From leftist radicals and boycotting unions to Osama Bin Laden and his ilk—the call is the same: “Israel – get out of Gaza”.
Ironically the so-called occupation ended 5 years ago when Israel removed every last soldier and Jewish resident from within Gaza’s border.
The claim of the more educated among Gaza’s Grand Coalition is that Israel still polices the territory’s coastal border, as well as its own, enforcing a blockade (little mention, of course, is made of Egypt equivalent approach to its border with Gaza; apparently Arabs can “oppress” other Arabs without opprobrium). While the form and function of this blockade is certainly open to debate, it is striking (to say the least) how the Grand Coalition ignores the rather unfortunate fact that Gaza is ruled by a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction.
It is in this upside-down world of the Middle East—a world the West still confuses with that of Lawrence of Arabia and Khalil Gibran—that an unlikely knight in tarnished armor is riding to the rescue.
The right-wing Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s combative (but clever) foreign minister, is answering the call from Berkeley to Moscow, from Venezuela to Teheran, from London’s teachers unions to the British Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship in Chicago.
He is lobbying European and other countries to build a power station, a desalination plant and a harbor in the Gaza strip, an area that receives more humanitarian and U.N. aid per capita than any other in the world (in addition to receiving aid, Gaza specializes in rocket fire, sending more than 10,000 into Israel from its 139 square mile enclave, surely another world record worth mentioning). Israel will no longer be, in any respect, the occupier. In return, Lieberman is asking Western governments and international bodies to police Gaza’s borders and ports to ensure no illicit weapons are brought into the territory.
These developments would provide Gaza with exactly what the Grand Coalition appears to wish for: an independent Gaza that can function without Israeli provision of electricity, water, goods, or security. Israel could thereby wash its hands of any responsibility for Gaza’s 1.6 million inhabitants and its Hamas government. The Coalition, it seems, has its newest, strangest member.
Or does it? If we may be so bold as to read between the lines, an self-sufficient Gaza is precisely what the Coalition’s Israel haters worldwide don’t want. The world’s most favored scapegoat (57% of UN resolutions on the Middle East have dealt with Israel’s transgressions, a country located on 0.1% of the land in the Middle East and its only democracy), the focus of much of the media’s mudslinging, would then be out of the picture. A tragedy of epic proportions: reporters and politicians, radicals and protesters alike would have to focus on Kurdistan or Darfur, on Congo or Somalia, on Myanmar or Chechnya – all the cornucopia of humanitarian disasters the world prefers to ignore. Israel is by far the sweetest target, the soft underbelly of the West.
The world can choose to give Gaza entirely back to the Gazans, give a respite to their favorite scapegoat Israel, and focus on some other, far more pressing problem.
My money is on the status quo. The Grand Coalition between Israel’s right and the West’s left (and the Islamists), between what most claim to want and what Lieberman is offering, is a pipe dream.
A wonderful dream, yet a dream nonetheless.
Published on Slant Right
Published on NewsBlaze
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When individuals or a whole nation of people (Gazans) can be helped to a position where they are not living a depraved, worse than hardscrabble existence, they will gradually come to value and want to protect that new lifestyle. If Gaza can become more self-reliant and secure, doesn't that help to create to the south the same kind of influence Israel now has to its east with a rapidly growing Jordanian middle class who now benefit so dramatically from better relations and trade with Israel? Almost "normal" relations lately allow easy tourism, back and forth between Israel and Jordan to each land's enormous benefit.
And while discussing power plants, what could be better for everyone than implementation ot the massive Red to Dead hydro power pipeline? Envision the massive quantities of green energy produced, and the potential also to reestablish the Dead Sea as a better than ever before world class resort, again equally benefitting both Jordan and Israel. And there might even be enough water dragged over the hills with the then down-side gravity to actually have some kind of tiny but positive impact on the rising levels of the worlds oceans!!