By Fr. Shay Cullen
The massive on-going invasion by Israel of the Gaza Strip and its blockade of humanitarian aid to 2.2 million Palestinian civilians deprive them of the means of survival and force them to live in drastic subhuman conditions. The bombing has destroyed their homes and livelihoods in Northern Gaza in the past two months and they were ordered to evacuate to the South of Gaza where the bombing continues unabated.
An estimated 1.5 million are confined there to a small section of land in Southern Gaza without shelters, water, sanitation, food, or medical help. Sickness is spreading. Perhaps a million more are in other parts of Gaza refusing to flee South.
There is no safe place for them to shelter North or South of Gaza and the head of the UN humanitarian relief said it is not possible to even give them aid because of the non-stop bombing nearby. This continues without mercy or concern. As many as 15,000 are estimated to have been killed already, almost 5,000 of them children. It is for sure a great crime against humanity as half of the hospitals have been attacked and destroyed or made non-functional.
All this retaliatory and disproportionate violence is because of a surprise vicious and evil military attack on Israeli soldiers and civilians on October 7 by the Palestinian Hamas militant group that killed and massacred as many as 1,300 Israelis and took 240 hostages. Some have been released.
Everyone acknowledges that Israel has a right to defend itself but killing 7,000 women and children is not self-defense. It is a worse crime against humanity than what Hamas did. Cutting off humanitarian aid is to force Hamas to release more hostages.
The Palestinians were driven out of their homeland in 1948 by armed Israeli settlers from Europe that came after WWII and millions of Palestinians were driven from their homelands into refugee camps. They have been confined in the West Bank and Gaza and in refugee camps in Lebanon. Described by commentators as “open air prisons,” these areas have been occupied by Israeli troops ever since and the Palestinians have never been allowed to form an independent nation-state of their own. A two-nation solution has been backed internationally for many years. That is something right-wing Israelis do not want. What they want is to be rid of the Palestinians and take all the land of Palestine for themselves as seen in continuing violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, it seems.
Huge, kilometer- long walls seal the Palestinians off from their ancestral homelands that now make up the State of Israel presently ruled by the extremist right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has vowed to destroy Hamas and declared war on the group. The years of occupation, oppression, confinement and long-time inhuman restrictions of the Palestinians by Israel turned Hamas resistance fighters into vicious killers and their heinous attack against Israelis on 7 October 2023 incited the ire and revenge-seeking by the extremist right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is no saint or savior of Israel. He will be facing an upcoming trial accused of past crimes of bribery, breach of trust, and fraud. His hope is to stay in power by waging war and stay out of jail. He is detested by more than half of moderate Israelis that demonstrated for months against Netanyahu’s plan to pass laws to reduce the power and authority of the Israeli Supreme Court. A way to save his own skin.
However, his political and personal future is facing a grim challenge since the tragedy of the Hamas attack happened on his watch, a serious failure of intelligence in defending Israel. Hamas had practiced and rehearsed their attack “hidden in plain sight” in Northern Gaza for two years and were ignored by Israeli intelligence. They united and trained the Islamic Jihad groups in Gaza for the coordinated attack on Israel.
Media reports say outsiders had known of the pending attack because there was a rush of short selling on the stock market of Israeli shares days before the attack. They knew what Benjamin Netanyahu did not and should have. Now he hopes his war will end the threat and redeem himself.
Despite previous attacks in the past, they were not wiped out by Israel and left in power, a useful tool for Israel. Hamas would never negotiate a two-nation solution and that is just fine with Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Zionists that don’t want a two-nation solution either. They want a one-nation solution and to remove the Palestinians and occupy the whole of Palestine. They are doing that at present with as many as 17,000 or more Palestinians dead, most of them women and children.
The latest plan of Netanyahu is to divide Gaza and occupy the northern half and possibly build a bigger wall to contain and imprison the 2.2 million Palestinians. The United States is against it and Turkey, too. So, who will rule in Gaza after the war? No one knows.
The two-nation solution is seemingly the only feasible, long-term solution for these implacable enemies. World opinion is apparently turning against Israel. The latest bill in the US Congress to give more billions to Israel and Ukraine is blocked by Republicans.
The support by Joe Biden for the military action by Israel no matter how many Palestinians die is linked to his prospects of reelection next year. He will be looking for the US Jewish communities’ donation money for his reelection campaign.
He also has to be mindful of the votes of the US Evangelical Christians. Christians United for Israel claim they are 10 million strong. (They voted for Trump) They believe that the State of Israel has to be fully established before the Second Coming of Christ, the end-of-time event when the dead and the living will experience the “rapture” and ascend bodily into heaven and meet the Lord.
Most European countries are still burdened with guilt for allowing or supporting the Holocaust when Hitler and his SS massacred six million Jews. The German nation is totally in support of Israel. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, told the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament, “At this moment, there is only one place for Germany. That is the side of Israel. That’s what we mean when we say, ‘Israel’s security is German ‘reason of state.”
Ireland is outspoken on behalf of the Palestinians and voted to fly the Palestinian flag for seven days over Dublin City Hall in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Politicians have spoken strongly in support of the people of Gaza.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter last Wednesday. This is an official warning to the Security Council that there is a wider global threat because of the war on Gaza. He has called for an immediate cease fire for humanitarian reasons. The Security Council has not called for a cease-fire and motions have been vetoed.
The needs of the people in Gaza are dire and he said, “We are simply unable to meet those in need inside Gaza. The entire humanitarian system is on the edge of total breakdown. Such an outcome must be avoided at all cost.”
