July 11, 2010

The Israeli regime has now agreed to lift partially the blockade of Gaza: potato chips, mattresses, washing machines, honey – all of which were banned earlier can now enter Gaza. Predictably, the US and EU Governments have welcomed this Israeli step, without questioning the military significance of the earlier banning potato chips. Nor have these leaders of the "civilized world", continuously teaching the virtues of human rights and democracy to their more "backward brethren" in the global south, questioned what is the military significance of banning Gaza exports and preventing exit of students to study in the West Bank? How do Gaza’s exports affect Israel’s security? How do preventing Gaza students from studying in the West Bank increase its security?

The story of Gaza’s blockade has never been about Israel’s security. The tunnels that exist on the Egyptian side can supply any of the items that Israel could consider a security risk. The issue has always been of punishing the people of Gaza for voting in the Hamas. The war against Gaza, punitive bombing, cutting off food and daily necessities, all of this is collective punishment – clear and simple. That it is illegal under international law counts for little. As long as the US backs Israel and the European Union play along, Israel can act with impunity. In any case, its military clout in the region is unrivalled and therefore it faces a threat to its security only in its imagination. With the altered balance of forces at the global level, Israel feels that its long-term project of squeezing the Palestinians out of their homeland has no impediment on the ground. This is the Project Greater Israel, which will create one state of Israel including the West Bank, disenfranchising the Palestinians and pushing them into small Bantustans. In this scheme, Gaza is to be beaten into submission, with its economy completely destroyed and surviving only on the mercy of the master race dominating this Greater Israel.

Not surprisingly, periodically Israeli military and other commentators speak approvingly of learning from the Nazis. The latest is retired Israeli Judge Hadassa Ben-Itto saying recently, "We must learn from the Nazi tactics," during a conference discussing ways to improve the State of Israel's PR efforts in the world (see Omar Barghouti’s accompanying article)

The list of the goods that can now enter Gaza has been purged of its obvious punitive nature. What threat did potato chips or mattresses ever pose to Israel? How could dry fruits be considered? These do not now find place in the banned list. But the bigger lie in Israel’s current campaign on "relaxing" embargo is what Israel will not allow. It will not allow any exports out of Gaza making sure no industry can survive in Gaza. For any meaningful economic activity, a number of items are required to be imported. All of these are listed as "dual use" – any steel items, lathe machines, machine parts, chemicals, etc. -- the list is vague and can cover any item required for a manufacturing base. This is the trick that Israel is now using – allowing finished goods that were banned earlier and obviously not related to Israel’s security.

Apart from banning the so-called dual use items, Israel has also banned all building materials. These can be imported into Gaza only if they are for international agencies’ own construction or if permitted by Palestinian Authority. As Palestinian Authority – the one which was not elected but claims to be the official one curtsy western powers and Israel (President Mahmud Abbas’s term as President is also now over and in any case Hamas one the Parliamentary elections and Salim Fayyad is Prime Minsiter under a "constitutional" coup) does not exist in Gaza, it means that no one barring international agencies can import any building materials. None of the 8,000 houses destroyed in the one-sided war that launched on the Gaza Strip can be repaired as no steel or cement can be imported. If allowed, the devious Gazans would immediately convert the steel into giant slingshots and the cement to balls of concrete, firing them from these slingshots. No wonder Israel’s security is always in danger! In any case, the world has seen how dangerous slingshots can be in the fake videos that IDF put out after the Mavi Marmara attack.

The other sad part of Israel’s blockade of Gaza is that it will not allow any student from Gaza to leave to study anywhere including West Bank. In a Supreme Court hearing, on behalf of a student in Gaza wanting to continue her studies in the West Bank, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that even under its "new" Gaza policy, there would be no relaxation of the policy preventing travel of persons into and out of Gaza in all but exceptional humanitarian cases.

Since 2000, Israel has imposed a sweeping ban on the exit of Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip. A Supreme Court ruling in 2007 asked the Israeli State to consider allowing access for students from Gaza wishing to study in the West Bank. However, Israel has not granted a single student from Gaza permission to travel to the West Bank. Loud and clear – this was collective punishment and continues to be so.

Recently, Israel has also passed laws by which it can send back to Gaza any one originally from there but currently living in the West Bank. The Palestinians from the West Bank and from Gaza cannot marry and live together as husband and wife. The same rule applies to Israel’s Palestinian-Arab citizens and West Bank Palestinians. They also cannot marry and live together – neither in West Bank nor in Israel. And the Israeli judiciary has accepted this as not violating any human rights; something that even the South African Judiciary did not do, otherwise of the Apartheid regime.

Step by step, Israel is being exposed as what it is. A state in which citizens and the state wear the clothes of victimhood to cover their deeply racist society; a state that believes only in the law of the gun; a state where imposing hunger on the Gaza population is to be seen as "putting Palestinians on a diet." The problem with this paranoid view of the world is that it cannot last forever. It may last as long as it can coerce the west on its past record of anti-Semitism. As the west fades in power, Israel will be perceived even more clearly as a rogue state. The problem is that while its racist edifice gets exposed and crumbles, the Palestinians will still have to pay a very heavy price. As will the rest of the world with rising Islamophobia in the west aiding and abetting Talbinised Islamic fundamentalism.