The one-sided “war” in Gaza was not about murdered yeshiva students or a Palestinian burned alive. It wasn’t about Qassam rockets or Israeli drones. It wasn’t about smuggling tunnels, which besides armaments also move food and building materials into Gaza. The most recent attack on Gaza was not even Israel punishing Hamas for rejecting divide-and-conquer tactics by signing a unity agreement with the PLO.
Since 1948 Israel has refused any sort of peace with Palestinians. Zionism is a zero-sum game. There can only be one winner. For Israel two states or one non-Zionist state are both losses. Occupation is unfortunate but necessary, so goes the reasoning.
Americans are extremely uncomfortable watching what is essentially a repeat of our own genocidal campaigns against Native Americans. But, then, isn’t conquering Zion THE story in the Bible? Even House Democrats talk “separation of church and state” out of the side of their mouth not supporting Zionism. And while these same liberal Congressmen fear the return of Jim Crow in the South, they apparently have nothing against martial law only for Palestinians and far worse than Jim Crow. What they are supporting is a toxic form of colonialism buttressed by US vetoes in the UN Security Council (also a vestige of colonialism) no matter which party is in power.
Israel has long maintained it has no “partner for peace” with any faction among the Palestinians. But this has been by design. In the late 1980’s Israel, which had refused to talk with the PLO, seriously erred by supporting Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Mujama Al-Islamiya (Muslim Association) movement, the precursor of Hamas. But by the time Americans realized their similar Islamist strategy in Afghanistan had backfired, Hamas was militant and Israel sent gunships to blow the Sheikh and his family to smithereens.
With the Oslo Accords, the PLO and Fatah renounced terrorism and hopes were high for a Two State solution offering Palestinians a sovereign homeland. But Israel never rewarded the defanged, dependent West Bank with a state of its own, instead continuing to take more Palestinian land for right-wing settlers. By now it’s obvious that Israel never had any intention of giving up lands it and American supporters like to call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria. In fact, the charter of the long-ruling party, the Likud, specifically denies a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. So, from Israel’s perspective, negotiations are only for stalling and stonewalling silly Americans. Spying on the American Secretary of State just gives them an edge.
If Gazans are more militant than those in the West Bank, there is a reason. A majority of those living in Gaza now are descendants of refugees who were purposely expelled from their homes in Israel in 1948. While Israel has a “Right of Return” for Jews, this does not extend to Christians or Muslims who owned property in what is now Israel. They are now living in what is essentially a concentration camp looking over barbed wire at people who put them there. Only a fool would fail to acknowledge their anger or their rights.
There is little sense in constructing timelines of which acts of terror preceded others. While we may call Hamas terrorists, a recognized state killing 1800 people, mainly civilians, also should be called terrorist. There is no sense or justification in the cliché: “this has been going on for 3000 years.” No. It hasn’t. It’s been going on since 1948. It’s a land dispute and not a clash of civilizations or religions.
It is not surprising, then, that virtually every nation on earth – with the exception of present and former colonial powers – understands why Palestinians resist having sovereignty taken from them. It’s the Occupation. The United States and Israel can label anyone who resists “terrorist” all they want, even forgetting acts of resistance and terror that created these two nations. But the problem in Israel-Palestine, like most of the messes created by the Sykes-Picot “deal” that carved up the Middle East, will remain a mess for any knucklehead who refuses to understand why those they oppress fight back.
It’s the Occupation, Stupid.
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