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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Gaza needs more than condemnation</h1>
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<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/haidar-eid"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Haidar Eid</a> </div>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-needs-more-condemnation/13594">http://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-needs-more-condemnation/13594</a></small></small></small></b>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-07-18T01:15:00+00:00">18
July 2014</span> </div>
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<p>The Palestinians of Gaza, naively, went to the polling station
in January 2006, mistakenly believing the Bush doctrine of
bringing democracy to the Middle East — in spite of him being
responsible for the brutal massacre of hundreds of thousands of
innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>People voted, but not for the preferred choice of the Israelis,
or their American backers and the Arab dictators. The
Palestinian choice was against the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/peace-process">peace
process</a> industry, against the fiction that is the
ever-slippery <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/two-state-solution">two-state
solution</a>, against the corruption of the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/oslo-accords">Oslo</a>-era
<em>nouveau riche</em>.</p>
<p>The outcome was a surprise not only for the Oslo camp, but also
for the winners themselves: <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hamas">Hamas</a>. And
Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, were made to pay a heavy
price for this transgression: the imposition of a severe <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-siege">siege</a>
<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/genocide-gaza/6397">described
by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in 2006</a> as “genocide.”</p>
<p>But the deadly siege was not enough to satisfy Israel’s hunger
for Palestinian blood. The Palestinians of Gaza refused to
passively accept Israel’s siege, like good natives are supposed
to. Hence, Israel ferociously attacked Gaza in three horrific
assaults in 2006, 2009 and 2012 and now again in 2014.</p>
<p>In all of these attacks, the people of Gaza were left alone to
face one of the strongest armies in the world — an army that has
hundreds of nuclear warheads, thousands of trigger-happy
soldiers armed with Merkava tanks, F-16s, Apache helicopters,
naval gunships and <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/white-phosphorous">phosphorous
bombs</a> made in the United States. Gaza has no army, no navy
and no air force. And yet Israelis claim to be under threat and
fear for their lives!</p>
<h2>Complicity</h2>
<p>Commenting on this situation in Gaza, Karen Koning AbuZayd,
former commissioner-general for <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-needs-more-condemnation/electronicintifada.net/tags/unrwa">UNRWA</a>,
the UN agency for Palestine refugees, <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/23/israelandthepalestinians.world">said
in 2008</a>: “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first
territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject
destitution with the knowledge, acquiescence and — some would
say — encouragement of the international community.”</p>
<p>We in Gaza know very well that Israel could not have carried
out its current genocidal war, preceded by this horrific siege
and a series of massacres before it, without a green light from
the so-called international community.</p>
<p>Tellingly, an Israeli soldier was quoted by Israel’s <em>Haaretz</em>
newspaper in 2009: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about
Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He
doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him
with anything and you can just shoot him.”</p>
<p>But this aggression is not new; none of these wars have been a
response to Qassam <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/rockets">rockets</a>
fired from Gaza.</p>
<p>The 1948 Genocide Convention clearly states that one instance
of genocide is “the deliberate infliction of conditions of life
calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a people
in whole or in part.”</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/sara-roy">Sara Roy</a>,
an expert on Gaza, <a
href="http://www.thenation.com/article/gaza-treading-shards">describes</a>
the Strip as follows:</p>
<blockquote>[Gaza is] a land ripped apart and scarred, the lives
of its people blighted. Gaza is decaying under the weight of
continued devastation, unable to function normally …
<p>The decline and disablement of Gaza’s economy and society
have been deliberate, the result of state policy — consciously
planned, implemented and enforced. Although Israel bears the
greatest responsibility, the United States and the European
Union, among others, are also culpable … All are complicit in
the ruination of this gentle place. And just as Gaza’s demise
has been consciously orchestrated, so have the obstacles
preventing its recovery.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program
stated in a <a
href="http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/CBCD0E051E978998C125766A0039933D-Full_Report.pdf">2009
report</a>: “The evidence shows that the population is being
sustained at the most basic or minimum humanitarian standard.”</p>
<p>As <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ilan-pappe">Ilan
Pappe</a> argues in <em><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/book-review-israeli-academics-struggle-against-mccarthyism/3603">Out
of the Frame</a></em>, mainstream discourse in Israel is
about the need to destroy Gaza once and for all: “today from the
left to the right, from academia to the media, one can hear the
righteous anger of a state that more than any other in the world
is destroying and dispossessing an indigenous population.”</p>
<p>And now, judging by the increasing air raids, the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/incitement">incitement</a>
of Israel’s war-mongering generals and politicians, Israel is
putting that ideology into practice. As Thursday evening, Gaza
time, the latest statistics are horrific: 237 dead, more than 50
of them children, and 1,770 injured, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-ends-humanitarian-ceasefire-new-massacre-gaza-children">according
to the Gaza health ministry</a>, and more than 1,600 homes <a
href="http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_17_07_2014.pdf">demolished</a>
in broad daylight.</p>
<p>And yet those in places of power, unsurprisingly, still back
Israel’s “right to defend itself,” conveniently forgetting or in
the case of the Obama administration, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-state-department-rejects-gazas-right-self-defense-israeli-aggression">denying</a>
that those who are oppressed and dispossessed also have the
right to resist their oppression. Israel is intent on destroying
Gaza and international official bodies and administrations like
Obama’s <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-state-department-blames-hamas-israels-murder-gaza-children">repeatedly
declare</a> their commitment to Israel’s “security” like a
broken record, without a care for Palestinian lives.</p>
<h2>Urgent</h2>
<p>The urgent question facing us in Gaza is not just how to
survive for today, but how to hold Israel accountable to
international law and basic principles of human rights; how to
stop the current escalation and the ongoing massacre and how to
stop this from ever happening again.</p>
<p>Knowing that the credible <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/goldstone-report">Goldstone
report</a> on suspected war crimes in Gaza in 2008-09, and
reports by <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/amnesty-international">Amnesty
International</a> and <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/human-rights-watch">Human
Rights Watch</a> are all ignored or undermined, there is a
bitter awareness that we in Gaza can have no expectation of
Israeli accountability for the current onslaught. But this is in
the short term only — in the long term, we know that Israel will
have to answer to its oppression of Palestinians because this
oppression will end one day. History will have it no other way.</p>
<p>What Palestine needs from the world today is not just a
condemnation of the Gaza massacres and siege, but also a
delegitimization of the ideology that produced this policy and
justifies it morally and politically, just as the racist
ideology of apartheid was delegitimized.</p>
<p>It seems, however, and again, as Ilan Pappe <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-righteous-fury-and-its-victims-gaza/7912">notices</a>,
that even horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are
treated as “discrete events, unrelated to events in the past and
dissociated from any ideology or system.” Supporters of
Palestine must always relate today’s massacres to the original
sin of colonization of the land which Israel has claimed for its
own and the dispossession of its indigenous people.</p>
<p>The window of hope comes from the lessons we have learned from
South Africa, where the ugly apartheid regime came under
mounting pressure from outside. It is time for international
civil society, as opposed to the ineffectual United Nations, to
redouble their support for our struggle against apartheid in
Palestine today. As Palestinians under Israeli siege, occupation
and apartheid, we increasingly rely on international law and
solidarity for our very survival. That solidarity is needed more
than ever today.</p>
<p>The best way to honor those killed, injured and made homeless
in Gaza is to raise your voices even louder and demand that
governments impose <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/sanctions">sanctions</a>
against Israel. Now is the time to increase the number of
universities and businesses that <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/boycott">boycott</a>
Israel. Now is the time to demand <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/divestment">divestment</a>
from more pension funds. Now is the time for more countries to
cut all ties with Israel.</p>
<p>A country that fails to abide by international law, that
refuses to withdraw from Arab lands it has occupied since 1967<font
color="#cc0000"> [sic - 1948]</font>, that practices racism
against its <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel">Palestinian
citizens</a>, that refuses to allow <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinian-refugees">Palestinian
refugees</a> to return to their homes and lands, is a country
that should be expelled from the community of nations.
International solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinians demands
no less than the complete isolation of apartheid Israel.</p>
<p><em>Haidar Eid is an independent political commentator from the
Gaza Strip, Palestine.</em></p>
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