Islam Times - Real Holocaust underway in Gaza

Islam Times - An interview with Alberto Garcia Watson, political commentator from Beirut, about Palestinian resistance groups responding to a fresh series of Israeli air attacks by firing rockets into Israel as the Gaza death toll keeps rising.

Q: First of all give us your assessment of this disproportionate use of force by the Israelis against the people of Gaza. And how many more children and women have to be killed? How many more schools and residential complexes have to be destroyed before the international community steps in to stop the attacks?

Watson: Well yesterday last night the al-Wafa hospital in the Gaza Strip actually in the Gaza city was bombed even though there were eight international activists inside protecting those who were unable of moving out of the hospital.

This just shows this is a proof of the callousness of the Israelis in their program of extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza. We just heard a couple of days ago a high general of the Israeli army saying that I wish I will wake up one morning and Gaza has disappeared from the map.

This is the spirit of Israel. This is the way that Israel sees a possible solution to the conflict in Gaza. They are destroying hospitals, they are destroying schools, and they are killing not just Hamas leaders like they say in all the press, international press like I've been listening even this morning [that] Hamas leaders have been targeted. No it is not Hamas leaders being targeted. Everyone is targeted. If in a neighborhood it happens to be a leader of Hamas lives there, the whole neighborhood has to suffer.

All buildings are knocked down and bombed down. We saw yesterday in Zeitoun which is a neighborhood in the outskirts of Gaza city how a building, a three storey building was bombed down. Thirty people were left without a home because it happened to be that a leader of the Islamic Jihad lived there. This is the way that they operate.

In 2008 in Cast Lead operation, that is Zeitoun neighborhood, a family, the Samouni family, famous family was actually put into a building, 98 members of that family and it was bombed from the air, it was bombed from the sea and 49 casualties happened. I happened to be bringing some of these children for treatment back to Europe and we brought them back a year and a half ago and what was considered to be a war crime by the United Nations is not condemned.

The whole world looks to the other side. We have been just so busy watching the World Cup and we have just left this massacre, this holocaust, this real holocaust because here we can really see what is going on and what is happening.

Just yesterday they also bombed center of the sanitation. They want to make these people starve to death. They want them to suffer to all the consequences and yesterday with this peace truce that it is a laugh, it is actually a laugh, it just made Israel even become more violent if we can actually do that. I mean we see very little interest by the international community. We see the Arab League not really interested in solving this situation. We see Fatah very, very quiet. It seems like Fatah eventually is going to take advantage of this situation if Hamas disappears. It is actually very, very sad I have to say.

Q: And various rights groups have already stated that the Israelis have been carrying out war crimes against the people of Gaza in this asymmetric warfare that they have been conducting against the people they were mostly civilians, women and children are being killed.

What has to happen to get the international community to confront the Israelis for these so-called war crimes as known by various rights groups to halt them, to stop them or even at times to prevent these attacks from happening?

Watson: We have to see the first Israeli deaths before that happens. Whenever the Israelis start suffering in their own field, in their own ... [entity] and in their own skin what Palestinians are suffering day by day, probably we will see a reaction.

In 2012, in November 2012, on the 21st of November it was a truce brought up by the Israelis because actually they were amazed by the capabilities that the Palestinian resistance had and they were not aware of such capabilities and it was them, the one bringing up the truce and it was them even accepting the conditions of Hamas.

At this point as I said this truce that it was brought yesterday is a laugh and it is a trap. I mean how can you expect the Palestinians, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad or any other faction in Gaza to accept terms when they have not even been consulted, when they haven’t even been mentioned?

The situation of those people that had suffered the death of relatives, the damage that has been inflicted in Gaza, why is it not mentioned, why is not consulted? Why is Egypt trying to bring a truce that as I said is a trap when they are not even mentioning that they are going to open the Rafah crossing for Palestinians to be able to seek for refuge or even medical attention?