Gaza and more

For those who follow what is happening in and to Gaza, there is an interesting article in the Jerusalem Post that reported “Reeling from four damning reports in one week from human rights organizations about the IDF’s conduct in Operation Cast Lead, the sense among senior defense officials is that the ‘legal front’ against Israel is growing at an alarming rate”. This article can be read in full here

As we reported yesterday here, the IDF appears to have blinked, and in a statement issued by its Spokespersons’ Unit it said Thursday that “In addition to the investigations ordered by the Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the IDF is currently looking into complaints that were received from various sources – private lawyers, human rights organizations (including Amnesty) and media outlets (both domestic and international) – that raise different questions regarding the way in which the IDF operated during Operation Cast Lead. In certain cases, the Chief Military Advocate has already ordered the opening of a criminal investigation“.

That is important, and good But is it too late? There has been too much appallingly irresponsible disregard for other people here.

Maan News Agency reported recently that Israeli Intelligence forces have said that there has been a marked increase in “fake medical papers and documents being submitted to Israeli border officials by Palestinians in Gaza. The permits allow the patients to enter Israel … Israeli authorities, who claim most of the patients are ‘not sick’, and only want to enter the area to find work in Israel or the West Bank”.

Is that surprising?

But, of course, there always has to be a security angle, to silence any objection to Israeli policies on which only Israel itself can decide to place any limits. Ma’an reported in this story that Israeli authorities also expressed concern that the ‘fake papers’ would enable Palestinians “to carry out attacks” in Israel. This item was posted here.

Sara Roy, is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University whose work on the economic de-development of Gaza has gained considerable professional respect, wrote recently in the Harvard magazine, The Crimson, that: “Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution, its once productive population transformed into one of aid-dependent paupers. This context is undeniably one of mass suffering, created largely by Israel but with the active complicity of the international community, especially the U.S. and European Union, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Gaza’s subjection began long before Israel’s recent war against it. The Israeli occupation-now largely forgotten or denied by the international community-has devastated Gaza’s economy and people, especially since 2006. Although economic restrictions actually increased before Hamas’ electoral victory in January 2006, the deepened sanction regime and siege subsequently imposed by Israel and the international community, and later intensified in June 2007 when Hamas seized control of Gaza, has all but destroyed the local economy … Recently, I spoke with some friends in Gaza and the conversations were profoundly disturbing. My friends spoke of the deeply felt absence of any source of protection-personal, communal or institutional. There is little in society that possesses legitimacy and there is a fading consensus on rules and an eroding understanding of what they are for. Trauma and grief overwhelm the landscape despite expressions of resilience. The feeling of abandonment among people appears complete, understood perhaps in their growing inability to identify with any sense of possibility … What possible benefit can be derived from an increasingly impoverished, unhealthy, densely crowded, and furious Gaza alongside Israel? Gaza’s terrible injustice not only threatens Israeli and regional security, but it undermines America’s credibility, alienating our claim to democratic practice and the rule of law … What looms is no less than the loss of entire generation of Palestinians. And if this happens-perhaps it already has-we shall all bear the cost”. Sara Roy’s article can be read in full
here.