Disproportionate response has always been the cornerstone of
Israeli policy towards Palestine and this time too it has been no different.
The decision of the Jewish state to allow massive levels of settlements
(considered illegal by friend and foe alike) on Palestinian land has only added
fuel to the fire.
The knee-jerk reaction to Palestine gaining observer status
at UN (just nine opposing votes shows where the world opinion stands), the
hawks in Israeli government had to prove that any line other than the Israeli
line will bring about only suffering for Palestinians and their cause.
The settlements will further corral Palestinians into a
smaller piece of land, which is being continually encroached by Israel on every
possible pretext, forcing into their lives an artificial scarcity for resources
and related suffering.
The icing on the Israeli policy cake is further financial
and material restrictions that will cripple Palestine administration. As
hundreds of millions of dollars in legitimate taxes and aid is denied to the
Palestine government, it is only natural that the current human catastrophe in
the occupied territories will worsen. This will weaken the government’s ability
to govern and, more importantly, rein in the activities of militant groups that
target Israeli territory with crude rockets.
The recent cross-border military operations by Israel in
Gaza clearly demonstrates that the Jewish state has no qualms in killing
civilians, though its propaganda machinery goes to great lengths to say how
it ‘minimises collateral damage’.
In a report by an international news agency, a Gaza resident
recalls how he got a warning call from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) at 3am
that the building was about to be bombed in five minutes and the family had to
evacuate immediately. He and his family were lucky enough to make it out alive
before Israeli jets reduced the building to rubble — not everyone was that
lucky.
Say an average family has five to seven members, including
children and elderly, how many can get out of a multi-storey building if roused
at the dead of the night and given a five-minute window? So even as its
operations are guaranteed to massacre innocent civilians, Israelis can hide
behind their lip-service to ‘adequate warning’ — and have their US-led backers
endorsing the slaughter.
However, the Western champions of ‘peace and stability in
the region’ have no difficulty in ignoring Israel’s possession of nuclear
weapons and its continuing occupation of other countries’ territories — if only
one were to forget that it is actually an occupied Palestine that is today’s
Israel.
Israeli policies are also ensuring that the oppression and
injustice faced by the Palestinians are increasing by the day, and in turn
transforming into a rallying point for terrorist organisations. Recruitment
videos of jihadi groups showing mothers wailing over bloodied, limp bodies of
little children killed in Israeli raids have been quite effective in serving
their purpose.
When the financial and military might of Israel and its half-a-dozen
backers are able to subvert the functioning of an international body like the
United Nations and reduce it to a scarecrow, it is only natural that any action
that will hurt Israel and its citizens will find takers and supporters.
Palestinians are being killed slowly and painfully by
Israel’s sheer brutality and equally effective stranglehold of blockades. The
blood and tears of Palestinians will ensure that Israel will never sleep in
peace till it mends its ways.
(This article was published as the editorial column in
Postnoon on December 5, 2012.)
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