Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 28 January 2009
Palestinians in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip huddle around a fire next to their home destroyed during Israel's 22 days of attacks on Gaza. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)
Because it is generally accepted by the so-called "international community" that Hamas is a major threat to Israel, and therefore to world peace and security, France has dispatched a frigate to participate in a new blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Sunday Times reported that United States naval ships hunting pirates in the Gulf of Aden have been instructed to track down Iranian arms shipments (25 January). Many other European states offered their navies to assist. Indeed, United Nations Security Council resolution 1860 emphasized the need to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition.
Unfortunately not one European country offered to send its navy to render humanitarian assistance to the thousands of injured, hungry, cold and homeless people in Gaza rendered so as a result of Israel's attack. Perhaps helping children dying from white phosphorus burns, or just lack of clean water, would be seen as supporting "terrorism."
The perverse assumption behind all the offers of help to Israel seems to be that Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza fired rockets at Israel merely because rockets were available. Therefore, the logic goes, peace would prevail if the supply of rockets were curtailed.
Another strange assumption is that Hamas was freely importing rockets from Iran or elsewhere because Gaza's borders were open and free of any control.
This ignores the fact that since Israel "disengaged" from Gaza in the summer of 2005, the coastal territory was never allowed any free access to the outside world. Gaza has been under varied forms of siege and blockade by land, sea and air. Fishermen were not even free to fish without constant attacks by the Israeli navy.
Click here: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10248.shtml to see entire article.
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