by Uri Heitner
According to the
reports out of Cairo, one of the main issues in the negotiations, maybe
the biggest one, is Hamas' demand to remove the Israeli blockade on
Gaza. The Palestinian narrative of the "siege" has taken roots in the
public consciousness, to the point where we have also fallen into the
trap. Is Gaza really under a siege?
The "siege" narrative
was born after Israel's disengagement from Gaza in the summer of 2005 to
replace the Palestinian narrative of "occupation," as an excuse for
terrorism against Israel. After the withdrawal from Gaza, when the
settlements were uprooted and every last trace of every last Jew
eradicated, the Palestinians couldn't cling to their claim of
"occupation." So ever since they have painted Gaza as an area under a
"brutal siege."
This claim has to be
examined starting from the disengagement. Israel withdrew and
responsibility for Gaza was transferred to Palestinian Authority, under
President Mahmoud Abbas. The entire world, certainly Israel, lined up to
make Gaza the jewel of the Middle East, a paradise on earth. But the
Palestinians chose to turn it into a hell of terrorism, firing rockets
at Israeli civilians and digging tunnels to use for acts of mass
terrorism. The withdrawal from Gaza itself was conducted under fire, and
afterward the entire Strip became the base for an ongoing war crime
against Israeli civilians -- first under Abbas, and two years later
under the Hamas regime.
Only after 10 months of
continual rocket fire following the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad
Schalit did Israel declare the Gaza Strip a hostile entity and partly
close the crossings and enforce a maritime closure on it. Open border
crossings are standard between nations at peace. It's obvious that from
the moment Gaza became a hostile entity all the crossings would be
closed, exactly like the border crossings between Israel and Syria, for
example, are closed. It's obvious that there can be no argument about
this.
But Israel did not
actually close the crossings at all. The opposite: even when the
shooting on Israel was heaviest, including the Protective Edge War, 300
trucks laden with the best of goods crossed from Israel into Gaza daily.
The terrorist tunnels intended to be used to murder Israelis were built
with concrete and construction materials that Israel supplied. Even
when the Palestinians shot at the crossings, Israel continued to let the
trucks through. Israel kept on supplying electricity to Gaza, without
pause, even after the Palestinians repeatedly shot at the Ashkelon power
plant.
True, Israel placed a
maritime closure on Gaza to prevent this terrorist monster from
wide-scale armament. The closure was enacted according to international
law, as even the report by the U.N. investigative committee into the
Turkish flotilla of 2010 stated.
Is this a siege? This
is how the dictionary defines "siege": "The act or process of
surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate
it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance
of the defenders and thereby making capture possible." Does this bear
any resemblance to the reality on the Gaza border?
Moreover, Israel does
not even have the ability to keep Gaza under siege, because Gaza shares a
border with Egypt. The Gazans and the Egyptians belong to the same
people. Thousands of rockets have not been fired at Egypt from Gaza.
Siege? Let Egypt open its Gaza border crossings.
The whole siege story is nothing more than a fable made up to sway world opinion against Israel.
Uri Heitner
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=9617
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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