Friday, May 14, 2021

As If Emotions Behave Like Viruses In The Land: Case in Point: GAZA

 Nadene Goldfoot                                        

       Gaza City, before Jerusalem Day 2021 and the War to Destroy Israel 

Gaza was an ancient Palestinian city  2 miles from the sea on the southern coastal strip.  It served as a base for Egyptians expeditions to the North.  The Philistines captured it in the 12th century BCE and remained the most important of their 5 coastal cities.  

It was allotted to the tribe of Judah by Joshua at the end of the Exodus, when the land was being dispersed among the 12 tribes of Jacob.  It remained in Philistine hands and was the place of the imprisonment and death of Samson. 

 In 720 BCE, it was annexed by Sargon of Assyria and in 521, by Cambyses of Persia.  Alexander the Great recolonized it as a hellenistic city in 332.  After his death, it was disputed between the Egyptian Ptolemics and the Syrian Seleucids until annexed by Antiochus III of Syria in 198.  It became independent in 110, was captured by Alexander Yannai in 96, but declared a free city by Pompey in 61.  All this happened in the "Before the Common Era (BCE)."                        

   Gaza now after lobbing 17,000 rockets into Israel and Israel hitting their origins

A Jewish population lived in Gaza throughout the Middle Ages, as did a Samaritan community until its capture by Napoleon in 1799.  Gaza was a center of Sabbetaism in the 17th century.  Its Jewish inhabitants left in 1917 at the end of World War I.  The few subsequently returning departed during the 1929 Arab disturbances and attacks.  It became the main city in the Gaza Strip, its 1949 population of 30,000  being swollen by many refugees.  Gaza was captured in November 1956 by Israel forces who remained there until March 1957.  It again passed under Israel rule during the Six Day War in 1967.  A census taken later that year gave its population as 119,000.  The present population is 590,481.  Gaza has a very young population, with roughly 75% under the age of 25. The city is currently administered by a 14-member municipal council of Hamas terrorists.This is a population where men may have 4 wives and many children.  There is no birth control.  

 Egypt and Israel consequently imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip due to events that were disruptive and dangerous.  Israel eased the blockade allowing consumer goods in June 2010, and Egypt reopened the Rafah Border Crossing in 2011 to pedestrians.                                                              

David fighting the Philistines at Keilah (I Samuel 23: 1-13)

Gaza has been the city of the Philistines, the worse enemy the ancient Israel had, and now it holds Arabs who voted in terrorists as their government.  I don't really think they had a choice as this first voting experience plus the pressure they were put upon brought this about, and now it's here to stay, evidently.  The worst of vibes lie in the soil and the atmosphere for at least over 4,000 years.  As Hinduism might say, the place has bad karma.  

Gaza itself is way, way overcrowded for the land.  It is 41 kilometers (25 mi) long, and from 6 to 12 kilometers (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of 365 square kilometers (141 sq mi). With around 1.85 million Palestinians on some 362 square kilometers, Gaza ranks as the 3rd most densely populated polity in the world. An extensive Israeli buffer zone within the Strip renders much land off-limits to Gaza's Palestinians. 

Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 2.91% (2014 est.), the 13th highest in the world, and is often referred to as overcrowded. The population is expected to increase to 2.1 million in 2020. In 2012, the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) in the occupied Palestinian territory warned that the Gaza Strip might not be a "liveable place" by 2020 and as of 2020, Gaza suffered shortages of water, medicine and power, a situation exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis.  Now it has exploded, erupted on the Temple Mount over a real-estate problem to be solved in court and on Jerusalem Day's celebration into all-scale war against Israel.  No wonder !  

To this moment, over 16,000 rockets have been shot into all of Israel.  People have been in bomb shelters for over 5 days with 15 seconds to get there after the siren wails.  The sound of rockets is the worst part of it all as they come dropping down out of the sky.  

Note that instead of suggesting to Palestinians that they could move to any other Muslim country and get out of such crowded circumstances, they are not.  They have been encouraged to stay, used as ammunition against Israel, both physically and as propaganda to hold over Israel's heads, especially at the UN.  

Hamas knew exactly where this surprise attack on Israel would lead to.  It's happened before in 2014.  What were they ever thinking of? The attack itself was well planned.  The reasoning for it is for one thing only:  to wipe out Israel.  

Despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, when Jews moved out. according to their own government order in the name of peace,  the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators consider the territory to be still "occupied" by Israel, supported by additional restrictions placed on Gaza by Egypt.

 Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. The system of control imposed by Israel is described as an "indirect occupation".

 Some other legal scholars have disputed the idea that Israel still occupies Gaza. The extent of self-rule exercised in the Gaza Strip has led some to describe the territory as a de facto independent state.

                                                

They rarely pay their utility bills.  They're mostly in arrears.  They're too busy digging tunnels to get things like ammunition to use against Israel.  They are not a self-sufficient country that is constantly expanding its population.  


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