WHY ISRAEL IS AN OCCUPATION DENIER
Every day of 56 years of Israeli occupation of Gaza is a provocation
Mainstream media is awash with hysterical claims that the Hamas invasion of Israel was unprovoked. But anyone who ignores the context and turns a blind eye to the oppression of Palestinians has blood on their hands. Here is the context of the current conflict in Gaza, and why Israel continues to be an occupation-denier:
Background: the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip (1967-now)
Israel conquered the Gaza Strip and placed it under Israeli military administration in 1967. In 2005 troops were withdrawn but control was kept over Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters.
In 2006, Hamas (‘Islamic Resistance Movement’) won the Palestinian legislative elections and assumed administrative control of Gaza Strip and some of the West Bank. It had waged a political campaign based on anti-corruption, the establishment of an Islamic State and resistance to Israeli aggression.
After the election Hamas’ then-leader Khaled Meshal wrote in an op ed piece:
‘We shall never recognize the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognize the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else’s sins or solve somebody else’s problem.
‘But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.’
Ignoring the hand of peace, the Israeli occupation of Gaza was enforced in 2007 via a draconian land, sea and air blockade maintained with high-tech fences, electronic surveillance, crackdown on protestors and periodic bombardments. Hamas retaliated by launching thousands of rockets into Israeli territory.
2.1 million people are currently locked into the Gaza Strip, of which 1.5 million are refugees. It is 41 km (25 mi) long, from 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of 365 km2 (141 sq mi). It ranks as the 3rd most densely populated in the world. Electricity and energy shortages have affected sewage systems: the water isn’t safe to drink.
Unable to develop due to trading, educational and employment restrictions, 80% of the population are dependent on humanitarian aid. 50% are food insecure. 80% of youth are unemployed. Child and teenage suicide rate has soared. Young Palestinians join resistance groups and protests as an antidote to despair.
Periodic ferocious collective bombardments have been inflicted on Gaza’s civilians in 2006, 2008-9 (23 days,) 2012 (8 days,) 2014 (50 days,) 2021 (11 days.) According to the United Nations, roughly 6,400 Palestinians and 300 Israelis had been killed in the Gaza conflict since 2008, not counting the current conflict.
In recent years, Israel has come under increasing pressure to restore the Palestinian territories to pre-1967 borders.
The United Nations Human Rights Council in 2023:
‘Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, end its occupation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, and stresses that all efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be grounded in respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law and relevant United Nations resolutions…’
As of October 9, hundreds of Gaza inhabitants have died under a ferocious bombardment. A spokesman said Israel is fighting against ‘human animals’ and it will shut down everything: ‘no fuel, electricity, food and water.’
KHAN YUNIS, GAZA - AUGUST 3, 2014. : Palestinians inspect destroyed buildings and collect usable stuff following an Israeli air assault staged within the scope of 'Operation Protective Edge' in Huzaa district of Khan Yunis, Gaza on August 3, 2014. Yasser Qudih/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Source: Did Israel violate international law in Gaza? - Vox
After the unprecedented incursion by Hamas into Israel this month, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says the country is at war.
An invasion seems to be in the offing. Questions arise as how that will be achieved.
The last time the Israeli military saw hand-to-hand combat in Gaza was in 2014. Unfamiliar with fighting on Gaza’s urban terrain, it withdrew after losing 68 soldiers.
The last ground war fought by Israelis was in 1973. Today, like the United States, Israel’s military is casualty-shy and adverse to face-to-face combat. It engages mainly with air power and drones, as well as shooting at the legs and ankles of protestors. It fears the well-armed Hezbollah in Lebanon coming in to support Hamas.
Israel as Occupation Denier: Hamas as ‘fig leaf’
In 2005, then Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that Israel was withdrawing the military occupation because of ‘demography.’ The pull-out allowed Israel to subtract the 1.4 million Palestinians who lived there and claim that the overall Jewish majority would get back up to 57 percent. (Cook, 2006.)
Under occupation, Palestinians would be classified either as residents or citizens of Israel. Today, if the occupied territories were counted, the population of Israel would be 50% Palestinian, defeating the purpose of the ‘Jewish state.’
Thus, Israel denies it is occupying the Palestinian Territories. It refers to to the Palestine Authority instead. The United Nations and most countries refer to the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories.’ The United States, Israel’s ally, doesn’t.
(Israel’s anathema to any reference to their occupation is such that a group called Students for Israel complained when I mentioned ‘Occupied Palestine’ in a course syllabus. I was dropped from the university.)
Israel’s claim is that Gaza is an independent entity governed by a designated terrorist group, Hamas. This characterization serves the following objectives:
· Abnegation of Israel’s responsibilities as an occupying power under the Geneva Conventions.
· Denial that Hamas is a resistance movement legal under international law as was, for example, the French Resistance in World War Two.
· Justification of blockades and bombardments as Israel’s ‘self defence’ against an independent territory and not as aggression against an occupied population.
· Classification of 2.1 million Gaza population as non-Israeli.
Israel likes the legal ambiguity with which it has maintained the status quo in Gaza for 17 years. Can it withstand the grind of an expensive and unpopular military occupation necessary to maintain a defeat of Hamas?
Michel Chossudovsky’s excellent article details Israel’s theft of Gaza’s off-shore gas fields in Operation Cast Lead in 2008: War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
The theft of Gaza’s land will be far more difficult.
Provoked War
IfNotNow, a progressive American Jewish group that opposes Israeli apartheid, said last Saturday that while “we watch the unfolding horrors with heartbreak and dread for our loved ones ― Israelis and Palestinians alike” ― the attack by Palestinian fighters was a result of decades of oppression.
“We cannot and will not say today’s actions by Palestinian militants are unprovoked,” the group said in a statement.
I could not agree more.
References:
Bitter 16: New report documents consequences of Israel's blockade on Gaza (euromedmonitor.org)
Humanitarian situation in Gaza - House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)
Gaza Strip protesters received bullet wounds to ankles, medics report | Gaza | The Guardian
Jews now a 47% minority in Israel and the territories, demographer says | The Times of Israel
Cook, Jonathan (2006). Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-2555-2.
About Us - Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (globalr2p.org)
Israeli’s 9/11
Another brutal US-backed regime stealing the words of the oppressed by calling Palestinians ‘genocidal terrorists’ & ‘human animals’ whilst grabbing land
Thank you. The United Nations Human Rights Council in 2023:
‘Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, end its occupation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, and stresses that all efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be grounded in respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law and relevant United Nations resolutions…’