The war on the Gaza Strip and its repercussions on the West Bank

It is difficult to write about what is happening in Gaza these days, including killing, displacement, comprehensive destruction, and the obliteration of all aspects of life. It is a multi-faceted topic that extends between the past, present, and tomorrow, and we do not know what it will bring. However, it must be said that what is happening cannot be described as a war against the Hamas movement, because the goals of this war have become clearly visible, and they are quite simple: to make the Gaza Strip a place unfit for human life, to force its residents to leave it.

It is true that attention is focused on human victims, but even these victims do not receive the necessary attention, as they are merely numbers measured in the tens or hundreds daily and are added to the list that has now reached approximately nineteen thousand and which is growing at every moment, and which now exceeds twenty-five thousand dead if we add to those still under the rubble.

Making the sector uninhabitable for human life
The plan to make the Gaza Strip a place unfit for human life is being implemented intentionally and programmed by eliminating all elements of life by destroying public facilities, including water and electricity infrastructure, as well as all buildings that provide public services to people, such as hospitals, schools, factories, universities, mosques, churches, farms, etc., and eliminating human competencies of doctors, engineers, lawyers, university professors, journalists, and medical personnel such as ambulance, nursing, etc., preventing the access of fuel, gas, medicine, medical supplies, food and water to people, and starving and terrorizing everyone. People were expelled from the north and center towards the south on the Egyptian border in preparation for their displacement.

Everyone is talking about an Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip by deporting its residents to Egypt, or via Egypt to other countries that accept to host them. Here it must be said that starving and thirsting people is a tool of oppression and pressure to force them to leave and at the same time claim that they left voluntarily without coercion!

Egypt has announced, through President Sisi and other Egyptian officials, that it does not allow the population of the Gaza Strip to be displaced from their homes to Egyptian territory, but the Egyptian leadership has not taken any countermeasure to prevent the displacement, and there is no doubt that the presence of nearly two million Palestinians in the Palestinian Rafah on the Egyptian border is more than two people per square meter without water, food, or even places to relieve themselves, especially women, will lead at one moment to a human explosion that will topple the separation wall between Egypt and Rafah and leave hundreds of thousands flowing from Rafah to Egyptian territory in search of a drink of water or a piece of bread, and then the authorities will say the Egyptian government said that it was not in its power to stop this human flood, and the issue turns as if receiving and providing relief to them is a humanitarian act!

Doesn't Egypt have sovereignty over the Rafah crossing?
I said that the Egyptian leadership did not take any countermeasure to prevent the displacement, and I do not mean by that that I expect Egypt to declare war on Israel, but I simply mean that the Rafah crossing separates Egypt from the Gaza Strip and that this crossing is supposed to be subject to Egyptian sovereignty and that Egypt by opening this crossing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and allowing the flow of food, medical and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip without any restrictions on the number.

Not only that, but also allowing the entry of specialized humanitarian personnel, such as doctors, technicians, and the necessary machinery to remove the rubble to help treat the injured and save their lives, and allowing foreign media and foreign journalists to enter the Gaza Strip from the Rafah crossing to convey to the world the true picture of the situation in the Gaza Strip and convey it to the world.

The plan to displace the population of the Gaza Strip outside their homeland is not new to the Zionist thought on which Israel was founded, and it confirms that the Nakba of 1948 is still continuing and that the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland and land in 1948 has continued since then without stopping, but at a different pace, both within the territories that were occupied in the year 1948 or the one that were occupied the year 67, and today they are trying to implement it on the Gaza Strip, and if the expulsion of the residents of the Strip succeeds, God forbid, that plan will be implemented on the West Bank later. 

Therefore, Gaza today is the first line of defense for the West Bank and in its heart. East Jerusalem, where attempts to erase its Arab identity and expel its Arab residents have not stopped for a moment since 1967. Yesterday, thirty families from the Baydoun neighborhood in the Mughrabi Gate area were informed to vacate their homes built on 8,725 meters within two months under the pretext of expropriating the cable car that will be built above them for the public benefit.

The American role and the accounts of some Arab regimes
What must be taken into account and must be confronted with all possible means is that the conspiracy to evacuate the Gaza Strip is being carried out with American blessing and support, which was embodied the day before yesterday by America using its veto to prevent the UN Security Council from taking a decision on an immediate ceasefire. America, after two months of the massacres against our people in the Gaza Strip, in which the number of victims exceeded twenty-five thousand, if we take into account the number of victims who are still under the rubble, still believes in the possibility of implementing the displacement plan and wants to give Israel more time to continue killing, destroying and pressuring the residents of the Gaza Strip.

What is truly regrettable is that there are a number of Arab regimes that see the war on the residents of the Strip as a war against the Hamas movement, and they collude with that war because of their rivalries with Hamas, and this is extremely wrong because the people, as a whole, are the victims and they are the ones who pay the price, not Hamas.

Addressing the root of the conflict, not its side effects
Israel, America, and all the regimes that believe that the current war will eliminate Hamas must understand that eliminating the ideology of resistance against the occupation, under whose slogan Hamas stands, will not be achieved even if Hamas leaders are killed or its voice is silenced. The problem is bigger than Hamas, which is that the Palestinian people, who have been struggling in various forms for a century for their freedom and independence and have not withered, faded, or forgotten their homeland, will always rise from the ashes to resume their struggle for their freedom on the soil of their homeland. There is no doubt that wisdom requires recognizing the reality of the Palestinian people and their right to freedom, self-determination and independence, and this is the only way to achieve stability and security for all in the region. As for following the illusion of eliminating their national aspirations and trying to assassinate them morally, dehumanizing them, and calling them human animals, as an Israeli minister said, and the sons of darkness, as Netanyahu said, will only bring more violence and suffering on both sides.

There is no doubt that positive thinking about a better future for all requires addressing the roots of the conflict and not being concerned with its side effects. The root of the conflict is the occupation, denial of the rights of the Palestinian people, and denial of their existence. No one desires war for the sake of war, and no one desires death for the sake of death, but people go to war and die when all paths that lead to them being able to exercise their rights are blocked, and it is logical that this principle also applies to Hamas. What is needed today is a political initiative that preserves everyone’s rights, everyone’s face, and allows everyone to come down from the tree and speak in a language other than the language of murder and violence in order to spare bloodshed and achieve justice and peace for all.
abuzayyadz@gmail.com