This is Palestine, in Your Inbox, trying to make sense of the madness.

How to Lead a Gaza Teach-In

Over the past few weeks, I’ve led a number of teach-ins on the history of Gaza:

Here is a link to the presentation.

This issue summarizes the presentation’s contents. Feel free to download it & revise it for your own needs or purposes. Now, more than ever, people are hungry and thirty for context and history. The deck provides a detailed overview of the past 56 years of Gaza’s history, including notes in every slide with links to sources, articles and books.

The first 7 slides deal primarily with Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip from 1967-1987. This slide below summarizes Israel’s violent suppression of Palestinian political freedoms during it’s first twenty years of occupation:

The next 10 slides cover the outbreak of the First Intifada, Hama's ascendency, the Oslo Process, including Camp David and the Second Intifada. The slide below provides some understanding of why the Oslo Process was flawed and how it led to a deterioration in Palestinian rights, freedom and hope:

The next 5 slides cover Israel’s “Disengagement” plan, the rise of Hamas to power in 2007, including a number of its peace overtures during this period. One thing I would highlight in this section is a point made by Ismail Haniyeh in a 2006 Guardian op-ed, namely, that “We Hamas are for peace and want to put an end to bloodshed … if the world is willing to engage in a constructive and fair process in which we and the Israelis are treated as equals.” This Palestinian demand has been consistently rejected by successive Israeli governments, and goes a long way to explaining why violence persists in Israel and Palestine:

The next 12 slides cover the humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded in Gaza since Israel (w/ Egyptian support) imposed a suffocating land, air & sea blockade on the Strip in 2007. The result of this illegal and cruel act of collective punishment on 2 million Palestinians had been that 80% of Gazans have become dependent of food handouts just to survive & 50% have had to forgo health care or utilities payments just to put enough food on the table. The 16-year long siege has led to a water crisis, electricity crisis, sewage crisis, unemployment crisis, a public health crisis, a mental health crisis and total hopelessness and despair. This slide covers just one of those crises, namely, that Palestinians who cannot receive medical treatment in the Gaza Strip owing to the blockade are also denied exist permits to leave, resulting is tremendous amount of easily avoidable suffering and loss of life:

The last 8 slides cover the 5 wars that Israel has waged on Gaza in 2008-9, 2012, 2014, 2018 & 2021, and the war crimes committed by both the Israeli military and Palestinian militant groups. Altogether, during this period, Israel killed ~3,500+ & wounded ~15,000+ Palestinians in Gaza, while Hamas & other Palestinian groups in Gaza killed 185 Israelis. Israel carried out countless war crimes during these assaults, including collective punishment, disproportionate use of force and indiscriminately targeting of civilians. Hamas & Islamic Jihad also carried out war crimes, owing to the indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilian population. Here’s the slide on the 2018 war waged on Gaza:

Feel free to download the deck and or revise it for your own needs. Also, feel free to share any feedback, correct any errors or mistakes or anything you think I should add, remove or edit. You can do that by just replying to this email.

Sending much love.

-Zach