January 23, 2008
The Assault on Gaza
By Nayyer Ali, MD
For the last two weeks, the Israeli army and air force have been pounding the Gaza Strip. This action has been roundly condemned by most of the world, but has been totally supported by the US government. In the Congress, the House voted 395 to 5 in support of the assault. Bush has been his usual blank check for Israel. But no one in the US government bothers to ask why this attack is justified, or what it can reasonably accomplish in exchange for the bloodshed and mayhem it has created.
The Israelis have trotted out their usual lame justification that this was forced upon them by Hamas and its rocket fire. In fact, Hamas abided by the six-month truce that expired in mid-December. It was Israel that broke the truce in November when it attacked and killed several Hamas members. Over the last eight years, academic analysis revealed that out of 25 periods of extended calm between the two sides (over seven days in duration), Israel broke the ceasefires first 24 times. Israel likes to paint itself as merely responding to provocation, but in reality it is usually trigger-happy.
While Hamas did a reasonable job abiding by the truce, Israel refused to fulfill its obligation of lifting the siege and collective punishment of the 1.5 million people trapped in Gaza. Instead it sought to damage Hamas by maintaining its illegal blockade that is a violation of the Geneva Convention. Hamas refused to formally extend the truce in December because of Israel’s bad faith, which then led to resumption of the rocket fire. These rockets of Hamas, which are very crude and practically useless weapons, have killed 15 Israelis over the last several years. Hardly grounds for initiating an attack that kills and wounds thousands of Palestinians. The Israelis have pushed into the tiny Gaza Strip, and have to soon decide whether they intend to fully reoccupy Gaza with their army, or instead sign a new truce with Hamas on some other terms.
Israel prefers to paint the situation as being about the rights of Israel. They would like the world to accept that the problem is Hamas, and its intransigent rejection of Israel’s right to exist. This is a false understanding of the situation. The heart of the problem is not Hamas, and never will be. The real problem is the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. The Palestinians are the only people on the planet that are occupied. They have no statehood, and the government of Israel has the right to kill any Palestinian man, woman, or child, at any time of its choosing for which the Palestinian people have no legal recourse. No Palestinian family can ever bring a suit for wrongful death against an Israeli citizen acting on behalf of the state or against the state. The 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the real problem that Israelis still cannot bring themselves to deal with. Invading Gaza or destroying Hamas will not change any of that.
Hamas is not an entity that can be destroyed. It is a representation of the will of the Palestinian people, at least some portion of it. Support for Hamas over the last 15 years has correlated very closely with the extent that the Palestinians believe a peaceful negotiated end of the occupation was possible. Over the last eight years it has become clearer and clearer that Israel has no intention of ever ending the occupation. What it wants is to wall off the Palestinian population into large open air prisons like Gaza, then colonize all the choice bits of the West Bank, and meanwhile retain overall mastery of all the land between the Jordan River and the sea. This fantasy relies on the Palestinians agreeing to individually and collectively surrender their identities and futures so that Zionism can flourish. This is the real purpose of the assault on Gaza, just the inevitable next stage of Israel’s attempt to bludgeon the Palestinians into submission.
To any sane person this is not a strategy that will work. The Palestinians are not going to settle for scraps. Israel can only end this conflict when it comes to realize that it requires a full return of all occupied land, and a complete dismantling of the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This is a step that the majority of Israelis still oppose, which is why there is no chance for a real peace in the near future.
Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.
