A step towards peace in Gaza
The Palestinians in Gaza blame Israel and the United States for their misery and helplessness. Since the days of Moshe Dayan and the 6 Days War, Israel believes its survival as a state requires massive retaliation to any killing of Israeli citizens. Attacking Israel with rockets from Gaza are considered justification for massive retaliation. It is a vicious circle of ever-escalating violence the only end of which will be a genocidal total war. There is a way, however, to break the vicious circle of terrorist attacks and massive retaliation and create a climate for peaceful co-existence between the Palestinians and the Israeli people the majority of whom want to live in peace. The economic despair of the Palestinians must be addressed and resolved. Only Israel and the oil rich Muslim states can make that happen. It requires time to build infrastructure and then develop business and industry. But first, the current public relations disaster that Israel has created must end. Israel must make peace possible.
The first step on the road to peace is for Israel to restore, rebuild, or replace the Hospitals in Gaza and assure all the Palestinians the kind of quality medical care and treatment that Israelis take for granted.
The Israeli military must protect the hospitals as hospitals while they are cleaning out the tunnel systems which are at the heart of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel. The Israeli military is certainly capable of holding the hospitals and keeping the immediate neighborhoods surrounding them safe from terrorist incursions. It would be up to the Palestinians living in Gaza to determine just how long the Israeli military must remain to protect the hospitals and keep them from becoming Hamas bases. When the Palestinian people are ready to renounce Hamas they can seek to create alliances with other states including Israel. The Palestinian people need to renounce Hamas and its ongoing war to eliminate the State of srael and kill Jews from bases in Gaza.
The pharmaceutical industry and medical supply companies of the world could supply all the medications and medical supplies the Gaza hospitals. The Israelis and the oil-rich states of the Muslim world could underwrite the cost which would be only a fraction of the cost of supplying weapons to the warring parties. Israel has one of the most technologically advanced healthcare systems in the world. If there is insufficient staff for the hospitals from among the Palestinians, the Israelis should make up the difference with their own physicians, nurses, and skilled medical technicians.
The entire western boundary of Gaza is the Mediterranean Sea. The United States Navy hospital ships Mercy and Comfort have 1000 bed, fully equipped medical facilities on board. Immediate deployment of one of them to Gaza would deliver vital humanitarian support and provide a beacon of hope to the two million residents of Gaza.
USNS Hope
The Royal Navy’s RFA (Royal Fleet Auxiliary) Argus, a highly capable 100 bed facility, is already deployed in the Middle East region, as a “Primary Casualty Receiving Ship.”
Providing tertiary hospital care aboard a United States Navy hospital ship and ferrying severely injured patients in well-marked Israeli helicopters from the rubble of the battlefield to the hospital ship would certainly help dispel the image of the Israeli military bringing death and destruction from the air. By supplying medical care and treatment for the innocent Palestinian people of Gaza would begin to change the perception of both the United States and Israel throughout the civilized world. It should be hard for the mother of a child who has been seriously injured and recovered through the care of American and Israeli doctors to continue hating the people who saved her child.
Making the Gaza hospitals islands of hope for the Palestinian people would give them an immediate view of a possible future where peace replaces war.