The Israeli blockade and embargo on the Gaza Strip has brought its one and a half million residents to the edge of catastrophe. At the time of this writing, Palestinians living in Gaza have been without power for four days. Hospitals and clinics are on their last supplies of electricity. Gaza’s meagre infrastructure, already crippled from months of inter-factional conflict and Israeli air raids, is on the verge of collapse. The spectre of a humanitarian crisis looms over the tiny territory. The U.N. Security Council has called for an emergency meeting to be held on Tuesday to discuss the situation. How have things in the region gotten so awful when only a few months ago there was renewed talk of peace at Annapolis?
Let’s start with a little background. Two and a half years ago, the nation of Israel conducted a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation. The move was initiated by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and seen by most international observers as progress for peace. However, for those living in Gaza and Israel, the withdrawal was met with equal parts suspicion and outright opposition. Israeli settlers, some of whom had been living there for decades, believed that Israel was essentially abandoning them and their interests and that they were surrendering to the Palestinians. They maintained that any land handed over would inevitably be used by the Palestinians to launch further rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli cities like Ashkelon and Sderot.
Palestinians on the other hand had mixed reactions. Some saw any return of land and disengagement on the part of Israel as a good thing and an important step towards the greater overall objective of complete withdrawal from all Palestinian land. It was also seen as an admission that even well-established settlements built on Palestinian land were not wholly legitimate nor viable. Others believed however that because the withdrawal had been initiated by Sharon, one of the Palestinians’ most reviled and mistrusted opponents, that there had to be some sinister motivation to it all. As the old proverb goes: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
Ironically, sceptics on both sides were proven partially right. Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza did not cease, despite promises of ceasefires by the PLO. Hamas, the political party designated a terrorist organization by several Western countries including Canada, won parliamentary elections in January 2006. This lead almost immediately to terrible clashes with losing party Fatah and the impression that the whole of Palestine was in chaos. For their part though, Israeli military activity against targets in Gaza continued as well, including numerous aerial strikes and even tank sorties.
In any case, the developments over the course of the last week have shown that even supposedly full military disengagement by the Israelis cannot disentangle the two neighbours from each other so easily. Perhaps the biggest factor leading to the current gloomy state has been the absence of U.S. pressure on the two sides to come together and work out an agreement. A single high-profile trip and summit is just not enough.
The real tragedy though is that observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do not even see this development as anything surprising. Extreme hardship, human suffering and conflict of the most savage degree are all ordinary facets of this struggle. If, as President Bush and others refer to it, this is the Holy Land, I ask: What’s so damned holy about it?
=//Turnquest
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