The irony in Gaza is striking

For the first time in a long time, the Israeli military has allowed the international media to report freely wherever and whatever they wanted in Gaza, as operations of evicting colonists from Palestinian land took place.

This comes as a major contrast to Israel's normally restrictive attitude; Israeli killings of innocent Palestinian civilians, demolition of Palestinian homes and uprooting of olive trees are the kind of things that do not get accommodated by the Jewish state and these events are never recipients of Israeli "kindness".

The way this coverage has taken place makes some wonder who is the victim in the story? Lines have certainly been blurred so that the colonists are seen using images of the Holocaust (with some colonists wearing yellow stars like the ones Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis) to convey the injustice that has been done to them. The common message is these people have been forced to leave "their" land and not the land that has been occupied illegally by their country Israel since 1967.

At times, it felt like some of these colonists were performing to the media, with continuous acts of weeping and collapsing, then rising again and wanting to be carried off to the buses, instead of walking. There was definitely a melodramatic element played out in the entire process.

There was little mention of who these people were and why they were being evicted. After all, these people are the same people who willingly and forcefully took someone else's land (and water and airspace and harvest) despite the international community calling their acts illegal time and again.

Transformed lives

Gaza housed 9,000 colonists, who transformed the lives of more than one million Palestinians into utter misery and deprivation.

Yes, they (the colonists) called their colonies home, but they built these homes at the expense of someone else. And now, as the colonists leave for "temporary stays" in other illegal colonies in the West Bank, they receive compensation from their government, in some cases up to $400,000 (Dh1.47 million)!

So, what of the expansion of colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem? Why is that not being questioned in the media? Sooner or later, the question of their illegality will rise and Sharon, the original architect, will have to make a similar decision.

The media has emphasised how difficult it has been for the defiant colonists to be escorted out of their homes, but one point must be made clearly: it is much more difficult for people to be expelled from their homes (which belonged to their parents and grandparents) with no place to go and absolutely no financial help or international assistance, which is what Palestinians faced in 1948 and 1967. There's an analogy one won't read or hear on Western mainstream media.

As always, one concludes that Israeli wrongdoings are always downplayed and often overlooked while Palestinian acts of resistance are exaggerated and often dubbed as terrorism.