When Did Israel Start the Gaza War?
According to Sara Roy, a Harvard University Middle East expert (see the January 2009 London Review of Books), the Israelis actually began the campaign to destroy Hamas on November 5 (only hours after US election results indicated a change of administration was coming in the US). To begin its attacks, the Israelis broke the truce that Hamas had observed for the past several months. Following that attack Israel has squeezed Gaza in virtually every possible way, blocking food supplies for United Nations Relief and Works and the World Food Program, refusing to permit entry of diesel fuel needed to run Gaza’s power station, interfering with the operations of Palestinian banks, blocking the movements of Palestinians, and preventing the entry of journalists or other observers into Gaza. There is no other example of a modern military power attacking an unarmed population this brutally and indiscriminately.
As Sara Roy and other observers describe it, the Israeli plan is to turn Gaza into a massive humanitarian problem that is devoid of any political dimension. That means the Israelis want the outside world to forget that the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza, are the other side of the long-stalled Israel/Palestine peace process. Rather, with the Sederot rocket attacks as the excuse, the Israelis want the outside world to believe that the entire problem is the fault of the Palestinians. However, the Israelis attacks look like an obvious effort to kill, wound, dismember and render homeless as many Palestinians as possible before world reaction sets in.
President Bush in commenting on the Gaza situation has made clear, the Israelis have an absolute right to defend themselves against Palestinian terrorism. However, the Palestinians have no right to defend themselves against Israeli attacks, constant Israeli harassment as now applied in and around Gaza, and the steady theft of their homes, including in Jerusalem, and farms throughout the West Bank.
Herein lies the gross blind spot in American Middle East Policy: The Israelis can do no wrong; and the Palestinians have no rights.
