Staging more violent protests on the Israel-Gaza border, Palestinians commemorated the one-year anniversary of Right-of-Return protests, something organized by the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers. Firing rockets into Israel last week followed by Israeli Defense Forces F-14 strikes on Hamas headquarters, the situation could not be more tense on the Gaza border. Palestinians claims they were displaced form their land when Israel fought its 1948 War of Independence, when in fact many families left because they wanted no part of the Jewish State. Many Palestinians stayed in Israel on land owned since the Ottoman Empire, and after the British Mandate of Palestine in 1922. Since seizing control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority June 7, 2007, Hamas has fought three wars with Israel, largely because they run out of cash and look to get bailed out by the oil-rich Arab Gulf States.
Since taking over Gaza from the PA, Hamas has made nothing but excuses for running the 2 million-inhabitant seaport into the ground. Gaza residents endure the indignity of poor living conditions, including sporadic electricity and clean water. While the Gaza Strip receives grants from the U.N. and Gulf States, infrastructure services remain sketchy, especially when it comes to electricity. Hamas’s 57-year-old Gaza Leader Ismail Haniyeh launched new protests on the one-year anniversary of “Land Day,” where Palestinians demand a return to Israel. Haniyeh has brutally repressed Gaza protesters daring to criticize the Hamas government for failing to deliver on promises of better infrastructure and foreign investment. Foreign intestment has been reluctant in Gaza, knowing that Hamas’s propensity to go to war against Israel when the government runs out of cash.
Haniyeh follows the tradition of Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] founder Yasser Arafat, who rejected every multinational peace deal since the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel seized Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. All three countries lost their land waging war but losing the Six Day War. Hamas wants no part of peace talks because Israel can no longer swap land-for-peace as part of 1967 U.N. Resolution 242, where Israel returns to the pre-1967 borders in exchange for peace. When Israel has swapped land-for-peace in the past, it brought them only more violence and terrorism. When Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1979 in exchange for a peace treaty, it brought the Gaza more violence and terrorism. Handing over Gaza to the PLO May 12, 2005, has brought Israel three wars in the last 14 years.
Haniyeh ordered Tens-of-thousands of Palestinians to return to the Gaza-Israeli border to stage more Land Day protests. Hamas has turned Gaza rule into an Orwellian exercise in directing all of Palestinian rage onto Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and state of Israel. Keeping Palestinians’ hate on Israel takes the focus on its Hamas rulers that have run the seaside territory into the ground. Protesters demand that Israel lift it blockade on Gaza, ironically installed to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel. Despite Israel’s blockade, Hamas has managed with the help of Iran to smuggle large quantities of rockets-and-arms into the impoverished territory. Why Hamas can’t use the same channels to bring in food-and-medicine is anyone’s guess. Violent protests on the Gaza-Israeli border have resulted in 200 Palestinian deaths since the protest began in March 2018.
Gaza residents are told daily by Hamas that they will one day conquer Israel and return to the Promised Land. But that land was once a wasteland before Israel’s May 14, 1948 Declaration of Independence. Israel was recognized by the United Nations as a sovereign state June 14, 1949. Palestinians think that conquering Israel would return the Holy Land to prosperity, when it would result in widespread anarchy and chaos, leading the same living conditions in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank under Palestinian control. Israel prospers as the Mideast’s most powerful economy because of its Democratic free-market economy, something that doesn’t exist in the Middle East with its majority of monarchies and military dictatorships. “I don’t know how many years will pass before our lives improve but we should continue [protests] as long as the occupation and blockade exists,” said 16-year-old Mohammed Ali.
As long as Hamas brainwashes Gaza residents into believing all the riches lie on the other side of the border, Gaza will continue to languish in the backwater of poverty and despair. Hamas and the PA have been given billions of dollars to improve infrastructure and the business climate, yet periodically run out of cash stockpiling guns and armaments for the next war of liberation with Israel. While Hamas and PA leaders know they will never conquer Israel, it’s the over-riding message to Gaza and West Bank residents. “In the coming days we hope to conclude negotiations and achieve and real breaking of the blockade,” said Hamas’ Gaza ruler Yehya Sinwar. Sinwar knows there’s no negotiation with Israel, while Hamas continue to wage war, firing rockets into Israeli territory. Sinwar’s remarks show how Hamas keeps Gaza residents in the dark about what’s really going on.
