Cartoon by Apicella: The Boy Without Pajamas …And without food, water, electricity, medicine.
By Ramzy Baroud* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz
Gaza's troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped, from the mainstream media's radar, and by extension from public consciousness. This conveys a false impression that things are improving and people are starting to rebuild their lives.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel's war last year the Palestinian Ministry of Health has declared that 344 Gaza patients must now be added to the growing number of casualties.
Khaled Abed Rabbo, once a young father of four, is a living example of the ongoing tragedy. His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his children. He buried seven-year-old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after losing any hope that his four-year-old daughter Samar's future would be any less bleak.
According to an IslamOnline report Khaled's wife, Kawthar, lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding up a white flag. But their internationally recognised gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces who began shelling their home. These miserable events unfolded over Christmas time last year. The Rabbo family was reduced by nearly half.
Since then they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds, as has the fact that the Israeli siege on Gaza is the quintessence of barbarism. Yet just as in December 2008, the Israeli blockade means almost nothing enters or exits Gaza. The injured, in need of treatment, are not allowed to leave, while medical supplies, medicine and food are routinely prevented from entering.
With entire neighbourhoods pulverised concrete is desperately needed to rebuild homes, mosques, hospitals and other structures that were destroyed. But concrete, like everything else, is forbidden. And so Khaled, like many others, has little hope that his home, which has lain in ruins for the best part of a year, will be restored any time soon.
From 14 September to 2 October, 2009, the Human Rights Council will conduct a session during which the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights will present a report based on the fact finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, conducted after the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Eight months after the bloodletting of Operation Cast Lead a 34-page report by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, released on 13 August, pressed for the Gaza blockade to be lifted. The report, which will be presented alongside Goldstone's in September, lays out in detail how Israel battered the Strip, one of the most impoverished and densely populated places on earth.
Israel was found to have contravened the most basic norms of human decency: "Under the Universal Declaration of Human rights everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country... and everyone has the right to seek asylum. Such calls were ignored, and the borders of the Gaza Strip remained closed throughout the conflict," noted the report.
"The right to health of children, set out in [international law] is of particular concern in Gaza. United Nations agencies, Ministry of Health officials and health NGOs report that rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, compounded by the conflict, have increased the threat of child malnutrition. In January, UNICEF said that 10.3 per cent of Gazan children under five were stunted."
The report continues, expressing concern that the only exports allowed out of Gaza in almost two years have been 13 large truckloads of cut flowers, and fully recognising that the siege was a response to the Gazan people exercising their right to elect a Hamas government.
From the denial of food, medical supplies and housing to clean water and education, any basic sense of what the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights calls the "highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" has been systematically undermined by Israel.
One cannot help but wonder, even after so many years of witnessing the ingenuity of Israel when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, how the Israeli government and public can feel not the slightest embarrassment in denying an entire people access to something as basic as food and clean water.
Certainly this is something Khaled must ponder from time to time. Life has been no cake-walk for him, though this last year must have been the most trying of all with two little ones dead, what remains of his family homeless and the third of his four children struggling to walk in a Belgium hospital.
Four-year-old Sana was supposedly one of the lucky children on that day. She survived, one of very few that escaped to safety through Egypt's sealed border. But she has two bullets lodged in her tiny spine, so deeply embedded that Belgian surgeons cannot remove them. Now she is paralysed, her body propped up and supported by a pink and purple back brace, like a fairy's suit of armour. Her chances of ever walking again are slim. Just two or three short years after graduating from a crawl she will most likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
The right of a child to walk: it is too basic, perhaps, to be included in human rights documents, yet not too basic for Israel to deny.
* 
By Ramzy Baroud*
As Israeli bombs fell on the Gaza Strip during its one-sided war between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009, millions around the world took to the streets in complete and uncompromising outrage. The level of barbarity in that war, especially as it was conducted against a poor, defenseless and physically trapped nation, united people of every color, race and religion. But among those who seemed utterly unmoved, unreservedly cold were some Palestinian officials in the West Bank.
Mahmoud Habbash, the PA Minister of Social Affairs is but one of those individuals. His appearances on Aljazeera, during those fateful days were many. On one half of the screen would be screaming, disfigured children, mutilated women, and search parties digging in the dark for dead bodies, at times entire families. On the other, was Habbash, spewing political insults at his Hamas rivals in Gaza, repeating the same message so tirelessly parroted by his Israeli colleagues. Every time his face appeared on the screen, I cringed. Every unruly shriek of his, reinforced my sense of shame. Shame, perhaps, but never confusion. Those who understand how the Oslo agreement of September 1993 morphed into a culture that destroyed the very fabric of Palestinian society can fully appreciate the behavior of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank during the Gaza war, before it and today.
But especially today.
Those who hoped that the Israeli atrocities in Gaza would rekindled a sense of remorse among the egotistical elites in Ramallah, were surely disappointed when the PA withdrew its draft resolution supporting recommendations made by South African Judge Richard Goldstone. The Goldstone report is the most comprehensive, and transparent investigation as of yet into what happened in Gaza during the 23-day war. It decried Israeli terror, and chastised Palestinians as well. But the focus on Israel undoubtedly and deservingly occupied much of the nearly 600-page report. The next step was for the Human Rights Council to send the report for consideration to the United Nations Security Council, which was to study the findings for a possible referral of the case to the International Criminal Court e in the Hague. Such a move would have been historic. Knowing the full implications of such a possibility, Hamas accepted the report's recommendations in full. Israel, backed by its traditional US ally, rejected it, leveling all sorts of accusations and insults on the world-renowned Jewish judge.
The draft resolution " condemning Israel and calling for the transfer of the report to the UNSC - was due for a vote at the Council on October 2. Alas, it was withdrawn at the behest of the Palestinian Authority and its president Mahmoud Abbas himself. Palestinian friends and allies at UNHRC were shocked, but obliged. They were equally disappointed when they watched PA envoys discussing the matter, not with the Asian, African or other traditional allies at the Council, but with US and European diplomats, who seemed to have a greater sway over Palestinian political action than those who have for decades supported Palestinian rights at every turn.
Something went horribly wrong. How could a leader of an occupied and suffering nation commit such a 'mistake', deferring an urgent vote and discussion on a report pertaining to the death of over 1,400 people, the maiming and wounding of thousands more, to a later date, six months from today?
Theories flared. Israeli and other media argued that US pressure on PA president Mahmoud Abbas was the main reason behind the supposedly unanticipated move. A positive vote on the resolution would jeopardize the 'peace process', therefore any action must be stifled for the sake of giving the 'peace process' a chance, was the rationale.
Amira Hass of Haaretz opined, "The chronic submissiveness is always explained by a desire to 'make progress.' But for the PLO and Fatah, progress is the very continued existence of the Palestinian Authority, which is now functioning more than ever before as a subcontractor for the IDF, the Shin Bet security service and the Civil Administration."
Jonathan Cook, however, offered another view: "Israel warned it would renege on a commitment to allot radio frequencies to allow Wataniya, a mobile phone provider, to begin operations this month in the West Bank. The telecommunications industry is the bedrock of the Palestinian economy, with the current monopoly company, PalTel, accounting for half the worth of the Palestinian stock exchange."
"No blood for mobile phones," should perhaps be the new chant in Palestine. But it's that sad fact that held the Palestinian will hostage for too many years. However, it's not just mobile companies whose interests triumph over Gaza's agony. Indeed, the post-Oslo culture has espoused a class of contractors. These are businessmen who are either high-ranking officials in the PA and the Fatah party, or both, or closely affiliated with them. Much of the billions of dollars of international aid that poured into Palestine following the signing of Oslo found its way into private bank accounts. Wealth generated more wealth and "export and import" companies sprung up like poison ivy amidst the poor dwelling of refugees throughout the occupied territories. The class of businessmen, still posing as revolutionaries, encroached over every aspect of Palestinian society, used it, controlled it, and eventually suffocated it. It espoused untold corruption, and, naturally, found an ally in Israel, whose reign in the occupied territories never ceased.
The PA became submissive not out of fear of Israeli wrath per se, but out of fear that such wrath would disrupt business, the flow of aid thus contracts. And since corruption is not confined by geographical borders, PA officials abroad took Palestinian shame to international levels. Millions marched in the US, in Europe, in Asia, South America and the rest of the world, chanting for Gaza and its victims, while some PA ambassadors failed to even turn out to participate. When some of these diplomats made it to public forums, it was for the very purpose of brazenly attacking fellow Palestinians in Hamas, not to garner international solidarity with their own people.
Readily blaming 'American pressure' to explain Abbas' decision at the UNHRC no longer suffices. Even the call on the 74-year-old Palestinian leader to quit is equally hollow. Abbas represents a culture, and that culture is self-seeking, self-serving and utterly corrupt. If Abbas exits, and considering his age, he soon will, Mohammed Dahlan could be the next leader, or even Mahmoud Habbash, who called on Gaza to rebel against Hamas as Israel was blowing up Palestinian homes and schools left and right.
Palestinians who are now calling for change following the UN episode must consider the Oslo culture in its entirety, its 'revolutionary' millionaires, its elites and contractors. A practical alternative to those corrupt must be quickly devised. The Israeli wall is encroaching on Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, and a new war might be awaiting besieged Gaza. Time is running out, and our collective shame is nearly complete.
* Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle
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When Mr. Baroud says,”One cannot help but wonder … how the Israeli government and public can feel not the slightest embarrassment in denying an entire people access to something as basic as food and clean water,” it is evident that he has not read the Talmud. The Talmud teaches that all non-Jews (the “Goyim”) are mere animals, without souls, and are the spawn of Satan. Jews can cheat, defraud, abuse, oppress and kill the Goyim because they are subhuman, and all their property belongs to the Jews, as God’s Chosen People. In fact, the Jews are OBLIGATED to exterminate the Goyim after they have squeezed every drop of life from them and confiscated all their wealth and property. With a pernicious, evil ideology like that, it is no wonder to me that the Israelis do what they do.
The state Gaza is in IS terrible and the fact the nobody seems to want to hear their cries IS an atrocity. Of ALL of the people in this world, those who cry, “never again” have done (again and again) to the children, mothers, fathers of Palestine, worse than was done to Israel’s generation past.
How can the world, my country especially, ignore this? WHY are we allowing these camps of exclusion to prevail? How is Israel in the “right” in any of this?
The situation in ALL of Palestine, including Gaza, is just oompletely wrong and Israel NEEDS to be called onto the mat by the rest of the world.
If Israel continues in this nazi-esque vain, it’s time for the world to stand up to them for these oppressed people!
More and more, Americans are learning of these truths, as the internet is flourishing with stories out of Gaza, Janin, Bi’lin, etc… I truly hope America will step in and help to stop the occupation of the people whose homeland was stolen.
Thank you for an excellent article.
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