For peace in Palestine and Israel to endure
Yet, as the latest ceasefire after another brutal engagement between Hamas, which rules over the Gaza Strip, and Israeli Defence Force, indicate, peace is indispensable for the quiet that Israeli government officials seek and the freedom of movement that is imperative for the Palestinians to exercise the functions of a viable economy.In the latest encounter, […]
Yet, as the latest ceasefire after another brutal engagement between Hamas, which rules over the Gaza Strip, and Israeli Defence Force, indicate, peace is indispensable for the quiet that Israeli government officials seek and the freedom of movement that is imperative for the Palestinians to exercise the functions of a viable economy.
In the latest encounter, more than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in about two months of intense Israeli military bombardment of Gaza, in what prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu earlier promised would be a heavy price that Hamas would pay for the abduction and subsequent of three Israeli youths near the West Bank, which is controlled the Palestinian Authority. Over 10,000 Palestinians were injured. About 75 per cent of the casualties were civilians, with some 550 children among them, according to most accounts, including by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) which supervises relief work in the Occupied Territories. Over 230,000 Gazans were displaced by the war, most of them taking shelter in schools and open camps run by the UN and some Palestinian relief agencies.
Israel launched its ‘Operation Protective Edge’ on July 6 in response to the youths’ kidnapping and murder. Netanyahu immediately blamed Hamas, although Israeli officials produced no evidence to back up the claim. Subsequent inquiries however showed that the Palestinian Resistance Movement was right when it declared that the prime minister was lying.
However, the Israeli incursion in the West Bank following the killings was viewed by the Palestinians as a violation of previous ceasefire terms, and began launching rockets into Israeli towns in retaliation. Thereafter began the pounding of the narrow Strip of 1.8 million people. Rockets from Gaza killed about five civilians and one Thai national inside Israel. All the 64 Israeli soldiers who died during the operation were killed in actual combat with Hamas and fighters of the Islamic Brigade.
The high casualty figures Palestinian civilians in Gaza have prompted the United Nations to call some aspects of Israeli tactics during the operation as potential war crimes incidents, and launched an investigation. It also accused Hamas of similar crimes in it is lobbing of crude rockets that have no guiding systems into civilian areas. The two cannot in any way be comparable, but somehow the international often seeks such balance in what is clearly an asymmetrical engagement.
Most of the nearly 5,000 rockets and mortars fired into Israeli fell harmlessly on empty land, damaged a few building, or were intercepted by Israel’s U.S.–funded Iron Dome. In contrast, Israel’s ground, air and naval forces struck over 5,000 targets in Gaza, dropping over 20,000 tonnes of explosives that could pose serious danger to the people for many years to come. The pattern is a familiar one: a round of bloodshed, followed by a ceasefire that would leave many wondering when the next cycle of bloodshed would begin. Palestinians are paying too much of heavy price in this cyclical violence. Israel insists that its operation and frequent ground incursion into the West Bank and Gaza would stop only when rocket fire from Gaza stopped. Israeli officials are used to proclaiming that their forces withdrew from Gaza and that there were no justifications for acts of aggression by the militants in the Strip, including Hamas, which Israel and its ally United States regard as a terrorist organisation.
But Gaza, as one UN-appointed Rapporteur to the conflict zone once noted, is the world’s largest open-air prison. Its coastline and air are controlled by Israel. Nothing enters the Strip, be it medical supplies or other humanitarian aid sent by international organisation goes into Gaza and the West Bank without the approval of Israeli officials, who can be arbitrary in their determination. It is this suffocating Israeli heavy-handedness and the denial of basic economic freedoms that is at the root of the frustrations that Palestinians feel towards their occupiers. Israel cannot demand peace from people it has denied peace.
Hamas is right to stress that a longer-lasting truce would involve lifting the Israeli blockade on Gaza for the Strip to begin to function as a viable economy. Trust must flow from both sides, Israel and Palestine. That is the foundation for a viable peace. Unless that is achieved, it is, painfully, a matter of time before another conflict between Israel and the Palestine erupts again.