Butchery in Gaza

For now, let’s just say the values remain ideals to be pursued as enjoined by the season that is about to pass.No one, not even the most insular person living on a desert Island can deny that what is unfolding between the Israeli government and its foe-the Hamas is anything but peaceful. Another round of […]

For now, let’s just say the values remain ideals to be pursued as enjoined by the season that is about to pass.
No one, not even the most insular person living on a desert Island can deny that what is unfolding between the Israeli government and its foe-the Hamas is anything but peaceful. Another round of conflagration has blown up between the two, resulting into death on both sides. But as always whenever another unthinking war ensues in the feud that has ceaselessly plagued these two peoples, it is the Palestinians that remain on the receiving end, as the Israeli government finds justification to unleash its hideous fire power against largely defenceless people.
In the latest one, the whole world has watched as the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) blow up residential houses, and in the process massacring and maiming women and children; destroying the almost non-existing social infrastructure and further rendering the lives of about two million hapless people of Gaza hell on earth.
The genesis of the latest bad blood was the killing of three hitch- hiking Israeli youth, whom Natanyahu and his government think must have been carried out by radical Islamists, in reply a 13 year old Palestinian boy was seized and burnt alive by a gang of Israelis, which itself occasioned rockets being launched into Israel, provoking the carnage and massacre that Israeli reprisal has come to constitute.  
Not satisfied with the air bombardment of Gaza, Israel embarked on a ground incursion and the latest estimate is that Israel now controls 40% of the tiny territory of Gaza, ostensibly undertaken to stop the rockets being launched into Israel and to destroy the ubiquitous tunnels built across the length and breadth of Gaza by Hamas to evade the prying eyes of Israeli surveillance. The tunnels themselves are an outcome of several years of blockade of Gaza which virtually turned the territory into an Arab Bantustan of a sort, reminiscent of the Apartheid era, which in effect boxes in people, denying them access to the whole world, except what the Israeli authorities allow. As they say, adversity engenders ingenuity. With their backs to the wall, the Palestinians, led by Hamas, have found a way out to acquire not only the necessities of life but also to make the weapons with which they are defending themselves against the Israeli scorched –earth blitzkrieg. Before this latest skirmish, the rockets could go as far as a few kilometres into Israel and the Israelis could go to sleep knowing they can come to no harm. Not so now. The rockets when launched without interception can now reach the northern extremity of Israel close to Lebanon. This prowess was achieved through the creation of the enabling environment provided by the tunnels, a necessity forced on the Palestinians largely by the unhelpful attitude of Israeli authorities towards achieving peaceful co-existence.
The Palestinians in Gaza have not only acquired the technology to burrow into the earth, they also now can build rockets to fight back. If they can do all this, manufacturing weapons to fight close combats is a foregone conclusion, meaning that the once prostrate Palestinians who threw stones at Israeli soldiers shooting at them are now lobbing rockets into their neighbours’ towns. This implies that they are gradually acquiring the know- how to furnish themselves with sophisticated and dangerous weapons. Soon Israel would not be the only one capable of reducing cities and buildings to rubble. If the impasse on peace negotiations continue as it has been, it is not inconceivable that soon a parity of weaponry would be achieved by the Palestinians. It is the reason why the bombardment of Gaza had to be undertaken using an unfortunate incident of the murder of the Israeli youngsters and its retaliation through making a bonfire of a lone Palestinian boy.
The obvious deduction from this is that the intractable cycle of violence has started to affect all the players equally. Yes, scores of Palestinian men, women and children have been killed by Israeli Defence Force (IDF) purporting to be targeting Hamas fighters. Some of those killed are teenagers whom everyone could see were running for cover from the indiscriminate bombings of the IDF, women and children who had taken shelter in a school run by the United Nations. They were all killed, wittingly or unwittingly, by Israelis who boast that they only take out targeted and specific villains. But the ground incursion launched has brought the fact home forcefully to the Israeli that they do not have a monopoly of means of death, so far regrettably a huge number of their soldiers and a few civilians have also died, like the scores of the Palestinians killed—all victims in a senseless and pointless refusal to come to terms with the fact that this mutual hatred and recriminations could go on forever until the pugilists allow better judgement of give and take, to take over in order to resolve the Palestinian problem of statehood.     
On the difficulty of the realisation of the Palestinian statehood based on the two-state solution being pursued, Israel has the most blame. Through a deliberate policy of continuous building of settlements on Palestinian lands against all entreaties, it has gobbled up huge tracts of land, so much so, that it has rendered Palestinian statehood an oxymoron, a non-starter and virtually unrealisable. A fact that has continued to undermine Mahmud Abbass’s authority in the West Bank and fuelled young Palestinians’ anger which drives them to extremes. Israeli authorities’ unwillingness to stop erecting Jewish settlements is an indication that they do not intend to grant the Palestinians a state. Whenever the international community insists, Israel reluctantly merely goes through the motions of negotiation until it feels it has replenished its armoury for another round of destruction of Gaza and killing of its defenceless people. Then the negotiations breakdown irretrievably to be followed immediately by outbreak of hostilities occasioned by an issue that otherwise could have been ironed out without resorting to bloodletting.
Since the war has to be justified, Israel turns itself into the victim.  Bilyamin Natanyahu would now go on about his responsibility to defend Israelis by killing hundreds and thousands of the Palestinian women and children, until Gaza is once again reduced to rubble for those fortunate to be alive to start rebuilding from the scratch, much like the curse of Sisyphus.  It must be said that the cycle of senseless wars have continued because the US acquiesces in them, and the spinelessness of the United Nations to enforce many of its resolutions which Israel had flouted. Responsible governments do not owe a duty to defend only its citizens. They equally owe an obligation to ensure other people deserve to be extended the same right and it is morally imperative in war times, particularly when the situation that gave rise to the war is well known.
The whole world-particularly the West must bury their heads in shame for allowing the utter butchery that is going on in Gaza to continue.