2008 and the Palestinian cause
Ahmad Sabri & Hidayah Abbas | Arab News


The year 2008 started with an Israeli-Egyptian cooperation that stopped the people of Gaza traveling to Makkah to perform the pilgrimage. It was a year that began with the killing of a 40-year-old woman, who had just come back from Haj, at an Israeli checkpoint in Gaza and ended with killing of more than 400 innocent people.

If we remember, 2008 also started with the promise of a Palestinian state — a promise described by well-known thinker and columnist Fahmi Howaidi as “the New Year’s lie.” The year ended with the same promise/lie but in a much bloodier way.

The biggest tragedy of 2008 was Gaza. Half of last year was spent in cease-fire, and in the 180 days of this so-called truce, Israel broke the terms roughly more than 180 times, killing and injuring many civilians. Gaza was and still is under a siege that caused the death of approximately 200 patients who suffered from lack of medicines and the absence of electricity that run the machines that keep them alive. Although it was described by the UN humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes as “unwarranted” and as a “collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” the siege remains. Holmes also talked about the Israeli attacks clearly as “action(s) against the people in Gaza (that) cannot be justified, even by those (Palestinian) rocket attacks.” Holmes and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel to end its closure of Gaza Strip, but Israel, as usual, defied the international will. Holmes declared in January that Gaza “is a (humanitarian) crisis already” even though he said this when the situation was much better. From that time things got much worse in the world’s most crowded area (1.5 million in 360 km square area) and the deputy head of Israel’s mission to the UN, Daniel Carmon, had no shame to confess at the time that he and his government are “very much aware of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.” By the end of the year, the UN’s Human Rights Council monitor Richard Falk said the UN must “implement the agreed norm of a responsibility to protect a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a crime against humanity.” He added: “The consequences of this blockade are felt by the ordinary population, not by those who are deciding to fire rockets, or allowing rockets to be fired, or actually firing them.”

Although Falk also said that it would seem “mandatory” that the UN’s International Criminal Court investigate Israel’s policies in regard to the Palestinians, nothing of the sort happened or is likely to happen anytime soon, and the criminals are very likely to walk freely and happily for a long time. The Israeli government has faced a level of criticism by “normally cautious UN officials not seen since the heyday of South African apartheid,” Falk said, but we wonder if the world will move against the Israeli regime and save lives and stop the aggression. Actually Falk was the one that got stopped and expelled by the Israeli government at the end of last year.

Collective punishment is a well-known tool of global terrorism. It aims basically to harm people who are not responsible in order to change their political views and to push them toward putting pressure on those who are. Holmes recognized this Israeli attempt when he said: “The idea that somehow it’s going to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas or at least stimulate them to rise up against Hamas and throw them out I think is not well founded.” If these last days of 2008 carried a massacre, we should not forget that it is an offspring of several terrorist threats and acts. A highlight of this year’s terrorist campaign against Gaza was Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s statement threatening the people of Gaza with something bigger than the “holocaust” of Hitler.

2008 had a symbolic importance as well. It was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.

2008 held unpleasant surprises too. Despite the fact that the UN resolutions dealt with the refugee crisis and their right to return, Israel’s top officials said in a crystal clear tone that they will not allow “one single refugee” to return home, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that there will be no place for Arabs in Israel after a Palestinian state is established.

That was shortly after a campaign against Arab citizens in Acre who — unlike the majority of Israelis — didn’t stay at their homes on a Jewish religious day. All of this came few months after the chief rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, called for a massive revenge, declaring, “It’s time to call the child by its name: Revenge, revenge, revenge. We mustn’t forget. We have to take horrible revenge for the terrorist attack at Mercaz Harav yeshiva” referring to the incident in which eight Israelis were killed, and — as always — calling for “hanging the children of the terrorist who carried out the attack in the Mercaz Harav yeshiva from a tree.”

Back to Livni who made another criminal statement in 2008 by calling the Israeli judicial system to order the confiscation of Palestinian government money to give it to the Israelis who were harmed in Palestinian attacks.

But during 2008, probably not a single statement stood against international law, as did Olmert’s. The Israeli prime minister announced that he will not accept any peace initiative that forces Israel to withdraw to the borders of June 5, 1967 — a withdrawal that according to the UN decisions must have started and finished 41 years ago. This is a main condition in the Arab peace initiative which Israel gave signs of accepting last year.

2008 for the Palestinians was a year of terrorist threats and attacks, a year of collective punishment, settlement expansion, Israel challenging and contradicting international laws, rising hate crimes and international silence.

To our eternal shame, 2008 was the year of Arab indifference to the plight of the people of Gaza.

— Ahmad Sabri and Hidayah Abbas are Saudi students based in Jeddah.