All In A Days Work For A Mythical Democracy

[Violet_Crumble]

In the mid-Gaza Strip, an old man dressed in white sits on a wooden box, watching an Israeli driven bulldozer destroy his land. The tree leaves are deep green and are crushed and caught in the pusher. This is making the trunks more mangled. He watches. The destruction goes on for hours.

There is nothing he can do. Under this ‘cease-fire,’ the Israeli government continues to send occupation soldiers to rip up trees and crops, creating wastelands that reinforce the myth that this is a land without a people, as if no Palestinian family ever lived here. This practice destroys the livelihood not only of families and communities, but creates Palestinian dependency on Israeli agricultural production.

Palestinian commerce remains at a virtual standstill with checkpoints and closures ensuring there is little ability to create Palestinian goods, or to work for the money necessary to rebuild destroyed factories, manufacturing centers, or shops. It reinforces one of the goals of occupation—to create such a dependency on Israeli goods and work, that whether or not the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) stays inside the West Bank and Gaza, the viability of a Palestinian state becomes ever more tenuous. Many Palestinian stores are stocked largely with Israeli goods. Many Israeli incursions include targeting shops, agricultural production and factories. This, the Israeli government blames on ‘security.’ A man in Gaza City, surveying his destroyed printing press shop, said, “If we make soap they say we’re making bombs.”

<snip>

This is all in a days work for an occupier. In just the first week (7 July-13 July) of this bilateral ‘cease-fire,’ the IOF committed at least 23 violations. IOF closed the Tufah checkpoint ensuring that Palestinians could not go home, shot into Rafah wounding a 16 and 17 year old, shelled houses in Khan Younis, snatched four people from Jabaliya Refugee Camp (and many more taken to prisons throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip), shot and wounded two PA police near Deir al Belah, opened fire into Rafah again, committed six closures, built two new ‘watch-towers’ or sniper posts, and sealed off roads to Bethlehem with cement and sandbags (by the way, contrary to one what thinks if they know of Israel’s much lauded Gaza-Bethlehem Agreement, the IOF is still inside Bethlehem, pointing their automatic weapons at the Aida Refugee Camp from their sniper post at ‘Rachel’s Tomb’). After the week-long period of the aforementioned study, IOF have killed Palestinians in the northern West Bank, taken many without charge to Israeli prisons, continued its tight closure of Hebron, incurred into Nablus and the Jenin area, have been flying over Bethlehem in F-16s, etc. This is just a sample of what Israel means by ‘cease-fire.’

Hamas and Jihad agreed to a cease-fire. Okay, but have Israeli Occupation Forces ceased firing? No. Has the IOF ceased humiliating Palestinians in checkpoints or keeping them closed altogether? No. Palestinians still largely cannot move from one of their own towns to the next. Has the IOF ceased home demolitions? No. Have they ceased settlement construction? No. Just from looking out the window settlement activity is visible. Have they ceased building the towering apartheid wall in the West Bank and southern Gaza Strip? No.


http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=3939

[jos]

1. Great article

Thanks for the post.

I'm sure the American media will focus on the substance of this article like a laser beam. Not!