Driving
along the Salahedin road, he explains why they have to drive slowly:
people on foot are so traumatised by pain and the constant bombings that
they don’t even hear cars. Along the lunar landscape he meets an old
man who tells him that his fate is that of sheep, who are fed just
enough to be sacrificed for the annual Eid feast. Among his old
acquaintances, the average “displaced” person has one and a half square
metres to live – the Palestinians are “shipwrecked”.
The stench from tons of rubbish, smashed sewage treatment plants and
lack of water is overwhelming. He reminds us how Pope Francis summed up
the situation: “it is cruelty, it is not war.” Hospitals are
systematically bombed, babies dying of hypothermia, dehydration and
disease, doctors and nurses targeted, schools and universities
destroyed, books and academic documents wilfully destroyed by Israeli
soldiers. The Palestinians are suffering “a violence worthy of the Last
Judgement.” So many buildings, so many landmarks have been destroyed
that Filiu loses track of where he is. Nothing he has witnessed in
Afghanistan, Syria or Ukraine prepared him for Gaza. This explains “why
Israel does not allow the international press access to such a shocking
scene.” With the exception of Haaretz, people in Israel do not see the
daily violence in Gaza. European and north American governments,
“usually so keen to defend freedom have done nothing to get Israel to
relent on this strict black-out.” Filiu is staggered at the lack of
empathy in the West for the civilian victims of these killing fields.
He does not gloss over the bitter divisions within Hamas and the
Palestine Liberation Organisation which are encouraged by Israel and,
more recently, the UAE which has signed a strategic partnership with
Israel. The UAE-built hospital in Rafah is spared Israeli bombs and
stands undamaged surrounded by collapsed buildings. The Emiratis claim
to spearhead ‘humanitarian action’ in Gaza but actually plumb new depths
of cynicism. Filiu understands the inner workings of Hamas and the PLO
better than most: Hamas’s ruthless methods to control Gaza, the sorry
tales of murderous infighting, and the history of the elite Hamas force,
the Qassam Brigades. He also observes that middle class people have
fled Gaza and he finds many young Palestinians more than willing to join
Hamas, despite the heavy casualties inflicted on its fighting forces by
Israel.
A broader breakdown of international law is illustrated by different
events: the current US/Israeli strategy to privatise humanitarian aid to
Gaza, Israeli encouragement of criminal warlords such as Abou Shebab to
attack humanitarian convoys, Israeli bulldozing of Muslim cemeteries,
pleading “simple negligence” only to “send lorries full of decomposing
anonymous corpses back to hospitals in Gaza”. As the rules put in place
after 1945 give way to the brutal rule of force, cynical manipulation of
the media and characterisation of Israel’s enemies as animals, Western
leaders remain silent, ignoring the collapse in their influence across
the world. The author concludes: “As of 7th October 2023,
Gaza and its people have been suffocating as a result of a triple
stalemate – an Israeli impasse, a Palestinian impasse and a humanitarian
impasse. The Israeli impasse is the consequence of Israel’s refusal to
treat Gaza other than from the point of view of the security of the
Jewish state, with no regard for the human reality of Gaza…such
self-delusion…has not spared Israel the bloodiest day in its
history……The Palestinian impasse results from the first and from the
absolute priority Palestinian factions give their own interests to the
detriment of the physical integrity of the Palestinian people. The
humanitarian impasse results from the aforementioned since there is
little point to pretend helping over the longer term a population
deprived of any political prospect and at the mercy of an occupying
power.”
Final words must go to Piotr Smolnar (La bande de Gaza au bord de l’asphyxie, Le Monde 20th February 2018)
who Filiu quotes: ”Gaza resembles for all the world some sort of crazy
laboratory attempting to test how long two million guinea pigs can
survive in a hermetically sealed glass cage.” Gaza is not just
collapsing on “the women, men and children of Gaza. Gaza is collapsing
on the norms of international law painstakingly built to avoid repeating
the barbarities of the second world war.” Gaza in other words is
opening the door to “an abject world …..abandoned to the likes of Trump,
the Netanyahu, Putin and Hamas” a new world whose advent is being
brought forward by our abandonment of Gaza.
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