Arabs...Seize the Moment and Save Gaza

Source: Al-Manar TV, 20-11-2008

For the sixteenth consecutive day, besieged Gaza is still taking the blows of "Israel's" battering ram amid international silence and Arab apathy. Today a 19-year-old Palestinian fighter belonging to the resistance movement Hamas was killed by an "Israeli" tank shell east of the Strip. 19 years, but who's counting anyway?

To hear about the death of young men striving for the least standards of life, does not touch hearts anymore. Why should it, when television networks broadcast wake-up calls like the pictures of 4-months-old Iman Hajo with a bullet hole in her heart or Mohammed Durra being shot dead on his father's lap, in vain. Patients in coma do not always respond to wake-up calls.

 If the scenes of death of these infants did not move the "Arab Conscience" how can empty stomachs and empty pockets move it.? When you hear more news, astonishment just never stops.

The United States, which closely supports "Israel" against Arabs as well as its stranglehold on 1.5 million Gazans, has asked four oil-rich Gulf States for close to 300 billion dollars (300,000,000,000 dollars) to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait's daily Al-Seyassah reported Thursday.

The daily said Washington has asked Saudi Arabia for 120 billion dollars, the United Arab Emirates for 70 billion dollars, Qatar for 60 billion dollars and was seeking 40 billion dollars from Kuwait. The United States plans to use the funds to help the ailing automobile industry, banks and other companies suffering from the global financial turmoil. The four states are estimated to have amassed close to 1.5 trillion dollars (1,500,000,000,000 dollars) in surplus in the past six years due to high oil prices that rocketed above 147 dollars in July.

According to a report issued Tuesday by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) "Whatever the political or security consideration are behind these measures, there is an obligation by all parties to preserve the human dignity and to ensure the basic well-being of the Gazan civilian population, of which more than half are children."

But obligation cannot make "moderate" Arabs - who possess the means of black gold and piled green bills - pull through "immoderate" Gazans because they are in Hamas's territory and because they democratically elected -under international monitoring - this group to rule. Instead they are proposing financial aid to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in Ramallah.

It is so hard to believe that foreigners, westerners or whatever they may call them across the "gapped" Arab nation, challenge "Israel" and break the blockade while Arabs are getting more sluggish and this much indifferent. They even made a "faux pas" proposal to send an Arab force to the Strip, something the Americans and the "Israelis" might favor and push for.

"If the latest proposed round of Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo materializes, then it could be the last fig leaf the Arab states would hold before they follow the disastrous road of acting as policemen to protect the occupation against the Palestinians," Arab writer Dr. Ahmed Mustapha wrote. Arabs should have seized the moment of this global economic crisis as well as the power shifts in the US and "Israel" to make substantial give-and-take bargains to save the day for the Palestinians.