By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

 

A century ago during the First World War Gaza was a remote outpost of the weakened Ottoman Empire whose demoralized Turkish military defenders, faced with the British-engineered ‘Arab Revolt’ had no stomach for fight, yet they beat back the Allied invaders during most of 1917 in the first two battles (March 26 and April 17) before losing the Third Battle of Gaza (November 1-3), largely because of Khedive Egypt’s traitorous complicity with Britain, and fleeing all the way to Anatolia, thereby surrendering all of Palestine and Syria, since they lacked local support.

The deceitful British betrayed the Arabs whom they had incited against the Ottomans, and to the shock and surprise of the people of Palestine, handed their homeland in 1948 to the illegal non-Semitic Zionist migrants form east Europe (Khazars who had converted to Judaism) by creating the spurious state called Israel.

As a result, the Gaza Strip, placed under Egyptian rule, became a large refugee camp to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes and hearths in Haifa, Bayt Laham, Nazareth, Asqalan and etc.

In 1967 it was occupied by the illegal Zionist entity, which, faced with the stiff resistance, decided in 1994 to hand over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, but it was only in 2005 that all Israeli soldiers and the Zionist settlers fully withdrew from this strip with the granting of limited self-rule governance.

Usurper Israel, however, continued to infringe upon the freedom and liberties of the people of Gaza who had no control over their own airspace and were subjected to frequent artillery shelling and aerial attacks, resulting in the wars of 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021, mainly because of the emergence of the Hamas Movement as the elected representatives of the besieged people.

Today, Gaza after three weeks of relentless bombing that has martyred over 9,000 civilians (mostly women and children), injured 25,000 others, displaced some 800,000 from their destroyed homes, and reduced the infrastructure to shambles, including schools, colleges, mosques, churches, hospitals, and markets – all with the instructions and weapons of the US – has been subjected to a ground attack by the Zionist regime in a bid to re-occupy it.

As we go to the press, the Gazan defenders have beaten back the invaders on all three fronts, destroying over a dozen tanks and armoured vehicles, with a vow to turn Gaza into the graveyard of Zionism.

The year 2023 is not 1917, and the Gazans are not a foreign force detached from the land, but an indigenous and native people determined to offer sacrifices to safeguard their homes and hearths.

This means the Israelis and their godfather the US have made a strategic blunder on the assumption of decimating the Palestinian Resistance Movement whose indomitable spirit will inflict a historical defeat on the aggressors and lead to the liberation of all of Palestine.