It should now be obvious Israel fully intends to starve as many Palestinians to death as possible. Palestinian land is divided up into “enclaves,” otherwise known as Bantustans, 300 in the West Bank and three in Gaza, peppered with over 120 checkpoints. “The denial of freedom of movement for Palestinians has made any semblance of normal life impossible,” explains War on Want, part of the Make Poverty History campaign. “Collective punishment of this kind means people are unable to get to work, school or even hospital while the arbitrary and random nature of curfews is designed to make it impossible for people and civil institutions to make any plans.”

According to a United Nations reported presented to the Donors Conference last December, “37% of the estimated 3.7 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had trouble getting food in 2004. Another 27% were at risk of running into such difficulties,” al-Jazeera reported. Nearly half the “Palestinian population was poor, with poverty rate in the Gaza Strip reaching a staggering 65%,” the report continued. “Up to 16% of Palestinians—550,000—were living on $1.5 a day, with the likelihood that the figure will rise to 35% if aid is not forthcoming.” Now that the Palestinians have elected Hamas to represent them, that aid will not be forthcoming.

As the Christian Science Monitor notes, the Palestinians “are the most foreign-aid dependent society on earth” and the Israeli strangulation of this foreign aid will have deadly consequences. “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,” Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, told the Israeli media, a former adviser to the now comatose Ariel Sharon. Weisglass’ starvation diet (ultimately resulting in death) is a continuation and amplification of the Jabotinsky plan to “freeze the peace process,” which of course has nothing to do with peace.

“The real purpose of the ‘disengagement’ is to block negotiations with the Palestinians for dozens of years and to prevent any discussion about the West Bank, while at the same time extending the Israeli settlements in a way that will put an end to any possibility of a future Palestinian state,” noted Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery in October, 2004. In essence, Weisglass has told the Palestinians they remain in their Warsaw ghetto and slowly starve to death, or they can leave and renounce any idea of every returning. Zionism is all about running Palestinians off the land. “I support compulsory transfer,” or ethnic cleansing, declared David Ben-Gurion in 1937. “I don’t see anything immoral in it.” For Zionists, the Palestinians are “the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path,” as Chaim Weizmann saw it. Weisglass’ mentor, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, believed there was “no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel.” According to Yitzhak Avira, a Haganah Intelligence Service officer, the Zionist view in 1948 was that “the [Palestinian] Arabs are nothing. Every [Palestinian] Arab is a murderer, all of them should be slaughtered, all the [Palestinian] villages that are conquered should be burned.” Of course, in 2006, it would be impossible to kill every Palestinian and burn every Palestinian village, so instead the Zionist state has decided to slowly asphyxiate the Palestinians.

For the Zionists, the election of Hamas is a gift horse—it allows Israel to increase and extend punitive measures against the Palestinians. Last week, Sharon’s inheritor, Ehud Olmert, told Assistant U.S. Secretary of State David Welch that Israel sees “no separation between Abbas and the authority ruled by Hamas, and this must be understood and emphasized,” even though Mahmoud Abbas is considered a pragmatist, that is to say he will bend over backwards to please the Zionists, and has repeatedly called for an end to the al-Aqsa Intifada. However, the Jabotinsky Likudites in control of Israel will not be pleased until the Palestinians, the “rocks of Judea,” emigrate, are dead, or turn invisible.

On the other hand, the nightmare for the Jabotinsky faction is the possibility Hamas may recognize Israel’s right to exist. Hamas designate-PM Ismail Haniyeh indicated such recognition may be forthcoming. “If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them,” Haniyeh reportedly told the Washington Post, although he later denied making the statement. “Haniyeh was also quoted as saying Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, was ready to consider talks with Israel if the Jewish state withdrew from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and recognized the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees who fled in the 1948 war and their descendants,” Haaretz reported. Moreover, a “senior Russian diplomat said Sunday that Moscow expects Hamas to make a clear pledge to recognize Israel…. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal will head a delegation set to arrive in Moscow on March 3, the Islamic militant group said in a statement posted on its Web site Friday.”

Israel will never allow a Palestinian state, as envisioned by Hamas and the Palestinian people, and will certainly never allow the “right of return,” that is to say allow Palestinians forcefully removed from their land, many now living in squalid refugee camps, to reclaim their homes. In order to make sure the Palestinians are radicalized into perpetuity and will never agree to exist side-by-side with Israel, the “architect of Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian militants,” former head of Shin Bet, Avi Dichter, said late last month that “Israel should hunt down wanted Hamas leaders even if they become ministers in a newly elected Palestinian government…. Dichter singled out by name senior Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh when asked whether Hamas leaders-turned-ministers would be targeted for assassination despite their possible new roles in a democratically-elected government,” according to Reuters.

Of course, Haaretz does not bother to mention that Menachem Begin, the 6th Prime Minister of Israel, was a terrorist leader responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946, killing over 90 people, mostly civilians. Or that so beloved are Israel’s terrorists they have streets named after them (for instance, Avraham Stern, Nazi collaborator, Mussolini follower, and founder of the Lehi terrorist group, responsible for assassinating Count Folke Bernadotte and Lord Moyne, the British minister for Middle East affairs, has a street named after him in Tel Aviv). Dichter’s call for the assassination of the democratically elected Ismael Haniyeh is of course relegated to the back pages of national newspapers in this country. If, on the other hand, Haniyeh called for the assassination of Ehud Olmert, there would be 72 point headlines on the front page of the New York Times.