Look At Israel
In three years of the blockade(since June 2007) that bars such essential commodities as cement and even medicines, the resident living in the besieged Palestinian territory are cut off from the rest of the world and are forced to be confined to the harrowing life of a concentration camp. Israel allows only limited humanitarian supplies from aid organizations into the Gaza Strip that is equal to one quarter of the pre-blockade volume. The blockade has been decried by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Human Rights Council and many human rights organizations.
Now moved by the pathetic and most pitiable conditions of the Gaza residents, some organizations from Europe and Turkey, out of sheer humanitarian spirit, wanted to deliver the much-needed necessities of life to the besieged inhabitants on six ships that carried no weapons as before their departure these were thoroughly examined by the Turkish authorities. If the Flotilla had reached the port, it would have given a saving grace to Israel by allowing the vital humanitarian aid to the worst afflicted people of Gaza. It could have given Israel a humanitarian and benign image and might have led to further easing of the tight and suffocating restrictions imposed by mighty Israel on Gaza residents. It could as well have diluted the bitterness now existing between Israel and Hamas.
However, even these modest and harmless relief efforts were stubbornly resisted by Israel, and as a result a military action was ordered to capture the flotilla by swooping down on them by airstrikes. The Israeli navy also took part in this excessive use of force. Israel is in the habit of taking every move aimed at making peace in the volatile region or easing the life of the helpless Palestinians as a challenge to its sovereignty or territorial integrity. It is an over-reaction and a paranoid propensity to use force even on occasions where mere negotiations would be enough.
The attack on the peaceful flotilla has further tarnished the already besmirched image of the brutal and bully Israel that talks of holocaust but has created and imposed another holocaust on the helpless and economically crippled people of Palestine who have enormously suffered in all manners ever since the creation of the Israeli state. They have been forced all these years to live like animals and survive at the misery of a power-drunk Israel aide, abetted by a super power: the United States of America.
The Palestinian state has been promised by the United Nations to live side by side with the Jewish state. Then why one state exists, while the rightful claimants of the other are being subjected to barbarities that continue unabated. Why doesn’t, the “ WESTERN CIVILIZED WORLD ” and particularly United States and United Kingdom honor the United Nations resolution number 181 of November 1947 recommending partition of the territory into two states, one Jewish and one Arab? Why have they equipped Israel to the teeth with lethal and atomic weapons while the civilian Palestinians population is made to suffer for over six decades now for no fault? The legitimate demand and right of an independent state by Palestinian nation has invariably been met with brutal massacres as was done in Sabira and Shatilla refugee camps in September 1982.
Thereafter, Israel with impunity and on her bidding, has been killing Palestinians, raiding their areas with more massacres, and inflicting more miseries on the Palestinian nation. One shudders to see that several millions Palestinians, a part of human race, is languishing in concentration camps and denied even barest necessities of life and given rationed food. They are forced to live within a bounded territory with no chance of rebuilding their shanty houses destroyed frequently by Israeli bombing.
The flotilla’s horrendous episode must awaken the slumbering conscious of the world at large and give rude jolt to those nations that have been unconditionally and unjustifiably supporting Israel’s barbaric and savage treatment of the Palestinian nation that has a moral and a legal right to get an independent piece of land. The world community must act fast to bridle and restrain a merciless Israel that knows no bounds when it comes to butchering and brutalizing innocent Palestinians.
By Saeed Qureshi