With great sadness, I fear Israel’s grand experiment in the Gaza Strip may have achieved its desired goal.
We won’t find this goal spelled out in any government planning documents, but what bizarre purpose do the Israeli leaders have in deliberately and methodically isolating two million people from the rest of the world for more than a decade?
Ostensibly they had hoped to squeeze the Palestinians tight enough that they would rise up against their leaders (Hamas) and topple them from power, despite the fact that there’s universal agreement that Hamas won the election in 2006 fair and square. After a year or two, Israeli leaders should have gotten the message; they couldn’t compel Palestinians in the streets to do their dirty work for them.
Another likely goal was to punish and humiliate the entire population of the Gaza Strip into submission, to accept their Zionist overlords and the occupation without protest. Battering and slaughtering men, women and children with three military campaigns in the past 10 years should have done the trick. Killing and wounding thousands of protesters at the fence every Friday failed too. Israeli leaders didn’t factor in the Palestinian SUMUD … strength, determination, resolve and dignity. Israel’s military campaigns violated international humanitarian laws and the law of occupation but their leaders have never been held accountable. They’ve never been able to declare “victory” either.
The Israeli hasbara (propaganda) machine has tried to convince the world that Hamas and the Gaza Strip enclave are a festering hotbed of radicalism threatening the State of Israel and, by extension, the entire world. In the early years, many in the international community might have been fooled by this campaign, but no longer. The Palestinian voices (teachers, doctors, engineers, merchants, journalists, students, mothers and fathers) have slashed through the Israeli propaganda.
Now, perhaps, the Israeli masterminds behind the 13-year blockade of the Gaza Strip have succeeded.
They’ve succeeded in convincing many in Gaza to voluntarily lock themselves behind a wall of silence. Alongside the checkpoints, sharpshooters and naval gunships threatening Palestinians who raise their voices for justice, are the Palestinians themselves who now punish their own for raising their voices for justice.
Rami Aman is a Palestinian man in Gaza who had the audacity to connect with Israelis over a Zoom meeting a few weeks ago. Hamas arrested him for the crime of engaging in “normalization” activities.
When I was in Gaza (2012-2013) I recall a public execution of several Palestinians convicted of being collaborators with the enemy. (I didn’t witness the execution.) As disturbing as those executions were for my Western brain to grasp, I understood the rationale for condemning and punishing people working with the Israelis against their own community.
Rami is not accused of being a collaborator, and he couldn’t be. His crime was engaging in speech with the “enemy” with the goal of fostering better understanding on both sides of that Zoom chat. As far as I know, Rami remains in prison.
I completely understand why many Palestinians in Gaza would refuse to engage with any Israeli, and no one should be compelled to do so.
But when a Palestinian has an interest in educating Israelis about the reality of the occupation and siege which most Israelis know absolutely nothing about, I will never understand the desire of those Palestinians who would shroud their brothers and sisters in silence and punish them. If Israel’s experiment was to create a society where the population is self-policing against free will and freedom of thought, apparently the experiment has succeeded.
While many Palestinians in Gaza remain locked up in their self-imposed confinement, the largest peace event ever jointly organized by Palestinians and Israelis in history is planned for Monday, April 27th, co-hosted by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle – Families Forum and co-sponsored by over sixty peace organizations and religious institutions around the world.
Monday, April 27
10:30am Pacific, 1:30pm Eastern
5:30pm UTC, 8:30pm in Israel & Palestine
Watch the Ceremony here: www.afcfp.org/watch-the-memorial
Speakers will include Yaqub al-Rabi of the village of Bidya, whose wife, Aisha, was killed by a stone suspected to have been thrown by a settler at their vehicle in 2018; Tal Kfir of Jerusalem who lost her sister, Yael, in a terrorist attack at Tsrifin in September 2003; Yusra Mahfoud of the Al-Arroub refugee camp near Hebron, whose 14-year-old son Alaa was shot and killed by soldiers in 2000; and Hagai Yoel of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, whose brother Eyal was killed in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin in 2002.
For the first time last year, Rami Aman livestreamed the event in Gaza. It’s doubtful that anyone in Gaza will be able to watch or participate this year.
لماذا غزة؟ Why Gaza? 