By Ramzy Baroud
August 14, 2014 - My old family house in the Nuseirat refugee camp
in Gaza was recently rebuilt by its new owner, into
a beautiful three-story building with large windows
adorned by red frames. In Israel’s most recent and
deadliest war on Gaza, the house sustained
significant damage. A large hole caused by Israeli
missiles can be seen from afar, in a part of the
house where our kitchen once stood.
It seems that the original target was not my house,
however, but that of our kindly neighbor, who had
spent his entire working-life toiling between manual
jobs in Israel, and later in life as a janitor for
UN-operated schools in Gaza. The man’s whole
lifesavings were invested in his house where several
families lived. After “warning” rockets blew up part
of his house, several missiles pulverized the rest.
My entire neighborhood was also destroyed. I saw
photos of the wreckage-filled neighborhood by
accident on Facebook. The clearance where we played
football as little kids was filled with holes left
by missiles and shrapnel. The shop where I used my
allowance to buy candy, was blown up. Even the
graveyard where our dead were meant to “rest in
peace” was anything but peaceful. Signs of war and
destruction were everywhere.
My last visit there was about two years ago. I
caught up with my neighbors on the latest politics
and the news of who was dead and who was still alive
underneath the shady wall of my old house. One
complained about his latest ailments, telling me
that his son Mahmoud had been killed as he had been
a freedom fighter with a Palestinian resistance
movement.
I couldn’t fathom the idea that Mahmoud, the child I
remembered as running around half-naked with a runny
nose, had become a fierce fighter with an automatic
rifle ready to take on the Israeli army. But that he
was, and he was killed on duty.
Time changes everything. Time has changed Gaza. But
the strip was never a passive place of people
subsisting on hand-outs or a pervasive sense of
victimhood. Being a freedom fighter preceded any
rational thinking about life and the many choices it
had to offer growing up in a refugee camp, and all
the little kids of my generation wanted to join the
Fedayeen.
But options for Gazans are becoming much more
limited than ever before, even for my generation.
Since Israel besieged Gaza with Egypt’s help and
coordination, life for Gazans has become largely
about mere survival. The strip has been turned into
a massive ground for an Israeli experiment concerned
with population control. Gazans were not allowed to
venture out, fish, or farm, and those who got even
close to some arbitrary “buffer zone,” determined by
the Israeli army within Gaza’s own borders, were
shot and often killed.
With time the population of the strip knew that they
were alone. The short stint that brought Mohammed
Morsi to power in Egypt offered Gaza some hope and a
respite, but it soon ended. The siege, after the
overthrow of Morsi became tighter than ever before.
The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah did very
little to help Gaza. To ensure the demise of Hamas,
Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority carried on with
its “security coordination” with Israel, as Gaza
suffered a Draconian siege. There was no question,
that after all the failed attempts at breaking the
siege and the growing isolation of Gaza, Gazans had
to find their own way out of the blockade.
When Israeli began its bombardment campaign of Gaza
on July 6, and a day later with the official launch
of the so-called Operation Protective Edge, followed
by a ground invasion, it may have seemed that Gaza
was ready to surrender.
Political analysts have been advising that Hamas has
been at its weakest following the downturn of the
Arab Spring, the loss of its Egyptian allies, and
the dramatic shift of its fortunes in Syria and,
naturally Iran. The “Hamas is ready to fold” theory
was advanced by the logic surrounding the unity
agreement between Hamas and Fatah; and unity was
seen largely as a concession by Hamas to Abbas’
Fatah movement, which continued to enjoy western
political backing and monetary support.
The killing of three Israeli settlers in the
occupied West Bank in late June was the opportunity
for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
test the misleading theory on Hamas’ weakened
position. He launched his war that eventually
mounted into a genocide, hoping that Hamas and other
resistance groups would be forced to disarm or be
completely eradicated - as promised by various
Israeli officials.
But it didn’t. From the very first days of the war
it became clear the resistance could not be
defeated, at least not as easily as Netanyahu had
expected. The more troops he invested in the war on
Gaza, the more Israeli army casualties increased.
Netanyahu’s response was to increase the price of
Palestinian resistance by inflicting as much harm on
Palestinian civilians as possible: He killed over
1,900, wounded nearly 10,000, a vast majority of
whom were civilians, and destroyed numerous schools,
mosques, hospitals, and thousands of homes, thus
sending hundreds of thousands of people on the run.
But where does one run when there is nowhere to go?
Israel’s usual cautious political discourse was
crumbling before Gaza’s steadfastness. Israeli
officials and media began to openly call for
genocide. Middle East commentator Jeremy Salt
explained:
“The more extreme of the extreme amongst the
Zionists say out loud that the Palestinians have to
be wiped out or at the very least driven into
Sinai,” he wrote, citing Moshe Feiglin, the deputy
of the Israeli Knesset, who called for “full
military conquest of the Gaza strip and the
expulsion of its inhabitants. They would be held in
tent encampments along the Sinai border while their
final destination was decided. Those who continued
to resist would be exterminated.”
From Israeli commentator Yochanan Gordon, who
flirted with genocide in “when genocide is
permissible,” to Ayelet Shaked, who advocated the
killing of the mothers of those who resist and are
killed by Israel. “They should follow their sons.
Nothing would be more just. They should go as should
the physical houses in which they raised the snakes.
Otherwise more little snakes are raised,” he wrote
on Facebook.
References to genocide and extermination and other
devastatingly violent language are no longer
“claims” levied by Israeli critics, but a loud and
daily self-indictment made by the Israelis
themselves.
The Israelis are losing control of their
decades-long hasbara, a propaganda scheme so
carefully knitted and implemented, many the world
over were fooled by it. Palestinians, those in Gaza
in particular, were never blind to Israel’s
genocidal intentions. They assembled their
resistance with the full knowledge that a fight for
their very survival awaited.
Israel’s so-called Protective Edge is the final
proof of Israel’s unabashed face, that of genocide.
It carried it out, this time paying little attention
to the fact that the whole world was watching.
Trending Twitter hashtags which began with #GazaUnderAttack,
then #GazaResists, quickly morphed to #GazaHolocaust.
The latter was used by many that never thought they
would dare make such comparisons.
Gaza managed to keep Israel at bay in a battle of
historic proportions. Once its children are buried,
it will once again rebuild its defenses for the next
battle. For Palestinians in Gaza, this is not about
mere resistance strategies, but their very survival.
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