Air attacks on Gaza

Israel once again launched air strikes on the hapless citizens of Gaza, killing and injuring dozens of people, many of them children, who lived in densely populated neighbourhoods. No one was killed by the retaliatory rockets fired from the besieged Gaza. UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov denounced the violence, saying "the indiscriminate launching of rockets and mortars against population centres is absolutely unacceptable and must stop immediately." Although he did not name any names, the usual tendency is to equate the aggressor with the aggressed. After two days of violence, a shaky ceasefire between Israel and the Islamic Jihad went into effect a week ago.

What triggered the latest escalation of hostilities was the targeted killing by Israel of Baha Abu al-Ata, a senior commander of the Islamic Jihad along with his wife and three others. He was killed, purportedly, for ordering reprisal rocket attacks after Israeli forces shot dozens of Palestinian during regular protests at the illegal separation wall that infringes on the rights and lives of Palestinians. His elimination prompted the militant groups to fire rockets into Israel. Apparently, in an effort to forestall further fighting, Israel signaled to Hamas, which rules in Gaza, that it has not resumed its policy of eliminating resistance leaders in targeted killing. That though may have a momentary significance. As regards the all-embracing issue, the two-state solution is dead in the water. The US is openly biased towards Israel. In December 2017, the Trump administration relocated US embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem - the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their elusive state - prompting the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mehmoud Abbas to sever diplomatic ties with Washington. In March this year, President Trump in utter disregard for international law announced recognition of Israeli sovereignty over occupied Syrian territory of the Golan Heights, which was rightly described by Syria as a "blatant aggression" on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. It may well serve as an encouragement for Israel to annex all of the occupied Palestinian territories. With ceaseless expansion of Jewish settlements a future Palestinian state has already become unviable.

Relentless violence and targeted killings in the occupied territories is part of a deliberate strategy to force the people in the West Bank and Gaza to leave and find refuge in other countries. However, massacres in Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon and later in Gaza, choking of the occupied territories economy, blockade of Gaza, house demolitions, and destruction of agricultural and other means of livelihoods have not dampened the Palestinian people's urge to claim the lands where their ancestors lived for as long as anyone can remember. Such acts of unashamed aggression are unlikely to produce the desired outcome. They will only swell the ranks of violent resistance organisations. That may also have consequences for the Western countries, which either justify or turn a blind eye to Israeli brutalities, and support illegal and illegitimate usurpation of another people's lands.