https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/hamas-gaza-israel-civil-war/
If you
ask Palestinians in either Gaza or the West Bank who’s responsible for their
suffering, most would probably say Israel. But what would they say if they were
safely overseas and no longer needed to fear their own governments? That’s not
a question reporters, diplomats, or nongovernmental organizations usually
bother asking. We now have an answer to it, at least with regard to
Palestinians who fled Gaza. They left not because of anything Israel did, but
because of persecution by Gaza’s Hamas-run government
Their testimony was
brought by Haaretz reporter Zvi Bar’el, who went to Greece in
search of Syrian refugees but accidentally stumbled instead on Palestinians
from Gaza–thousands of them, by their own count. One Gazan refugee estimated
there were about 6,000 Palestinians from Gaza in Athens alone. The Badil
Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights says the real
figure is probably higher.
And
that’s just those who have been able to leave. Many would like to but
are stuck in Gaza because the border crossing to Egypt is open only a few days
per month. Even when it’s open, only a few hundred people per day can leave.
Osama, one of the Palestinians Bar’el interviewed, said that when he left Gaza
(via a cross-border smuggling tunnel) over 25,000 people were on the waiting
list to leave via the official border crossing.
And
why have so many Gazans fled or tried to flee? The Palestinians Bar’el met had
a uniform answer: Hamas. Not a single one of them even mentioned Israel in
their responses.
“There’s
a Palestinian doctor here who came with his wife and three children,” Osama
told Bar’el. “Imagine, a doctor, a respectable person with a profession, has to
flee Gaza only because he was suspected of disloyalty to Hamas.”
Ayman,
who has been listening to the conversation in silence, joins in. “I’m a
cartoonist, an artist, and I’ve had exhibitions in Gaza. Hamas didn’t like my
cartoons and they forbade me to draw, and they also arrested me. After I spent
time in a Hamas prison I decided to escape,” he says.
“They
tied my hands and feet, they beat me, and after I was injured from the blows
they transferred me to a hospital where I was for more than a month. In the
meantime they also arrested my brother to get information out of him about me.”
There
are numerous UN agencies ostensibly devoted exclusively to helping the
Palestinians, while human rights groups allocate disproportionate
attention to this issue. In both cases, their only real
interest in Palestinian suffering is finding some way to blame Israel for it.
They couldn’t care less about protecting Palestinians from the abuses of their
own government. That’s why they keep issuing reports accusing Israel of being
the “key cause” of Palestinian suffering, as one UN agency put it this
week, despite all evidence to the
contrary.
Yet
their blatant bias often obscures a larger problem that affects even
well-meaning journalists, NGOs, diplomats and almost everyone else involved in
telling the world about what’s happening in the West Bank and Gaza–a failure to
understand the way fear affects what people say in nondemocratic societies. For
Palestinians, blaming anyone other than Israel for their problems risks serious
repercussions from either their own governments or vigilante groups affiliated
with both governments. And that’s true not just in Hamas-run Gaza, as people
like Ayman and Naji discovered to their sorrow, but also in the Fatah-run West
Bank, where journalists, businessmen,
and Palestinian
security officers have all suffered arrest and financial
sanctions for daring to criticize the Palestinian Authority or its president,
Mahmoud Abbas. Blaming Israel is always the safest solution, even in cases
where it’s patently untrue.
Responsible
journalists, NGOs, and diplomats would take this fear factor into account and
try to dig a little deeper to try to get at the truth. They would also
recognize that the very fact that Israel is the one party no Palestinian fears
to criticize is in itself a potent refutation of Palestinian claims that Israel
is an oppressive regime. People who truly live under an oppressive regime are
generally afraid to go on record criticizing it.
Instead,
these opinion shapers take everything they hear from Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza at face value and parrot it uncritically. That does nothing to
better the Palestinians’ lot, but a great deal to bolster the Palestinians’ own
repressive governments by absolving them of all scrutiny and pressure to
reform.
The
testimony of these Gazan refugees in Greece provides a rare opportunity to hear
what Palestinians say when they’re out of reach of their own repressive
governments and can speak freely. It thereby offers a glimpse at the true
source of much Palestinian suffering – and a rebuke to all the journalists,
diplomats, and NGOs who have collaborated with both Palestinian governments to
hide this truth from the world.
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