The Israelis have now killed over 1,000 people during the current round of fighting in Gaza. Israel argues that they are responding to continued rocket attacks upon their citizens.
This sounds like a valid reason but Israel continues to expand settlements on Palestinians territory and operates racist policies to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem. It is difficult to argue that Palestinians should passively accept this.
In exchanges I have had with the Israeli embassy in London they are argue that Palestinian attacks would continue whether they carried out settlement activity or not. Perhaps but there is no way of knowing since Israel never stops expanding the settlements.
To my mind the root of the problem is that Israel considers itself as home to Jews and not to Palestinians. Palestinians, therefore, are considered second class citizens. Consider the use of live ammunition to control Palestinians during the first intifada and contrast this with the extreme care taken not to harm illegal Jewish settlers being removed from Gaza.
I am not claiming that Jews are somehow bad and Palestinians good but that if a society is constructed so that one group of people has all the power then they will abuse that power.
The Israelis consider Israel to be land given to them by God and they consider the Palestinians presence to be a problem. Thus they continue to steal land from The Palestinians while simultaneously blaming them for the conflict.
Now we hear that Israel is insisting that the isolation of Gaza be increased to prevent Hamas rearming as a condition for a ceasefire.
But will Israel also refrain from rearming during a ceasefire?
