Realism:Failure of 'Power'

The mistreatment and plight of the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped by the Israel in Gaza Strip started when Tel Aviv tightened its closure of the Hamas-controlled territory on 18 January this year-even preventing UN humanitarian supplies from getting in. This new phase of atrocities has reminded the world of another concentration camp set up by the Israeli Jews for the Palestinians in the modern era.

The main aim behind Israe's barbaric blockade around Gaza was to collectively punish the Palestinian innocent civilians, condemning them to vast devastation, leaving them to imminent death, without bothering even for patients who were suffering from kidney and heart problems.

By stopping fuel and electricity supply, just like Nazis, the occupying power of the siege deprived the Gazas of clean water and light so as to ensure that homes, hospitals, factories and shopping markets are not able to function, resulting into a miserable life for the Palestinians--and even to the eventual deaths of the most vulnerable.

The Gaza is a locked, impoverished Mediterranean coast between Israel and Egypt . Israeli government which had refused to recognize Hamas elected government in 2006 responded by clamping down even harsher on the flow of goods in and out of the territories of Gaza Strip when it completely came under the control of Hamas in 2007 due to internal fighting between the Palestinian factions (PLO and Hamas). Since then, Tel Aviv acted upon deliberate tactics of state terrorism, led by a new cycle of violence and economic blockade that had deepened the misery of the people of Gaza .

However, Israeli brutalities in the Gaza amounts to the barbaric treatment of human beings which Jews themselves faced in the concentration camps established by the 'Hitlerite Germany' but learnt no lesson from the past.

On January 23, 2008, after suffering from acute starvation, due to lack of food including everything, more than four hundred thousands Palestinians were forced to pour into Egypt from Gaza Srip through a border wall, blown up by the Hamas militants and stocked up on food and fuel in short supply, caused by the siege. In this regard, residents of Rafah, a town linking the Egypt-Gaza frontier where a long metal wall was demolished, setting off explosions overnight by a deliberate planning of the militants. This scene reminds the escape of Jews from Sobibar, a concentration camp, erected in Poland during Word War 11. In that camp, German Nazis had made the life of Jews so troublesome, even culminating to deaths that a number of Jews prepared a plan and succeeded in saving their lives through the 'escape'. However, one can note a great resemblance between these two tragic events in one or the other way.

Like the concentration camp of the Sobibar from where Jews themselves had run away to avoid the intolerable sufferings, the fall of Rafa wall is a new lesson as well a challenge to the Israeli regime.

Nevertheless, Tel Aviv is determined to keep pressure on the Palestinians in face of an international outcry of the Muslims over the shortage of basic necessities of life which led to multiple hardships of various nature in the territory which could rightly be called a giant jail--not lees than the concentration camps set up by the German Nazis for the Jews.

The plight of the blockade could be judged from the fact that faced with constant economic challenges and miseries, people of Gaza used to "use wiles to keep bread on their tables". Unemployment is at least 60 percent in this highly populated region. And according to the aid agencies, 85 percent of the people live below the poverty line. The situation was already getting worse by the day after Israel shut its crossings, bringing about a blackout in the territory.

Israel's mal-treatment of the Gazas could also be noted from the fact that the hungry Palestinians cleaned out every shop on the Egyptian side--and within some hours there was nothing left to buy within a seven-mile distance of the border including the Sinai town of El-Arish.

Meanwhile, acting upon the Nazi-like brutality, on 25 January, Israeli air strikes killed four Palestinians in the southern Gaza town of Rafah . On the whole, more than 38 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli forces in wake of the Gaza siege.

Massacre of more than 5 million Jews (According to the figures of Jews) through various tactics of torture in concentration camps erected by Hitler before and during the World War 11 is till condemnable. It was a big tragedy, popularly known as the Holocaust, conducted by the forces of state terrorism which Tel Aviv itself has been practising upon all the Palestinians in the controlled territories of West Bank and Gaza Strip since it got a free hand from the United States in this regard.

It seems that under the cover of the Middle East peace process, recent trip of the US President Bush in the region was to encourage and embolden the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert in continuing his old practice of state terrorism on the innocent Palestinians who are fighting for the liberation of their lands from the occupying forces. However, question arises as to why the Palestinians should pay for the Holocaust or concentration camps as they had no link with the same. Lack of any practical action except lip service or verbal condemnation on the part of the UN Security Council and the US-led European powers against the latest phase of Israeli atrocities particularly on Gazas, show that western countries intend to repent or compensate the Jews for the Holocaust at the cost of Palestinian torture, while the latter are not responsible for that tragedy.

It is noteworthy that Egyptian government is insisting all the Palestinians to return to Gaza after buying and shopping. So they will again join the concentration camp and live at the discretion of Tel Aviv that could make the life of the dwellers miserable whenever it wished.

Now crimes of Israel in Gaza can, without any doubt, be equated with those committed by Nazis in the concentration camps and instead of deducing a positive lesson, Israeli Jews are themselves perpetrating the same on the Palestinians. 

    Sajjad Shaukat

Author of the Book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations 

It is my own article published in Al-Arab English Online  on January 28, 2008 (London)

For Feedback:  sajjad_logic@yahoo.com