Two years after Israeli war crimes in Gaza:

Israeli lawlessness and oppression continue

Latheef Farook

Palestinians are mere ‘Things’ whose lives have ‘No value’

In 1982 Moshe Dayan said “Israel should tell the Palestinians in the territories that “we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we shall see where this land leads”. How true to date what was said in 1982 - The remarks apply to Palestinians and the Arabs too

It was two years ago, between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009, Israel unleashed its carnage on the starving Palestinian population in Gaza. The United States, the great patron of Israel together with Britain, France and Russia did nothing to stop the Israeli slaughter while the Arab dictators, some collaborated with Israel, while others remained silent.

Helpless world simply watched the television footages of day, Israeli barbarity. A United Nations fact-finding report accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. As usual the report is gathering dust in the UN shelves.

Gaza is a small beach side strip of around 365 sq miles by the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli occupation

Sandwiched between Egypt and Israel this territory with about 1.5 million Palestinians is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Most of the inhabitants are refugees who owned their lands and homes in what we now call Israel. They were chased out at gunpoint by Jewish terror gangs, and their lands grabbed to set up the Jewish state of Israel in Palestine in 1948. During the June 1967 Israeli war of aggression, Gaza was brought under Israeli occupation. Since then the people there were subjected to untold oppression, cruelties and miseries besides daily killings, arbitrary arrest and torture. Decades of Israeli oppression and humiliation produced angry young men most of whom are fighting back though with limited means.

Unable to face the fierce Palestinian opposition, Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years and handed over control of the Rafah border, Gaza’s sole contact with the outside world, to Egypt while Palestinian Forces, monitored by European Union officials, too were stationed.

Almost four decades of systematic Israeli oppression and repeated border closures have driven Gazans to poverty and inevitably around 80 percent of the population depends on food aid for day-to-day subsistence. Without such aid they would die in a matter of days.

Elections

In a spotless democratic election, held in January 2006 under the supervision of former US President Jimmy Carter who described it as free and fair, Hamas was elected with an overwhelming majority.

Israel, the US and their European and Arab collaborators wanted Hamas crushed at any cost as they did not want democracy in the Middle East. Israel, backed by US and Europe, stopped all donations and cut off the flow of all money to starve Palestine into submission.

The Arab regimes too joined this financial blockade knowing very well the misery they were causing to the Palestinians who needed this money to keep body and soul together.

Bombed Gaza Strip

In the midst Israel, under the guise of trying to free a captured soldier, bombed Gaza Strip in June 2006 with its F-16 fighter planes and helicopter gunships and artillery fire from tanks surrounded and turned Gaza into a virtual slaughter house. Within days roads, bridges, power plants, water supply, universities, schools, hospitals, play grounds, mosques and even tombs and ministry buildings were bombed and destroyed causing untold misery to the people already starving.

In an unprecedented lawlessness, and the violation of international law, Israel started mafia-style abduction of Hamas Cabinet Ministers, Mayors and Parliamentarians.

As usual there was deafening international silence at this Israeli barbarity. Egypt joined Israel in closing the border and virtually sealed and cut off Gaza from the rest of the world.

Since June 2007, 90 percent of Gaza’s local industries too were forced to shut down, leaving 70,000 labourers jobless.

There was no fuel to keep the plant running because Israel imposed a complete lock-down with no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines. It was a slow death. Palestinians in Gaza and even in the West Bank were made virtual prisoners in their own homes and in a dire economic situation while Israel continued its air strikes in the densely populated city.

This was a grave war crime and it should be pointed out that in the aftermath of World War II German leaders were sentenced to death for lesser crimes.

This situation continued for 20 long months until January 17, 2008 when Israel imposed a complete blockade and shut down Gaza’s only power plant plunging the entire territory into chaos. They were only allowed to breathe the air which Israel could not blockade.

People started queuing for bread, but there was no bread, as it cannot be made without electricity. Connections with the outside world started fading as mobile phones and laptops ran out of battery power.

There was no water because the pumps needed electricity. People could not go to work because there was no fuel for cars and buses. Hospitals with generators ran out of fuel to power them, halting all surgery procedures.

In desperation, Palestinians tried to enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, but the Egyptian border guards drove them out. Over 1,000 Palestinians went out to the streets begging the world to end this cruel enforced starvation to death.

Destructive weapons

Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery said “The message of Jews, the US and Europe to Palestinian is that “you will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas Government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US.

It was on these starving Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli unleashed its military might, from December 27 to January 18, 2009, using US supplied latest of bunker buster missiles, F16 bombers and other latest of destructive weapons. Helpless world watched television footages of the slaughter of innocent men, women, children and the aged?

During the 22 days of its carnage Israel killed, 1,334 Palestinians, one-third of them children, injured 5,450, one-third of them children, displaced 100,000, made homeless 50,000, destroyed 4,100 residential homes and buildings, damaged 17,000 damaged (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza), destroyed 29 educational institutions, destroyed or damaged 92 mosques, destroyed 1,500 shops, factories and other commercial facilities, 20 ambulances, ruined 35-60 percent of agricultural land and caused an estimated damage of US$ 1.9 billion in total estimated damages.

Two years later today plight of the Palestinians in Gaza remains unchanged. Israel remains lawless and arrogant. Champions of human rights in Washington, London, Paris and the so-called brothers in the Middle East have no time for the Palestinians.

The writer is a senior journalist who, after working for almost ten years in the Ceylon Daily News and the Ceylon Observer, led a group of journalist to Dubai in 1979 to launch Gulf News. He returned home after a quarter century working in the Gulf and now based in Colombo.

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