Gaza #3: The cease-fire that wasn't a cease-fire. The other side of the story

Most of the world, listening to the mainstream media in both Israel and the United States, hears the Israeli narrative loud and clear . . . the Palestinian narrative, not so much.

Take this latest "cease-fire" that was said to have lasted less than two hours before Hamas attacked and killed three Israeli soldiers.    Declaring that Hamas had broken the cease fire, Netanyahu blasted the U.S. State Department with angry words for having coerced Israel into agreeing to the cease fire.   He gave the U.S. ambassador a message:  "not to ever second-guess me again" and that we should trust his judgment on how to deal with Hamas.  He also added that he now "expected" the U.S. to fully support Israel's offensive in Gaza.

In retaliation against Hamas, Israel launched a predawn heavy artillery strike that demolished a United Nations school, killing 21 Palestinian civilians of the 3,220 who had taken refuge in the school from the Israeli attacks on their homes.    The United Nations had repeatedly cautioned Israel that their schools were being used to house refugees and should not be attacked.  Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, says that Hamas itself is totally to blame for the deaths because Hamas has its military operations near shelters and hospitals.

U.N. officials have said that the school was at least 200 yards from any Hamas military activity.  Bits of shrapnel found at the school site suggests that heavy artillery, generally fired from up to 25 miles away, were the weapons used -- and they are notoriously imprecise in hitting targets.   They are designed for wide-spread destruction, not precise targets. 

This latest "lack of precision" in the Israeli attacks prompted the harshest criticism yet from the U. S. State Department ("appalled at the disgraceful attack") and the United Nations ("a moral outrage and a criminal act").  

No one is claiming that Israel targets these schools, but it is a fact that six U. N. schools have been hit, despite being designated as U.N. refugee shelters.  A director of the U.N. relief agency asks, "Why aren't the safe zones working?"   The U.N. updates the exact locations of their refugee sites twice a day and notifies the Israelis. 

The increasing number of civilians and the extreme disproportion of the lives lost in this conflict (300 to 1) has become a growing theme in mainstream news in the U.S.   But even so,  it is mostly the Israeli side of the story that is reported, other than the human tragedy aspect of the Palestinian civilian plight.

Here is the Hamas version of what happened concerning the cease-fire.   The cease-fire conditions that they agreed to did not include allowing Israel to continue destroying the tunnels in Gaza during the cease-fire period.   For them, there was no cease-fire, because Israel never ceased its military operations.

Further, one version suggests that the attack on the three Israeli soldiers was actually carried out before the designated 8:00 am beginning of the cease fire and that Israel held back on reporting it until 9:30 in order to justify its subsequent "retaliatory" strikes -- and also to then claim that Hamas could not be trusted.

A larger point in the Palestinian narrative that gets lost in the news media is the disagreement about who is the instigator of the current fighting.   Israel blames Hamas for shooting rockets into their country.     The Palestinians blame Israel for the blockade of their country and the economic strangulation and deprivations they suffer;   for them, the rockets and the tunnels are the only recourse left to them to resist Israel's domination.

As Richard Falk wrote in Al Jazeera:

"This [Hamas] response is without a doubt contrary to international law, but what alternatives were open to Hamas other than sullen acquiescence? It was also the case that prior to the heavy flow of rockets, Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza, which appeared to be designed to induce a retaliation that could then provide Tel Aviv with justification to launch a massive military operation in line with the distasteful Israeli metaphor that “mowing the grass” — an indiscriminate punitive incursion — in Gaza is necessary to ensure that the region remains compliant.

"Also relevant is a comprehensive unlawful blockade of Gaza that was established in mid-2007 and is widely viewed by international law experts as illegal because it amounts to the collective punishment of Gaza’s population of 1.8 million civilians. Collective punishment is unconditionally prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In this case, since Palestinian civilians are supposed to be protected by Israel as the occupying power, the violation of international humanitarian law is flagrant."

There undoubtedly is truth in both of these points of view.   I think the world at least needs to hear both.   Led by the outrage over the extreme disparity in the human cost of this war, gradually more of the Palestinian narrative is being aired.    As I'm writing this, Israel is said to be pulling back its troops.   Perhaps they've simply accomplished their task of destroying the tunnel system, if not the entire economy and infrastructure of Gaza -- or perhaps they are reacting to mounting world criticism.

Ralph