artikelen
Israel's Responsibility for the War in Gaza
By Yacov Ben Efrat (Challenge, 1 January 2009)
My article "Israel over Gaza" (see below) has aroused, to my surprise, many reactions, including some that disagreed with my placing responsibility exclusively on Israel. In so short a piece, admittedly, it was not possible to present the comprehensive analysis of a war whose roots lie far back in 1967. I had to make do, on occasion, with generalizations that may require a more detailed justification.According to the conventional wisdom, in 2005 Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, dismantling and destroying all its settlements there. Despite this, Hamas fired rockets on Israeli towns in the Negev. Since it is clear that such a violation of sovereignty demands a response, the present operation is justified, even at the price of massive killing that includes many innocent people.
In addition, those who oppose my position claim that I completely exonerate the Hamas regime, either because I am motivated by hatred of Israel as a conqueror and occupier, or because the Palestinians are so downtrodden that they're not responsible for their actions. Let me state clearly, then, that in placing exclusive responsibility on Israel, I do not overlook the misdeeds of the other side. Since 1993 the Palestinian leaders have committed every mistake in the book. They agreed to sign the Oslo Accords, which did not promise an independent state or dismantlement of settlements. They established a corrupt regime that collaborated with the Occupation. They lost the trust of their people, which shifted toward the extremist religious movement, Hamas.
Hamas, which promotes martyrdom for the sake of paradise, has undertaken a war of total annihilation against Israel. It uses armed struggle as a tool to raise its prestige among the Palestinian people, which has lost all hope, and, in particular, to take over the Palestinian Authority (PA). Hamas sees itself as the spearhead of the Islamic Awakening. It views its takeover in Gaza (June 2007) as a small step in the Muslim Brotherhood's march to conquer the region from Egypt to Jordan, from Syria to Saudi Arabia. The arrogant behavior of its leaders, and their strategic judgments, may appear indeed to be motivated by hatred of the Jews, but Hamas stores an equal if not greater hatred against the Arab secular regimes. It views them as an enemy as deadly as Israel – or deadlier. The cruel violence of the Gaza takeover was evidence of this hatred.
If all this is so, however, why place the blame exclusively on Israel? The reason is simple: It was and is exclusively in Israel's power to prevent what has happened and is happening in Gaza. Its economic and military power is enormous compared to the PA's. During decades of occupation, however, Israel did all it could to thwart Palestinian development. While ruling Gaza, it trampled it into the poverty and backwardness we see today. This is a reality that the use of force cannot improve.
Moreover, Israel used the Oslo Accords as a springboard to strengthen its hold on the West Bank. While negotiating with the Palestinians, it allowed new settlements to spring up, placed outposts on every hilltop, and massively expanded the settlement-neighborhoods around Jerusalem. (In this way it sliced the city off from the remainder of the West Bank while cutting the latter in two.) Without scruple, Israel closed its gates to thousands of commuting Palestinian workers; it did this after decades of flooding their home markets with its own goods, blocking the development of an economy that could employ them. Israel increased unemployment and poverty among Palestinians to a level that rivals the worst of the third-world countries. It has compensated for the missing labor by importing migrants under slavery conditions. In addition, Israel lent a hand to establishing a corrupt PA, through which it could control what went on in the Territories.
This shaky structure, the Oslo "peace", collapsed in late September 2000, after Ariel Sharon made a provocative tour of the al-Aqsa Compound in Jerusalem. Not long after, Israelis elected the same Sharon as Prime Minister. In his new capacity he decided to bring down the PA and place a blockade around its president, Yasser Arafat. The death of Arafat left the PA on the skids. Into the vacuum rushed Hamas, which had paved its way to power by carrying out suicide attacks in Israeli cities. Israel's response was to build the Separation Barrier, which remains a focus of violent confrontation. When all this did not do the trick, Sharon came up with the idea that lies at the heart of the present dispute: unilateral disengagement from Gaza.
Why unilateral? Why was Israel not smart enough to exploit this very significant measure in order to reach a comprehensive agreement with the PA? The answer is that Sharon did not want to negotiate on the fate of the West Bank and Jerusalem. On the contrary, he wanted to get rid of Gaza in order to strengthen his hold on much of the West Bank.
Because of its unilateral character, the disengagement from Gaza in August 2005 had the effect of further weakening PA President Abu Mazen's Fatah movement. Hamas won the parliamentary elections of January 2006. In short, unilateral disengagement – which won the support of all center, left and Arab Knesset members – turns out to have been the opening volley in the present war. Readers of Challenge and its sister publication in Hebrew, Etgar, will recall that we strongly opposed the unilateral approach, seeing where it would lead.
Today Israel's government concludes that once again there is no one to talk to. It has wasted two years in pointless palaver with Abu Mazen, where the two sides sit and sketch the portrait of a virtual Palestinian state. The real purpose of such idle talk is to postpone the day of reckoning. Israeli leaders explain the sterility of the talks in a manner that seems quite logical: Abu Mazen is weak, Hamas rules Gaza by force, and so there is no real partner. We persist, however, in asking our question: Who bears the main responsibility for this state of affairs?
When we raise the question of responsibility, we don't refer only to what Israel could have done and failed to do in the past. We also ask what can be done today, at once, before the tanks break through the fence and sow more destruction. We demand of Israel that it make an express commitment to withdraw from all the territories that it took in 1967, as well as announce its readiness to talk with every Palestinian and Arab factor that is willing to end the conflict.
The moment Israel commits itself in this way, the Hamas regime will lose its public support – unless, of course, it drastically changes. Such a commitment from Israel's side will enable the Palestinians to elect a leadership with a mandate to enter peace talks. The separation barrier will fall, and the distorted relationships between the two peoples will be transformed into normal relations between two states.
However, as long as Israel refuses to commit itself to such a program, as long as it seeks to strengthen its hold by hook or crook on the West Bank and Gaza, as long as it controls the gateways and prevents the establishment of a port or airport, as long as the Shin Beth runs life in the Territories by remote control, Israel has no moral right to massacre Palestinians. It has no right to defend its sovereignty while denying the sovereignty of the people next door. What's worse, the bloodshed is for nothing. As long as the Occupation lasts, resistance will last as well. This is the lesson which Israeli governments have obstinately refused to learn.
Israel over Gaza: A Campaign to Perpetuate the Occupation
By Yacov Ben Efrat (Challenge, 29 December 2008)Israel's military operation called Molten Lead started on Saturday, December 27, 2008 and took more than 200 lives in its first day, much to the satisfaction of the Israeli public. Already on Friday there were cries of "Go get 'em!" from the columns of the leading newspapers, and on Saturday the Gazans got what Israelis have long been wishing them. This was no spontaneous operation, no mere response to the recent firing of rockets on the towns of the Negev. In the preceding half year of calm, while warning that Hamas was arming itself, Israel carefully planned the attack to extract the highest possible price.
Officially, the campaign was intended to return that calm to the area under conditions more favorable to Israel. But the aims go farther. Israel is trying to bring Hamas back to the negotiating table with Egypt on terms that will be good for the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its president, Abu Mazen. Hamas failed to use the six-months calm "constructively" by reaching a deal with Abu Mazen, and now it is paying the price. Israel wants it to end armed resistance, recognize the legitimacy of the Oslo Accords, and accept the terms of the Quartet. In other words, Hamas is supposed to yield its control over Gaza and blend into the PA as a minor partner.
The countdown started in November when, rejecting an Egyptian proposal, Hamas failed to attend a meeting with the PA in Cairo. For Israel's Gaza campaign is no solo performance. The step was coordinated with Jordan and Egypt – and won Abu Mazen's blessing too. The Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas belongs, constitutes the main opposition to the Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian regimes. We have here the same Arab-Israeli axis that went against Hezbollah in Lebanon two years ago. Again it has total support from the White House. This time too, Israel serves as the executive agent, whose task is to reduce the common enemy.
Hamas, for its part, has made all possible mistakes. The first was its takeover of Gaza in June 2007, which caused the Israeli blockade to harden, harming civilians. The latest mistake was its resumption of armed struggle against Israel.
Hamas wants its rule over Gaza to be acknowledged, so that it can then compete with the PA for the West Bank. It has played a double game. On the one hand, it took part in the democratic process of the PA elections three years ago – even coming out victorious. On the other hand, the PA and its elections were a creation of the Oslo Agreement, which Hamas refuses to recognize.
Khaled Mashal, leader of the movement, has not contented himself with opening fronts against the PA and Israel. He has also provoked the Egyptian regime, not only by rejecting its proposals, but also by demanding that it open the Rafah Border, an act that would violate Egypt's international commitments. At the grassroots level, Hamas has joined the Muslim Brotherhood in a campaign of incitement against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
For all these reasons, Gaza today stands alone against Israeli military might. From his refuge in Damascus, Mashal calls for a third Intifada, although the Palestinians have not yet recovered from the second. While Hamas lusts for power, ordinary Palestinians are tired, confused, and above all frustrated. On one side they have Abu Mazen, who is ready to swallow all the frogs Israel puts on his plate. On the other side they have Hamas, caught in the conception that its regime is God's will, even at the cost of Heaven Now.
Within three minutes of starting its operation, Israel had killed or wounded hundreds. It is not difficult to imagine what will happen after three weeks of this. The purpose is to introduce Hamas to earthly reality – and, if possible, to restore the respect that Israel lost in Lebanon two years ago. In this regard, we may define Molten Lead as a repair operation for the second Lebanon War, in accordance with the recommendations of the Winograd Commission that investigated the debacle.
But what is Israel's real situation? Is it as strong as it is trying to appear by spilling blood in Gaza? What effect will the pictures of torn bodies, scattered in the yard of the Police Academy, ultimately have on Israelis? Or the piercing shrieks of the mothers? Most Israelis want to reach some form of normality and become a society that, in the words of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, "it's fun to live in." Where is the "fun" in such massacres, recycled for 60 years?
During the last 40 of those years, Israel has systematically trampled another people, refusing to end the Occupation. The Palestinians have lost all rights. Their life proceeds amid settler pogroms, military roadblocks, closures, separation walls, and gruelling poverty. Olmert has said (but only after it was clear he was on the way out) that there won't be any choice for Israel but to withdraw from all the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem. If that is really his position, he has wasted his term in empty talk. In action, Israel's position is the opposite. It does not withdraw, it does not dismantle even the outposts it calls illegal, most of the settlers remain in their homes, the army continues to control the borders, and Gaza continues to sink in despair.
Molten Lead has no political justification. Even if Hamas does return to the negotiating table, Israel will have nothing to offer. For it remains as unwilling as ever to pay the price of peace – that is, to end the Occupation. Because it has not paid, the rockets fall on Sderot and other Negev towns. Israel then uses the rockets as an excuse for continuing not to pay.
Another excuse is the "no partner" mantra. When Israel says it is ready for a Palestinian state, it does not mean in all the Occupied Territories – its talk of a state, therefore, is wool over the eyes. Israel's unwillingness to pay is the source of Hamas's strength. The movement rests on three pillars: poverty, the weakness of the PA, and the lack of a diplomatic prospect.
It is Israel that plunged Gaza into its present condition. The disengagement of 2005 was unilateral, refusing any role to the PA and leaving the field open for the Hamas takeover. The responsibility for what is now occurring in Gaza rests, therefore, almost exclusively on Israel. Perhaps Molten Lead will end, indeed, in an "improved" cease-fire. Perhaps we shall soon see the Hamas leadership in Cairo again. But a renewal of calm will result in no solution. What solution can there be as long as the Territories continue to sink in corruption, poverty and despair? How long will it take until a new calm gives way to another massacre?
And how long can Israeli society go on living as an Occupier? How long until the country's internal social gaps, together with the ever worsening conflict, land a blow many times worse than rockets from Gaza? The basic problem isn't Hamas. It is the nationalist consensus of Israel's political parties, which have prodded the present transitional government to carry out this massacre, whose only real purpose is to continue putting off the price of peace.
© Dries van Agt (2009) - Disclaimer - Hosted by WeHostIT