One year ago, Israeli planes roared over the Gazan skies launching destructive raids on residential buildings and public and private facilities all over the strip.
Their first target was the courtyard of the police complex where hundreds of officers were celebrating their graduation. Nearly 300 of them were slain; most of them had no connection with the military actions of Hamas. Israeli aircraft then continued their relentless raids on the so-called "bank-of-targets" pre-listed sites. When all of them were destroyed, the pilots were free to pick whatever targets they felt worthy of their precious loads.
Then Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, backed by artillery and frigates, swept the area, destroying and burning everything standing before them. Not a single house or street in the strip was immune from the barrage of bombs, rockets and missiles.
Gazans scrambled away trying to escape the deadly fire that chased them wherever they went. Images of bullet-ridden corpses of children and women shocked viewers who watched the events on TV screens, or read about it in the media.
More than 1,400 martyrs fell during that aggression, which continued for three weeks. It was likely to persist further, had the cries of condemnation not been voiced from people with a moral conscience, particularly in Scandinavian countries.
The transition era between the George W. Bush and Barak Obama administrations, and reports that the latter held different views about the Middle East than those of his predecessor, also helped force Israel to halt the war.
The tally of the war was horribly catastrophic: thousands of houses, public institutions, schools, factories and farms were destroyed. The dislodged people crowded everywhere, searching for a lost security and a safe life, which was shattered by the Israeli army in its attempt to regain the deterrence it seemed to have lost in the 2006 Lebanese war with Hezbollah.
The Goldstone report came to bluntly state that Israeli forces committed war crimes, and perhaps crimes against humanity, when it targeted Palestinian civilians, and used internationally banned weapons such as burning white phosphorous shells. It is a pity that the developments that followed the first attempt to submit the report for a vote at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva led to nowhere. First, the voting was postponed and when it belatedly was voted on, the bargaining process extracted most of its competence and effectiveness.
The question that arises is why the houses destructed during the Israeli aggression remained as heaps of rubble, throughout this last year? Was the international community unable to pressure Israel to allow the entrance of the building materials, needed to rebuild Gaza? It more than logical that Israel bears the costs of the rebuilding. Why then did it ban the passage of cement, steel, pipes, glass and other construction materials into Gaza? How long would the house-owners be homeless, especially when the winter season has already entered, bringing rain, severe cold and floods?
For the aggression file to be finally closed, perpetrators should be persecuted, reconstruction must start immediately and the border-crossings reopened. The key to convincing the international community of the seriousness of these demands is restoring the national unity by ending the divisions between the sons of the homeland. Would those fighters listen to the voices of the Gaza victims? Or, could it be that voices of rivalries, disputes and factional interests are louder, and more influential?