Close up:

Semantic quibbles

By Salama A Salama

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When Israel says it will unleash "a holocaust" in Gaza -- the words are those of Israel's defence minister -- the threat must be taken seriously. Israel has repeatedly shown that it is capable of turning genocide, which the Nazis once inflicted on the Jews, against others, using state-of-the-art technology to pursue its aims while simultaneously creating such an effective media smokescreen as to successfully cover up its crimes, winning the understanding and pardon of the international community, and even of Arab states.

The acts of war Israel has unleashed on Gaza -- indiscriminate strikes against civil structures that have turned many buildings into rubble and caused hundreds of innocent deaths, children among them -- have all the marks of a holocaust in the making. All that is needed is a few more Qassam missiles (the crude homemade canisters that have more in common with firecrackers than the ordinance Israel is dropping on Gaza) to give Israel an excuse to invade Gaza, raze it to the ground and kill and kidnap, as the world remains silent.

The Turkish attack against the Kurds in northern Iraq -- following an American green light, of course -- and the arrival of American warships in the eastern Mediterranean have raised suspicions of an impending military conflagration in the region. Israel's indifference to the suggestions of Egypt's chief of General Intelligence about ways to alleviate tensions over Gaza seems to confirm this.

Israel clearly finds itself in a position where it can dispense with peace efforts. It long ago buried the Arab peace initiative, and more recently put paid to Bush's promises in Annapolis. Israel knows that the Arabs are currently obsessed with the Lebanese problem and whether or not to hold an Arab summit.

As tragic as the situation is in Gaza the Arabs can not bring themselves to face it. The mutual acrimony between Fatah and Gaza has widened the rift between Palestinian players, leaving the Arabs seemingly capable of little beyond wringing their hands, denouncing Israel's genocide in Gaza and trying to persuade Hamas to halt the firing of Qassam missiles into Israeli border towns. Hamas responds that it has tried many times to maintain calm, while Israel continues to threaten Gaza, killing, kidnapping and blowing up the homes of activists, the names and addresses of which Israeli intelligence has on file.

We have a vicious circle, one that is relentlessly pushing up the price of what Hamas calls acts of resistance, i.e. the futile firing of missiles that have become more a symbol of weakness than of strong and steadfast resistance. The price is being paid by the Palestinian people. They have suffered a long and cruel economic stranglehold and now a savage bombardment, and still they have gained no returns for their suffering.

If official Arab support for the Palestinian people does not go beyond words then the Palestinian resistance must surely revise its tactics to take account of this fact. This is not to suggest that it should abandon armed, or non-armed, resistance if that better achieves its objectives. Rather, what it needs to do is search for new and innovative means to prevent the Palestinian people from becoming the victims of an Israeli inflicted holocaust.

There is no point screaming and wailing. As long as the international community remains silent, as long as the Palestinian resistance is unable to retaliate in a way that makes Israel hurt, as Hizbullah succeeded in doing in Lebanon, and as long as the Arab world stands by and watches because it is incapable of standing up against Israel and against Washington's destructive policies in the region, it makes little difference whether we call what is happening in Gaza a massacre or a war crime. The Palestinian resistance will remain doomed to failure as long as the undeclared war persists between Fatah and Hamas, between the West Bank and Gaza, and between Abu Mazen and Haniyeh. The first step towards halting the Palestinian holocaust is for the two factions to unify ranks and work out an agreement over a united strategy that combines armed resistance with more peaceful means. Until the Palestinians unify their ranks no one will be able to stop the slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank, and soon it will be too late to worry about whether to call it genocide or holocaust.