Paul Mason, Channel 4 News (Gaza City)
“In the destroyed suburb of Zeitoun in Gaza City Paul Mason finds local support for Hamas still strong.”
They look you in the eye and say we are not giving up our support for the Resistance (Hamas) and there will be no peace until the Israeli siege on Gaza is lifted.
Palestinians have the right to self defense. Israel does not, at least not now. It has an obligation (not right) which is to end all forms occupation in both Gaza and the Westbank and compensate Palestinians for 5 decades of suffering. Till then, everything Israel does to the Palestinians is aggression, not self defense.
“there will be no peace until the Israeli siege on Gaza is lifted.”
Lifting the siege on Gaza would not bring peace, either. There will be no peace until the Israelis officially recognize the right of the Palestinians to a nation-state of their own, and all elements and factions of the Palestinian leadership officially recognize Israel’s right to exist as a nation-state. And both official acts of recognition must occur simultaneously.
It is a fool’s errand to demand one side’s recognition first, before extending recognition by the other. If all ruling factions and coalitions cannot agree to such simultaneous recognition, there will be no real peace. So put away childish rants of irredentism (both of “Greater Israel” and of “replacing Israel”) and get down to the hard work of negotiating joint recognition.
They already did in 1988. Didn’t stop Israel from building settlements and expanding at the expense of anyone non-Jewish.
There has been no joint, official recognition of an Israeli nation-state and a Palestinian nation-state by both Israel and the Palestinian authorities, neither in 1988 nor since.
The immediate cause of the ongoing military conflict in Gaza is the Israeli blockade that chokes the Gazan economy. Without the blockade there would be no rockets fired into Israel. This has nothing to do with the mutual recognition of Israeli and Palestinian states – Israel is violating international law by imposing such a blockade and the Hamas rocket attacks at Israeli population centers likewise are war crimes.
Israeli newspaper editorials have been critical of the Israeli government for squandering 2.5 billion dollars on a military operation that does not fully and finally defeat Hamas but drains the Israeli treasury at a time when a growing percentage of Israelis are living beneath the poverty line.
The ongoing violence in Gaza is detrimental to all sides and the blockade being lifted shall accomplish this.
The question is, will lifting the siege of Gaza bring peace? No, it will not. It may end the immediate military confrontation, but is not the same as peace. Peace will only be achieved when all parties to the conflict officially, formally, and simultaneously extend recognition as nation-states to both Israel and Palestine. Anything less simply continues the festering resentment on both sides.
The whole world saw and remembers the Israeli illegal piracy act in international waters against the Turkish Freedom Flotilla passenger ship MV Mavi Marmara and other ships, killing 9 Turkish pacifists and injuring several dozen others, bringing medication and food to Gaza on May 22, 2010. If that’s not another blatent example of Israeli blockade against Gaza, I don’t know what is. The blockade idea probably comes from what used to be big brother US, now at the service of the Israeli cause…