[WCUSP] Fwd: Gaza reoccupied

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

Please call your Congresspeople and ask for international presence in
Gaza and the West Bank where Israel continues to destroy, kill and maim.
And probably/possibly using chemical weapons that create the strange
injuries in the previous article I just sent you.
Thanks for doing any and all that you can.

HAARETZ.Com: Gideon Levy: Gaza reoccupied

  Gaza's Darkness

  By Gideon Levy

  levy at haaretz.co.il



Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must
know it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction
of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war,
the Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza - there's
no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and
shelling, indiscriminately.



Nobody thinks about setting up a commission of inquiry; the issue
isn't even on the agenda. Nobody asks why it is being done and who
decided to do it. But under the cover of the darkness of the Lebanon
war, the IDF returned to its old practices in Gaza as if there had
been no disengagement. So it must be said forthrightly, the
disengagement is dead. Aside from the settlements that remain piles
of rubble, nothing is left of the disengagement and its promises. How
contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about "the end of
the occupation" and "partitioning the land" now appears. Gaza is
occupied, and with greater brutality than before. The fact that it is
more convenient for the occupier to control it from outside has
nothing to do with the intolerable living conditions of the occupied.



In large parts of Gaza nowadays, there is no electricity. Israel
bombed the only power station in Gaza, and more than half the
electricity supply will be cut off for at least another year. There's
hardly any water. Since there is no electricity, supplying homes with
water is nearly impossible. Gaza is filthier and smellier than ever:
Because of the embargo Israel and the world have imposed on the
elected authority, no salaries are being paid and the street cleaners
have been on strike for the past few weeks. Piles of garbage and
obnoxious clouds of stink strangle the coastal strip, turning it into
Calcutta.More than ever, Gaza is also like a prison. The Erez
crossing is empty, the Karni crossing has been open only a few days
over the last two months, and the same is true for the Rafah
crossing. Some 15,000 people waited for two months to enter Egypt,
some are still waiting, including many ailing and wounded people.
Another 5,000 waited on the other side to return to their homes. Some
died during the wait. One must see the scenes at Rafah to understand
how profound a human tragedy is taking place. A crossing that was not
supposed to have an Israeli presence continues to be Israel's means
to pressure 1.5 million inhabitants. This is disgraceful and shocking
collective punishment. The U.S. and Europe, whose police are at the
Rafah crossing, also bear responsibility for the situation.



Gaza is also poorer and hungrier than ever before. There is nearly no
merchandise moving in and out, fishing is banned, the tens of
thousands of PA workers receive no salaries, and the possibility of
working in Israel is out of the question.



And we still haven't mentioned the death, destruction and horror. In
the last two months, Israel killed 224 Palestinians, 62 of them
children and 25 of them women. It bombed and assassinated, destroyed
and shelled, and no one stopped it. No Qassam cell or smuggling
tunnel justifies such wide-scale killing. A day doesn't go by without
deaths, most of them innocent civilians.



Where are the days when there was still a debate inside Israel about
the assassinations? Today, Israel drops innumerable missiles, shells
and bombs on houses and kills entire families on its way to another
assassination. Hospitals are collapsing with more than 900 people
undergoing treatment. At Shifa Hospital, the only such facility in
Gaza that might be worthy of being called a hospital, I saw
heartrending scenes last week. Children who lost limbs, on
respirators, paralyzed, crippled for the rest of their lives.



Families have been killed in their sleep, while riding on donkeys or
working in fields. Frightened children, traumatized by what they have
seen, huddle in their homes with a horror in their eyes that is
difficult to describe in words. A journalist from Spain who spent
time in Gaza recently, a veteran of war and disaster zones around the
world, said he had never been exposed to scenes as horrific as the
ones he saw and documented over the last two months.



It is difficult to determine who decided on all this. It is doubtful
the ministers are aware of the reality in Gaza. They are responsible
for it, starting with the bad decision on the embargo, through the
bombing of Gaza's bridges and power station and the mass
assassinations. Israel is responsible now once again for all that
happens in Gaza.



The events in Gaza expose the great fraud of Kadima: It came to power
on the coattails of the virtual success of the disengagement, which
is now going up in flames, and it promised convergence, a promise
that the prime minister has already rescinded. Those who think Kadima
is a centrist party should now know it is nothing other than another
rightist occupation party. The same is true of Labor. Defense
Minister Amir Peretz is responsible for what is happening in Gaza no
less than the prime minister, and Peretz's hands are as blood-soaked
as Olmert's. He can never present himself as a 'man of peace' again.
The ground invasions every week, each time somewhere else, the kill
and destroy operations from the sea, air and land are all dubbed with
names to whitewash the reality, like 'Summer Rains' or 'Locked
Kindergarten.' No security excuse can explain the cycle of madness,
and no civic argument can excuse the outrageous silence of us all.
Gilad Shalit will not be released and the Qassams will not cease. On
the contrary, there is a horror taking place in Gaza, and while it
might prevent a few terror attacks in the short run, it is bound to
give birth to much more murderous terror. Israel will then say with
its self-righteousness: 'But we returned Gaza to them.'