Due to the great importance of this article, I am copying it here in full. It closely represents the views of the Palestinian people, either in Gaza or the West Bank, and, I suspect, also in Israel.
UN must act on Goldstone and the PA must be dissolved: The Electronic Intifada
Omar Barghouti, 5 October 2009
Palestinian civil society has strongly and almost unanimously condemned the Palestinian Authority’s decision to delay action regarding the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s report, headed by justice Richard Goldstone, which investigated the recent Israeli war of aggression against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. A common demand in almost all Palestinian statements was for the UN to adopt the report and act swiftly on its recommendations to bring the report to the Security Council and failing meaningful investigation by responsible parties, take the case to the International Criminal Court in order to bring an end to Israel’s criminal impunity, and to hold it accountable before international law for its war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and, indeed, all over the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Succumbing to US pressure and unabashed Israeli blackmail, Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA), was reportedly personally responsible for the decision to defer council consideration of the Goldstone report. This dashed the hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as those of international human rights organizations and solidarity movements, that Israel would finally face a long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims would have a measure of justice. The PA decision — which delays adoption of the report at least until March 2010 — gives Israel a golden opportunity to bury it with US, European, Arab and now Palestinian complicity, and constitutes the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.
History of betrayal
This is not the first time, though, that the PA has acted under orders from Washington and threats from Tel Aviv against the express interests of the Palestinian people. The historic July 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), finding Israel’s wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal, presented a rare diplomatic, political and legal opportunity to isolate Israel just as apartheid South Africa was isolated after the ICJ’s 1971 decision against its occupation of Namibia. Alas, the PA squandered the opportunity and systematically — quite suspiciously, actually — failed even to call on world governments to comply with their obligations stated in the advisory opinion.
The whole clause on Israel and Palestinian rights that was to be discussed at the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva was dropped after the Palestinian representative gave his green light. Efforts by non-aligned nations and former UN General Assembly president Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann to push for a UN resolution condemning Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and establishing an international tribunal were thwarted mainly by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, causing several prominent diplomats and international law experts to wonder which side the official Palestinian representative was on.
The Mercosur-Israel Free Trade Agreement was almost ratified by Brazil last September after the Palestinian ambassador there expressed approval, only urging Brazil to exclude Israeli settlement products from the agreement. With prompt action by Palestinian and Brazilian civil society organizations and eventually by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), this ratification was averted and the responsible Brazilian parliamentary committee recommended that the government refrain from approving the agreement until Israel complies with international law.
In all these cases and many similar ones, the instructions to the Palestinian representatives came from Ramallah. The PA government there has, however, illegally appropriated the PLO’s authority to conduct Palestinian diplomacy and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people.
The PA’s latest forthright collusion in Israel’s campaign to whitewash its crimes and escape accountability came a few days after the far-right Israeli government publicly blackmailed the PA, demanding that it withdraw its support for adopting the Goldstone report in return for “permitting” a second mobile communications provider to operate in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
This collusion undermines the great efforts by human rights organizations and many activists to bring justice to the Palestinian victims of Israel’s latest massacre in Gaza, the more than 1,400 killed (predominantly civilians), the thousands injured, the 1.5 million who are still suffering from the wanton destruction of infrastructure, educational and health institutions, factories, farm lands, power plants and other critical facilities, and from the long criminal Israeli siege against them.
It is nothing short of a betrayal of Palestinian civil society’s effective boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with all its recent, remarkable growth and achievements in mainstream western societies and among leading unions. It is also a betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast-spreading BDS campaign, to end Israel’s impunity and to uphold universal human rights.
It is crucial to remember that the PA does not have any legal or democratic mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or to represent the Palestinians at the UN or any of its agencies and institutions. The current PA government has never won the necessary constitutional approval of the democratically elected Palestinian Legislative Council. Even if it had such a mandate, at best it would only represent the Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, excluding the great majority of the people of Palestine, particularly the refugees.
Israel’s strongest weapon, the PA
Only the PLO can theoretically claim to represent the entire Palestinian people, inside historic Palestine and in exile. For such a claim to be substantiated and universally accepted, though, the PLO would need to be revived from the grassroots upwards, in a transparent, democratic and inclusive process involving Palestinians everywhere and encompassing all political parties that are outside PLO structures today.
In parallel with this popular take-back of the PLO by the people and their representative unions and institutions, the PA must be responsibly and gradually dismantled, with its current powers, particularly the representation seats at the UN and other regional and international institutions, returned to where they belong: a revived and democratized PLO. Dissolution of the PA, however, must at all times avoid creating a legal and political vacuum, as history shows that hegemonic powers are often the most likely to fill such a vacuum to the detriment of the oppressed.
The fact is the PA has been gradually and irreversibly transformed since its establishment 15 years ago. It began as an often powerless, obsequious and coerced sub-contractor of the Israeli occupation, relieving Israel of its most cumbersome civil duties, like providing services and tax collection. Most crucially, the PA very effectively helped Israel safeguard the security of its occupation army and colonial settlers. Now, the PA has gone beyond those roles, becoming a willing collaborator that constitutes Israel’s most important strategic weapon in countering its growing isolation and loss of legitimacy on the world stage as a colonial and apartheid state. Israel’s hundreds of nuclear weapons and its fourth most powerful military in the world proved impotent or at least irrelevant before the growing BDS movement, particularly after Israel’s acts of genocide in Gaza. The almost unlimited diplomatic, political, economic and scientific support Israel receives from American and European governments and its unparalleled impunity have also failed to protect it from the gloomy fate of apartheid South Africa.
Even before Israel’s war on Gaza, many unions around the world had joined the BDS campaign. After Gaza, BDS leaped into a new, advanced phase, finally reaching the mainstream. Years of careful groundwork facilitated this, but international shock at Israel’s white phosphorus showers of death visited upon the children of Gaza cowering in UN shelters, and the universal feeling that the international order has failed to hold Israel accountable or even end its slaughter, or the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, has provided an enormous boost.
In February, weeks after the end of Israel’s Gaza bloodbath, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) made history when it refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban. In April, the Scottish Trade Union Congress followed the lead of the South African trade union federation, COSATU, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in adopting BDS to bring about Israel’s compliance with international law. In May, the University and College Union (UCU), representing some 120,000 British academics, reiterated its annual support for the logic of boycott against Israel, calling for organizing an inter-union BDS conference to discuss strategies to implement the boycott.
And in September, Norway’s government pension fund, the world’s third largest, divested from an Israeli military contractor supplying equipment for construction of the illegal West Bank wall. Shortly after that, a Spanish ministry excluded a team representing an Israeli college illegally built on occupied Palestinian land from participating in an academic competition. Also in September, the British Trades Union Congress, representing more than 6.5 million workers, adopted the boycott, ushering in a new phase reminiscent of the beginning of the end of the South African apartheid regime. According to concrete, persistent and mounting indicators, Palestinians are witnessing the arrival of their South Africa moment.
Amidst all this came the Goldstone report, quite surprisingly — given the judge’s strong connections with Israel and Zionism — providing the straw that may well break the camel’s back: irrefutable evidence, meticulously researched and documented, of Israel’s deliberate commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite its clear shortcomings, this report presented Israel with the daunting possibility of standing trial at an international tribunal, effectively ending its impunity.
In this dire situation, only one strategic weapon in Israel’s arsenal could fend off a crushing legal and political defeat: the PA. And Israel indeed used it at the right time, almost killing the Goldstone report.
Ultimately, the failure of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the Goldstone report is another proof, if any is needed, that Palestinians cannot hope at the current historical moment to obtain justice from the US-controlled so-called “international community.” Only through intensified, sustainable and context-sensitive civil society campaigns of boycott and divestment can there be any hope that Israel will one day be compelled to end its lawlessness and criminal disregard of human rights and recognize the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination. This right, as expressed by the great majority of the Palestinian people, comprises ending the occupation, ending the legalized and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, and recognizing the fundamental, UN-sanctioned right of Palestine refugees to return to their homes of origin, like all other refugees around the world.
We simply cannot afford to give up on the UN, though. Human rights organizations and international civil society must continue to help the Palestinian struggle to pressure the UN, at least its General Assembly, to adopt and act upon the recommendations of the Goldstone report at all levels. If the UN fails to do so it will send an unambiguous message to Israel that its impunity remains intact and that the international community will stand by apathetically the next time it commits even more egregious crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine. This would gravely undermine the rule of law and promote in its stead the law of the jungle, where no one will be protected from total chaos and boundless carnage.
Omar Barghouti is a founding member of the BDS movement (www.BDSmovement.net).
The moral of the next story seems to be crystal clear: before beating up Palestinians, make sure there are cameras around:
IDF soldier arrested after caught on tape beating Palestinian: Ha’aretz
By Amira Hass
An Israel Defense Forces soldier was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of beating a Palestinian resident during a nighttime raid in the West Bank village of Bil’in, Israeli activists against the separation fence said. The soldier was remanded by a military tribunal until Monday. The IDF Spokesman’s Office confirmed the report and said a gag order had been imposed on information about the soldier or the investigation.
he soldier’s arrest followed a complaint lodged with the investigations department of the Military Police by Mohammed Hatib, 35, through attorney Michael Sfard of Yesh Din – a human rights volunteer organisation. According to the complaint, on the night of September 16, IDF forces raided the home of a resident of Bil’in. The woman who owns the house asked Hatib, who is the head of Bil’in’s committee against the separation fence, to come to the house. When Hatib asked to speak to the officer in charge, the soldiers beat him severely. He was hospitalized overnight at the hospital in Ramallah.
The complaint states that one of the soldiers, whom the residents call “Captain Fuad” threatened Hatib that if protests in Bil’in did not stop, he “would end up like Bassem,” an apparent reference to Bassem Abu Rahmeh, a Bil’in resident who was shot and killed by IDF fire on April 17 during protests against the fence.
Village residents say the IDF conducts nighttime raids up to four times a week, sometimes using percussion grenades and tear gas and sometimes also entering homes, which has led to Israeli activists staying overnight in village homes.
Palestinian U-turn on Gaza report: Ha’aretz
The Palestinian Authority has backed UN Security Council talks on alleged war crimes in Gaza, days after seeking the deferral of a UN debate on the issue. The UN Security Council is set to discuss whether to hold an emergency session on the Goldstone report, which accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes. A senior PA politician has said last week’s request to defer discussion of the report was a “mistake”.
The PA decision sparked an outcry among Palestinians.
Libya, the only Arab state on the 15-member body, will request the UN session in a closed-door meeting.
Palestinian officials voiced their “full support” for the proposed discussion – after leaders were excoriated for requesting a deferral of a UN debate last week. PA politician Yasser Abed Rabbo, has said the leadership had erred by seeking the deferral of the debate at the Human Rights Council until next March. “We must say a mistake has been made. This mistake should not be underestimated or concealed,” he said in a radio interview.
Many Palestinians have expressed anger at PA President Mahmoud Abbas for seeming to let Israelis off the hook following Goldstone’s trenchant criticism of Israel’s blockade of Gaza and attacks on its citizens. Mr Abbas himself has ordered an “investigation” into how his own government made the decision, in an apparent attempt to head off a wave of criticism. Academics and rights workers held a street protest on Monday.
The Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza, has lashed out at the decision as “shameful and irresponsible”, and posters saying “to the trash heap of history, you traitor, Mahmoud Abbas” have appeared in the Strip. And an Israeli-Arab political party has called on the PA leader to resign.
The UN panel led by eminent South African judge Richard Goldstone accused Israel of using disproportionate force and deliberately harming civilians. It urged the UN Security Council to refer allegations to the International Criminal Court (ICC) if either side failed to investigate and prosecute suspects. Israel has rejected the evidence and said it had already investigated its troops’ conduct, clearing most of the subjects of wrongdoing.
‘Bad for peace’
Palestinian delegates in Geneva reportedly came under intense pressure from the US and Israel to seek the delay of the Human Rights Council debate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that the report’s conclusions would “devastate the peace process”, although peace talks are currently stalled anyway over Israeli settlement-building in the occupied West Bank.
Hamas, the militant rival to the Fatah-dominated PA which administers Gaza, is also accused of indiscriminately targeting Israeli civilians. It too has rejected the Goldstone report. Any Libyan-proposed resolution at the UN Security Council can be vetoed by the US, which has in the past used its blocking powers dozens of times to prevent action against its closest ally in the Middle East. A Libyan spokesman at the UN headquarters in New York said the meeting was necessary “because of the seriousness of the report and because we think it’s too long to wait until March”.
Israeli military action destroyed thousands of homes, hundreds of factories and 80 official buildings.
Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 people were killed in the violence between 27 December 2008 and 16 January 2009, more than half of them civilians.
Israel puts the number of deaths at 1,166 – fewer than 300 of them civilians. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
UN council to debate Gaza crimes: Ha’aretz
The UN has brought forward a regular Security Council meeting on the Middle East after Libya demanded an urgent debate on alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Arab states say the 14 October debate must tackle a report which criticised Israel, after the US argued against a emergency session dedicated to it.
The UN Human Rights Council delayed its debate on the findings of the Goldstone report following a Palestinian request.
Libya’s envoy to the Security Council said its aim was to “keep momentum”.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has come under sharp criticism at home for requesting the UNHRC delay, which followed intense pressure from the US. State department spokesman Ian Kelly insisted the US focus was solely on reviving the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process and wanted “to clear the decks of any issues that might impede our progress towards this”.
Palestinian officials voiced “full support” for Libya’s efforts to get the issue on the agenda of the Security Council, and senior PA politician Yasser Abed Rabbo has called the request for a UNHCR delay a “mistake”.
Mr Abbas himself has ordered an “investigation” into how his own government made the decision, in an apparent attempt to head off a wave of anger and protests.
‘Disproportionate’
Libya is the only Arab state on the 15-member body, where US diplomats regularly use their power of veto to block measures against its close ally Israel.
The Human Rights Council will not now address the 574-page Goldstone report – which accuses both Israel and Palestinian militants of committing war crimes in the conflict – until March 2010.
The UN panel led by eminent South African judge Richard Goldstone accused Israel of using disproportionate force and deliberately harming civilians. Hamas militants were accused of indiscriminate rocket fire at Israeli civilians.
It urged the UN Security Council to refer allegations to the International Criminal Court (ICC) if either side failed to investigate and prosecute suspects.
Israel has rejected the evidence, saying it has already investigated its troops’ conduct, clearing most of the subjects of wrongdoing. Hamas also denied committing war crimes.
Israeli military action destroyed thousands of homes, hundreds of factories and 80 official buildings in Gaza.
Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 people were killed in the violence between 27 December 2008 and 16 January 2009, more than half of them civilians.
Israel puts the number of deaths at 1,166 – fewer than 300 of them civilians. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
Haram al-Sharif sovereignty under threat: The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, 7 October 2009
Tension over control of the Haram al-Sharif compound of mosques in Jerusalem’s Old City has reached a pitch unseen since clashes at the site sparked the second Palestinian intifada nine years ago. Ten days of intermittently bloody clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem culminated yesterday in warnings by Palestinian officials that Israel was “sparking a fire” in the city. Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper similarly wondered whether a third intifada was imminent. Israel, meanwhile, deployed 20,000 police to safeguard the annual Jerusalem march, which was reported to have attracted a crowd of 70,000 passing through sensitive Palestinian neighborhoods close to the Old City. The ostensible cause of friction is Israel’s religious holidays that have brought Jewish worshippers to the Western Wall, located next to the Haram al-Sharif and traditionally considered the holiest site in Judaism. The wall is the only remnant of the Jewish temple destroyed by Herod in AD70.
At a deeper level for Palestinians, however, the ease with which Jews can access sites in and around Jerusalem, while the city is off-limits to the vast majority of Palestinians, highlights the extent to which Palestinian control over Jerusalem and its holy places has been eroded by four decades of occupation. That point was reinforced on Sunday when the gates to the mosque compound were shut by Israeli police, who cited safety concerns for 30,000 Jews praying at the Western Wall for Succot. Jerusalem’s police chief, Aharon Franco, also incensed Palestinians on Monday by castigating them for being “ungrateful” after Israel had allowed them to pray at al-Aqsa during Ramadan. In fact, only a small proportion of Palestinians can reach the mosque. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza cannot get past Israel’s wall, and the 1.5 million Palestinians in Israel and Jerusalem are finding it harder to pray there. This week police have been allowing only women and Palestinian men with Israeli identification cards showing they are aged at least 50 to enter. Both the Palestinian Authority and Jordan issued statements this week warning that Jewish groups, including extremists who want to blow up the mosques, should be prevented from entering the Haram. It was in this context that the leader of the Islamic Movement inside Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, called on Israel’s Palestinian citizens to “shield the [al-Aqsa] mosque with their bodies.” Concerned that most Palestinians can no longer access the mosques, Salah has taken it on himself to campaign against Israeli moves under the banner “Al-Aqsa is in danger,” urging Israel’s Palestinian minority to protect the mosques by increasing their visits and ensuring a strong Islamic presence at the site.
In a further provocation by Israel yesterday, Salah was arrested on suspicion of incitement and sedition. A judge released him a few hours later but only on condition that he stay away from Jerusalem.
Palestinian concerns about Israeli intentions towards the Haram are not without foundation. Israel’s religious and secular leaders have been staking an ever-stronger claim to sovereignty over the compound since the occupation began, despite an original agreement to leave control with Islamic authorities. On the ground that has been reflected in Israel’s efforts to reshape the geography of the city. It began with the hasty razing of a Muslim neighborhood next to the Western Wall that was home to 1,000 Palestinians. In place of the homes a huge prayer plaza was created.
Next a ring of Jewish settlements were built separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and more recently Jewish extremists have been taking over Palestinian neighborhoods just outside the Old City, such as Sheikh Jarrah, Ras al-Amud and Silwan. With official backing, Jewish settlers have also been confiscating and buying Palestinian homes in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, including next to the mosques, to establish armed encampments. They have also been assisted by Israeli archeologists in digging extensively under the quarter. Tensions over the excavations escalated dramatically in 1996 when Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister then as now, approved the opening of the Western Wall tunnels under the mosques. In the ensuing violence, at least 70 Palestinians were killed. In addition, Israeli officials and rabbis have been redefining the significance in Jewish religious thought of the compound, or Temple Mount as it is known to Jews. The rabbinical consensus since the Middle Ages has been that Jews are forbidden from entering the compound for fear of desecrating the site of the temple’s inner sanctum, whose location is unknown. Instead religious Jews are supposed to venerate the site but not to visit it or seek to possess it in any way. That view has been shifting since a wave of religious nationalism was unleashed by the seemingly miraculous nature of Israel’s victory in the 1967 war. As the Israeli army captured the Old City in 1967, for example, its chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, rushed to the Haram to read from the Bible and blow a ram’s horn, as the ancient temple priests had once done. At the Camp David talks with the Palestinians in 2000, Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time, demanded — against all Jewish teachings — that the whole compound be declared the “Holy of Holies,” a status reserved for the temple’s inner sanctum. His adviser Moshe Amirav said Barak had used this precondition to “blow up” the negotiations. The Camp David failure led to an explosion of violence at the Haram al-Sharif a few months later that triggered the second intifada. Islamic sovereignty was challenged again in 2003 when Israeli police unilaterally decided to open the compound to non-Muslims. In practice, this has given messianic cults, who want the mosques destroyed to make way for a third temple, access under police protection. It was precisely rumors that Jewish extremists had entered the compound on the eve of Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, that provided the spark for the latest round of clashes. It is reported that a growing number of settler rabbis want the injunction against Jews praying at the compound lifted, adding to Palestinian fears that Israeli officials, rabbis, settlers and fundamentalists are conspiring to engineer a final takeover of the Haram al-Sharif.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Only gall and nothing more: ha’aretz
By Gideon Levy
Is the discourse we are conducting – if indeed we are conducting any discourse among ourselves and with our interlocutor – legitimate at all? Ever since the territories were occupied a public debate has been going on here about their future and what is being done there. The questions have come and gone, all of them in the same cursed vein: To give? To concede? Under what conditions? In exchange for what? The settlements – yes or no; the roadblocks – yes or no; the assassinations, the arrests, the starving, the closure, the encirclement, the curfew, the exposure, the torture, the freedom of movement, the choice or the ritual – yes or no.
An excellent example was provided this week by Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco, who said that the city’s Muslims were “ungrateful.” For what? We gave them – here we have that word “gave” again – permission to pray at the Temple Mount and they replied with violence.
Indeed, we do not have any moral right to conduct this discussion. First of all, it’s a lie that we have given the Muslims permission to worship – only men over 50. But more importantly, who are we to “give” them rights to which they are entitled in a way that is taken for granted in every democracy? Is it imaginable that we would prevent young Jews from going to the Western Wall? Can Palestinians, too, dream of holding a “Jerusalem March” of their own? Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his spokesmen are boasting of having taken down a number of roadblocks, and the deputy director general in charge of frequencies at the Communications Ministry is considering whether to “give” the Palestinians a second mobile telephone network after the government has piled up conditions – Goldstone in exchange for Wataniya, the cellular phone operator.
Where does this right come from? Just as a rapist does not have the right to discuss carrying out his nefarious scheme, and the robber cannot haggle over the conditions under which he will return his loot, the occupier, the taskmaster, the jack-booted soldier and the exploiter cannot discuss the conditions under which they will carry out their deeds. This is a blatantly immoral discussion. The discussion by free people of the fate of other people under their rule is just as legitimate as the discussion by slave-runners or human traffickers. The only legitimate discussion is one that intends to end the situation, immediately and unconditionally.
This starts from the top. The Supreme Court deliberates on various matters. Is torture legal? Are assassinations permitted? Is it permissible to take land away from a farmer? Is it permissible to impose a siege on hundreds of thousands of people? Is it legal to imprison people for years without trial? Is it possible to prevent people from getting medical treatment? Is it legitimate to prevent children from getting to school? The mere fact of raising these questions in court, as if there weren’t already a conclusive answer to them, is the most depressing proof of the moral nadir to which we have declined.
Of course, this illegitimate discussion seeped long ago into every walk of society. On television, learned commentators discuss whether the siege of Gaza is “effective.” Over a can of Red Bull, soldiers argue about whether Operation Cast Lead wasn’t stopped too soon and when “we’ll stick it to them” again. In their cafes, over a cup of iced java, young people sit and discuss whether “we should give the Palestinians a state,” as if this were a question at all and we “give” states. But these discussions, too, monstrous as they may be, have in recent years given way to repression (in the psychological sense), silence, complacence and indifference.
About an hour’s drive from us, the unbelievably cruel reality continues. Everything is done there in the name of us all, supposedly, and in the name of security, supposedly. And here among us there is either distorted discourse or non-discourse.
Nothing will change as long as this state of affairs continues. A recent report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs draws a shocking picture of what is happening in Gaza. For example, 75 percent of its inhabitants, more than 1 million people, are suffering from nutritional deficiencies, 90 percent must live through power blackouts for four to eight hours every day, 40 percent of those who apply to leave for medical treatment are refused by Israel and 140,000 inhabitants are unemployed.
All these figures reflect a situation that has degenerated badly over the past year, and all of them stem from the siege in its third year. How many of us know this? How many of us does this touch at all, between the bar and the gym? And above all, where did we get the gall to decide the fate of another people?