By Jimmy Carter
Commentary by
Thursday, May 08, 2008
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=91778# The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where 1.5 million human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.
This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority Parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers, including a joint team I led from the Carter Center and the National Democratic Institute.
Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the Occupied West Bank are now imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition Cabinet.
Regardless of one's choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions in delivering water, food, electricity, and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza - about 1 million of whom are refugees.
Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the encapsulated area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children. Prior to the highly publicized killing of a woman and her four little children last week, this pattern was illustrated by a previous report from B'Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organization: 106 Palestinians were killed between February 27 and March 3. Fifty-four of them were civilians who didn't take part in the fighting, and 25 were under 18 years of age.
On a recent trip through the Middle East, I attempted to gain a better understanding of the crisis. One of my visits was to Sderot, a community of about 20,000 in southern Israel that is frequently struck by rudimentary rockets fired from nearby Gaza. I condemned these attacks as abominable and an act of terrorism, since most of the 13 victims during the past seven years have been non-combatants.
Subsequently, I met with leaders of Hamas - both a delegation from Gaza and the top officials in Damascus, Syria. I issued the same condemnation in their presence, and urged that they declare a unilateral cease-fire or orchestrate with Israel a mutual agreement to terminate all military action in and around Gaza for an extended period.
They responded that such previous action by them had not been reciprocated, and they reminded me that Hamas had previously insisted on a cease-fire throughout Palestine including both Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, which Israel had refused. Hamas then made a public proposal of a mutual cease-fire restricted to Gaza, which the Israelis considered and also rejected....
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