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The 16 Year Siege on Gaza is Almost Over
Blinken Screams This is Your Last Chance Over the Fence
When I heard that Secretary Blinken said that this was an “extraordinary generous offer”, I thought he was talking about how he might be giving Israel a chance to stop the war now and continue to get more weapons or get cut off once and for all. So, I clicked the little iPhone news box. Nope. He was just screaming like a hostage negotiator outside a bank with snipers on the roof tops: This is your last chance before we throw in the grenades.
My disappointment sunk to a new low for this guy, who I thought was a decent human. Instead, he was telling the Gazans that if Hamas doesn’t surrender, we’re going to let Bibi to start blasting away into Rafah like he’s saying. Horrible, I thought, and when I looked up the situation to get a reminder of what being Gazan is like, I realized he’s worse than I thought.
Human Rights Watch called Gaza “an open air prison.” For 16 sixteen years the small strip has been barricaded by Israel. The Israelis maintain a choke hold, a blockade around the city. Palestinians are not free to leave. They must beg to travel, and Israeli let’s few out, only under conditions it harshly controls.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem recognizes how nasty its own government is. They note that no one gets in or out, “except in…