How the War in Gaza Could Have Been Avoided

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/180945/how-war-gaza-could-have-been-avoided?utm_medium=email&newsletter=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20-%2020140812&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=email_nation

Alongside the toll of death and broken lives, perhaps the saddest reality of the latest Gaza war, like the Gaza wars before it, is how easy it would have been to avoid. For the last eight years, Israel and the US had repeated opportunities to opt for a diplomatic solution in Gaza. Each time, they have chosen war, with devastating consequences for the families of Gaza.

Let’s begin in June 2006, when the University of Maryland’s Jerome Segal, founder of the Jewish Peace Lobby, carried a high-level private message from Gaza to Washington. Segal had just returned from a meeting with Ismail Haniyeh, whose Hamas faction had recently won free and fair elections and taken power in Gaza. Hamas was seeking a unity government with the rival Fatah faction overseen by Mahmoud Abbas.

The previous year, Israel had withdrawn its soldiers and 8,000 settlers from Gaza, though its armed forces maintained a lockdown of the territory by air, land and sea, controlling the flow of goods and people. Gazans believed they were trapped in the world’s largest open-air prison. For generations they had lived in overcrowded refugee camps, after their villages were depopulated by Israel and new Israeli cities built on their ruins in the years that followed Israel’s birth in 1948. By voting for Hamas in 2006, Palestinians signaled their weariness with Fatah’s corruption and its failure to deliver an independent state, or even a long-promised safe passage corridor between the West Bank and Gaza. In the wake of its surprise election victory, Hamas was in turn showing signs of edging toward the political center, despite its militant history.

Nevertheless, Israel and “the Quartet”—the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations—refused to recognize the outcome of the democratic elections, labeling Hamas a “terrorist organization,” which sought Israel’s destruction. The administration of George W. Bush strongly pressured Abbas not to join a unity government. The Quartet suspended economic aid and Israel severely curtailed the flow of goods in and out of Gaza.

“It’s like meeting with a dietician,” remarked Dov Weisglass, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “We have to make [Gazans] much thinner, but not enough to die.” Only years later did researchers prove that Weisglass was speaking literally: Israeli officials had restricted food imports to levels below those necessary to maintain a minimum caloric intake. Child welfare groups began to report a sharp rise in poverty and chronic child malnutrition, anemia, typhoid fever and potentially fatal infant diarrhea. Human rights organizations denounced the measures as collective punishment. Avi Shlaim, a veteran of the Israeli army, author of numerous books on Middle East history, and professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, wrote:

America and the EU [European Union] shamelessly joined Israel in ostracizing and demonizing the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed. As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes.

[magical thyme]

1. they don't want to avoid it. nt

[malaise]

2. Genocide

That's the word

[azurnoir]

3. Ismail Haniyeh's 1 year old grand daughter died of an infection in her digestive tract

quite possibly caused by the blockades power shortages and water sanitation problems

Funeral “Amal” the granddaughter of the Palestinian prime minister “Ismail Haniyeh,” who martyred on 25 Nov. 2013, “Wednesday” due to the unjust blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip and power outages, this child martyr joining a list of victims of Palestinian children by the unjust siege!

She was suffering from serious infections in the digestive system adversely affected the nervous system and the brain, she considered a new victim of the victims of fuel shortages and power cuts in the Gaza Strip because of the unjust siege

http://www.islamicinvitationturkey.com/2013/12/01/funeral-amal-the-granddaughter-of-the-palestinian-prime-minister-ismail-haniyeh-who-martyred-on-25-nov/

I picked note this link because of the use of the term 'martyr', we see too often in the Western press that term seeming to mean a combatant when in fact it means anyone who died as a result of Israel's actions whether they be 8 days or 80 years old

[Boom Sound 416]

4. Let's begin in 2000 nt

[kelliekat44]

5. Any effort by the Palestinians to unify will be blocked by US and instigate another attack on Gaza

Israel does not want to deal with a unity Palestinian government that seeks statehood and peace. And the US will always pretend that any representative of the Palestinian people is a terrorist organization no matter whether or not they recognize the Israeli state to exist or not. As soon as the PLO recognized the state of Israel and asked for monitors in the area looked what happened and look what happened to Arafat.