Tony Blair in June 2009 speaking at a press
conference in Gaza calling for a quick reconstruction. Photograph: Hatem
Moussa/AP
The savage attack Israel unleashed against Gaza on
27 December 2008 was both immoral and unjustified. Immoral in the use of force
against civilians for political purposes. Unjustified because Israel had a
political alternative to the use of force. The home-made Qassam rockets fired
by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the excuse, not the
reason for Operation Cast Lead. In June 2008, Egypt had brokered a ceasefire
between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. Contrary to Israeli
propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly
from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. Yet on 4 November Israel violated the
ceasefire by launching a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. When Hamas
retaliated, Israel seized the renewed rocket attacks as the excuse for
launching its insane offensive. If all Israel wanted was to protect
its citizens from Qassam rockets, it only needed to observe the ceasefire.
While the war failed in its primary aim of regime
change in Gaza, it left behind a trail of death, devastation, destruction and
indescribable human suffering. Israel lost 13 people, three in so-called
friendly fire. The Palestinian death toll was 1,387, including 773 civilians
(115 women and 300 children), and more than 5,300 people were injured. The entire
population of 1.5 million was left traumatised. Across the Gaza Strip, 3,530 homes were
completely destroyed, 2,850 severely damaged and 11,000 suffered structural
damage.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian
Refugees, tending to the needs of four million Palestinian refugees, stated
that Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age”; its
inhabitants reduced to building homes from mud after the fierce 22-day
offensive.
War crimes were committed and possibly even crimes
against humanity, documented in horrific detail in Judge Richard Goldstone’s
report for the UN human rights council. The report condemned both Israel and
Hamas, but reserved its strongest criticism for Israel, accusing it of
deliberately targeting and terrorising civilians in Gaza. The British
government did not take part in the vote on the report, sending a signal to the
hawks in Israel that they can continue to disregard the laws of war. Gordon
Brown’s 2007 appointment as a patron of the Jewish National Fund UK presumably
played a part in the adoption of this pusillanimous position.
One year on, the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely
populated areas on earth, continues to teeter on the verge of a humanitarian
disaster. Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, in force since June 2007,
restricts the flow not only of arms but also food, fuel and medical supplies to
well below the minimum necessary for normal, everyday life. Reconstruction work
has hardly begun because of the Israeli ban on bringing in cement and other
building materials to Gaza. Thousands of families still live in the ruins of
their former homes. Hospitals, health facilities, schools, government buildings
and mosques cannot be rebuilt. Nor can the basic infrastructure of the Gaza
Strip, including Gaza City’s sewage disposal plant. Today, 80% of Gaza’s
population remain dependent on food aid, 43% are unemployed, and 70% live on
less than $1 a day.
Meanwhile, the so-called peace process cannot be
revived because Israel refuses to freeze settlement expansion on the West
Bank. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently agreed to a temporary freeze
of 10 months, but this does not apply to the 3,000 pre-approved housing units
to be built on the West Bank or to any part of Greater Jerusalem. It’s like two
men negotiating the division of a pizza while one continues to gobble it up.
Politically, the disjunction between words and deeds
persists. Appeals to the Israeli government to lift or relax the blockade of
Gaza were not backed up by effective pressure or the threat of sanctions. In
fact, the only effective pressure was applied by the US on the Egyptian
government – to seal its border with Gaza. Egypt has its own reason for
complying: Hamas is ideologically allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, the
Islamic opposition to the Egyptian regime. The tunnels under the border
separating Egypt from the Gaza Strip bring food and material relief to the
people under siege. Yet, under US supervision and with the help of US army
engineers, Egypt is building an 18-metre-deep underground steel wall to disrupt
the tunnels and tighten the blockade.
The wall of shame, as Egyptians call it, will
complete the transformation of Gaza into an open-air prison. It is the
cruellest example of the concerted Israeli-Egyptian-US policy to isolate and
prevent Hamas from leading the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.
Hamas is habitually dismissed by its enemies as a purely terrorist organisation.
Yet no one can deny that it won a fair and free election in the West Bank as
well as Gaza in January 2006. Moreover, once Hamas gained power through the
ballot box, its leaders adopted a more pragmatic stand towards Israel than
that enshrined in its charter, repeatedly expressing its readiness to negotiate
a long-term ceasefire. But there was no one to talk to on the Israeli side.
Israel adamantly refused to recognise the Hamas-led
government. The US and the European Union followed, resorting to economic sanctions
in a vain attempt to turn the people against their elected leaders. This cannot
possibly bring security or stability because it is based on the denial of
the most elementary human rights of the people of Gaza and the collective
political rights of the Palestinian people. Through its special relationship
with the US and its staunch support for Israel, the British government is
implicated in this shameful policy.
At present the British public is preoccupied with Tony Blair and the war
in Iraq. What is often overlooked is that this was only one aspect of a
disastrous British policy towards the Middle East, inaugurated by Blair, and
which shows no sign of changing under his successor.
One of Blair’s arguments used to justify the Iraq
war was that it would help bring justice to the long-suffering Palestinians. In
his House of Commons speech on 18 March 2003, he promised that action against
Iraq would form part of a broader engagement with the problems of the Middle
East. He even declared that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was as
important to Middle East peace as removing Saddam Hussein from power.
Yet by focusing international attention on Iraq, the
war further marginalised the Palestinian question. To be fair, Blair persuaded
the Quartet (a group consisting of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia) to issue
the Roadmap in 2003, which called for the creation of an independent
Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But President George
Bush was not genuinely committed and only adopted it under pressure from his allies.
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s hard-line prime minister at the time, wrecked the plan
by continuing to expand Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Could Blair
really not have realised that for Bush the special relationship that counted
was the one with Israel? Every time Bush had to choose between Blair and
Sharon, he chose Sharon.
Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August
2005 was not a contribution to the Roadmap but an attempt to unilaterally
redraw the borders of Greater Israel and part of a plan to entrench the
occupation there. Yet in return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon
extracted from the US a written agreement to Israel’s retention of the major
settlement blocs on the West Bank. Bush’s support amounted to an abrupt
reversal of US policy since 1967, which regarded the settlements as illegal and
as an obstacle to peace. Blair publicly endorsed the pact, probably to preserve
a united Anglo-American front at any price. It was the most egregious British betrayal
of the Palestinians since the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
In July 2006, at the height of the savage Israeli
onslaught on Lebanon, Blair opposed a security council resolution for an
immediate and unconditional ceasefire: he wanted to give Israel an opportunity
to destroy Hezbollah, the radical Shi’ite religious-political movement. One
year later, in June 2007, he resigned from office. That day he was appointed
the Quartet’s special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. His main
sponsor was Bush and his blatant partisanship on behalf of Israel was probably
considered a qualification. His appointment coincided with the collapse of the
Palestinian national unity government, the reassertion of Fatah rule in the
West Bank and the violent seizure of power by Hamas in Gaza.
Blair’s main tasks were to mobilise international
assistance for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, to promote good
governance and the rule of law in the Palestinian territories, and to further
Palestinian economic development. His broader mission, was “to promote an end
to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”.
On taking up his appointment, Blair said that: “The
absolute priority is to try to give effect to what is now the consensus across
the international community – that the only way of bringing stability and peace
to the Middle East is a two-state solution.” His appointment was received with
great satisfaction by the Israelis and with utter dismay by the Arabs.
In his two and a half years as special envoy, Blair
has achieved remarkably little. True, Blair helped persuade the Israelis to
reduce the number of West Bank checkpoints from 630 to 590; he helped to create
employment opportunities; and he may have contributed to a slight improvement
in living standards in Palestine. But the Americans remained fixated on
security rather than on economic development, and their policy remains skewed
in favour of Israel. Barack Obama made a promising start as president by
insisting on a complete settlement freeze on the West Bank, but was compelled
to back down, dashing many of our high hopes.
One reason for Blair’s disappointing results is that
he wears too many hats and cannot, as he promised, be “someone who is on the
ground spending 24/7 on the issue”. Another reason is his “West Bank first”
attitude – continuing the western policy of bolstering Fatah and propping up
the ailing Palestinian Authority against Hamas. His lack of commitment to Gaza
is all too evident. During the Gaza war, he did not call for a ceasefire. He
has one standard for Israel and one for its victims. His attitude to Gaza is
to wait for change rather than risk incurring the displeasure of his American
and Israeli friends. As envoy, Blair has been inside Gaza only twice; once to
visit a UN school just beyond the border and once to Gaza City. His project
for sanitation in northern Gaza was never completed because he could not persuade
the Israelis to allow in the last small load of pipes needed. A growing group
of western politicians has publicly acknowledged the necessity of talking to
Hamas if meaningful progress is to be achieved; Blair is not one of their
number.
Blair has totally failed to fulfil the official role
of the envoy “to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”,
largely for reasons beyond his control. The most important of these is Israel’s
determination to perpetuate the isolation and the de-development of Gaza and
deny the Palestinian people a small piece of land – 22% of Mandate-era Palestine,
to be precise – on which to live in freedom and dignity. It is a policy that
Baruch Kimmerling, the late Israeli sociologist, named “politicide” – the
denial to the Palestinian people of any independent political existence in
Palestine.
Partly, however, Blair’s failure is due to his own
personal limitations; his inability to grasp that the fundamental issue in
this tragic conflict is not Israeli security but Palestinian national rights,
and that concerted and sustained international pressure is required to compel
Israel to recognise these rights. The core issue cannot be avoided: there can
be no settlement of the conflict without an end to the Israeli occupation.
There is international consensus for a two-state solution, but Israel rejects
it and Blair has been unable or unwilling to use the Quartet to enforce it.
Blair’s failure to stand up for Palestinian independence
is precisely what endears him to the Israeli establishment. In February of last
year, while the Palestinians in Gaza were still mourning their dead, Blair
received the Dan David prize from Tel Aviv University as the “laureate for the
present time dimension in the field of leadership”. The citation praised him
for his “exceptional intelligence and foresight, and demonstrated moral
courage and leadership”. The prize is worth $1m. I may be cynical, but I cannot
help viewing this prize as absurd, given Blair’s silent complicity in Israel’s continuing
crimes against the Palestinian people.
Avi Shlaim is professor of international relations
at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and the author of Israel and Palestine:
Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (Verso, 2009). His fee for this article
has been donated to Medical Aid for Palestine
No comments:
Post a Comment