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The Harsh Realities Behind the Death of Innocents in Gaza
(Sydney Morning Herald-Australia) Paul Monk - When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it offered the Fatah leaders a deal: make your peace with us and we will help you develop Gaza into a thriving commercial hub. Infrastructure was left in place and investment offered. What happened? Fatah was ousted by Hamas in a brutal coup, the Israeli offer was spurned, the infrastructure torn up because it was Jewish, and the metal from torn-up pipes was used to make rockets to fire into Israel. In the wake of World War II, the UN proposed a two-state settlement in Palestine that would have given the Arabs a more than equitable share of the territory. The Jewish leadership accepted the offer. The Arab leaders flatly rejected it. They then launched a three-pronged attack on the nascent state of Israel, to destroy it in its cradle. The Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank are deemed refugees because half a million Arabs fled their homes during the Arab war against Israel in 1948. Yet in the years after 1948, some 600,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands and their property confiscated. None of them, nor any of their descendants, is considered a refugee now; nor do they claim a right of return and they have certainly not been compensated for their property. The writer is a former senior intelligence analyst.