bombing prisoners in a cage

There are 4 points I want to make today about the situation in Gaza.

1. Israel is bombing prisoners in a prison camp
Gaza is a tiny strip of land with about one-and-a-half million Arabs, half of them refugees. It is one of the most crowded places on earth. Civilians in the Gaza Strip are fenced in -- the sea on the west and heavily guarded borders on the land perimeter. As Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon working at a Gaza hospital, put it, the aerial bombardment of Gaza is like "bombing 1 1/2 million people in a cage." (LA Times)

2. Gazans are being collectively punished for their choice of Hamas in a free and fair election
In January 2006 Hamas was elected in a fair and free election. The election was monitored by a number of international observers, including President Jimmy Carter and declared free and fair. So Hamas is a democratically elected government of the Palestinian people and the representative of the Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as the West Bank. Israel, supported by the US and the EU (shame on them both) refused to recognize the Hamas-led government. Israel then proceeded to isolate Gaza, to destroy the infrastructure of Palestinian government, withhold supplies, and tax revenues owed to the Palestinian people.

3. Who starts the violence?
A recent statistical analysis by three academics (one at MIT, one at Harvard and one from Tel Aviv University) found that an overwhelming majority of lulls in violence since 2000 (when the second intifada began) ended when Israelis killed Palestinians, sparking renewed tit-for-tat violence. According to Nancy Kanwisher, Johannes Haushofer and Anat Biletzki, "79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks." The pattern was "more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. ... Of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%."
(also from the LA Times story)

And finally:
4. Palestinians, apparently, have no right to self-defense.
The resolution passed in Congress recently supports Israel’s right to self-defense. No such right apparently belongs to the imprisoned population of Gaza. The slaughter will continue until Israel is asked to commit to the right of existence of the people of Palestine!