The attempt by western politicians and media to present this week's carnage
in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defence - or at best the
latest phase of a wearisome conflict between two somehow equivalent sides - has
reached Alice-in-Wonderland proportions. Since Israel's deputy defence minister,
Matan Vilnai, issued his chilling warning last week that Palestinians faced a
"holocaust" if they continued to fire home-made rockets into Israel, the balance
sheet of suffering has become ever clearer. More than 120 Palestinians have been
killed in Gaza by Israeli forces in the past week, of whom one in five were
children and more than half were civilians, according to the Israeli human
rights group B'Tselem. During the same period, three Israelis were killed, two
of whom were soldiers taking part in the attacks.
So what was the response of the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, to
this horrific killing spree? It was to blame the "numerous civilian casualties"
on the week's "significant rise" in Palestinian rocket attacks "and the Israeli
response", condemn the firing of rockets as "terrorist acts" and defend Israel's
right to self-defence "in accordance with international law". But of course it
has been nothing of the kind - any more than has been Israel's 40-year
occupation of the Palestinian territories, its continued expansion of
settlements or its refusal to allow the return of expelled refugees.
Nor is the past week's one-sided burden of casualties and misery anything new,
but the gap is certainly getting wider. After the election of Hamas two years
ago, Israel - backed by the US and the European Union - imposed a punitive
economic blockade, which has hardened over the past months into a full-scale
siege of the Gaza Strip, including fuel, electricity and essential supplies.
Since January's mass breakout across the Egyptian border signalled that
collective punishment wouldn't work, Israel has opted for military escalation.
What that means on the ground can be seen from the fact that at the height of
the intifada, from 2000 to 2005, four Palestinians were killed for every
Israeli; in 2006 it was 30; last year the ratio was 40 to one. In the three
months since the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference at Annapolis, 323
Palestinians have been killed compared with seven Israelis, two of whom were
civilians.
But the US and Europe's response is to blame the principal victims for a crisis
it has underwritten at every stage. In interviews with Palestinian leaders over
the past few days, BBC presenters have insisted that Palestinian rockets have
been the "starting point" of the violence, as if the occupation itself did not
exist. In the West Bank, from which no rockets are currently fired and where the
US-backed administration of Mahmoud Abbas maintains a ceasefire, there have been
480 Israeli military attacks over the past three months and 26 Palestinians
killed. By contrast, the rockets from Gaza which are supposed to be the
justification for the latest Israeli onslaught have killed a total of 14 people
over seven years.
Like any other people, the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation - or
to self-defence - whether they choose to exercise it or not. In spite of
Israel's disengagement in 2005, Gaza remains occupied territory, both legally
and in reality. It is the world's largest open-air prison, with land, sea and
air access controlled by Israel, which carries out military operations at will.
Palestinians may differ about the tactics of resistance, but the dominant view
(if not that of Abbas) has long been that without some armed pressure, their
negotiating hand will inevitably be weaker. And while it might be objected that
the rockets are indiscriminate, that is not an easy argument for Israel to make,
given its appalling record of civilian casualties in both the Palestinian
territories and Lebanon.
The truth is that Hamas's control of Gaza is the direct result of the US refusal
to accept the Palestinians' democratic choice in 2006 and its covert attempt to
overthrow the elected administration by force through its Fatah placeman
Muhammad Dahlan. As confirmed by secret documents leaked to the US magazine
Vanity Fair - and also passed to the Guardian - George Bush, Condoleezza Rice
and Elliott Abrams, the US deputy national security adviser (of Iran-Contra
fame), funnelled cash, weapons and instructions to Dahlan, partly through Arab
intermediaries such as Jordan and Egypt, in an effort to provoke a Palestinian
civil war. As evidence of the military buildup emerged, Hamas moved to forestall
the US plan with its own takeover of Gaza last June. David Wurmser, who resigned
as Dick Cheney's chief Middle East adviser the following month, argues: "What
happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was
pre-empted before it could happen."
Yesterday, Rice attempted to defend the failed US attempt to reverse the results
of the Palestinian elections by pointing to Iran's support for Hamas. Meanwhile,
Israel's attacks on Gaza are expected to resume once she has left the region,
even if no one believes they will stop the rockets. Some in the Israeli
government hope that they can nevertheless weaken Hamas as a prelude to pushing
Gaza into Egypt's unwilling arms; others hope to bring Abbas and his entourage
back to Gaza after they have crushed Hamas, perhaps with a transitional
international force to save the Palestinian president's face.
Neither looks a serious option, not least because Hamas cannot be crushed by
force, even with the bloodbath that some envisage. The third, commonsense
option, backed by 64% of Israelis, is to take up Hamas's offer - repeated by its
leader Khalid Mish'al at the weekend - and negotiate a truce. It's a move that
now attracts not only left-leaning Israeli politicians such as Yossi Beilin, but
also a growing number of rightwing establishment figures, including Ariel
Sharon's former security adviser Giora Eiland, the former Mossad boss Efraim
Halevy, and the ex-defence minister Shaul Mofaz.
The US, however, is resolutely opposed to negotiating with what it has long
branded a terrorist organisation - or allowing anyone else to do so, including
other Palestinians. As the leaked American papers confirm, Rice effectively
instructed Abbas to "collapse" the joint Hamas-Fatah national unity government
agreed in Mecca early last year, a decision carried out after Hamas's
pre-emptive takeover. But for the Palestinians, national unity is an absolute
necessity if they are to have any chance of escaping a world of walled cantons,
checkpoints, ethnically segregated roads, dispossession and humiliation.
What else can Israel do to stop the rockets, its supporters ask. The answer
could not be more obvious: end the illegal occupation of the Palestinian
territories and negotiate a just settlement for the Palestinian refugees,
ethnically cleansed 60 years ago - who, with their families, make up the
majority of Gaza's 1.5 million people. All the Palestinian factions, including
Hamas, accept that as the basis for a permanent settlement or indefinite end of
armed conflict. In the meantime, agree a truce, exchange prisoners and lift the
blockade. Israelis increasingly seem to get it - but the grim reality appears to
be that a lot more blood is going to have to flow before it's accepted in
Washington.
Source: The Guardian Unlimited
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