A Sick Situation: More Israeli Aggression and World Indifference Jordan Times

A Sick Situation: More Israeli Aggression and World Indifference

Jordan Times, June 29, 2006

As Israeli tanks amass in and around the Gaza Strip, another tragedy is waiting to happen. The Israeli prime minister is threatening “extreme” action and already Israeli war jets have bombed three bridges and an electricity exchange, leaving most of the strip’s 1.3 million people without power.

The world, especially the US and the EU, seems to have lost any vigour to intercede. Israel is free to act as it pleases, “extreme” or otherwise.

It is a sick situation.

One Israeli soldier was kidnapped. Over one million Palestinians are made to suffer. As collective punishments go, this cannot be more egregious. Collective punishment by an occupying power is a war crime. God forbid that anyone should point this out.

Israel wonders why it cannot be left in peace. The West wonders why most Muslims blame them for the poor relations between the Muslim world and the West. But Israel continues to be propelled by its own twisted logic of maximum violence. And the West lets it.

Someone needs to point out to Israel that it is digging a bottomless hole, and not just for itself. Israel should have learnt by now, after a nearly 60-year existence, that no amount of force can solve its problems.

One Israeli soldier is kidnapped. But some 8,000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons, and not because they are thieves. Some 400 of those 8,000 are women and children under 18. The vast majority of those 8,000 people have not stood any trial. Is that not a form of kidnapping?

There is an illusion afoot in the world that Israel is somehow civilised and the Palestinians are somehow not. It is an illusion that is fostered by a strange belief that if murder is committed by men in uniform under orders from other men in uniform it is somehow legitimate.

It is an illusion that, in a move unprecedented in history, has led the world to sanction a people under occupation mainly for refusing to accept that occupation.

It is a sick situation.

Contrary to the illusions of Israeli men in uniform, no solution will ever be found to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the barrel of a gun.

Contrary to the illusions of the international community and the impotent self-delusion of Arab leaders, no political solution can ever be found if real pressure, with real consequences, is not exerted on the aggressor to end its aggression.

And contrary to the illusion of armed Palestinian groups, the world does not give a hill of beans for Palestinian prisoners, or indeed Palestinian lives.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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