Israel Punishes the Palestinian People for Voting the ‘Wrong Way’
by Aisha Gawad
As the United States appears to wage a war for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems only logical that it would be thrilled with the news that a Middle Eastern nation had carried out legitimate, fair and free elections. In different circumstances, the US would indeed be thrilled, but not when the voters are Palestinians and the electoral winner is Hamas. Since the January 2006 elections in Palestine that resulted in a Hamas controlled Parliament, the US has joined its ally Israel in a campaign to bring down the newly elected government. The effect of this campaign has not hurt Hamas members, or “terrorists” as the US and Israel would label them, as much as it has hurt the Palestinian people. The effort to bring down a government is manifest more in the streets of occupied Palestine than in the Parliament or ministry buildings.
Already poor to begin with, around 165,000 Palestinian Authority employees have not been paid in months because of a halt in international aid, and because Israel has stopped distributing Palestinian tax and customs money. For people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, who essentially live in the world’s largest internment camps, six months without pay makes it nearly impossible to afford basic necessities.
Presently, with the Israeli military incursion into Gaza, many are worried about a possible humanitarian crisis gripping the Strip. The truth is, however, that Gazans were already facing a humanitarian crisis before the invasion. The Israeli siege, called “Operation Summer Rains,” does not create a new crisis, but exacerbates an existing one. Palestinians already live in substandard conditions; they have limited access to clean water, live in fear that their homes and olive groves will be demolished, and lack basic human rights such as freedom of movement. Nine thousand Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children, are being held without charges in Israeli prisons. To the international community, they are nameless and faceless. How can such a way of life not be considered a humanitarian crisis?
Israeli aggression in Gaza has been on the rise since June, even before Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured by gunmen. On June 9th, eight Palestinian civilians enjoying a day at the beach were killed with a 155mm Israeli artillery shell. From June 13 to June 20 alone, 12 Palestinian civilians were killed, including several children in Israeli missile attacks. On June 27, the onset of the current operation in Gaza, Israel bombed three bridges, Gaza’s only power source, and a university. Around 1.4 million people in Gaza are living without electricity and are quickly running out of water. Everyday, more civilians are being killed and more vital civilian infrastructure is being destroyed.
In addition to the attacks on Gaza, Israel is (as of press date) conducting a massive military operation in Lebanon, a country plagued by, and still recovering from war. In just over two weeks, the Israelis have bombed several villages and the Beirut airport, killing hundreds of civilians. More damage is being inflicted every hour.
Israeli uses US-supplied weapons for these attacks, which violates the US Arms Export Control Act. The act limits the use of US weapons in such a way that makes it illegal for Israel to use them to attack civilians. This current operation also breaks a slew of international laws. The United Nations Human Rights Council, in a vote 29-11, decided that the invasion violates international human rights law and voted to send a fact-finding mission to the area. The President of the European Union, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, also spoke out saying that the EU “condemns the loss of lives caused by disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces and the humanitarian crisis it has aggravated.”
By the standards of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the collective punishment of the Palestinian people by the Israelis is considered a war crime. Article 33 of the Conventions states that: “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed,” and “collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”
The US claims to want a Palestinian peace partner to negotiate for
a solution with the Israelis, but it supports an illegal occupation
and the persistent use of violence against civilians. As Ismail Haniyeh,
the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, writes in a July 11
op-ed in the Washington Post, the US thinks of Palestinians as terrorists,
“yet a nuclear Israel possesses the 13th largest military force on the
planet, one that is used to rule an area about the size of New Jersey
and whose adversaries there have no conventional armed forces. Who is
the underdog, supposedly America’s traditional favorite, in this case?”
The US will not find a future peace partner in the children of Palestine
today. Palestinian children are already facing permanent psychological
trauma as sonic booms and gunfire keep them awake at night. If the US
does not insist that Israel stops its military incursion immediately,
when it looks for a Palestinian who values optimism and diplomacy in
the future, all it will find is a Palestinian hardened by hatred.
