January 24, 2008 - No. 8

People of Gaza Take Decisive Action to Liberate Themselves
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance!

January 23, 2007: Border wall between Gaza Strip and Egypt felled by the Palestinian resistance.

• People of Gaza Take Decisive Action to Liberate Themselves -- Long Live the Palestinian Resistance!
• Facts about the Siege on Gaza - Palestine House
• UN Rights Official Slams 'Cowardly Israeli War Crime' in Gaza - Agence France Presse
• UN Security Council Fails to Agree on Draft Statement on Gaza Crisis - China Daily Online
• NAM Condemns Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Civilians in Gaza - Prensa Latina
• Economic Warfare in Gaza - Yossi Wolfson, Challenge Magazine
• Calendar of Events in Support of Palestinian People

SUPPLEMENT
• 2008 -- 60 Years of Al Nakba
• A Year of Activities to Commemorate 60 Years of Al Nakba
• Declaration in Support of the Palestinian People
• 4th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week-- February 3-10, 2008

Calendar of Events
• Commemorating 60 Years of Al Nakba: The Refugees Will Return!

People of Gaza Take Decisive Action to Liberate Themselves
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance!

September 25, 2004: Toronto demonstration against Israeli Apartheid wall.

TML salutes the Palestinian people's stunning mass repudiation of the intensified six-day siege imposed by the State of Israel on the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip, in which Israel cut off all fuel and food deliveries to Gaza over Israeli territory and ordered the Egyptian government to keep the Rafah crossing shut. On Wednesday, January 23, the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas demolished two-thirds of a 12-km-long border wall between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Following the demolition, a flood of 30,000 Palestinians crossed the border at Rafah into Egypt followed by some 350,000 more by the end of the day.

This wall was erected originally by Israel at the start of the current Al-Aqsa Intifadah in 2000. After Israel's colony-settlement inside Gaza was dismantled on the orders of Ariel Sharon back in August 2005, the occupier reinforced the barrier, inserting a "no-man's land" between its Gaza and Egypt terminals.

As Palestinians in their hundreds of thousands clambered back and forth between the Gaza strip and Egypt on January 23, details emerged of the audacious and well-planned operation that brought down a hated border wall. Although the Hamas administration in Gaza City did not officially acknowledge a role in bringing down the wall, border guard Lieutenant Abu Usama of the Palestinian National Security, interviewed January 23 by the Times of London, said Hamas had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches. That is why when the explosive charges were set off around 4:00 am local time, the 15-m-high wall came tumbling down, leaving it lying like a broken concertina down the middle of no-man's land. Usama said he had observed the cutting operation "...happening over the last few months. It happened in the daytime but was covered up so that nobody would see." Asked whether he had reported it to the government, he replied: "It was the government that was doing this. Who would I report it to?" He normally works from a small guard cabin in no-man's land, but "last night we were told to keep away from the wall. We were ordered to stay away because they were going to break the blockade."

There were 17 explosions in all, Hamas security officials said. At first, Hamas and Egyptian security officers prevented people from getting through, witnesses said. But by morning thousands of Gazans had massed at the border and overwhelmed police began letting people cross. Most Egyptian security and police were later pulled out from the immediate vicinity of the border, Egyptian security officials said.

Eventually, Egyptian security forces stood by and did not confront the Palestinians. According to Al-Jazeera's Cairo correspondent, the Mubarak regime could not accept the prospect of being portrayed as assisting Israel in starving Gaza. Egyptians demonstrated during the day in support of the people of Gaza.

January 23, 2008: Top, demonstration at Cairo University. Bottom, Beirut demonstration outside Egyptian embassy.

Prior to this bold initiative to breach the blockade of Gaza, the chorus of world imperialism and their collaborators had been intent on blaming Hamas for the siege of Gaza. "Blame it on Hamas" -- read the headline of the Globe and Mail editorial Tuesday, January 22. After the wall was brought down, they were stunned and it took them a while to again find ways to make Hamas the problem. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. wants to see stability in the region, but that "most importantly both the security concerns of Israel and the humanitarian concerns of Gazans be met."

The government in Ramallah could only babble nonsense: "We don't accept that some sides take advantage of the Gaza residents' hardship and harm the relations with Egypt," said Ashraf al-Ajrami, Minister of Prisoners' Affairs in the Palestinian government led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. As if the smashing of the wall on the Egyptian border was not the most eloquent expression of pressure on the international community, he complained saying, "The Palestinian government wants to tackle the situation and lift the siege on Gaza by activating the mechanism of pressure on the international community."

The militant action of the resistance was the fitting reply to the severe restrictions on movement in or out of Gaza had been in effect since the Israeli occupier closed the Gaza Strip's border crossings in June. This intensification of the Israeli siege of Gaza has been especially hard on a large minority of the population of the Strip who remain ineligible for food assistance from the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA) as they are not registered with that agency as '1948' Palestinian refugees. This clampdown was instituted after the forces of Palestinian resistance routed and put to flight a CIA spy-nest of U.S. Security Coordinator Lt-Gen Keith Dayton and the so-called security forces of Mohammed Dahlan, chief of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' personal bodyguard (see TML Daily, June 22, 2007 - No. 102).

According to reports carried by the Ma'an news agency from their own correspondent, Gazans began stocking up on supplies from Egyptian stores in the town of Al-Arish. Some bought cement at 27 Egyptian pounds per sack -- about one-fifth the price charged by the Israelis. At times, even the cement needed to make tombs for the dead has been scarce in the Gaza Strip. Al-Jazeera's report included a brief comment from a Gaza man heading back with a cartload of cement to build his family a new house. Gazan merchants sent trucks to import medicine and other goods. Gazans also bought clothes which have become scarce in Gaza's markets after eight months of Israeli-imposed heightened border controls. As Gaza resident Abu Taha told a reporter from the Associated Press, he could get the basic foods in Gaza, but at three times the cost. By early afternoon, according to United Nations sources, some 350,000 people -- about 20 per cent of Gaza's population -- had crossed into Egypt. At the same time, several thousand Palestinians have become stranded on the Egyptian side of the border over the last several weeks and months after trying to return from medical treatment in Egypt or Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca. They streamed back into the Gaza Strip.

Tony Karon, writing for Roothless Cosmopolitan stated, "The hole blown by Hamas in the Gaza-Egypt border fence has finally punctured the bubble of delusion surrounding the U.S.-Israeli Middle East policy. In a moment reminiscent of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, through the breach surged some 350,000 Palestinians -- fully one fifth of Gaza's total population, as my friend and colleague Tim McGirk observed at the scene. And what did they do on the other side? They went shopping for the essentials of daily life, denied them by an Israeli siege imposed with the Wehrmacht logic of collective punishment. And the Egyptian security forces didn't stop them, despite Washington and Israel urging them to, because U.S.-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak would provoke a mutiny among his citizenry and even his own security forces if they were to be ordered to stop hungry Palestinians from eating because Israel has decided that they should starve until they change their attitude."

Elaborating the significance of this event, Karon points out, "The whole Annapolis strategy is based on the false premise that Arab leaders could be rallied to the purpose of isolating Hamas (and also Iran) through blockades and even military action in furtherance of U.S. and Israeli objectives. The hole in the wall in Gaza is an eloquent tombstone to President Bush's Middle East policy. The post-Bush era has begun, a moment of great promise for all in the region who hope to live in peace and security."

Heroic Women of Gaza

The decisive action at the Rafah border crossing was preceeded by a heroic action the previous day of the women of Gaza who demonstrated en masse to demand the Rafah crossing be opened. One news item reports that about 70 people were injured "when Egyptian riot police blocked a surging crowd of Palestinian women from rushing the Rafah border crossing." This action followed the Israeli Zionist announcement that they would allow only enough fuel to maintain electrical power generation in the Gaza Strip until Thursday, January 24. However, far from being either idled or paralysed by their Israeli occupier and its accommodationist choir in the Palestinian Authority executive offices in Ramallah, the forces of resistance led oby the women of Gaza rose to show once again that in the conditions of stepped-up U.S.-Israeli siege, the people of Gaza know on whom and what to rely.

A report carried on the website of the Palestine Information Centre says that, "hundreds of Palestinian patients and wounded (some of them with amputated limbs) had staged a sit-in at the Rafah border terminal since the early morning hours demanding access into Egypt to receive treatment.

"Later in the afternoon, hundreds of Palestinian women and children headed to the Rafah crossing and tried to break into it but were met with a large number of Egyptian security forces [who used] water hoses and fired in the air in a bid to disperse them.

"The Hamas Movement had called for the peaceful demonstration to demand the opening of the crossing. A number of women fainted due to the crowd while others were bruised in the scuffle with the Egyptian border guards.

"In a similar act but on the northern part of Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians of the 1948 lands arrived at Beit Hanun (Erez) crossing accompanying a number of medical and humanitarian supplies.

"Mohammed Zeidan, chairman of the 1948 recompilation committee and one of the participants in the march, said that the demonstration was intended to stand up to Israel's oppression.

"He appealed to Fatah and Hamas Movements to unite and return to dialogue, opining that such a siege would never have taken place if there was a strong Palestinian unity."

According to a report in the International Herald Tribune -- the international edition of the New York Times which is distributed in Israel inside the Ha'aretz newspaper -- "eyewitnesses said several thousand women and children, carrying flags of the militant Islamic Hamas movement, which rules the Gaza Strip, demonstrated at the Palestinian side of the crossing, hurling insults at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and taking a swipe at U.S. support for Israel. 'Hosni Mubarak you are a coward , you are an agent for the Americans,' they chanted. 'Gaza women will not be humiliated.'"

January 23, 2008: Montreal vigil against Israeli siege of Gaza.

(Sources: Palestine Information Centre, Agence France Presse, Jerusalem Post, Ma'an News, Associated Press, Xinhua)

Facts about the Siege on Gaza

- Palestine House -

To date, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have closed all border crossings to the Gaza Strip for almost 18 months continuously. The total siege imposed by IOF on the Gaza Strip has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and has violated the economic and social rights of the Palestinian civilian population, particularly their rights to appropriate living conditions, health and education. It has also paralyzed most economic sectors. Furthermore, severe restrictions have been imposed on the movement of the Palestinian civilian population. The siege of the Gaza Strip has severely impacted the flow of food, medical supplies and other necessities, such as fuel, construction materials and raw materials for various economic sectors.

After the Hamas' takeover of Gaza in June 2007, IOF further tightened the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, and the living and economic conditions of Palestinian civilians in Gaza have subsequently deteriorated. On 19 September 2007, the Israeli government declared the Gaza Strip "A hostile entity" and measures of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza escalated from this point. Since September 2007, the Israeli Government have severely limited the goods exported to the Gaza Strip to just nine basic materials. Consequently, local markets have run out of many goods, causing sharp increases in prices, which in some cases have amounted to 500%.

Numbers

- 69 is the death toll in the Gaza strip due to lack of medical drugs or due to Israel preventing patients from leaving for medical treatment.
- ZERO will be the stock balance of 360 basic drugs at the Ministry of Health stores in Gaza by February 2008 due to the Israeli siege.
- ZERO is the stock balance of 60 blood bank supplies and lab materials at the Ministry of Health in Gaza due to the Israeli siege.
- 624 students are prevented from leaving Gaza to their universities due to the Israeli siege.
- 900 workers lost their jobs in the light drinks factories alone due to the Israeli siege on Gaza.
- 25,000 workers lost their jobs in the textile sector due to the Israeli siege on Gaza.
- 6,000 workers lost their jobs in the furniture factories in Gaza due to the Israeli siege.
- 120,000 workers lost their jobs inside the green line due to the Israeli siege on Gaza.

UN Rights Official Slams
'Cowardly Israeli War Crime' in Gaza

- Agence France Presse, January 19, 2008

Israel's targeting of a Hamas government office which caused serious casualties at a nearby wedding party was a "war crime" and those responsible should be punished, a United Nations official said January 19.

John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, also slammed the killing of Palestinians in other attacks and the closing of border crossings.

"The killing of some 40 Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a Government office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel's respect for international law and its commitment to the peace process," Dugard said in a statement.

"Recent action violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention," Dugard charged in the statement put out by the UN human rights commission.

"It also violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets."

He said that "Israel must have known" about the wedding party in the Gaza Strip near to the interior ministry when it launched missiles at the ministry building on Friday, January 18.

The massive air strike destroyed the former interior ministry building in Gaza City, now abandoned, sending a tide of shrapnel crashing against adjacent apartment buildings and killing a 47-year-old woman.

Around 50 people were wounded in the blast, including several children. At least 30 of the victims had been attending the wedding party near the building.

"Those responsible for such cowardly action are guilty of serious war crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes," Dugard said.

The United States and other participants in the Annapolis conference in November to relaunch the Middle East peace process "are under both a legal and a moral obligation to compel Israel to cease its actions against Gaza and to restore confidence in the peace process, ensure respect for international law and protect civilian life," he said.

"We attacked the building and nothing else," an Israeli army spokeswoman said of Friday's raid, calling the target a "headquarters" of the radical Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, January 17, Israel announced a complete closure of the Gaza Strip after a sharp escalation in rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli communities across the border and retaliatory raids by the Israeli army.

UN Security Council Fails to Agree on
Draft Statement on Gaza Crisis

- China Daily Online, January 23, 2008 -

The UN Security Council discussed Tuesday a draft presidential statement that would call for an end to Israel's closure of crossings into the Gaza Strip, but failed to reach an agreement.

The 15-member council held consultations in an emergency session throughout the day amid calls by Arab countries for moves to help end the lockdown of Gaza which has effectively blocked humanitarian assistance to the 1.5 million population in Gaza.

Briefing the council, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe expressed continued UN concern about what he termed the "extremely fragile" humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip while strongly urging Israel to allow "regular and unimpeded" delivery of fuel and basic necessities to the area.

The top political chief also warned Israel against what he called "collective penalties" for the Palestinian people.

"Israel must reconsider and ease its policy of pressuring the civilian population of Gaza for the unacceptable actions of militants," Pascoe said. "Collective penalties are prohibited under international law."

Diplomats took the floor in a formal open meeting to voice their concern over the humanitarian consequences caused by Israel's lockdown of the territory before huddling behind closed door to discuss a draft presidential statement prepared by Libya, the council's president for this month.

The nonbinding text, which has the support of Arab countries, expresses concern over the situation in Gaza and calls on Israel to end its restrictions and ensure access for humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.

It also urges Israel "to abide by its obligation under international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and immediately to cease all its illegal measures and practices against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip."

Palestinian UN observer Ryad Mansour said the situation in the Gaza Strip was distressing and grave, as Israel had intensified its "collective punishment" of the Palestinian civilian population, obstructing the entry into Gaza of even basic food stuffs and other essential humanitarian supplies.

"The current situation is absolutely untenable, humanly unbearable and morally unacceptable," Mansour said, urging the council to take "urgent, practical and specific measures" to end the crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Israel's UN delegate Gilad Cohen said the current crisis was caused by "many wrong choices" made by Palestinian militants who had fired more than 2,000 rockets and mortars at Israel in 2007.

Israel and its Western allies, including the United States and France, opposed the passage of the document, which would require the approval of all council members.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters that the current draft was "unacceptable" because "it does not talk about the rocket attacks" on Israeli civilians.

Western diplomats doubted any adoption of the text in its current form, saying it would have to be amended to include more balanced language.

The council is expected to continue their consultations over the text Wednesday afternoon [January 23].

(Source: Xinhua)

NAM Condemns Israeli Attacks on
Palestinian Civilians in Gaza

- Prensa Latina, January 22, 2008 -

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) countries today condemned before the Security Council Israeli attacks on the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, and the latest one, that left 19 dead and 50 wounded.

Cuban Ambassador Isidoro Malmierca, president of the NAM Coordination Bureau, spoke yesterday at an emergency meeting requested by the group, along with the League of Arab States and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The situation has provoked great concern within the NAM given that the illegal Israeli actions have caused the deaths of more than 150 Palestinian civilians, including women and children during the last six weeks, the diplomat reiterated.

Israel's violent military escalation constitutes a serious violation of international law, including international humanitarian law and human rights agreements, as well as exacerbating the cycle of violence, Malmierca stated.

The ambassador emphasized that this aggression places international peace and security at risk, as well as the fragile peace process within the region.

In his comments to that UN agency, the president of the NAM Coordination Bureau indicated that actions of this nature aggravate the already deplorable human conditions existing in the Gaza Strip.

The civilian population continues to be subjected to collective punishment under a cruel occupation, said Malmierca.

He referred to the intensification of the siege of the occupied Palestinian territories with the hermetic sealing of all border crossings, to the point of preventing food deliveries to the population from January 18.

He added that Israel is still reducing fuel supplies to Gaza, and totally cut off deliveries to the main generating station on Sunday, January 20.

Malmierca called on the Security Council to demand that Israel lift the siege and open border crossings to permit access, at least, of food and medical supplies.

Urgent measures should be taken to assure the delivery of essential provisions, as well as the resumption of fuel deliveries to the Gaza Strip, he indicated.

The Non-Aligned Movement, he concluded, demands that the international community, and the Security Council in particular, fulfill their responsibilities and demand that Israel immediately end its violations and comply with its international obligations.

(Translated by Granma International)

Economic Warfare in Gaza

- Yossi Wolfson, Challenge Magazine, January 21, 2008 -

No more lies or twisted tongues. Israel is saying at last what, in the past, it always refused to acknowledge: its war is against the Palestinian population.

Until now, in discussions about the separation wall, closures, blockades, house demolition, and other sorts of collective punishment, the State Attorney's Office lacked the gumption to admit in court that the aim of such measures is to harm civilians. It always came up with convoluted security claims in order to present some vital military necessity for the sake of the War against Terror. Harm to the population was described as a regrettable side effect.

But now a Rubicon has been crossed. This happened after ten human rights organizations petitioned the High Court on 28 October 2007 against cuts in the supply of electricity and gasoline to Gaza. The petitioners claimed that the cuts amount to collective punishment, which is forbidden under international law. The state might have answered that the cuts are a necessary military measure aimed at stopping the production of Qassam rockets. Or it might have tried some other tongue twister. But no. In their response to the petition, Dana Briskman and Gilad Shirman from the State Attorney's Office announced openly, without blinking an eye, that the cuts' main purpose is to exert pressure on the economy as a way of influencing Hamas.

Thus the state clamps the arteries of life for 1.5 million Gazans and describes its action as an economic war. Here it infringes a basic principle of the international laws concerning warfare, which distinguish between the civilian population and the armed forces. One main purpose of these laws is to shield civilians from the battlefield and mitigate the effects war can have on them. The lawyers for the State Attorney do not dispute this principle. Rather they would limit it to strictly military operations. Cutting the supply of electricity or gasoline is not a strictly military operation. In an economic war, they hold, the principle does not apply. Following this logic to its absurd conclusion, we find that it is forbidden to blow up a civilian installation, but it is permissible to disable it by cutting off raw materials. It is forbidden to blow up a power plant, but it's OK to turn off the electricity.

This is not to imply that Israel abides by the law in its strictly military decisions. In summer of 2006, for example, it did blow up the Palestinian power plant in Gaza, raising the Strip's dependence on itself for electricity -- the same electricity that it today proposes to cut.

The state turns international law on its head. Various provisions regulate civilian supplies in wartime, with the aim of keeping the situation from reaching the threshold of a humanitarian crisis. Israel cites these provisions but interprets them as allowing it to harm civilians as long as it stops short of that threshold, defined by it.

What is the humanitarian threshold in Israel's view? The blockade of Gaza has been going on at various levels for years. Since Hamas ousted Fatah there in the summer of 2007, the shipment of goods to the Strip has been restricted almost totally to basic foods, medicines, medical equipment, cooking gas, gasoline and electricity. Karni, the main checkpoint for transfer of goods, earlier functioned in a spotty manner, but today it is completely shut. The code for importing goods to Gaza has been deleted from the computers of Israel's Customs Authority, which (according to the Paris Protocol) is supposed to collect the tariffs. The supply of fuel (except cooking gas) has been cut (without court interference). The electricity cut has not yet been implemented, but the shortage is already severe. Electricity and water are available only intermittently. Most of the industrial plants are closed for lack of raw materials and replacement parts. Hospitals, water and sewage services have been operating for the last year and a half (since Israel blew up the power plant) by means of emergency generators. Because replacement parts are lacking, the infrastructures are running down, and there is increasing danger of disaster. A harbinger was the bursting of the cesspool wall in Um al-Nassar last year, where five people drowned in a river of sewage.

According to statistics from the summer of 2007,[1] before Israel hardened its measures, 87 percent of Gazans lived beneath the poverty line, which was reckoned at $2.40 per day. Already then there were perceived shortages in basic products, and food prices rose by tens of percentage points. According to figures of the World Food Programme, 85 percent of Gazans depend on aid to purchase food.

In the view of Israel, however, the existing supply of goods is above what the law obligates it to allow, and the supplies of electricity and gasoline are even twice the minimum required. Below the humanitarian threshold as defined by it, Israel includes little more than hospitals run by generators, ambulances, supply trucks, and minimal public transport. On 1 November, it repeated its assurances to the court that its measures are carefully weighed and considered. It promised to watch the situation closely to prevent a humanitarian crisis. Yet the government had no up-to-date figures on the likely effects of an electricity cut. The court asked for data, but the state did not provide them. Instead, it became clear that even the partial statistics cited earlier were misleading.[2]

Israel claims in court that it has the right to choose the countries it trades with, as if Gaza were just one independent state among the many. It views a cut in electricity to Gaza as not essentially different from, say, a cut in the sale of diamonds to Spain. This claim conceals the self-righteous notion that Israel, having disengaged, is no longer responsible for the Strip. But who presides over Gaza's borders? Who rules its air space? Whose jets and attack helicopters are those up there? Who controls Gaza's sea, preventing the erection of an independent harbor?

Gaza's economic dependence on Israel is the fruit of a deliberate policy that has been in effect for decades. Here as well as in the West Bank, Israel stymied any fledgling industry that might compete with it. It developed Gaza's dependence on it for electricity and gas. It turned the Gazans into a cheap labor force to serve Israeli industry -- at first by having them commute into Israel and later by developing an industrial area at Erez checkpoint. Israel also benefited from Gazan dependence on its products. When Karni was closed, among the loudest protesters were Israeli farmers. According to reports from the summer of 2007, about a fourth of the fruit grown in Israel was marketed in the occupied territories. The cut in gasoline shipments also made a dent in the income of Dor-Alon, the Israeli energy company supplying Gaza.

Yet Israel's conceptual change about Gaza is not consistent. Disengaged or not, it can't resist the temptation to exploit the Strip's resources. Parallel to the discussion on cutting energy supplies, there is another petition before the High Court that also concerns energy -- but here the supply would go from Gaza to Israel. In this petition, two corporate groups are battling for an Israeli license to pump natural gas from the reservoir off Gaza's coast, a reservoir that -- if Gaza belonged to a Palestinian state -- would be in its territorial waters. The pumped gas is slated to become a major energy source in Israel's economy. Did the Justices happen to recall another case they are hearing, in which the state says it no longer occupies Gaza? If so, they haven't indicated this. Needless to say, no Justice cried in astonishment, "By what right do you intend to exploit the gas reserves of the Gaza Strip? This is against the provisions of international law, which forbid an occupying power from exploiting the natural resources of an occupied territory for its own use!"

Finally, we cannot ignore the similarities between Israel's policies in Gaza and in Lebanon. In southern Lebanon too (if to a lesser degree), Israel for years used the population as a cheap commuting workforce and as consumers of its products, all in the framework of the so-called "Good Fence" policy. This ended, as in Gaza, in a unilateral withdrawal (May 2000). Israel's interest in controlling the water that flows its way from southern Lebanon brings to mind its interest in Gaza's gas reserves. Its attack on Lebanon in 2006 also has its Gazan parallels. In both places Israel learned that it has no military answer to the threat of rockets in the hands of militias. With Hizballah as with Hamas, Israel refused to negotiate. In Lebanon too, it hesitated to open a broad ground war, and rightly so. It learned that it cannot rule a hostile area in the face of attrition from guerrillas. When it undertook military action in Lebanon, the weakness of its own armed forces became apparent. This weakness derives from the moral corruption of the military and political leadership. The war revealed an impossible combination: on the one hand, the leadership's overall contempt for human life, and, on the other, Israeli society's unwillingness to accept battle casualties.

In both cases, Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has made indiscriminate war from the air on civilians while hesitating to commit ground forces. In both it has sought to destroy the economic infrastructure and reduce the civilian population to primitive conditions. By harming them, it was thought, you could get them to pressure their leaders and thus make political gains. This notion proved false in Lebanon, as in Gaza. The Israeli attacks amount to an expression of weakness, but the price will not be paid by those who launch them, rather by civilians on both sides.

Notes

1. See the Gisha web site: "New Report: Commercial Closure," http://www.gisha.org/.
2. "Court criticizes State Attorneys," http://www.gisha.org/.

Calendar of Events

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