Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Hier 04:37

Return to hell

An estimated half-million Palestinains who were temporarily displaced by the Gaza War began returning to north Gaza last Sunday as a result of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Their destination is a place of destruction – mountains and mountains of rubble and severely damaged buildings. The scenes of destruction resemble World War II. It is hard to imagine that dystopian wilderness is where ordinary families lived and worshipped, yet their relentless march back “home” sent a clear signal that Palestinians are determined to stay on the land that to our eye hardly seems habitable. It means the struggle for Palestine that has locked the Palestinains and Israelis in a permanent cycle of violence dating back to 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel will continue. Of that there can be little doubt. Some 700,000 Palestinians fled and were driven from their homes by newly arrived Jewish people in the 1940s – it is commemorated as the Nakba, the catastrophe, in Arabic. Another 300,000 Palestinains were displaced after the 1967 war, when Israel seized yet more territory. The Gaza war has displaced 90 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza – the new Nakba – and they know that if they do not return they will lose their ancestral home forever. Although Palestinians continue to claim the right to return, Israel has refused, in order to avoid a Muslim majority within Jewish borders, and Palestinians have become long-term refugees, mainly in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Today, about six million Palestinians are displaced, including those in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. This latest Gaza war is unprecedented for the sheer horror of it. For 15 months – since Hamas attacked Israelis in their homes and at play on October 7, 2023, murdering 1,200, wounding over 3,000 and taking 251 more hostage – we have been fed heartwrenching media pictures of death, mayhem and annihilation. Now, as a fragile peace still holds, prisoners are being exchanged and food supplies are arriving in Gaza, we have had the spectacle of slow-moving throngs of homeless, but not hopeless civilians returning to a terrain blitzkrieged by the mighty Israeli retaliatory war effort against them. The casualty figures are staggering – over 47,000 Palestinians killed and over 111,000 injured, 75 per cent of them unarmed women and children in schools, homes, safe havens, hospitals, mosques, anywhere and everywhere. And while the official Gaza War raged, illegal Jewish settlers and the Israeli army waged unofficial war against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, killing another 900 of them. Israel has been quiet about its own civilian casualties, playing down the effect of the surprise Hamas attack that threatened to unseat PM Benjamin Netanyahu from the leadership of his expedient coalition of the right and extreme religious right. The brutality on both sides feels like it belongs in another age – the Dark Ages and late Middle Ages, when human history was near its lowest ebb. It speaks of a lack of humanity among men. But such is the nature of war. We should remind ourselves, nonetheless, that it is politics that got us here, from the underhand politicking that led to the creation of Israel in a way that made conflict inevitable, to this point in Palestine. The war followed an intense period of Netanyahu's attempting to pass very unpopular legislation aimed at weakening the Israeli judiciary, to enable his escape from trial for corruption. As he focused on self-preservation, he dropped the ball of Palestinian resentment, obviously mistaking reduced violence as his having tamed Palestinian resistance. He also overlooked the massive impact on Palestinian sentiment of the increase in illegal Israeli settlers who feel empowered by his politics. The brutality of the war has been the unforgivable effort of one man to stay politically alive at all costs. Nethanyahu promised to win a war that is unwinnable. The return of the Palestinians is proof that he failed. He said he would destroy Hamas, yet Hamas fighters were there to welcome back the returnees. The Palestinian desire to return “home” will endure as long as the Jewish desire to return to Israel has done, so the big question is, where do the people of Israel and Palestine go from here? President Trump has supported Netanyahu unstintingly, and, like him, would like to ethnically cleanse Palestine by moving people to Jordan and Egypt – which have refused, unsurprisingly, since the violence will spread there and destabilise those countries. They, liberal Israelis and the international community support an increasingly unachievable two-state solution, but President Trump remains unconvinced, and what Trump thinks is the biggest factor in play at the moment. Using his sanctions policy, he could try forcing the economically weak Jordan and Egypt to comply; but that would alienate Saudi Arabia which he is hoping to reconcile with Israel. The fighting has only shifted arenas. Peace in the Middle East remains elusive. The post Return to hell appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.