{"id":45611,"date":"2014-08-11T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=45611"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:45","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:45","slug":"crimes-against-humanity-in-gaza-is-it-really-a-buffer-zone-or-a-bigger-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/08\/crimes-against-humanity-in-gaza-is-it-really-a-buffer-zone-or-a-bigger-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Crimes against Humanity in Gaza: Is It Really a ‘Buffer Zone’ \u2013 Or a Bigger Plan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s time to step back and ask if we want to support Israel if it wants to eject all Palestinians from their land.<\/em><\/p>\n

5 Aug 2014 – <\/em>Late last week, the White House decried Israel\u2019s attack on a UN school in Gaza as \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d and \u201ctotally indefensible\u201d<\/a>, then proceeded to approve $225m in funding for its Iron Dome<\/a>. On Monday, the US state department went further, calling the airstrikes upon a UN school \u201cdisgraceful\u201d<\/a> \u2013 and yet America provides Israel with more than $3.1bn<\/a> every year, restocking the ability of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to hit more schools, and to wage total war against an imprisoned people, because of their nationality.<\/p>\n

American taxpayers should not be paying for this. And the western world should stop rejecting serious inquiries<\/a> about Israel\u2019s moral inconsistencies, or allow it to benefit from cognitive dissonance and information overload amid the current crisis in Gaza.<\/p>\n

There is a land grab going on. The Israeli prime minister, Binjamin Netanyahu, has shrunk Gaza\u2019s habitable land mass by 44%, with an edict establishing a 3km (1.8-mile) buffer zone, a \u201cno-go\u201d zone for Palestinians<\/a> \u2013 and that\u2019s quite significant, because a good part of Gaza is only 3 to 4 miles wide. Over 250,000 Palestinians within this zone must leave their homes, or be bombed. As their territorial space collapses, 1.8m Gazans now living in 147 square miles will be compressed into 82 square miles.<\/p>\n

Gaza\u2019s entire social and physical infrastructure of housing, hospitals, places of worship, more than 130 of its schools<\/a>, plus markets, water systems, sewer systems and roads are being destroyed. Under constant attack, without access to water, sanitary facilities, food and medical care, Gazans face an IDF-scripted apocalypse.<\/p>\n

With Gaza\u2019s land mass shrinking due to Israeli military action, it\u2019s about time someone asked: What is the end game? Three weeks ago, Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset, called for Gaza to \u201cbecome part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Israel<\/em> has a housing crisis? After the \u201cno-go\u201d buffer zone is evacuated, there will be 21,951 Palestinians per square mile in Gaza, while Israel\u2019s population density stands at 964 persons per square mile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Deputy Speaker Feiglin wants the Palestinians in Gaza to lose all<\/em> of their land. One must not assume that Mr Feiglin or his Likud faction speak for the main government actors like Prime Minister Netanyahu. After all, Knesset politics are complex and divergent<\/a>. But since Gaza has just lost control of that 44% of its land, it may also be time to ask: does the establishment of that 3km zone represent the unfolding of a larger plan? Is that<\/em> the end game?<\/p>\n

At the very point where an aroused public becomes aghast at the slaughter of Gazans, the western world becomes inured to the violence, hypnotized by the media\u2019s cadence of body counts. The intolerable becomes normalized, and later ignored as old news. Which would seem a perfect time to leave in place the 3km zone \u2013 for security purposes, of course \u2013 and then advance the proposal that Palestinians crammed into the remaining 56% of Gaza simply … leave.<\/p>\n

I assume the IDF acts with deliberation, under orders from the Netanyahu government. And I think the extraordinary and illegal forced relocation of over 250,000 Palestinians from 44% of Gazan land is a crime against humanity under the guise of establishing a \u201cbuffer zone\u201d for security purposes.<\/p>\n

Look at the region\u2019s maps<\/a> from recent history. Look at the steady erosion of Palestinian land and the acquisition of land by Israel, and you can understand that the present attack on Gaza is not about solely about Hamas. It\u2019s about land. It isn\u2019t just about Hamas\u2019s rockets. It\u2019s about land. It isn\u2019t just about Hamas\u2019s tunnels. It\u2019s about land. It isn\u2019t about kidnappings. It is about land. It isn\u2019t even about meeting a housing crisis in Israel. It is about grabbing land from the Palestinians in Gaza and the natural resources that go with the land, upon the occasion of Israel\u2019s military invasion of Gaza.<\/p>\n

Yes, Hamas\u2019s attacks on Israel are illegal and should be condemned, and those who ordered the attacks should be held accountable under law. All policies and practices which refuse to recognize Israel\u2019s right to exist should be condemned. Israel has a right to exist. But Israel\u2019s right to exist is impaired when Israel decides Palestinians have no right to exist on their own land. It\u2019s time for us to stop paying for Israel\u2019s dubious, destructive self-righteousness. And it\u2019s time for the solipsism syndrome afflicting Israel\u2019s leaders to get a day of discussion in the International Criminal Court concerning their attacks on Gaza \u2013 and especially their new 3km \u201cbuffer zone\u201d.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

Dennis Kucinich served 16 years in the US House of Representatives. He was twice a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 Aug 2014 – It\u2019s time to step back and ask if we want to support Israel if it wants to eject all Palestinians from their land. Late last week, the White House decried Israel\u2019s attack on a UN school in Gaza as \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d and \u201ctotally indefensible\u201d, then proceeded to approve $225m in funding for its Iron Dome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}