Gaza Turned Into Open-air Prison By The Israelis

by Mazin Qumsiyeh, Ph.D.
Published on 10/8/2005

An Oct. 6 commentary published by Glenn Sulmasy claims that Israel had made a peace gesture by “withdrawing” from Gaza. It even claimed that Israel has ended its occupation of the tiny Gaza strip. But the facts are that even the United Nations issued a report that explained that Israel remains the occupying power because it is still in control of exits and entry (including land, airspace and coastal areas) of what is now a large, open-air prison called Gaza.

Further, this tactical redeployment (not withdrawal) was not a scaling back of the Zionist colonial project but a tactical readjustment of this project. Dov Weisglass, right-hand man of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, stated clearly that, “The significance of the [Gaza] disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. Prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent the discussion of refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.”

The Zionist project distracted the international community by removing the 2 percent of settlers who were in Gaza while adding 4 percent in the occupied West Bank. There was a high cost of maintaining those 8,000 colonial settlers living among 1.3 million Palestinians (mostly refugees) in a tiny desert strip. In “return” for this magician slight-of-hand, the Bush administration catered to the Israeli lobby by promising more support to Israel's intransigent positions and basic violations of International law (on refugees, on confiscated lands, colonies in Jerusalem etc).

Taxpayers foot bill

As before, we the taxpayers foot the bill. Israel with 0.1 percent of the world population gets 30 percent of U.S. foreign aid. The U.S. also vetoed 35 UN Security Council resolutions that would have made Israel comply with international law and human rights.

Thus, despite the concerted public relations campaign of folks like Sulmasy, what we continue to have in Palestine/Israel is an apartheid system supported mainly by the U.S. government under pressure from the Israeli lobby.

Nearly 6 million of the 9 million native Palestinians remain refugees and displaced people while 4 million Palestinians live in shrinking disjointed ghettos and large open-air prisons surrounded by walls and fences. Gaza strip is just one of several of these
remaining reservations.

The real road map to durable peace in the Middle East should be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This includes the core issue of the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands and for full equality. A major step in this direction would be to end the infiltration of our nation's capital and media by Israeli lobbyists so that the U.S. can develop a sane and objective policy that protects American public interests rather than narrow special interests.

Mazin Qumsiyeh ... is a member of the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a coalition of 200 groups around the U.S. which seek to change the American role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mazin Qumsiyeh
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://justicewheels.org

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