Israel still not sparing Gaza

The Gaza strip in Palestine is once again becoming a victim of the diabolic designs of the Zionist terrror regime in Israel.  This time the Israeli government's provocation started with its indiscriminate shooting at the protests against Israeli's occupation last Friday,  and the shooting to death of two persons who happened to be seen near the country's border.

In response to the two incidents,  Hamas in Gaza made a counter-attack.  But then the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu was soon seen converting the Gaza strip into a battle-field once again.   Although a truce has come into force from Monday,  its life span is yet to be proven.   It is more so because in Gaza,  which has been reeling under a detestable embargo unilaterally imposed by Israel for the last 12 years,  Israel has been showing a knack of unleashsing violence more aggressively in the month of  Ramadan.   In the build-up to the elections in April,   prime minister Netanyahu, while seeking a fifth term in office,  had already intensified the attacks against Gaza.

Those attacks were made with the allegation that the soldiers of the Palestinian Resistance fired had two rockets against Tel Aviv.  That time too,  the bombing was done with the threat of a unceasing war.   In the latest round of attacks,  Israel issued warnings that it would try to penetrate into the grassroots of Hamas in such a way as to obliterate Gaza.  And Hamas for its part made it clear on Sunday that they had no plans for a new war against Israel,  and if Tel Aviv stops aggression and lets Palestinians live peacefully,  they would not hesitate to return to peace.   All the same,  Palestine's permanent representative to the UN  has said that they will challenge at the International Criminal Court Israel's act of making provocations by shooting  and killing peaceful protesters.   The Ambassador's demand came closely after the statement by UN Human Rights Council that the UN presence there has to be boosted in order to monitor the law and order situation in occupied Palestinian territory .

In the last two days,  29 Palestinians, including two pregnant women and 2 children were killed,  and over a hundred were injured.   The Israeli explanation is that it was an Israeli retaliation against the rocket attacks on Israeli settlements by Plestinian armed resistance groups including Al-Jihad and Hamas,  which killed three people.   But Gaza says that what has happened now is only a continuation of the attacks Israel had begun before March.    In the violence since last March,  so far 265 Palestinians have been killed.  And it was while Israel and Palestinian militant and political groups were sitting together, and exploring ways for truce and peace at the Egyptian capital of Cairo,  that violence erupted again on Friday.

In the small strip of Gaza, measuring a mere 140 square miles,  2 million people are living in a thickly populated area.   Ever since the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas captured power in 2007,  Israel and Egypt have imposed a land, naval and aerial embargo in the area.   Israel forced on Gaza three major wars over the last decade.  And the neighbouring West Bank,   ruled by Palestinian Authority,  has also hardened the embargo by banning financial transactions.  In the region where unemployment is running at a high of 70 per cent,  financial crisis is continuing with grave intensity.   But in the current context, when Israel has been bombing to  disaster a people already in the grip of poverty and disease,   the itnernational  community is not only remaining silent against it,  but even isolating  Palestine more, citing its feeble resistance.

It is on the back of the Trump administration's support that the Zionist regime of the fifth-time prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been escalating the atrocities against Palestinians.   Trump has been pumping energy to Israel's show of muscle power one after the other,  throwing to the winds all international conventions over the last one and a half years.   It began with the US decision to move the US embassy to Tel Aviv in December 2017,   parallel to its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.  Further,  in January last year,  Trump froze all  funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)  that had been rendering assistance to Palestinian refugees.

Last June, America withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council,  on the pretext that it was standing against Israel.    In September,  it closed PLO's Washington office.  In all its official documents, US changed the descrition 'Israel-occupied' to 'Israel-controlled'.   In addition,  the US recognised the autonomy of Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank.   The Reagan administration's rejection of Israel's annexation of Golan Heights as unacceptable,  was corrected and approved.  On top of all this,  the US tried all its persuasive best to stop or soften  the isolation of Israel by Arab nations of West Asia.

Thus Trump has been doing everything in his powers to lend strength to Netanyahu left and right.  It is with his confidence about it that Netanyahu is openly running roughshod over Palestine with his plans to make  'undivided Jerusalem'  'the eternal capital of Israel' and to gradually exterminate Palestinians,  who have been a thorn in the flesh of Israel.    In other words,  as long as Trump's America and Netanyahu's Israel exist,  the fire in Gaza and the region will not be doused.