Gaza remembers

Published : Jan 28, 2011 00:00 IST

A young Hamas supporter holds flags of the Islamic Resistance Movement amid the rubble of a building in Gaza City on December 30 during a rally marking the second anniversary of Israel's three-week offensive. - MAHMUD HAMS/AFP

A young Hamas supporter holds flags of the Islamic Resistance Movement amid the rubble of a building in Gaza City on December 30 during a rally marking the second anniversary of Israel's three-week offensive. - MAHMUD HAMS/AFP

West Asia: Two years after Israel's Operation Cast Lead devastated the already beleaguered Gaza Strip, nothing much has changed for its people.

IT was two years ago that Israel carried out its three-week-long brutal military attack, Operation Cast Lead, on the defenceless people of Gaza. On December 27, the anniversary of the launch of the attack, thousands of Gazans marched on the streets of the besieged enclave.

Aid flotillas from various countries are trying to break the Israeli siege and reach much-needed medical and food aid to the people of Gaza. This is the third New Year that the 1.5 million residents of Gaza will go without basic necessities such as electricity and running water. Barring a few Western countries such as the United States and Canada, the rest of the international community condemned the Gaza massacre and the widespread destruction of the already impoverished enclave. Even before the 2008 Israeli invasion, Gaza was described as an open-air prison blockaded from land, air and sea. The United Nations Human Rights Council commissioned the Goldstone Report, which documented in detail the havoc wrought by the Israeli war machine on the hapless population.

The report explicitly states that the very purpose of the attack was to destroy what remained in Gaza of civilian and government infrastructure. Schools, hospitals, places of worship, government buildings and thousands of homes were among the targets. During the three weeks of continuous attacks from the ground and the air, 1,417 Palestinians, many of them children, were killed. Very little of the destroyed infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, could be repaired because of the economic blockade. Basic goods and medicines are not allowed into Gaza. Gazans have also been deprived of the right to cross their borders, which have been arbitrarily imposed on them by the Zionist state.

John Ging, the head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the occupied territories, said recently that there had been no material change for the people of Gaza since the murderous Israeli assault two years ago. He said that there was no reconstruction, no economy in Gaza. He emphasised that the Israeli stranglehold on the livelihood of the people continued unabated. There has been no easing of the total blockade on Gaza as claimed by Israel, which has let in a few token aid convoys. The so-called easing, he said, had in reality been nothing but a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt. Egypt, which shares a short border with Gaza, has rigorously implemented the Israeli-mandated sanctions, which run counter to international law. Ging reminded the international community that more than four years had elapsed since Israel imposed the stifling siege on Gaza. Israel has not even allowed the passage of construction materials, which are desperately needed to rebuild the homes, hospitals and schools that were destroyed during Operation Cast Lead.

In the first week of December, 22 international organisations, such as Oxfam and Save the Children, produced a report called Dashed Hopes: Continuation of the Gaza Blockade. The report called for international action to force Israel to lift its blockade unconditionally. Israel ratcheted up the blockade of Gaza in 2007 after Hamas consolidated its power there. Ninety per cent of Gaza's functioning factories and enterprises were forced to close down by the end of 2007 owing to the lack of raw materials and spare parts, and 70 per cent of the population has been living on less than $2 a day since then.

Before the second anniversary of the invasion, representatives of civil society organisations in Gaza wrote an open letter to remind the international community that Gazans, like other people, had the right to lead normal lives, including the right to travel and move freely. The letter said that Gazans want to live without fear of another bombing campaign that leaves hundreds of our children dead and many more injured with cancers from the contamination of Israel's white phosphorous and chemical warfare. It asked for more support for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel's blatantly racist policies. Since the Gaza massacre of 2009, world citizens have undertaken the responsibility to pressure Israel to comply with international law, through a proven strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions. As in the global BDS movement which was so effective in ending the apartheid South African regime, we urge people of conscience to join the BDS call made by over 170 Palestinian organisations in 2005, the letter said.

Their letter also called on the international community to take up the responsibility of protecting the Palestinian people and act against Israel for its intentional policies of savagery, including the severing of access to drinking water and electricity supply to 1.5 million people. The momentum the BDS is gaining worldwide has alarmed the Israeli establishment. Israeli leaders have sought to characterise the movement as an anti-Semitic exercise intended to delegitimise the Jewish state. This argument, however, has few takers even in countries such as the U.S. where there is a sizeable and influential Jewish population. Today, the most fervent supporters of Israel are xenophobic right-wing parties in Europe espousing neo-Nazi ideology. As the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe noted recently, the BDS will be effective because it shows clearly the link between racist character of the state and the criminal nature of its policies towards the Palestinians.

The U.N. has not taken any action against Israel on the findings of the Goldstone commission. The U.S. and the European Union do not want Israel to be taken to task for the war crimes it has committed and have sought to bury the Goldstone Report. In fact, a .U.S congressional resolution passed this year condemned its findings. A recently released WikiLeaks document suggests that there was some degree of tacit security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) before Operation Cast Lead started. It is no secret that there is no love lost between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated P.A. in the West Bank.

Senior government officials and politicians in Israel are talking of launching yet another attack on Gaza in a bid to topple the lawfully elected government led by Hamas and weaken the resistance. WikiLeaks cables have revealed that the Israeli army chief, Gabi Ashkenazi, informed a U.S. congressional delegation in 2009, after the war on Gaza, that he was preparing for a large-scale war. He is quoted as having told the delegation: In the next war, Israel cannot accept any restrictions on warfare in urban areas. Ashkenazi also revealed that he was getting inputs from U.S. intelligence agencies in identifying targets.

It is the spirited resistance of the people of Gaza in the face of overwhelming odds that has confounded the Israeli occupation forces and kept the flag of resistance flying. Since Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli army has continued targeting civilians in Gaza even though Hamas and other resistance groups are observing a truce. In the third week of December, a 20-year-old shepherd grazing his flock of sheep was killed by Israeli soldiers. Every other day in the past couple of months, there have been reports of either Gazans being killed or increased Israeli military activity, including the use of F-16 fighter planes for targeted killings.

Israel's refusal to lift the blockade coupled with its continuing intransigence on the issue of statehood for Palestine has alienated it even further from the international community. The brutal attack on the Turkish aid ship Mari Marmara last year further galvanised international opinion against Israel's racist policies. One illustration of this is the recognition of Palestine's statehood that came from major Latin American countries in December. Brazil and Argentina were among the first to recognise Palestinian statehood. Bolivia and Ecuador followed suit. Other key Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Nicaragua, are reportedly all set to recognise Palestinian statehood. Venezuela was the only Latin American country that had recognised Palestine earlier. A week before he demitted office, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva demanded the end to the U.S.' guardianship of West Asia. There will be no peace in the Middle East [West Asia] as long as the United States is the guardian of peace. It is necessary to involve other countries in negotiations between Israel and Palestine, he said.

These developments will help the Palestinians when they present their case for international recognition at the U.N. General Assembly this year. Already more than 106 U.N. member-states, including India, have extended recognition to the Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders. Palestine declared independence on November 15, 1988, in Algiers. Among the leading countries in the world that have still not recognised the state of Palestine are the U.S., Japan and Germany. Many more states recognise Palestine than they do the Republic of Kosovo. Only 72 U.N. members have recognised Kosovo, which became independent in 2008.

The U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies were among the strongest supporters of Kosovo's statehood. Two million Kosovars were fast-tracked into independence, while a million and a half Palestinians have been suffering in the world's biggest open-air prison Gaza. In the West Bank, the Israelis are gobbling up Palestinian land at a feverish pace in an effort to make statehood for Palestine unviable.

A recent voice vote in the U.S. Congress unanimously approved a resolution by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that called on the U.S. President not to recognise the state of Palestine and to veto any effort by Palestine to get full U.N. membership. AIPAC is Israel's main lobbying arm in the U.S.

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