Justin here. Lucky for me Mandisi’s been around – I have been sick. I’m better today. The world marches on though.
Before I get into the title topic I want to note that the Zapatistas have lifted their red alert and announced some plans for their national campaign.
Justin here. Lucky for me Mandisi’s been around – I have been sick. I’m better today. The world marches on though.
Before I get into the title topic I want to note that the Zapatistas have lifted their red alert and announced some plans for their national campaign.
Now on to the subject. Israel is firing missiles all over Palestinian territories. They killed 7 and injured some others. Israel has imposed closures in various parts of the West Bank and is invading various towns in force (see IMEMC for ongoing coverage). Israel claims this is in retaliation for a suicide attack in the Israeli town of Netanya that killed 2 Israelis.
This is how a period of ‘relative calm’ (during which only Palestinians die) ends.
This is also how the theatrics about the evacuation of settlements ends (for more on that, see the usual good ones Hass, Levy, Baroud)
A lot of people write about this ‘evacuation plan’ and how it’s a cover for Israel to annex parts of the West Bank. I don’t think the two are related. Israel is annexing the West Bank because it can. It is ‘evacuating’ settlers from Gaza as the first step in an experiment in mass murder, preparing a situation that won’t be very different from Iraq under the sanctions.
Listening to the media it’s easy to forget that Israel has pretty close to total control over Gaza, the West Bank, and the military situation in general. Israel presses buttons and Gazans die. And meanwhile, all the while, people in Gaza and especially the children are starving, as 5 years of siege continues. None of that will change if the settlers leave (and I’m not at all certain they will be leaving). Instead, the slaughter in Gaza will reach a new level of impunity.
And of course Israel won’t have anything to worry about from the ‘international community’ or the media. Now that Israel has ‘heated’ things up with its high-tech killings and invasions, people can tut-tut and say ‘oh, and things were so close to improvement… they were even going to *leave* Gaza… and now look… I guess there just won’t ever be peace there…’
