Only peace can end the hellish situation in Gaza and Sderot
Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) – Benedict XVI yesterday launched an appeal, calling on Palestinians, Israelis and the entire international community to end intra-Palestinian fighting and rocket attacks against Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip. This morning Israeli planes bombed targets in Gaza, killing at lest four people, including relatives of Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya. Despite a week of similar air strikes that left 30 people dead, Israel has been unable to put a stop to rocket attacks against the town of Sderot. Intra-Palestinian fighting between Fatah and Hamas for the control of Gaza also does not seem to be over. The death toll from Palestinian factional fighting so far stands at around 50. Our correspondent reflects upon the violence and tragic situation in Gaza and Sderot and upon peace as the only way out.
The increasingly sad and hopeless situation in and around the overpopulated and desperately poor Gaza Strip is attracting decreasing international attention – as if it has all just become a dreary routine.
Palestinian armed men, belonging to a variety of armies, police forces, commando units, clan militias, criminal gangs etc. are attacking, killing, kidnapping, torturing each other (as well as any “civilians” unfortunate enough to be in their way). Groups of such men hurl primitive ordnance and rockets at Israeli towns and villages just across the border. The poor Israelis of Sderot are feeling they are right inside the “nightmare of the living dead,” and that no one “up there”, in government, really cares too much about their plight. They do not matter politically or economically. It is not, of course, as if Sderot were North Tel Aviv! The Israeli army retaliates in all the old ways, and tries unsuccessfully to catch the attackers before they launch their rockets, while unable to say precisely what more they could possibly do to stop the nightmare, short of “surging” right into Gaza (and perhaps pushing its people westwards across the border with Egypt – which is Egypt’s own nightmare-scenario, or one of them).
And the endless, endless, endless talks . . . to bring about yet another cease-fire among the Palestinian factions (which will last five minutes or five weeks or months, but will always, invariably, collapse in the end, in just this same way); to bring about a cross-border cease-fire between rocket-throwers and the Israeli Army (which will last five minutes or five weeks or months, but will always, invariably, collapse in the end, in just this same way). And there will be the inevitable visit by the U.S. Secretary of State, by Javier Solana for the European Union, by the U.N. Secretary General – indeed, by whom not?
And so we go, on and on and on.
In truth, there is no “solution” for Gaza. Gaza is a huge (well, not really even that huge) prison camp, heavily surrounded and well guarded on all sides, including from the sea. It has one of the highest population densities on earth. It has no resources, and no prospects. Most of its perhaps one and a half million Palestinian inhabitants are refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It is ruled by gangs. Even the supposed “official” security forces “loyal to the president” are often some sort of gangs, whose commanders have grown rich (as the people have become even poorer) on extortion and monopolistic commerce. The U.S. and Israel may like them, may think them “our gangs,” but essentially they are still gangs.
And there just is not enough to go around. This is why they fight among themselves, why they will always fight among themselves – as long as they are in prison.
And the terrified civilians cannot even seek refuge anywhere. They are totally locked in. There is nowhere to run to. The borders are very strictly guarded, by Egypt, by Israel.
Hell on earth.
Brave reporters who go into Gaza (and manage to come out again) say that more and more people there are now telling them openly that the only solution is for Israel to “re-occupy” the Strip and administer it fully again, as it did before Oslo, before the 2005 “re-deployment”. This is not surprising. This IS Israel’s responsibility. Israel IS the Occupying Power, and, under international law, has the full responsibility for the civilian population, and cannot simply abandon the occupied territory, without handing it, by peace treaty, to the new state. That Israel chose in 2005 not to have any more a permanent military presence inside the narrow Strip does not mean that it has ended its status and obligations as the Occupying Power. As international jurists have been pointing out.
Israel can only free itself from those obligations by ending the occupation truly, through a peace treaty with Palestine, recognising the State of Palestine in Gaza AND the West Bank, removing the siege on the Palestinians and enabling them, within the terms of the peace treaty, to develop.
Every opinion poll there is, says that Palestinians will overwhelmingly welcome this peace with freedom. Only then will Palestinians have the will, and the internal legitimation, to suppress armed and terrorist activities against Israel by the few who will have refused to sign on. Only then will there be more than just enough to go around, so Palestinians will not have to kill and maim other Palestinians for crumbs from an inadequate cake.
Only then will the poor Israelis of Sderot cease to feel like human sandbags for their more fortunate compatriots who are right now luxuriating in their safe neighbourhoods, and making even more money in their bright new office towers, some tens of kilometres to the north of there.
Only peace is the solution. A planned peace, a negotiated peace, a systematically thought-out and built-up peace; an equitable peace, between equals, between two nations recognising each other’s equal right to security and to a chance at prosperity.
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09/06/2018 09:05
