Welcome To Peace's Funeral
That's what the headlines scream now: "Peace buried under Gaza Rubble". If there was an opportunity to achieve peace, to begin with. Questionable, given the odds; for one side eager to achieve stability and normalcy while fighting a rear-guard action, understanding that those with whom they bargain for peace up front speak differently in another tongue. Just as it takes two hands to execute a clap, one side only cannot a peace make.Democratically elected Hamas demonstrates its governance capabilities through its deadly intransigent Islamist agenda; leaving no room for the co-existence of a hated neighbour. Manipulating those Gazans with families, hoping for a better future, to a searing hatred for that neighbour through the simple expedient of deliberately sacrificing them in the ongoing delivery of Kassams, provoking Israeli response.
The other elected body, secularist Fatah, also pushes its Arab determination to extinguish Israel behind the guise of peace agreements, but through more covert means. Both have succeeded in delivering countless fatal stab wounds to the heart of peace, while deftly manoeuvring situations meant to elevate sympathy for their cause abroad, resulting in condemnations on the part of the international community for Israel's "disproportionate response".
When rockets rain down on sovereign territory they shatter any diplomatic attempts toward reason to result in peace and harmony; the former initially a dim hope, the latter increasingly unattainable at any price. With the ongoing, and stepped-up bombardment of Israel, the original targets have been expanded to include other communities close to the Gaza border, creating greater numbers of vulnerable, shell-shocked populations.
Currently a third of the population of Sderot has departed, the greater proportion of their children suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Living under a daily bombardment of rockets, amounting to thousands of such attacks over the years, stifles childhood through fear and suffering. What country in the world would sit by and watch as its citizens undergo relentless attacks without responding?
Over 180 missiles have been fired by Gaza terror militias inside Israel. That's a rate of two rocket launches an hour in the space of the last four days. The Israeli population in southern Israel has been terrorized. Severe property damage has occurred, and people injured, taken to the Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon, itself the target of a strike. Ashkelon residents have appealed to their government to protect the city. Government responds, as it must.
And, predictably, Palestinian Authority officials blame Israel for the intensified attacks on Gaza in the Israeli response to the calamity of intensified rocket attacks on Israelis. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has called upon the United Nations for intervention. Perhaps the United Nations peacekeeping authorities are capable of responding with a less militant solution to counter terrorism. Advice comes readily from those not themselves experiencing attacks. As does censure.
The two Arab countries with whom Israel enjoys an official peace, Jordan and Egypt, found themselves with little choice - it would appear, in the name of Arab solidarity - but to condemn Israel for "violating international law". International law does not inhibit a nation from taking all required steps to defend itself and its citizens. In the face of continued assaults Israel has time and again requested the bombardments cease. In the face of violent attacks, seldom do gentle requests to desist prevail.
If and when faced with similar threats, no other country would hesitate to defend its own.
When Hamas triumphantly breached the border barrier between Gaza and Egypt, Egypt was anything but happy. Its foreign minister threatened that Egyptian security forces would "cut the legs off" any who further dared to repeat such an action against its sovereign territory. It represented yet another theatrical choreography for international consumption, acting out the play that desperate Gazans, blockaded by Israel, flooded Egypt's border markets.
Gazans are themselves a captive audience of their own real-life, real-time drama, fixated on their misery, helpless to call a stop to the squandering of any opportunities for civil, civic and social advancement, in an ongoing atmosphere of controlled violence, replacing the previous lawlessness that prevailed where its young and restless formed a deadly peripatetic menace, alongside Fata-affiliated terror groups.
They're held in helpless thrall against a former occupier, a heartless enemy whose military might ostensibly has nothing better to do than maintain them in a state of fearful submission. The Palestinian Authority under Fatah whose mandate it was to bring law and order to prevail in Gaza, appeared to have little interest in exerting control over the roaming militias. Hamas stepped in to do just that, establishing the order of their own terror control.
Under which the ongoing rocket barrages were extolled as virtuous responses to the presence of an "illegal" enemy occupier, and through whose encouragement, allied with financing and training from Syria and Iran and their proxy Hezbollah, enrolled them in an outright war they never did quite envisage for their near future.
In the words of one Gazan whose teen-age son was killed in the inevitable, civilian-victimizing crossfire during an IDF strike on a rocket-launch team, "I'm against these rockets, but I am afraid. What can I do? If I protest they will hit me, they will kill me."
Yes, they most certainly will.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 02, 2008
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