"We did not know"

a beginners guide to the
Israeli/Palestine conflict

The Gaza Massacre

The 22-day massacre was presented to the western media as a legitimate response to Hamas rocket attacks - "what other country would put up with this kind of attack upon its civilians for so long?" - but the attack upon Gaza was planned months in advance, Hamas having infuriated both Israel and the USA by winning an overwhelming victory in the elections in Gaza and by taking full control over the Strip in spite of efforts to destabilize them.

Earlier in the year, the IDF had built a simulated town in which their troops practised combat in an urban environment. Israeli intelligence having gathered, by a network of informants within the Strip, detailed information on the precise locations of Hamas personell and installations, Hamas were simply goaded into resuming rocket fire at a time to suit the Israeli agenda. As might be expected, the western media failed to report that the ceasefire had held until, under the pretext of having discovered a tunnel, Israel lauched a strike upon Gaza. Hamas responded, as anticipated, with renewed rocket attacks upon Sderot and, following that, Israel's "retaliation" could, as always, be reported in the western media as a regrettable but unavoidable response to a renewed wave of Hamas terrorism. This is a well-tried-and-tested Israeli technique: provoke, await the response, complain to the world that Israel is under attack... then "retaliate" as planned.

It is, according to Israel, just the beginning. A wave of missile attacks on the Gaza Strip, which began on Saturday morning, bombarded security compounds belonging to Hamas, which controls the coastal territory. Clayton Swisher reports.

Israeli jets are again bombing targets in the Gaza Strip. The air assualt is now into a third day. Warships have also been involved in the attacks, shelling the area around Gaza's port. The death toll in Gaza has risen to 318. A UN agency says at least 51 of those victims were civilians. Despite the onslaught, the Palestinian resistance continues. Rockets fired from Gaza have killed one person and injured seven in the city of Ashkelon. Roza Ibragimova reports.

Palestinian families are wondering whether they will become the next target after four days of Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip. As Sherine Tadros reports, there are few places to hide, and civilian casualties continue to rise.

The heavy Israeli aerial bombardment and threat of a ground offensive has forced Gazans to remain indoors for safety. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros spent the evening with one family in Gaza City to see how they're coping.

The Israeli government says there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but social and medical workers disagree. John Ging from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency says the situation in Gaza is catastrophic.

Israeli propaganda and manipulation of the media, presenting Israel, always, as the victim rather than the perpetrator of fanatical aggression, has been successful in maintaining a gross perversion of the truth. There is widepread ignorance of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, of the history of massacres, the brutality, systematic ethnic cleansing, and of the historic and, to this day, relentless expansion of Israel into Palestinian land. There is widespread ignorance of the abductions, the torturing, the curfews, the checkpoints, the scale of the dispossessions, the bulldozers, and the building of Israeli settlements where, yesterday, Palestinians lived and worked. We hear nothing of the daily humiliation and thuggish treatment of the Palestinian people and of the apartheid that has been established.

Thanks to the Israeli news blockade on Gaza, there is even widespread ignorance of the latest catalogue of war crimes that took place between the 27th December and the 17th January 2009.

The real enemy of the state of Israel is not terrorism; it is simply the truth and, once it’s out, there is no way to put it back.

News/Awareness

STUC recommends BDS against Israel

Following the STUC delegation's visit to Palestine in March, the General Council of the Scottish Trade Union Congress passed, on 22nd April, a landmark resolution recommending Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

War On Want statement on Gaza

On Saturday 27 December 2008, Israel commenced a brutal assault on Gaza. The attack, which lasted nearly four weeks, has left over 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more injured. The United Nations has called for a war crimes investigation after Israel knowingly shelled a building where over 100 Palestinian civilians had taken shelter. The International Committee of the Red Cross has accused Israel of breaching the Geneva Conventions in preventing ambulances from rescuing civilians wounded by Israeli bombing.

This attack marked the culmination of a policy of collective punishment and killing practised by Israel against the people of Gaza over the past 18 months. Israel has imposed an illegal state of siege on Gaza and created a devastating humanitarian crisis for the 1.5 million people trapped there. The root cause of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is Israel's illegal occupation, which has raised poverty among ordinary Palestinians to the levels of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the international community has ignored international law with respect to Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people. By rewarding Israeli aggression with economic preferences, the UK government and other EU member states have given the green light to Israel's campaign of illegal violence.

The British government's support for Israel makes it complicit in this crime. As governments around the world condemn Israel's actions, the British government refuses to condemn Israel for its attack on Gaza. The UK government supported the US block on a draft UN resolution submitted four days after the attacks began which "strongly condemns all military attacks and the excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by Israel, the occupying power, which have led to the death and injury of scores of innocent Palestinian civilians, including women and children." The resolution calls for "an immediate ceasefire and for its full respect by both sides."

Action on Gaza

Israel's latest attack on the people of Gaza is a war crime, made possible only through the financial, military and diplomatic support Israel receives from Western states. The UK government has licensed the sale of millions of pounds worth of arms to Israel, including key components for F-16 fighter jets. The former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw previously admitted that military equipment licensed by the British government could be used in attacks on Palestinian civilians. F-16 fighter jets have been deployed against civilian populations in the current assault on Gaza.

The European Union has been seeking to upgrade political and economic relations with the state of Israel, including the possible integration of Israel into the European single market. Despite a public call from Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to EU leaders not to reward Israel for its continuing disregard of international law, the EU Council of Ministers had voted to proceed with the upgrade.

In December 2008, the European Parliament agreed to postpone its vote on the EU-Israel upgrade. According to MEPs, this decision was in response to pressure from civil society. Following a call from parliamentarians, aid agencies and other civil society organisations across Europe to halt the upgrade of political and economic relations with Israel in protest over its assault on the Palestinian people, the EU has now suspended the upgrade process. War on Want welcomes this move but it is now up to the EU to ensure that the process is stopped all together.

War on Want calls on the British government to place sanctions on the Israeli government by ending the trading of arms with Israel. War on Wants also demands that the process of upgrading the EU-Israel relations is completely halted, and that the EU-Israel Association Agreement is suspended. (Article 2 of the Agreement makes Israel's trading preferences conditional upon respect for human rights.)

There will never be a just peace in Palestine if Israel is allowed to flout international law with impunity. War on Want calls for an immediate end to Israel's blockade on Gaza, and an end to its occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people.

Please send a letter urging your MP to call on the Foreign Secretary to end the arms trade with Israel and press for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association agreement.

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