Noam Chomsky begins his latest TomDispatch this way: “On August 26th, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) both accepted a ceasefire agreement after a 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza that left 2,100 Palestinians dead and vast landscapes of destruction behind. The agreement calls for an end to military action by both Israel and Hamas, as well as an easing of the Israeli siege that has strangled Gaza for many years. “This is, however, just the most recent of a series of ceasefire agreements reached after each of Israels periodic escalations of its unremitting assault on Gaza. Throughout this period, the terms of these agreements remain essentially the same. The regular pattern is for Israel, then, to disregard whatever agreement is in place, while Hamas observes it -- as Israel has officially recognized -- until a sharp increase in Israeli violence elicits a Hamas response, followed by even fiercer brutality. These escalations, which amount to shooting fish in a pond, are called ‘mowing the lawn’ in Israeli parlance. The most recent was more accurately described as ‘removing the topsoil’ by a senior U.S. military officer, appalled by the practices of the self-described ‘most moral army in the world.’ “The first of this series was the Agreement on Movement and Access Between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in November 2005. It called for ‘a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah for the export of goods and the transit of people, continuous operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza for the import/export of goods, and the transit of people, reduction of obstacles to movement within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, [and the] re-opening of the airport in Gaza’ that Israeli bombing had demolished.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 17:00:00 +0000
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