“The home I am staying in is across from the Preventive Security compound. All the glass of the house shattered. The home has been severely damaged. Due to the siege there is no glass or building materials to repair this damage. One little boy in our house fainted. An eight-year-old little boy was trembling on the ground for an hour. In front of our house we found the bodies of two little girls under a car, completely burnt. They were coming home from school. This is more than just collective punishment. We are being treated like laboratory animals. I have lived through the Israeli bombardment of Beirut and Israel’s message is the same in Gaza as it was in Beirut—the killing of civilians. [loud blast] There was just another explosion outside!”
Palestinian medical sources say the hospitals are ‘overrun’ with dead bodies, with many of the wounded arriving in “pieces”. Israeli officials have described the blitz – the bloodiest day for Palestinians in a decade – as “just the beginning“, with Defense Minister Ehud Barak promising that the “operation will go on and be intensified as long as necessary”.
It is clear, despite
Israel’s claims, that the assault has little to do with stopping the Qassams, which have killed
around 15 Israeli civilians (
now 16) in the past five years. Accurately viewing the rockets as “
more a psychological than physical threat“, Israel has frequently provoked Qassam fire in order to end unwanted periods of calm (as in January and March of this year, for example). Rather, the attack must be understood in the context of Israel’s broader strategic objective of eliminating Hamas, punishing the Palestinian population for voting the wrong way in the 2006 elections and returning to power a leadership that would, it is plausibly assumed, be more compliant with Israeli expansionism in the West Bank. Hence the program of collective punishment that began as soon as Hamas entered office, with Israel, the U.S. and the EU imposing what amounted to “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions … in modern times” on an occupied civilian population while Israel went on a killing spree, perpetrating flagrant
war crimes and
killing hundreds of civilians. Hence the US’s and Israel’s efforts to
engineer an internal coup against Hamas, thwarting every opportunity for Palestinian reconciliation, leading ultimately to the
takeover of Gaza by Hamas in June 2007. And hence the US’s and Israel’s persistent refusal to engage with Hamas or attempt to bring it into the process, despite the fact that doing so is a prerequisite for any serious attempt at peace.
Israel entered the most recent ceasefire with extreme reluctance,
rejecting for months Hamas’s truce offers in favour of a massive escalation of violence (in the first few months of this year more Palestinian children were killed than in the whole of 2007). When it was finally agreed, the truce was very successful in halting the violence, despite violations on both sides. Despite this, however, the
illegal closure [.pdf] was
maintained, leaving Gaza in a state of “
virtual siege” [.pdf] and its population seeing “
few dividends from the ceasefire“. The truce was, as the UN special rapporteur
describes, “maintained by Hamas [for months] despite the failure of Israel to fulfill its obligation under the agreement to improve the living conditions of the people of Gaza”. Throughout this time Gazans have continued to suffer
extensive blackouts, complete economic collapse, shortages of scores of essential medicines and a
“devastating” rise in poverty and malnutrition (to the point where
18% of Gazan children have stunted growth). Many receive running water for only a few hours every few days (80% of which does not meet the WHO’s standards for drinking, thanks to infrastructural neglect) and have been reduced to
scouring rubbish dumps for food or eating
grass and
animal feed to survive. Such is the
“diet” Israel has imposed on Gaza. 70% of agricultural land in Gaza is no longer being irrigated and is turning into desert, and of 3,900 industrial enterprises all but 23 have shut down. Official unemployment has risen to almost 50%. 80% of Gazans are now dependent on international food aid for mere survival, and a large majority of Gazan households subsist below the ‘deep poverty’ line of $3 per capita/day.
In short, as the UN OCHA reports [.pdf], the siege “has created a profound human dignity crisis, leading to a widespread erosion of livelihoods and a significant deterioration in infrastructure and essential services”, with consequences that “are profound, pervasive and difficult to reverse.” Under these conditions, the “truce” was meaningless for most of Gaza’s population and was as a result plainly unsustainable. The recent resumption of rocket attacks, triggered by an Israeli strike in November, are a response to the closure and an attempt, as most analysts recognise, to force Israel to reach a new ceasefire whereby the terms of the old one are actually implemented – that is, in which the closure is lifted. On Tuesday, for example, Hamas stated that it would be interested in a renewal of the ceasefire and ordered a 24-hour halt to rocket attacks. As Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin explained earlier this week, Hamas is “interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms … It wants us to lift the siege, stop attacks, and extend the truce to include [the West Bank]“. The problem is that Israel is not interested in a long-term truce. As Tzipi Livni recently explained, an extended calm “harms the Israel[i] strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement”. Both Livni and Netanyahu have pledged to “topple the Hamas regime“, while Kadima MK Yoel Hasson has called for the assassination of Hamas political leaders – his Christmas wish appears to have been granted, with military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovitch declaring today that “[a]ny Hamas target is a target“. The air-strikes are not, in short, about ending rocket fire but about destroying the Hamas government. As former deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh put it,
“The target of these operations are governing structures of Hamas in Gaza … Gaza will not be governed by Hamas in the long-run. It is inconceivable as far as we are concerned.”
With the Bush administration supporting the Israeli strikes and the rest of the world either powerless or complicit (for that is what all these statements urging “restraint” on “both sides” amount to), it falls to us to show solidarity with Gazans as Israeli bombs continue to fall. The “unprecedented … humanitarian implosion” [.pdf] that has been deliberately manufactured over the past three years has virtually destroyed Gazan society, such that 40% of Gaza residents would emigrate if they could. With the likely election of Netanyahu in February, the end of Abbas’s term in January and Israel’s blitzkrieg showing no sign of stopping, things could be about to get a hell of a lot worse.
The Palestine charter calls for “the destruction of Israel by any means & the annihilation of all Jews in Palestine.”
So Hamas plays war instead of really trying to find peace.
So Israel plays war.
So Hamas die.
So arabs now whine like little girls. The brave among them honor kill defenseless Muslim women.
Israel must be succeeding. Hamas leaders are again hiding under beds while their 5th columnists spread their now stale propoganda.
250 Hamas leaders & terrorists killed. Hmmm. It’s a start.
You wrote that the assault has little to do with stopping the Qassams, which have killed around 15 Israeli civilians (now 16) in the past five years. – With 60-to 80 Palestinian rockets raining into Israeli towns in one day alone, – that is a miracle !! – Maybe the G-D of Israel is protecting his people?
The rockets are “more a psychological than physical threat“, you are right. They also cost money. You claim that there is a “devastating” rise in poverty and malnutrition (to the point where 18% of Gazan children have stunted growth). – Shouldn’t you spend that money on food, if there is such a humanitarian crisis ?
Ma’an news:
please everything in gaza is good and the ips will deal with it correctley i no for a fact that the israli soilders have the story as a lie and bush is going to cause more damage since the 10inch didnt do enough he wanted 10 half ill give him that