The Human Cost Of War

I am usually pretty hard on the militant forms of Islam that threaten the existence of, what I consider to be better cultures .....

Dr Izeldeen Abuelaish

.... however I am not personally discriminatory against individuals of any ideology, who I treat as I find.

So I was as moved as any normal human being would be, over a particularly sad story from Gaza, where an ordinary Gazan and his family have paid a very high price, for the intransigence of the movements that sweep that part of the world.

Its sometimes easy to forget how many terror groups have, or still operate in Gaza and Palestine. Yasir Arafat's Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, Palestine Liberation Front, Abu Nidal's Fatah faction, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, Hizbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda.

There were also Jewish terrorist groups Irgun and Lehi (Anti British), and Haganah and Palmach to fight the Arabs in the 30's and 40's (5,000 Arabs were killed by these groups, against 400 Jews, and 200 Britons). These lists disregards even smaller splinter groups, and means that ordinary people have little or no chance of living with out having to pay money, or pledge allegiance to, the various gunmen and criminals who naturally gravitate towards these organisations.

Dr Izeldeen Abuelaish , who recently lost his wife to leukaemia, has now lost three of his children and a niece, when an Israeli tank fired a shell through his house, and others are severely wounded and maimed. Apologies hardly seem adequate to express sorrow for such a terrible loss.

"Collateral Damage" is a term that is often loosely bandied about without enough thought. The terrible grief that Dr Abuelaish's family will suffer for the rest of their lives, is what 'collateral damage' really means in far too many cases. So while I struggle to sympathise with the cause of Palestinian Arabs, who could so easily have been absorbed into the wider Arab world, (rather than living in a permanent state of 'refugee status', just to allow militants to keep the 'struggle' alive), I have to feel sorry for those who suffer on behalf of the gunmen; they so rarely get a voice.

But lets be honest .... the Palestinians have lost .... no one is going to reset the clock back to 1947. They are not going to eradicate the State of Israel, its not going to to go back to the borders on the 1940's nor are the 'refugees' (or rather their descendents), going to be able to reclaim lost land or property. 

Their failure to accept the reality that faces them, and just assimilate within the greater Arab world, means that if anything, their political situation will probably be worse in 10 or 20 years than it is right now .... but they cling to the idea that violence will get them all their aims.

Update: In November 2021 Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish who was seeking an apology and compensation from Israel over the 2009 tank strike ... the court upheld a lower court’s 2018 ruling that the military is not liable for wartime actions.