leaving the area in an attempt to save their lives.
Khalid told Al-Monitor that the displacement was sudden and hundreds of neighbors and residents fled the area after the intensification of the bombings. “We fled on foot from our houses around 3 a.m., because we did not have a car. We were exhausted when we reached the UNRWA school after 7 a.m.,” he said.
Khalid's family had left their house on July 10 for the first time to go to a relative’s home, after shells fell in their neighborhood. Hours later, calm returned to the area and they returned home. However, fighting in the early hours of July 12 was more fierce, prompting them to leave their house and the northern Gaza area once again.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the population of the northern Gaza Strip counts more than 220,000 people, all of whom are exposed to dangers due to their proximity to the Israeli border, not to mention that this is the region most affected in each Israeli war on Gaza.
UNRWA, which is in charge of the needs of Palestinian refugees who live in the Gaza Strip, opened the doors of its schools to receive the displaced from border areas, especially in the north.
The agency's spokesman, Adnan Abu Hasna, said the number of people who left their homes in the northern Gaza Strip until now has reached 17,000. They have taken refuge in 20 UNRWA schools.
Abu Hasna told Al-Monitor that most of the displaced were from the regions of Atatra and Salatin, directly adjacent to the border with the Israeli occupation. “Most of the displaced fled their houses last Sunday [July 13] and Monday [July 14] and UNRWA is still helping them by providing food, drinks and basic necessities,” he said.
However, the danger is not only limited to the population of the northern Gaza Strip as the Israeli border surrounds Gaza to the east in the Shojaeya area and the neighboring suburbs, in addition to some areas of the south on the outskirts of the towns of Rafah and Khan Yunis.
The Palestinian Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip advises of the evacuation areas exposed to danger or continuous bombing. According to its director-general in the Gaza Strip, Said al-Saudi, some residents in the northern and eastern areas of the Gaza Strip were advised to ready themselves to evacuate and not to open their windows for fear of a significant impact by the Israeli bombardment.
Saudi explained to Al-Monitor that his institution called on residents of border areas exposed to a direct risk to move to the suburbs that are far from the border, as they are less dangerous. He said, “The interior areas are always less dangerous than the border areas. Thus, we call on them [residents] to evacuate the border areas until the war ends.”
He said that he has a three-stage plan: “If the threat is minor but the residents want to evacuate their houses, we go to them and help them do so. The second level is when the risk is average, [at which time] we move cautiously to reach, evacuate and save the residents from the oppression of the occupation. The third degree is when danger is extreme. In such cases, we coordinate with the International Red Cross in addition to the Palestinian Red Crescent to evacuate the residents who are exposed to the highest level of risk, noting that Israel has targeted passenger vehicles in previous wars.”
The residents of the border areas in the Gaza Strip, especially in the north, are more affected than the rest of the population in each war. The war bill they pay is the highest among the people of Gaza, and this war is proving to be no different.
Source: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/gaza-border-bears-brunt-of-conflict.html#ixzz37eoR142o
URL of Part 1: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-west/world-media-israeli-attacks-gaza/d/98126
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-west/world-media-gaza-israel-part-2/d/98156