MAY 17, 2018
Nazareth.
The contrasting images coming
out of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories on Monday could not have
been starker – or more disturbing.
Faced with protests at the
perimeter fence in Gaza, Israeli snipers killed dozens of unarmed Palestinians
and wounded more than 2,000 others, including children, women, journalists and
paramedics, in a hail of live fire. Amnesty, the international human rights
organisation, rightly called it a “horror show”.
Such horror is now so routine
that TV anchors could only headline the news as the worst day of bloodshed in
Gaza in four years, when Israel massacred civilians in its last major military
assault.
Already gasping from the
chokehold of Israel’s decade-long blockade of Gaza, local hospitals are now
collapsing from the weight of casualties.
A few kilometres away,
meanwhile, Israelis were partying.
So-called “liberal” Tel Aviv
was busy “chicken dancing” with Netta, who had just won the Eurovision Song
Contest and gave a free open-air performance to celebrate.
And in Jerusalem, Israeli
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was glad-handing a bevy of US officials,
including Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and policy adviser. They were
there to beam for the cameras as the US opened its embassy in the occupied
city.
The move pre-empts
negotiations over the city’s fate and sabotages Palestinian ambitions for East
Jerusalem to become the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s grin said it all.
As he mouthed platitudes about “Middle Eastern peace”, he finally had
Washington’s blessing for all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. And next year
Europe will give its implicit blessing too by hosting the Eurovision Song
Contest there.
But amid the euphoria, a few
Israeli commentators understood that politics is about more than power – it’s
about imagery too. The champagne-quaffing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem while Gaza
drowned in blood left a profoundly sour taste in the mouth.
There was more than a whiff of
hypocrisy too in statements about “defending borders” from a state that has
refused to declare its borders since its creation exactly 70 years ago – as
well as from a Netanyahu government currently trying to establish a Greater
Israel over the Palestinian territories.
But the hypocrisy was not
restricted to Israel and Washington, which parroted Mr. Netanyahu’s talking
points.
There was an ugly equivocation
from other western leaders. They spoke of “regret”, “tragedy” and “concern at
the loss of life”, as though an act of God had struck Gaza, not an order from
Israeli commanders to quell the Palestinian urge for freedom with live
ammunition.
Equally dishonest was talk of
the “need for restraint from both sides” and “clashes”, as though the
protesters had been tussling with Israeli soldiers in hand-to-hand combat
rather than being coldly picked off through telescopic sights.
Israeli politicians and media
have desperately searched for a moral justification for these executions. They
have talked of “kite terrorism” and a supposed stone-throwing threat to
soldiers positioned hundreds of yards away.
While thousands of
Palestinians have been executed or maimed, how many Israelis have been harmed
in the past six weeks of Gaza’s protests? Precisely none.
This is a strange kind of
terror.
The reality is that tiny Gaza
is becoming rapidly uninhabitable, as the United Nations has repeatedly warned.
For more than a decade Israel has blockaded it from land, air and sea, while
intermittently pummelling the enclave with missiles and military invasions.
A senior New York Times
correspondent tweeted on Monday that Gaza’s Palestinians looked as though they
had a “death wish”. But two million Palestinians – a population rapidly growing
– are inmates in what is effectively a shrinking prison, whose store rooms are
almost bare.
Tens of thousands of them have
shown they are prepared to risk their lives not for some death cult but to win
freedom, the most precious human impulse of all.
And they have preferred
confrontational, non-violent resistance as a way to shame Israel and the world
into recognising their plight.
And yet instead, Israel has
stripped them of all agency by falsely claiming that they are pawns in a game
by Hamas to pressure Israel.
But in so far as Hamas is
trying to influence Israel, what is its aim?
Last week, a gloating Israeli
media reported that Hamas was quietly appealing for a long-term truce with
Israel, effectively renouncing the Palestinians’ right to violently resist
Israel’s occupation.
It would not be the first
time. But whereas once Hamas sought a truce in return for a two-state solution,
now it is said to have requested simply an end to the blockade and a chance to
rebuild Gaza.
Even this minimal concession
is rejected by Israel. Instead an Israeli minister responded to Monday’s
slaughter by proposing that Israel assassinate the Hamas leadership.
Israel may be without remorse,
but are western leaders feeling shamed?
Apart from South Africa and
Turkey, none has so far withdrawn an ambassador. There are no calls for
embargos on sales of arms, no demands for war crimes investigations, no threats
of trade sanctions.
And no plans, of course, for
the kind of “humanitarian intervention” western governments have keenly
promoted in other parts of the Middle East where civilians are under threat.
For seven decades, the west
has pampered Israel at every turn. The lack of any meaningful punishment for
violating Palestinian rights led directly to Monday’s massacre.
And the failure to inflict a
price on Israel for this massacre – in fact, the reverse: visible rewards with
a relocated US embassy and the chance to host the Eurovision Song Contest –
will lead to the next massacre, and the one after.
Handwringing is not enough. It
is time for anyone with a conscience to act.
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