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‘No retaliation!’
By Ali Abunimah
In the wake of the ghastly Tel Aviv
bombing, there ‘has been no retaliation yet’ from Israel. This is
utterly false. There has as yet been no violent reprisals by Israel,
though these will probably come. But Israel has retaliated with
unprecedented measures of collective punishment against the entire
Palestinian population in the occupied territories.
In addition to tightening the closure of the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip, Israel tightened the siege of Palestinian towns and cities, and
closed the international borders with Egypt and Jordan, and the airport in
occupied Gaza.
Israel reportedly cut off fuel supplies, international mail, and more
seriously money transfers to the occupied territories. Because of the
devastating economic impact and the mass unemployment caused by the
occupation, thousands of Palestinian families fend off complete
destitution and even starvation only with remittances transferred from
relatives outside the country. The decision to cut off money transfers,
therefore, is a deliberate, targeted act of retribution against
Palestinian civilians and can have no other purpose than to cause misery.
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that ‘No protected
person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally
committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation
and terrorism are prohibited.’
Despite the imposition of these measures, Simeone said only in passing
that ‘on the political front the West Bank and Gaza remained closed’
and that Israel had indeed cut off fuel supplies. But she followed this
with the astonishing statement that Israel ‘took no action against the
Palestinians today.’ (Simeone's comments were followed by a report from
Jennifer Ludden about the funeral of one of the teenage victims of the
bomb attack.)
How is it that measures of collective punishment which only a few months
ago in an albeit less stringent form were the subjects of entire reports
by NPR are today so invisible that NPR declares that Israel ‘took no
action?’
The colonizer mentality that operates in Israeli society as in all similar
situations views any act by any native against members of the ruling group
with the utmost gravity and holds all natives responsible for the action
of any of their number, while at the same time being completely inured and
oblivious to the misery caused to the natives by the colonizer. The
natives on the other hand feel their own pain directly, and are then made
to feel the pain of the colonizer. It seems that many observers have
absorbed this mentality and view anything short of an all out military
assault against an occupied population to be admirable restraint on
Israel's part, or in today's case ‘no action’ at all.
One thing is clear: notwithstanding any ‘ceasefires,’ as long as the
occupation continues some Palestinians will retaliate for Israel's
violence against Palestinians with violence against Israelis, even though
three million Palestinians endure the daily assaults of the occupier
without ever resorting to violence. Israel's collective punishments merely
ensure that the next such response will occur sooner rather than later.
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