The Obscenity Called Gaza

The New York Times' columnist, Richard Cohen, offers some brilliant insights into the Gaza conundrum, a place he calls, "an open-air prison for 1.8-million people."

"...more than 300 children are dead, killed in a month-long Israeli bombardment. Each of those children has a name, a family. Several were killed in a recent shelling of a United Nations school, an act that the United States called 'disgraceful.' The many civilian casualties in Gaza cannot be waived away as 'human shields' of Hamas. They were not human shields. They were human beings."

Cohen doesn't spare Hamas of its responsibility either. He condemns Hamas for manipulating and subjugating the Palestinians it governs as it goads Israel into attacking through its endless, if ineffective, rocket campaign all in pursuit of a fantasy of wiping Israel from the face of the Earth.

Cohen also offers a scathing rebuke for the global community for failing to enact UN resolution 181 that calls for the creation of two nations in the Holy Land, one Jewish, the other Arab. Since 1947 just one of those nations has been created. The other has been ignored. The job stands unfinished.

"Without two states, Israel will lurch from one self-inflicted wound to the next, growing ever angrier with its neighbors and a restive world from which it feels alienated."

In other words, Israel's legitimacy is inexorably tied to the creation of the Palestinian state envisioned by the UN in 1947 when it created Israel. The state of Israel is a creature of the United Nations, not some supposed deity, something it has for too long ignored.

The international community has failed the Palestinians by failing to create their state, the companion of Israel. We know where that state was intended to exist. We know the borders that were established in creating Israel. Unpopular as it would be with the Knesset, it's time the community of nations went back in to complete their obligations under UN resolution 181.

“Netanyahu has fought Palestinian statehood all his life. But it is the only way out of his labyrinth. In the end his sound bites yield to reality. That reality is bitter indeed.”

We need to go back into the Palestinian homeland. We need to clean up the mess and restore the borders between Israel and the Palestinian state envisioned by Resolution 181. That will probably take muscle, plenty of it, not only to restore the borders but to establish and occupy a suitable buffer zone for a substantial period (40-years perhaps) to enable the creation of a viable, democratic and peaceful Palestine capable of engaging its neighbour, Israel, in normal relations.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib