Loophole to July 30th Humanitarian Cease Fire in the Israeli Invasion of Gaza

On July 30th, 2014, Israeli leaders agreed to halt their assault on Gaza for four hours for humanitarian aid to be delivered into Gaza. However, according to a Yahoo report, the Israeli military–with its planes, struck a heavily visited marketplace in Gaza on Wednesday. According to reports, at least 17 people were killed in this attack.

Yet despite the outrage by those throughout the world at this latest killing by the Israeli military, as the Yahoo article reports, according to their conditions of temporarily ceasing their attacks, their actions “would not apply in places where troops were “currently operating””.

Such statements are highly concerning, as they seem to attempt to justify existing actions by the Israeli government in Gaza areas. Again, this rhetoric seems to stand by the idea that of these places are areas where Hamas is or could attack, thus attempting to justify targeting schools and markets. But how useful is a cease in actions when it is not implemented throughout Gaza?

Yet despite attempts by the Israeli government to continue to allow their activities to take place–even when a halt in conflict is announced, criticisms of the Israeli actions are not relenting. Activists, professors, celebrities, musicians and artists are continuing to speak out against what they believe are gross human rights violations from this invasion. For example, in the Yahoo article, Robert Del Naja of the British music group Massive Attack was quoted as saying that

“This bombardment of an area that is one of the most densely populated on earth, where civilians aren’t allowed to leave, is just beyond belief”. He went on to say that “In order to protect yourself, do you really want to massacre another people?”

This is the question we must keep in mind: Hamas’ rocket attacks of course also horrific, since they are targeting non-combatants. And they should be condemned, and those responsible should also be held accountable through international institutions such as human rights courts. But is the way to respond to those rockets by inflicting hundreds, and now over 1200 deaths in this recent invasion? Human rights abuses are being carried out in the name of ending Hamas’ rockets. And yet, the rhetoric seems to be that this is “necessary” in order to end Hamas’ weapons and tunnels?

And yet, all throughout this discussion, one other very important point that we must keep in mind is that there is a decades long illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories (either directly as in the case of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or indirectly as in blockades of Gaza) that continues to take place by the Israeli military. Somehow, for some, the discussion centers around Hamas’ rockets, without ever questioning the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. in reality, there must be pressure for Israel to remove its presence from the Palestinian territories, and yet, many are sadly willing to look at Israeli’s actions outside of this political context.

Unfortunately, with high domestic support domestically in Israel, as well as allies such as many US government leaders (both Democratic and Republican regimes) unwilling to strongly act against the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, Israeli leaders in favor of such policies of occupation seem to have little pressure and in turn minimal incentive (compared to the benefits) to end its illegal activities in these areas.