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The ongoing Israel-induced carnage of civilians in Gaza City (548
dead and some 2,700 wounded as of January 6) is giving the world a
nightmarish crash course in world politics, and an inkling into how
intrepid, well-motivated development workers from all over the world
can succor the poor and suffering in a war zone.
Development workers, many health practitioners,
are risking life and limb to assist the wounded in Gaza, and
hundreds more from other countries are waiting for a clearance from
Egypt to cross over to Gaza at Rafah Crossing.
In contrast, the world’s top politicians could
hardly claim a similar service before the world’s public.
Single-handedly, the United States trumped a
United Nations Security Council resolution to stop Israel’s
“overreaction.” This “US’ spoiled brat” in the Middle East
has answered rocket attacks allegedly fired by elements of Hamas
from Gaza City with an unceasing barrage of aerial bombardment, land
invasion of its well-trained and well-equipped soldiers, and sea
blockade even of aid provisions for Gaza residents.
Meanwhile, some normally garrulous Arab leaders
are still quibbling among themselves how best to look at Israel that
had grabbed their lands and displaced their peoples to forge the
world’s fourth largest industrial-military complex.
What is happening in Gaza is the continuing
tragedy of two peoples, the Jewish and the Palestinian Arabs, and
their millenia-old tussle is a longtime thorn in world history.
Land is the key to all problems in Israel, whose
creation was prompted by the urge to build a Jewish homeland based
on the Talmud, corresponding to the first five books of the
Christian Bible.
In between two millenia of persecution and
discrimination in their “promised land,” the Jews left Israel in
a diaspora. Here, peoples collectively called Palestinians were left
behind to nurture the land, maintaining the Jews abandoned, and have
lost, their birthright.
However, the biblical promise of a land for the
Jews and a return to the Temple in Jerusalem were enshrined in
Judaism, sustaining Jewish identity through an exile of 19
centuries.
A rise in European anti-Semitism and revived
Jewish national pride inspired a new wave of emigration to Palestine
in the form of agricultural colonies financed by the Rothschilds and
other wealthy families in the late 19th century.
Against all machinations of many superpowers
operating in Palestine, Jewish migration grew dramatically during
the second quarter of the 20th century with the increased
persecution of Jews worldwide and subsequent Holocaust perpetrated
by Nazi Germany.
Jewish inflow caused tension with the native
Palestinian Arabs, and violence flared between the two groups
leading up to the United Nations plan to partition Palestine into
Jewish and Palestinian sectors and Israel’s ensuing declaration of
statehood on May 14, 1948.
More than half of the Arab population fled their
homes during the war of 1948, of whom only a small fraction were
allowed to return after the end of hostilities.
Israel fought against neigh-boring Arab states
during the next 35 years over territory to regain the biblical
Canaan, eventually annexing territories and placing them under its
military administration in 1967.
These included the territory on the west bank of
the Jordan River (the West Bank) that had been annexed by Jordan in
1950, the now embattled
Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula region of Egypt,
Golan Heights region of Syria, and East Jerusalem and adjoining
villages (also formerly part of Jordan).
Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations have
consistently disputed and hotly contested these actions in the
United Nations, where the US has consistently propped up Israel,
with which they earned a foothold in the Middle East.
In 1978, the Israeli military occupied a strip
of Lebanese territory adjoining Israel’s northern border, from
which it withdrew in 2000.
Israel passed legislation effectively annexing
the Golan Heights in April 1981, but completed a withdrawal from the
Sinai Peninsula in April 1982 after negotiating a peace treaty with
Egypt.
In May 1994, Israel began turning over control
of much of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank—including
jurisdiction over most of the people in those areas—to the
Palestinians in accordance with the provisions set forth in the
Cairo Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho signed by the two
parties earlier that month.
These exchanges of territory were part of a
series of agreements (generally referred to as the Oslo Accords)
that were initiated by the September 1993 Declaration of Principals
on Palestinian Self-Rule.
Supposedly, the agreements should settle
outstanding grievances between the two sides over issues relating to
Israeli security and that country’s occupation of Palestinian
territory.
The Israelis and the newly formed Palestinian
Authority arranged further exchanges of territory as part of the
Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip signed in
September 1995 and the Wye River Memorandum of October 1998.
ngamolo@manilatimes.net
/ ngamolo@gmail.com
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