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[Note: The editorial note and article below are reprinted from the Summer
2006 issue of The Organizer newspaper.]
U.S.-ISRAEL OUT OF LEBANON AND GAZA NOW!
As we go to press, the Israeli armed forces have launched a full-scale
military assault upon Lebanon. During the weekend of July 15-16 alone,
Israeli air strikes killed 79 Lebanese civilians. Hundreds of thousands of
villagers in southern Lebanon have fled their homes. Aljazeera (July 15)
re****ts:
"At least 12 Lebanese villagers, including women and children, were killed
today in an Israeli air strike on vehicles fleeing a village in southern
Lebanon. The convoy was leaving the border village of Marwahin when it was
attacked.
"'Israeli forces threatened to destroy our town if we did not evacuate
it,'
Akram Ghannam, a resident of Marwahin, told Aljazeera. 'People gathered in
the streets. They did not know where to go. Others began to flee.' Ghannam
said there were no Hezbollah forces in Marwahin."
These criminal actions by the Israeli forces have been applauded loudly by
the U.S. government, which has bankrolled the Israeli war machine to the
tune of US$50 billion over the past decade. For U.S. policymakers,
Democrats
and Republicans alike, the Israeli state has served as a beachhead in the
U.S.-led war against the Arab peoples of the region -- a war aimed, other
things, at controlling the Middle East's vast oil resources.
Meanwhile, the death toll and devastation have continued to mount in Gaza.
A
statement issued July 14 by the Committee for a Democratic and Secular
State, which is based in Palestine, provides an alarming account of the
situation in the Gaza Strip:
"The deadly incursion into Lebanon has not lessened the destruction, the
killings and the terror imposed by the Israeli forces, day and night, in
the
Gaza Strip. We cannot allow the war in Lebanon to take our eyes off what
is
happening in Gaza. The Israeli state is using the events in the north to
continue its systematic drive to destroy the Palestinian people, their
institutions and their infrastructure.
"The United Nations Relief and Works Agency re****ts that electricity in
the
Gaza Strip is available but six hours a day due to the bombing of the
power
plants. Running water is available but two to three hours a day. Garbage
pickups have stopped since July 9, as the garbage trucks have run out of
gas. The World Health Organization is warning of a major sanitary and
humanitarian crisis if nothing is done -- soon."
The Committee for a Democratic and Secular State ends its statement with
the
call for the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Lebanon, Gaza
and the West Bank. The Editorial Board of The Organizer sup****ts these
demands and urges all its readers to mobilize across the United States to
call for the immediate end to the U.S.-Israeli attacks upon the Lebanese
and
Palestinian people.
We reprint on this page an article from F. Lezar that shows that the
incursion and siege of Gaza had in the planning for several months -- all
pretexts notwithstanding. The article concludes by posing the question
that
is at heart of these recent events: Is there a solution in the region
other
than the establishment of a democratic and secular state in Palestine - a
single state granting equal rights to all the people, whatever their
religion, living in the historic territory of Palestine? -- The Editors
----------
ISRAEL'S SIEGE OF GAZA: AN ACTION SEVERAL MONTHS IN THE PLANNING
By F. LAZAR
Since June 29, the State of Israel has waged a new military onslaught
against the Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On June 30, the editorial of the Israeli
newspaper Ha'aretz carried the following headline: "The [Israeli]
Government
Is Losing Its Mind." The editorial stated:
"Shelling bridges that can be bypassed on foot or by car; taking control
of
an air****t gutted for years, reducing a power station to rubble, plunging
vast tracts of the Gaza Strip into darkness; showering leaflets on people
professing concern for their fate; sending a plane hovering over the
Presidential Palace of Bachar El-Assad and arresting the elected leaders
of
Hamas - the government wants to convince us that all these actions have a
single purpose: to free private Gilad Shalit. .... [Israeli Prime Minister
Ehoud] Olmert should know that arresting Hamas leaders only bolsters them
and their partisans. But all this is not only unsound thinking: Arresting
people to use them as bargaining chips is the deed of a gang, not of a
State."
This is how Ha'aretz describes the action of the Israeli government: It is
the action of a gang, not of a State. Once again, it is worth noting that
the cornerstone of Zionism - which is opposed radically to Judaism's
democratic traditions - rests on the negation of the right of the
Palestinian people to exist. That is the reason why the successive
governments of the Zionist State have never wanted peace; their objective
has been to kick out the largest possible number of Palestinians to grab
ever more Palestinian land.
How can one talk of peace if one fails to abide by the right of
Palestinian
refugees to return to their birth villages, if one refuses to abolish
racial
discrimination and to implement equal rights?
Pretexts and cynicism
A recent article in Ha'aretz quoted Golda Meïr, prime minister of the
Israeli State in 1967, as follows: "I shall never forgive Arabs for
forcing
us to kill them." Listen to the murderer's cold-blooded cynicism.
According
to journalist Akiva Eldar, also in Ha'aretz, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert
declared before the Security Ministerial Cabinet: "The world is fed up
with
the Palestinians. Till now, we have held up delivering any blows. But
enough
is enough."
In the Middle East, is not the Israeli State, backed by U.S. imperialism,
a
direct instrument of the repulsive reactionary policies that can be seen
most clearly in Iraq? What are the 9 million Palestinians scattered across
the entire world guilty of?
The kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the murder of a settler are only
justifications, for the sake of the media, for a military action that has
been several months in the planning.
The July 1 issue of Ha'aretz notes that "arresting Hamas Members of
Parliament in the early hours of Thursday, June 29 was scheduled several
weeks ago and approved by [Justice Minister] Mazuz." The article goes on
to
quote an army spokesperson who stated that the Hamas leaders "are not a
bargaining chip for the return of private Shalit. It was just an operation
against a terrorist organization."
Adam Ereli, spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said after the
raid
that, "Israel is entitled to defend itself."
In all, eight Palestinian government ministers and 56 MPs and local
councilors have been abducted. By striking at the leader****p of the
Palestinian Authority's government, the Israeli State wants to show it has
the capacity to take direct control of the situation - which, of course,
has
escaped anyone's control. Today, to crush the Palestinian people and their
democratic demands, the only means is the force of arms.
So, "is the Israeli government losing its mind," as the Ha'aretz headline
claims?
Bankruptcy of "Two-State" Solution
According to the analysis of Joseph Massad, a U.S. academic (Al Ahram
Weekly, June 15, 2006), "The Oslo Accord was a necessary and historically
limited step, implemented to strengthen the Israeli hold on the stolen
Palestinian territories and to normalize Israel's diplomatic relations
with
the Arab world and, beyond, with the rest of the world. Now that the
Israelis have reached these goals, they no longer need the Oslo Accord."
This is the true justification of the Oslo Accord. Those who today refer
to
this accord as a "solution" or a "step toward peace" simply brush the
truth
under the rug. Today, for the Israeli State, no Palestinian political
entity
of any kind must remain.
In the Occupied Territories, the very existence of the Palestinian people
is
threatened.
In Al Ahram Weekly (June 29), Azmi Bishara, Palestinian Member of
Parliament
who is an "Israeli citizen," described Gaza as "a vast penitentiary
colony,
a heap of overcrowded slums, a festering dump of poverty and frustrations,
ready to erupt at any moment because there is no hope. ... Israel is
Gaza's
doom, it has made Gaza what it is today."
The current military onslaught has just reduced to rubble most of the
vital
infrastructure of the North and the South of the Gaza Strip. How can one
claim that destroying the power grid for 700,000 people can in any way be
aimed at "eliminating terrorist infrastructures"? As re****ted by the
correspondent of the British daily The Independent, "Israeli guided
missiles
are plunging Gaza into a new dark period of 'collective punishment'."
Within just the past seven weeks - that is, till June 21, a day when a
pregnant woman, her unborn baby, and her brother were killed, and 14 other
members of the same family were wounded - the State of Israel has killed
90
Palestinians, an overwhelming majority of them civilians. To those must be
added the June 9 massacre that killed seven members of the same family
picnicking on a Beit Lahia beach, in the vicinity of Gaza.
And yet the U.S. State Department speaks of the "right of Israel to
self-defense!"
Defense Minister Amir Peretz, member of the Labour Party, said the killing
of civilians was an involuntary mistake in the necessary pursuit of the
fight against "terrorists." Following in his footsteps, Olmert, after
expressing "deep regrets" for the deaths of 14 civilians, mostly children,
killed during bombings, said the lives of Israeli citizens threatened by
Qassam rockets were "however, more im****tant."
Numerous doctors re****t that Palestinian children are routinely victimized
by ceaseless bombings, especially sound-bombs dropped in the middle of the
night. On May 8, 2006, in Ha'aretz, Gideon re****ted: "Since the
disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, military sources
indicate
that Israel has fired some 8,000 shells that have sown death, terror and
ruins as a response to the 545 Qassam rockets and pot shots that have
killed
nobody."
Israeli humanitarian groups estimate that 80% of Palestinian victims are
civilians. The situation today reveals the entire failure and dead-end of
the so-called strategy of the "two-state" solution and Partition.
"I gave the order to security forces to use all their power to pursue the
terrorists, those who inspire them, and all those who protect them." This
was what Prime Minister Olmert declared at the opening session of his
cabinet meeting. "We intend to do everything, and I mean everything, to
free
the soldier. ... I repeat: nobody will be spared." (Le Monde, July 2)
The kidnapping of an Israeli soldier is just a pretext to further crush
the
Palestinian people and their democratic demands, starting with the right
to
return. It matters little for the State of Israel to be "recognized" by
the
Palestinian organizations. The Israeli State, sup****ted by U.S.
imperialism,
has pushed its drive to fully wipe out the Palestinian people one notch
higher.
Is it not the Partition of the historic territory of Palestine that has
for
six decades been the major cause of trouble and chaos in the region?
Is there a democratic solution other than implementing the right to return
for all the refugees, in the framework of a single state that would
guarantee equal rights for all citizens?
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