Divided voices deplore escalating Gaza violence

As the night time Israeli ground attack into Gaza got underway Saturday voices from around the world grew louder deploring the escalating violence, the human suffering, but disagreeing on its root causes.

A top Vatican official was quoted in a Catholic News Service article saying that a failure to respect human dignity was at the root of the Mideast conflict, including the violence in the Gaza strip.

Religious tensions play a minor role in fueling world conflicts; rather, countless economic and social injustices are what foment violence, said Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

"For decades, human dignity has been trampled in the Gaza Strip; hatred and homicidal fundamentalism find fodder" in social and economic injustice, he said in an interview originally published in the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Jan. 1.

He said the use of arms in the Middle East must stop because "dialogue is the only possible way to bring peace" in the Holy Land.

The "fresh, ferocious outbreak of violence" and renewed military action in Gaza will not break the cycle of attacks and reprisals in the Holy Land, he said.

"The current excessive imbalance between military spending and development aid -- (which) exists everywhere, including the Gaza Strip -- shows a deep distrust in the power of dialogue, a deep distrust in the human being," said the cardinal. Only dialogue can end the world's conflicts, he added.

But talks must include rectifying long-standing injustices, he said.

The international community, diplomats and local governments must remember that "the source of every conflict, not to mention the degradation of the environment and the social and economic injustices" that trigger the many crises plaguing communities today, is "contempt for, neglect of, or only partial agreement with the principle of respect for human dignity," he said.

Turkey’s English-speaking Sunday newspaper, Sunday Zaman, using United Nation’s figures, pointed out that 78 percent of the 1.5 million people living in Gaza depended on food distributed by the UN before the Israeli air strikes that started on Dec. 27. The percentage has only increased in the past week, the paper stated, adding that it is now extremely difficult for aid agencies to reach the needy.

The “dire” situation in Gaza in not new, the paper wrote. Almost 80 percent of its inhabitants are descendents of the refugees of the 1948 war. “It is one of the most densely populated places on earth.”

Israel imposed a news blackout on its troop movements in the Gaza Saturday. However, one website, Opednews.com, a progressive news source, quoted Gaza residents who apparently had spoken before the latest ground attack.

One person who was identified as a doctor working in a public hospital was quoted as saying: "The situation here is very difficult. They are shooting at us from everywhere, at all targets - military or not. Many have been killed and more injured, especially in the first two days.

"They are using all sorts of bombs. They weigh up to 500kg and can take out a 15-storey building in a second, like an earthquake.

"Everyone is living in fear. You never know who they are going to hit.

"Obviously, there is anger. It's our people dying - our kin, our relatives, not strangers. But people stick together. They live because they have to live.

Another person, identified as a human rights worker was quoted as saying: "What is happening here is unbelievable, it's shocking – a catastrophe. We've been living a nightmare for the past two days because of what's happening around us.

"I fear for myself, my family and the people I care about. In all my life, I've never had such a bad feeling.

"The children, my nephew and niece, are so scared. They hide under the beds, terrified, and I can do nothing to help them, except to sing soothing words to them. But nothing can help them in this situation.

"We need serious action to be taken right now to end this Violence against our people. I am so angry with the world – we hear nothing but words... We don't have medicine, food, cooking gas, fuel, power.

"Every single person in Gaza is in a very bad psychological state ..”

During the weekend of growing violence, opinion in Mideast newspapers was predictably divided.

Pakistan's The Frontier Post termed the Israeli bombings as plainly nothing short of genocide of a hapless people. "What else could it be if not a calculated murderous campaign to exterminate the Gazan Palestinians when scores of Israeli jet-bombers and helicopter gun ships come swooping to invade their narrow strip of land and fearing no challenge or resistance freely knock out dozens of sites with devastating carpet bombing, inflict colossal death and injury on them, and return to their bases to resume their slaughter the next morning?" it asked.

Lebanon's Daily Star remarked, "it is highly unlikely that anything positive will emerge from the violent rampage Israel's military launched against the Gaza Strip over the weekend. The only hope - a slim one indeed, based on past experience - is that some of the players on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will finally learn some lessons that should have been absorbed long ago."

Qatar's Gulf Times pins its hopes on Barack Obama for solving the Middle East conflict. "How Obama actually plans to deliver a peace deal that has eluded both the Clinton and Bush administrations is not immediately clear ... how he handles this crisis and any future flare-ups during his presidency will determine how long that honeymoon lasts," it said.

The Jerusalem Post wrote that “international demands notwithstanding, it is way too premature for Jerusalem to be entertaining thoughts of a cease-fire. It is Hamas that needs an exit strategy to extricate it from a devastating situation of its own making. ...

Hamas must not get what it most wants. Hamas wants Israel's home front to be demoralized, to feel under siege. It wants to stampede our government into sending ground forces into Gaza's camps and alleyways, to ensnare our fighters in ambushes it has spent long months setting.

If Hamas can't hoodwink Israelis into self-defeating policies, it is counting on pressure from within Israel or without to produce at least a temporary halt to the operation, during which it could regroup, or better yet a cease-fire. It needs this to claim a "moral victory" over the IDF; to demonstrate that the West has no response but appeasement to violent Muslim extremism. Finally, Hamas needs a cease-fire on its terms, or it will lose face vis-à-vis Mahmoud Abbas. ...

There should be no talk of a cease-fire until the declared goal of achieving long-term normality in the South has been attained.

Fox is NCR Editor.