Gaza is burning! And it Was All Foreseeable
Written by Nahla Chahal, CCIPPP, for the Alternative Information
Center (AIC)
Tuesday, 30 December
2008
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Mourners carry the bodies of five members of a Palestnian family,
including three children and two teenagers, killed during an Israeli
airstrike. No one should pretend to be shocked by the extent of the
Israeli crime being committed in Gaza?it was carefully prepared, and
even announced! A wide range of Israeli politicians made public
statements about such attacks, competing to outbid each other. Many
United Nations officials had sounded the alert about the siege of Gaza,
which was already unbearable, even before the bombs started falling.
Even the lorries, which were authorized to carry supplies across the
border on the eve of the attack, appear to have been part of the
preparations for the current military offensive. They inadvertently
gave a false sense of calm by delivering materials necessary to manage
a town under fire?such as a small quantity of petrol so that some
hospital generators could function and a few ambulances could be
driven.
If it is not genocide being carried out in Gaza, then what are we
supposed to call it? Tzipi Livni, just one month ago while in Brussels,
sought to justify the ?unfortunate? siege of Gaza by the need to
strangle Hamas. Just like Madeleine Albright, who when asked once by a
journalist if the aim of getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth the
deaths of one million Iraqi children during the embargo, replied "yes,
unfortunately we think it was worth it." Both of them follow the same
credo expressed by Samuel Huntington: "dry up the sea where the fish
swim."  The ?sea,? of course, being the people. It is the Vietnamese
for the Clash of Civilizations author; the Iraqis for the former
American secretary of state; and the Palestinians for the Israeli
foreign minister. However, the difference in Palestine is that this has
lasted for 60 years. This is not mere colonialism wishing just to
conquer and dominate a people; Israeli leadership instead aims to wipe
them out.

The crime in Gaza did not begin on that dark Saturday?it began when the
siege of Gaza was put in place and when the hypocritical fiction of a
"peace process" was accepted by the Quartet, the Annapolis conference,
and all the rest. Everyone knew perfectly well that the ?peace process?
was a sham, that certain Arab regimes maintain official and unofficial
relations with Israel, supposedly to "encourage" it to follow the path
of peace. We even recently witnessed the European Union upgrading its
level of its cooperation with Israel.

But now is not the time for analyses or rhetoric. Witnessing the blood
being spilt in Gaza, the men and women of this world will either feel a
jolt of conscience or it will be too late:  not only for Gaza and
Palestine, but for they themselves.  They will also have become slaves.
In the face of such a crime, we must protest, shout aloud our
indignation, condemn and boycott Israel. We must demand an
international protection force for Palestine. We must demand the
resignation of the Palestinian Authority, which has become a camouflage
for the occupation. And we must punish Israel for committing these war
crimes by demanding it be judged by an international tribunal.

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