That didn’t take long. Just one day after the six-month truce between Hamas and Israel ended, a Palestinian was killed in an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip. When Hamas responded with a rocket volley of its own, wayward shrapnel seriously injured two nearby Palestinian children.
The attack was expected, Israel already having made preparations for the day when the cease-fire would end. Its troops are ready, the ammo is plentiful and the aim clear: To propel the situation in Gaza to critical mass, to the tragic detriment of the health and well being of its people.
Not that any contingency plans were needed. It does not really matter whether there is a truce or not. The economic blockade of Gaza, which was to have been lifted during this period of peace, is as strong as ever. Whichever way one decides to brand the problem — Hamas’ militancy or Israel’s collective punishment — there are 1.5 million hungry Gazans paying the price and Israel is all the while reaping the benefits. The aim of the game, which Israel plays expertly, is a complete and permanent rupture between the West Bank and Gaza.
When we understand this, we can understand Israel’s attitude toward the truce, which it wanted free-of-charge. Overall, the truce served Israel well for it allowed strangling without killing.
Israel is following through on a policy that aims to relieve it, as an occupying power, of its legal, political, moral and humanitarian responsibilities for Gaza. The first overture cannot come from the victim since that would mean an explicit acceptance of the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor as being somehow normal.
This, moreover, is the cornerstone in a strategy that seeks to forestall the creation of a Palestinian state and propel the Palestinian national project to nowhere. A host of decidedly right-wing fanatics have already joined or rejoined the Likud Party. Now nobody will accuse Netanyahu of being a hard-liner. As prime minister, he will only be carrying out the policies of the party. Under Netanyahu, Israel will remain deaf to international appeals, including that by the UN to open the Gaza border crossings in order to let in desperately needed aid. Israel is denying the entry of boats carrying aid seeking to break the border blockade. It listens not to thousands who flooded Beirut’s southern suburbs demanding an end to the blockade of Gaza Strip.
Hamas, of course, will continue to be blasted for ending the cease-fire and, before that, for refusing to enter into reconciliation talks with Fatah last month. But such criticism will not serve the cause. There used to be a Palestinian cause. Not anymore. The cause has lost its focus, though it should not. Israel is still the enemy and no matter how much we airbrush and touch up what was a so-called truce, reality remains as ugly and brutal as ever. After waiting for six months — actually four decades — for peace, everything remains the same. Israel is as belligerent as ever, as obstinate in its refusal to pay the costs of peace, as insensitive to those who have tried to make peace with it and to those it has made to suffer.
