Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Carnage Stops for the Moment


Image of white phosphorous falling inside the UN school in northern Gaza where a woman and a child were killed on January 17.

So they've stopped for the moment. Snipers have no doubt fanned out to liquidate/exterminate the usual "pockets of resistance," but for the moment "quiet" has descended on the smoking, blood-drenched ruins of Gaza.

Hamas, so far as we can tell from afar, didn't fight. There was no resistance to Israeli tanks and bombs and bullets. The entirety of Gaza was an Israeli free-fire zone, and there was no where at all for Gazans to find safe refuge within Gaza, no way at all for non-combatants to flee. They are trapped, encaged, without succor, without hope, to be slaughtered at will by the dartk forces of death and destruction arrayed against them.

All the European heads of state are assembled at Sharm el-Sheikh to assure Israel that they support its right to defend itself against the perfidy of the Palestinians, that they are determined to get humanitarian aid to the Gazans as quickly as possible, and (according to Gordon Brown) to provide counseling services to children who have been traumatized by the struggle.

Mouin Rabbani comments on the proceedings that it is breathtakingly inconceivable that not one of these glittering heads of state has mentioned the word "occupation". How can they discuss what's happened without mentioning the occupation? Rabanni's counclusion? The Two State Settlement is dead. The very notion of "negotiations" has been discredited.

Rabbani opines that the next step is not a One State Solution, as that ideal is unlikely in our lifetimes. The next step is more likely an extistential struggle. He doesn't describe it, not yet. But given past history, the "extistential" solution is the elimination of the Palestinians by force.

No comments:

Post a Comment