COMMENTARY: By Reb Halabi
I recently heard the British-Palestinian Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah tell of the horrors of Israel’s total destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and healthcare system.
Many children who have lost both parents and extended family in Israel’s inhumane and incomprehensible slaughter of Gazans, have also lost their limbs, eyes and certainly their futures.
Dr Abu-Sittah alerts the world that these children are destined for what can only be described as an appalling and destitute future. When one toddler drowns in a pool in Australia, we all mourn and sympathise with the family.
- READ MORE: Palestinians return to destroyed Khan Younis homes as Israel bombards Gaza
- Other Gaza catastrophe reports
Why are 13,000 children not mourn-worthy?
Child amputees (some of whom were amputated without anaesthetic) will need reconstruction on their amputated limbs. They will need new prosthetics every six months because as a child they grow so fast; but none of this is going to be possible because of Israel’s complete decimation of the health care system in Gaza.
There is no escape for Gazans but there is the inescapable conclusion that this is exactly what Israel wants and has planned since October. They want to make Gaza uninhabitable for even a dog to survive.
Then Israel can cruise in and, in Jared Kushner’s words, “clean up” Gaza’s valuable waterfront and develop their new Riviera.
Inhumane catastrophe
I know we have been witnessing this since October and I know it is in the news, if not the irresponsible and heartless mainstream media, but it is on such channels as Democracy Now! and Al Jazeera. Regardless of how often I hear or see of this inhumane catastrophe, I still believe it to be utterly inconceivable that this slaughter is going on and the
world…is…not…stopping…it.
Q. When your plans are to displace your neighbour and clear out their belongings, how do you implement those plans and where are you going to shove your neighbour to?
A. Into the barren desert next door.
There’s no mistaking the full intent of the US and Israeli governments now that representatives have been caught whispering in a dark corner with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. If anyone was in doubt as to the long view of the Israeli government, then this bit of information should be crystal clear.
Machinations between countries and international bodies took place recently. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has couched the “loan” they are offering Egypt as supposed financial support due to, “[the] economic difficulties posed [to Egypt] by the Israel-Gaza war”. (It’s not a war, it’s the attempted eradication of defenceless people, a genocide, an ethnic cleansing and an end game to get rid of the thorn in Israel’s side).
The IMF goes on to say that the $10 billion offering to Egypt is to “help the Egyptian economy survive amid local and external factors”. The external factors of this dark plan is to open the gates on the border of Egypt and Gaza, and for the IDF to herd (they are “human animals” after all) the Palestinians across into the desolate Sinai, never to return.
Israel will slam the gates shut, turn back, and start on the redevelopment of a fabulous Israeli Riviera. Jared Kushner will be pleased. He and his family, possibly, have already optioned prime real estate lots.
Egypt’s ‘another prison’
Egypt’s part in this plan, for their financial gain, is to construct another outdoor prison for the Palestinians to set up camp, then perhaps the US and Israel hope the prisoners will be forgotten by the world.
The poor Palestinians will be moved from prison Gaza to prison Sinai. Most have been born in a prison, will live in a prison and die in a prison — and they have committed no crime. What a blight on the world’s conscience.
The Christian nation of the US sermonises loudly and incessantly to other nations regarding human rights violations, such as in China, Russia and Iran.
They have admonished many regions of the world for their inhumane treatment of people, yet there they are, laying out their hypocrisy without any attempt to pull the veil over their faces and hide their shame.
Mid-February a headline in France 24 read, “Egypt building ‘enclosure’ for displaced Gazans in Sinai”. It goes on to say that the construction of a walled camp is to “receive” Palestinians.
Let’s just look at those two words, displaced and receive. Displaced makes it sounds like a terrible flood or natural disaster has befallen certain areas and in order to help people out in a time of dire need the Egyptian government are preparing to “receive” them, like a host welcoming them with champagne and canapés. WTF?
Another expression is that the new prison in the Sinai is a “contingency plan”. What? As opposed to a ceasefire and sovereignty which would make the most humane sense of all?
Repellent euphemisms
These softly, softly words and euphemisms are truly repellent. What we are witnessing is not a safe haven for the Palestinians to escape to, but the opening of the prison gates which will lead directly to the next prison for the next seven decades.
And who are guarding the prison gates on both sides? Israel and the United States, that’s who.
President el-Sisi has caved in to two of the most bullying and oppressive nations.
Apparently, he will sell out his Muslim brothers, sisters, grandmothers and children for $10 billion. This money, primarily from the IMF, has a whiff of facilitating the removal of people from their indigenous land.
They must surely know what they are doing, and that is to brush the demands and cause of the Gazans and Palestinians right under the Egyptian carpet.
Gary Field’s book titled Enclosure is a must read for those interested in the dispossession of Palestinians from their land. Power and space are examined with a focus on orchestrated exclusionary landscapes; like the one that occurred in 1948.
The Palestinians have been moved from what was their entire homeland, to ever decreasing scraps of land. Now it appears they will be shoved off entirely from the Gaza strip in the long-awaited plan of Netanyahu and his dark-hearted ilk unless world leaders step up to the decency plate.
I feel like I’m screaming underwater. Why aren’t the other 193 countries in the world screaming above the water line as they witness this horror right in front of their eyes? Why aren’t more leaders made of strong moral fibre which should naturally be horrified by the actions of the US and Israel?
Reb Halabi is a PhD candidate focusing on the intersection of religion and geopolitics. This article was first published on John Menadue’s public policy journal Pearls and Irritations and is republished here with permission.
