It is nearly three years ago that Hamas took over control and started their bloody reign over the Gaza-strip. Seen as the counter side of more secular minded Fatah, it gets little respect except from extremist and other irrational thinking creatures.
Belgium, where Europe’s hearts pumps -on foreign policies like that of a dying man-, planned to send its minister for development there. Israeli Deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon thought this wasn’t a very good idea.
We’ve heard his name in the news before. Only a few weeks ago he had a meeting with the Turkish ambassador, over allegedly insulting video material that was broadcast on Turkish television, after which he stated words in Hebrew that wouldn’t do much good in any Islamic orientated country, or, for that matter, in any country at all.
This time Israel made the news because the Belgium minster was not welcome in Gaza. The reason is Hamas: Israel neither talks, nor wants to recognize this group, which it considers to be a terrorist group (as do many countries).
Humanitarian aid and food is what is allowed into Gaza’s borders, and that is it. That is it indeed, as even those things have slowed down over the past few years. As an outsider to the region, it is difficult to shape your own views, at least if you would like to have any objectivity in them. So many stories meet each other head on while the truth, often so simple, is hidden and obscure. We hear Israel about terrorists’ casualties, and then moments later Hamas comes up with a story that works only if the other version is falsified. I would like to believe, as I don’t doubt many others do too, that the people in Gaza know that Hamas is no good. I actually do believe that, thought I must admit a lingering inability to make a hard, closed case to support that claim.
There are, however, some other issues that the world’s leaders should fight a little harder for. Israel, founded as a Jewish state over half a century ago, was a place “for the Jews”. After the terrible misdeeds of Hitler in the Second World War, and via a route of nasty deals made by former colonial powers, the United Nations agreed to grant them the right for their own state. The history is complicated, messy and unfair. Not just from the UN’s and Israel’s side, but from the other side as well. Those issues must be left behind, as Israel exists and will not be wiped out, whatever some people might hope or think.
With an eye to claiming borderlines as they were before 1967, many, even some of the fiercest anti-Israelis, unwillingly and silently accept that claim. In part it is all the more ironic, that a state with so called Biblical chosen people is neglecting a basic duty of giving each their due. Living in a country that is only theirs because it was granted to them by those who had no right to give it anyway, why not give to those who have lived through their own Diaspora too? Naturally, the people that occupied those areas prior to ‘Zionism’ also have a right to exist, a right to prosperity and certainly a right to fulfillment of basic human needs.
A two-state solution here is the best hope. That won’t succeed without more White House efforts, of that much I am sure. This also means condemning Israel for their settlement building more vigorously. Yes, Netanyahu might have postponed it, but he neither cancelled it nor did it with an indefinite time table. Add on top of that the buildings currently under construction, which by knowledge will be finished, and all his ‘painful step’ does is create some hatred, instead of a lot.
This all goes much further than basic human needs, which is the absolute place to start. From what I’ve heard and read, a practical stop of people going into Gaza has been active since March 2009. This has led to a severe backdrop in humanitarian aid, of which Michel, the Belgian minister for Development, says that only 20% is still arriving on the places where it is needed. And now that Michel isn’t allowed in either, there is an easy political route to take a look at the situation, again.
As a Dutch citizen, and therefore a European one, my hopes are aimed at Brussels. They’ll probably be futile: Their voice is not unified, and it doesn’t carry much weight in comparison to that of the US. The Belgian minister is right in a way, though, which brings us back to the introduction: Israel’s vision differs.
By not allowing him in, it considers itself to keeping a straight backbone. As I see it, it is doing something very different from that. More than anything else it is neglecting not a political organization, but a large group of people who have asked for their sorrows as much as Israeli citizens who are shot at with rockets. With an aim of bolstering the ideals of the European Union by meeting parts of the population, not every politician is a political message without being a moral one too. I wonder whether Hamas has ever even heard of Belgium in the first place.