The Agony of Palestine

Dilip Simeon, Hardnews Bureau

Historian Dilip Simeon in Delhi explores the history of the Holocaust of Jews by the Nazis, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the origin of the bloody conflict and the Gaza carnage. Is peace, justice and reconciliation possible?

Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza has ended (coincidentally?) just before President Barack Obama's inauguration.  It has cost 1,300 Palestinian lives, half of them children and women. Over 5,500 have been wounded. Thirteen Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed. Clinics, schools, cemeteries and UN buildings stocked with humanitarian supplies have been decimated.

John Ging, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, has spoken of violations in international law. The Israeli military are accused of using powerful shells in civilian areas which they knew would cause casualties; using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs; holding civilians as human shields; attacking medical facilities, killing 12 ambulance men, and killing policemen with no military role. The Red Cross protested after the army moved a Palestinian family into a building and shelled it, killing 30. The surviving children clung to the bodies of their dead mothers for four days while the army blocked rescuers from reaching the wounded. One extended family has lost 48 members.

Human Rights Watch has called on the UN Security Council to set up a commission of inquiry. Amnesty International says hitting residential areas with shells that send blasts and shrapnel over a wide area constitutes "prima facie evidence of war crimes". Two leading Israeli human rights organisations have written to the country's attorney-general demanding he investigate the allegations. Almost 540 Israeli citizens have announced that "Israel has returned to openly committing war crimes, worse than what we have seen in a long time", and called for "massive intervention by the international community", asking the world to "condem and not become an accomplice in Israel's crimes".

Despite all this, the West continues to give carte-blanche to Israel, and equates the colonised people of Palestine with a rampaging army which has always blocked all attempts to stop its expansionism. In extreme situations, the issue is treated as if it were one of two equal parties, one of whom - the Palestinians - are for no rhyme or reason, launching terrorist attacks upon the other, Israel, which we are repeatedly told, has "the right to defend itself".