Map Palestine
Map Palestine
Growth Cemetery Gaza
Strip slow slide into the network of arms smuggling tunnels built under its foundations has now turned into a long career in hell.
Very armed factions now battle each other in a deadly Civil War for political power and control of the billions of dollars in aid humanitarian and reconstruction funds flowing into the territory by courtesy of the European Union and the United Nations.
200 people have died and almost 2000 injured so far this year as a result of the rapid rise in internal violence that has now sucked once again in Israel, dozens of Kassam rockets are still fired indiscriminately against civilian centers in Israel of a well-stocked arsenal smuggled into Gaza through Egypt.
Israel's unilateral evacuation of Gaza in August 2005 had intended to show Israel's willingness to find a peaceful solution to the competing demands for Jews and Arabs to sovereignty in Gaza and the West Bank.
Instead, now witness scenes of death and violence in Gaza, which nobody could have predicted that the broadcast networks in the world showed their images of thousands of soldiers difficulties and distress Israeli police and the elimination of 7000 crying and in some cases defiant Jews from their homes and livelihoods after a presence of almost forty years.
Certainly the threshing and eradication of the Jewish presence in Gaza, provides for the continuation of violence against the Jewish state and hatred and incitement of Gaza's civilian population against Jews by many as Israel was severely criticized in many parts of acting unilaterally as he did.
But no one could reasonably expect to do Arabs kill Arabs in Gaza in an endless cycle of violence in the last twelve months.
It makes no sense to assign the blame for failure of Gaza, to capture the witness gave to the Palestinian Authority by Israel. Others can, and surely they do as the situation continues to worsen.
However, after having dropped the baton in Gaza and allowed to reach the stage of the anarchy that now, the Authority has proved to be a lame duck without any power or authority to enter into any agreement with Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Abba Eban, Israel's first ambassador to the United United famously said in 1973:
"The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"
The Palestinian Authority has become in the latest example of that statement more appropriate.
As the killing continues, supporters of the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas, – The 22 States of the Arab League, United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations – to look and, as usual, wring their hands, say a lot, but as always do nothing to stop it.
They continue to promote and cling to the two-state solution formulated by them in 2002 and 2003 that remain unimplemented in more detail minimal and no prospect of ever being successfully concluded – as if nothing had happened in the meantime.
They put their faith in Abbas, being able to deliver Palestinians completely flawed plans – totally ignoring the change in power caused by the rise of Hamas in Gaza, calling for the destruction of Israel.
They still do not understand that the direction of negotiation in Gaza today is Prime Minister Haniyeh of Hamas. No amount of fiction or make believe by the League Arabic, the Quartet and Israel, for that matter that can possibly change the current reality.
Abbas has no power to fill your pen, let alone put your signature on any agreement with Israel to achieve compliance.
Perhaps, because thinking about your next step, the Arab League and the Quartet should meet carefully unless quoted words of Abba Eban, who appeared in Newsweek, 2 December 1974:
"But in addition to warnings about the futility of war we reflect together on the availability of peace? Palestine comes into modern history as a region that straddles the Jordan, which includes the present sovereign territories of Israel and Jordan and the administered areas of the West Bank and Gaza. From this original Palestine, 80 percent became an exclusive domain Arabic through the separation of Transjordan from Palestine. "
Jordan has always been and remains the only direction for negotiation anyone interested in finding a solution to the West Bank and Gaza between Israel and the Arabs.
Division of the West Bank and Gaza between Jordan and Israel is the only possible outcome that has no reasonable prospect of success.
In an interview published in the Khaleej Times on 11 October 2006, the King Abdullah of Jordan stated:
"I really believe that during the first half of 2007 we might wake up to reality and realize that the solution of two States no longer possible, and then what? "
Until the Arab League and the Quartet to understand and act on this reality, in the cemetery will continue to grow in Gaza and ultimately, and unfortunately, extend to cemeteries in the West Bank and Israel.
About the Author
David Singer is an Australian Lawyer and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International — an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine