Of course I am happy about the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. After eight days of pounding Gaza’s population, and the barrage of rockets on Israeli civilians, any cessation in hostilities is welcome. While I am fully aware of the horrors faced by friends in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, this attack has been so much worse for the people of Gaza just four years after operation ‘Cast Lead’, and of course also for people in the south of Israel. During the eight days173 Palestinians were killed (113 of thom civilians, 38 children and 13 women)
and 6 Israelis (no children) were killed. In the year preceding the onslaught, 64 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, 5 in the West Bank, and no Israelis. Since the first rocket fell on Israeli soil in April 2001, 59 Israelis were killed and 4,717 Palestinian.
Meanwhile, the US gave Israel 8.2m dollars per day. The reality of the death of children and the devastation in Gaza has been whitewashed in the western media as all social networks report.
The conflagration could never achieve its aims – the Israeli military did not stop the rockers and the rockets did not stop the Israeli military attack. But I cannot help thinking about the inevitability and imbalance of it all. There are many often forgotten but worth retelling facts about Gaza, as the Israeli (Jewish) blogger Eyal Clyne documents. The Gaza ‘Strip’ is an artificial space created by Israel after its establishment in 1948, when Israel chose not to incorporate it. Most Gazans are 1948 refugees, not allowed to return to their homes. Gaza was forcibly governed by Egypt until it was occupied by Israel in 1967, when a third of it was confiscated to build military camps and Jewish settlements. Continue reading “After Gaza, Again”
Since the onset of ‘the Arab Spring’ social scientists have been moving from analysing oppressive political regimes to analyses of acts of resistance. This is particularly relevant in the case of Israel-Palestine, where, since the turning point events of October 2000, when 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel who protested in solidarity with the Al Aqsa Intifada were shot by the Israeli police, acts of resistance are becoming widespread. Several social scientists are beginning to grapple with acts of resistance not only in the OPT, where non violent protestors confront the Israeli security forces on a weekly basis, but also within the state of Israel, where protestors (mostly Jewish) take to the streets to campaign for social justice.
I was expecting that the subject of this article, Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan, would not be alive by the time this article was published. Adnan, a 33- year old baker and father of two daughters living in the occupied West Bank, is a political activist and spokesman for Islamic Jihad, who was hunger striking against the Israeli practice of administrative detention. His 66-days strike was the longest in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr Adnan was hospitalised and lay shackled to his hospital bed, despite the Israeli authorities’ commitment to unshackle him. However, as I was preparing to write this, Mr Adnan agreed to end his hunger strike in return for the state of Israel releasing him on 17 April.
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