Israel and Palestine; what next? A talk by OneVoice – part 2

Continued from part 1 

After Rami and Dari said what they had to say about their work in OneVoice, I and a few other listeners had a few questions. Here are the highlights:

I had heard during their introduction that they had offices in Gaza which had closed during Operation Cast Lead for obvious security reasons, and now they have just been reopened. The point of interest to me was how it was received by Hamas, the ruling party over there. I was curious because Hamas is, at best, a firm organization. If there is anything that they see as a threat they will try and take care of it swiftly.

Rami was the one to answer my question since he was obviously more aware of the situation there. To the surprise of the audience, they had allowed it to open. They were even allowed to hold two meetings in Universities there, a general meeting and one specifically for students that specifically support Hamas and those that supported parties from the PLO. Rami expressed his wishes that it would be just the start of things to come. But with the blockade still active, he as a West Bank resident, can’t visit his colleagues as of yet.

Another pressing issue was that of normalization. When I had put up the event on a social networking site, some people chose not to go because it encouraged normalization. Meaning that they saw that OneVoice made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict politically symmetrical, while in reality it is asymmetrical, with Israel doing the occupying, building the settlements, possessing more finances and a more powerful military. OneVoice responded by saying that they too did not deny that the situation was indeed asymmetrical, but that what is important is the end of the conflict. Rami himself said that there will be no justice or peace, no work towards an independent Palestinian state, until the military occupation ends, and it needs to be ended “urgently”. OneVoice was not forcing people from both sides into dialogue and presenting a symmetrical political situation, but making people on both sides to focus inwardly, both at the same time, to effect change. As Sharon, a representative and worker in OneVoice’s London office, said “if Israel is part of the problem, then it is part of the solution”.

Throughout the talk, I noticed that Dari kept on mentioning that if the conflict does not end then her future will be, in essence, ruined or ripped apart. Some pro-Palestinians might think that she is doing nothing but playing victim, but I kept an open mind and asked her what she explicitly meant by that. Her answer was nothing to do with the possibility of increased terrorist attacks, but the very moral integrity of Israeli society. She had mentioned earlier on, during an informal chat, how long it took Israelis to “wake up”, and now she was envisioning a world fifty years from now where Palestine eventually disappears. She imagined that all her fellow Israelis would be asking themselves “where were we when this happened?”.

That last part was admittedly touching. Many who follow Palestine’s political affairs have witnessed the crimes committed by the Israeli government and I.D.F. I have always wondered how the soldiers who have taken part in these crimes deal with it. How must they react or whether they realize at all that their own morals are crumbling. Yet here was Dari, a soldier who had served in the second Intifada, left frustrated and saw the importance of moral integrity to herself and the country she was born in. An importance greater than any amount of wealth or land that one can gain.

These were essentially the main points of the talk. Hopefully I will stay in touch with the organization and their progress. I don’t want to raise my hopes too high, and I don’t know if this is because I am wise or because it is just a knee-jerk reaction. Something tells me things will either be slow to change, or it will be too late…

 

Suicide bombing in Palestine; a deeper issue.

“[...] it was al-Sayyid’s job to keep an eye on the religious young men spending time at local mosques. By asking the right questions, clues might be gleaned as to their suitability as suicide bombers. Just how devout were they? Did they show the commitment and conviction needed? Were they on the Israeli security services’ wanted list? Did they have financial worries? Were they emotionally stable?” [1]

The suicide bombings have become a history in Palestine and Israel, but they do remain a possibility. The horrific results of these intricate operations were witnessed by many Israeli civilians, it is a saying that everyone in Israel knows someone who has suffered from one of these attacks. Asides from the careful selection process mentioned above, there is also the task of getting the right paperwork and transport to gain access into Israel proper and then there is the matter of picking out a target.

One example was the so called “passover massacre” (sorry for generic wikipedia article) because it took place during a passover Seder. This serves as an example of the many attacks that happened in Israel.

It is horrific enough that women and children are often the victims. We as Palestinians have a moral duty to speak out against the act because we, of all people, also know the agonizing pain of losing innocent people, including and especially children. But there is also a deeper issue, and I will quote it again…
“[...]Were they emotionally stable?“[1]
The suicide bombers, who come from amongst our own whether they are brothers, sisters, neighbours or friends are human beings. They are not convinced but fooled, they are not empowered but enslaved. They are enslaved by the Israeli military occupation and that gives the perfect recruiting environment for Hamas who become their secondary masters. Many families in Palestine have and are seeing difficult financial times, and when things get so desperate and Hamas offer extra money to the family of the suicide bomber, that is not empowerment, that is slavery. But an even greater atrocity is to take advantage of their mental states, whether they are simply erratic or suffer from conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. To think that someone has lost their own family members and witnessed the horrors of war only so that they end up ending their lives and everyone else is collectively punished is a great shame.

I know that some out there think that by condemning suicide bombing I am somehow justifying the Israeli government’s actions in the West Bank and the Gaza. I can assure you I am not. The reason that I am criticising what some Palestinian political movements have done is so that we can improve on it. It is because I love Palestinians  as human beings and I love Palestine as our identity. And we need to prepare to not only fight military occupation and discrimination, but to also criticize our rising elites for our own good.

[1]From David Pratt’s, Intifada: the long day of rage, Sunday Herald Books (2006) p.141-142

“The wounds of Gaza” – A talk by Dr Ang Swee Chai

Part 1 – The roots of purpose and reason.

note: This talk took place in January of 2010, a long time ago. I thought it would be good to publish it again here for people to read. Operation Cast Lead may be over, but people over there are still suffering. 

“The wounds of Gaza” is a talk prepared by Dr Ang Swee Chai and about her experiences as a hospital worker during the 2008/2009 Israeli offensive on Gaza, formally known as “Operation Cast Lead”.

The first thing that may really stand out to someone is the passion, respect and sophistication with which she speaks, not just about the recent war on Gaza, but of the whole history of the Palestinians.
I suspected that these passions over a wide ranging issue must have had a root cause, and indeed there was and she confirmed it with her own words.
Born in Singapore in the 1950s and of a Chinese origin, Dr Ang Swee Chai was a practicing Christian and her interpretation of the Bible led her to believe that Israel and Palestine rightfully belonged to the Jews and that Israel was a blessed nation. After the 6 day war of 1967 in which Israel occupied what remained of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza strip, she recalled seeing the event as “David against Goliath” as Israel had after all defeated three Arab nations (Syria, Jordan and Egypt). This strong Christian Zionism that she had remained with her until it was struck down by experience and then broken by shock.
The moral turning point that caused this began when she volunteered, as a Christian of good works, to work with the Red Cross as a doctor. She ended up in Gaza hospital, which is not in the Gaza strip, but in Lebanon. To be more precise it directly over looked Sabra and Shatila refugee camps which the Palestinians inhabit (By the capital city Beirut). Her perception of the Israeli-Palestinian situation was totally changed when she became involved with Palestinian culture and more importantly with refugees as individuals. As she said in her own words
“I fell in love with the Palestinian culture and the Palestinian people”
However, as she worked in the 1980s in the area, she was to witness an event that would shock her and bring home the reality and urgency of the situation and lead her to support a peaceful pro-Palestinian cause as opposed to the previous pure pro-Israeli views.
On the 15th of September 1982, a massacre of the Palestinians of Sabra and Shatila by the so called “Christian” Phalangists proceeded for three days and cost over three thousand lives. Numbers are still disputed as this event does not have an “official” historical record.
What was more shocking to Dr Chai was that the Israeli army, which helped pave the way for the Phalangists, stood by and watched the whole thing unfold. All it took for this to stop on the 19th of September was the simple order of “Stop, everyone go back to your homes” by an Israeli commanding officer and surely enough, the Phalangist death squads listened.
When Dr Chai herself saw the aftermath of the massacre she said that she had felt angry at first, but then broken. That is what I see as a major moral turning point in her life. What inspired her to work even harder was as she said the “perseverance” of the Palestinians. One example being a picture she took of some children of Sabra and Shatila who survived that massacre, smiling and making the victory sign, which many in the West mistake for a peace sign.
By 1987 she was working at a hospital in Khan Younis in the North of the Gaza Strip itself. The significance of this date is that it marked the first intifada, a popular uprising of the Palestinians against the Israeli military occupation which has been going on since 1967.
The first thing she mentioned about the Intifada was the event of Tiananmen Square and how the Palestinians have been similarly facing up to tanks on foot before and after this famous iconic event.
As the injured and the dead began to roll into the hospitals, her personal experience destroyed the myth that Gaza is simply a block of Islamic extremists as she worked with doctors of Christian and even secular orientations.
In 1989 the Intifada was carrying on, and even though it consisted of mostly boys throwing rocks Israel was taking action in trying to keep it down. The whole of Gaza had spent the Islamic holy month of Ramadan under curfew. The conditions in the talk were not made clear but from my understanding a typical curfew was that no one was allowed out after dark and that there were continuous military patrols throughout the designated area. As Ramadan ended the curfew was lifted and the people of Gaza spilled out on to the streets to celebrate the ensuing “Eid-al Fitr”. Rockets which were reported to be fired from helicopters exploded into the crowds leaving 68 dead and 343 injured. Dr Chai was one of many doctors who worked in treating the casualties and the repetitive exposure to the direct result of war had emphasised the degree of brutalisation in this conflict.

Part 2 – Operation Cast Lead and the weapons of war. 

Following a second Intifada in the year 2000 and the election of Hamas in Gaza in 2006 was the blockade of Gaza in 2007. One of the most densely populated areas on earth, the size of the isle of Wight was locked up with all eight crossings closed and the sea was made a “no access” zone for up to three nautical miles. As supplies dwindled, 80% of Gaza’s population was reduced to relying on U.N rations.
Hamas, as a former resistance movement and now a political body, mounted it’s own attacks using “homemade rockets” from materials smuggled in underground tunnels going to Egypt. The rocket attacks stopped and started over various failed cease fires.
On the 27th of December 2009, Israel launched operation “Cast Lead” as a response to Hamas and an attempt to weaken them. Dr Chai was also present in this particular war where more than 1300 died including 400 children. The Israelis themselves suffered 13 deaths. The operation itself included bombing and ground incursions with troops and tanks.
During the talk, Dr Chai mentioned various weapons that the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces/ Israeli army) had used. Some of which I will describe and explain.
• D.I.M.E (Dense Inert Metal Explosives).
These are still believed to be in their experimental stages. Unlike traditional explosives, they do not rely on their explosion of the metal cases for shrapnel damage, instead the metal casing disintegrates and unleashes “micro shrapnel”; pieces of metal approximately 2mm big in a 4 meter radius killing anyone within that range almost instantly. Anyone close to that lethal zone is likely to have their flesh and bone torn apart by these metallic pieces; they also embed themselves in wounds causing infection. This is considered untreatable as the pieces are too small to be taken out individually meaning that doctors have to resort to amputations. Some forms of the bomb have been reported to have metal powders instead of pellets for shrapnel.
The shrapnel itself is made from a tungsten alloy, HMTA, mainly consisting of the metal tungsten with small amounts of nickel and cobalt. Studies by the U.S department of health shows that these elements may have carcinogenic (cancer causing) effects, although these findings should be treated with caution.

• White Phosphorous – Incendiary (fire based) tactical weapon.
Stored within metal casing and exploded in the form of clustered solid lumps spreading over a wide area and igniting upon contact with almost anything.
Under international law, it is illegal to use directly against humans but legal to use as a smoke screen for strategic reasons. Dr Chai has shown images of phosphorous bombs exploding over Gaza City and Khan Younis and also the aftermath such as burnt out buildings which seemed to have been directly targeted.
Burns on the flesh have left open wounds where excess white phosphorous is absorbed in to the tissues and the blood stream of victims sometimes causing multiple organ failures.
Gases given off from the bombs such as phosphorous pent-oxide can cause phosphoric acid rain causing damage to plants and aquatic life. This is particularly destructive to the outskirts of Gaza, which as a community is heavily dependent on agriculture especially during a blockade which is on going.

• Fuel Air Bomb – Less formally known as a “Vacuum” bomb.
A bomb that was used by Israeli forces in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The “fuel” inside quickly consumes the Oxygen of the environment and reacts violently causing an explosion, this means it can burn for a long time in places of limited air flow as the fuel “searches” for Oxygen so that it can react. This means survivors of a blast in a closed space such as a tunnel or bunker may die from asphyxiation (No oxygen to breathe means death). If that is not enough the rapid cooling after the reaction creates a sudden drop in pressure and so a vacuum suction effect is created (hence the name “Vacuum Bomb”). In other words, if dropped in a building, the building could implode in on itself burying the inhabitants alive.

The precision of these weapons are not the greatest in terms of their area of effect with the exception of the experimental D.I.M.E. However, the reader should consider their potency within densely populated cities as well as the part they played in reducing the northern Gaza strip to a tent city.
I must be fair in saying that Hamas has also acted rashly with the use of imprecise rockets. Although most don’t seem to even have explosive warheads they have still caused damage. One case was when a rocket crashed through the roof of an Israeli primary school which was fortunately empty at the time.
This ultimately gives an idea and shows the hatred and loathing Israel has created and aimed at itself over the years. More importantly, as human beings, the victims of ignorance have been our children