Oppression & Resistance

When I discuss the Palestinian issue with people who have not researched it, I am often presented with the proposal that there are 'good' Palestinians and 'bad' Palestinians. The 'good' Palestinians are the ordinary civilians and the 'bad' are the evil, irrational terrorists (personified by the bearded Hamas militant with an AK47). It is this division of the Palestinian people that the Israeli propaganda machine broadcasts. The 'baddies' are the ones doing the active resistance and the ordinary Palestinians are just caught in the violent indulgences of these fanatics. This classification allows the Israelis to justify the periodic massacres of Palestinians by bleating: "We were just trying to kill the baddies. They are using the civilians as human shields so we had to kill the civilians as well."

This is a nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians participate in(in some way) or support the resistance. Hamas were democratically elected to power in 2006 in Gaza largely because they were willing to continue the resistance while Fatah (the other major political party) had become corrupt and ineffective. History shows that the Palestinians will vote for whichever party will be most effective in defending them through resistance.

The question then is, why do they bother? Surely they would be better off without the resistance? Is the resistance not bringing death upon them? In the context of my previous post, the Palestinians have made unimaginable concessions to Zionism. They have lost the vast majority of their homeland. They have lost their liberty and the Zionist forces are now trying, and succeeding in, expropriating the remaining 5th of the Palestinians country. The very real threat is that the Palestinian people are being wiped from history and slowly wiped off the map.

In the face of the perpetual injustices against them, Palestinian resistance is entirely justified and necessary. The Palestinians are fighting for the very simple right to freedom. The picture above shows a Palestinian boy throwing stones at an Israeli tank, a common activity amongst Palestinian children. It is a symbolic act of defiance rather than a violent act but is often met with live ammunition. The desperation that the Israeli occupation brings means Palestinians are willing to die for their fight for freedom however wretched a form that fight may take (stones and homemade rockets are usually the extent of their armory).

The fight for freedom is a cause that has been repeated many times through history but in modern times has been clouded with the label of 'terrorism' that is liberally splashed across the Western Press with no reference to the historical context of the conflict.

The 'crazy terrorist' label is one which has been successfully applied to the military wing of Hamas. Most recently, the responsibility for the Gaza massacre was left squarely on the shoulders of Hamas for their indiscriminate and irresponsible firing of home made rockets into Israel. What was largely left out of our news coverage was the fact that Hamas had been impeccably observing a 12 month ceasefire when Israel attacked and killed 6 Palestinians in November. The inevitable retaliatory rockets fired by Hamas gave Israel its justification (in the eyes of the world) for their massacre of Palestinian civilians which they had been planning for at least 6 months. Israel was supposed to have loosened the siege of Gaza as their side of the ceasefire. They never did. The following link shows an Israeli government representative admitting that Hamas had been observing the ceasefire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SILJxPTqjAM

Hamas had also offered to renew the ceasefire with Israel for a further 12 months. This rubbishes the idea that Israel was acting in 'defence'.

The motive? Hamas was always seen as an unreasonable party. They refused to recognise Israel as a country and therefore were not fit to negotiate peace with (I personally do not see why one side should be allowed to demand recognition as a pre-cursor to peace talks, particularly given the historical context but this was an acceptable excuse apparently). However, when elected, Hamas officials offered Israel a 10 year truce in return for withdrawing to the 1967 borders of Israel (ie an end to the illegal occupation of the West bank). A demand seconded by none other than the UN. The excuse for not negotiating a just peace with Hamas was fading.

What the Israelis set out to do with their massacre of the Gazan population earlier this year was as follows:

a) to demonstrate to the world again that they were under attack by Hamas militants (a claim which was simply untrue but was nonetheless bought wholesale by the Western media);
b) to further radicalise the population in order to perpetuate the idea that there was no reasonable party in Palestine to negotiate peace with;
c) to ensure that any talk of a withdrawal to 1967 borders as a just peace settlement was taken off the table (despite this being an express demand issued by the UN);
d) to replenish some of their 'deterrence capacity' lost in their defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon;
e) to improve public opinion of the ruling party in Israel just 2 weeks before the national elections.

None of these motives have anything to do with the protection of the 'security' of the Israeli people and most in fact have quite the opposite effect. 'Security' is used by the Israelis constantly as the excuse for every kind of persecution of the Palestinians, not least in relation to the apartheid wall they are building and the military checkpoints that cover the West Bank. I will be experiencing the effects of both of these means of persecution first hand and will be writing here about those experiences.

The Palestinians are not seeking to defeat the Israelis militarily, that will never happen. The Israelis have one of the most powerful armies in the world (including an aresenal of over 300 nuclear war-heads). The resistance is therefore, at this time, largely symbolic and represents the Palestinians refusal to be beaten in the face of terrible adversity and persecution. The alternative is simply to fade into obscurity and accept a status as second class human beings in their own homeland.

Finally, there are two things that need to be said about resistance movements in more general terms:

1. The resistance is a product of illegal military occupation and oppression, not vice versa. The resistance (usually in its more radical and extreme form) is often used by the oppressor as justification for perpetuating the oppression of a people but this is purely propaganda.
2. The violence of the oppressed (the resistance) cannot, and should not, be equated to the violence of the oppressor. They are totally different in motive and morality. The first is justified on the grounds of basic human rights, the second is justified on the grounds of imperialistic and economic gain.