Tit for Tat

Sun-Herald journalist Paul Daley's* report (No end in sight to great divide, 1/11/09) on what he calls "the tit-for-tat conflict between Palestinians and Israelis" or "the cycle of tit-for-tat violence" left me reaching for the smelling salts.

What is this tit-for-tat nonsense? 'Tit-for-tat' implies a symmetry between the parties, but this particular 'conflict' (another woefully inadequate term) has all the symmetry of a criminal and his victim. Characterising the odd punch landed by the colonised on their colonisers, and the latter's always disproportionate response, as tit-for-tat is a grotesque misreading of the underlying dynamic of the relationship. No, what's happening in occupied Palestine is more of a 'hammer-and-anvil' thing.

Still, Daley did use the contextualising 'o' word, something his colleagues often neglect to do: "the long-running Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank"/ the "occupied territories." And he even managed a hint of scepticism in relation to Israel's official line on its reasons for mugging Gaza: "Israel invaded Gaza late last year, ostensibly in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli towns along the Israeli border."

But then he stuffs up big time: "But Hamas has fired more than 50 home-made rockets and mortars at Israel since August. The Israeli Air Force bombed a weapons warehouse and two tunnels in the strip on October 22 after several rockets were fired into the town of Sederot [sic]..." According to wikipedia, there have been 11 incidents involving Palestinian rocket/mortar firings from Gaza since August (List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2009). Unfortunately, just how Daley managed to conjure 50 homemade rockets and mortars out of that is anyone's guess. As is what the Israelis were up to in the same time frame. Far from sitting on its hands with respect to Gaza - which is the impression you'd get from reading Daley - Israel was in fact quite busy there, killing 5 adult civilians, 3 children and 7 fighters; wounding 13 adult civilians, 4 children and 5 fighters; arresting 12 people; staging 16 incursions; bombing border tunnels and other infrastrucure; shelling fishing boats; razing agricultural land; and keeping Gaza's borders hermetically sealed (See Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - Weekly Reports, pchrgaza.org) Whatever the Palestinian tit, that's a hell of a lot of Israeli tat, none of which is referred to by Daley.

Now here's a revelation for a mainstream media man: "Gaza is a misery for many of its 1.4 million residents, close to a million of whom are refugees." A million refugees, eh? That'd also be a hell of a lot of Israeli tat, no?

"Israel has played its part too [in improving the lot of the Palestinians in the West Bank]. The previously permanent Israeli checkpoints around some West Bank cities and towns... have been removed while medical services are offered to some Gazans." Daley's uncritical regurgitation of Israeli spin here is belied by an AFP report (based on UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) data) dated 9 October: "Israel has 592 obstacles such as checkpoints, trenches and barriers across the occupied West Bank and a report that Israel was moving 100 such curbs can not be verified... The figure was down from a total of 618 registered in August." (West Bank riddled with Israeli obstacles: UN)

And what is meant by while medical services are offered to some Gazans? Here is what Gazan doctor and human rights activist Mona El-Farra had to say about the state of medical services in Gaza on 17 October: "The emergency health services in the Gaza Strip are in a state of imminent collapse due to shortages of electricity, medicine and other vital, life-saving equipment. Due to a lack of available services in Gaza, many patients are forced to seek medical treatment abroad. However, the closure makes accessing external treatment a near impossible task. To date at least 391 patients have died as a direct or indirect result of the closure." (fromgaza.blogspot.com)

This is nowhere near good enough - even for a slow Sunday.

[See my 29/7/09 post The Sarafand Massacre]