The residents of Gaza are not innocent,’ it was recently claimed by the Jerusalem Post, ‘for they elected Hamas… they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.’ The consequences of democratically electing a government have been severe already: besiegement, blockade and bombardment. Operation Pillar of Cloud – the latest Israeli offensive – has ominous parallels with the 2008-2009 assault Operation Cast Lead, which left over 1,400 Palestinians dead.
Indeed, the last 64 years of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians has amounted to little more than state-enforced humiliation and degradation. Palestinians have been robbed of their homes, lands, and rights, and these injustices have been enshrined in law. On top of this, Palestinians have spent the last 45 years under illegal occupation by a state that refuses to adhere to international law. To attempt to portray the current assault on Gaza as a simple case of self-defence, and to remove it from all historic context, is to ignore the crimes committed against an entire population.
The justification of self-defence offered by the Israeli government can be easily exposed as fallacious by simply studying the facts. Twenty six Israelis have died from Gazan rockets in the history of the conflict. The two main military operations Israel has enacted, ostensibly to deter rocket attacks, have in fact both caused them to increase. One of every four Israeli deaths caused by rockets has occurred during these two operations. In 2008, before Israel begun Operation Cast Lead, no Israelis were killed by rocket fire. Equally, no Israelis died in the past year, up to the beginning of Pillar of Cloud. On both occasions, informal cease fires were broken by Israeli military aggression: the Hamas operative Ahmed Jabari killed by the IDF last week had in the hours leading up to his death received the draft of a permanent truce with Israel, yet his assassination was still approved.
Rather than self-defence then, one has to look elsewhere to find the reasoning behind these vicious assaults on Gaza. There is certainly a political impetus – Netanyahu has called the next election for January, and Pillar of Cloud is surely regarded as a political opportunity. The fact that Palestinian lives are nothing more than political capital for those in the Knesset to toy with is sickening. Sadly, such views are by no means marginal. The same Jerusalem Post editorial asserts that Israel should ‘flatten all of Gaza’, forcing ‘Gazans… to pay the price.’ Collective punishment – as the paper recommends – is a violation of the Geneva Convention, and demonstrates clearly the bloodlust exhibited by some who support this assault on an imprisoned civilian population in Gaza.
Of those killed in the last prolonged Israeli attack on Gazans, Operation Cast Lead in the winter of 2008-2009, 82% were civilians: almost 1,000 Palestinians, murdered by the IDF, men, women and children were regarded as mere collateral damage. The situation now – as Operation Pillar of Cloud intensifies– seems to be much the same. The deaths of Palestinian civilians have been described as ‘unavoidable’ by the IDF as it brazenly bombs Gaza. Yet these civilian deaths are clearly avoidable; Israel has one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world, has demonstrated its capacity for surgical strikes, yet still children are being killed by IDF bombs. Relentlessly bombarding one of the most densely populated civilian zones on the planet – whilst harnessing the capability to avoid civilian casualties – is both indefensible and perverse.
As of November 19th, 93 Palestinians are dead, 740 injured: by the time this is published, that figure is certain to have risen further. The excuse of self-defence is evidently a sham: as Chomsky said recently, ‘You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land.’ There is no justification for this bombing of a civilian population. Anyone concerned with human rights must oppose this assault; arbitrary, illegal, and immoral, it is a regressive act of militarism that not only kills Palestinians, but endangers Israelis.
Joseph Bilsborough