In terms of casualties, Saturday, December 27th 2008 was the worst day in Palestine since the 1967 war. Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip all day using Apache helicopters and F-16 fighters. In an area considered to be the most densely populated on earth (1.5 million people in 350 square kilometers, 80% of whom are refugees forced out of their homes and into Gaza by Israel), the death toll was predictably large.
But very few would have guessed just how large. In just over 12 hours, Israel murdered over 220 (two hundred and twenty) Palestinians, and wounded over 700, 12o of whom are in critical condition without the neccessary medical care they need. It is estimated that tens of bodies remain under the rubble.
I'm trying to put into words the horror and shock felt here in Palestine today, but I don't think I can ever be able to convey it. 220 lives extinguished just like that. It was, and as the
airstrikes are ongoing, a massacre of historic proportions.
For weeks, there has been talk of a large-scale Israeli attack on Gaza, but the nature of the attack was both surprising and horrific. At 11:30 AM, as Gaza's schools ended their morning shift and children were walking home or to school for the afternoon shift, 60 Israeli aircraft launched over 100 tons of missiles and explosives at around 40 targets across Gaza. This original wave took no more than three to five minutes. The immediate result was ghastly: 120 murdered in those five minutes.
The targets were mostly police stations, and the most striking image is that of dozens of new cadets lying dead on top of each other at Gaza City's main police station. They had been taking part in their graduation ceremony. I want to make a point here lost on many Western news agencies: the police force in Gaza is not the 'Hamas police'. Like any other police force in the world, it are an institution independent of the ruling party. It was around at the time Gaza was ruled by Fatah, by Hamas and by a unity government. The head of the police force, Tawfiq Jaber was amongst the first killed. He was a lifelong Fatah man.
As Gaza's hospitals quickly filled with the dead and wounded, the strikes continued. 2 hours after the first wave, the death toll had risen to 150. By sunset, it had reached 170. By the end of the day, after police stations, family homes, mosques, apartment blocks and workshops had been attacked, the ever increasing death toll had climbed to 200.
About 30 minutes ago, the second mosque was hit. the Dar al-Shifa Mosque is adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the hospital that had recieved hundreds of casualties. The force of the strike completly destroyed the mosque and blew out the windows in the hospital. Earlier, the Sheikh Zayed Mosque had been destroyed with worshippers inside. 15 were killed.
It was tough to get a line into Gaza during the day, but I managed to get hold of my uncle Mohammad in Gaza City. He sounded in shock, unable to say much. I asked him where he was; he replied that he was next to the building used to issue passports, and there were about 50 bodies inside. I couldn't say anything. I hung up.
My uncle Jasim in Khan Younis was also outside. He said he was okay, but there were explosions and dead people everywhere.
I didn't even bother talking to my uncle Mahmoud; my mom had called him and heard crying all around him. His wife was mourning the death of her brother.
I think the most poignant emotion was shock, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank. As its primary victims, we had become used to Israel crossing red lines in its continuous policy of opression and occupation. But this was something else. The sheer scale of the massacre was unfathomable.
In response, there were clashes with Israeli troops across the West Bank. It was an outpouring of anger more than anything else. With nothing but rocks, we knew there was little we could do for those being slaughtered in Gaza. The helplessness was mutiplied, however, by the actions of Mahmoud Abbas' security forces in Ramallah. In a day whens tens of their colleagues were murdered in cold blood in Gaza, the security forces followed us right up to the outskirts of the illegal Israeli settlement of Bet El (home to Israelis military command for the West Bank), the whole time taking note of faces, numbers and checking names and IDs. The operation was by no means covert, and the brashness was not lost on many of the disgusted demonstrators.
The reason for all this overt information gathering readily became apparent. After getting hit with two rubber bullets and inhaling enough teargas for a lifetime, I was astonished to find Palestinian riot police walk calmly towards us at the point of confrontation with the Israeli soldiers, turn their backs to the Israelis and herd us away. I had never, ever heard of Palestinian police breaking up a demonstration against Israeli troops. The scene rubbed salt into a very open wound.
Back home, the TV was never off, and the full scale of the horror still hadn't settled in. The news broadcast continuous images of severed limbs, headless bodies, piles of dead bodies, children, women, men. More than 70 of the bodies arrived at the hospitals torn apart. 15 bodies were so disfigured they still have not been identified. The hospitals, already out of hundreds of neccesary medicines, were running out of blood even as hundreds rushed to donate. I managed to call my uncles again. Mohammad's voice was hollow, scratching, like he was forcing the words out. He told me his kids had finally gone to sleep, but in the late December cold he had opened all the windows in his apartment. With the airstrikes hitting everywhere and anywhere, everybody risked having their windows blown out. As he noted, if they were to get blown out, there is no glass in Gaza as a result of the siege to replace them. He told me everything seemed to be a target; there were no police stations left in the entire Strip. Even the apartment building housing the offices of a civil society institution working for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails had been completely levelled. I asked him if anybody he knew had been wounded or killed. He paused for a bit before telling me he had lost 20 friends. He said he wanted to go down to Khan Younis tomorrow to pay his respects in the funeral processions, because some of them had been buried today without ceremony. There is no space in the hospitals to hold the dead, so they were buried en masse.
It was even tougher talking to Jasim. He was speaking in single word sentences, sometimes repeating the same word over and over: 'Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere'. They had no power, and the streets were empty, but he could still hear the airstrikes all around. This is a man in his mid-forties who has lived in Gaza most of his life and witnessed all its previous horrors. I've never heard him like that.
The scariest thing is that Israel has announced this is merely the beggining, and that it intends to escalate and increase its attacks. Nobody is safe. Israeli army officials say that 90% of those killed were Hamas fighters. That is patently untrue. The majority of those killed were policemen and civillians. In this climate, Ehud Olmert has the audacity to appear on TV and tell the people of Gaza that there is no enimosity between them and Israel. It is nothing but an attempt at playing the reluctant warrior for the cameras, and a ploy that underlines just how little Israel regard Israel has for Palestinian life.
The only thing more insulting, and the object of scorn amongst tens of thousands who took to the streets to demonstrate the slaughter across the world, is the stance of Arab regimes, particularly Egypt. Olmert revealed that the decision to undertake the massacre had been taken on Wednesday, one day before Tzipi Livni met with Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and vowed from there to destroy Gaza and change the reality there. She was not rebuked by Egypt's Foreign Minister for threatening to rain mass murder upon the civillian population in the Strip. According to Hamas officials, Egypt had informed them yesterday that no major Israeli attack was forthcoming on Gaza for the next few days. Whether this is true or not, the Egyptian regime is directly complicit in Gaza's suffering, as it has banned supplies and aid from reaching the Strip for two years.
What is Israel aiming to achieve? Its stated goal is to end the launching of homemade rockets from Gaza, and to topple Hamas. The idea that either of those goals can be achieved militarily is ludicrous. Even as Israel pounded Gaza today in such an unprecedented fashion, Palestinian fighters managed to launch over 50 rockets. Palestinians developed the rockets back when Israeli troops were inside Gaza; they won't stop because of airstrikes, and they won't stop even with a full reinvasion, which Israel seems to have ruled out.
Toppling Hamas is also unrealistic. For all its faults (and it has many) Hamas remains a group of the people. Its leaders, icons and fighters are all average Palestinians, and that is where it derives its popular strength. Toppling Hamas' rule in Gaza will not be as easy as destroying its bases and killing its leaders. Israel has done that before, and each time the movement has returned stronger, its popularity increasing. Throughout the two years of continuous siege imposed on Gaza by Israel, Egypt and the international community, the people have never put the blame on Hamas, but at those denying them food, fuel and freedom. Like todays massacre, the victims are not Hamas, but the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, of which Hamas is but a part.
Israel still believes it can impose its will by force. The only way its goals will be met is through genocide. But there is another angle, and that is the upcoming Israeli election. It is not novel for incumbent Israeli governments to carry out atrocities against Palestinians to garner domestic support, and with the Likud expected to win the next elections, this is definitely a power play by the embattled ruling party, Kadima.
Today, and probably the days to come, will be a clear demonstration os the very worst of Israel, what Will termed a dangerous blend of Zionist fantasy and election posturing. For 60 years, Israel has tried to use its overwhelming military prowess to cow the Palestinians into accepting the fate it dictates for them, and for 60 years no Israeli government has been able to do that.
Remember Gaza.
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