Israel attacked the Gaza Strip during the past couple of days without any reason or justification. The Israeli Army bombarded the strip with one thousand missiles and bombs throughout three days last week. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, deputy chief of the general staff of the Israel Defense Forces, confirmed the bombing by saying that the Israeli artillery fired on Gaza Strip with some 300 missiles a day and it didn’t stop the Palestinian terrorism (legal resistance). The question is: What is the reason for this savagery? Are the Israelis trying to bring the Palestinian resistance to its knees? Are there any other goals behind these horrific operations? I couldn’t find any reasonable explanation for what happened. The only thing I could think of is that Israel is trying to force the Hamas volunteers to carry out suicide operations against Israel. If they do so, the Israeli government would have one more excuse to refuse to deal with Hamas and to continue to describe them as terrorists. Second, it gives Israel the opportunity to announce and impose unilateral steps like determining the final borders of the Jewish state and thereby take over more Palestinian lands and continue building the racist wall.
Israel wasn’t satisfied with the savage bombing. It persuaded Europe to suspend the aid given to Palestinians. The American administration has already done so. They are punishing the Palestinians for electing Hamas though it was done in free elections, which Washington supposedly wants in the greater Middle East. Unfortunately, the United Nations too ended their cooperation with the Palestinian government although it goes against UN principles and covenant. The UN is an international institution that must not be influenced by the political decisions that the United States and the European Union take from time to time.
Following the Israeli Army’s brutal operations in the Gaza Strip, the Arab group in New York submitted a proposal to the Security Council calling on Israel to stop the continuing violence against the Palestinians. Fourteen members of the council supported the motion, but as was only to be expected, the United States vetoed it. The Americans said the proposal was unfair to Israel. What is more, it will “hurt the feelings” of Israelis while they were celebrating the Jewish festival of Passover. Thus the United States gave Israel the green light once again to go ahead with its one-sided steps.
The strange thing is that the White House wants the Arab nations to be democratic and strengthen their relations with Israel. The American administration has always sided with Israel at the expense of Arab countries and Palestinian rights since the founding of the Jewish state on usurped Palestinian lands. The American bias in favor of Israel is such that at times it looks like racial discrimination against Arabs. This would only harm American interests in the long run.
A former US diplomat, John Gunther Dean, admitted as much when he said: “In many ways, the Palestine problem is the most pervasive, complex and dangerous problem in American foreign policy. It is also the most difficult to address because it is so deeply embedded in guilt, emotion and fear as to be almost beyond rational thought.”
He said that Americans, both government officials and private citizens, feel far freer to criticize America, Britain or France without being thought to dislike or oppose the peoples of those countries, but most non-Jews are afraid of being charged with anti-Semitism even if they are only critical of the hard-line policies of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Dean said Israel is no longer, if it ever was, an international charity. “It is a relatively powerful, rich nation-state. It should be analyzed, as its own citizens analyze its actions, in respectful terms.”
Dean, who worked in US foreign service for 50 years, added: “When Israel saw a conflict between its goals and ours, it naturally chose its own. America has seldom done so. At the governmental level we tiptoe around issues, which have severely harmed American interests. Example: the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon was profoundly disturbing to American relations throughout the Middle East; its policy toward the Palestinians has stopped the peace process and certainly promoted terrorism directed at America.”
Can we ever expect a balanced approach from the Americans to a problem that threatens both international security and peace?
