If progress is to be made in the Middle East, the U.S. and Israel must first acknowledge that Hamas is not the problem. The Israeli occupation and impunity are the problem.
Israeli aggression and violations of Palestinian human rights started long before Hamas was even born. Israel has always dealt with the Palestinians as a population that has to be controlled, subdued – even crushed. We may disagree with Hamas’s ideology, but it has gained legitimacy through its resistance to an occupying force, and through fair elections.
Elected representatives of Hamas are as legitimate as President Mahmoud Abbas. But the world, led by the U.S., has chosen to deal selectively with the elected representatives of the Palestinian people and has resorted to its usual acts of collective punishment, bombing and killings. Israel claims that rockets propelled from Gaza are a justification for disproportionately unleashing its advanced military arsenal.
If the rockets are the main instigator for the Israeli strangulation of Gaza, why is the Israeli army continuing its incursions, raids and killing in the West Bank? While Israeli military actions have been deadlier and larger in scale in the “Hamas-run” Gaza Strip, they have also been taking place on a daily basis in the Palestinian Authority-run West Bank. Over the last four months Israel has conducted numerous military incursions into the West Bank, killing and rounding up predominantly Fatah activists loyal to President Abbas.
Neither Annapolis nor the talks that followed stopped Israeli military adventures into the West Bank, rendering Abbas impotent in front of his people. The Israeli attitude towards Palestinian leaders, be they from the Palestinian Authority or from Hamas, is the one and the same: Palestinian leaders should be there only and if they agree to police their own people. After all, what the world seems to forget is that both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip effectively remain under Israeli control.
Israel has been acting with impunity in both areas, asserting its military prowess and continued occupation to an oblivious world. Even when its deputy defense minister threatened to unleash ‘shoa’ against the Gaza Strip, there was virtually no condemnation or even shock in the West. Such statements of cruel intent stirred little reaction except for indignation that he had used a word associated with The Holocaust. There was no indignation that Israel was threatening to inflict massive destruction on the Gazan population, but there was a debate about whether the minister’s word choice belittled The Holocaust.
That in itself was indicative how Palestinian lives hold little, if any, value to the powers that be. The only anger expressed was over what was perceived as Reuters news agency’s mistranslation of the word “shoa” to mean “holocaust”. Israeli officials and writers rushed to explain that he meant “catastrophe”.
According to this perplexing logic, it is fine to inflict a catastrophe on the Palestinians, as long as nobody mistakes it for for a holocaust – a word which, when used in its lower case, means “causing massive destruction” according to several respected dictionaries.
In contrast, Western leaders spared no words in their dictionary of shock and horror when Palestinian killed eight Israeli seminary students.
The fact is that more than 120 dead Palestinians, half of whom are civilians, did not bring anything close to words of condemnation President George Bush or similar outrage by Western leaders. But comparing each side’s death toll is not the point here.
The value of human life cannot and should not be measured by numbers. Regardless of race, religion or nationality, the loss of a loved one evokes the same human feelings of pain, sadness and devastation.
But in the current situation, the world, and especially the dynamics of this so-called peace process, places zero value on Palestinian lives.
Annapolis was a farce, like all the talks that came before it. It is a plan to perpetuate Israeli control, territorial expansion, and military supremacy.
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