Gaza Must Prepare for Israel’s Next War

Eleven days of another asymmetrical Palestine/Israel confrontation. America’s most sophisticated technology left behind a trail of devastation, including the life of more than 60 children, and a generation born under years of Israeli blockade with little hope for a future.

In Gaza, mothers perished under rubbles with their children, are called the lucky ones. They don’t live to grieve the loss of their progeny.

Israel’s open range "chock and awe" aimed to inflect maximum pain, targeted residential towers in the City of Gaza, hovels in refugee camps, COVID testing clinics, cut power and halted water treatment plants. To hide the extent of its atrocities, Israeli jets flattened the tower for the only independent media center connecting the besieged Strip to outside world.

On the Israeli side, and according to official statements, Palestinian resistance fired approximately 4,300 rockets. The Iron Dome, financed by American taxpayers, intercepted 90% of the rockets and Israeli military allowed some to fall in open space.

The latest flares erupted following Israeli attacks on worshipers at Al-Aqsa mosque, and threats to expel Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem. Israel’s latest aggression culminated years of blatant disregards to international law by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and four years of his Washington enabler, Donald Trump.

According to Israeli organizations, Peace Now and B’Tselem, since the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Jewish population in occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, had grown by 250%, from approximately 250,000 to 620,000.

Moving Jews to occupied Palestinian land contravenes with Oslo II of 1995, where Article XXXI, clause 8 calls on "The two parties view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, the integrity and status of which will be preserved during the interim period."

In 2001, current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, boasted on video of his intention to take a different approach to the Palestinian Israeli understanding, asserting "I’m going to interpret the Accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ‘67 borders."

When asked how he intends to address US concerns, the supposed sponsor of the peace Accord, Netanyahu bragged of his prowess, stating, "America is a thing you can move very easily."

Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, hitherto, took calculated measures to gut out the core Israeli obligations in the Oslo Accord. Israeli disregards to signed agreements, coddled by American administrations’ unwillingness to honor its "impartial" role, and the silence of world powers, has only emboldened Israeli repression of Palestinians.

More than quarter of a century later, succeeding right-wing Israeli governments have fragmented the "integrity and status" of the Palestinian territories into isolated islands, linked by "Palestinian only" Israeli checkpoints, surrounded by "Jewish only" outposts, and cordoned East Jerusalem from the West Bank by a wall of expansive illegal colonies.

In violating the pertinent clauses of the Oslo Accord, Israeli leaders ravaged the West Bank landscape, including East Jerusalem, by transplanting zealots into "Jewish only" designated settlements to prejudice the outcome of negotiation during the "interim period."

Meanwhile in Gaza, Israel placed a strict blockade under the pretext of stopping weapons entering the enclave. Measures described by Israeli government adviser Dov Weisglass in 2006, “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

The latest clashes had shown that while it is certain the more than fourteen years of Israeli prescribed "diet" have increased the suffering of the civilian population, however, it had neither secured Israel nor weakened the ingenuity of people resisting aggression.

Promising to rebuild Gaza, President Biden is traveling, again, on a road rotted with potholes and humps making a lasting truce less likely if the US continues to sweep the root cause under the carpet.

For a ceasefire to endure, these basic questions must be answered: Will Israeli governments comply with signed peace accords? Will the ceasefire end the blockade on the two million people in Gaza? Will it cease the illegal construction of "Jewish only" colonies on Occupied Palestinian land? Will it end the daily humiliation of native Palestinians at the "Palestinian only" Israeli checkpoints? Will it allow Palestinian families to return to their homes in Sheikh Jarrah?

Absent of addressing the tinderbox makes it, not if, but when a new spark explodes into yet, another larger war. Rebuilding Gaza, only, will do nothing but establish new targets for Israel’s next war. The Biden Administration can’t continue excusing Israel right for self-defense while its apartheid system wages a nonstop silent war of aggression on more than five million human beings.

It is the occupied, not occupier whose resistance is a form of self-defense and therefore justified. This is not an opinion, but rather, a legal right under international law.

Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) an author who had written weekly newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of Children of Catastrophe, Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. His recent coauthored book Bride of the Sea was published in Germany and Poland. He can be reached at jamal@jamalkanj.com.

4 thoughts on “Gaza Must Prepare for Israel’s Next War”

  1. The Biden Administration can’t continue excusing Israel right for self-defense while its apartheid system wages a nonstop silent war of aggression on more than five million human beings.

    Want to make a bet on that? The Zionists don’t care about International Law. Neither do any of their enablers. Total ethnic cleansing of every Muslim. Even the “Arab Citizens”. Especially the Arab Citizens. As much force as necessary to make this happen.

    Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack?

    In the beginning I dismissed this story as nonsense, but it keeps coming back. Imagine being targeted by whatever-this-is. You are a Palestinian minding your own business in the house or garden or on the road, and ZAP!

    A weapon that fires a beam hundreds of metres to induce unbearable pain is ready to be unleashed on the world…

    Imagine those “settlers” of the Apartheid state being given a few dozen of these things.

    Anyhow, God’s Favorite Thieves and Murderers might go low-tech. Water supplies could be reduced to something like 2 liters per day. No water at all for irrigation, and every known cistern and well would be dynamited. Free Food! 2000 calories for adult males, and much less for women and children.

    Start a version of the US Prison-Industrial Complex. Any violation of the law, and you lose health care. The right to hold any job. Etc.

    I’m quite sure the inhabitants of the pissant state will be much more creative in ways I can’t even imagine. They are not nice people.

  2. The Biden Administration can’t continue excusing Israel right for self-defense while its apartheid system wages a nonstop silent war of aggression on more than five million human beings.

    Want to make a bet on that? The Zionists don’t care about International Law. Neither do any of their enablers. Total ethnic cleansing of every Muslim. Even the “Arab Citizens”. Especially the Arab Citizens. As much force as necessary to make this happen.

    Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack?

    In the beginning I dismissed this story as nonsense, but it keeps coming back. Imagine being targeted by whatever-this-is. You are a Palestinian minding your own business in the house or garden or on the road, and ZAP!

    A weapon that fires a beam hundreds of metres to induce unbearable pain is ready to be unleashed on the world…

    Imagine those “settlers” of the Apartheid state being given a few dozen of these things.

    Anyhow, God’s Favorite Thieves and Murderers might go low-tech. Water supplies could be reduced to something like 2 liters per day. No water at all for irrigation, and every known cistern and well would be dynamited. Free Food! 2000 calories for adult males, and much less for women and children.

    Start a version of the US Prison-Industrial Complex. Any violation of the law, and you lose health care. The right to hold any job. Etc.

    I’m quite sure the inhabitants of the pissant state will be much more creative in ways I can’t even imagine. They are not nice people.

  3. I agree with the author Jamal afterall he knows the long torture-like journey. There is a difference between the political Zionist Regime and the Jews who follow the Torah. How many times has the world watched one of the world’s efficient militaries attack a nation without a militiary.

    The continuous bombardment of Palestinians with 30 foot concrete walls on three sides and the sea on the other. We also know there is a large amount of natural gas off the coast of Gaza, Jordan and Syria. Israel wants all of it and thus the constant military incursions into all three countries under the diguise of killing militant factions.

    The Arab nations could put a stop to the destruction of Paletstine and its’ people by boycotting every country that does business with Israel.

  4. How are the Palestinians supposed do prepare for the next war? No army, no navy, no air force, no tanks, no precision guided missiles, no means of shooting down Israeli aircraft, the rest of the world giving them passing notice.

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