Stay up-to-date on what’s happening in Gaza: Gaza Under Siege – Updates
The siege of Gaza is entering its third week and the Palestinian death toll continues to rise. Yet again, it is the Palestinian women and children who are paying the price for the Zionist entity’s incapability of maintaining a ceasefire. As if aerial and naval bombardment of the biggest open air prison on earth is not enough, Israeli forces mounted a ground offensive on Thursday night. The Muslims of Gaza have become used to being attacked during the holy month of Ramadān, a form of psychological warfare intentionally enacted by Israel.
There are many hidden truths about the build up to Operation Protective Edge, which the BBC and the mainstream media have chosen to downplay or ignore outright. Few are aware that two Palestinian boys were shot dead by Israeli soldiers[1] before the three Israeli settlers were murdered; while a further five Palestinian children were killed in subsequent “revenge attacks”.[2] What our independent, ‘impartial’ media outlets conveniently forget to mention is that it was Israel who broke the November 2012 ceasefire, which Hamas honoured.[3]
But before we start talking about any practical solutions towards “peace in the Middle East”, we need to study some facts that serve as a stark reminder, when assessing Israel’s capability of working towards peace, let alone maintaining it.
In its fervent efforts towards peace, Israel:
1) Has strived to become the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, while it refuses to sign the non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections.
2) Is cited by Amnesty International as responsible for “demolishing more than 4000 Palestinian homes as a means of ethnic cleansing”.[4]
3) Regularly violates the Geneva Convention by imposing collective punishment on entire towns, villages and camps in Palestinian territories.
4) Has seized and continues to illegally occupy or control sovereign territory in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan by military force and continues to do so in utter defiance of the UN Security Council’s resolutions.
5) Routinely violates the international borders surrounding Palestinian territories with warplanes, artillery and naval gunfire.
6) Has created millions of refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses. According to UN statistics, the number of registered Palestinian refugees currently stands at around five million.[5]
7) Refuses to pay compensation to Palestinians whose land, bank accounts and businesses have been forcefully confiscated.
8) Is in defiance of 69 UN Security Council resolutions and has been protected from a further 41 by U.S. vetoes.[6]
9) Has signed the Oslo Accords, promising to halt any new Jewish settlement construction, but has instead built more than 270 new settlements since its ratification.
10) Has assassinated more than one hundred Palestinian officials, most of whom form the democratically elected government in the last two years, which has resulted in the deaths of civilians in the process.
The above facts are merely the tip of the iceberg while the list of broken ceasefires and international treaties is never-ending. The most recent assault has claimed the lives of more than 300 Palestinians, three quarters of whom are woman and children, has injured almost 2000, demolished 600 homes and has damaged 1300 others. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was to slip at these figures when he said Israel is indeed “becoming an apartheid state.” UN reports show that abject poverty has increased in Gaza by 300% since the 2007 Israeli blockade.[7] One can only imagine how unbearable life has become in one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
Ironically, Israel continues to play the victim card and sobs to the international community for being “singled out”. However, its 65-year track record of unprecedented brutality and aggression towards the Palestinians has made its lip service to the peace process farcical to say the least.
People of conscience around the world, Muslims and non-Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs have been protesting, boycotting, praying and giving charity. These are all sincere and well-intended actions, which have undoubtedly raised awareness of Israel’s bloody and ruthless rampage.
However, and being careful not to sound like a pessimist, I ask myself how fruitful boycotting and protesting is. How effective is boycotting Israeli products when it receives more than a third of all U.S. aid and is ranked one of the richest nations in the world? If two million people marched in London against the Iraq war which fell on deaf ears, what will hundreds of thousands demonstrating outside Downing Street achieve when the successors of Mark Sykes and Arthur Balfour stand in adamant support of their exceedingly bias Middle East foreign policy?
Whilst well-armed neighbouring Arab states that bodyguard Israel sit idly and spectate the bloodshed taking place before their eyes, here at home, PM David Cameron reaffirms his allegiance to Israel and its “right to defend itself.”[8]
Unsurprisingly, Israel has agreed to a ceasefire proposed by the butcher of Rabaa, the Pharaoh himself, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The ‘ceasefire’, other than having overlooked the resistance’s stance completely, in effect grants the Zionist entity international legitimacy to carry on bombing Gaza whilst viperously diverting blame for Israel’s atrocities onto Hamas. The UN, OIC and the Arab League have once again proven their ineptness as they witness the one-sided war that is turning Gaza into a city of rubble and stray limbs—again. They do, however, throw the occasional one-liners of condemnation, but the bitter truth is that they have never been able to contain Israel’s manoeuvres due to their obedience of string-pullers in Washington, London and Paris.
Once this reoccurring episode passes, empty talks of “peace” and “practical solutions” will dominate the post-siege narrative by the usual suspects—the same protagonists that created Israel and continue to fund it. However, our hope in Allāh is great and peace will be dictated on the terms of the most resolute, and by His will, justice will serve a humiliating blow to the Zionist oppressors.
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Source: www.islam21c.com
Notes:
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/israeli-jets-gaza-netanyahu-hamas-teenagers-deaths
[5] http://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees
[6] http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/campaigns/no-more-us-vetoes-at-the-un
[7] http://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/201304151632.pdf
[8] http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-07-14/david-cameron-israel-has-a-right-to-defend-itself/
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8 Comments
Well written. However what we seem to be realising is that any internal methods of ‘peaceful protest’ against the injustices are unheard, unnoticed and blatantly ignored. Maybe moving forward external methods, regardless of how ‘taboo’ they are to the West need to be looked at such as physical force needed against the Israelis. There is only one way to tame a rabid dog…
I don’t think Israel have ever been interested in peace as we understand it. Their actions suggest that they are merely stalling for time whilst they systematically remove Palestinians from the land.
They seize more and more land for their illegal settlements, forcing the Palestinians into a smaller area. That makes it easier to give excuses to the world when they kill so many civilians because they can just say it’s the civilians fault for living close to the “militants”.
They engage in “peace” processes, saying negotiations should be without conditions whilst building more settlements, knowing that they can then accuse Palestine of stalling the process when they refuse to come to the table whilst more settlements are being built. All this at the same time as them clearly not being interested in any single state for the Palestinians, which is obvious from how they’ve divided the Palestinian lands into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They continue to oppress the Palestinians, knowing this leads to greater resistance, which they can then use to say “we are only defending ourselves” and “no country in the world would accept rocket attacks”.
So perhaps Israel is interested in peace, just not peace where Palestinians or Palestine still exists.
Excellent article, mashaAllah. Well analysed and well put.
Israel, has militarily occupied the Gaza Strip (along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem) since 1967. It is one of the longest and brutal in human history — over 2,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone in the last seven years.
Israel’s discriminatory division of water means that Palestinians get 70 litres a day per person (far below the 100 liters per capita minimum).
The Israeli terrorists conducts monthly incursions into the Gaza Strip to destroy the land it has declared as ‘no-go zone.’ Its tanks, bulldozers and military
jeeps, accompanied by helicopters and drones, systematically destroy
fruit bearing trees and agricultural land in the Gaza strip. Civilian
infrastructure in this area is also demolished.
The Israeli army created a ‘no-go zone’ along the Israel-Gaza border that Palestinians cannot enter. This ‘buffer region’ extends up to 1,500 meters at times into the Strip and includes some of its most fertile land. As a result, 35 per cent of the agricultural space in Gaza is off-limits to farmers.
Israel has announced that access to the sea six nautical miles beyond Gaza’s shore is prohibited for fisherman. This means that 85 per cent of fishing waters granted to Palestinians under the Oslo Accords is now inaccessible; this is severely impacting Gaza’s coastal economy.
No people would ever tolerate an oppressive occupation and an unjust siege, so why should the Palestinians?
I can see why Hitler was trying to eradicated these accursed people.
Going into other people’s land and then try to eradicate the people.
Israel does not want peace, they want a holocaust to eradicate the Palestinians.
No, these “Israelis” have NOTHING to do with the people Hitler tried to eradicate. These people are not real Jews, the real Jews protest AGAiSNT the Terrorist state of “Israel” and are treated like scum by the IDF, beating them up and imprisoning them just like the Nazis did. Israel is an enemy of Jews and Muslims. The people who set up Israel were of Russian descent, the real Jews lived peacefully under Muslim rule for over a millennium. Israelis are just modern Nazis with even more sophisticated propaganda than Joseph Goebbels – but the new democratisation of news due to social media and the internet has caused their power to wean in front of international pressure against them from HUMAN BEINGS from all backgrounds.
It’s part of their vile, unsympathetic propaganda to make people think that Nazis were after THEM so that when people see their crimes they start to praise Hitler and so the resistance against the Israeli oppression gets tarnished and compared to Hitler, so we shouldn’t fall into their disgusting trap.
Well said Shimon, in my anger I did not take the time to clarify it is not all Jews but the Jews who are oppressing the Palestinians & those who support it. Thank you for clarifying it.
You are not entirely accurate. I went to a predominantly Jewish high school in the US, costing about $30, 000 a year. It was one of the highest ranked schools in the country, comprised of very rich, elite Jews. These students were NOT Zionist and yet they were very pro-Israel. And you can’t really say that the students in my high school were not “real” Jews. They celebrated Bar and Bnot Mitzvah, Rosh Hashanah etc.