18 November 2007

LET THERE BE LIGHT

In an incredible show of pettiness and cruelty, Israel recently attempted to weasel its way out of its responsibility to administer basic utilities to a population whose land it has occupied for upwards of half a century and whose economic well-being it has all but obliterated. Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, officially approved electricity cuts to the Gaza Strip on 25 October and, to top it off, tried to sell it to the world as a legitimate means of combating the steady stream of Qassam rocket fire heading into Israel from Gaza, which, relative to the harm that Israel has inflicted upon all of its darker-skinned, more Muslim neighbors, is something akin to an annoying itch that just won’t go away.

(But Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip two summers ago, some of you may be thinking, so they’re no longer bound by the international laws that govern the responsibilities of occupying forces. Well, sure, Israel withdrew (wink, wink, cough) two years ago, but still controls the airspace, coastline, and borders. And, uhh, let’s not forget that they frequently come in, guns a blazing, kill a whole bunch of people, and then leave again. So, in what sense do Palestinians really control Gaza? Formal political posturing notwithstanding, the occupation trudges steadily along.)

The plan that Barak approved would cause electricity to be shut off to the Gaza Strip for 15 minutes after the launching of a Qassam rocket, and for longer periods after each subsequent rocket launching. And this is all made possible by Israel’s formal mid-September declaration that Gaza is a “hostile entity,” which removes, as Barak has explained, Israel’s responsibility for administering things like electricity to the distinctly non-hostile grandmothers and children and uncles and brothers and nieces and orphans of Gaza because they happen to live in a region that some bunch of men in suits has explicitly dubbed “hostile.” This is textbook collective punishment, forbidden under the Geneva Conventions, the Hague conventions, the United Nations Charter, the Laws of Armed Conflict, and also forbidden by the unwritten principles of basic compassion and decency.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that Hamas would not bend under the threat of further sanctions, like cuts in electricity and fuel. “International law,” he said, “requires that occupation forces take care of the needs of the occupied peoples.” And it should be noted here that he’s correct.

UN Deputy Secretary General John Holmes has said that the situation in Gaza is shy of famine, but not by much. He also said, “I would appeal to Israel to relax these restrictions [and] to lift the economic blockade on Gaza.”

The number of humanitarian food convoys entering Gaza is down by 50% since July. The embargo began in June, when Hamas was democratically elected to power. There are 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip, and around 60% of the electricity used there is supplied by Israel under the requirements of international law.

In an interview with Israeli Army Radio (the much-famed bastion of evenhanded and openminded journalistic honesty with regard to Palestine), Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vinlai said, “We are left with no choice but to take these steps. I assume they will have an effect, even if not immediately,” Then he added, “And to hell with who suffers in the meantime. We can no longer stand for rockets landing harmlessly in the fields of southern Israel.” Well, that’s at least how I heard it in my head.

He also said (and this is just priceless) that it was his hope that the power cuts would encourage Gazans to become less dependant on Israel and produce their own electricity. Wow. With what raw materials would he have them produce this electricity? Rubble and hunger?

Then, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert comes out and publicly tells Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (of Fatah) that the electricity cuts will not go forward. “We will take the steps needed,” he said, “but we will not allow a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip,” which, of course, is interesting because of its absolute opposition to reality. We will not allow a humanitarian crisis, he says, while the civilians of Gaza on the ground are bearing the burden of what can only be called a humanitarian crisis.
So, one man (blinded by some kind of militaristic sadism) disagrees with another (who is blinded to the carnage perpetrated by his own whims and penstrokes). It’s the demented arguing with the deluded over which genocidal strategy to adopt, and that simply can’t end well.

THE HAMASTAPO

On 11 November 2004, legendary and iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat succumbed to a mysterious death in Paris, and left Palestine bereft of a unifying figure. Since his death, the schism between Fatah (the party founded by Arafat) and Hamas (the more fundamentalist up-and-comers on the Palestinian political scene) has escalated into open war and a literally split Palestine, with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip and Fatah the West Bank.

On 12 November 2007, Fatah activists organized and held a massive memorial rally in Gaza City for the late Arafat that turned into a raucous political protest against Hamas rule in open defiance of Hamas’s ridiculous and draconian Gaza-wide ban on public protest. Whether the organizers intended the rally to turn into a protest, or had actually hoped it wouldn’t, is unclear, but, at some point, certain Fatah supporters (among hundreds of thousands who had gathered for the rally) began hurling insults and stones at the Hamas security forces who had surrounded the event for the ostensible purpose of crowd control. The astounding and (sadly) predictable response of the security forces was to open fire on the crowd, to send bullets tearing into the vast sea of kaffiyehs and yellow Fatah flags. Eight were killed. Witnesses report that, at one point during Hamas’s attempt to shut the rally down, a group of hundreds of Fatah activists, armed only with stones, assembled and confronted a large assemblage of Hamas security forces, who were letting off bursts of automatic gunfire into the crowd. This, all else aside, is some serious determination.

The next day, Abbas declared, “We have to bring down this bunch, which took over Gaza with armed force, and is abusing the suffering and pains of our people.” He also likened Hamas’s behavior here to “the crimes of the Israeli occupier,” which, in the steadily intensifying battle of PR spin, militancy, and name-calling going on between Hamas and Fatah, is really the mother of all insults.

Meanwhile, Hamas was busy proving the truth of Abbas’s accusation, rounding up Fatah activists in Gaza and arresting them, behaving not only like the Israeli occupier, but like the current regime in Burma, and like (Remember Guantanamo?) the current regime right here at home.

The day after they murdered eight Palestinians, Hamas forces arrested 50 activists. By week’s end, more than 400 Fatah supporters had been locked up as political prisoners.
Amidst all this Hamas-bashing, it should be noted that Fatah also holds a number of Hamas supporters as political prisoners over in the West Bank. And more than 9,000 Palestinians are held across the border in Israeli jails. No matter what side you’re on here, it all ends with Palestinians in cages.