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It's Déjà Vu in Gaza All Over Again
How Did We Get Here?
Like previous operations, the latest offensive is ostensibly targeted at Hamas, the political organization at the helm of the Gaza strip. Israel’s military operations in the territory, officials said, are in direct response to the rockets fired by Hamas into Israel — at a pace of about 145 a day, according to the IDF, though many are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome. One Israeli civilian was killed since the beginning of the latest conflict, and one soldier died on Thursday, possibly due to friendly fire.
But before Hamas’s rockets, there was a massive raid of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, leading to hundreds of arrests — including dozens of people who had been released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011 — and at least 10 deaths.
That, in turn, was in response to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers who vanished from the Gush Etzion settlement, leading to a massive manhunt and the largest military escalation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
The fact that a murder in the West Bank turned into a ground invasion in Gaza should at the very least raise questions, critics observed. But there was little room for questions amid the fury that surrounded the teens’ disappearance.
“When those teens went missing, the Israelis had a choice about how to react: They could have chosen to search for the suspects, indict them, charge them, try them, and if they could convict them, punish them to the full extent of the law,” Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American political analyst, told VICE News. “Instead they chose a different route, which was one of collective punishment that focused on Hamas as an organization, but also against Palestinians in general. That went outside of the bounds of what was necessary and called for in the face of that crime. It was a deliberate provocation and one that caused the situation that we see today.”
Like previous operations, the latest offensive is ostensibly targeted at Hamas, the political organization at the helm of the Gaza strip. Israel’s military operations in the territory, officials said, are in direct response to the rockets fired by Hamas into Israel — at a pace of about 145 a day, according to the IDF, though many are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome. One Israeli civilian was killed since the beginning of the latest conflict, and one soldier died on Thursday, possibly due to friendly fire.
But before Hamas’s rockets, there was a massive raid of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, leading to hundreds of arrests — including dozens of people who had been released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011 — and at least 10 deaths.
That, in turn, was in response to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers who vanished from the Gush Etzion settlement, leading to a massive manhunt and the largest military escalation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
The fact that a murder in the West Bank turned into a ground invasion in Gaza should at the very least raise questions, critics observed. But there was little room for questions amid the fury that surrounded the teens’ disappearance.
“When those teens went missing, the Israelis had a choice about how to react: They could have chosen to search for the suspects, indict them, charge them, try them, and if they could convict them, punish them to the full extent of the law,” Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American political analyst, told VICE News. “Instead they chose a different route, which was one of collective punishment that focused on Hamas as an organization, but also against Palestinians in general. That went outside of the bounds of what was necessary and called for in the face of that crime. It was a deliberate provocation and one that caused the situation that we see today.”
https://news.vice.com/article/its-dj-vu-in-gaza-all-over-again