“Nothing apart from pressure in the form of sanctions, boycotts and
divestment will stop the murdering of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip.
There is nothing we here in Israel can do against it. Brave pilots refused
to partake in the operations, two journalists – out of 150 – do not cease to
write about it, but this is it. In the name of the holocaust memory let us
hope the world would not allow the genocide of Gaza to continue.” -Ilan
Pappe
Genocide in Gaza By Ilan Pappe
A genocide is taking place in Gaza. This morning, 2 September, another three
citizens of Gaza were killed and a whole family wounded in Beit Hanoun. This
is the morning reap, before the end of day many more will be massacred. An
average of eight Palestinian die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip.
Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed.
The Israeli leadership is at loss of what to do with the Gaza Strip. It has
vague ideas about the West Bank. The current government assumes that the
West Bank, unlike the Strip, is an open space, at least on its eastern side.
Hence if Israel, under the ingathering program of the government, annexes
the parts it covets – half of the West Bank – and cleanses it of its native
population, the other half would naturally lean towards Jordan, at least for
a while and would not concern Israel. This is a fallacy, but nonetheless it
won the enthusiastic vote of most of the Jews in the country. Such an
arrangement cannot work in the Gaza enclave – Egypt unlike Jordan has
succeeded in persuading the Israelis, already in 1948, that the Gaza Strip
for them is a liability and will never form part of Egypt. So a million and
half Palestinians are stuck inside Israel – although geographically the
Strip is located on the margins of the state, psychologically it lies in its
midst.
The inhuman living conditions in the most dense area in the world, and one
of the poorest human spaces in the northern hemisphere, disables the people
who live it to reconcile with the imprisonment Israel had imposed on them
ever since 1967. There were relative better periods where movement to the
West Bank and into Israel for work was allowed, but these better times are
gone. Harsher realities are in place ever since 1987. Some access to the
outside world was allowed as long as there were Jewish settlers in the
Strip, but once they were removed the Strip was hermetically closed.
Ironically, most Israelis, according to recent polls, look at Gaza as an
independent Palestinian state that Israel has graciously allowed to emerge.
The leadership, and particularly the army, see it as a prison with the most
dangerous community of inmates, which has to be eliminated one way or
another.