On August 26, thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets of Gaza in joyful celebration of a ceasefire that ended Israel’s fifty-day assault on Gaza. Smiling Hamas officials greeted cheering crowds and declared victory in withstanding Israel’s onslaught, making Israel pay a high military price for its attempt to put ground troops in Gaza, and emerging politically intact.¹ Opinion polls showed Hamas’ popularity skyrocketing to 88 percent, its highest level of support since 2006, while the approval rating of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas fell to a dismal 36 percent in the wake of Abbas’ tepid expressions of solidarity with Gaza and the crackdown on solidarity protests in the West Bank by PA security forces. Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza was destructive, but Hamas managed to keep up a steady if ineffective barrage of missiles. As a result, 79 percent of Palestinians thought Hamas had won the war, while only 3 percent thought Israel had.² 

In Israel, the ceasefire left Netanyahu squirming under widespread criticism that he had betrayed the military’s successes by agreeing to end hostilities too quickly and failing to accomplish the stated goal of the demilitarization of Gaza. Across the political spectrum, the perception was that Netanyahu had snatched political defeat from the jaws of military victory. 

Critics from more hardline elements—such as Jewish Home Party’s Naftali Bennett and Likud Central Committee Chairman Danny Danon—were predictably shrill. But even Isaac Herzog, the leader of the Labor Party opposition, piled on, saying, Netanyahu had “lost the Israeli public’s trust, particularly residents of Gaza border towns,” many of whom wanted the Israeli military to force more bloodshed on Gaza. “The army won, but the government failed, and we will make efforts to replace it, to demonstrate political determination while maintaining Israel’s security and striving for peace,” said Herzog.³ Public opinion polls showed 59 percent of Israelis thought Israel had not won so-called Operation Protective Edge, while only 29 percent thought the operation had been a success. Netanyahu’s approval rating cratered to 32 percent.⁴

Judging from the reactions of public opinion in Gaza and Israel, therefore, it would appear that Hamas was the winner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party the loser. Yet just days after the hot phase of the war ended, Israel announced that it would seize an additional 1,000 acres of the West Bank for the purpose of settlement building, the largest land grab by Israel in some 30 years.⁵

“Encircled by Mr. Netanyahu’s latest appropriation, Palestinian residents of the bucolic village of Wadi Fukin have already lost all but 450 of the 3,000 acres they once had, and stand to lose more,” wrote the Economist. “The hillsides where the village’s 600 sheep and goats graze are set to go. Unable to farm, many men find work as builders, often on Jewish settlements nearby. They may yet be called upon to build homes for Israelis on land they regard as their own.”⁶ Nearly simultaneously, Israel and Jordan announced that they had inked a deal worth $15 billion over 15 years for Israel to supply the Hashemite Kingdom with natural gas.⁷ The gas reserves Israel plans to exploit for sale to Jordan lie in the Mediterranean off Gaza’s shoreline. This helps to explain Israel’s drive to restrict Gaza’s fishermen to a six-mile distance from shore: If Gaza’s fishermen have a right to the fish beyond that line, why don’t the people of Gaza also have the right to the natural gas reserves that also lie beyond that line?⁸

These two events—the land grab and the gas deal—illustrate two realities of the post-conflict terrain: Israel still has the political and military authority to advance its colonization of Palestinian land, and the Arab regimes continue to welcome business ties with Israel, even after its massacre of Gaza. Moreover, the hope that after Israel’s attack Hamas could secure the lifting of the suffocating siege—the air, land and sea blockage imposed by Israel and Egypt beginning in 2007 after Israel’s disengagement with Gaza in 2005 and the political victory of Hamas in Gaza’s 2006 elections—have not come to fruition. Nearly two months after the bombing ended, Israel, the PA, Egypt, and Hamas had yet to come to an agreement on the lifting of the siege, and as the terms get hammered out, it looks increasingly as if any easing of the siege will be limited at best.

In order to explain these contradictions—a rejuvenated Hamas facing the continuation of the siege, and a weakened Netanyahu still able to dictate terms—it is necessary to step back from what has transpired in the last few months and look at the larger context in which Israel’s massacre took place.

Prelude: Hamas in a box
The most essential factor in clearing the way for Israel’s bombing of Gaza was the dramatic reversal of fortune suffered by Hamas in recent years. The 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt created new opportunities for Hamas to forge alliances beyond its tenuous links to Syria and Iran. Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Gaza’s government, visited with Tunisian, Egyptian, and Qatari diplomats, and when the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi ascended to the Egyptian presidency, Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, could truly feel that its years of isolation had finally ended. Initially, there was even some easing of restrictions at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. In early 2012, Hamas felt confident enough of the rising fortunes of the Arab uprisings to embrace the Syrian revolt against the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad,⁹ which had been until that point one of Hamas’ chief backers.

But a year later, everything had changed. Most spectacularly, the ouster of Mohammed Morsi and the reassertion of authoritarian rule in Egypt under the auspices of Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi dealt an immediate and sharp setback to Hamas. Sisi immediately sought to tighten the siege in order to extend the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood from Cairo to Gaza City. In Syria, Assad managed to reassert his rule by massively increasing the killing of Syrian protesters. Tunisia and Qatar also faded as possible new patrons of Hamas. 

The reimposition of Hamas’ isolation due to the setbacks to the Arab revolts was the immediate backdrop to the announcement of a unity government between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah in April 2014. After years of offering an indefinite truce to Israel and making other overtures toward recognition of Israel, the terms of the unity government amounted to an even more historic lurch toward concessions by the Islamic resistance movement. Hamas felt it had few other options: its fiscal crisis was growing dire, and its inability to pay civil servants was creating the potential for a backlash among one of its few remaining bases of support. 

International Crisis Group senior analyst Nathan Thrall summarized what Hamas gave up as part of the unity deal: “[The unity government deal] offered Hamas’ political adversaries a foothold in Gaza; it was formed without a single Hamas member; it retained the same Ramallah-based prime minister, deputy prime ministers, finance minister and foreign minister; and, most important, it pledged to comply with the three conditions for Western aid long demanded by America and its European allies: nonviolence, adherence to past agreements and recognition of Israel. Israel strongly opposed American recognition of the new government, however, and sought to isolate it internationally, seeing any small step toward Palestinian unity as a threat.” (emphasis added) 

In the midst of Israel’s horrific strafing of Gaza, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal sat for an interview with PBS interviewer Charlie Rose, during which Meshaal reiterated the central point that Hamas was not opposed to a Jewish presence in Palestine but to a Jewish state in Palestine. “We are not fanatics, we are not fundamentalists,” said Meshaal. “We are not actually fighting the Jews because they are Jews per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers . . . I’m ready to coexist with the Jews, with the Christians and the Arabs and non-Arabs. However, I do not coexist with the occupiers.” In other words, contrary to the relentless characterizations of Hamas by Israeli politicians as “anti-Semitic,” Meshaal welcomed coexistence—but only coexistence based on equal rights. What Meshaal said he was not willing to recognize was Israel’s right to exist as an apartheid state—which by the way is the same position that PA officials hold. It should also be said that such openness to coexistence with equal rights is explicitly rejected by Israel’s leading political figures and parties in favor of racist and openly genocidal policies.¹⁰

It is Hamas’ conciliatory posture, not its intransigence, that Israel finds so intolerable. In the words of Lebanese socialist Gilbert Achcar: 

The Israeli government’s exasperation is not because Hamas is “radicalizing” in any way, but on the contrary because—due to the Egyptian turn of events since 2013—it had to water down its general political line and make a lot of concessions on the way to its reconciliation with the West Bank Palestinian Authority. The truth is that the Israeli government feels much more comfortable with a divided Palestinian landscape and a Hamas that is easy to demonize than with a unified Palestinian landscape and a more moderate Hamas. Ever since the 1993 Oslo agreement, the actual game of the Israeli far right in government has always been to weaken the “moderate” Palestinians, from Arafat to Abbas, and push towards a radicalization benefitting Hamas—the latter being their “preferred enemy” as long as it can easily be demonized, since it makes their relation with the U.S. and Europe much more consensual and reduces Western pressure on them. Remember that the most brutal Israeli onslaught on Hamas/Gaza came after the Islamic movement’s shift away from suicide attacks into political action, including its participation in the 2006 elections after having rejected such elections for many years as illegitimate in contrast to armed struggle.¹¹

With Hamas willing to accede to all of Israel’s demands (as Thrall enumerated above), it could no longer provide the pretext for periodic wars or opportunities for ideological demonization of the “Palestinian threat.” Coupled with signals by US policymakers that they welcomed a unity government based on Hamas’ concessions, Israel immediately understood this as a threat and set about trying to pry apart the Hamas/Fatah alliance. 

One such opportunity for Israel to create a provocation arrived a couple weeks later during the Palestinians’ traditional Nakba Day protests on May 15, 2014, when Israeli snipers shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers. IDF spokespeople initially claimed that the teens were participants in a riot and that it wasn’t clear who or what killed the teenagers since the soldiers at the scene had used only rubber bullets. These claims were debunked in subsequent weeks as video and forensic evidence was gathered that showed the two teens had been killed by live ammunition.¹² The autopsy results were released on June 9, thus providing the immediate context for the June 12 abduction and killing of the three Israeli settler teens in the West Bank, which led to Israel’s initial clampdown on the West Bank and subsequent assault on Gaza.¹³

Massacre: Israel on the rampage
Of the three Israeli offensives against Gaza during the last six years, the ferocity of Operation Protective Edge was without equal. Israeli politicians condemned Hamas’ launching of some 4,000 rockets at Gaza, but all sides acknowledge that those rockets had practically zero military effectiveness. On the other hand, as of August 14, 13 days before the ceasefire officially took hold, Israel had already fired at least 39,000 tank shells, 34,000 artillery shells, and 4.8 million bullets on Gaza, according to Ha’aretz. Palestinian military expert Hazem Abu Murad estimated that between July 7 and August 12, Israel had detonated 18 and 20 kilotons of explosive ordnance on Gaza. By way of comparison, the atomic bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima was the equivalent of 13 kilotons, and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was rated at 21 kilotons. Abu Murad was killed on August 13 along with five other people trying to defuse unexploded ordnance in Gaza.¹⁴

The impact of this firepower is horrific to recount. Some 13 percent of Gaza’s housing stock was destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombing, according to the UN. ¹⁵ About 5 percent of housing is uninhabitable—roughly 18,000 housing units have been either destroyed or severely damaged—leaving more than 108,000 people homeless. Israel also damaged or destroyed at least 15 of Gaza’s 32 hospitals, forcing six to close down. Of 97 primary health-care clinics, 45 reported damage, and 17 were closed. Between 20 and 30 percent of Gaza’s water and sewage infrastructure was damaged. Israeli forces repeatedly targeted Gaza’s only power plant, eventually forcing it to shut down. Israel’s “precision” targeting also damaged 75 kindergartens and day care centers.¹⁶ In addition to the more than 2,100 people killed and 11,000 injured in Gaza, Israeli forces also injured thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank.¹⁷

Some 10 days into the aerial bombing campaign, Israel sent in ground troops with the intention of imposing a new “reality” on Hamas and pledging to destroy the network of tunnels that Hamas fighters had dug.¹⁸ In response, Hamas issued a statement denouncing the ground invasion as “a dangerous step, the consequences of which have not been calculated.” The statement continued, “Israel will pay a high price and Hamas is ready for the confrontation.” In the end, Israel did indeed pay a high price and with no military successes to show for it. After all, Egypt destroyed the network of tunnels under its border with Gaza without invading, and Israel could have done the same. The military rationale for inserting ground troops into Gaza had little to do with the tunnels in the end. It seems that Israeli war planners hoped that a ground invasion would allow them to strike at top-level Hamas officials and also to directly engage Hamas fighters, whom they assumed they would be able to rout. Instead, Hamas fighters killed 60 Israeli soldiers, sending the IDF packing without accomplishing any of its stated aims. 

Suddenly, one component of Israel’s latest episode of “mowing the lawn”¹⁹ in Gaza—its term for periodic rampages that are supposed to keep Gaza and its inhabitants in a perpetually degraded state—had been checked. As the number of dead Israeli soldiers climbed, the much-vaunted “deterrent effect” of Israel’s formidable military diminished, and Gaza’s resistance fighters won newfound respect within Gaza and beyond as tenacious fighters who showed both strategic insight in drawing Israeli soldiers into Gaza and tactical effectiveness in their engagements with them.

With their ground troops unable to make a significant impact without risking higher, politically less-acceptable casualty rates, Israel stepped up its air offensive to obscene levels. The ferocity continued to increase despite global condemnation. Israeli politicians seemed to think that issuing warnings to entire neighborhoods to evacuate or else they would be killed demonstrated their lofty morality. According to a UN assessment, “At the height of the conflict, an estimated 500,000 people—28 per cent of the population—were internally displaced, including in UNRWA schools designated as emergency shelters (293,000), government schools (49,000), in informal shelters such as empty buildings, churches, or mosques, and with host families (170,000).”²⁰

On July 30, Israel bombed a UN school where Palestinians who didn’t want to be killed had been told to shelter. “The shelling of a UN facility that is housing innocent civilians who are fleeing violence is totally unacceptable and totally indefensible,” said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Pundits remarked at the strong criticism issued by Israel’s most important ally. It was the sixth UN shelter bombed by Israel.²¹

The second attempt at a ceasefire, declared on August 26, held with both sides committed to hammering out the terms of a truce at the negotiating table. Yet the primary demand of each side—Hamas’ demand that the siege of Gaza be lifted and Israel’s demand that Gaza be demilitarized—were and are mutually incompatible, and nearly two months after the end of the conflict, the terms of a lasting truce still have not been established.

Aftermath: Fatah returns
Israel failed to achieve any of its explicit military aims before the ceasefire, but a slew of Israeli political figures have not shied away from making the case that the war itself is the aim, the purpose of which is to advance Israel’s overall agenda of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. For example:

• Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: Hamas “has no intention of coming to terms with the Jewish presence in the land of Israel (sic) and therefore what is needed is to seriously consider conquering the Strip and carry out a thorough cleansing.”²²
• Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari: “There are no innocents in Gaza, don’t let any diplomats who want to look good in the world endanger your lives—mow them down!”²³
• Gilad Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: “We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza, flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima—the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing.”²⁴

The fact that Hamas held out in the face of this most recent Israeli offensive is a credit to its indomitable resistance and has in turn significantly bolstered the Islamist movement’s political standing, enhancing its appeal in both Gaza and the West Bank.²⁵ But surviving is distinct from victory. A victory would bring the Palestinian people closer to achieving some aspect of their national demands. Instead, Israel’s offensive, like other grotesque instances of “mowing the lawn” in Gaza, have compelled the people of Gaza to focus on the question of survival, and thousands are losing patience and seeking to flee, putting their lives at risk and spending enormous sums to pay smugglers to transport across the Mediterranean.²⁶ 

For its part, Hamas has had to orient on demands of the most elemental sort—for example, the opening of border crossings to allow for the import of construction materials and medical supplies—despite the fact that Israel is violating international law in denying the importation of such goods. As a result, Hamas is still in the position of bargaining over the terms of Gaza’s imprisonment.

The October 12 donor conference for Gaza reconstruction illustrates the point. The conference lined up pledges of $5.4 billion from various Western and Arab governments, but the PA, Israel and the United States conspired to bar Hamas from attending. For years, Israel and the United States have relied on the collusion of the PA in the demonization of Hamas, and the PA has been happy to oblige, earlier this year going so far as to call its security pact with Israel “sacred” and insisting that it would take priority over any agreements to form a unity government.²⁷ The terms of the donor conference amount to Israel and the United States repaying the favor. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has used this collaboration to leverage the return of PA officials in the form of border inspectors who will help Israel to ensure that anything Israel wants to bar from Gaza won’t go through the border crossings. Abbas has also established the PA as the conduit through which the billions in reconstruction funds will flow. 

Commenting on the irony of this arrangement, ElectronicIntifada.net correspondent Maureen Murphy writes:

As the Palestinian Authority which serves as the policing arm of the Israeli occupation positions itself as the executor of Gaza’s reconstruction, this will surely be used as an opportunity for those who seek to dismantle the armed resistance (which defended Gaza and demonstrated greater discipline and tactical capability than it did during any prior confrontation with Israel). Though the PA has jockeyed for this role to sideline the Hamas leadership in Gaza, any attempts to rebuild are subject to Israel’s ultimate authority. . . . Reminding observers who is really in charge, West Bank-based PA ministers including Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah were initially denied permits by Israel to visit Gaza, which remains under closure and economic siege imposed by Israel and enforced by donor conference host Egypt.²⁸

The notion of Egypt, whose cooperation with Israel is vital to maintaining the siege of Gaza, hosting a donor conference for reconstruction is nothing less than a cruel joke. If anything, the ascension of Sisi to the throne of power has made Egypt’s enthusiasm for the siege of Gaza even more pronounced, since it offers Sisi the opportunity to further isolate the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to Yediot Ahronot columnist Ron Ben-Yishai: 

Ever since al-Sisi came to power, not one rocket has been transferred to either Hamas or Islamic Jihad through Sinai, according to an Israeli security official. The Egyptians destroyed hundreds of tunnels under the Philadelphi Route (that runs parallel to the Gaza-Sinai border), but more importantly—they sealed, almost hermetically, routes for smuggling weapons and rockets from Sudan to Sinai and from Sinai to Egypt, and into the Strip . . . “(Former Egyptian president Hosni) Mubarak pretended he was trying to stop the smuggling of rockets to Sinai, while actually enabling the situation, in order to see Israel bleeding and weakened. He did not want to see us get rid of the Hamas threat,” a senior Israeli security official said. But during al-Sisi’s rule, there is full trust between the two countries’ defense systems, as well as unprecedented cooperation and coordination to prevent Hamas from gaining more power.²⁹

Ben-Yishai’s central point, however, is that there is a strategic shift underway among Israeli policymakers. His column, which is titled “Easing Gaza restrictions is the new two-state solution,” lays out the case for bringing the PA into ongoing negotiations to improve conditions in Gaza, thus enabling Israel to appear benevolent in its treatment of Gaza while using its partnership with the PA to keep any changes within parameters acceptable to Israeli officials.

According to Ben-Yishai,

Up until a few weeks ago, Israel managed its conflict with the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria independently from its Gaza policy, but now the two converge. Israel is even willing to pay a serious price for this to happen and thus—without much fanfare—Israel waived its objection to internal Palestinian reconciliation and the formation of the Palestinian unity government between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. . . . Israel is not only trying to allow Abbas’ PA to build institutions and regain control in the West Bank from the bottom up—but also allow him to extend his authority and control to the Strip. . . . The security establishment now admits that Israel’s airtight closure of the Gaza Strip has worked against the country’s general interests. The blockade created common interests and solidarity between the economically troubled Hamas government and the suffering residents of Gaza.³⁰

A role for the PA in the administration of Gaza will facilitate better conditions for Gaza’s residents while the drive to strangle Hamas persists. For its troubles, the PA benefits—economically and directly—from its handling of reconstruction funds (the PA has already announced that half the funds pledged at the donors conference won’t find their way to Gaza³¹), but also politically from its control over how those funds are used and whose interests primarily benefit from them. Israel succeeds by establishing a process of ongoing negotiations over the extent of Gaza’s isolation—negotiations which are always already destined to fail. 

This strategy has worked exceptionally well for Israel during the two decades since the Oslo “peace process” began. As the Oslo negotiations unfolded, Israel expanded its colonial grip on the West Bank while the PA transformed Fatah resistance fighters into a praetorian guard for Israel’s interests. Those fighters-turned-security-forces were crucial in the early days of Operation Protective Edge in suppressing a massive march of some 40,000 in the West Bank in solidarity with Gaza.³² While many hoped this might represent the first act of a new popular struggle against Israel, a new Intifada failed to materialize—in large part because the cadres necessary to lead such a struggle were the ones trying to hold the marchers back.

Alternatives
Unless and until the strategic dead end of endless negotiations and the PA’s collaboration with Israel are abandoned, a Palestinian unity government represents an attempt by two weakened factions to deflect criticism and share blame. Israeli leaders are committed to denying a Palestinian state, no matter how weak or dependent on Israel such a state would be.³³ As a result, the Palestinian national movement is faced with the daunting task of crafting a new strategy based on rebuilding an infrastructure of resistance to take the place of participation in negotiations that are designed to fail. The challenge is that Israel’s vastly superior military capabilities give it a decisive advantage in a direct confrontation with Palestinian resistance fighters. 

For this reason, a strategy for Palestinian liberation must find ways to leverage the advantages it does enjoy. First of all, the collective global horror at the brutality of Israel’s offensive produced solidarity protests of unprecedented size. This no doubt has created new opportunities to extend and deepen the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights (see Bill Mullen’s article in this issue of the ISR). The growth of this movement will be essential in the coming years to compel Israel to answer for its past war crimes and to pay a price for continuing to violate Palestinian human rights and international law.

Second, the success of the Arab uprisings in overthrowing US-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt and forcing other Arab rulers onto the defensive weakened the grip of imperialism on the region and created significant openings for the Palestinian resistance movement, for example in helping Hamas to overcome its isolation. But the reverse has also been true: the setbacks to the Arab uprisings have put the Palestinian movement on the defensive again. Across the Middle East, popular sympathies lie with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli domination,³⁴ but the political and business elite—of Jordan, Egypt and Syria—is more concerned with integration into the imperialist world order, hence their willingness to make business deals with Israel that pilfer natural resources rightfully belonging to the people of Gaza. But when the people of Jordan, the people of Egypt, the people of Syria organize themselves to demand bread, peace and freedom from their own ruling classes, the role of those same ruling classes in maintaining Israel’s dominance come under pressure. Palestinian liberation will be the result of the combined impact of the Palestinian struggle itself, regional Arab uprisings, and the BDS movement internationally. A movement that takes advantage of all three of these dimensions of resistance can liberate the Palestinians—and all of the Middle East.

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1. “Palestinian joy as Israel agrees Gaza truce,” Al Jazeera English, August 27, 2014, available at http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast....
2. Maher Abukhater, “In Palestinian poll, Hamas emerges as winner of Gaza war,” Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2014, available at http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/....
3. Stuart Winer and Marissa Newman, “Opposition head accuses Netanyahu of losing public’s trust,” Times of Israel, August 28, 2014, available at http://www.timesofisrael.com/opposition-....
4. Ari Yashar, “Majority of Israelis Think Israel Didn’t Win Gaza Operation,” Arutz Sheva, August 27, 2014, available at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/N....
5. Isabel Kershner, “Israel Claims Nearly 1,000 Acres of West Bank Land Near Bethlehem,” New York Times, August 31, 2014, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/....
6. “Another thousand acres,” Economist, September 6, 2014, available at economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21615644-binyamin-netanyahu-orders-biggest-land-grab-generation-another-thousand.
7. Marissa Newman, “Israel signs $15 billion gas deal with Jordan,” Times of Israel, September 3, 2014, available at http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-sign....
8. Julie Lévesque, “Israel Steals Gaza’s Offshore Natural Gas: $15 Billion Deal with Jordan,” Global Research, September 6, 2014, available at http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-stea....
9. Omar Fahmy and Nidal al-Mughrabi, “Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt,” Reuters, February 24, 2012, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/2....
10. Ali Abunimah, “‘Concentrate’ and ‘exterminate’: Israel parliament deputy speaker’s Gaza genocide plan,” Electronic Intifada, August 3, 2014, available at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-....
11. Gilbert Achcar, “Gaza and the impact in the region,” International Viewpoint, September 7, 2014, available at http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/sp....
12. Ali Abunimah, “CNN camera catches Israeli soldier who fired at, killed Palestinian teen,” Electronic Intifada, May 22, 2014, available at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-....
13. “Beitunia killings,” Wikipedia.org, accessed on October 19, 2014, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beitunia_ki....
14. Ali Abunimah, “How many bombs has Israel dropped on Gaza?,” Electronic Intifada, August 19, 2014, available at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-....
15. “Gaza: Initial Rapid Assessment,” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs occupied Palestinian territory, August 27, 2014, available at http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/gaza_mi....
16. “Israeli attack on Gaza damaged 75 kindergartens and day-care centers,” Mondoweiss, September 22, 2014, available at http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/israeli-da....
17. “Since the beginning of ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in Gaza, Israeli forces have also injured at least 2,139 Palestinians in the West Bank,” Mondoweiss, August 25, 2014, available at http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/operation-....
18. Nicholas Casey, Tamer El-Ghobashy, Joshua Mitnick, “Israel Launches Ground Invasion of Gaza,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2014, available at http://online.wsj.com/articles/netanyahu....
19. John Feffer, “Mowing the Lawn in Gaza,” Foreign Policy In Focus, July 16, 2014, available at http://fpif.org/mowing-lawn-gaza/.
20. “Gaza initial rapid assessement,” September 9, 2014, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (ONCHA): Occupied Palestinian Territory, available at www.ochaopt.org/documents/gaza_mira_repo....
21. Zeke Miller, “White House: Shelling Of UN School in Gaza ‘Totally Indefensible,’” Time, July 31, 2014, available at http://time.com/3065174/gaza-school-un-w....
22. Ben Lynfield, “Lieberman: Israel needs to conquer and thoroughly cleanse Gaza Strip,” Independent, June 24, 2013, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/....
23. Davide Mastracci, “5 Israeli Quotes on the Gaza Conflict You’ll Wish Were False,” Huffington Post, January 20, 2013, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davide-mas.... Original Hebrew available at http://www.hakolhayehudi.co.il/?p=47035.
24. Gilad Sharon, “A decisive conclusion is necessary,” Jerusalem Post, November 18, 2012, available at http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contr....
25. Mohammed Omer, “Hamas to run for presidential and municipal elections, again,” Middle East Eye, October 17, 2014, available at http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-....
26. “Report: 10,000 have fled Gaza in past 8 months due to siege and Israeli attack,” Mondoweiss, September 10, 2014, available at http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/report-isr....
27. Ali Abunimah, “Mahmoud Abbas: collaboration with Israeli army, secret police is ‘sacred,’” Electronic Intifada, May 30, 2014, available at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-....
28. Maureen Murphy, “Who benefits from billions pledged for Gaza reconstruction?” Electronic Intifada, October 14, 2014, available at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maur....
29. Ron Ben-Yishai, “Easing Gaza restrictions is the new two-state solution,” Yediot Ahronot, October 11, 2014, available at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,....
30. Ibid.
31. Murphy, Electronic Intifada.
32. Kelly Lynn interviewed by Sarah Levy, “The West Bank rises up against war in Gaza,” Socialist Worker, July 30, 2014, available at http://socialistworker.org/2014/07/30/th....
33. Ryan Grim and Paul Blumenthal, “Benjamin Netanyahu Stops Pretending To Support A Sovereign Palestinian State,” Huffington Post, July 18, 2014, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/18....
34. See, for example, “The Road to Jerusalem through Tahrir Square: Anti-Zionism and Palestine in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution,” Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XLI, No. 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 6–26.