Gaza kicks off again, not many dead (yet)

Apparently one of the first things Obama did having secured victory in the US election was to phone Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority and beg him not to embarrass everyone by going for observer status at the UN again. Get real!It was thrown out last time, and it's doomed this time too. This is not the best way forward, he probably said; what you need to do is to start negotiating with the Israelis.

I imagine Abbas's response was something like: "Have you tried negotiating with them? They won't budge an inch on anything." And Barack would only need to look at the Wikileaks documents of secret "negotiations"between the 2 sides to realise that Abbas is right. Despite many far-reaching concessions from the Palestinian side, the Israeli team completely failed to alter their position on anything substantive. And of course they can rest secure in the knowledge that they will receive Obama's support in pretty much anything they do, whether it's espanding the already illegal settlements (they are planning to open a university at one of them soon), or responding to a rocket attack by destroying whole appartment blocks full of families.

Last week the Israelis "responded" to the launching of rockets into southern Israel by pounding Gaza with air strikes. Little has been said of a previous event where Israeli soldiers opened fire during a demonstration and killed a small child. Today we hear the rocket attacks, and their completely disproportionate counter-strikes from the Israelis have entered a new cycle.

The last time this happened, the Israelis levelled extensive areas in Gaza and killed at least ten times as many people as they lost. You may feel the Israelis have a right to defend themselves against these rocket attacks, but what of the Palestinian right to defend themselves? The fact remains that the Israeli government is running an Apartheid regime, with the Palestinians playing the role of the blacks, and the Israelis the role of the white South Africans. The whole world  thought that was wrong and eventually the pressure told and that appalling regime collapsed. But with America's stalwart support the Israelis think they are safe to behave however they please, and with Obama's recent victory they are going about proving just that.

I realise Hamas does not exactly hold the moral high ground either. No organisation, be it "terrorist" or state (like Iran) is going to get very far by insisting the Israelis be simply pitched into the sea, or "go and live in Alaska" as Iran's premier said they should not long ago. The Israelis are there for the long haul: get used to it. And I don't believe in the 2 state solution either. An independent Palestinian state could not operate autonomously. What the Palestinians need is to be granted full human rights and civil liberties identical to those enjoyed by the Israeli people; only then can the process of living in harmony begin. It seems an awfully long way off right now, but it's the only way.