Gaza: Punishing the People
Zionist Extremism Key Impediment to Peace | 04.03.2008 01:08 | Anti-militarism | World
It is really simple folks; 60 years ago "Israel" - represented at the time by European Zionism - started taking land away from the Palestinian people by force.
They are still taking it away today.
The core problem is that Israel demands the world recognize the "Jewish state", but refuses to recognize a Palestinian state. If Israel would simply to give Palestine exactly the same thing it demands for itself, there would be peace.
Israel insists it has a right to do what it does in Palestine because of the suffering of Jewish people in Germany in the middle of the last century. But what did Palestine have to do with any of that? Why should they pay the price for other peoples' crimes? (And remember, the Zionists who created Israel out of thin air, upon the suffering the Palestinians, collaborated with the Nazis, saying, "Any Jew who does not want to emmigrate to Palestine deserves to be on the trains").
Israel screams about Qassam rockets, but if a new nation was declared in the middle of the North American continent without your permission, a nation that refused to actual declare its borders, a nation that continued to take more and more land from you until you and your family were barely clinging to survival as the lights went dark and the sewage piled up, would you not fight back?
A foreign power occupies their land, and they want it back.
They are still taking it away today.
The core problem is that Israel demands the world recognize the "Jewish state", but refuses to recognize a Palestinian state. If Israel would simply to give Palestine exactly the same thing it demands for itself, there would be peace.
Israel insists it has a right to do what it does in Palestine because of the suffering of Jewish people in Germany in the middle of the last century. But what did Palestine have to do with any of that? Why should they pay the price for other peoples' crimes? (And remember, the Zionists who created Israel out of thin air, upon the suffering the Palestinians, collaborated with the Nazis, saying, "Any Jew who does not want to emmigrate to Palestine deserves to be on the trains").
Israel screams about Qassam rockets, but if a new nation was declared in the middle of the North American continent without your permission, a nation that refused to actual declare its borders, a nation that continued to take more and more land from you until you and your family were barely clinging to survival as the lights went dark and the sewage piled up, would you not fight back?
A foreign power occupies their land, and they want it back.
Punishing the people
Leader The Guardian, Monday March 3 2008
March 03 2008.
Four months have passed since the peace meeting in Annapolis, and the smouldering fire of the Israel-Palestine conflict has once again combusted. Up to 70 Palestinians have died in two days of fighting, after Israel launched an offensive - involving ground troops, air strikes and shelling - to stop the firing of Qassam rockets.
(Actually, this is not the case. Israel planned this operation well in advance of Annapolis, before the rockets were an issue. When Israel and America's coup attempt in Gaza failed last June, Israel imposed measures of Collective Punishment on Gaza, in order to "suffocate Hamas", and soften up Gaza for the invasion. Its own defense staff warned that this illegal policy would provoke a violent response, most likely in the form of rocket attacks. This war is about 'Regime Change', plain and simple.)
Half the casualties of Israel's onslaught are civilian, including women, children and a 21-month-old baby. Yesterday Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said an even broader offensive was on the cards to crush the rocket squads - and maybe even bring down Hamas's rule.
Barak, legal team to mull artillery use on civilian areas in Gaza
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960258.html
Already critically weakened in the eyes of his people for his policy of engagement with Israel (and because corrupt elements of Fatah were used as proxies in the American/Israeli coup attempt), the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas suspended peace negotiations yesterday, but stopped short of declaring the process dead. He declared Sunday a day of mourning and gave blood at his West Bank office. These gestures cut little ice even in the West Bank where Fatah's writ still runs. A violent demonstration broke out in Hebron, where a 14-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers. This raises the real possibility of anti-Fatah unrest spreading beyond Gaza.
It has been said often enough that a peace settlement is impossible while Gaza is being ignored. But if any sequence of events demonstrated the utter futility of Israel, backed by the international community, trying to negotiate over the heads of half of the Palestinian people, it is what has happened in the last 48 hours.
Things were bad enough already. The independent Palestinian parliamentarian Mustafa Barghouti had counted 177 Palestinian deaths since Annapolis (as attacks by the Israeli military, as well as Settler-Terrorists more than doubled following the meeting). Most were in Gaza, but there were also now more checkpoints in the West Bank than there had been before the November conference. While 788 Palestinians had been set free in a confidence-building measure, 1,152 had been newly arrested.
In the same period there were four Israeli deaths.
Israel acknowledges military action on its own will not stop the rockets. For that you need a ceasefire, and for that you need negotiations with Hamas, which the Israeli leadership (though not the people, who staunchly support a cease-fire and negotiations) refuses to contemplate. So Israel is left with only military options - reoccupying parts of Gaza or assassinating Hamas's leaders.
Both have been tried in the past, and both have failed.
Hamas, on the other hand, is gaining in at least one of its objectives: to be considered the lead movement of the Palestinian resistance. It still has no answer to the economic blockade. It may have acquired longer-range missiles but it is a long way from establishing with its enemy the balance of deterrence which Hizbullah has established in South Lebanon.
The unstoppable cycle of assassinations and Qassams constitutes a form of collective punishment in which civilians on both sides bear the brunt. Israeli suggestions that targeted assassinations would reduce the number of civilians killed have been exposed as threadbare. A major military operation is leading to more civilian deaths, not fewer.
Haim Ramon, the vice-premier, was quite straightforward about it. He said yesterday: "If the Palestinians in Gaza are paying the price we are very sorry, but it is the responsibility of the leaders they elected." But there is another casualty which even he should care about: the two-state solution. It is already withering in the minds of the diaspora, and it could soon die inside Palestine itself. Israel is losing the Palestinian generation that is ready to accept it. The younger generation are moving towards a one-state solution. Once that is the demand, security fence or no security fence, the conflict will flare into civil war. Israel does not have a clear military strategy in Gaza. No matter how many Hamas leaders are killed, it will never be able to wipe the Strip clean of the movement. But Israel still possesses the means to negotiate a ceasefire.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/03/israelandthepalestinians
Leader The Guardian, Monday March 3 2008
March 03 2008.
Four months have passed since the peace meeting in Annapolis, and the smouldering fire of the Israel-Palestine conflict has once again combusted. Up to 70 Palestinians have died in two days of fighting, after Israel launched an offensive - involving ground troops, air strikes and shelling - to stop the firing of Qassam rockets.
(Actually, this is not the case. Israel planned this operation well in advance of Annapolis, before the rockets were an issue. When Israel and America's coup attempt in Gaza failed last June, Israel imposed measures of Collective Punishment on Gaza, in order to "suffocate Hamas", and soften up Gaza for the invasion. Its own defense staff warned that this illegal policy would provoke a violent response, most likely in the form of rocket attacks. This war is about 'Regime Change', plain and simple.)
Half the casualties of Israel's onslaught are civilian, including women, children and a 21-month-old baby. Yesterday Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said an even broader offensive was on the cards to crush the rocket squads - and maybe even bring down Hamas's rule.
Barak, legal team to mull artillery use on civilian areas in Gaza
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960258.html Already critically weakened in the eyes of his people for his policy of engagement with Israel (and because corrupt elements of Fatah were used as proxies in the American/Israeli coup attempt), the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas suspended peace negotiations yesterday, but stopped short of declaring the process dead. He declared Sunday a day of mourning and gave blood at his West Bank office. These gestures cut little ice even in the West Bank where Fatah's writ still runs. A violent demonstration broke out in Hebron, where a 14-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers. This raises the real possibility of anti-Fatah unrest spreading beyond Gaza.
It has been said often enough that a peace settlement is impossible while Gaza is being ignored. But if any sequence of events demonstrated the utter futility of Israel, backed by the international community, trying to negotiate over the heads of half of the Palestinian people, it is what has happened in the last 48 hours.
Things were bad enough already. The independent Palestinian parliamentarian Mustafa Barghouti had counted 177 Palestinian deaths since Annapolis (as attacks by the Israeli military, as well as Settler-Terrorists more than doubled following the meeting). Most were in Gaza, but there were also now more checkpoints in the West Bank than there had been before the November conference. While 788 Palestinians had been set free in a confidence-building measure, 1,152 had been newly arrested.
In the same period there were four Israeli deaths.
Israel acknowledges military action on its own will not stop the rockets. For that you need a ceasefire, and for that you need negotiations with Hamas, which the Israeli leadership (though not the people, who staunchly support a cease-fire and negotiations) refuses to contemplate. So Israel is left with only military options - reoccupying parts of Gaza or assassinating Hamas's leaders.
Both have been tried in the past, and both have failed.
Hamas, on the other hand, is gaining in at least one of its objectives: to be considered the lead movement of the Palestinian resistance. It still has no answer to the economic blockade. It may have acquired longer-range missiles but it is a long way from establishing with its enemy the balance of deterrence which Hizbullah has established in South Lebanon.
The unstoppable cycle of assassinations and Qassams constitutes a form of collective punishment in which civilians on both sides bear the brunt. Israeli suggestions that targeted assassinations would reduce the number of civilians killed have been exposed as threadbare. A major military operation is leading to more civilian deaths, not fewer.
Haim Ramon, the vice-premier, was quite straightforward about it. He said yesterday: "If the Palestinians in Gaza are paying the price we are very sorry, but it is the responsibility of the leaders they elected." But there is another casualty which even he should care about: the two-state solution. It is already withering in the minds of the diaspora, and it could soon die inside Palestine itself. Israel is losing the Palestinian generation that is ready to accept it. The younger generation are moving towards a one-state solution. Once that is the demand, security fence or no security fence, the conflict will flare into civil war. Israel does not have a clear military strategy in Gaza. No matter how many Hamas leaders are killed, it will never be able to wipe the Strip clean of the movement. But Israel still possesses the means to negotiate a ceasefire.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/03/israelandthepalestinians
Zionist Extremism Key Impediment to Peace