There is no dispute over the hardships that Gazans are enduring as a result of chronic electricity outages. It is difficult not to feel sympathy with LA Times opinion piece writer Abier Almasri as she describes life in Gaza with only limited electricity.
However, Almasri states:
To Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, Gazans are pawns in a shameful quest for political domination. As the occupying power, Israel bears responsibility under international law to facilitate normal life for the people of Gaza. Hamas exercises internal control and is responsible for protecting our rights. The Palestinian Authority oversees millions in donor funds and should also protect our rights, including paying for vital services.
As Almasri well knows, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and is not “occupying” it. Moreover, Almasri fails to mention anywhere in her article the major reason for the lack of “normal life” in Gaza: Hamas terror.
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Hamas has made every effort over the years to ensure that Israelis, and not only those living in border communities, cannot live normal lives free from the threat of terrorism, rockets, mortars, attack tunnels, and kidnappings.
This is the reason that Israel has to maintain security protocols that affect the lives of Gazans. Were Hamas to give up its Jew-killing desires, there would simply be no reason for Israel to secure its borders against terror.
And as Almasri herself acknowledges, “Israel acceded to a Palestinian Authority request to cut the electricity it provided to Gaza in order to “dry up” funds to Hamas.”
Even if a solution could be found to fully restore electricity supplies, Col. (Res.) Grisha Yakubovich, former Head of the Civilian Department in the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit, stated in an exclusive article for HonestReporting that:
no one can provide guarantees that Hamas — a terrorist organization — will not use the Israeli electricity or PA funds for continued terror efforts, such as digging attack tunnels and producing massive rockets that will be fired at Israeli cities (and ironically, at times the Israeli power plant that provides the very energy Gaza requires).
At the end of the LA Times opinion piece, we learn that Abier Almasri is a research assistant for Human Rights Watch, an organization whose deep-seated ideological bias has been extensively documented by NGO Monitor.
Indeed, Almasri appears to be following the same tired old HRW modus operandi of primarily blaming Israel for anything and everything it can pin on the country. In a June 2017 article, HRW’s Israel/Palestine Advocacy Director Sari Bashi addressed the Gaza electricity crisis, putting the onus on Israel for solving it and claiming that Israel continues to occupy Gaza:
Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, recognised as a single territorial unit, is now 50 years old. The nature and extent of its control varies in different parts of the territory, but in all parts, Israel has obligations under the law of occupation and international human rights law to facilitate normal civilian life.
Because Israel continues to exercise significant control over life in Gaza, including its ability to develop its energy sector, it should supply the full amount of power it can to meet the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza, a precondition for accessing water, health services and a functioning economy.
The Israeli government says it is merely implementing a decision that belongs to the PA. The PA’s attempt to use the basic rights of Palestinians in Gaza as bargaining chips in its power struggle with Hamas is shameful.
But it doesn’t control Gaza or the West Bank and, regardless of its position, Israel has legal responsibilities to civilians in the territory. So long as Israel continues to control the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by military occupation, it remains responsible for their welfare.
What started as a plea in the LA Times from an ordinary Gazan woman for a properly functioning electricity supply to prevent a humanitarian crisis, instead becomes poisoned by HRW’s own politicized anti-Israel agenda as Almasri sings from the HRW song sheet.
We can sympathize with the plight of Gazans deprived of electricity and a normal life. To contend that Israel is still occupying Gaza and bears primary responsibility shows that as far as Abier Almasri and Human Rights Watch are concerned, the lights have gone out and nobody is home.
It is worth noting that in September 2016, the LA Times issued the following corrective to a book review that also claimed that Israel still occupied Gaza:
This review refers to Israel’s nearly 50-year-long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross, among others, consider Gaza part of the occupied Palestinian territories; Israel, which withdrew from the region in 2005, and some other scholars reject this characterization.
A similar addition to this latest op-ed would be appropriate.
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