From Annapolis to Tel Aviv: Preaching, But Not Reaching, Peace

By Mohammed Omer

A young Palestinian flees an Israeli missile attack on a house in Gaza City, Jan. 15, 2008. (Photo M. Omer).

FIRST IN ANNAPOLIS, then Paris, then Tel Aviv, the international community responds to U.S. President George W. Bush’s afterthought Mideast initiative by posturing beneath banners boldly proclaiming “peace.” Just as was the case with Wye, Oslo and Camp David II, however, these diplomatic veneers only thinly disguised the escalating violence on the ground. Allegedly peace-seeking Israel continues its daily air, ground and sea attacks on the Gaza Strip, its detentions, arrests, targeted assassinations and its expansion of illegal colonies for Jews only in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since Bush’s Jan. 9 arrival in Tel Aviv, Israeli occupation forces have killed 19 people and wounded dozens more.

Gaza’s borders have remained closed since the Nov. 27 Annapolis summit, as Israel maintains its strangulation of Gaza’s airspace and ports. Pervasive shortages of food and medicine have resulted in scarcity-driven hyper-inflation. In the West Bank the concrete obscenity Israel euphemistically describes as a “security barrier” continues to grow, snaking through Palestinian towns and villages, suffocating commerce, destroying crops and eviscerating whole communities. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, sits sequestered behind 25-foot-high concrete walls, gun towers and barbed wire allowing only three ways in or out of the “little town.” His visit to the Church of the Nativity there did not cause the peace-professing Bush to abandon his disinterested mockery of concerned involvement.

Talks Are Cheap

The exclusion from “peace talks” of Hamas, the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people, signified from the beginning that Annapolis and its aftermath is only for show. As Bush, Omert and Abbas discuss peace, Israel assaults Gaza with U.S.-made F-16s, tanks and Hellfire missiles. The iron fishbowl of Gaza rages from injustice and an imposed silence of negation. In retaliation, Islamic Jihad lobs “Quds” homemade rockets at Israeli targets, spurring the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to join the defiance with homemade “Aqsa” rockets, the Popular Resistance Committees to fire homemade “Nasser” rockets from Gaza, and Hamas to add its homemade “Qassam” rockets. Of course, these crude concoctions function more as noisemakers than as weapons, as evidenced by the preliminary death figures for 2007. Last year Palestinian homemade weapons killed seven Israeli civilians and six Israeli occupation soldiers. During the same period, Israeli tanks, missiles and bombs killed 373 Palestinians, 53 of whom were children. Thus the year ended with an Israeli kill ratio of more than 28:1.

For Palestinians, 2007 marked the “worst” of Israel’s 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This was particularly true in Gaza, which Israel on Sept. 19 declared a “hostile entity.” Factional fighting here between Fatah and Hamas forces had ended when Hamas regained total control of the Gaza Strip on June 14, following the attempted coup of the elected government by Israeli- and U.S.-backed Fatah militia. The preceding five days saw a Palestinian- on-Palestinian bloodbath: 110 Palestinians were killed and over 550 injured, according to U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Dr. Mawia Hasaneen, director of emergency and reception at Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, reports that in the first three weeks of January of this year, Israeli attacks have killed 76 Palestinians and wounded 293. This contrasts with two Israelis slightly wounded by homemade Palestinian rockets and several dozen treated for shock.

Zakaria Al Agha, one of the few remaining Fatah leaders still living in Gaza, implores President Bush to “turn his words into action” by demanding an end to the Israeli occupation. “End the siege on Gaza!” he demanded. “Put pressure on Israel to stop its attacks on Palestinians!”

“It’s ironic,” noted Gaza-based Palestinian journalist Jebreal Abu Kemel. “Bush calls for peace yet the Israeli warplanes don’t sleep!”

Shaking his head incredulously, he asked, “If Israel wants us to believe there will be peace, why haven’t they stopped killing people during Bush’s visit?”

While visiting Israel, Bush was less than two hours from Gaza. Even he knows it is under siege, its people suffering, starving, without clean water, medicine and the ability to move freely—an entire population deprived of the most basic human rights. President Bush is the one man with the power to force Israel to allow him to enter Gaza—yet he chose to ignore the lives of 1.5 million people, 900,000 of them children.

Indeed, he came and left without making a single promise or improving the situation in the slightest way. Instead he posed ambiguously for the camera, promoting “peace talks,” then promptly vanished. His lack of quantifiable and actionable suggestions left the majority of Palestinians asking, “What kind of peace is Bush really talking about?”

But for peace to occur there must first be justice, which requires that violations of human rights on all sides be addressed. Human rights have been defined and agreed upon through international law. Yet since at least Oslo an emphasis on human rights and international law has been conspicuously—some might say deliberately—absent.

History has taught the Palestinian people that when leaders speak about a “peace process” absent justice, these leaders are not truly seeking solutions. Politicians, diplomats and negotiators who fail to use international law as a basis for a just settlement are not seeking true peace.

What is left is a process that isn’t about peace, but is rather about positioning, about posturing—and about pillaging.

Mohammed Omer, winner of New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award, reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at <gazanews@yahoo.com>.