RETURN TO GAZA: MATTERS ARISING
By Babatunde Jose
Strong winds and heavy rain pummeling Gaza’s survivors. Winter weather conditions are worsening the plight of Palestinians sheltering among the enclave’s ruins.
‘Worse than hell’: Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza since a ceasefire came into effect last month, pausing Israel’s 15-month assault and genocide. But most people found their homes destroyed or heavily damaged.
“What they met was a catastrophe, horrific destruction. The [Israeli] occupation destroyed all the homes, shops, farms, mosques, universities and the courthouse,” said Osama Abu Kamil, a returnee.
*After a year of conflict, two-thirds of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed, leaving behind 42 million tonnes of rubble and a mountain of health risks. Life in Gaza is worse than hell.*
Medical evacuations and humanitarian aid have been flowing into the Gaza Strip through Rafah and the Karem Abu Salem crossing in the south, but they are not enough, especially tents and other humanitarian supplies.
The convoys are carrying a variety of essential items including food, tents, and sanitation products. Some of the tents are being sent to the northern part of the Strip to provide shelter for displaced families who are currently living in open spaces, struggling to cope with harsh weather conditions and a lack of necessities.
The World Health Organization estimates 14,000 Palestinian patients are waiting urgently for evacuation to receive advanced care outside Gaza, including 5,000 children.
The Israeli attacks and destruction are “a conspiracy against the refugee issue aimed at erasing it entirely”.
Arab League says in a statement that remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appearing to suggest the establishment of a Palestinian state on Saudi soil showed “a complete detachment from reality”.
*“The kingdom affirms that the Palestinian people have a right to their land, and they are not intruders or immigrants to it who can be expelled whenever the brutal Israeli occupation wishes,”* said the Saudi Foreign Ministry.
Perhaps like you, a number of emotions welled up in me as I watched a calculating charlatan suggest that America “will own” Gaza and that, for their own good, more than two million Palestinians would be evicted from their ancestral homeland to make way, presumably, for a horde of fanatical Israeli settlers and voracious real estate moguls.
One cannot but be angry at the audacity of a preening braggart who knows nothing about Palestine or its history but claims to have the best interests of Palestinians at heart while he intends to “clean out” Gaza and, in effect, erase them and their history.
“The US will take over the Gaza strip,” Trump said. “We will own it…you [Palestinians] just can’t go back.” The raving of a luni!
There is only destruction and rubles to “go back” to, since for 15 months, Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. More than 60,000 Palestinians, mostly infants, children and women, have been killed. More than 100,000 people have been injured – in mind, body, and spirit – often grievously. But the fact remain that it is their land, holus bolu, and they are going nowhere. No chance for a repeat ‘nakba’.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has “caused an epidemic of traumatic injuries with no rehabilitation services available,” the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini said last week. *“Now, Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world — many losing limbs and undergoing surgeries without even anesthesia,”*
Israel’s Assault Has Orphaned 19,000 Children in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed at least 2,100 babies and toddlers between 0 and 2 years of age in the first 10 months of Israel’s genocide. Doctors who have gone to Gaza on service trips have said that they constantly saw children shot in the head during their time in Gaza’s crumbling health facilities.
UNRWA has estimated that at least 10 children in Gaza are losing one or both legs per day in Israel’s attacks. This estimate doesn’t include children losing arms or hands, so the true number of children losing limbs each day is likely higher.
*History will hold President Biden and his administration’s officials responsible for enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza. For more than a year, he remained unmoved by the far-right Israeli government’s systematic campaign of slaughter, ethnic cleansing, forced starvation, and mass destruction that he sorry to say supported and excused.*
Now, Israel is busy razing the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu and rancid company are determined to turn much of it into dust and memory, too – with the enthusiastic complicity of America’s entrenched political and media establishment.
That wanton brutality has not bothered Israel’s atrocity-excusing allies nor their defining disregard for the grotesque number and manner of Palestinian deaths.
To ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank and replace them with a string of seaside resorts has been the end game since 1948. And a succession of Democrat and Republican presidents has enabled Israel – with a spigot of arms and dependable diplomatic cover – to realize its dream of ridding Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians once and decidedly for all.
It was a dream shared by the decrepit and recently departed Joe Biden, his duplicitous Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and craven Democratic Party “elites” who feigned interest in a phantom “two-state” concoction as they rearmed Israel to the hilt and voted down – again and again – ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.
*Biden and Blinken stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Netanyahu like obedient manikins while Israel vented its killing lust against largely defenseless Palestinians and Gaza was reduced to uninhabitable, dystopian-like rubble.*
In words and deeds, Blinken and Biden set the egregious stage for Trump’s demented gambit.
I doubt that the Israel-is-always-above-reproach crowd who populate CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times opinion page will remember that senior Biden administration officials were also negotiating with Israel to drain Gaza of Palestinians but reached for a palatable euphemism called “civilian safe passage”.
Meanwhile, Trump’s ethnic-cleansing-drenched remarks have revealed that stages two and three of the so-called ceasefire agreement that set the terms for the possible reconstruction of Gaza are a cynical farce and at best a transparent sham.
Bereft of even a hint of humanity, Trump and Israel’s racist cabinet will make sure that Gaza will not be rebuilt. Working together, they will guarantee that Palestinians remain exposed and vulnerable to the harsh, unforgiving elements, deprivation, disease, and want.
For some, no homes, no jobs, no schools, no hospitals, no libraries, no playgrounds, will, inevitably, translate into no hope. But, they will not move from their ancestral land.
Palestine’s fate and future will be resolved by Palestinians in quiet conversation amid the ruins wrought by the “international community” who, for generations, has condemned and abandoned them to the rabid wolves.
The Yorubas have a saying that whatever is beyond our power is better left to God. There is no doubt the Palestinian issue has defied human intervention, with the lackadaisical attitude of their Arab brethren some of whom find it impossible to look the oppressors and their supporters in the face and tell truth to their power and the political and material impotence of the Palestinians make it imperative that the matter should be handed to the final arbiter. God.
*The curse on Israel*
Psalm 109 is a psalm in the Book of Psalms. In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint version of the Bible and in the Latin Vulgate, this psalm is Psalm 108. In Latin, it is known as “Deus, laudem”. It is attributed to King David and noted for containing some of the most severe curses in the Bible. It has traditionally been called the “Judas Psalm” as noted in the New Testament. The New Oxford Annotated Bible titles this psalm as one of the Imprecatory Psalms against deceitful foes. Today this Psalm is very appropriate to be invoked against the Israelites for the pains caused the Palestinians.
*Psalm 109*
*1 My God, whom I praise, do not remain silent, . . . . . 7 When he is tried, let him be found guilty, and may his prayers condemn him. 8 May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. 9 May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.10 May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven[a] from their ruined homes.11 May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.*
*12 May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.13 May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation.14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord; may the sin of his* *mother never be blotted out.15 May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may blot out their name from the earth.*
*16 For he never thought of doing a kindness, but hounded to death the poor and the needy and the brokenhearted.17 He loved to pronounce a curse— may it come back on him. He found no pleasure in blessing—may it be far from him.*
*21 But you, Sovereign Lord, help me for your name’s sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me. 22 For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me* *. . . .*
*Yes! God should not remain silent in the face of the horrendous calamity that has befallen the Palestinians. From the rubles of Gaza, Palestine must surely rise again. In Sha Allah.*
*Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend*
*Babatunde Jose*
*Friday 14th February 2025*
Last week as we were going to press, news filtered in of the passing of a great friend Oba Adeleke Idowu Basibo, Alaperu of Iperu. He passed on last Thursday 6th February at Babcock University Teaching Hospital. He was a genial fellow and a most affectionate Royal. Little did we know he was bidding us farewell on Christmas day when we all gathered at Baba Oba’s annual party. ‘Yellow’ was at his Royal best.
We wish him eternal rest and may God admit him to paradise. The Alaperu was a very good man and a dependable friend. We will all miss him.
