Time to see the other side of the story?

THOSE who really care for the people of Gaza should steer clear of those with a political agenda of bashing Israel, the only democratic state in the Middle East.

They should place the blame for hardship where it belongs – on Gaza’s Hamas rulers and the state of war they have declared on their Israeli neighbours.

In the week ending January 27 of this year, 1,138 trucks entered the Gaza Strip from Israel. The largest number carried construction materials. Others carried thousands of tons of food products. Other trucks carried animal foodstuffs and agricultural products, ceramic and plumbing products, electrical equipment, hygiene products, medicines and medical equipment.

There was nothing unusual about that week. Deliveries of essential supplies have been going on for years, week in and week out – all through the period, in fact, when people in Europe were being told that the inhabitants of Gaza were “under siege” and that a “humanitarian crisis” was imminent.

Something else that has gone on for years, and that was not mentioned in the recent article by Cllr Hugh Lewis published in this newspaper, has been the firing of rockets and mortar shells by Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups at the civilian population of southern Israel. These attacks were doubled and then trebled in the years after 2005 when Israel pulled out all its soldiers and all the Jewish civilians from Gaza in an effort to bring peace.

Israel does keep a limited blockade in place on Gaza. This blockade is legal under international law in the conditions of war declared by Hamas on Israel. It is a blockade to prevent the entry of rockets and war materials supplied by Iran to Hamas for attacks against Israel’s people. But Israel has always made a distinction between the ordinary civilians of Gaza and the terrorist groups that dominate life there and openly boast about their dedication to the destruction of Israel.

In 2010, Egypt’s biggest-selling newspaper Al-Ahram reported that Gaza’s stores were “flowing with goods” at “low prices” and noted its luxury hotels and thriving entertainment and amusement centres.

That is why the allegations made by Cllr Lewis of an “all-pervasive siege” and the “collective punishment” of Gaza’s people are very far from the truth.

Let us take a recent example. March 2012 was a month in which 208 rockets and mortar shells targeted, among others, Israeli children on their way to and from school, giving them 15 seconds to run to bomb shelters. Yet, in the same month, 3,653 truckloads of supplies were delivered from Israel to the civilian population of Gaza, and 1,375 patients and their companions entered or passed through Israel to receive medical treatment.

The people of Israel want only peace with their Palestinian neighbours. When Hamas finally calls off its violent “holy war” to “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea” – ie eradicate Israel – then real peace will follow.

Free Gaza – yes! Free it from its radical Islamist terrorist leadership. In the meantime, Cllr Lewis is welcome to visit Israel and should write the other side of the story for Southside People.