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US hand in Gaza tragedy

Writing in Foreign Policy in Focus [as reproduced in CommonDreams] Stephen Zunes [professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco] Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus writes:

"There is much blame to go around regarding the tragic turn of events in the Gaza Strip. While Hamas is the most immediate culprit, responsibility also rests with Fatah, Israel - and the United States.

The seizure of power in the tiny coastal territory by Hamas militants after bitter factional fighting with Fatah militiamen has only encouraged anti-Palestinian hardliners in Israel and the United States who claim that the Palestinians are unworthy of statehood and that Israel should continue its occupation and colonization of major segments of Palestinian territory seized by the Israeli armed forces in June 1967. The scenes of the bloody infighting among Palestinians have seemingly reinforced racist notions common in the United States and Israel, as exemplified by the statement by former Israeli Prime Minister and recently re-elected Labor Party leader Ehud Barak’s that Israel was “a villa in the jungle.”

The vast majority of ordinary Palestinians, meanwhile, are disgusted at the behavior of both Hamas and Fatah, who see it as little better than gang warfare and a tragic setback in their struggle for freedom against foreign military occupation. Whether the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip or the newly established parallel government in Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank will be recognized as legitimate by the Palestinians themselves remains to be seen.

As much responsibility as the Palestinian leadership itself must bear for the current situation, none of this would have happened if the U.S. government had lived up to its responsibilities as guarantor of the Oslo Accords and self-proclaimed chief mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. U.S. refusal to force Israel to live up to its legal obligations to end its colonization drive in the West Bank and withdraw from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees has led much of the Palestinian population to give up on the peace process and embrace groups like Hamas, which demand control of all of historic Palestine."

Key to and underlying what Zunes writes is this critical point:

"The myth perpetuated by both the Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties was that Israel’s 2005 dismantling of its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of military units that supported them constituted effective freedom for the Palestinians of the territory. American political leaders from President George W. Bush to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly praised Israel for its belated compliance with a series of UN Security Council resolutions calling for their withdrawal of these illegal settlements (despite Israel’s ongoing violations of these same resolutions by maintaining and expanding their illegal settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights). Pelosi, for example, called Israel’s pullout a “courageous” and “gut-wrenching” decision that constituted “a decisive milestone on the road to peace” toward which the Palestinians have responded by violence, proving that the “conflict is not over occupation…it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.”

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