Abu Hena
In 2008 -09 the western-backed Israeli weaponry unleashed the “Operation Cast Lead “against the Gaza Strip when the barbarous Zionist politicians shouted the savage cry: “Bomb Gaza back to the Middle Ages and “flatten Gaza”. More than 1400 innocent Palestinians were killed then and the Gladstone Commission accused the Israeli leaders of “war crimes”. In March 2002 the Israeli hordes attacked Arafat’s Ramallah office and carried out rampage on the refugee camps in Nablus creating a situation “horrifying beyond belief.”
Ariel Sharon who carried out these brutalities against humanity remained in coma for ten years before he died, suffering the penance in part. This time another maniac prime minister with his characteristic violent behavior has been wildly pounding the Gaza Strip with indiscriminate air strikes for last ten days, hitting innocent civilians, mosques, charities and the homes for the disabled killing hundreds and wounding thousands. “No international pressure will prevent us from striking with all force …,” he frowned like the Pharaoh and indeed defied the call of the entire international community including the Security Council resolution to stop the violence.
UN and ICRC supply pipelines, medical and humanitarian services have been cut off and the water system has collapsed. Over 100,000 Palestinians living in north and east of Gaza have been asked by Israel to leave their homes. And as 40,000 reservists have been called up to start new, more aggressive assaults on innocent Palestinians, Israeli APCS, tanks and armoured vehicles are carrying out massive destruction all around Gaza. It is a human tragedy caused by a frenzied Zionist leader who revels on Palestinian blood and the whole world is grimly watching the rampage as silent spectators.
No end of brutalities in sight
During the last sixty five years the alien invaders of the land of the Palestinians killed more than sixty two thousand men, women and children who grew up there like the herbs of the woods and a million were uprooted from their soil using western diplomacy and billions of dollars of military aid. All these years the Palestinians heard them saying, “the fewer Arabs here, the better.” The occupation force has established itself on an alien land following the design crafted by the British imperialists to act as their agents in the region.
In 1948 when street agitation forced five reluctant Arab governments to send troops on a futile mission to block the creation of Israel, 750,000 Palestinians either fled Palestine or were driven from their land that became the Jewish state. Israeli armed men barred their return and systematically razed 53 of their ancestral villages. The sixty-day war in June 1967 brought the remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine under Israeli occupation, and pushed out another 250,000 more refugees. Such is the fate of the world’s 10 million Palestinians, 70 percent of whom are refugees. The tragedies of the Palestinian episode have no end in sight.
The Zionists resist all peace plans in their bid to maintain their monopoly position as the only friend of the west, especially America in the region and to keep the supply line of aid and assistance alive. On the other side the sufferings of the Palestinians continue to afflict politics within the Arab region and beyond. On exile, Palestinians have been harassed, attacked and sometimes driven away from the host country. Lebanese Christians massacred hundreds of Palestinian women and children at Sabra and Chatila in 1982 and destroyed the camps at Tel Zaatar and Qarantina in1970.
‘No peace with settlements’
About five million Palestinians live in Palestine, under Israeli control. In the West Bank, Israeli settlements and military camps occupy 40 percent of land. In 2000 Israel cordoned the territory with walls, fences and checkpoints confining the Palestinians into dozens of enclaves. Since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2000, its 1.5 million inhabitants have been confined within a strip, kept alive by international aid. Another 1.5 million Palestinians inside Israel have long suffered legal and economic discrimination. They are isolated from their fellowmen. Israel bars them from travelling to Gaza and most Arab countries. Palestinians in the occupied territories cannot visit them. The 250,000 Palestinian residents in East Jrusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967, have Israeli residence permits. But if they travel abroad to work, they lose their right to live in the place of their birth. Only Syria gives its 450,000 Palestinians all the rights except the right to vote. Egypt, home to 70,000 Palestinians allows them to travel, if they are lucky to get special permits. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is responsible for the welfare of the 4.5 million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.
On 23 September, 2011, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas submitted an application for admission of Palestine as a full member state based on the borders of June 4,1967 before the Six Day War with Israel. On 29 November 2012 the United Nations accorded non-member observer status to the Palestine State signifying a re-birth. Abbas branded the Jewish settlement activity in the occupied West Bank as “the primary cause for the failure of the peace process.” The US Presidents were avowedly anti – settlement but they had to yield to the pressure groups all the times. ‘The Israeli lobby’ steers the US foreign policy in a pro-Israeli direction. The lobby includes Jewish Americans, neo- conservative Christian evangelicans and ‘neo- conservative gentiles.’
Israel commands US Presidents
When President Ford learned of Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank, he sent US ambassador Malcolm Toon to present a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, demanding an immediate end to settlement construction. Rabin recounted his reaction to the letter in a 1992 speech in Wasington D. C. “You have two options,” he recalled telling Toon, “I’ll bring this message to the Cabinet and recommend we reject it. Or, since no one knows about it, President can take back the message.” Toon was startled, Rabin said.
The ambassador had never heard of a President “taking back’’ a message to the head of a foreign government. Rabin insisted, “Try, try.” Within 48 hours, Rabin remembered, Toon told him, “What I didn’t believe has happened. The President took back the message.” Later, a month after taking office President Bush approved the $10 billion loan guarantees. This incident alone shows how subservient the US President becomes to the Israeli political and diplomatic lobby and how elated a section of the US citizens feel when they hear the Israeli prime minister boasting about such Israeli preponderance over the US government.
As Israel’s defense minister, Rabin told his troops in December 1987, they should use “force, might and beatings” to put down the Palestinians’ resistance movement. Later, the same man spoke about “the pain, the sorrow on the Arab side. “You can restore order with force, but force is no help in solving what is basically a political problem,” Rabin once said. Rabin wanted that history would record him as the architect of an Israel in harmony with its Arab neighbours. He was right but he was assassinated by an Israeli fanatic when he wanted to negotiate with the PLO to end the conflict.
End of occupation be focused
Israel’s population was estimated to be 4200,000 in 1984. Rabin realized that such a small population could not survive and prosper, even with the most sophisticated western weaponry, in an environment predominantly Islamic, by cultivating hostility and enmity with the 1.5 billion Muslim community who have fourteen hundred years of glorious history of civilization and emprire building the world over. As the Turkish epic “Conquest 1453” ( Fall of Constantinople to the Turks ) had its premiere in 2012, the Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing ” in Gaza. “Israel is committing ethnic cleansing by ignoring peace in this region and violating international law. Sooner or later, Israel will have to answer for the innocent blood it has shed so far,” he said. The sentiment was echoed by the Arab League Secretary General: “The real problem that the Arab and Islamic countries and all friendly countries in the world must focus on is ending the occupation.”
Mohammed Morsi, the only democratically elected Egyptian President played a leadership role as the regional peacekeeper during the 2012 crisis when an Egyptian brokered ceasefire took place in November. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who witnessed the signing expressed hope saying, “In days ahead, the United States will work with partners in the region to consolidate this progress.” Now neither Morsi nor Clinton is in office and the Hamas which is sceptical about the new Egyptian President has rejected Egypt’s ceasefire proposal. People of Palestine want permanent peace not temporary cease fires which provided no permanent solution to the problem so far. Western diplomats want to prolong the crisis at the cost of the Palestinians. The Muslim World is simply unconcerned. The Palestinians are now tied together by the narratives of endless suffering, despair, death and dispossession, and the dream of returning home.
The writer is former Member of Parliament, and author of ‘Islam the Last Hope’
Source: Weekly Holiday
