Although the situation in Gaza
now is eerily similar to almost 4 years ago, the difference is there's no more
Mubarak.
A VERY GOOD POST
Al-Jazeera
(Associate Professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.)
"....
But Mubarak has gone. And so has his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Abu
el-Gheit, along with his threats to break the legs of our children who,
according to him, posed "a threat" to Egypt's national security. The Arab Spring
came as an expression of a strong, popular desire to get rid of such corrupt,
dictatorial, puppet regimes.
So what do we, Palestinians, expect from the new Egypt? As part of the
Mubarak legacy, Egypt has continued to try to play the role of mediator between
"the two sides".
Yet by doing so, it swallowed the bait and convinced the
Palestinian resistance factions last week to abide by a truce that Israel used
as a cover to assassinate a senior Palestinian commander it had been trying to
kill for several years.......
Israel has tested the water of the Arab Spring since its inception.
Had it
not been for the complicity of the reactionary Arab regimes and the
international conspiracy of silence, Israel likely would not have attacked Gaza. Full stop. In 2009, Palestinians
of Gaza were left alone to face an army equipped with the F-16 aircraft and
Apache and phosphorus bombs. Not only that, but fingers were pointed at us.
Now is the moment of truth, the moment of sending a clear message to the new
Arab world:
The Mubarak and Abu el-Gheit era is gone. That the power of
deterrence, in light of the massive imbalance of power between Israel and the
Palestinians, lies with the ordinary citizen in the streets of Tunis, Cairo,
Rabat, Doha, Amman and Muscat.........
As for the Palestinians, we must unify our ranks on the ground in a national
front, a front that will turn its back on remnants of the ugly Oslo days and
security coordination,
one
that declares its divorce from all racist proposals. And we must make it
absolutely clear that
there is no place for normalisers amongst us from now on.
We should not allow them to sit comfortably among us until they sever their
relations with the occupation and stop whitewashing its ugly face: A face that
is stained with the blood of Palestinian children, Omar Mashharawi, Ranan
Arafat, Safaa Hammoudeh, Mohamed Dardouna, and the Samouni children.
Gaza 2009 was the Sharpeville and Guernica of Palestine.
Gaza 2012 is
Palestine's Soweto 1976, that will lead inexorably to implementation of the
Right of Return and the end ofall racist solutions; the beginning of the end of
occupation, colonisation and apartheid in Palestine.
Let history repeat itself, but not as a tragedy this time: 1976 witnessed the
beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa; 2012 will be the turning
point that will lead to the end of it in Palestine."
