The recent Israeli-Palestinian crisis that started on July 8 is witnessing another escalation. Within three weeks, the number of the Palestinians killed neared 2,000, the injured moved beyond 10,000 and the displaced soared above 200,000.
The conflict on the other hand also cost the lives of 61 Israeli soldiers, two civilians and a Thai farm worker killed by rocket fire.
To those who are students of history, the massacre, as gruesome as it was is still a child’s play compared to previous ones.
Worse ones had been recorded in the past.
Palestinian freedom fighters claim the rockets they fired into Israel are in protest against several months of Gaza siege; an attempt to call the world attention to end over forty years of military occupation of their land and make the world powers prevail on Israel to accept UN resolutions on the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine. They also demand that the closed air and sea ports be opened before any major negotiation.
They claim that they could no longer live under a situation where Israel police and military, without restrictions, enter their territories through land, air or sea: kills at will, arrests as it wishes, demolishes their abode at any time and seizes their land without justifications.
As at August 3rd, Israel had carried out more than 4,600 airstrikes across the crowded seaside area of Gaza. On July 17, it sent in ground forces in what it said was a mission to destroy the tunnels used by Hamas to break the blockade and ameliorate the effects of the siege on citizens.
Israel bombed residential buildings, mosques, hospitals and refugee camps.
The Zionist State’s defended its actions saying Hamas use civilian areas for cover and says the resistant group is responsible for the heavy casualty.
To the uninitiated, the explanation of Israel is enough justification for the massacre of the Palestinians, whose only offence was daring to demand for a home land, a decision that has been finalised many decades ago.
The creation of the Palestinian and Israeli states had been settled in the Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917 in a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
The declaration reads: His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The text of the letter was published in the press one week later, on 9 November 1917. The "Balfour Declaration" was later incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire and theMandate for Palestine. The original document is kept at the British Library.
The Balfour’s declaration of 1917 had therefore granted two-state solution. Though the creation of a Jewish State was ab initio,unjustly imposed on the already conquered Arabs, a state each for the Arabs and the Jews was granted, yet a Jewish state was created in 1948, while a state for the Arabs remains in the cooler.
Today, Israel is indirectly working toward a divided Palestine with two autonomous states of Gaza Strip and West Bank, having separated the two states with a gulf of Israeli settlements on the occupied lands of the Palestine. That is why a Gazan cannot escape to the West Bank even in times of crisis.
Palestinians are more than convinced that it is better to die, fighting for their rights and securing a dignified living than to continue to live as slaves in their home land.
They know too well that the only way to end the forty year occupation of their land and almost a decade of Gaza blockade is resistance. Hence no single dissenting voice either among the citizens or within varying resistant groups was recorded, despite the killings.
Perhaps that is also the reason the entire groups of fighters, the PLO, The HAMAS, the Islamic Jihad Group and others cooperated throughout the trying period. It is also the reason why all the different ethnic and religious groups, despite their differences never raised a voice against the struggle embarked upon by the resistant groups.
While the Western press and many unenlightened media of the developing countries refer to them as ‘militants’ and ‘terrorists’ they remain ‘national heroes’, ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘martyrs’ to their people. It is the same reason the Christian leaders offered the Muslims to offer Salat (prayers) in their Churches when the Jewish State destroyed virtually all Mosques in Gaza.
Little did many know that the two ‘fighters’ are not equal partners.
The world media, powerfully controlled and manipulated by the Jews did not tell the world that Palestinians have no state status at the UN. Palestine is a homeland without a state, a nation without a police, a state without an army, a population without immigration and a state without a customs service. Its borders are determined by Israel, its power station controlled by the Jewish State and fuel supplied by the Zionist regime.
Palestine is though, not a disputed territory like Saharawi Democratic Republic and Kashmir, yet it is denied a state by the powerful nations in the UN. Its statal status had been decided decades before South Sudan’s agitation, yet it is denied a referendum. Little did the enlightened people of the globe know that Palestine remains the only country that is under cruel jack boot of the colonial masters without independence since the beginning of last century.
Little does the world know that while Palestine has been on the world map from time immemorial and that the State of Israel was only super imposed on the universal almanac in 1948.
As at 1948, when the Arabs were persuasively coerced into accepting the existence of a Jewish State in their midst, Israel was occupying about fifteen percent of the land while Palestine had about eighty five percent; but the reverse is the case today!
A colleague of mine innocently asked: why would Palestinians be shooting rockets at Israel when they know they will be mercilessly crushed and gruesomely massacred by the Israeli military; but I replied rhetorically:
Why did the Mandelas of the world resist the Apartheid regime in South Africa despite the superior fire power of the government coupled with the killings and imprisonments? Why did Libyans and Algerians resist the Italians in spite of the awful murders that were visited on them? Why did the Irish Army and the United States of America fought terrible wars to liberate themselves from the Great Britain despite the horrifying consequences of wars; and why did the oppressed people of the world resisted their oppressors, not minding the consequences of the failure of their revolts.
Israel has overt and covert reasons for orchestrating this crisis. It knew the Palestinians will naturally protest the killing of the abducted boy who was burnt to death just as they had been protesting with rockets, the eight-year old siege and forty years of military occupation in Gaza.
The overt reason according to Israel is to demilitarise Gaza and destroy the tunnel with which the Gazans survived the siege.
But what are the covert reasons? Zionism accepts that the entire land of the
Palestinians, including Jerusalem and in fact, the entire Middle East is promised to the Jews in the Torah, and until the whole land is liberated and the entire inhabitants are pushed out, with Jerusalem ultimately becoming the capital of the Great Jewish State, no genocide or pogroms can be too much a sacrifice.
It is not surprising therefore, that thousands of Palestinians have remained in refugee camps since 1948. Israel carried out massacre of 6,000 refugees in a day at Shatila camp in ..... and used chemical weapon, white phosphorus on Palestinians..... in 2012 without consequences.
The ultimate goal is to provoke the exodus of Gazan population through suffocating and frustrating policies.
One of the reasons the Palestinians are being punished is that the Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah in West Bank decided to unite and close rank. It is also to the population who dared to support this ‘heinous crime’ to turn against their governments, but that agenda appears to be failing.
Does the world population know that Gaza remains the most densely populated community in the world, with millions of people cramped into a choking enclave? And are they aware that over1.8 million Palestinians are today locked inside Israeli prison?
Many also do not know that Palestine is a cosmopolitan community that harbours Muslims, Christians and others.
Today millions of innocent Christians erroneously assume that Israelis are Christians, unknown to them that there are more Christians among the Palestinians than in Israel. Little do they know that Judaism is the predominant religion of the Jews and the foremost people that reject Christianity and refuse to accept Christ as a Prophet to date are the Jews.
Most often, political Zionism is usually confused with the religion of Judaism. For instance, Islam respects and recognises Judaism but abhors Zionism because of its racist inclination. Little do many know that, in the Human Rights parlance, Zionism is worse than Apartheid and it remains the worst form of racism ever known to mankind.
Do we know that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. In fact, not all those who would describe themselves as traditional Zionists can identify with the distorted and extremist version on display today in Israel.
Following the persecution of Jews in virtually most nations in Europe, Israelis wanted a safe haven but the Zionists hijacked and truncated the dream turning the dream State of Israel to a brutal nation, hated by virtually all its neighbours and adored only by its distant friends!
In fact, many Jews today are distancing themselves from what is being done by Tel Aviv in their name. For instance, the New York Times columnist, Roger Cohen, a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist, is appalled with the actions of the Israeli state.
"What I cannot accept, however," wrote Cohen, "is the perversion of Zionism that has seen the inexorable growth of a Messianic Israeli nationalism claiming all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River; that has, for almost a half-century now, produced the systematic oppression of another people in the West Bank; that has led to the steady expansion of Israeli settlements on the very West Bank land of any Palestinian state; that isolates moderate Palestinians like Salam Fayyad in the name of divide-and-rule; that pursues policies that will make it impossible to remain a Jewish and democratic state; that seeks tactical advantage rather than the strategic breakthrough of a two-state peace; that blockades Gaza with 1.8 million people locked in its prison and is then surprised by the periodic eruptions of the inmates; and that responds disproportionately to attack in a way that kills hundreds of children. This, as a Zionist, I cannot accept."
Zionist Henry Siegman, the former leader of the American Jewish Congress, said on the global TV show Democracy Now. ‘
’...But for Palestinians to try, in any way they can, to end this state of affairs - and to expect of them to end their struggle and just focus on less than 2 per cent (of Palestinian land) to build a country is absurd. That is part of - that's propaganda, but it's not a discussion of either politics or morality."
He continued: ‘’The social networks are buzzing with commentaries on Gaza with the overwhelming support going towards the Palestinians. It seems that while the Zionists hold the Palestinians under military occupation, and Washington and London under political occupation, the likes of Twitter and Facebook have become the voices of the people.’’
Ignorance perhaps, account for reasons why many still support the needless persecution and killings of the Palestinians as well as the unjust denial of their State. With right knowledge and little conscience, it is hope that the civilised world will one day wake up from its slumber and stop this needless persecution for the good of humanity.
