‘We are the victims’: Palestinians in Gaza react to ICC prosecutor’s decision
Even as the ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, Palestinians in the war-battered coastal enclave are facing daily death and displacement, and the announcement brings little comfort.
Local man Sami Abu Zeid emphasised that civilians were continuing to suffer. “We’re the victims, although we have nothing to do with Israel or Hamas. We are not Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” he told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah.
“We’re civilians … What is my guilt or my children’s guilt? What’s my guilt or my siblings’ guilt? What is my guilt or my neighbour’s guilt? Why was I displaced and why do I have to suffer every day?”
Another Gaza resident, Majdi Sleim, criticised the ICC prosecutor’s decision to seek warrants for the leaders of Hamas alongside Netanyahu and Gallant. “We tell the prosecutor that the cards are being shuffled because there’s equivalence between the victims and the oppressed,” Sleim said.
“How is it possible to equalise between those who defend their country and freedom – and the ICC say they value everything in accordance with humanitarian standards – and between those who target children, women and elderly people? Those who destroy homes and infrastructure and humanitarian sectors in the Gaza Strip?”
There is no equivalence between oppressor and oppressed, yet killing civilians and taking hostages are war crimes on both sides. That is the equivalence. However the industrial scale Israel employs in killing civilians including starvation and total devastation of Gaza, there is no equivalence there to the horrific Oct 7 attack. Then there are the terrorist attacks by Settlers, backed by Israel and the IDF, the continuous raids, harassment and destruction of the West Bank which have been happening for many decades, the blockade and walling in of. If it weren't for all that Hamas wouldn't exist. Netanyahu even supported Hamas to drive a wedge between Fatah 'controlling' the West Bank and Gaza.
The legitimate resistance has used horrible tactics, yet any peaceful protests like the March of return have only been met by violence and more vetos by the US. Oct 7 blame lies not only on Hamas, it also lies on Netanyahu, the UN and the West in general. It took 75 years of resistance and the near total destruction of Gaza for the west to finally recognize, we have a real problem. It took social media to break through the narrative that western main stream media has been holding onto since 1948, to break through Aipac and for people to realize what has really been going on there for over 75 years.
