In an article written by the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, titled “Aggression under false pretenses” and published Tuesday on The Washington Post, the Palestinian PM slammed the U.S. policies that blindly support Israel even in its brutal aggression against Palestinians.
Haniyeh offered an interesting perspective on the long standing Israel-Palestinian conflict while making a special effort to point out the U.S. indirect responsibility for the Palestinians’ suffering.
The White House called on Israel and the Palestinians today to practice restraint, turning a blind eye to the repetitive crimes Israel committed over the past days since it began its wide-scale offensive in the lands it withdrew from last year, ending 38 years of military occupation.
"We hope that Israel, in trying to retrieve its soldier, will practice restraint and that both sides will practice restraint in trying to lower the temperature and develop a sense of security in the future," said spokesman Tony Snow.
"There's pretty much unified international reaction, which is that Hamas needs to give back the Israeli soldier and needs to renounce 'terror' and needs to do so immediately," said Snow.
Mr. Haniyeh wrote:
“As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution”.
It’s been reported that the Israeli forces launched a new airstrike early Thursday, targeting the office of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, which implicates that Israel would carry on with its Gaza offensive while engaged in another one in Lebanon.
The Israeli army started bombing southern Lebanon yesterday as a means of pressuring Hezbollah resistance movement to release two Israeli soldiers it captured Wednesday morning.
"Pretext for a job scheduled"
“The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year. It is the explosive follow-up to a five-month campaign of economic and diplomatic warfare directed by the United States and Israel. The stated intention of that strategy was to force the average Palestinian to "reconsider" his vote when faced with deepening hardship; its failure was predictable, and the new overt military aggression and collective punishment are its logical fulfillment. The "kidnapped" Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is only a pretext for a job scheduled months ago.
“In addition to removing our democratically elected government, Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively. The Palestinian leadership is firmly embedded in the concept of Islamic shura , or mutual consultation; suffice it to say that while we may have differing opinions, we are united in mutual respect and focused on the goal of serving our people. Furthermore, the invasion of Gaza and the kidnapping of our leaders and government officials are meant to undermine the recent accords reached between the government party and our brothers and sisters in Fatah and other factions, on achieving consensus for resolving the conflict. Yet Israeli collective punishment only strengthens our collective resolve to work together."
Last week, Israel launched a military strike targeting the office of the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haneya in Gaza City, setting it ablaze. The attack on the Palestinian PM offices was described by political analysts as a warning by Israel to the Hamas-led government. The Israeli occupying army also arrested eight members of Hamas' 23-member Cabinet and 20 of the 72 Hamas members of the 132-seat parliament.
“As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure -- the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles -- my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?" Mr. Haniyeh added.
“They think, doubtless, of the hostage soldier, taken in battle -- yet thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, remain in Israeli jails for resisting the illegal, ongoing occupation that is condemned by international law. They think of the pluck and "toughness" of Israel, "standing up" to "terrorists."
Palestinian fighters holding 19-year-old Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit offered to release him if Israel freed Palestinian woman prisoners it holds (about 35), all the under-18-year-olds (about 300) and 1,000 of the oldest and sickest of the Palestinian prisoners.
But Israel rejected the Palestinians’ demands, insisting that the release of the soldier must be “unconditional”.
There are more than 9800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, but their fate is not even mentioned in the U.S.-backed peace plan for the Middle East, known as the roadmap.
“I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly "legitimate" state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals," Mr. Haniyeh added.
“Surely the American people grow weary of this folly, after 50 years and $160 billion in taxpayer support for Israel's war-making capacity -- its "defense." Some Americans, I believe, must be asking themselves … if only U.S. policies had been predicated from the start on historical truth, equity and justice.
Many Americans are still not aware how much of their tax revenue goes to Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, despite its own relatively healthy economy.
The generous financial aid the U.S. provides Israel with allows it to purchase tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16 war planes, machine guns and bullets, all of which it uses in its persistent aggression against the Palestinian people.
So the U.S. is indirectly funding the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands, for without its yearly financial aid to the Jewish state, the Israeli government wouldn’t have been able to sustain its military occupation of Palestine for long.
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