De Israelische Terreur 244

A dark future ahead: Palestinian children hold traditional Ramadan lamps during a march organized by Hamas in Gaza City, September 2007. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

'Dehumanizing the Palestinians Ali Abunimah,
The Electronic Intifada, Sep 21, 2007

The Israeli cabinet has voted to declare the occupied Gaza Strip a "hostile entity," thus in its own eyes permitting itself to cut off the already meagre supplies of electricity (needed among other things to pump water), fuel and other basic necessities that it allows the Strip's inmates to receive. The decision was quickly given backing by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.Israel is the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, despite having removed its settlers in 2005 and transforming the area, home to 1.5 million mostly refugee Palestinians, into the world's largest open-air prison which it besieges and fires into from the perimeter. Under international law Israel is responsible for the well-being of the people whose lives and land it rules.There have been barely audible bleats of protest from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ("Such a step would be contrary to Israel's obligations towards the civilian population under international humanitarian and human rights law") and the European Union ("The [European] Commission hopes that Israel will not find it necessary to implement the measures for which the [cabinet] decisions set the framework yesterday."What? It hopes that Israel will not find it necessary to cut off basic necessities to 1.5 million people of whom half are children?These statements serve only to underline that Israel operates in a context where the "international community" has become inured to a discourse of extermination of the Palestinian people -- political and physical.Yossi Alpher, for example, a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and once a special adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, argued coolly this week that Israel should murder the democratically-elected leaders who won the Palestinian legislative election in January 2006 -- calling for "decapitating the Hamas leadership, both military and 'civilian.'" True, he admitted, there would be a possible downside: "Israel would again undoubtedly pay a price in terms of international condemnation, particularly if innocent civilians were killed," and because "Israel would presumably be targeting legally elected Hamas officials who won a fair election." Nevertheless, such condemnation would be quickly forgotten and, he argued, "this is a mode of retaliation and deterrence whose effectiveness has been proven," and thus, this is "an option worth reconsidering."'

Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9002.shtml

De Israelische politiek werkt in de praktijk als een sluipende etnische zuivering van de bezette Palestijnse gebieden, vertelde een VN-medewerker op de Westbank me vorige week.