The ground invasion

Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles have encircled the Gaza City at its outer extremes. Outside Gaza are amassed hundreds of Merkava Tanks, loads of Patriot missile batteries and more than a 100,000 Israeli troops — all hell bent on annihilating Gaza from history, from geography, from memory!

While Israel enjoys the free air, free borders, and the freedom to gather allies and ask for more aid, weapons and artillery; antithetically Gaza has no freedom across its borders, its air or its waters. It cannot summon friends; it cannot receive aid; it cannot communicate with the outer world — no one can leave Gaza nor can anyone enter.

Imagine, your bitterest enemy, whose president calls you ‘terrorists’, whose defence minister calls you ‘human animals’, and whose lawmakers ask of dropping a nuclear bomb on your besieged city. Imagine that all the food, all the medicine and all that enters Gaza comes via Israel’s rationing — not since October 7^th, but since 1967. But that’s not all; Israel has to keep punishing these wretched step-children of humanity from time to time, by bombing them. Like in 2009, Gaza was pounded for 3 weeks, and over 1,400 Gazans were killed. In 2012, Israel dropped 1,500 bombs, destroying homes and killing over a hundred Gazans. In 2014, at least 2,300 Gazans were martyred in one and half month bombing campaign. In 2021, as many as 256 Gazans were killed and 2,000 wounded. And in 2022, IDF conducted 147 airstrikes, killing 49.

So, it’s kind of ironic when we talk of a ground invasion of Gaza. Because according to UN definition, Gaza has been a constant and continuous victim of genocide for decades; its people are killed; serious bodily or mental harm is inflicted upon them; constant depravation causing malnutrition, hopelessness and threatening circumstances are causing their slow annihilation as a community of people. At this time, Israel is not only committing direct genocide of Gaza, but also inciting world public upon complying; and of conspiring with allies to commit complete genocide of Gaza by the ongoing bombing operations and the war they are to wage by the ground invasion.

Israel is also committing Apartheid of Gaza and the West Bank. Just like the racial segregation and discrimination practised in southern Africa, the Jews of Israel brutally discriminate against the Palestinian Arabs and keep them segregated in several Bantustans in the West Bank, while Gaza is a separate Bantustan. The people are denied the ‘right to life and liberty of person’; subjected to ‘inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment’, ‘arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonments’; denied the right to ‘political, social, economic and cultural life’, and deprived of the right to ‘leave and return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association’.

Israel also fits in comfortably in the definition of terrorism. On a daily basis, it commits acts of violence or killing on the people with the purpose of intimidating the Palestinian population, thereby provoking a constant state of terror. The structurally designed state-terrorism by Israel keeps the political, constitutional, economic and social structures of the people torn and destroyed.

In the perpetual state of conflict between Israel and Palestine, Israel is also constantly committing several war crimes against the Palestinians. For instance, it commits ‘willful killing’, ‘extensive destruction and appropriation of property’ and ‘intentional attacks on civilian population and non-military infrastructure’ especially schools and hospitals. In its disproportionate attacks, Israel uses prohibited weapons like phosphorus bombs.

Israel gravely commits several crimes-against-humanity on Palestine too. It murders to exterminate, it imprisons en masse to enslave, it commits torture upon unlawfully imprisoned people and it persecutes people on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural and religious grounds.

But this is not all. Israel literally dehumanises the Palestinians by way of subjecting them to abuse on checkpoints and streets on a daily basis. It controls their behaviours by way of starvation, depravation and mass imprisonment. It keeps developing tactics and experiments to inflict physical and psychological harm on Palestine.

So, in this enormous state of perpetual anguish, torment and affliction, it is difficult to assimilate what a ‘ground invasion’ could mean for Gaza.

How do Gazans feel, whose houses have been razed to rubbles again and again, who have slept in the streets with their families so many times, who have suffered injuries and amputations and deaths of loved ones, who have never eaten a bellyful, and who have no schools to send their children to nor proper running hospitals to treat their ailments. How would a Gazan with the corpse of his dead child in his arms feel like! How does he feel at the sounds of sirens indicating that his house may be blasted within the next moments! How does he feel taking rations of food from the hands of Israelis! How does he feel when his fuel, his internet, his water is cut off every now and then! How does he feel when he finds no true friend in the Arabs nor in the larger Ummah ready to intervene for his cause!

Surely, he feels suffocated, anguished, hopeless. He feels furious, paranormal and suicidal. He feels rebellious, burning like fire inside his soul. And he feels that life or death, he will have to take matters in his own hands. He feels that he will not wait for modern weapons, vehicles or supplies; that he will not wait for the Arabs to come to his help with their contingents; that he will hit back on the Israelis now, even if it means his death!

For this reason, many analysts have said that Gaza actually wants a ‘ground invasion’, it wants the enemy to lay feet on its ground. This may not be a winning strategy for the Gazans, but it would certainly be a chance for every cheerless, every downtrodden, every bereaved, every able-bodied Gazan to ferociously strike back at the enemy — not so much driven for victory, but driven for vengeance and driven by the want of survival of their women and children.

Perhaps in the lap of death he will breathe the breath of freedom he has never breathed before! Perhaps in martyrdom he will find his lost dignity! Perhaps in being felled he will find his misplaced nobility, his true pride and true victory!

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2023.

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