After reading the Jan. 26 article "Living in conflict: Students in Israel speak out," I felt compelled to write an alternate side of the conflict — a view so often ignored, demonized and silenced. The lack of the word "Palestine" in the entirety of the article showed the blatant tilt of the article, further emphasized by the writer's referral to the occupation and bombardment of Gaza as "conflicts in Israel" and "events in Israel." On such a divisive and debated issue, perhaps a review of recent history of the area will help show some perspective on the issue.
Avi Shlaim, a former member of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and current professor at Oxford, speaks to the recent history of Gaza, saying, "Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace." Though Israel did unilaterally withdraw from these settlements in 2005, Shlaim goes on to mention that while the 8,000 settlers were evicted from Gaza, "[a]nother 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state." In an op-ed for The New York Times published on Jan. 7, Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, comments: "Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza's air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will." He goes on to cite the Fourth Geneva Convention and Israel's duty under it to "see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip."
Far from seeing to their welfare, Israel has instead overseen an almost total blockade of the Gaza Strip; Khalidi explains that "fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation." The ostensible reason for this blockade is Hamas — though the organization was democratically elected — and its campaigns of terror unleashed on innocent Israelis. Israel's response to Hamas, however, borders on the line of collective punishment for the people of Gaza, cruelly summed up by Dov Weissglas, chief of staff for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, with his comment that "we put them on a diet."
Hamas is far from blameless, murdering many in their terrorist campaigns, and Israeli citizens of Ashqelon and Siderot have as much right to live in peace and security as we do in Medford, but Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, puts it into perspective when he points out, "[twenty] Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week … is on a quite different scale." The guns did fall silent this summer when Hamas and Israel agreed to a six-month truce — a truce broken, according to Khalidi and Shlaim, by Israel on Nov. 4 when a raid killed six Hamas men.
A joint study by Tel Aviv University and the European University has interestingly found that Israeli violence has ended 79 percent of the "lulls in violence" on the border, while only eight percent are attributed to Hamas and other Palestinian groups. The breaking of this particular ceasefire led to immediate escalations by both the Palestinians and the Israelis and the massive, indiscriminate killing and terrorizing of civilians that has characterized Operation Cast Lead and the Hamas retaliations.
One clear fact emerging is that a terrible humanitarian crisis is gripping the Gaza Strip as it remains blockaded behind Israeli barriers. According to the BBC, 50,800 Gazans are homeless, 400,000 are without running water, 4,000 buildings have been destroyed, and more than 20,000 are "severely damaged." Additionally, the International Atomic Energy Agency is investigating reports that Israel used depleted uranium in its bombardment of Gaza, and the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused Israel of firing white phosphorous shells into civilian areas in Gaza — including a United Nations compound. White phosphorous, according to the BBC, "sticks to human skin and will burn right through to the bone, causing death or leaving survivors with painful wounds."
While the terror being faced by those living in southern Israel is unacceptable and Hamas deserves condemnation for it, it is important to remember the suffering of those on both sides of the conflict. Those who seek the moral high ground in these terrible events and who wish to portray the other side as terrorists and monsters should be assessed on their own actions and on whether they meet their claims of a "purity of arms." Israel's repeated attacks upon staff and property belonging to the United Nations as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) cuts deeply into Israel's claim that it is seeking to safeguard civilians and target only legitimate military targets.
Though Israel has offered its standard fare, claiming that militants fired from a school that Israeli forces struck, Christopher Gunness, the spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, strongly countered these claims. Speaking to CNN, he said, "The Israeli army is circulating ancient pictures which allegedly show militants using our compound. It's an old set of pictures to show a new case. It doesn't work." As claims of targeting militants hold no truth, neither does the standard Israeli backup — that the incident was an accident. According to the United Nations, all U.N. buildings inside Gaza are clearly marked and fly U.N. flags. Additionally, the United Nations has provided the IDF with satellite coordinates of all United Nations installations in Gaza.
The attacks on U.N. and ICRC staff, installations and vehicles are not the only atrocities being committed inside the Gaza Strip, as it remained for so long sealed off to foreign journalists. The U.N.'s Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on Jan. 12 in which it "strongly [condemned] the ongoing military operation carried out ... in the occupied Gaza Strip, which [has] resulted in massive violations of human rights of Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure."
The ICRC, an organization operating under strict neutrality guidelines, has joined the chorus of condemnation. According to Conor Gearty, director of the London School of Economics Centre for the Study of Human Rights, the IDF violated international law by denying access to "a neighborhood within which were later found four small children, starving amongst twelve corpses." The ICRC says its entry into the area was postponed by the IDF for four days.
Though Israel does have an inalienable right to defend its borders and citizens, the Palestinians have a right to live in peace and to pursue economic interests — and maybe even the right to govern when democratically elected. In exchange for temporary security goals, Israel has potentially radicalized an entire new generation of Palestinians: the friends and schoolmates of the 400 Palestinians killed. To allow a more sustainable peace to evolve, Israel must follow the demands of the international community, lift its blockade on Gaza and stop its illegal campaigns of abduction, assassination and bulldozing houses, thereby allowing the Palestinians the chance to build for themselves the sustainable and peaceful homeland they deserve.
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Faris Islam is a sophomore majoring in history and political science.
