Mass
Starvation And
Democracy Prevention
By Ghali Hassan
15 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
“[The economic siege] is like an appointment with a dietician.
The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but they won't starve to death,"
--Dov Weissglas, Ariel Sharon's political advisor.
Nothing
has displeased the US and its allies more than free and fair democratic
elections. The recent Palestinian elections are just a case in point.
While Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections freely and fairly,
the next step for the US, Israel and their European vassals is to demonise
Hamas, undermine democracy and continue the violence and the destruction
of the Palestinian society.
Condoleezza Rice, the bellicose
secretary of state just paid a visit to US stooges and tin-pot dictators
to warn them against supporting the Palestinian people. President Mubarak
of Egypt, who recently orchestrated his own fraudulent and violent elections,
was the first to lecture Hamas, and urged Hamas leaders to recognise
Israel and renounce “violence." In other words, Hamas must
recognize a “Jewish state” on Palestinian land and accept
Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinian people. Mubarak
didn’t mention if Israel will recognise Palestine and renounce
its ongoing greater violence. Blaming the victims for the systematic
violence which Israel inflicted on the Palestinian people has been an
Israeli-Western policy of dehumanising the Palestinian people.
Israel has also requested
that Hamas renounces “violence." And because the violence
is Israel’s violence and Hamas is unable to stop it, Hamas is
guilty. So, the Israeli government found a good pretext to increase
the brutality and terror against the Palestinian people. Israel will
continue the violence and the dispossession of the Palestinians while
Western governments are supporting Israel’s genocidal policy against
the Palestinian people.
Since the elections, the
Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) has killed at least 20 Palestinians in
the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, including a disabled teenager
in the West Bank and a Palestinian woman tending her sheep in the Gaza
Strip. On 19 February, Israeli snipers killed children and injured another
30 in Nablus and the Balata refugee camp. On 20 February, the IOF killed
Ahmad Mohammad Nayef Abu Sharkh, 29, in a cold blood as he was confronting
the IOF incursion into the refugees’ camp. Who is the terrorist?
The IOF also imposed severe restrictions on the movement of civilians.
There has been no Israeli death by Palestinians, including Hamas. Israel,
as an occupying power is obliged to abide by international law.
For their part, Hamas leaders
have said that they will end the armed struggle if the Israelis were
to commit to withdrawing completely from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and
East Jerusalem. “If Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, then
we will establish a peace in stages. We will establish a situation of
stability and calm, which will bring safety for our people," said
Ismail Haniya, the newly elected Palestinian Prime Minister. “We
do not have any feelings of animosity towards Jews. We do not wish to
throw them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our land back, not
to harm anybody," added Haniya.
The Israeli government responded
by effectively annexing the Jordan Valley and most of the illegal Jewish
colonies (settlements) in the West Bank. Palestinians in the area are
either expelled or pushed into the ghettoised zones and encircled by
the Apartheid Wall. The US and Israel are not interested in peace; they
had plenty of opportunities in the last 50 years or so to establish
peace, but instead they resort to violence and destruction.
The Palestinian people are
the most brutalised and terrorised community on earth. As Jennifer Loewenstein,
a scholar at Oxford University, wrote recently; “While [Palestinians]
are being stomped, shot, beaten, demolished, assassinated, intimidated,
robbed, despoiled, starved, uprooted, dispossessed, harassed, insulted
and killed with bullets, missiles, armoured bulldozers, tanks, helicopter
gun-ships, cluster-bombs, fleshettes, fighter-bombers, semi-automatic
submachine guns, sonic booms, tear gas, electrified fences, blockades,
closures and walls, they must renounce violence so that the hoodlums
won't get hurt. If they defend themselves, they lose." Israel’s
genocidal policy of systematic control and imprisonment of the Palestinian
people can only be compared with Nazi concentration camps.
Recent UN reports reveal
that 60 percent of Palestinians are now living in acute poverty, a figure
which has tripled in just four years. Over 22 percent of children under
the age of 5 are suffering from serious malnutrition and 16 percent
from acute anaemia, many of whom will suffer permanent damage to their
physical and mental development as a result. The majority of families
are now eating only once a day and over 50 percent of Palestinians are
now completely dependent on food aid.
The UN report which was presented
to the Donors conference last year said that, “37 percent of the
estimated 3.7 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip had trouble getting food in 2004. Another 27 percent were at risk
of running into such difficulties." About half the “Palestinian
population was poor, with poverty rate in the Gaza Strip reaching a
staggering 65 percent," added the UN report. “Up to 16 percent
of Palestinians -- 550,000 -- were living on $1.50 a day, with the likelihood
that the figure will rise to 35 percent if aid is not forthcoming."
In addition, “child mortality rose by 15 percent and the average
unemployment rate reached 28 percent."
To satisfy its Zionist ideology,
Israel is proceeding to impose a Nazi-like economic siege over nearly
4 million defenceless Palestinians, intended to starve them into surrendering
their democratic freedoms. On Sunday 19 February, Israel moved to withhold
funds of $50 million per month owed to the Palestinians from tax and
customs revenue, causing great hardship and financial crisis in occupied
Palestine. The money is part of the value-added tax of 17 percent that
Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. In 2005 Israel
collected $711 million on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. The money
is simply stolen from the Palestinians by the Israeli government. The
Jewish state which is in violations of international laws and UN resolutions
is imposing -- with the support of the US and Europe -- sanction measures
that will starve the victims of its brutal occupation.
The Palestinians’ reward
for democratically electing their representatives is a “collective
punishment," which if implemented will lead to a silent Palestinian
genocide. It is ironic that the might of the US, Israel and the European
powers is now directed against the most defenceless community in the
world, the Palestinian community. Similar genocidal sanctions imposed
on Iraq by US-Britain, and backed by the Europeans, have needlessly
killed more that 1.6 million Iraqis, including 600 000 Iraqi children,
and destroyed the fabric of the Iraqi society. It was premeditated genocide.
“Mass starvation is mass genocide. It is a silent holocaust,"
said Nayef Rajoub, a prominent Hamas leader.
Israel’s brutality
against the Palestinian people is continuing only because of massive
flow of US and European financial and military aid into Israel's economy.
A collective guilt will continue, unless the Palestinians’ legitimate
rights of return and self-determination are honoured. Like Apartheid
South Africa, Israel can be forced -- even under moderate economic sanctions
-- to change its brutal policies and live in peace.
Ghali Hassan
lives in Perth, Western Australia.