Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal :
Under the Jewish occupation, the whole of Palestine has turned into an open-air prison. The Palestinians are terribly suffering for more than 70 years. The Israelis have taken their water, have burnt their olive trees, destroyed their houses, evicted them from their villages, stolen their land, imprisoned their father, brothers and sons, bombed their cities, made walls on their land and humiliate them at hundreds of checkpoints. More than 6 million Palestinians have left their homes and live in a global diaspora. The Israelis expect that the Palestinians must submit to every atrocity in silence like a lame duck. If they protest, then they call it terrorism. If they shot a tiny rocket, they call it a war crime. Whereas, the crime of Israel is huge. Since its creation, the Israelis had so many killing campaigns against Palestinians. For a common Israeli, it is extremely difficult to be poor. But for a Palestinian, it is difficult to survive; death may come at any time. This time, for more than a week, Israeli bomber planes, missiles and artillery gun are pounding on the defenceless Gaza civilians. They have already killed about 200 Palestinians; of them more than 80 are children. Many more are injured. The Israeli Army is also destroying the infrastructure: high-rise residential buildings, government offices, electricity installation and even media offices are now being razed to the ground. They are not discriminating militants from children. They have also bombed the refugee camps and have killed many children there.
A brutal crime exposes not only the moral death of the criminal but also the immorality of those who support it. A crime thus causes huge polarisation among people. Because of Israel, the whole world is now deeply polarised. The criminal Israel leaders and their supporters stand in one pole. And those who condemn the crime stand in another pole. There is no third pole. To condemn the killing, it doesn’t need to be a saint. Even an illiterate man with an iota of morality can do that. In fact, such a crime presents a moral test; it exposes the real moral content of the people. Most of the people will go to the hellfire not for killing or robbing someone, but for failing the moral test. So some western leaders have proved that they don’t possess the minimum morality to condemn even the terrible crimes. In the past, such people could lead the colonial occupation, genocidal massacres, imperialistic arson and ethnic cleansing across the world. And today, in the name of self-defence, they give Israel an unlimited licence to kill Palestinians and destroy their houses and occupy their land. They blame Palestinians for being anti-Semitic, hence assume unworthy of any human right.
The UNO has died a moral death long ago. It is now a useless forum for talk shows. In the last 70 years, it couldn’t solve the Palestinian problem. Nor could solve the Kashmir problem, neither could stop the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. The UNO is under the full occupation of imperialists; hence has lost its own independence. It was created to protect the imperialists’ own interest and not to serve the interest of the weaker people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. These imperialists created Israel and now do everything to defend it. Hence to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, it firstly needs to end the imperialists’ occupation. In fact, those who think that UNO and the USA will solve Palestinians’ problems, are indeed living in fools’ paradise.
The current crisis in Palestine didn’t start with Hamas and its rockets but with the occupation. The occupation of Palestinian is the worst crime that took place in the modern age. The USA, the EU and the UK are complicit in the crime and now support Israel. The UNO had 70 years to solve the problem, but couldn’t solve it. It will not be able to solve it even in the next 100 years. Only if there is a wish, there is a way. The key stakeholders don’t have the wish to solve it. For the resolution of the problem, it needs the end of the Israeli occupation. In fact, it is the only key that can open the door to any meaningful solution. But Israel doesn’t want to end its occupation, rather want to expand it and fortify it. The steady expansion of the Israeli settlement in the West Bank is indeed part of the greater Israel project. The USA, the UK and France don’t want the end of occupation either. They want that the Palestinians must accept the Israeli occupation and seek peace through unconditional surrender. They label any resistance against the occupation as terrorism and call the Israeli killing a part of its rightful self-defence.
(Dr. Mahboob Kamal is a freelance
columnist).
