Gaza Under Siege Once Again

The Israel-Palestine debate is such a perpetual issue at Columbia that it can be easy to neglect new developments. A vigil for Gaza at the Sundial, a panel discussion in a Hamilton classroom—these can be dismissed as containing nothing we haven’t heard before. But the situation in the region is not standing still, and the recent flurry of activity on campus has reason. Last month, the residents of the Gaza Strip temporarily escaped their prison, and for that they are now being punished, severely.

At the end of January, Palestinians in Gaza, who had suffered under Israeli and international blockade for two years and near-complete isolation for eight months, knocked down the wall fencing off their border with Egypt. It stayed down for 12 days, during which approximately 350,000 Gazans crossed into Egypt to buy desperately needed food, fuel, medicine, and other supplies. On Feb. 3, however, U.S.-backed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak finally overcame his fear of popular rebellion and ordered his security forces to once again shut down the crossing. Now, Israel—which bombed Gaza’s main power plant several months ago, leaving the territory dependent on Israel for two-thirds of its electricity—has not only re-established its blockade, but also further cut back the power supply.

January’s brief moment of hope notwithstanding, things look bleak for the people of Gaza. The Israeli government has embarked on an open policy of collective punishment. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared last Monday that “we will continue to apply sanctions that are hurtful to the needs of the [Palestinian] population” until all Palestinian rocket fire ceases. The only policy changes under consideration involve escalation—Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit reportedly argued in a Feb. 10 cabinet meeting that to “show them we mean business,” Israel should “decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.”

The effects of the extended siege and regular military incursions have been horrific. 80 percent of Gaza residents live below the poverty line, and the same percentage rely on international food aid to survive. Gaza suffers through rolling blackouts that last up to eight hours each day, half the homes in Gaza have running water for less than six hours a day, and 20 percent have no sewage connection. 40 Palestinians have died in Gaza hospitals since the start of the siege, after having been refused passage out of Gaza. More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli air strikes, shelling, and ground incursions since Israel’s “disengagement” in August 2005—approximately 60 percent were civilians, and at least 144 were children.

Of course, Israelis suffer too. The reason Olmert cited publicly for the most recent clampdown was the injury of a young boy in Sderot by a Palestinian rocket. Is Israel’s policy of collective punishment, deplorable though it may be, merely a response to similar Palestinian atrocities? The answer to this question is simple: no.

One basic distinction is arithmetical. Rockets fired from Gaza, which are the principal justification for the blockade, have killed 13 people in the last seven years—four of them since August 2005. By contrast, seven Palestinian picnickers were killed by a single Israeli shell striking a beach in June 2006. The overall ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in the conflict since August 2005 is more than 20 to one.

Israel’s blockade is hard to understand as a defensive or retaliatory measure. It was imposed on Gaza starting in 2006, when the Islamist party Hamas, which at that time was maintaining a ceasefire toward Israel, won parliamentary elections. Hamas kept this unilateral ceasefire from February 2005 through April 2007, despite repeated Israeli attacks targeting the organization. This forbearance had no discernible impact on Israeli policy. Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire is a futile and ugly strategy, but when nonviolence gains the group nothing, it is easy to see why it has resorted to trying to raise the cost of Israeli policy by any means available. But then, the siege is not really about preventing rocket fire.

After Arab residents in 1948 rejected a UN partition plan allocating 55 percent of historical Palestine to a Jewish state representing 37 percent of the population, a young Israel seized an even larger portion of the territory by military force. The advancing Israeli armies drove out hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees, whose return Israel has ruled out in the name of preserving a Jewish majority (usually described more euphemistically as preserving “a Jewish and democratic state”). In 1967, Israel occupied the remaining 23 percent of historical Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has only gestured toward a real withdrawal from this 23 percent—under the Oslo Accords, settlement construction in the occupied territories increased. Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and to expand its settlements there, while Gaza, of course, remains under siege.

The upshot of this history is simple enough. Ultimately, Palestinians are fighting—and often murdering civilians—to obtain the democratic rights denied them for half a century, by means of either sovereign independence or equality in a single democratic bi-national state. Israel, with U.S. backing, is fighting—and often murdering civilians—to prevent this, and thereby preserve its racial hierarchy and its regional hegemony.

The violence of the oppressed may be reprehensible, but it is not morally equivalent to the violence of the oppressor. Nor can it make the struggle for a free Palestine and basic human dignity for Palestinians any less urgent.

David Judd is a senior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in computer science. The Point, However runs alternate Mondays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com