Palestine Matters

By Bill Fletcher, Jr

When atrocities befall the Palestinians at the hands of
the Israeli occupiers, much of the Western world
remains silent. Particularly in the USA, we await
an Israeli explanation for the atrocity, often
assuring ourselves that we will be offered a
rational and acceptable justification for whatever
has taken place. Civilians killed, for instance,
when the Israelis choose to assassinate a
Palestinian leader, and we are generally
told that it is tragic ‘collateral damage.’
The use of cluster bombs in the attack on
Lebanon in 2006, and we are treated to stories
about the brutality of Hezbollah. The fact is that Israel
is the only power in the Middle East with nuclear weapons,
and we are entertained with silence. In each case,
the response is accepted as understandable, given
Israel’s “fight for existence.”

Today the people of Gaza are victims of what both
Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists correctly
call collective punishment. After the Hamas/Fatah
mini-civil war in which Hamas took over Gaza, allegedly
because they believed that Fatah was preparing to
attack them, the Israelis began a blockade
(as well as military incursions) with the full support of
the Bush administration. This was followed by rocket
attacks on Israeli settlements near Gaza by some
Palestinian military units. The Israeli blockade never
let up nor did Israeli attacks on Gaza or Palestinian
rocket attacks against settlements. Despite Hamas'
repeated offers for a truce, the Israeli government has
turned a deaf ear, finally locking the people of Gaza
into a collective hell.

When, a few weeks ago, humanitarian organizations
began voicing louder and louder concerns regarding
the conditions facing the people of Gaza, the Israeli
government and their apologists in the USA shrugged
this off. I was stunned, for instance, to read
commentaries in the US media where it was
suggested that, while conditions may not have
been ideal, there was no humanitarian threat.
When Hamas blew up the walls blocking off
Gaza from Egypt and hundreds of thousands of
people entered Egypt in order to get badly
needed supplies, some commentators in the
USA suggested that the Palestinians were really
just interested in obtaining more cheap cigarettes.

As a little reminder, the notion of collective
punishment, that is, taking steps against an
entire people due to the actions of some, is
illegal according to international law. Consider,
for instance, if the USA decided to blockade and
bomb Sicily due to the activities of the Sicilian Mafia (
which has been responsible for the deaths of
thousands through the drug trade as well as other
illegal activity). What if, in addition, the USA took
military action against the Italian government because
it had not taken a strong enough stand against
the Mafia? Such an approach would be
considered absurd, but this is, in effect, what
has been unfolding against the Palestinians, not
just today, but for the length of the Occupation that
began in 1967.

The suffering in Gaza specifically, and Palestine
in general, has not been the subject of any
substantive discussion in the 2008 Presidential
campaign. There is a code of silence that surrounds
this subject and an unspoken assumption that
whatever steps Israel needs to take to “ensure its
survival” will receive 100% support from the US
political establishment. Additionally, as was in
full view in the aftermath of former President
Jimmy Carter’s best-selling book
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,
those who question the Israeli Occupation and
the US complicity in it, are subject to vitriolic
attack, and more often than not, accused of
being anti-Semitic. Thus, the conditions
have been stacked in most so-called
mainstream circles against a reasonable
discussion of a key foreign policy matter.

The continued consequences of this approach
should not need to be reiterated. Despite the
photo-op that took place in Annapolis with the
Bush-orchestrated Israeli/Palestinian summit
in 2007, little progress has been made. Israeli
strangulation of the Gaza makes it politically
unlikely for the Palestinian National Authority,
under President Abbas, to make any significant
compromises, not that the Palestinians have
much more to give.

The garroting of the Gaza and the destruction
of the wall separating it from Egypt actually
serves as a metaphor for the larger Palestinian
situation. Whether through the "apartheid" Wall
created by the Israelis cutting off Palestinian
territory and creating, in effect, reservations
for the Palestinians; through the imprisonment of
some Palestinian leaders; through the assassination
of other Palestinian leaders; and through the increase
in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, the
Palestinian people are being pushed further and further
to the brink.

The good news, to the extent to which there is any,
is that there has been a noticeable change in the
climate on the ground in the USA when it comes
to discussing Palestine. The fact that Carter’s book
was a best seller, not to mention the growing
attention in the USA and in Europe to the need
for an immediate end to the Israeli Occupation,
quite possibly portends an opening toward a just
resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Yet the US political establishment does not get it.
Each time they attempt to silence discussion of
Palestine, or pretend that atrocities against
Palestinians are simply the figments of someone’s
imagination, their credibility in the eyes of the world
further diminishes. It is the equivalent of attempting
to keep a bubble under water.

With each atrocity against the Palestinian people
comes another battle cry from one or another part
of the planet, not only against Israel, but against
their unconditional backers in Washington, DC.
And those battle cries should raise our concern.

What about this do our political leaders not understand?
When will they get the wax out of their ears and the
cotton out of their mouths and recognize that a different
road must be taken?