COMMENT | Looking at the plight of Palestinians beyond recent attacks

COMMENT | Many Malaysians were seen on social media expressing their heartfelt sadness over what has been happening in Palestine after the attacks by the Israeli forces against the Palestinians while they were performing their prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Since then, the situation has become worse as more innocent Palestinians have become victims of destruction due to airstrikes by both the Israeli forces and Hamas.

While there is a full-fledged conflict between the Israeli forces and Hamas, the victims are the innocent people in Palestine who are at the centre of the conflict.

While some are using Hamas as a scapegoat in saying that they are the ones killing their own people and the Israeli forces are just retaliating, we should not forget that the situation in Palestine did not escalate only a week ago; the plight and struggles of the Palestinians go a long way back.

Although the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov 22, 1967, required Israel to withdraw from Arab lands that it had occupied during the war of June 1967, Israel did not abide by it.

Today, the West Bank is nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority but Israeli troops still enforce security restrictions on Palestinian movement and activities there.

Israeli settlers have built an ever-expanding community in the West Bank that effectively denies the land to Palestinians.

As for Gaza, Israel finally left the territory in 2005 but they have been in and out of the area a number of times. In 2008, Israel sent soldiers into Gaza and during this time, an estimated 1,300 people, many of them civilians, were killed before a ceasefire was declared; some 13 Israeli soldiers also died.

There have been other incursions over the years, including in 2012 and 2014, resulting in civilian deaths in the thousands.

Generally, human rights violations by Israeli forces in the occupied Palestinian territories have included home demolitions and the forced eviction of Palestinian families, punitive arrests, unfair trials, ill-treatment and torture of detainees, and the use of excessive or lethal force to subdue non-violent demonstrations as well as the use of restrictive legal means.

Furthermore. this is not the first time that Palestinians are under attack during the holy month of Ramadan because back in 2014, about 2,200 Palestinians died while more than 10,000 others were injured after airstrikes were launched by the Israeli authorities into Gaza.

The destruction was so bad that more than 10,000 houses in Gaza were completely destroyed. It left Gaza completely unliveable at that time, according to the United Nations. In 2018, the Israeli forces killed 190 Palestinians and wounded around 28,000 protesters who participated in the 'Great Return' protests along the Gaza border two days before the start of the holy month.

On the eve of Ramadan in 2019, Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza strip, killing 20 Palestinians, including two pregnant women and two babies, with more than 130 houses completely destroyed.

Israeli military attacks on Gaza either before the start of Ramadan or even during Ramadan almost every year represents a continuation of the unnecessary cruelty the Israeli government has been inflicting upon a Palestinian population that has been denied all sorts of rights since their land was taken away from them.

While all the attention is focused on the recent attacks, even before all that, the Israeli government has denied Covid-19 vaccine access for millions of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. In February 2021, the Israeli authorities blocked a vital first shipment of 2,000 doses of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, which were intended for medical workers, from entering the blockaded Gaza strip.

More disappointingly, some Israeli lawmakers even went to the extent of saying that the Israeli government should only allow vaccines into Gaza in return for a concession from Hamas. This is indeed embarrassing because withholding vaccines from people who really need them is an inhumane act because we are talking about the lives of people during a pandemic.

While the Israeli forces eventually allowed 2,000 doses of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine to be administered for medical frontliners, not a single dose of vaccine was administered to the Palestinian people living in the region of Gaza and the West Bank. While nearly 450,000 Jews living in the area were vaccinated, nearly three million Palestinians have been deprived of vaccines. The vaccine disputes between Israel and Palestine have given birth to a new field of competition between the two sides.

As to defending their actions, the Israeli administration emphasises that the management of the healthcare sector in the West Bank and Gaza is the responsibility of the Palestinian side as stated in the Oslo 1 Accord that was signed with the Palestinian wing in 1993. In fact, Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein claimed that the Oslo Accord did not place on them any new obligation in this regard.

The international community strongly opposes this view by the Israeli administration as the UN Human Rights Council has declared that the state of Israel is responsible for vaccinating the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank against the Covid-19 pandemic. In referring to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the UN Human Rights Council emphasised that Israel’s attitude was morally and legally unacceptable.

Even the World Health Organization made a similar statement in voicing out its dissent to the attitude of the Israeli administration. While the Oslo 1 Accord does state that the healthcare sector should be managed by the Palestinian side, another section of the accord states that in the cases of epidemics and infectious diseases, both parties should share responsibility.

While many Malaysians have come out in support of the Palestinians, there should be more consistency in voicing the displeasures and bringing about constant awareness over what is happening in Israel. The Malaysian government should also come out even stronger in condemning the acts of the Israeli forces against the innocent people of Palestine. The fact that the Malaysian Foreign Ministry came out late in addressing the situation at the Al-Aqsa Mosque showed their commitment towards the issue because we use to be a very strong voice in condemning Israel for the atrocities.

For the general public, I would urge everyone to keep providing awareness about the situations in Gaza and the West Bank as well as the general plight of the Palestinian people because, like every other year, once the situations die down we are no longer interested and get on with our lives. Let’s keep the people of Palestine in our thoughts and prayers.

AARON DENISON is a former Social Research Officer at the Universiti Malaya and is currently pursuing his postgraduate doctorate (PhD) at Hiroshima University in Japan.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.