generalspeaking

Partners for Peace

Israel and the Palestinian Authority have begun the long-awaited meetings between their peace negotiators in yet another wearying attempt to reach a mutual agreement that would finally see the birth of a Palestinian country for a Palestinian nation. It will be a country for Palestinians, full stop. Israel declared the birth of the State of Israel as finally having achieved a modern-day dream of returning Jews to their original homeland, from their millennias in the diaspora to which history and fate consigned them.

President Mahmoud Abbas made haste to emphasize that he and his administration would not permit the presence of one single Jew whatever in the new Palestine. Whereas, needless to say, he will choke on the sentiment that Israel is the Jewish homeland, and a nation of Jewish majority which also hosts non-Jews like Arabs, Kurds, Druze, Muslims, Christians and a myriad of refugees from North Africa. It is somehow reasonable for an Arab country to refuse the entry of a single Jew.

And perfectly reasonable for the leader of an Arab country to express freely the sentiments of his citizens, refusing to entertain the very notion as utterly absurd and disgustingly unpalatable that any Jews might live within the borders of the nascent Palestine. And while the two solitudes meet in an effort to eventually arrive at a founding formula for the new Palestine which would guarantee security for the old Israel, Palestinian Gaza reminds that it has much to say.

For the most part, Gaza, controlled by the internationally-recognized-as-terrorists group Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, renders its sentiments over the presence of Israel by sending over the border rockets. What that results in is responding rockets or artillery from the IDF. The IDF recently deployed its Iron Dome protective system in the tourist port town of Eilat to intercept an incoming Grad rocket.

The Palestinians are enraged and affronted that Israel has recently announced plans to build hundreds of new homes in Jewish settlements meant to be carved out of the West Bank and included within the new arranged-for boundaries, in exchange for similarly carved out Israeli territory to be included within the new Palestine. Israel has had previous experience in pulling out of Palestinian territory when it unilaterally vacated Gaza only to see it overrun by militants leaving Gazans in chaos.

Now, however, Palestinian Gazans live under the benign rule of Hamas which violently wrenched its control from Fatah in 2007 and entrenched themselves as implacable Islamist rulers of the territory. From which, ever since, Gazan-based terrorists have launched rockets into Israel. Interestingly, the Hamas judicial system has recently come under criticism from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Navi Pillay has decried Hamas's judicial system deviating so egregiously from international human rights law, by imposing the death penalty without due trial. "One absolute requirement is that the death penalty can only be imposed after a fair trial. This is currently not possible in Gaza, neither legally nor practically", she said. Ill treatment and torture of prisoners on the part of Hamas also appear to trouble her.

Hamas Attorney General Ismail Jaber hastened to assure the international community that Hamas works strictly within the law; the death penalty is imposed only against criminals or spies "after all legal proceedings against them are exhausted". Executions take place in front of families of victims, religious figures and prominent members of society "to deter others from committing similar offences."
Like, for example, the June execution of two men whom the interior ministry of Gaza accused of spying for Israel. They were hanged in Gaza's central jail. And who can forget the spectacle captured on film of Hamas 'militants', killing Palestinians accused of giving aid and comfort to the Zionist enemy by dragging them to their deaths, attached to the bumpers of speeding cars?  "(2012) Hamas unleashed a savage show of violence Tuesday, killing six Palestinians suspected of spying for Israel — and dragging one of their lifeless bodies through the streets of Gaza."

Partners for peace.

Labels: Communications, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Peace

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 17, 2013