What is happening in the region with the departure of George Bush who came in riding on a wave of self-induced enthusiasm and a can-do belief on Israeli-Palestinian politics?

Ask any Israeli, and the probable answer would be: progress.

But ask any Palestinian living in Gaza, and the answer would spell, in capital letters: “GENOCIDE!” That is, if one was fortunate enough to get close to Gaza and question the inhabitants considering the siege they have been squeezed in. It is a siege that continues, despite the success of a few desperate people in blowing up a section of the border wall at Rafah. The hole will be plugged.

Most of the Western media have conveniently chosen to focus coverage on every other scene of tragedy. But in a daily game of freezing electrical power and water supplies, of blocking the delivery of much-needed medical supplies and aid to treat the old and sick, and causing untold number of deaths, Israel is playing the role of a murdering conqueror in the region since its illegal inception.

According to Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the term is defined as:

“[A]ny of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part....”

Take these clauses one by one, turn them up or turn them down, and what you have is a description of what the Israelis are throttling the Palestinians with. And let’s not define such activity in any diplomatic pleasantry.

This is an ongoing holocaust while the world watches — a world held hostage by Israel’s continued acts of occupation and barbarity against the rightful inhabitants of a land that the world has turned its back on.

Now what would give a nation like Israel the brazen idea that such activity would sit well with the world? In a greater part, it is the continued assenting posture of the United States government that is fueling this drive to eliminate a people from their own little spot on earth.

The fact that there has been little or no censure from the US of recent Israeli activity in Gaza has simply worked to encourage the brutality of the Israelis against the Palestinians. And the pathetic figure of an impotent UN secretary-general, who has proven himself to be nothing but a doormat for the US, does not give us the confidence that there would be any action from the man to bring attention to the dire situation of a people slowly being led to their deaths or to emphasize the need to help them.

And where are the European Union and the rest of the civilized world as such a holocaust unfolds? Do they believe that a holocaust a second time around will absolve them of their guilty complicity in the first one?

The Arab world should take heed of this ongoing murderous trend by the Israelis and reconsider thoughts of peaceful coexistence. What Israelis want is the systematic destruction of any people they deem a threat to them, and they are successfully doing it by proxy through the generosity of the US government with its billions in arms and aid.

All talks of a peaceful alliance, of olive branches being extended, of hope nurturing itself in the region will remain just an illusion as long as Israel continues this genocide against hapless Palestinians.

And let not Bush or others warn us of imagined threats of death and destruction from Iran, Iraq or Timbuktu when the writing is on the wall — inscribed in the blood of innocent Palestinians.