[News] Israel has no moral high ground after violating a Palestinian corpse in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200224-israel-has-no-moral-high-ground-after-violating-a-palestinian-corpse-in-gaza/ 



  Israel has no moral high ground after violating a Palestinian corpse
  in Gaza

Yousef Alhelou- February 24, 2020

Restoring its lost “power of deterrence” has been always Israel’s 
pretext for using excessive force against Palestinians, especially in 
the besieged Gaza Strip. “Changing the rules of engagement” is another 
term that we hear from Israeli officials when it comes to dealing with 
the legitimate resistance factions.

However, what happened yesterday to the east of Khan Younis in the 
southern Gaza Strip was unprecedented. A shocking video 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200224-israel-hangs-palestinian-martyr-from-bulldozer/> 
shared online shows the body of a slain Palestinian man hanging from the 
blade of an Israeli military bulldozer after he was shot dead and run 
over along the Gaza-Israel nominal border fence. The gruesome footage 
drew strong reactions from Palestinian officials and factions. One 
senior member of the PLO Executive Committee, Dr Hanan Ashrawi, tweeted: 
“Too painful to watch let alone experience this unhinged sadistic 
cruelty of the occupation and persistent Israeli crimes.”

Israeli army officials claimed that the man, along another who was 
wounded but escaped, was suspected of placing an explosive device near 
the fence, where hundreds of Palestinian protesters have in recent years 
been killed by Israeli soldiers using excessive force against unarmed 
civilians. Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, 
has demanded a criminal investigation into the incident and sent a 
letter to the Israeli Chief Military Advocate General Sharon Afek, 
detailing that the actions “depicted in the video were viewed as war 
crimes and blatant violations of international criminal law, and 
international human rights and humanitarian law.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Mohammed Al-Naem was a member of the armed wing of 
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Quds Brigade/. /His corpse was taken away 
by the bulldozer and is being held by the Israeli army. The incident was 
witnessed by dozens of unarmed Palestinian civilians and medical teams 
who gathered to retrieve Al-Naem’s body but were shot at by an Israeli 
tank that crossed into Gaza, injuring three people.

*WATCH: Israel bulldozes Palestinian protest in the West Bank 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200224-israel-bulldozes-palestinian-protest-in-the-west-bank/>*

The humiliating theft of the corpse is obviously an example of the new 
measure introduced by Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett. He 
intends to keep the bodies of Palestinians from Gaza to use as a 
bargaining chip to put pressure on Hamas — the de facto government in 
the enclave — to release the remains of two Israeli soldiers and two 
others who are presumed to be still alive, after being captured during 
Israel’s 2014 military offensive.

As the anger mounted yesterday, multiple barrages of home-made 
projectiles were fired from Gaza towards nearby Israeli settlements. The 
decision to respond was apparently taken by the Joint Operations Room 
run by Hamas and the other factions.

“The resistance will not hesitate to retaliate to any Israeli attack and 
we are prepared for any large scale operation,” insisted Islamic Jihad 
spokesman Musa’ab Al-Buraim on a local TV station. “We will defend our 
people and will not stand idly by.”

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system was deployed hours before the 
Palestinian response. What’s more, dozens of Israeli air strikes have 
been carried out in the past 24 hours across Gaza, targeting training 
sites belonging to Islamic Jihad and injuring four people. Two members 
of the movement were killed in air strikes against a facility near 
Damascus in Syria. The simultaneous attacks were intended to point the 
finger at the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad leadership in Syria and Lebanon. 
The message was clear: Israel’s arm can reach anywhere under the pretext 
of fighting “terrorism”.

As usual, mediation efforts by Egypt and the UN have been made to 
contain the situation but it seems that Israeli threats to wage a large 
scale operation in Gaza do not hold with the resistance groups for two 
reasons: First, the threats are always in the context of psychological 
warfare and changing the rules of engagement. Second, fierce statements 
to crush the resistance in Gaza serve the electoral interests of Prime 
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival, former General Benny Gantz of 
the Blue and White bloc. Gantz seized the opportunity to criticise his 
opponent’s efforts to stop the retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza. 
“Israel’s government is Hamas’s hostage,” railed Gantz. “[Hamas leader 
Ismail] Haniyeh is extorting Netanyahu and he’s paying up with suitcases 
full of dollars.” This was a clear reference to Qatar’s financial aid to 
Gaza.

It’s no surprise that Palestinian blood in Gaza — an open laboratory for 
testing Israeli weapons and munitions on live targets — is being used to 
boost the popularity of election candidates, most notably embattled 
Netanyahu who failed to form a government in the elections last April 
and September. Having a third Israeli General Election in less than a 
year scheduled to take place on 2 March explains the appetite to provoke 
Palestinians not only in Gaza but also in the occupied West Bank and 
Jerusalem. Candidates are vying with each to show who can be the hardest 
against the Palestinians, defy the most international laws and build the 
most settlements, all with the backing of the Trump administration in 
Washington. It has become the norm for Palestinians to be used by 
Israeli politicians and army officials in this way for selfish political 
gains.

Since the last major Israeli military offensive on Gaza in the summer of 
2014, many truces and ceasefires have been mediated, and have been 
fragile. The Palestinians in the beleaguered territory have been 
demanding a total lifting of the siege after 13 years, but the demand 
has been fruitless. Israel’s reluctance is a way of buying it more time 
to impose facts on the ground, and of blackmailing the victims of its 
siege to keep calm, or Qatar’s financial aid will not be allowed through.

As I write, the air is filled with tension as air raid sirens sound 
across the nominal border and Palestinian projectiles fly over towards 
Israeli settlements. Every such message to the other is followed by 
military action. Israel’s disproportionate force, though, is clearly not 
producing the desired effect; there are no white flags being waved in 
Gaza. Apart from anything else, its 2 million inhabitants have nothing 
left to lose after living under a brutal military occupation for decades.

Israelis may think that they are dictating the rules of engagement, but 
they are wrong. The Palestinian resistance groups are doing that by 
demonstrating that by violating Mohammed Al-Naem’s corpse, Israel has 
abandoned any more high ground that it wants the world to believe it 
holds. The thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli 
jails are no less valuable than Israeli captives in Gaza, and mutilating 
a corpse on camera is never going to change that.


The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not 
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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