To Palestinians, Gaza is a symbol of resistance. To Israel, Gaza is a template to pummel and isolate that resistance.
On June 19, Israeli combat helicopters fired missiles into the camp, ostensibly as part of an arrest operation that ended up killing five Palestinians, including a 15-year-old girl named Sadeel Naghniyeh.
Then in early July, in the worst attack on the West Bank since 2002, the Israeli armed forces terrorised the inhabitants of Jenin for two days and killed at least 12 people, including children. The massive aerial and ground assault involved helicopter gunships, missiles, drones, armoured vehicles, bulldozers and more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers.
That is what happens, it seems, when Palestinians keep rebuilding – and keep existing. Indeed, Al Jazeera quoted 56-year-old camp resident Ahmed Abu Hweileh on the takeaway from the bloody escapade: “The message to the world and the occupation is that this camp will keep on going. They tried to destroy it and it came back up.”
Israel’s recent comportment in Jenin – and particularly the sudden use of air strikes in the West Bank for the first time in years – has invited comparisons to the Israeli modus operandi in the Gaza Strip, another location that has come to symbolise Palestinian resistance.
Haven’t you heard? Politics is anything that diverges from the current status quo. Anything in line with it, on the other hand, is cool and good and apolitical.
Reminds me of this quote by Martin Luther King
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
The historical context being the white moderates defined themselves as neutral but they actively worked to prevent any anti-racism changes.
There is no Center in politics. Only disguised right-wingers.
