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<h1><font size=4><b>Who is killing whom in
Israel/Palestine?</b></font></h1><font size=3>By
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/sonja">Sonja
Karkar</a><br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/who-is-killing-whom-in-israel-palestine-by-sonja-karkar" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/who-is-killing-whom-in-israel-palestine-by-sonja-karkar<br>
<br>
</a>Friday, March 26, 2010<br><br>
One man dead in Israel and the whole world knows. He actually was not
Israeli, but an unfortunate immigrant worker from Thailand. We have been
told who killed him too: not by name, but by some shadowy <i>nom de
guerre, </i>used by jihadist groups some claim to be loosely affiliated
with al-Qaeda in Iraq and elsewhere. The unknown group in Gaza, Ansar
al-Sunna, claimed responsibility for the rocket fired into Israel that
caused the man’s death by shrapnel.<br><br>
The Hamas government has had its own problems with such groups, which
have challenged its rule in Gaza. But, that is neither here nor there for
Israel.<br><br>
Israel has already said that its response will be strong. And sure
enough, Israeli bombers have pounded the southern-most part of Gaza, so
far killing and wounding some fourteen Palestinian civilians including
children, three of them critically.<br><br>
The proportionality of the response is totally unbalanced, but more
outrageous is that Israel should resort to such measures at all. Israel’s
recent provocations have been like a red rag to a bleeding bull and these
cannot be discounted in understanding the cycle of violence.<br><br>
The targeted assassination of a Palestinian Hamas leader in a foreign
country by agents using stolen identities and forged passports turned the
spotlight on Israel, which neither denied nor admitted to the crime,
while all the evidence clearly incriminated it. Briefly, the world was
shocked, not so much that a state would sanction a killing in the first
place, but that the killers would violate the sovereignty and security of
other countries to carry out such a plan.<br><br>
That modus operandi is common practice for Israel whether it perpetrated
this particular killing or not. Of course, its victims are always
“terrorists” as the Palestinians know only too well. Even their children
are fair game.<br><br>
In Nablus two sixteen-year-old cousins were shot in the heart and the
head for throwing stones. One is dead, the other critically injured.
Similar incidents occur without any international outcries throughout the
West Bank where protests by Palestinians against Israeli oppression,
discrimination and expansionism continue with a courageous steadfastness.
No people would willingly give up their birthright and land.<br><br>
As the bulldozers move in to tear down houses and rip up olive groves,
stones against these military machines are the only weapons these angry
youths have to defend their family homes and livelihoods. However, the
consequences for stone-throwers and their families alike are devastating
with death, injury, imprisonment, torture and expulsion just some of the
punishments meted out.<br><br>
In Hebron, repeated settler violence has led to the shooting and beating
of Palestinian civilians in the Old City and nearby neighborhoods.
Protests against these continual violations to their lives have only
invited more attacks on the Palestinians from Israeli soldiers claiming
to quell the protests. Tear gas and rubber-coated bullets have recently
injured some 47 residents, in response, says Israel’s military, to stones
thrown, although there is no way of knowing who fired the first shot or
threw the first stone.<br><br>
In East Jerusalem, the Israeli government announces almost every other
day new plans to construct Jewish-only housing units on land illegally
seized from the Palestinians. Families have been evicted from homes they
have lived in for decades while Jewish settlers are indecently moved in
before their very eyes. Palestinian houses are demolished in Palestinian
neighborhoods to make way for encroaching Jewish ones or to replace them
with Jewish neighborhoods. The latest are the 1,600 illegal units
announced while the US vice-president Joe Biden was in Israel seeking to
re-start peace negotiations on the understanding that settlement building
would cease.<br><br>
Not only is Palestinian land being stolen and lives destroyed, but
Palestinian religious sites of centuries are being desecrated. Christians
and Muslims alike are struggling to stop Israel’s Judaization of their
cities, and Jerusalem particularly, has always been part of this creeping
takeover, but never as intensely as now.<br><br>
Israeli excavations in and around Islam’s third most holy site in
Jerusalem, the Haram al Sharif compound which houses two famous mosques,
are seriously threatening its integrity and are in breach of the Fourth
Geneva Convention which prohibits the destruction of a World Heritage
site. Just 50 meters away, a Jewish synagogue is being built in the
Muslim quarter while one of the city’s oldest Muslim cemeteries is the
site selected for Israel’s Museum of Tolerance. Not only that, Israel has
periodically set up military checkpoints to prevent Palestinian men from
attending the Al Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers, a prelude no doubt to
barring Palestinians from entering the city at all.<br><br>
The whole Arab and Muslim world knows that Israel wants to turn Jerusalem
into an exclusively Jewish city and expand its territory from the
Mediterranean to the Jordan River, if not further. Up till now, that did
not seem to bother the US government, but after Israel insulted
Vice-President Biden, this administration might just be realizing that
its indulged acolyte can no longer be controlled and threatens its own
interests in the region.<br><br>
Netanyahu’s conciliatory message to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
offered the removal of some of the 500 plus military checkpoints that
have caught Palestinian civilians in an impossible grid of
shuffle-through turnstiles and lockdowns inside the West Bank. It is not
the first time that checkpoints have been dismantled only to have new
ones erected elsewhere. He also suggested the possibility of transferring
more land to the control of the Palestinian Authority. That is a sham we
have seen repeated all too often - talking peace and making a few paltry
concessions while creating facts on the ground, which make any viable
state impossible. But it is the Palestinians we should be worried
about.<br><br>
Aside from the walls and laws that imprison the Palestinians already,
Israeli leaders, academics and military experts, and backed by Zionist
supporters, have spoken of transfer, curbing Palestinian births and
putting them on a “diet”. The most chilling proposal was put by a former
chief rabbi in May 2007 when he advocated carpet bombing Gaza. His son
who is also a chief rabbi elaborated: "If they don't stop after we
kill 100, then we must kill a thousand, and if they do not stop after
1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill
100,000, even a 1,000,000. Whatever it takes to make them
stop."<br><br>
Such remarks and actions by a state drunk on its own ill-gotten power are
plainly genocidal and no peace talks are going to stop Israel in its
tracks. There is, however, one sure remedy – the enforcement of
international law by whatever legal means necessary, even if that
requires UN-backed sanctions or the cutting of billions of US aid to
Israel to force Israel to comply. Anything less will soon answer the
question of who is killing whom for those too blind to see the truth
already being played out in full view of the whole world.<br><br>
<i>Sonja Karkar is the founder of Women for Palestine and one of
the founders and co-convener of Australians for Palestine in Melbourne,
Australia. She is also the editor of
</font><a href="http://www.australiansforpalestine.com/">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">www.australiansforpalestine.com</a></font>
<font size=3> and contributes articles on Palestine regularly to various
publications. She can be contacted at
</font>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/javascripts/fckeditor/editor/sonjakarkar@womenforpalestine.org">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">sonjakarkar@womenforpalestine.org</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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