Punishing the Palestinians
Since the Hamas electoral victory, Tel Aviv has suspended the transfer of 55 million U.S. dollars in tax revenues it collects for the Palestinians --- money that rightly belongs to the Palestinians--- thus depriving the Palestinian Authority of much needed cash to pay salaries to its employees and to maintain basic services. One Israeli bank, Bank Hapoalim, has stopped the transfer of money to the Palestinian territories. This means that many Palestinian families will not be able to receive money from abroad anymore. The Tel Aviv regime has also closed the Karni checkpoint, choking off the flow of goods to parts of Occupied Palestine. At the same time, the Israeli navy is denying fishermen in Gaza access to their fishing grounds which, needless to say, has dealt yet another severe blow to the livelihoods of thousands of Palestinians. Not content with these brutal and inhuman measures, the Israeli army has begun pounding suspected launching pads of Qassam rockets and in the process has killed dozens of Palestinian civilians, including three children. It has once again unleashed the state terror for which it is notorious. It is this that has prompted the principled Israeli journalist Gideon Levy to ask, ‘Who is a terrorist?’
One can expect Israeli state terrorism to escalate in the next few days in the wake of the killing of nine civilians in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian suicide bomber on April 17. Though it was the Islamic Jihad group that was responsible for the bomb attack, the Tel Aviv regime is holding Hamas accountable as part of its strategy of weakening the Palestinian Authority. Hamas, it should be emphasized, has refrained from conducting any suicide operations against Israel for more than a year now, in observance of a voluntary truce.
It is partly because of the restraint that Hamas has shown in recent times that a handful of Israeli human rights activists have called upon the Tel Aviv regime to stop the blockade of the Palestinian Authority. They have urged their leaders to start talking to their Hamas counterparts. The same message has been directed at the U.S. government and the European Union, both of which have cut off all aid to the Hamas-helmed Palestinian Authority. In an appeal to the European Union, the Israeli human rights group Gush Shalom, for instance, has described the termination of economic assistance as “a terrible mistake: no people in the world would submit to such brutal and humiliating pressure from outside. The inevitable result will be a further radicalization of Palestinian opinion, and a deepening of the hatred for Israel and the West in the whole of the Arab and Muslim world.”
For the EU, the U.S., and the Tel Aviv regime, pressure upon Hamas is justified since Hamas has refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and to renounce the use of violence against the Zionist regime. But Hamas has made it explicitly clear that Israel as the occupying power must first withdraw completely from the West Bank and Gaza (which is still very much under its control), recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, and acknowledge the non-negotiable ‘right of return’ of 4.5 million Palestinian refugees -- before Hamas reciprocates. This is a legitimate demand in line with various UN resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, international law, and the principles of justice.
Instead of punishing Hamas, the U.S. and the EU should be pressurizing the Tel Aviv regime to end its occupation and to abide by UN resolutions. The mainstream media in the West and elsewhere should also urge Tel Aviv and its backers to cease their subjugation and oppression of the Palestinian people and to restore their rights. It is immoral for governments and the media to concentrate their attack upon the victims of occupation and oppression.
If Western elites are sincere about human rights and justice, they should champion the cause of the dispossessed -- not trample upon their dignity.