Election campaigns in Israel thoughtlessly celebrate the privileges of those eligible to vote, while showing almost complete apathy to the exclusion of millions of subjects. Palestinians, of course, have no need to be reminded of their condition — they are well aware of the reality in which they live. But even so, a situation in which every few years Israelis spend months wondering exactly how they should continue to control the lives of others marks a nadir in the violence we have internalized.
Whether public discourse during the elections includes a debate on these issues, or whether politicians and the public do everything they can to avoid mentioning the occupation, the political choices Israelis make determine how to entrench the occupation regime. Israeli Jews are the ones that determine how they will manage the enormous prison that is the Gaza Strip from the outside; how many homes they will demolish and how many communities they will displace in the West Bank; and how many Palestinian families will be deprived of their homes in East Jérusalem.
Whether public discourse during the elections includes a debate on these issues, or whether politicians and the public do everything they can to avoid mentioning the occupation, the political choices Israelis make determine how to entrench the occupation regime. Israeli Jews are the ones that determine how they will manage the enormous prison that is the Gaza Strip from the outside; how many homes they will demolish and how many communities they will displace in the West Bank; and how many Palestinian families will be deprived of their homes in East Jérusalem.
Immediately after the election campaign, and in the intervening years before the next one, Israeli Jews wiill rely on these “democratic elections” to both justify what Israel does do to their subjects as well as to market this reality as an acceptable one. In this way, the election actually forms a vital component in legitimizing the ongoing control of Israel's subjects’ lives. After all, every Israeli decision, no matter how arbitrary, is seen as the product of these elections. This is an inherently violent situation, since it is impossible to justify the ongoing violence without being part of the violence itself.
The violence is manifested not only when a soldier shoots or beats a Palestinian. It is there every time a lawyer in Israel's State Attorney’s Office closes a file of a killing, or when a Supreme Court justice approves another Palestinian home demolition, or when an Israeli official prevents another Palestinian student from travelling abroad to continue their studies or deny a sick or wounded Palestinian the right to treatment. Every single Palesltinian life lies in the hands of the Israeli Jewish citizens and they apply this violence through a slow, protracted, and arbitrary bureaucracy.
The violence is manifested not only when a soldier shoots or beats a Palestinian. It is there every time a lawyer in Israel's State Attorney’s Office closes a file of a killing, or when a Supreme Court justice approves another Palestinian home demolition, or when an Israeli official prevents another Palestinian student from travelling abroad to continue their studies or deny a sick or wounded Palestinian the right to treatment. Every single Palesltinian life lies in the hands of the Israeli Jewish citizens and they apply this violence through a slow, protracted, and arbitrary bureaucracy.
Moreover, the presence of “democratic elections” is of great importance not only in terms of image and propaganda, but also as a crucial valve that hinders assertive action by the international community that would, at last, express its rejection of this reality.
Bottomline, Israel democracy is just a sham.
That being said, on April 9 2019, Israel will hold general élections to full themselves and the world.
Israelis will head to the polls to choose their elected leaders and représentatives. If they are unhappy with the way things are going, like citizend of democracies around the world, their votes will help shape the ideological and political direction of the government and the institutions it controls.
In a vacuum, that sounds like fairly standad democratic practice. However, there is Nothing standard about Israel's "democracy".
Israeli citizens get to vote in Israeli elections, choosing elected leaders and how they rule the country. But the Israeli government doesn’t just rule over Israeli citizens, or just over Israel, for that matter.
Nearly 14 million people live under Israeli rule. The extent of that control varies, as does the ability of those 14 million people to exercise control over the policies, personalities, and institutions that determine so much about their day-to-day lives.
At the end of 2018, the population of Israel was approximately 8,972,000 people. That includes more than 330,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem who do not have Israeli citizenship and thus do not have the right to vote in national elections. It also includes more than 214,000 Jewish Israeli citizens who live in occupied East Jerusalem and more than 435,000 Jewish Israelis who live in the occupied West Bank.
Then there is the West Bank, which has been governed undemocratically by the Israeli military since it occupied the territory in 1967. Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed again and again, the Israel will not give up military control over the West Bank — ever.
In that territory, over which Israel plans to rule in perpetuity, live more than 2,623,000 Palestinians — over 2,953,000 including East Jerusalem Palestinians — who do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections. In the West Bank, Israel and its army are responsible for everything from road infrastructure, deciding who may live where, who may build where and what, who is allowed to move between different parts of the territory and when, who is allowed in and out of the West Bank, who is allowed to hold a political protest (only Jews), what the laws are and how they are enforced, and whether they will ever be granted independence.
The 435,000 Jewish Israeli colons who live in the West Bank have the right to vote in elections that can determine every one of those policies. They have elected representatives who can work to rectify any grievances they might have regarding how those policies affect their lives. The 2,623,000 Palestinians living in the same territory do not have the right to vote in elections that determine any of those policies. When their lives are negatively affected by the democratic country that rules over so many aspects of their lives, they have zero recourse within that democratic system to address their grievances.
Then there is the Gaza Strip. Despite having withdrawn its troops from inside the Palestinian enclave in 2005, Israel and its military still control a great number of significant aspects of life in the strip and the way it is governed. Israel determines what may be imported and exported; who can come in and out of the territory; and who can travel between the West Bank and Gaza. It has unilaterally claimed a buffer zone of farmland inside Gazan territory and enforces who may enter it; it determines and enforces limits to where Palestinian fishermen can fish; it controls the flow of electricity; and even had to give its permission for cash from a third country to be brought into Gaza to pay civil servants’ salaries.
None of the 1,961,000 people living in Gaza get to vote in the democratic elections that could affect those policies, including how much violence Israel uses against them.
So when Israel goes to vote this April, when everyone is talking about democracy, remember that out of the more-than 13,556,000 people whose lives are directly affected by Israeli policy, only 8,642,000, or around 64 percent of them have the right to participate in that democracy.
In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Israel exercises absolute and direct control on a daily basis, 650,000 Jewish settlers can vote while 2,953,000 Palestinians in the exact same territory cannot. Put differently, of the 3,603,000 people living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, only 18 percent, or fewer than one in five can vote in the elections that affect almost every aspect of their lives.
And of the 6,463,000 Palestinians living under varying degrees of Israeli rule in territory fully or partially controlled by Israel, only 1,548,000 — 24 percent, or fewer than one in four — have the right to vote in Israeli élections.
Some statistical notes: Aside from the numbers of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslins and Christians living in occupied East Jerusalem, which are from the end of 2016, and therefore can be assumed to be lower than the actual figures, all of the numbers given are official end-of-2018 projections published by the Palestinian Census Bureau and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, respectively. Both agencies include Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem in their figures, so the aggregate numbers were adjusted accordingly in order to not double count. Lastly, the figures do not refer only to the population of voting age, but the entire population, and therefore does not technically refer to voter eligibility in the current election but rather to whether someone will ever have the right to vote under the current regime’s rules of suffrage.
There is a small number of East Jerusalem Palestinians who have acquired Israeli citizenship over the years, in addition to a small number of Palestinian citizens of Israel who have moved to West and East Jerusalem.
Some statistical notes: Aside from the numbers of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslins and Christians living in occupied East Jerusalem, which are from the end of 2016, and therefore can be assumed to be lower than the actual figures, all of the numbers given are official end-of-2018 projections published by the Palestinian Census Bureau and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, respectively. Both agencies include Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem in their figures, so the aggregate numbers were adjusted accordingly in order to not double count. Lastly, the figures do not refer only to the population of voting age, but the entire population, and therefore does not technically refer to voter eligibility in the current election but rather to whether someone will ever have the right to vote under the current regime’s rules of suffrage. 
There is a small number of East Jerusalem Palestinians who have acquired Israeli citizenship over the years, in addition to a small number of Palestinian citizens of Israel who have moved to West and East Jerusalem.
Not mention the Golan Heights that Israel is stealing from Syria and subjecting its citizens.
Welcome to Israel's democratic oppressive state.
If the Likud party loses on April 9, it will blame Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit for deciding to indict Netanyahu on charges of corruption. It would also blame the media for refusing to grant Netanyahu a celebrity discount. Were it not for the cloud of criminality hovering over the war criminal, the party would be soaring in the polls rather than barely maintaining its current strength.
The apartheid regime in the West Bank, the humanitarian crisis generated by a blockade of two million Gaza Palestinians, the threat to Israel's democratic identity and the missed opportunity of the Arab League's historic peace initiative - all these are virtually absent from the public agenda.
The opposition is the Blue and White generals' party, led by Gantz, two other former military chiefs - Lt Generals (res) Moshe Yaalon and Gabi Ashkenazi - and by the head of the "centrist" Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid.
The three retired generals could have taken advantage of their stellar military records to tell the public what most senior Israeli defence officials believe - that their military is strong enough to defend Israel from any border the government chooses. They could have declared what most members of the intelligence community say behind closed doors - that the continued occupation is Israel's biggest strategic threat. They could have insisted courageously that Israel's Palestinian citizens and their Knesset representatives are legitimate government partners. But they Don't.
In his bid to be prime minister, Gantz is branding himself as a 'centrist', hoping to replicate (or better) the success of similar such candidates in recent elections.
But what could Gantz's brand of centrism mean for Palestinians? If his first speech is anything to go by, the answer is a familiar one.
"The Jordan Valley will remain our eastern security border," Gantz declared. "We will maintain security in the entire Land of Israel, but we will not allow the millions of Palestinians living beyond the separation fence to endanger our security and our identity as a Jewish state."
Such a vision - one where Israel remains in effective control of the entirety of the occupied West Bank but without granting its Palestinian inhabitants Israeli citizenship - sounds not only similar to the status quo, but also like Netanyahu's own proposal for a Palestinian "state-minus".
Differences 'meaningless for Palestinians'.
Gantz's approach to the Palestinians is also consistent with that of centrist rival Lapid. Mouin Rabbani, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, told Al Jazeera that "from a Palestinian perspective", the differences between Netanyahu and the likes of Lapid are "meaningless".
"Lapid is a proponent of a two-state settlement, but his vision of a Palestinian state has little in common with the concept of statehood as generally understood," Rabbani said, arguing that Lapid sees negotiations with the Palestinians as a "tactical exercise, the purpose of which is to normalise relations with the Arab states".
Last year, Gantz told an interviewer that West Bank settlements such as the so-called Gush Etzion "bloc", as well as Ariel, Ofra and Elkana "will remain forever". On 11 February, Gantz visited Kfar Etzion settlement, hailing it and other colonies as "a strategic, spiritual and settlement asset".
Gantz's running mate, former Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon, has already broadcast a campaign video from a settlement, declaring "our right to settle every part of the Land of Israel".
For human rights activists in Israel, the politics of Gantz's "centrism" is a grim reminder of what B'Tselem director Hagai El-Ad called "a clear truth": that "there is an across-the-board consensus for Israel to retain control over its Palestinian subjects in the occupied territories".
Every rookie political adviser in Israel knows there is no deadlier landmine on the way to the ballot box than to speak the Truth about the horrors of the occupation. They all know that Israel has become a country of a predominant majority of racists Zionists.
Netanyahu has managed to turn talk of peace, coexistence and reconciliation by his rivals into a symptom of advanced senility, at best, or the ultimate expression of dangerous defeatism. The bad name that the right has given the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution explains why Gantz and his friends have sought refuge behind the hollow slogan "there is no right and left".
Last year, Gantz told an interviewer that West Bank settlements such as the so-called Gush Etzion "bloc", as well as Ariel, Ofra and Elkana "will remain forever". On 11 February, Gantz visited Kfar Etzion settlement, hailing it and other colonies as "a strategic, spiritual and settlement asset".
Gantz's running mate, former Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon, has already broadcast a campaign video from a settlement, declaring "our right to settle every part of the Land of Israel".
For human rights activists in Israel, the politics of Gantz's "centrism" is a grim reminder of what B'Tselem director Hagai El-Ad called "a clear truth": that "there is an across-the-board consensus for Israel to retain control over its Palestinian subjects in the occupied territories".
Every rookie political adviser in Israel knows there is no deadlier landmine on the way to the ballot box than to speak the Truth about the horrors of the occupation. They all know that Israel has become a country of a predominant majority of racists Zionists.
Netanyahu has managed to turn talk of peace, coexistence and reconciliation by his rivals into a symptom of advanced senility, at best, or the ultimate expression of dangerous defeatism. The bad name that the right has given the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution explains why Gantz and his friends have sought refuge behind the hollow slogan "there is no right and left".
To prove their bona fides, they have also rejected any option of forming a political bloc with the Arab parties composed by Palestinians Christians and Muslins that became Israeli citizens after the Nakba. Furthermore, they announced instead that they would invite the Likud to join a government under their leadership.
I don't believe that once elected, Gantz and company would shake off the settlement lobby pressure, which has cowed the Likud for years and blocked any way out of the status quo. Nor that a coalition led by centre-left parties could freeze construction in the outposts and isolated settlements and dry up funding for settlements located outside the main settlement blocs. The Gantz-Lapid party has pledged that any proposed peace agreement would require a referendum or a special Knesset majority. But, for now, there is no chance that even a tiny withdrawal from the Palestinian occupied territories could garner a two-thirds majority absent the support of the Araba [Israeli-Palestinians] parties, those same parties that Blue and White has ruled out in advance. In addition, the record of several top Blue and White candidates, primarily among them Yaalon, and former Netanyahu hardline aides Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel, augurs a painful headache for Gantz if he ever tries to seek his party's approval for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
Any form of Palestinian independence would entail evicting at least 150,000 settlers from their homes, dividing sovereignty over Jerusalem and a just resolution of the refugee problem. An unlikely alignment of four stars would have to occur for this to happen.
The first, a willingness of the Israeli people and their elected officials to sign an agreement guaranteed to set off deep social unrest in Israel verging on civil war.
The second one would require a Palestinian agreement to declare an end of all their demands, including full implementation of the right of the 1948 refugees to return to Israel. Since there is a lack of consensus in this regard, the domestic price will also be extremely heavy.
The third star would require wealthy Sunni states to support the Palestinian peace camp and cease backing rejectionist organisations, risking a clash with those opposed to normalisation with Israel.
The fourth, and perhaps most important star, would require a willingness of the US administration and Congress to leverage their influence on the sides and risk a deep crisis with the Zionist evangelical leadership and major Zionist donors.
No Israeli leader is able to change the reality in the Middle East conflict without vigorous involvement of the White House. US presidents have played key roles in bringing about major Israeli historic shifts over the years - Israel's 1956 withdrawal from the Sinai, its 1979 peace agreement with Egypt, and 2005 pullout from Gaza.
The fight waged by former President George Bush Sr against Israeli settlements contributed to the victory of the Israeli centre-left led by Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, and in turn to the Oslo Accords, which tricked the Palestinians. The prospect of Donald Trump, who never spares any effort to bolster Israel's right-wing regime, lining up alongside the current "centre-left" bloc led by Gantz begs strong belief.
To make a long story short, Gantz and his right-wing colleagues seem to be the more of the same party rather than the game-changers the Israeli and the Palestinian people need so badly. According to Gantz, Binyamin Netanyahu’s strategy is failing to deter Hamas in Gaza. Which is his? Bombing too?
Any attempt by the Palestinian 'leadership' to read positive signals on Israeli lips is yet another sign of their bankruptcy and their powerlessness to achieve their stated goal of an independent Palestinian state.
Summarized information on the election and the candidates:
About 5.88 million eligible voters are set to vote in the Israeli elections on April 9 to elect a party that will lead the next Israeli government.
Fourteen main parties are competing for 120 seats in the 21st Knesset (parliament).
A party has to secure a majority of 61 seats out of 120 in order to form a government and choose a leader to become prime minister.
Israel has seen particularly high turn-out rates in the past, with 71.8 percent of eligible voters casting their ballots in the 2015 election.
Israel's incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, is seeking a fifth term in office.
According to polls, it's a tight race against his main rival Benny Gantz, a former army chief who leads the centrist Blue and White party, a party merged in alliance with former finance minister and TV personality Yair Lapid.
Here's what you need to know about Israel's élections.
Main contenders:
Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, 69
If re-eleetanhyahucted on April 9, Netanyahu could become Israel's longest-serving prime minister and the first sitting prime minister to be indicted on corruption charges.
A corruption investigation involving one case of bribery and two cases of fraud and breach of trust culminated in February 2019 when Israel's attorney general announced that he intends to indict Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu dismissed the allegations, calling it a "witch-hunt" concocted by his opponents.
Despite the charges, most younger Israelis prefer Netanyahu for prime minister over rival Benny Gantz, according to a pre-election poll by the Israel Democracy Institute.
Netanyahu currently leads the most right-wing government in Israeli history and also serves as defence minister.
Over the past decade, he's become known as Mr Security, casting himself as the one who can best keep Israel safe in the "tough neighbourhood" of the Middle East.
During his tenure, US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital and recognised Israel's claim on the occupied Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967, which may boost his popularity at the polls.
Binyamin "Benny" Gantz, 59
As security always takes centre stage in Israeli politics, Benny Gantz, former chief of staff of the Israeli army, is Netanyahu's biggest challenger.
Along with two other former Israeli army chiefs of staff, he quickly formed the Centrist Blue and White party in February 2019 - in alliance Lapid - in a bid to unseat Netanyahu.
Gantz boasts military credentials that appeal to much of the Israeli public. He served as chief of staff during two military assaults on the besieged Gaza Strip in 2012 and 2014.
Once praised by Netanyahu as an "excellent officer" to whom Israelis owed gratitude, the prime minister has now branded his competition as a "weak leftist".
In a bid to win right-wing voters, Gantz's controversial campaign videos boast of killing Palestinians and sending Gaza "back to Stone Age" referencing to the air attacks the army launched in 2014.
Many have criticised him for lacking a clear political stance, including on the future of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
However, as part of his platform, he has vowed to "fix" the controversial Jewish nation-state law, which defined Israel as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people.
How the elections work:
Voters will be casting their ballots for a party, not a candidate. The more votes a party gets, the more seats it obtains in the Knesset as the government is based on a nationwide proportional representation system.
A party must secure at least 61 out of a total 120 Knesset seats in order to form a government.
During elections, parties must pass an electoral threshold of 3.25 percent to gain a Knesset seat. To stand a better chance of passing this threshold, many parties form coalitions.
Once the results are in, all parties that pass the threshold then submit their choice of candidate for prime minister to President Reuven Rivlin.
Rivlin then assigns the job of forming a coalition to the party leader he thinks has the best chance of doing so.
Any attempt by the Palestinian 'leadership' to read positive signals on Israeli lips is yet another sign of their bankruptcy and their powerlessness to achieve their stated goal of an independent Palestinian state.
Summarized information on the election and the candidates:
About 5.88 million eligible voters are set to vote in the Israeli elections on April 9 to elect a party that will lead the next Israeli government.
Fourteen main parties are competing for 120 seats in the 21st Knesset (parliament).
A party has to secure a majority of 61 seats out of 120 in order to form a government and choose a leader to become prime minister.
Israel has seen particularly high turn-out rates in the past, with 71.8 percent of eligible voters casting their ballots in the 2015 election.
Israel's incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, is seeking a fifth term in office.
According to polls, it's a tight race against his main rival Benny Gantz, a former army chief who leads the centrist Blue and White party, a party merged in alliance with former finance minister and TV personality Yair Lapid.
Here's what you need to know about Israel's élections.
Main contenders:
Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, 69
If re-eleetanhyahucted on April 9, Netanyahu could become Israel's longest-serving prime minister and the first sitting prime minister to be indicted on corruption charges.
A corruption investigation involving one case of bribery and two cases of fraud and breach of trust culminated in February 2019 when Israel's attorney general announced that he intends to indict Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu dismissed the allegations, calling it a "witch-hunt" concocted by his opponents.
Despite the charges, most younger Israelis prefer Netanyahu for prime minister over rival Benny Gantz, according to a pre-election poll by the Israel Democracy Institute.
Netanyahu currently leads the most right-wing government in Israeli history and also serves as defence minister.
Over the past decade, he's become known as Mr Security, casting himself as the one who can best keep Israel safe in the "tough neighbourhood" of the Middle East.
During his tenure, US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital and recognised Israel's claim on the occupied Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967, which may boost his popularity at the polls.
Binyamin "Benny" Gantz, 59
As security always takes centre stage in Israeli politics, Benny Gantz, former chief of staff of the Israeli army, is Netanyahu's biggest challenger.
Along with two other former Israeli army chiefs of staff, he quickly formed the Centrist Blue and White party in February 2019 - in alliance Lapid - in a bid to unseat Netanyahu.
Gantz boasts military credentials that appeal to much of the Israeli public. He served as chief of staff during two military assaults on the besieged Gaza Strip in 2012 and 2014.
Once praised by Netanyahu as an "excellent officer" to whom Israelis owed gratitude, the prime minister has now branded his competition as a "weak leftist".
In a bid to win right-wing voters, Gantz's controversial campaign videos boast of killing Palestinians and sending Gaza "back to Stone Age" referencing to the air attacks the army launched in 2014.
Many have criticised him for lacking a clear political stance, including on the future of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
However, as part of his platform, he has vowed to "fix" the controversial Jewish nation-state law, which defined Israel as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people.
How the elections work:
Voters will be casting their ballots for a party, not a candidate. The more votes a party gets, the more seats it obtains in the Knesset as the government is based on a nationwide proportional representation system.
A party must secure at least 61 out of a total 120 Knesset seats in order to form a government.
During elections, parties must pass an electoral threshold of 3.25 percent to gain a Knesset seat. To stand a better chance of passing this threshold, many parties form coalitions.
Once the results are in, all parties that pass the threshold then submit their choice of candidate for prime minister to President Reuven Rivlin.
Rivlin then assigns the job of forming a coalition to the party leader he thinks has the best chance of doing so.
Noam Chomsky on Moral Relativism
VENEZUELA
PALESTINA
Jerusalem, a Rock and a Hard place: What is it like to live in Jerusalem?
Daily Life Occupation
"What would be unimaginabel elsewhere has become normal here in Gaza. A day on which four people are killed and 64 shot with live ammunition is one on which we feel almost almos happy because it was not the two or three hundred ... we had feared it might be," says a Gazan.
He is so right.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams were ready to take care of hundreds of
injured people on 30 March in Gaza as the weekly protests there had their one year
anniversary.
More than 190 have been killed and 6,800 shot and injured by the Israeli army
during the protests. In the end, ‘only’ four people were killed and 64 injured by live
fire on 30 March.
MSF’s field communications manager in Jerusalem, Jacob Burns, reflects on what it
means when such a devastating toll of injuries comes to be considered a ‘good’ day.
The day was well set for drama – a storm blowing in off the Mediterranean, the sea white and the air full of
dust in defiance of what was supposed to be spring. At al-Aqsa hospital in the middle of Gaza Strip the wind
was whipping through a tent set up in the grounds, chilling the nurses and doctors dressed in their scrubs.
This tent had been set up as part of a triage system, a way of managing the expected arrival of many
wounded from protests at the fence that marks the boundary with Israel.
It was 30 March, the first anniversary of weekly demonstrations in which more than 190 have been killed and
6,800 shot and injured by Israeli forces. The whole of the Gazan health system was on alert, ready to receive
hundreds of injured in a few short hours, just as it had done in the worst days of spring and summer last year.
At around half past two the radio crackled and the word came down: ten cases were on their way. The first
siren of the afternoon cut the air, and the orange and white ambulance pulled up and discharged its
wounded: one young man clutching a bandage to his neck, cut by shrapnel perhaps; a still man on a stretcher,
his head hit by a rubber bullet; and another youth with a bullet in his foot hopping into the tent, grimacing.
The afternoon continued like that, with patients arriving together in little bursts of pain, MSF doctors and
nurses assisting the Ministry of Health and another NGO with their assessment and treatment. Many had
gunshot wounds to the leg, with blood pooling on white bandages, nurses strapping splints behind the shin
to keep broken bones immobilised. Some people were moaning and crying, some were silent, and others –
affected by tear gas – were shaking and vomiting.
And yet an air of relief gradually spread among the assembled medical teams. This was nowhere near as bad
as they had thought it might be after a week marked by Palestinian rocket fire, Israeli bombing and rumours
of war. Egyptian efforts to negotiate calm between Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza, and
Israel seemed mostly to have succeeded.
It was nowhere near as bad as 30 March last year, or 14 May, or other lesser-known dates when the hospitals
were overwhelmed and patients were left waiting for treatment in the corridors.
What would be unimaginable elsewhere has become normal here in Gaza. A day on which four people are
killed and 64 shot with live ammunition is one on which we feel almost happy because it was not the two or
three hundred – or even more – we had feared it might be.
We must fight against this sense of normality. It is not normal to see so many young people arrive at hospital
all at once with bullets in their legs.
S I M O N R O L I N
Firas, 19, is treated by an anesthetist and a nurse at the MSF clinic in Gaza, where our teams are
working with the Ministry of Health and another NGO to treat thousands of people shot by the
Israeli army during protests at the fence that separates Israel from the blockaded enclave. 27
March 2019.
It is not normal for our surgeons to work on a 25-year-old man who needed all his blood replaced because a
bullet tore through both the main artery and the main vein in his chest.
It is not normal for them to remove the kidney of a boy because to try to save it would mean he bleeds to
death. It is not normal for our emergency doctors to listen to the lungs of a patient, hit in the throat with what
was apparently a tear gas canister, fill with blood.
It is not normal for us to discharge a patient from our clinics, and then to readmit him when he is shot again,
only then to have his family tell us that he went back to the fence yet again and was killed.
The crossing between Gaza and Israel is now open again for the lucky few who can use it. There is talk of
Israel providing more electricity and more space for Gazan fishermen in which to ply their trade. Israel
expects calm from the Palestinians in return.
The world’s media that came to see what would happen this weekend will mostly go home again, and Gaza
will once again drift out of the headlines until violence sparks again.
S I M O N R O L I N
A patient in the waiting room of the MSF clinic in Gaza city, in February 2019.
We must fight against this sense of normality. It is not normal to
see so many young people arrive at hospital all at once with
bullets in their legs.
“
In the meantime, however, Gaza will continue to suffer in circumstances that its inhabitants have become
used to: an economy in freefall, a health system all but broken by the Israeli blockade and Palestinian
political infighting, thousands of gunshot wound patients waiting, hoping that they will heal.
We at MSF will go back to our usual activities this week, working in our clinics and hospitals across Gaza. We
will admit more patients with gunshot wounds and continue to treat the nearly 1,000 who remain on our
books, a living reminder of the suffering that Gaza has gone through over the last year.
However, as we return to the routine we must all do our best to remember – despite the small hope that an
agreement could partially change the situation of the Gazans – this is not over, this is not how people should
live. This is not normal.
Among all that is happening in Gaza, UN human rights commission of inquiry found last month that Israel may have committed war crimes against protesters, resulting in the killing of 189 Palestinians within the period March 30 and December 31, 2018. The inquiry found “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at children, medics and journalists, even though they were clearly recognizable as such.”
The reasons why Palestinians did not give in to Israeli harassement and killing are not clear for many in the media. Many still do not understand what the Great March of Return really means for Palestinians.
A cynically titled report in the Washington Post attempted to offer an answer. The article, “Gazans have paid in blood for a year of protests. Now many wonder what it was for,” selectively quoted wounded Palestinians who, supposedly, feel that their sacrifices were in vain. Aside from providing the Israeli military with a platform to blame the Hamas Movement for the year-long march, the long report ended with two "quotes": The March of Return achieved nothing and The only thing I can find is that it made people pay attention, spoken by two wounded Palestinians among de hundreds who knew exactly what they have achieved in the last twelve months.
If the Washington Post paid attention, it would have realized that the mood among Palestinians is neither cynical nor despairing. The Post should have wondered: if the march ‘achieved nothing’, why were Gazans still protesting, and the popular and inclusive nature of the March has not been compromised?
“The Right of Return is more than a political position,” said Sabreen al-Najjar, the mother of young Palestinian medic, Razan, who, on June 1, 2018, was fatally shot by the Israeli army while trying to help wounded Palestinian protesters. It is “more than a principle: wrapped up in it, and reflected in literature and art and music, is the essence of what it means to be Palestinian. It is in our blood.”
Indeed, what is the ‘Great March of Return’ but a people attempting to reclaim their role, and be recognized and heard in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine?
What is largely missing from the discussion on Gaza is the collective psychology behind this kind of mobilization, and why it is essential for hundreds of thousands of besieged people to rediscover their power and understand their true position, not as hapless victims, but as agents of change in their society.
The narrow reading, or the misrepresentation of the March of Return, speaks volumes about the overall underestimation of the role of the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, justice and national liberation, extending for a century.
The story of Palestine is the story of the Palestinian people, for they are the victims of oppression and the main channel of resistance, starting with the Nakba – the creation of Israel on the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages in 1948. Had Palestinians not resisted, their story would have concluded then, and they, too, would have disappeared.
The story of Palestine is the story of the Palestinian people, for they are the victims of oppression and the main channel of resistance, starting with the Nakba – the creation of Israel on the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages in 1948. Had Palestinians not resisted, their story would have concluded then, and they, too, would have disappeared.
Those who admonish Palestinian resistance or, like the Post, fail to understand the underlying value of popular movement and sacrifices, have little understanding of the psychological ramifications of resistance – the sense of collective empowerment and hope which spreads amongst the people. In his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth”, Jean-Paul Sartre describes resistance, as it was passionately vindicated by Fanon, as a process through which “a man is re-creating himself.”
For 70 years, Palestinians have embarked on that journey of the re-creation of the self. They have resisted, and their resistance in all of its forms has molded a sense of collective unity, despite the numerous divisions that were erected amongst the people.
The March of Return is the latest manifestation of the ongoing Palestinian resistance.
The March of Return is the latest manifestation of the ongoing Palestinian resistance.
It is obvious that elitist interpretations of Palestine have failed – Oslo proved a worthless exercise in empty clichés, aimed at sustaining American political dominance in Palestine as well as in the rest of the Middle East.
But the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993 shattered the relative cohesiveness of the Palestinian discourse, thus weakening and dividing the Palestinian people.
In the Israeli Zionist narrative, Palestinians are depicted as drifting lunatics, an inconvenience that hinders the path of progress – a description that regularly defined the relationship between every western colonial power and the colonized, resisting natives.
Within some Israeli political and academic circles, Palestinians merely ‘existed’ to be "cleansed", to make room for a different, more deserving people. From the Zionist perspective, the ‘existence’ of the natives is meant to be temporary. “We must expel Arabs and take their place,” wrote Israel’s Zionist idelogist, David Ben Gurion.
Assigning the roles of dislocated, disinherited and nomadic to the Palestinian people, without consideration for the ethical and political implications of such a perception, has erroneously presented Palestinians as a docile and submissive collective.
Hence, it is imperative to develop a clearer understanding of the layered meanings behind the Great March of Return. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza did not risk life and limb over the last year simply because they required urgent medicine and food supplies.
Palestinians did so because they understand their centrality in their struggle. Their protests are a collective statement, a cry for justice, an ultimate reclamation of their narrative as a people – still standing, still powerful and still hopeful after 70 years of Nakba, 50 years of military occupation and 12 years of unrelenting siege.
Jerusalem, a Rock and a Hard place: What is it like to live in Jerusalem?
Daily Life Occupation
Um bando de soldados israelenses invadiram uma escola primária na Cisjordânia e prenderam um dos alunos. Acusaram o menininho de jogar pedras no carro de uns colonos judeus ilegais. Foi levado para um posto de detenção nas imediações e só foi solto porque o vídeo foi parar na CNN. Prova que a ação e a inação da grande mídia é crucial no combate à ocupação/apârtheid israelense e a limpeza étnica que os sionistas estão fazendo na Palestina desde 1948.
Israeli soldiers arrested 10-year-old Palestinian at his school for supposedly having thrown stones at illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The boy was released later, afgter being kept in detention in a military post nearby, after CNN showed this video. Which proves that the mainstream media action or inaction against israeli occupation is crucial.
NO! to Eurovision in Tel Aviv
BRASIL
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