Palestinians talk about ‘humiliation’ a lot. Humiliation at checkpoints (carefully ignoring the reason for the checkpoints), humiliation by airport security, and above all, humiliation caused by the very presence of the hated Zionists on soil which they believe to be theirs. Today an op-ed in our local newspaper, written by two people prominent in our Muslim and Jewish communities, mentioned the “daily humiliation” of the Palestinians. The very carefully written op-ed — the subject of creative ambiguity is something I’ll discuss another time — reminded me that I wanted to talk about humiliation, and who is humiliating whom.
Gaza’s only power plant will be shut down in two to three days unless Israel resumes fuel shipments, power plant director Rafik Maliha said Saturday.
Maliha warned that half a million Gazans would be left without electricity.
Israel halted supplies last week after Gaza terrorists attacked the Nahal Oz fuel depot on the Gaza-Israel border and killed two workers.
The power plant’s fuel reserves have been low in recent months, after Israel restricted fuel supplies in hopes of forcing terrorists to halt rocket attacks from Gaza.
First of all, the ‘crisis’ that would occur if the power plant shut down is exaggerated. Gaza gets fully 70% of its power from the Israeli electrical grid and another 5% from Egypt. The Gaza strip has about 500,000 residents in toto, so the statement is sheer nonsense.
Now here is what happened at Nahal Oz: a carefully planned, sophisticated attack was executed as a cooperative effort between Hamas and several other terrorist groups.
It was not a random action. One of the participants, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), named the operation “Breaking Zionist Arrogance.” The Zionist arrogance in question, of course, constitutes supplying fuel to Hamas-ruled Gaza, and the strategic purpose of the attack was to interrupt it so that there will be another pretext for more actions, such as breaking down border fences — either into Egypt, Israel or both. It will be another cause for the massive ‘frustration’ building up in Gaza.
On the same day of the attack on the terminal, about 50 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza fell in Israel.
So what Hamas and friends are saying is the following:
“We will kill you as much as we like and you will supply fuel and electricity with which we will build rockets to kill you more. We will only stop when you agree to open up your borders to us, so that we can go among you and kill even more.”
This is what is truly humiliating.
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