Searching For a Reason
After three weeks of Israeli indiscriminate assaults against the Gazan people the immediate conflict appears to have ended. Over 1300 Palestinians – mainly civilians – and 13 Israeli troops (five of which were the result of friendly fire) have died absolutely unnecessarily. This ceasefire is just that, a ceasefire. It is not peace – and it looks like true peace will not come for a very long time.
Israel initially declared their mission was to stop the rocket attacks on Southern Israel, but as the BBC reports “Palestinian militants [sic] fired about 20 rockets over the border after the Israeli ceasefire announcement, and Israel responded with an air attack“. So then why is Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declaring that their “goals have been achieved, and even more,”? The rockets aren’t going to stop, and Israel had to know that any assault against Gaza would not stop them in the first place – if history has proved anything it’s that oppression and occupation only increases the problem. Could Israel be purposefully radicalizing the Palestinians? After all, the more ‘attacks’ against Israel the more excuses Israel has to continue their bombardment of Gaza and the West Bank. Time and time again it has been shown that Israel faces no consequences for killing thousands of innocent Palestinians. The more radicalized the occupied people become, the more supposed justifications Israel gets for yet another batch of civilian murders.
Israel’s ultimate goal is barely hidden. Years of illegal settlements being built in Gaza and the West Bank for Jewish Israeli’s only (resulting in thousands of Palestinian displacements), more and more unjustified attacks on the innocent people of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and an ever more racist and sensationalist media maniuplating the people of Israel into believing that the Palestinians are a war-loving, natuarlly violent people (see footnote [1]). This is, first and foremost, an effort to eradicate the Palestinians to achieve a pure Zionist state. Gaza is the largest open air prison on the planet. Gazans are literally barred from leaving their designated plot of land. This reeks of apartheid-era South Africa: racial segregation at its worst. And all the while the sanctions are placed on Gazans and not, more appropriately, Israel. To think that a country with nuclear weapons and the complete support of the most powerful nation on earth could and is considered under threat by the very people they are occupying is absurd. To read that the six major Western Europe nations have vowed to support Israel in eradicating Hamas and to essentially uphold Israel’s murderous dominance is saddening to say the least.
There is the added element in all of this that the outgoing, corrupt Prime Minister Ehud Olmert staged this attack specifically with the attention of helping his Kadima party gain back some ground in the polls in preperation of the Israeli election next month. This seems to have backfired as the further right-wing party Likud appears to have gained more support after this conflict (and after criticising Kadima for not being ‘conclusive’ enough in the attacks on Hamas). The future doesn’t look bright.
[1]: See the Jerusalem Post for an example of what I mean – multiple mentions of Israel’s incursion into Gaza solely as a plot to topple the “Hamas terrorists”. The poll they have running is also extremely biased where the only answers you can pick are militaristic and pro-colonisation. Apparently withdrawing from occupied territory or seeking long-term peace with the Palestinians simply isn’t a possibility.
