Te gast: Gideon Levy<\/p>\n
Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must
\nknow it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction of
\nGilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war, the
\nIsrael Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza – there’s no other
\nword to describe it – killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling,
\nindiscriminately.
\n<\/p>\n
Nobody thinks about setting up a commission of inquiry; the issue isn’t
\neven on the agenda. Nobody asks why it is being done and who decided to
\ndo it. But under the cover of the darkness of the Lebanon war, the IDF
\nreturned to its old practices in Gaza as if there had been no
\ndisengagement. So it must be said forthrightly, the disengagement is
\ndead. Aside from the settlements that remain piles of rubble, nothing is
\nleft of the disengagement and its promises. How contemptible all the
\nsublime and nonsensical talk about ’the end of the occupation’ and
\n‘partitioning the land? now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater
\nbrutality than before. The fact that it is more convenient for the
\noccupier to control it from outside has nothing to do with the
\nintolerable living conditions of the occupied.<\/p>\n
In large parts of Gaza nowadays, there is no electricity. Israel bombed
\nthe only power station in Gaza, and more than half the electricity
\nsupply will be cut off for at least another year. There’s hardly any
\nwater. Since there is no electricity, supplying homes with water is
\nnearly impossible. Gaza is filthier and smellier than ever: Because of
\nthe embargo Israel and the world have imposed on the elected authority,
\nno salaries are being paid and the street cleaners have been on strike
\nfor the past few weeks. Piles of garbage and obnoxious clouds of stink
\nstrangle the coastal strip, turning it into Calcutta.<\/p>\n
More than ever, Gaza is also like a prison. The Erez crossing is empty,
\nthe Karni crossing has been open only a few days over the last two
\nmonths, and the same is true for the Rafah crossing. Some 15,000 people
\nwaited for two months to enter Egypt, some are still waiting, including
\nmany ailing and wounded people. Another 5,000 waited on the other side
\nto return to their homes. Some died during the wait. One must see the
\nscenes at Rafah to understand how profound a human tragedy is taking
\nplace. A crossing that was not supposed to have an Israeli presence
\ncontinues to be Israel’s means to pressure 1.5 million inhabitants. This
\nis disgraceful and shocking collective punishment. The U.S. and Europe,
\nwhose police are at the Rafah crossing, also bear responsibility for the
\nsituation.<\/p>\n
Gaza is also poorer and hungrier than ever before. There is nearly no
\nmerchandise moving in and out, fishing is banned, the tens of thousands
\nof PA workers receive no salaries, and the possibility of working in
\nIsrael is out of the question.<\/p>\n
And we still haven’t mentioned the death, destruction and horror. In the
\nlast two months, Israel killed 224 Palestinians, 62 of them children and
\n25 of them women. It bombed and assassinated, destroyed and shelled, and
\nno one stopped it. No Qassam cell or smuggling tunnel justifies such
\nwide-scale killing. A day doesn’t go by without deaths, most of them
\ninnocent civilians.<\/p>\n
Where are the days when there was still a debate inside Israel about the
\nassassinations? Today, Israel drops innumerable missiles, shells and
\nbombs on houses and kills entire families on its way to another
\nassassination. Hospitals are collapsing with more than 900 people
\nundergoing treatment. At Shifa Hospital, the only such facility in Gaza
\nthat might be worthy of being called a hospital, I saw heartrending
\nscenes last week. Children who lost limbs, on respirators, paralyzed,
\ncrippled for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n
Families have been killed in their sleep, while riding on donkeys or
\nworking in fields. Frightened children, traumatized by what they have
\nseen, huddle in their homes with a horror in their eyes that is
\ndifficult to describe in words. A journalist from Spain who spent time
\nin Gaza recently, a veteran of war and disaster zones around the world,
\nsaid he had never been exposed to scenes as horrific as the ones he saw
\nand documented over the last two months.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to determine who decided on all this. It is doubtful the
\nministers are aware of the reality in Gaza. They are responsible for it,
\nstarting with the bad decision on the embargo, through the bombing of
\nGaza’s bridges and power station and the mass assassinations. Israel is
\nresponsible now once again for all that happens in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The events in Gaza expose the great fraud of Kadima: It came to power on
\nthe coattails of the virtual success of the disengagement, which is now
\ngoing up in flames, and it promised convergence, a promise that the
\nprime minister has already rescinded. Those who think Kadima is a
\ncentrist party should now know it is nothing other than another rightist
\noccupation party. The same is true of Labor. Defense Minister Amir
\nPeretz is responsible for what is happening in Gaza no less than the
\nprime minister, and Peretz’s hands are as blood-soaked as Olmert’s. He
\ncan never present himself as a ‘man of peace’ again. The ground
\ninvasions every week, each time somewhere else, the kill and destroy
\noperations from the sea, air and land are all dubbed with names to
\nwhitewash the reality, like ‘Summer Rains’ or ‘Locked Kindergarten.’ No
\nsecurity excuse can explain the cycle of madness, and no civic argument
\ncan excuse the outrageous silence of us all. Gilad Shalit will not be
\nreleased and the Qassams will not cease. On the contrary, there is a
\nhorror taking place in Gaza, and while it might prevent a few terror
\nattacks in the short run, it is bound to give birth to much more
\nmurderous terror. Israel will then say with its self-righteousness: ‘But
\nwe returned Gaza to them.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Te gast: Gideon Levy Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must know it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the … Lees verder