A 6-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza was killed by Israeli fire on June 12.
“Medics say the girl (Hadeel Al-Smeiri) was decapitated by a (tank) shell,” the Associated Press reported the next day. The Israeli military said the soldiers opened fire in retaliation to “militants launching rockets into Israel.” AP dispassionately elaborated, “Gaza militants fire rockets and mortars into Israel almost daily.” The story of a few lines ends with another corroboration of the claims made by the Israeli military: “The shelling occurred near the border where militants fired 30 rockets into Israel on Tuesday.”
The story struck me beyond its value in attempting to analyze mainstream reporting, or the callousness required of a military spokesperson to defend the decapitation of a 6-year-old as necessary retaliation. What is equally disturbing is the fact that Palestinian factions fail to see in Hadeel’s untimely death a compelling reason for unity.
Some Palestinians, especially those in President Mahmoud Abbas’ camp, are still struggling with their sense of priorities.
Jeremy Bowen of the BBC wrote on June 11: “The humiliation of June 2007 (when Hamas took over Gaza) will not easily be forgotten by Fatah’s people. One of his senior ministers exploded with such fury whenever I asked him about it that his voice sent the dials on the BBC’s recording equipment hurtling into the red.”
Would the respected minister have responded with such intensity if Bowen sought his views on the murder of Hadeel?
The minister, of course, finds it difficult to get over such seemingly unforgivable action by Hamas, while himself forgetting reports in the US media — Vanity Fair to be more precise — that Mohammed Dahlan, until that day the Fatah strongman in Gaza, headed the US-Israeli plot to carry out a military onslaught against the democratically elected government in Gaza. The plan was botched because of Hamas’ pre-emptive takeover of the strip.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “as of May 26, 64 children had been killed in the conflict since the beginning of the year — more than the total child death toll for all of 2007. 59 of the deaths were in Gaza and another four victims were Israeli children.”
UNICEF reported: “Across the West Bank, some 600 obstacles to movement — and the barrier separating the West Bank from Israel — make it difficult for children to attend schools, patients to go to health centers and families to see each other. The closure regime is tightening even for UN humanitarian operations.” Yet, the minister, and many like him, find Hamas’ violence in June 2007 the pinnacle of humiliation. Puzzling, indeed.
What is more humiliating — the site of Dahlan’s office chair filled with bullet holes, or Palestinian mothers, elders, children lining up before an abusive group of trigger-happy Israeli soldiers, jeering in broken Arabic every racist word that they can conjure up? Meanwhile, recent news reports spoke of assurances made by Abbas to the anxious US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his offer to dialogue with Hamas was conditional. Why condition talks among brethren while allowing Israel the endless benefit of the doubt?
Perhaps Abbas, and the angry minister in the BBC report are not clear on how Israel envisions the Palestinian state they tirelessly promise. “The future Palestinian state must be established according to Israel’s security needs, including supervision of border crossings and the disarming of militants,” reported Haaretz in reference to comments made by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni; so much for the “sovereignty” aspect of the new state.
More, the Israeli paper went on to report: “Israel says it intends to keep major settlement blocs in the West Bank under any future peace deal with the Palestinians and that its network of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank helps to prevent attacks on Israelis.” Even if the Israeli promise of statehood ever actualizes, it has the word “apartheid” written all over it.
Palestinians need not pay much attention to Livni’s futile visions, and focus their energies to unify their ranks, for nothing compels more fury than their disunity, and nothing is as humiliating as their reliance on Israeli and US arms and money to keep their own brethren in Gaza, starved and browbeaten, at bay.
