The Media started drawing parallels between Ukraine and Israel, HAMAS and DPR (self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic”) almost at the same time when Israel started bombing Gaza. How correct it is to draw such parallels, and what are the people who say so missing?
Three Israeli teenagers disappeared in mid-June on the Western Bank of the Jordan river. Israeli authorities called this a kidnapping and, as usual, accused HAMAS of it. The official version says that all three of them were found dead some time later. Palestinian party denied it had something to do with the incident, but it didn’t matter, as Israel started a scale bombing of the blockade Sector Gaza.
Detailed analysis of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its reasons is not a matter for a single article - though knowing history makes understanding the peculiarities of confrontation easier - but there’s another thing we find interesting here.
Many Ukrainian Media started drawing parallels like “Ukraine = Israel”, “HAMAS = DPR” almost at the same time when Israel started bombing Gaza. Journalists and bloggers launched an active campaign of proving that HAMAS, DPR and LPR are the same kind, and even compared their aims and methods. Most of those authors made an univocal conclusion: Palestinian resistance has no difference from Donbass “rebels”, and both Ukraine and Israel are absolutely right in aiming to free their land from terrorists. At this point the local analytics missed some important issues - either because of ignorance or of malintention.
First, Palestinian Arabs lived on their land long before the Jewish State was created, and HAMAS was created as a result of Israeli occupation. Israel, inch by inch, forced the Palestinians from the land granted to them by the UN plan of 1947 for dividing Palestine, and created separate isolated enclaves. This is the way how sektor Gaza appeared, among others. Does it reassemble the creation of DPR or LPR? Hardly.
Second, in Palestine we see confrontation between two different peoples, and, in fact, two states, - not a confrontation within one state. Palestine (including Gaza) is an acknowledged non-Member Observer State status in the United Nations. And who acknowledged DPR? South Ossetia? A serious international breakthrough, indeed…
Third, HAMAS came to power in Palestine after parliamentary elections, not after forced takeovers of Israeli cities and importing heavy vehicles from abroad. Palestinian party has a full support from most Palestinians instead of hiding behind their backs, as some analysts say. How many people living in Donbass are really happy of the DPR and LPR's existence, I wonder?
Fourth, unlike DPR, Palestinian resistance doesn’t kill peasants and destroy infrastructure on the territories they control. Representatives of Israeli enforcement agencies and armed colonists, but not the peasants and children.
In this situation Ukraine makes a great difference from Israel, as Ukraine doesn’t go for massive bombing of Donetsk and Luhansk residential areas excusing themselves with presumption “DPR/LPR fighters might be hiding there”. At the same time,more than 200 Palestinian peasants were killed in the bombings of Sector Gaza, dozens of houses and infrastructure objects destroyed.
Fifth, one shouldn’t rely greatly on the fact that HAMAS is in the list of terrorist organisations in the US and a range of other western countries, as the procedure of adding some or other organisation to those lists is sometimes absurd. Thus, the US didn’t add some Chechen squads to those lists although they did commit terrorist attacks during war with Russia and never denied it and took responsibility for those acts. If DPR and LPR still aren’t in such lists, does this mean that Ukraine has no right to confront them using force?
Sixth, most fighters of Palestinian resistance are local people, inspired by the idea to free their occupied land - not the sellswords receiving salary from either local oligarchs or foreign secret services. I can’t recall any Arab country to have a solemn goodbye ceremony for the soldiers that were to be sent to fight against Israel.
This is why HAMAS is not DPR, and confrontation between Israel and Palestine differs from the Anti-Terrorist Operation in Ukraine. Drawing any parallels between them is trying to compare issues different both in nature and charachter.
And, by the way, seventh - HAMAS never hit commercial flights.
Mr.Dilyaver Saidakhmetov
