A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying
on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike
in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war
in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state
of Israel in May 1948
involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly
resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948,
Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the
Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an
utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this judgment was
too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush
administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli
army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state
of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist
colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do
with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was
to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military
control over the Palestinian
territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal
military occupations of modern times.
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable
damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948
refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural
resources, Gaza’s prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a
case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate
de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood
and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market
for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as
to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel
and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political
independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in
the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral,
illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the
instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the
Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local
residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable
land and the lion’s share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with
these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject
poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less
than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised
values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for
political extremism.
In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel
Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000
settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the
Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the
Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence
Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a
contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after,
another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope
for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply
incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw
unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement
blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus
not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to
further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move
undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national
interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national
identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the
Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.
Israel’s settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers
continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza
was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the
Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic
booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the
hapless inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of
democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire
history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a
great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration
with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all
the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine
democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January
2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian
Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to
recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely
and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in
ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down
by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed
with a significant part of the international community imposing economic
sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the
oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the
victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel’s propaganda machine
persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that
they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little
more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and
that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the
Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no
better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire
to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom
and dignity.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate
its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological
rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation
of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity
government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel,
however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule
between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the
nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by
Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah
leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power.
Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate
a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of
the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in
June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December
was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas
government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the
Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The
declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until
its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel’s terms. The undeclared aim is
to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a
humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and
statehood.
The timing of the war was determined by political
expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up
to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to
prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to
deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their
reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006.
Israel’s cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the
pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the
twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all
the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council
for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a
ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of
Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides
leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a
conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a
small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and
overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied,
as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity
overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of
bokhim ve-yorim, “crying and shooting”.
To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party
in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with
an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror.
Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against
Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month
ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal
but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand
protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right
to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was
totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years
after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the
other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza,
including 222 children.
Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong.
This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel’s entire
record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of
Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into
force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the
agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the
strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in
employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At
the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying
food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants,
and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing
the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the
border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective
punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched
by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current
war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core
messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire
agreements; that Israel’s objective is the defence of its population; and that
Israel’s forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians.
Israel’s spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message
across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel’s actions
from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the
ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas
men. Israel’s objective is not just the defence of its population but the
eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people
against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is
guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has
brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a
humanitarian catastrophe.
The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is
savage enough. But Israel’s insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the
logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll
of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a
land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.
No amount of military escalation can buy Israel
immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the
death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their
resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that
glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the
conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel’s concept of
security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other
community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting
but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to
negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967
borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the
same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on
the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel’s record over the past
four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a
rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state
habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction
and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political
purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must
wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian
neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the
past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of
course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not
mandatory to do so.
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations
at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the
Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment