Before it is dark and when there is no communication with the world," wrote Dr Eyad Sarraj, the prominent human rights advocate, from Gaza last Tuesday night, "I want to tell you that current Israeli policy of squeezing on has the aim of pushing Egypt to open its borders with Gaza and bring the situation to prior 1967."

He went on: "Israel will then close its borders with Gaza, separate the (Gaza) Strip from the West Bank and destroy the peace proposals of one or two states. In short Israel is fulfilling the (Ariel) Sharon unilateral withdrawal strategy.

If Egypt fails to open its borders with Gaza, Israel will push us through Rafah towards the Sinai desert. Wait for the exodus."

Understandably, the Palestinian psychiatrist, like the million-and-a-half fellow residents in the Gaza Strip, may have sounded desperate and frantic. After all his stepson, for one, his e-mail explained, is on a "ventilator for asthma every night. What will happen to him when our generator is not running any more?"

More so, he continued, "what will happen to hospitals, vaccines and blood banks? What will happen to patients on dialysis machines, and to babies in incubators?"

But he is not very far off from what Israel may succeed in doing (as it has done in the past), thanks to the silence of the lambs in the Arab world and among its influential supporters in the West in again failing to immediately confront Israel.

Hardly had the US President George W. Bush ended his visit to five Arab countries, the Palestinian territories and Israel when the latter's wrath descended on the "enemy territory", as the Gaza Strip was described in a cabinet decision last September.

This gave rise to suspicions in the Arab world that the reprehensible Israeli action had been cleared with Bush before he returned home from his historic and not very fruitful Mideast tour.

The Israeli measures, however, came on the heels of an ill-timed Bush administration request, voiced publicly during the trip by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the Arab countries must do more to reach out to Israel as a way to do their part to nudge the Mideast peace process.

Rice must then have had a memory lapse, forgetting the Arab peace plan which has been sidetracked by Israel.

The merciless Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip began six months ago after the regrettable division among the Palestinians, particularly between the Fatah group led by President Mahmoud Abbas who is based in Ramallah on the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamic militant group which had won the parliamentary elections, and nowadays is in control of the Gaza Strip.

The unexpected results of the elections, which were monitored by international observers, including former US president Jimmy Carter, paved the way for the split in Palestinian ranks.

Ruined

By all accounts, the Western-supported Israeli siege has ruined the Palestinian economy there. A CNN reporter, Ben Wedeman, has described Gaza as a "wasteland", pointing out that "four out of five Palestinians depend on international aid ... the economy has come to a standstill".

An intensified economic embargo was imposed last Thursday when all entrances to the Strip were closed and fuel supplies were stopped. All in the hope of dethroning Hamas and in a short-sighted response to continued shelling by Arab militants of Israeli towns in the border areas.

In reaction to the gas-deprived situation, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said contemptuously that as far as he is concerned, "all the residents of Gaza can walk". A UN spokesman said that "collective penalties" for an entire population were illegal under international law.

Israeli incursions and air raids have killed 810 Palestinians in the past two years, including 19 in one day last week. "Has the daily mass killing in Gaza improved the (Israeli) security situation?" asked Gideon Levy, a columnist with the Israeli paper Haaretz.

"No, it has only made it worse," he added, pointing out that as long as Bush was in the region "Israel refrained from liquidations" but when he left "we resumed the killing."

His conclusion: the "continued killing in Gaza ... will not weaken the Palestinians' struggle for freedom and will not bring security for Israel."

What all this should mean for Israel and the West is that the Palestinian question cannot be solved militarily but through negotiations. Dividing the Palestinians or taking advantage of a divided Palestine will not bring security to Israel or the Arab World.

As the heads of churches in Occupied Jerusalem and the Holy Land said in a statement, "we pray for the day when the people of Gaza will be free from occupation, from political differences, from violence and from despair ... (and) only bold steps towards just peace and ending the violence will protect human life and the dignity of both (Palestinians and Israelis)."