Zionists step up operations in Gaza
2010/06/12 IRIB
Israeli naval commandos martyred four Palestinians off the coast of Gaza on Monday June 7, in an operation designed by the Israeli government to send a signal to the Palestinian people and the world—that its illegal blockade of the territory will continue despite mounting criticism following the May 31 massacre of 19 peace activists. Patrick O’Connor, a commentator with the Socialist Website has more on the story as follows:
The Israeli military claimed that the men were attempting to carry out a terrorist attack. However, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade rejected the accusations. While details of the incident are still emerging, Israeli forces appear to have made little or no effort to detain rather than martyr the Palestinians. The four bodies were retrieved from the Mediterranean Sea and taken to a hospital in central Gaza. Palestinian health official Moawiya Hassanain said that two of the dead had suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the head. The Israeli troops involved were from the elite Shayetet 13 unit, which was responsible for the bloody raid of the Freedom Flotilla. An unnamed military official told Israel’s Army Radio: “This will be a shot in the arm for the commandos after the hard week they have been through.” This remark is indicative of the complete disregard for international law on the part of both the Zionist military and ruling regime. The Zionist fake state is increasingly isolated internationally, at the same time as it is being wracked by severe internal social and political crises. The Zionist regime's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unstable regime largely rests upon the support of the military establishment as well as right-wing settlers and their supporters.
The ordered attack on the aid flotilla, and its subsequent intransigent rejection of any criticism of what happened, underscores the criminality and recklessness of Israeli foreign policy. Netanyahu has refused to countenance an international inquiry into the Flotilla killings. “We don’t want a problematic precedent to be set for future events,” the so-called prime minister bluntly declared, tacitly admitting that further Israeli crimes against the Palestinians were inevitable.
Netanyahu told a meeting of Likud cabinet members that his regime would not agree to a “Goldstone-like” inquiry of the raid. This referred to the UN investigation conducted into Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza in 2008-2009 which concluded that war crimes had been committed. The inquiry increased the pressure on senior Israeli politicians, many of whom now are wary of traveling to Europe for fear of being arrested.
Several Zionist senior officials have sought to secure Washington’s support for their opposition to an inquiry by raising the specter of American political and military leaders facing investigation for their criminal activities. The Israeli War Minister Ehud Barack told a meeting of Labor ministers: “Do the Americans establish a committee of inquiry every time things happen in Afghanistan?” Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the US told “Fox News Sunday”: “Israel has the ability and the right to investigate itself, not to be investigated by any international board." He underlined he didn’t think the United States would want an international inquiry into its military activities in Afghanistan, for example.” Meantime, the US President Barack Obama’s administration has functioned as Israel’s key accomplice throughout the crisis triggered by the Gaza aid flotilla attack. The Israeli military claimed that it is formally investigating the incident. According to Haaretz, Netanyahu decided that the panel would not be allowed to interrogate soldiers or officers who took part in the commando raid.
Any Israeli investigation of what happened will be nothing but a whitewash. The question can be raised—if the regime’s story that the Israeli commandos did nothing wrong and acted in self defense against “terrorists” is true, why can the soldiers involved not be questioned? The shielding of the commandos is further evidence of a cover up, consistent with the actions of the troops themselves aboard the aid vessel, when they confiscated all the activists’ cameras and recording devices.
The Israeli regime propaganda machine has also been mobilized in response to mounting international scrutiny of the situation inside Gaza—Netanyahu and his colleagues have brazenly asserted that there is no humanitarian crisis. In reality, the Palestinian territory is among the most impoverished regions of the world. As a result of the Israeli blockade, Gaza effectively functions as an enormous prison.
In Gaza, the official unemployment rate is a staggering 44 percent, 80 percent of the population is dependent on food and income aid, and the number of those defined as “abject poor”, that is those unable to feed themselves or their families, has risen from about 100,000 to 300,000 in the past twelve months. Per capita gross domestic product plunged from $2,500 in 1998-99 to just $600 last year.
The limited industrial production that was previously developed in Gaza has collapsed due to the prohibition of basic machinery and component imports, while the agricultural sector is in crisis due to the Israeli ban on exports. Basic consumer goods beyond what is provided by the UN and aid agencies are only available at exorbitant prices, having been smuggled in through dangerous underground tunnels to Egypt.
Gaza’s 1.5 million people are the victims of a barbaric collective punishment inflicted by the Israeli fake state. In Palestinian Authority elections staged in January 2006, the Fatah candidates that were favoured and funded by Israel and the US lost to Hamas. Israel, the US, and Europe responded by freezing all Palestinian Authority funds, triggering a collapse in basic services and governmental infrastructure in both Gaza and the West Bank. At the same time, Washington spearheaded covert preparations for an anti-Hamas coup, providing money and weapons to elements within Fatah.
Then followed “Operation Cast Lead”, Israel’s assault on Gaza in December 2008 to January 2009, martyring more than 1,400 Palestinians and making another 20,000 homeless. The criminal assault targeted basic social infrastructure, including power stations, water and sewage stations, hospitals and schools. A report issued last month by the UN Development Programme, “One Year After: Gaza Early Recovery and Reconstruction Needs Assessment”, found that just 25 percent of the infrastructure damage inflicted during the war has been restored.
The UN report concluded that the blockade has been a major obstacle to repairing the damage done by Israeli air attacks and destruction. Nearly none of the 3,425 homes destroyed during Cast Lead have been reconstructed, displacing around 20,000 people. Only 17.5 percent of the value of the damages to educational facilities has been repaired, putting extra strain on Gaza’s already stressed education system where schools have been teaching two shifts of pupils per day for decades.
The Israeli regime has deliberately created this crisis in order to constrict the ability of the Hamas-led administration to govern Gaza and to undermine its political support from the population. Netanyahu and his colleagues are entirely indifferent to the enormous suffering they are inflicting on Palestinian civilians in order to advance their political objectives. In similar fashion, as the Freedom Flotilla raid demonstrated, they have no qualms about killing aid workers and activists in order to maintain the Gaza blockade. However, it is the duty of the international community and the justice-seeking, independent nations to force the Zionist brutal regime to respect at least to basic principles of human rights; a phenomenon that is of course totally in contrast to the nature of the British-installed and US-supported regime in the occupied lands of Palestine.
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