“If only it (Gaza) would just sink into the sea”
– Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 1992
In 2008 Gaza was bombed by Israeli Apache helicopters and American-made F16 fighter planes for 22 days, ultimately causing the deaths of more than 1,400 civilians. Israel, with the impunity it has enjoyed since its establishment, decided to come back into Gaza four times since then and repeat the same crimes by launching areal strikes, killing more than 4000 civilians, including hundreds of children, women, elderly, and injuring thousands. In fact, over the past 15 months alone, apartheid Israel has carried out two extensive military assaults on Gaza, killing hundreds, including more than 80 children, and injuring thousands, destroying vital infrastructure, while maintaining its 15-year illegal siege on the 2.4 million Palestinians here.
Israel’s airstrikes which always damage essential infrastructure and terrify the civilian population are a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people and are war crimes which are forbidden under international humanitarian law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prescribes the manner in which armies must treat civilians during times of conflict.
But Israel continues to get away with these war crimes and crimes against humanity. The “international community” does not seem seriously interested in the suffering of the native Palestinians. Neither does it even try to show concrete sympathy with those children who get killed in broad day light. After all, they are not Ukrainians, i.e., white. In fact, while the American president apparently thinks that while “Israel has the right to defend itself,” the same right does not apply to Palestinians. This is in spite of the multi-tiered oppression of Palestinians by Israel, from apartheid to military occupation and colonization, and in spite of the deadly, hermetic siege imposed on Gaza for more than 15 years, so much so that Israel has even been using ‘calorie count’ to limit Gaza food during the blockade.
This, however, has been Israel’s policy for a long time. In 1992, the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin wished that Gaza “would just sink into the sea.” The Oslo Accords, signed by Rabin, brought more misery into the lives of the 2 million inhabitants of this besieged, impoverished, occupied, small strip of land. The fact that Gazans are not born to Jewish mothers is enough reason to deprive them of their right to live equally with the citizens of the state of Israel. Hence, the Israeli logic goes, like the Black natives of South Africa, they should be isolated in a Bantustan, in accordance with the Oslo terms, without calling it so; and if they show any resistance to this plan, they must get punished severely by transforming the entire strip into an “open-air prison.”
Both the US and the European Union display ignorance in the face of the brutal reality caused by Israel to Gaza. As a result of Israel’s blockade on most imports and exports and other policies designed to punish Gazans, about 70% of Gaza’s workforce is now unemployed or without pay, according to the United Nations, and about 80% of its residents live in grinding poverty. About 1.2 million of them are now dependent for their day-to-day survival on food handouts from U.N. or international agencies; an increasing number of Palestinian families in Gaza are unable to offer their children more than one meager meal a day, often little more than rice and boiled lentils. Fresh fruit and vegetables are beyond the reach of many families. Meat and chicken are impossibly expensive. And fish is unavailable in its markets because the Israeli navy has curtailed the movements of Gaza ‘s fishermen. No wonder, a report by the UN predicted that by 2020, Gaza would become “unlivable.”
We are left with one option: people’s power. This remains the only power capable of counteracting the massive power imbalance between the oppressed Palestinians and their Israeli oppressors.
The UN, EU and the international community by and large have remained silent in the face of atrocities committed by Apartheid Israel. The corpses of hundreds of dead children and women have failed to convince them to act. We are, therefore, left with one option; an option that does not wait for the United Nations Security Council, namely, the option of people’s power. This remains the only power capable of counteracting the massive power imbalance between the oppressed Palestinians and their Israeli oppressors.
The horror of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa was challenged with a sustained campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions initiated in 1958 and given new urgency in 1976 Soweto Uprising. This campaign ultimately contributed to the collapse of white rule in 1994 and the establishment of a multi-racial, democratic state.
Similarly, the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions has been gathering momentum since 2005. Gaza, like Soweto and Sharpeville, cannot be ignored: it demands a response from all who believe in a common humanity. Now is the time to boycott the apartheid Israeli state, to divest and to impose sanctions against it until it complies with international law. Like black South Africans, Palestinians deserve freedom, justice and equality.
I agree completely with Haidar Eid’s subtitle: “Movements like BDS are the only force capable of counteracting the massive power imbalance between the Palestinians and their Israeli oppressors.”
Would it really be so difficult to walk into your city council with a BDS resolution like this one? – https://www.change.org/p/ann-arbor-michigan-city-council-ann-arbor-city-council-resolution-against-military-aid-to-israel
Until you can do that, in your own city, in any city, we will be reading a lot of tragic news stories from Palestine — and those stories are preventable.
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https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2022-09-09/ty-article/.highlight/over-120-countries-but-never-israel-queen-elizabeth-iis-unofficial-boycott/00000183-20a3-d2c9-a387-e7bbb2b90000
“Over 120 Countries, but Never Israel: Queen Elizabeth II’s Unofficial Boycott”
Over 120 Countries, but Never Israel: Queen Elizabeth II’s Unofficial Boycott
“In her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II crisscrossed the globe, but purposely skipped Israel. In 1984, during a visit to Jordan, she found the settlements ‘depressing’ & the Air Force’s planes frightening.
“In 1986, Margaret Thatcher became the first British leader to visit Israel. Journalist David Landau, later Haaretz editor-in-chief, dared to ask her when the queen would visit. ‘But I’m here,’ the Iron Lady replied. In 2014, not long before he passed, Landau was awarded the OBE for his contributions to Israeli-British relations. He did not ask the queen directly why she refrained from visiting here.
‘When there is sustainable peace,’ was the answer stammered by official British representatives whenever they were asked why the Queen is boycotting the State of Israel. This, of course, didn’t stop the queen from visiting Arab countries. She did not reverse this boycott throughout her 70 years on the throne, despite being the best-traveled world leader, with over 120 countries visited & around a million miles traversed in her tours. ‘Is there another member-state of the United Nations that the British Royals have so consistently & assiduously snubbed in this way?’ Landau wondered.
“Cognoscenti would explain that it is the British Foreign Service that decides such things, & that it is doing so out of supposed spite. This, among other reasons, as ‘revenge’ for the violent Israeli resistance to the British mandate, & having established a state on its ruins. Others said that the British are afraid to antagonize the Arab world, & that is why the Queen won’t show her face here.
“But had she truly wanted to, the Queen could have popped over for a visit. The sad but inescapable conclusion, therefore, is that she herself is part of this nasty, petty British intrigue to deny Israel that rankling vestige of legitimation that is in their power to bestow or withhold – a royal visit.,’ Landau wrote in Haaretz over a decade ago, in an article where he called upon the monarch to ‘bin these sour-smelling inhibitions & end this boycott.’ (cont’d)
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“Some British royals visited Israel over the years, but Buckingham Palace always went out of its way to make it clear that the visit is neither royal, nor official. Thus, it was in 1994, when Prince Phillip came to receive the Righteous Among the Nations award on behalf of his mother, who is buried in Jerusalem. In 1995 Charles, then Prince of Wales, came to attend Rabin’s funeral. A change came only in the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence, in 2018, when Prince William arrived for a visit, that was termed as official, even if it was meaningless. Two years later his father Charles, soon to be crowned king, visited here for the international Holocaust forum, held to mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. The Queen, however, maintained her boycott.
“Not all Israelis wanted such a visit, either way. “Elizabeth II is the daughter of George VI, the king on whose behalf Jewish freedom fighters were hanged in the Land of Israel; The king whose navy blocked the way of refugees to the Land of Israel, leading to their death. The hangman’s daughter is not welcome in Israel,” a commenter wrote on Haaretz’s website.
“”Others mentioned the dark episodes in her family’s past, mainly her uncle, Edward VIII, the family’s black sheep, whose list of sins also includes Nazi sympathies. In 2015, British tabloid The Sun published a family film from 1933 showing the seven-year-old Princess Lilybeth saluting in the Nazi fashion alongside her mother, sister, & uncle. The Palace expressed disappointment at the dissemination of the old footage, but declined to explain the background to it.
“”The Queen’s fans, on the other hand, are quick to point out in her ‘favor’ that a Jewish mohel circumcised her son Charles, in the best tradition of the royal family, deriving from a claim to Davidic descent.
““The closest she came to visiting here was in 1984, when she toured Jordan. The visit provided a few quotes seen as hostile to Israel. Among other things, it was reported that Her Highness was disturbed when Israeli jets passed overhead as she looked at the West Bank from across the river. ‘How frightening,’ she muttered then. King Hussein’s wife, Queen Nour, replied: ‘It’s terrible.’ Later on, upon being shown a map of the West Bank with the settlements marked on it, she said: ‘What a depressing map.'”
As it becomes more clearly understood that its the behavior, not the state or its people, being sanctioned, support for BDS will build. The equality battle can be won with a civil rights campaign and that would be a game changer.
Because the two-state arrangement is no longer plausible, that necessarily informs any plan for the future.
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Is hamas prepared to accept a modus Vivendi in gaza separate from the west bank?