Bully boys

(Gaza City, State of Palestine)

The Gaza Strip should be a beautiful place. It is a gentle territory which fades out into the Mediterranean Sea, never more than a hundred or so metres high at any point, and around a third of the 360 square kilometres is well irrigated. Almost half of the population are children under the age of fourteen, making it a predominantly young society. And it is populated by one of the most generous and hospitable peoples on Earth, the Palestinians.

However, more than two thirds of the population are UN-registered refugees. The vast majority of its land border is controlled by a neighbouring state which also runs constant sea and air patrols and controls the electricity supply of the entire territory. Eighty-one per cent of the population live under the poverty line.

To make an already critical situation worse, that neighbouring state, Israel, is currently engaged in one of its frequent military attacks. One of the major incidents of this invasion was the bombing of a girls’ school on January 6th, with the loss of forty civilians. The UN had previously given the Israeli government the coordinates of all protected buildings, so over four hundred refugees had moved into the school just before the attack.

A second major incident came on January 15th, when the Israelis bombed three hospitals and the UN headquarters in Gaza City. In the attack on the UN compound, the Israelis used white phosphorous, a controversial substance employed in both World Wars and in Vietnam. The compound was full of aid and aid workers.

Bombing a school when you know it is a school is quite obviously a reprehensible act committed by an amoral government and only justified by people with no humanity. What about bombing the UN headquarters?

THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG

The situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians is, of course, a problem with roots that lie deep in history. The territory has been changing hands in this area for a long time, and violence has invariably been an integral part of those changes of ownership. As far as land can actually belong to a people, it would be difficult – not to mention petty – to say now who had the original claim on the area.

Palestine existed as a state until comparatively recently, not just in Roman times – the so-called British Mandate of Palestine enjoyed international recognition from 1920 to 1948. However, this territory only existed as a pawn in a private deal between the British and the French – not the last time that Palestine would be the victim of Western meddling – and the intention of the Mandate was only to give the Jewish people a home.

So Israel was invented in the same place in 1947. It declared independence the following year and it has been growing ever since through a Hitlerian process of military annexation (1967 Golan Heights/Shebaa/East Jerusalem/Gaza Strip, 1978 South Lebanon, 1981 Golan Heights, 2000 South Lebanon, 2006 South Lebanon), and as a result Palestine does not now exist. There is the State of Palestine, of course, to be found in the spirit of the people in the Gaza Strip (taken by force from Egypt) and the West Bank (taken by force from Jordan).

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW

Israel’s strength lies in its allies. The US has supported Israeli anti-Arab aggression since the establishment of Israel in 1948, and it continues to fund the violence in the area through extensive economic and military aid. However, the worst aspect of this alliance, from the point of view of peace, is the fact that the US has always shown scant regard for the resolutions of the United Nations by simply vetoing anything that would prevent Israel from committing more atrocities (UNSCRs 16732, 19459, 17000, 17769, 19434, 19868, 19780, 20463 are among the more than one hundred UN resolutions that the US has vetoed in the last thirty-five or so years and relate specifically to the problem of Israel). Thanks to the lack of cooperation from the most powerful nation on Earth – a nation that time and again demonstrates that it believes itself to be above international law – the UN cannot enforce the UN Charter and the international community loses the opportunity to prevent further genocide.

In short, the Israeli government and military resemble a white supremacist organisation that threatens peace in the Arab world, and the US is the bully boy that lends real menace to the threats. Bombing a school is what we have come to expect from successive Israeli (and American) governments, but the shelling of the UN compound demonstrates a cynical disregard for the collective wishes of the international community as well as a supreme arrogance.

It is a gesture which seems to send a clear message to the rest of the world – we will do what we like and you are powerless to stop us.

EXCUSES

It is true that this land has been pulled apart since time immemorial – as land has everywhere else in the world throughout the inexorable rise of the human being, and it still does not justify the atrocities being committed by Israel this month. It is also true that Palestinians have sent bombs over too – it’s the panic-stricken, heart-rending and invariably futile gesture of the scared victim trying to fend off a crazed, violent attacker.

Watching the suffering in the Gaza Strip is like watching the small kid being beaten senseless in the playground by the bullies, and you cannot do anything because the head of the bullies stands there to make sure it happens. You – and the world – are screaming for it to stop but the big hard boy will not allow it to stop. Israel is beating the Palestinians senseless while the US stands there threateningly like the archetypal pig-ignorant playground thug and makes sure nobody intervenes.

Perhaps the most sickening aspect of this is the fact that Israelis still dare to talk about the Nazi Holocaust while they commit their own atrocity by decimating a population. They act the innocent victim while they make victims of their neighbours. They wave documentary evidence around with one hand while the other one is behind their back, throttling Palestinian children.

And what comes next for Israel and the State of Palestine? Will Iran or any other Arab state be provoked into attacking and thereby give the US the excuse it needs to continue its slaughter in the Middle East? And if the rabid dog that is modern America starts slavering and baying for blood, will the glorious new leader be able to keep hold of the lead?