There’s right and there’s wrong. Israel is wrong

You are either with the Palestinians or with Israel. I am with the Palestinians. Look, Israel has elastic borders, which it extends outwards at the slightest pretext and totally and utterly in disregard of international opinion or law. It occupies the land of the Palestinians, builds settlements on it and imposes a land, air and sea blockade against Gaza.

So Israel controls the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza. It decides what goes into and out of it; it decides who goes into and out of the strip.

Consider this: Israel and Hamas go to war and then into a ceasefire, but Israel will not allow cement, iron and wood into Gaza. These are needed for construction or reconstruction, but they are embargoed.

Why? Tel Aviv classifies them as dual-use materials, which means though they are used for construction, they can also be used to build the tunnels that Hamas fighters will use to gain entry into Israeli-occupied territory. Wood, cement and iron will therefore not be allowed into Gaza because they could be used to build Hamas’ military infrastructure.

But they are also needed by the non-combatant population of Gaza to construct and reconstruct properties and the strip’s sewerage infrastructure, for example. Yet, after the clashes of 2008, Israel listed glass among the prohibited materials, which meant that shattered windows could not be repaired to keep out the rain during the winter.

Therefore, Israel decides how the people of Gaza will relate to the elements. But that is not all; it also decides what they will eat. So, it allows in processed hummus, but not hummus laced with pine nuts or mushrooms. When Israel’s security distresses are as expandable as its borders, why does it think it cannot meet resistance from those whose lands it occupies?

Now when Israel prohibits building materials into Gaza, it deals a massive blow to the construction industry, which results in massive job losses. So, a Gazan has no job and he or she can’t move out to look for work as he or she pleases, because Israel only allows 3,000 people out of Gaza’s 1.8 million to leave the strip in a month.

Therefore, Gaza is a giant open air prison. What you have is collective punishment of Gazans, especially after 2006, because they legitimately voted for Hamas in legitimate polls, before it violently took over control of the strip from Fatah in 2007. The siege of Gaza goes back to the 1990s in the wake of the intifada uprising, but it went full throttle in 2007.

Unacceptable situation

The blockade has resulted in what the November 2011 UN-sanctioned report by Geoffrey Palmer, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand, described as an “unsustainable and unacceptable humanitarian situation in Gaza”. Israeli strikes water, electricity and sewerage systems, thereby strangulating the economy and jeopardising the health of the people of Gaza.

But look at the hypocrisy of London. A UK Liberal Democratic MP tweeted thus on the on-going Israeli/Hamas conflict: “… the West must make up its mind – which side is it on?” He added: “… the people in Gaza cannot escape; they are hemmed in by land, sea and air. I understand the plight of people firing rockets.” I concur.

A spokesperson for the rival Labour Party retorted: “… it defies belief that a Liberal Democratic Party MP should tweet something so vile and irresponsible.” And his Conservative counterpart chimed in: “No MP should tweet what’s essentially incitement to violence.” Is expression of one’s understanding of a people’s plight incitement?

But, remember American arms, money and support at international fora facilitate Israel’s mass killings of Palestinian civilians and destruction of their cities. What is more inciting than the fact that by the time of going to press, some 800 Palestinians, most of them non-combatants, had been killed in two weeks of indiscriminate bombardment by Israel?

Last week Israel’s envoy to the UN argued that Tel Aviv would destroy Hamas but residents of Gaza are not enemies of Israel. So, why are they being hemmed in and slaughtered? I still hear George Bush the elder and George Bush the younger saying, at different times, that the West’s enemy was Saddam Hussein and not the Iraqis!

Of course, Israel will easily destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure. It has the world’s fourth most powerful military. But will that end Palestinian resistance to the occupation and opposition to the suffocating apartheid-style blockade? No. Yes, I stand with long suffering Palestinians as they fight Israeli occupation and isolation and the hypocrisy of the West, especially Washington.

Opanga is a media consultant; [email protected]