26-Dec-08: If you were a Gazan Palestinian Arab...

If you were a Gazan Palestinian Arab, what would you make of these unfolding events today?

• You're living in a tiny miserable space that your political masters and their friends misleadingly call "the most densely populated place on earth". (In fact, it's nothing of the sort. Tel-Aviv and dozens of other cities have a higher population density, but no matter.) In your tiny, not-quite-state-of-Hamastan, you have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Despite this, the regime that governs you makes blood-curdling threats they have little ability to carry out. Its spokesman Fawzi Barhoum is quoted saying "There is no chance of extending the calm". His colleagues are making sure this turns out to be true.
• In case the Israeli authorities were in any doubt about whether to finally taper off their policy of forebearance and patience under fire, and intervene violently in your life, the Gaza-based terrorists that operate according to Hamas-regime dictates in your cities - meaning right inside your buildings and in your densely-populated living areas, "intensified their attacks, firing at least 25 mortar shells at the South overnight Thursday and early Friday" according to this source. Hamas is leaving very little doubt that it wants a shooting war as soon as possible, and you and your family - among hundreds of thousands of other hostages who live in the very buildings where the massive Hamas terror arsenals are located - are going to be in the direct line of fire. Evidently Hamas wouldn't have it any other way.
  
• The Hamas regime chooses now, this week, to push (according to the London-based Arab newspaper Al Hayat) for the enforced introduction of sharia law: "Courts will be able to condemn offenders to... violent punitive measures [that] include whipping, severing hands, crucifixion and hanging. The bill reserves death sentences to people who negotiate with a foreign government against Palestinian interests and engage in any activity that can hurt Palestinian morale. According to the report, any Palestinian caught drinking or selling wine would suffer 40 lashes at the whipping post if the bill passes. Thieves caught red-handed would lose their right hand." It's been reported that Hamas issued some denials. But this report will probably help you understand - if you need help - that sadly it's true.
• Your devoted cousins, the Egyptians, are concerned that Hamas escalation is going to provoke a full-scale shooting war. So they decided today to reinforce the boundary that runs between them and your Gaza Strip, and to step up security along that boundary. According to this report, "Egyptian security forces are concerned that an IDF operation will lead to an attempt by Gazans to break through the Rafah border crossing." Out of concern for Egypt's interests and against yours, Egypt is redoubling the security that protects its territory - from you.
• Notwithstanding the unprecedented levels of mortar shell and rocket fire from your place into ours, the government of Israel opened its gates this morning (Friday) to allow trucks laden with humanitarian aid into Gaza. (Reminder: Egypt has a border with you too. But the trucks always come into Gaza from our territory, not from theirs.) If there are fresh stocks of supplies in your local Seven-Eleven this afternoon, you can thank Israel. A report decribes the aid: "90 trucks will deliver medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods into Gaza. The shipment includes a large donation of goods from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's wife as well as more than 400,000 liters of fuel and 200 tons of natural gas."
• Your hated enemy, our government, says via one of its veteran ministers that the humanitarian shipment was meant to be a message to the people of Gaza that they were not Israel's enemy. We don't know how hard it is to read the following lines, but we want you to have this opportunity to read them: "We are sending them a message that the Hamas leadership has turned them into a punching bag for everyone. It is a leadership that has turned school yards in rocket launching pads. This a leadership that does not care that the blood of its people will run in the streets."

Since they're living under a terrorist regime prepared to sacrifice everything it has on the altar of jihad, this is not a time to envy the Gazans, who make a great deal of the fact that this is the government they democratically brought upon themselves. But it is a time for picking sides. You need to figure out which side wants to live in peaceful neighbourliness and which side doesn't even know how to contemplate that idea.