Gaza Palestinians walking into a trap

Gaza is under siege. More than 1.4 million impoverished Palestinian people living in the world's largest refugee camp, and now prison, have no electricity, no water and no adequate medical supplies. They cannot even flee to neighbouring Egypt. They are surrounded on all sides and being bombed by an enemy which only nine months ago dismantled illegal settlements it had built on robbed Palestinian lands and left Gaza. The enemy has returned and wants to create what it calls a buffer zone to protect Israeli towns from Qassam rockets. Compared to Israel's fire power, Qassam rockets are just damp squibs. What is happening in Gaza constitutes war crimes. Punishing a population for the crime of one group is the height of barbarism that only Hitler knew when he massacred Jews and Gypsies during World War II. Collective punishment is not what a civilized nation would inflict on a victim nation.

The Gaza Strip is a narrow piece of land along the Mediterranean coast between Israel and Egypt. Just 40km long and 10km wide, it is home to more than 1.4m Palestinians. The shape of the territory was defined by the Armistice Line following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent war between the Israeli and Arab armies. Egypt occupied the Strip for the next 19 years, but Israel conquered it during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and Gaza has been under Israeli control since then. In 2005, Israel pulled out the troops occupying Gaza, along with thousands of Jews who had settled in the territory. However, that has not been accepted internationally as Israel still exercises exclusive control over most of Gaza's land borders, as well as its territorial waters and airspace. - BBC

Israeli Prime Minister is not a believer in an eye-for-an-eye or a tooth-for-a-tooth policy. He believes in an eye-for-an-eyelash or a jaw-for-a-tooth policy.

The retaliatory attacks Israel is launching for the kidnapping of one Israeli soldier by a Palestinian group affiliated to Hamas is disproportionate by any standard. The West's conspicuous silence emboldens Olmert to continue his onslaught on Gaza. He is further encouraged when the Western media portray the Israeli attacks as justifiable response.

There is little mention about the plight of the Palestinian people who have been punished since they elected Hamas to office in elections early this year. The United States, Canada and other Western countries froze aid earmarked for the Palestinians while Israel refused to release the tax income it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Only two months ago, the European Union decided to release a portion of the aid but not to the administration elected by the Palestinians. The aid goes to humanitarian agencies. About one third of the Palestinian people depend on salaries from the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas administration is severely cash-strapped. It is a case of victims of occupation and oppression being further oppressed by the international community and Israel. The Palestinians in Gaza take a bath only once in four days because there is no electricity to pump water. The wounded cannot be moved out of Gaza for treatment. They are condemned to die in hospitals without proper medical attention.

Yet, the victims are seen as wrongdoers and the international community does little or nothing to stop the Israeli rampage.

South African freedom fighter and Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

When a case against a criminal who has robbed land is asked to settle out of court amicably, the settlement should be worked out on the victim's terms and conditions. But in the case of Palestine, the international community expects the victims to fall in line with the rogue state that is forcibly occupying their land and inflicting untold hardship on them.

The manner in which Israel is carrying out its raid on Gaza makes one ask whether Olmert is searching for Corporal Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped soldier, or making the sky to fall on the Palestinians as he vowed on Tuesday he would.

Israel continues to attack the Palestinian Prime Minister's office, the Interior Ministry and other government and infrastructure facilities in Gaza. It has arrested one third of the Palestinian cabinet and scores of legislators; sent its warplanes over Syria and vowed to assassinate Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal. This is certainly not the way a civilized nation would conduct itself.

According to a poll published on Friday, four out of five Israelis want their government to assassinate Hamas leaders to end the current Gaza crisis.

The poll by the Israeli newspaper Maariv found that 82% of the population favoured killing leading members of the group, whose military wing was involved in abducting the Israeli soldier, the Guardian newspaper reported.

The poll in a way gives a carte blanche for Olmert to eliminate Palestinian leaders. "I take personal responsibility for what is happening in Gaza. I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," Olmert declared this week. But the groups which kidnapped the soldier have said it would not release the soldier unless Israel releases 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held without charge. There are some 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, languishing in Israeli jails and subjected to alleged torture. Their fate is perhaps worse than that of hundreds of prisoners George W. Bush is detaining without trial at the Guantanamo Bay prison which the Amnesty International described as a "gulag".

If Israel could hold 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, why cannot the Palestinian freedom fighters hold one or two Israeli soldiers who are no angels in the eyes of the Palestinians? The whole Gaza offensive appears to be part of a major Israeli plan to redraw the map of Israel and legitimize more land grab. Olmert was elected on a pledge that he would redraw the borders of Israel and settle the Palestinian crisis once and for all with or without Palestinian participation.

That the Israeli offensive comes hours after Hamas announced that it was in agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with regard to the so-called prisoners' document which recognizes Israel adds credence to the theory that Israel wants to scuttle Palestinian unity.

Israel wants Hamas to resort to more drastic actions so that it could project Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and his Hamas MPs as a bunch of terrorists. As scores of Palestinians are being killed in the ongoing Israeli military offensive, Hamas has called on the Palestinians to fight the Israelis. But Hamas must be careful not to fall into the trap Israel has set for it.