Bernard Spiegal

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, reports that hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s children – 90% coverage – have received the first of two required polio vaccinations.  The second round should take place at the end of September.

So, come, say October/November, Israel will find comfort in the knowledge that the Gazan children it will continue to maim and kill will be polio-free.  

Not that the vaccination programme heralded any sort of cease-fire. Not for an hour. Not for a minute. Despite reports that Netanyahu was allowing a humanitarian corridor only for the passage of polio vaccines into Gaza, Euro-Med Monitors report that:

Israeli aircraft and tanks continue to bomb the central Gaza Strip, the area where the polio vaccination campaign has begun…these Israeli military attacks have coincided with the peak of families’ movement with their children towards the designated vaccination centres,

Some of these attacks have even targeted locations near the vaccination centres, endangering the progress of the vaccination process…

Beyond the reach of ethics

The vaccination programme can be seen as emblematic of Israel’s approach to truth-telling in general, and to Palestinians in particular, be they living in Gaza, the West Bank or East Jerusalem. (There are questions to be asked as regards the status, current and future prospects of the 20% of Palestinian citizens s living within Israel’s ’48 borders. This for another time.)

That approach is essentially one of performative gesturing designed to emolliate the sensibilities of Israel’s Western allies, led by the USA, whilst offering no substantive deviation from Israel’s strategic goal: that is, the ethnic cleansing – i.e. removal – of Palestinians from historic Palestine.

Thus, before our eyes is enacted the perverse paradox of Israel enabling a degree of highly publicised health care, the better then to kill and maim by diverse means – lethal weapon fire; malnutrition; preventable, but unprevented, contagious diseases – the vaccinated recipients, along with their families and friends.

But of course, it is not only Israel that engages in performative, essentially hollow, gestures.  One need only observe USA Secretary of State Blinken accumulating air miles, and burning copious amounts of fossil fuel, now on his tenth trip to the Middle East, specifically, to Egypt.  According to AP, Blinken is not even travelling hopefully:

Unlike in recent mediating missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic projections from the Biden administration of an expected breakthrough…unlike the earlier missions, Blinken has no public plans to… meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu… The Israeli leader’s fiery public statements — like his declaration that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was in the region in June — and some other unbudgeable demands have complicated earlier diplomacy.

Merely complicated?

Not to be outdone, UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, in July undertook a visit to Israel to meet PM Netanyahu, shaking his bloodied hand, and averring that:

We need an immediate ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, unfettered access to aid in Gaza and a pathway towards a two-state solution

That was in July of this year. It is now mid-September. Clearly, ‘immediate’ has become a somewhat stretchable temporal term, quantified by way of Gaza’s, the West Bank’s and East Jerusalem’s accumulating Palestinian body count. 

Notwithstanding the purported immediacy of the need for a ceasefire, neither the USA, nor the UK, have sought to explain how this much vaunted sense of seeming urgency squares with Netanyahu’s stated commitment (see above) to not consider a permanent ceasefire until Israel has secured the – fantasy – of a total victory over Hamas.

Words, words, words

The war on Gaza is framed by two forms of proliferation, one, tangible; the other, intangible and abstract.

Tangible are the armaments being produced in high numbers, and at a furious rate, by the USA, Germany and the UK as well. These weapons are to be deployed in Gaza, and no doubt the West Bank too. This side of the tangible/intangible divide is brutally effective. The weapons produced do what they are designed to do. There is no meaningful space between intention and performance.  They are guaranteed to maim and kill. That’s what they’re for.

And then there are the intangibles: words. Intangible words set against the tangibility of arms. Proliferating at a furious rate, they pile up, word upon word like a currency debased by over-supply. The pleas, the admonitions, the dissembling, not worth the breath that bore them to our ears.

A joint statement by the Leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, issued from PM Starmer’s Office, 12 August, is a good example of words as a debased currency.

The statement appears to be designed to shift responsibility for the carnage in Gaza, away from Israel, redistributing it to Iran and its allies. Thus, we are told, in a phrase that fuses the obvious with unembarrassed hypocrisy, that:

The people of Gaza need urgent and unfettered delivery and distribution of aid.

Preventing the achievement of delivering ‘urgent and unfettered’ aid, is somehow Iran’s fault. It is responsible for the starvation in Gaza and the IOF attacks on it.

… we call on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks that would further escalate regional tensions and jeopardise the opportunity to agree a ceasefire and the release of hostages. They will bear responsibility for actions that jeopardise this opportunity for peace and stability. No country or nation stands to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East.

Israel has achieved a degree of invisibility here. Nowhere in the full text, which can be found here,is Israel mentioned. One speculates that this is part of a calculated blame-shifting strategy designed to distract attention away from the brutal reality of Israel’s actions, thereby providing cover to the USA and allies continuing refusal to do what they are well-able to do – the USA on its own, even more so if accompanied by its allies – and that is to force Israel to cease its operations in Gaza (not to mention the West Bank and East Jerusalem). 

In the meantime, words, words, words while the slaughter and maiming of Palestinians continues unabated; and the danger of regional conflagration increases. All the benefits that accrue from a democratic, Jewish state.