Editing Palestine (section)

=====Operation Cast Lead (2008)=====
Israelis often use the phrase "mowing the lawn" to describe what they've done every so often in Gaza-- killing scores of people, terrorizing others, and destroying homes and infrastructure. In addition, another tactic is employed to justify doing so: the IDF purposefully kills Palestinians, including children, in order to provoke retaliatory attacks from Hamas. Once Hamas retaliates, the Israelis claim they can respond with such actions and claim they had no choice-- that their enemy (Hamas) is violent and does not want peace.

In January of 2008, Israel intensified its operations in Gaza. Twelfth Israeli PM Ehut Olmert swore to seek vengeance for Palestinian rocket fire. Food, water, fuel, and electricity controlled by Israel became scarce, and the IDF killed seven Palestinians. With the Strip's airspace completely locked down and checkpoint-laden walls erected in prior years, more and more air strikes on Palestine continued until the Israelis decided they needed a real show of force, following the shameful second Lebanese war operation. 

From December 2008 to January 2009, the IDF carried out a brutal assault on Palestine dubbed "Operation Cast Lead". Their goal was nominally to destroy the Palestinian armed resistance, similar to the stated goals of the 1967 war, the 1982 war, and the various sporadic crimes of the first and second Intifadas. 12 hospitals were damaged, 29 ambulances left damaged or destroyed, and 40 primary care clinics were destroyed; mosques, businesses, 217 schools and 60 nurseries damaged or destroyed, and a UN compound left in non-functional condition. 3,425 housing units were destroyed; 2,843 sustained major damage while 54,800 sustained minor damage. After 22 days of fighting, 1,387 Palestinians were killed-- 773 having been civilians and 320 children. On the Israeli side, only 13 were killed, including 3 civilians and four killed by friendly fire. Over 5,000 were wounded in the fighting. Hamas and Israel separately declared a ceasefire. 

Following this operation, the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, also called the "Goldstone report" commenced. This report (published September 2009) by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was authored by Jewish South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who worked to subvert apartheid in South Africa and worked for the international criminal tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; his co-authors were similarly credentialed figures from Ireland, Pakistan, and Britain. Israel's thirteen and current PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak refused to comment or explain Israel's motivation for the operation in Gaza; Goldstone and his colleagues were barred from entering Gaza via Israel, and they instead had to travel through Egypt to investigate. The IDF unilaterally declared its own internal investigation, and the report investigated crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas. Goldstone later effectively recanted his report, claiming he was too harsh on Israel and that Hamas didn't investigate and claiming he remained a Zionist-- even after investigating and confirming such Israeli acts as the murder of civilians carrying white flags, use of human shields including a nine-year-old boy, bombing a UN school which was being used as a shelter, and the intentional murder of 29 members of the al-Samouni family. Goldstone said in his op-ed that he never would have written the report had he known he'd be attacked, boycotted, censored, and vilified by the World Zionist movement in general, as well as the government of Israel and Jewish organizations in his native South Africa. The report itself, however, was a massive blow to Israel and its international diplomatic relations.

According to B'Tselem, of those killed during the period 2000-2010: 6371 Palestinian were killed by Israeli forces; of those 6371, nearly half (2996) were non-combatants, and 1317 were minors; 1083 Israelis were killed; of those 1083, 741 were civilians and 124 were minors. Further data is linked below.

Unable to form a unity government, in May of 2011 a deal was struck between Hamas and Fatah: Hamas would govern Gaza without oversight and Fatah would govern the West Bank under the PA. Meanwhile, throughout the first two decades of the 21st century, the UN simultaneously supported Israel and Palestine, favoring Fatah and the PA's two-state solution as they have since 1947. 

The Iron Dome all-weather air-defense system was built and deployed in Israel in 2011. The US sponsored its production by Israeli weapons manufacturers, and continues to allot more than one billion USD per year to Israel for Iron Dome battery and missile production. As of June 2024, Israel possesses ten Iron Dome batteries. They were first employed after President Obama called for Congress to fund production in 2010. Israel routinely claims that Iron Dome deflects projectiles (the handmade mortars and rockets) at incredible rates, yet the undeflected projectiles cause virtually no damage. Even when thousands of them are ''not'' deflected by the Iron Dome system, these "rockets" are closer to fireworks than to V-2s.

Quite often, Palestinian armed resistance is met with international scorn, not only on the basis of violence but its perceived similarity to Islamic extremist groups. The US and Israel purposefully bolster such claims, including adding organizations like Hamas to terrorist watchlists. From the perspective of US hegemony, this is a no-brainer: by equating Palestinian Islamic resistance to armed Salafists they are able to discard all nuance and portray authentic armed struggle against unipolarity as terroristic, savage, and baseless-- not to mention that this action serves to keep the Muslim world divided as well as the American Muslim population. If we take a closer look, however, at such claims, we find that Hamas and other Islamic Palestinian groups are fundamentally opposed to such extremist action. 

In November 2008, the Islamic State (ISIS) group Jund Ansar Allah was founded with around 100 armed members in the Gaza Strip in Rafah. The following year, the group claimed territory and attempted to establish an Islamic Emirate in Rafah. Immediately, Hamas went to war with the Islamic State, and soon killed their leader and a few others in a series of raids, which destroyed the organization. In 2014, just five years after Hamas utterly destroyed the Islamic State Salafists, Israel funded and armed Syrian rebels in order to overthrow Bashar al-Assad's government-- to which senior Israeli officials have admitted. These rebels, whom the Assad government is still battling today, include the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and others. Syrian oil fields have been occupied since by Americans and their rebel allies, plundering the natural wealth of Syria. However, that is not th sole reason for Israeli arms and funding; they also wanted to counteract Iranian and Russian influence over the region, which is a threat to American interests in the Arab world. The prevention of formation of geopolitical poles other than the Anglo-American unipole is the primary contradiction in geopolitics since the turn of the 21st century, and the rise of contenders such as Russia, China, and Iran threatens US hegemony abroad-- hegemony which is exclusive and minimally if at all co-operative with such emerging poles.