OK, so by this afternoon, the exchange rate of death in two days was 40-0 in favour of Israel. But now for the Gaza story you won\u2019t be hearing from anyone else in the next few hours.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about land. The Israelis of Sederot are coming under rocket fire from the Palestinians of Gaza and now the Palestinians are getting their comeuppance. Sure. But wait, how come all those Palestinians \u2013 all 1.5 million \u2013 are crammed into Gaza in the first place? Well, their families once lived, didn\u2019t they, in what is now called Israel? And got chucked out \u2013 or fled for their lives \u2013 when the Israeli state was created.
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And \u2013 a drawing in of breath is now perhaps required \u2013 the people who lived in Sederot in early 1948 were not Israelis, but Palestinian Arabs. Their village was called Huj. Nor were they enemies of Israel. Two years earlier, these same Arabs had actually hidden Jewish Haganah fighters from the British Army. But when the Israeli army turned up at Huj on 31 May 1948, they expelled all the Arab villagers \u2013 to the Gaza Strip! Refugees, they became. David Ben Gurion (Israel\u2019s first Prime Minister) called it an \u201cunjust and unjustified action\u201d. Too bad. The\u00a0 Palestinians of Huj were never allowed back.<\/p>\n
And today, well over 6,000 descendants of the Palestinians from Huj \u2013 now Sederot \u2013 live in the squalor of Gaza, among the \u201cterrorists\u201d Israel is claiming to destroy and who are shooting at what was Huj. Interesting story.<\/p>\n
And same again for Israel\u2019s right to self-defence. We heard it again today. What if the people of London were being rocketed like the people of Israel? Wouldn\u2019t they strike back? Well yes, but we Brits don\u2019t have more than a million former inhabitants of the UK cooped up in refugee camps over a few square miles around Hastings.<\/p>\n
The last time this specious argument was used was in 2008, when Israel invaded Gaza and killed at least 1,100 Palestinians (exchange rate: 1,100 to 13). What if Dublin was under rocket attack, the Israeli ambassador asked then? But the UK town of Crossmaglen in Northern Ireland was under rocket attack from the Irish Republic in the 1970s \u2013 yet the RAF didn\u2019t bomb Dublin in retaliation, killing Irish women and children. In Canada in 2008, Israel\u2019s supporters were making the same fraudulent point. What if the people of Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal were being rocket-attacked from the suburbs of their own cities? How would they feel? But the Canadians haven\u2019t pushed the original inhabitants of Canadian territory into refugee camps.<\/p>\n
And now let\u2019s cross to the West Bank. First of all, Benjamin Netanyahu said he couldn\u2019t talk to Palestinian \u201cPresident\u201d Mahmoud Abbas because he didn\u2019t also represent Hamas. Then when Abbas formed a unity government, Netanyahu said he couldn\u2019t talk to Abbas because he had unified himself with the \u201cterrorist\u201d Hamas. Now he says he can only talk to him if he breaks with Hamas \u2013 even though he won\u2019t then represent Hamas.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, that great leftist Israeli philosopher Uri Avnery \u2013 90 years old and still, thankfully, going strong \u2013 has picked up on his country\u2019s latest obsession: the danger that Isis will storm west from its Iraqi\/Syrian \u201ccaliphate\u201d and arrive on the east bank of the Jordan river.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Netanyahu said,\u201d according to Avnery, \u201cif they are not stopped by the permanent Israeli garrison there (on the Jordan river), they will appear at the gates of Tel Aviv.\u201d The truth, of course, is that the Israeli air force would have crushed Isis the moment it dared to cross the Jordanian border from Iraq or Syria.<\/p>\n
The importance of this, however, is that if Israel keeps its army on the Jordan (to protect Israel from Isis), a future \u201cPalestine\u201d state will have no borders and will be an enclave within Israel, surrounded on all sides by Israeli-held territory.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch like the South African Bantustans,\u201d says Avnery. In other words, no \u201cviable\u201d state of Palestine will ever exist. After all, aren\u2019t Isis just the same as Hamas? Of course not.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not what we heard from Mark Regev, Netanyahu\u2019s spokesman. No, what he told Al Jazeera was that Hamas was \u201can extremist terrorist organisation not very different from Isis in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Boko Haram\u2026\u201d Tosh. Hezbollah is a Shia militia now fighting to the death inside Syria against the Sunni Muslims of Isis. And Boko Haram \u2013 thousands of kilometres from Israel \u2013 is not a threat to Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n
But you get the point. The Palestinians of Gaza \u2013 and please forget, forever, the 6,000 Palestinians whose families come from the land of Sederot \u2013 are allied to the tens of thousands of Islamists threatening Maliki of Baghdad, Assad of Damascus or President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja. Even more to the point, if Isis is heading towards the edge of the West Bank, why is the Israeli government still building colonies there \u2013 illegally, and on Arab land \u2013 for Israeli civilians?<\/p>\n
This is not just about the foul murder of three Israelis in the occupied West Bank or the foul murder of a Palestinian in occupied East Jerusalem. Nor about the arrest of many Hamas militants and politicians in the West Bank.\u00a0 Nor about rockets. As usual, it\u2019s about land.<\/p>\n
Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OK, so by this afternoon, the exchange rate of death in two days was 40-0 in favour of Israel. But now for the Gaza story you won\u2019t be hearing from anyone else in the next few hours. It\u2019s about land. … Continue reading