January 7, 2009 at 6:33 am by Yaeli · Filed under Uncategorized
A really interesting article by Khaled Abu Toameh notes that protests in the West Bank against the current Gaza-Israel conflict have been only sparsely attended.
The feeling here on Tuesday was that many Palestinians related to the war in Gaza as if it were happening in another country.
The West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been separated for nearly two decades now. Most Palestinians living in the West Bank have never been to the Gaza Strip. Similarly, only a few Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have ever set foot in the West Bank.
Even when there were no Israeli-imposed travel restrictions, there was almost no interaction between the two communities. Although they may be united politically, the Palestinians in each area have always had different traditions and attitudes.
So while small protests were held, people sat around in cafes sipping cappacinos in Ramallah or went about their shopping ignoring them. There are a number of reasons for this, he suggests. It is an interesting and insightful article and worth reading. It raised a number of questions and thoughts for me.
January 7, 2009 at 4:15 am by Carmel · Filed under Uncategorized
One of the slogans that captured my attention in the anti war demonstrations of 2006 was “bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity”. This metaphor argues that the means to a vision must be consistent with the vision’s value system, since the medium is the message. However, Aristotle said “sometimes we go to war to live in peace”. As doctors know, the means for achieving health are often aggressive cures. Both proverbs have a point, in different contexts, I guess. And context changes rapidly. If only two days ago I would harden my heart and argue for Israel’s duty to destroy the Hamas for the future of the Palestinan people as well, the hard pictures of dead children change the context and the question of “in what cost?” appears.
Wars are not sterile, they never were. In fact all wars in human history were a war crime and bloodshed. Every war going on right now in the world is a walk in the park compared with those old wars. But something very important changed: we’ve got media now. Everyone can see this happening and human soul can’t ignore nor endure the war dynamics anymore. I always blame media for its many faults but on this one, bless its soul, it helps us grow and outgrow wars.
But what does it mean to outgrow wars? I look at the European Union latent and satiated countries, and almost can’t believe that until half a century ago they were engaged in historical rivalry and bloody wars over world territory. How did they outgrow that to a point we can’t even imagine them in war anymore? How can we follow that path? We may not like this, but maybe, a true and lasting peace consciousness cannot be achieved artificially, ahead of its time, with the help and the restrains of external forces.
Growth is a violent and dangerous process in nature and possibly in human nature as well. But growth can only be achieved from inside, from within it, otherwise it disrupts the species and not lasting. Maybe true peace grows only out of wars; maybe humans are able to transcend their consciousness only after they are saturated by blood, saturated in blood, holding bodies of dead children from both sides. Maybe we are bombing for peace, bombing till it blows our minds to outgrow it.
I have a vision of a Middle East Union, maybe even within a decade or two. My children or grandchildren will be learning about these wars in history and saying “can you believe it? can you even imagine these lazy saturated peaceful countries were once in such horrible wars? Hahahah….” I know it seems unbelievable now, but it is very possible, because it has happened to Europe and it may as well happen to us. I wish there was something we could do to bypass the bloody process but maybe we gotta accept the possibility that this is the way human nature develops and hold our breath and suffer pain for a little longer…
Maybe that is the recipe for making peace. the igridients are digusting but after stirring and baking we’ll have something to look forward to.
January 5, 2009 at 9:23 am by Yaeli · Filed under Uncategorized
This is the second of the series ‘Israel, Palestine and Gaza’.
It is an attempt to address the challenge that I get, whenever I try to defend Israel anywhere on the blogosphere, to come up with a workable solution to the conflict instead of ‘blindly supporting Israel whatever it does’ (which I don’t).
It is of course an extraordinarily presumptuous post. It is hardly necessary to say that it is written by a simple blogger with an interest in the subject at a comfortable distance from the conflict, not by Henry Kissinger - although some elements bear a resemblance to proposals recently put forward by Zbigniew Brzezinski (thanks, Peter Kemp at LP). Still, I wanted to make the attempt, however foolish.
II The platform for a lasting peace
The broad outline of a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict is clear enough, and has been for some time. It may seem a strange thing to say, but it really takes no particular prescience or omniscience to identify what its principal features should be: it’s essentially a matter of common sense.
Each proposal for peace discussed below can be expected to inspire, on both sides of the divide, responses like ‘That’s impossible!’, ‘Totally unacceptable!’, ‘You’re ignoring….’, ‘But what about…’
Let’s deal with those later. Instead, let’s start by describing the end-state.
For there to be a lasting peace of the eastern Mediterranean seaboard, all or most of the following conditions need to be met.
Acceptance of Israel’s existence.
Nothing much needs to be said against this point. It is the foundation of all that follows. The Palestinians may not like it, but Israel isn’t going away.
The renunciation of terror.
The Palestinians must abandon the use of terror against Israel. This is the sine qua non of any settlement. Without it, no resolution will be possible. Israel cannot give up the West Bank to see it become another Gaza, or perhaps even worse, another south Lebanon. It cannot expose its population and industrial centres to terror attacks or rocket fire from the east.
For reasons that may or may not be sufficient, until the commencement of Operation ‘Cast Lead’, the Israeli government required the residents of its southern towns to soak up the punishment meted out by Hamas in Gaza. It’s not an easy thing to say, but the fact is that Sderot is not strategically important to Israel (though Ashkelon is). No doubt that brutal calculus played a part in Israel’s relative quiescence over the past three years. Similar attacks against Tel Aviv could never be tolerated in the same way.
So terror must cease to be an instrument of Palestinian statehood. Any new Palestine must disarm its militia, and adhere to a basic principle of statehood: that the elected government holds a monopoly on the use of lethal force, exercised in accordance with accepted standards law through the instruments of its military and police services. All other exercise of lethal force will be a criminal act, and dealt with as such.
Security guarantees.
Without these, a Palestinian state, especially on the West Bank, would pose a constant, potent and existential threat to Israel. Recently I discovered, rather to my surprise, that it takes me more time to commute to work every day than it would to drive across the waist of Israel from the West Bank to the Mediterranean.
There must be a cast-iron assurance that the West Bank will not host a build-up of Arab armies capable of invasion. Israel is militarily very strong, but the IDF’s real strength lies in its reserves. These, unless the IDF’s performance has improved in recent years, it takes three days to mobilize. Therefore, an invading force would have three days to reach Tel Aviv before Israel’s defences could be fully deployed.
Such a force might well fail, given Israel’s technological superiority, but no responsible Israeli leader could afford to take the chance that it might not.
In support of security guarantees, some adjustment to the borders will have to occur. It may be over-emotive to describe the 1967 status quo ante as the ‘Auschwitz borders’, but Israel must have a territorial boundary capable of being defended. There will have to be compromises and perhaps some population transfers to affect this.
Complete withdrawal.
Israel must withdraw from the territories occupied since 1967; or rather, it must complete its withdrawal, since Gaza is no longer occupied. The settler movement and Israeli irredentists must accept that, whatever religious and historical claims they might have to Judea and Samaria, they will have to abandon them.
Jews who desire for religious or other reasons to live on what is now known as the West Bank should be allowed to do so, but as immigrants, not settlers, and be subject to Palestinian, not Israeli authority.
The creation of a new state.
The new State of Palestine would comprise the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, linked by a secure land corridor. Contiguity is neither feasible nor practicable. There are precedents: one of the world’s newest states, East Timor, consists principally of half of one island in the Indonesian archipelago, and the Oecussi enclave, which is wholly situated within neighbouring Indonesian West Timor. So, despite the logistic difficulties, a state made up of non-contiguous territories can be feasibly constituted.
It would be reasonable, until a state of non-belligerence is confirmed, that Israel would retain control of the air space, and access by sea to Gaza. In similar vein, it should maintain aerial surveillance of the West Bank and its border with Jordan, until the peace was secure.
The Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms should be the subject of separate negotiations between the sovereign powers concerned. These issues should be excised from any peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
No general right of return.
No reasonable person could expect Israel to absorb five million Palestinians. This would result in the demographic balance being shifted from a Jewish to an Arab majority and therefore, the dissolution of the Jewish state – which is of course the reason it is insisted upon by the current Palestinian leadership. Apart from that, the demands for jobs and housing would be quite impossible to meet.
Some limited right of return based on family reunion should be feasible, subject to security considerations. The UNWRA formula by which a Palestinian is regarded as a refugee if he or she had resided in Palestine for two years or more prior to 1948 should be revoked, and refugees encouraged to resettle, with the relevant government’s approval and support, into the Arab lands of their choice. Or they could chose to return to the new Palestine.
Compensation should be provided to Palestinians who can demonstrate to a properly constituted tribunal that their land or property was appropriated by Israel in consequence of their forcible expulsion from Israeli territory. A lower order of compensation might be available to Palestinians who fled for reasons other than compulsion.
The settlements.
Establishing settlements in the occupied territories was Israel’s historic mistake. Many Israelis and their supporters have contended that the settlements were not illegal, because they were established on territory that was not the sovereign territory of any state.
Be that as it may, it was, at the least, morally wrong to construct settlements in territories seized in war, whatever spiritual claims might be advanced for them. Of course, it has to be recognized that Israel offered the territories back, after the Six-Day War, in return for peace, but was refused. That offer remained effectively open at least until 1977, when the Likud gained its first electoral victory.
The settlements must be regarded as negotiable, as they have been in the past. Begin returned the Sinai to Egypt and forcibly evicted its settlers in return for a peace deal with Egypt; Sharon evicted the settlers from Gaza in return for nothing at all (if you exclude the terror campaign that gave rise to ‘Cast Lead’). The West Bank is more difficult, since over 400,000 Israeli settlers currently reside there. Wholesale, immediate return would not be possible - the employment and housing requirements of the settlers evicted from Gaza have still not been met.
There seem to be two options: to adjust the borders to include the settlements within Israel, or to allow them to remain in the new State of Palestine, subject to guarantees that their lives and property will be protected by the authorities of the new Palestinian state.
The latter seems preferable. The settlers would therefore have a choice: remain where you are as Jewish citizens of Palestine, or return to Israel, perhaps over a period of years. But if Israel can accommodate an Arab minority of two or so million, surely Palestine can accommodate a Jewish minority of a few hundred thousand.
Jerusalem.
This will be the hardest part of the deal for Israelis to accept – and for that matter, Israel’s supporters in world Jewry.
[In fact, I am not actually convinced that this proposal is either morally right or psychologically possible, but let's lay it out anyway.]
Israel must relinquish control of East Jerusalem and return it to Palestinian authority. Personally, I would like to see Jerusalem remain united under Israeli sovereignty. I recognize the moral, psychological and spiritual claim that the Jews have to Jerusalem, as expressed in the aching, deathless lament: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem…’
And yet East Jerusalem was seized by force in 1967, and should be returned. It could be argued that West Jerusalem was also seized, during the 1948 War of Independence, since the 1947 partition plan did not cede any part of Jerusalem to the Jews, but designated it as an international zone. (The Jewish Agency’s partition plan of 1946, too, accorded Jerusalem that status). But the War of Independence was the furnace out which Israel was born, wherein it defeated five Arab armies sworn to its annihilation. Whatever the legalities, for moral reasons alone Israel is entitled to keep all that it won in that war. But same cannot be said of the territory seized in 1967.
Sovereignty over Jerusalem should be divided to satisfy the just demands of both sides; yet it should be governed as a unity. It should not be too difficult to set up a system of government for Jerusalem jointly between Palestine and Israel, such that although it was divided in sovereignty, it existed as a single entity. Over time, sovereignty itself would become largely symbolic. Perhaps, in the decades that followed such a settlement, it might be possible for Israel to negotiate the return of East Jerusalem.
The Old City, with its places holy to all three faiths and its priceless archaeological sites, should be governed as a separate enclave, perhaps along the lines of Vatican City, but subject ultimately to Palestinian authority. Scholars, archaeologists and theologians should be strongly represented in any system of governance. Access to the sacred sites should be open and guaranteed to devotees of each faith. Archaeological and historical sites should be protected and preserved.
Israel to assist Palestine achieve statehood.
From whatever angle you view it, the establishment of the State of Israel represents an injustice to the Palestinian Arabs. But equally, from whichever angle you view it, a refusal to allow the Jews to establish a safe haven state would have been an injustice to the Jews. That is the dilemma at the heart of the conflict.
Israel has been an outstandingly successful exercise in nation-building. Despite wars, terrorism and the unremitting hostility of its neighbours, Israelis have built a nation which is rivaled in the modern age perhaps only by Singapore in its economic and technological accomplishments, and by none in its implementation of democratic principles, equity and the rule of law.
The claim that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state is a malignant untruth. Israeli Arabs are equal under the law, have their own political parties, and are well-represented in the Knesset. In early 2007, an Israeli Arab, Majalli Wahaba, a Druse, briefly occupied the position of Head of State in Israel, in the temporary absence of the acting President.
It is true there is tension between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs at the level of the street. This could hardly be otherwise, given the history of the conflict between the peoples, and the fact that all too often the Arab communities side with Israel’s enemies, and are exempt from national service and from payment of municipal taxes. In contrast, the Israeli Jews are required to risk and sacrifice all. Neither Jews nor Arabs in Israel are angels.
Israel has the flaw of every state so far constructed by human beings: it can’t transcend that condition. But if you look at the multitude of states which have emerged on the international stage since the end of WWII, Israel stands as the one to beat – and that against almost impossible odds.
Why is this important? Because of what it can offer to Palestine. Having remedied one injustice by instituting a state for the Jews, Israel must, in the kind of settlement we are discussing here, be ready to help redress the other, and assist the Palestinians to travel the road that it has itself so successfully followed.
At present, neither Gaza nor the West Bank resembles even a proto-state. Each is riven by factions – terroristic, criminal and clannish. Economic activity exists, it is true, and in parts of the West Bank, even flourishes. But neither territory can be said to possess an economy in any real sense. Essential infrastructures are ramshackle, if they exist at all, and the necessary institutions of a viable state – the rule of law, an impartial education system and so on – have been hopelessly compromised by violence, terror and corruption. Gaza and the West Bank are now almost wholly dependent on donor aid, a condition manifestly incompatible with self-reliant statehood. Proto-Palestine is therefore at ground zero.
It was an accident of history, no doubt, but nonetheless to Israel’s inestimable advantage that Israel was first a people, then a territory, then a nation, and then a state. I have little sympathy for those in Israel (and elsewhere) who claim there are no ‘Palestinians’ because there never was a ‘Palestine‘. That might have been true in 1920, in 1948 or 1967, but is true now. There is, now, a Palestinian people, and when a settlement comes about, there will be a Palestinian state on a geographically de-limited territory.
What’s missing is the bit in between – the Palestinian nation. This is where Israel can do the most to help – to assist with the building of national institutions, infrastructure and culture, as it built its own during the days of the Mandate, long before it became a state. Quite apart from issues of policy, Israel is well-placed to provide guidance to Palestine on agriculture and environmental programs (its famed ‘grey water’ distribution system, for example).
How difficult that will be to achieve as it were retrogressively, when the people already have a territory and a state but not a nation, would be the main challenge for the future decades. And of course, Palestine might reject Israel’s help anyway, and turn to others. That would be its right.
Coda.
The difficulties appear insuperable, the problem insoluble. What I have suggested above looks impossibly Utopian, and palpably incapable of achievement. Perhaps all these statements are true. We must hope not.
Without hope, there will be nothing but an unending river of blood - a river that seeps down into the sand and stone, to join all the other rivers and all the layers of devastation already stamped into the surface of this ancient, wretched, blessed land by the feet of the armies which raged north, raged south over the millennia. Who, even at this distance in time and space, can forget the fate of the Children of Zion, keening and keeping watch from lonely outposts over their shattered fortresses and slaughtered armies on the plains of northern Israel, all mercilessly destroyed by the Assyrians, and carried off at last to exile in Babylon by the exultant hordes of Sargon II on their way back from Egypt?
But this is now.
I can’t claim that this is an original prescription, but it seems extraordinarily apt. For both sides, the formula for peace is almost the same:
For Israel: We must forgive you for the present, and you must forgive us for the past.
For Palestine: You must forgive us for the present, and we must forgive you for the past.
I’m not sure if I’ve got the we’s and you’s in the right places, but you get the general idea.
________________
Next: The obstacles to a just settlement
*********
Yaeli’s note: Many thanks to Rob of The Better Part of Valour!
January 4, 2009 at 12:27 pm by Drima · Filed under Uncategorized
Okay, I don’t know about you, but first of all… happy new year and Sudanese independence day, regardless of the typical expected craziness raging in the Middle East.
I haven’t blogged anything about the unfortunate fighting, because well… many have already said what needs to be said. If anything, I’m simply going to recycle this old relevant post and link to Mona Eltahawy’s article.
Plus, quite frankly I’m getting tired of the same repetitive statements from both sides.
Here’s a radical idea that hasn’t been discussed on this blog before. Yeah, it’s the one in the title. Come on guys, if we’re going to talk, we might as well try a new proposition right?
Oslo? Two states solution? Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist for a while.
West Bank for Jordan doesn’t seem like a bad idea. But, Gaza for Egypt? Now that would be, ehm, complicated. At the very least, it’s going to be a burden for Egypt. I’m also sure it’s going to make our Monkey friend very happy. But hey, maybe, just maybe, it could be manageable.
Those Palestinian figures who are neither members of Fatah nor Hamas tend to see the challenge most clearly. Qais Abdul Karim, a long-standing leftist MP, said he believed Israel’s bombing was intended to force on the Palestinians a provisional state, rather than true independence and sovereignty. “The idea is to isolate Gaza from the West Bank completely and to throw Gaza into the arms of Egypt and to subject the West Bank to perpetual domination by Israel,” he said. “Our priority must be to find a way to end our division.”
Yes Qais, believe me ya habibi, I’d love to see an end to those divisions too, but how? By blaming others?
His concerns are not without foundation. Israelis speak openly of alternatives to a viable, independent, contiguous Palestinian state. In recent weeks Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s national security council, proposed Jordanian control over the West Bank or a multilateral land swap between Israel, the Palestinians and Egypt which would let Israel keep a large slice of the West Bank for itself and see Gaza slide closer to the reluctant embrace of the Egyptians.
Hmmm…
Mustafa Barghouti, an independent MP who ran for the presidency at the last election, said Hamas and Fatah had been seduced into fighting over leadership of a largely powerless institution, the Palestinian National Authority - created under the Oslo accords a decade and a half ago and which gave the Palestinians the trappings of power without a state itself.
True Barghouti, but hey boys and girls, let’s get real. Forget Oslo, the two states solutions, and the quoted text. Let’s go into the heart of the inevitable issue nobody wants to discuss greatly when violence like this erupts and even if the proposition of Oslo more or less gets worked out - Jerusalem.
Which of course brings me, to the religious dogmatic dimension of this conflict.
For the secular types on both sides, it’s not a major issue. Jerusalem can just get split two ways. Simple. But the religious folks, especially our crazy Zionist settler friends and Hamas loonies will never accept that. Heck, even many religious moderates won’t accept that. Instead of becoming more humanist and compromising, separation theology reigns supreme. Faith is no longer personal and spiritual but instead thrusts itself mightily into the public sphere.
Sigh.
Apparently, God is a real-estate broker who does not compromise - ever. And it gets better when you throw in all the prophecies and beliefs about the Messiah sort of flying out of the sky in a super hero costume to bring an end to this bloody, never-ending conflict… and then of course, the world. Seriously, what’s going to convince people like this to change their minds?
January 3, 2009 at 5:44 pm by Carmel · Filed under Israel, Palestinian Territories
Hi everyone. I haven’t been around much lately but it seems like the place to come to when i don’t have a TV and I can’t sleep, worrying about the ground faze of the war that started tonight. But let’s start earlier this evening. i didn’t go to the anti war big demonstration in Tel Aviv. Theoretically nobody’s pro war, but Hamas, Hezbollah, El Qaeda etc. don’t leave you any other choices besides kill or be killed. My friends in the Israeli left wing and my European friends are too busy being humanists and pluralists to understand that pluralism is irrelevant when your party believes it’s “my way or your dead body”.
On the other hand, you can’t kill an ideology by killing all the people who hold it. It seems that if we set the goal to destroy the Hamas completely, we’ll be in world war 3 in no time. And the fundamental Islam will survive it, of course. So there’s no choice but to go to war and no point to go to war anyway. And in-between that impossible reality, people will die.
I’m afraid to go to sleep as if i can keep things intact by following them with my own eyes. I’m afraid that once I’ll close my eyes I’ll wake up with a death toll. Tired of living here but can’t really call other places “home”. if only God himself could pull his head out of the clouds of smoke in Gaza and shout “you morons, I made you for the sole purpose of pleasure, growth and prosperity, but you had to take life so damn seriously. Fuck religions, the hell with weapons, go get a life. All of you”.
January 1, 2009 at 12:51 pm by Yaeli · Filed under Uncategorized
Many thanks to one of our neighborhood community members, Rob, who has kindly agreed to contribute this analysis he wrote to our neighborhood!
Part I: The war in Gaza
Let’s get the most difficult bit out of the way first with a bald statement of position that many will find unacceptable, or at least insufficiently ‘nuanced’.
Israel’s war against the terrorist organization Hamas is both justified and just. Its use of military force against Hamas is fully consistent with its own responsibilities to its citizens, and with its broader legal and moral obligations.
It is the ultimate duty of a democratically elected government to protect the people and the state from armed attack. In the final analysis, if it fails to uphold that obligation, it has no right to demand that its people surrender to the government either power, through the democratic process, or money, through the systems of taxation. Therefore, the State of Israel is obliged – indeed, required – to use armed force to protect its people from attack, and to prevent further attacks from occurring. How it executes that obligation depends on the nature and circumstances of the attacks.
So to the present case.
For more than three years now, since Israel’s occupation of Gaza ended in 2005 with the withdrawal of all Israeli military and civilian personnel from the Strip, Israel has endured an unrelenting attack from Gaza. The attack has taken many forms. Suicide bombers have infiltrated Israel to murder civilian targets indiscriminately and in as large numbers as can be managed. Tunnels have been dug under the border with Israel with the objective of kidnapping Israeli soldiers and holding them as political hostages, in the knowledge that Israel will do almost anything to get its soldiers back, even if all it recovers are body parts. This is Israel’s Achilles’ heel, and Hamas knows it well.
Most notably and obviously, the attack has come from missiles. Qassam rockets were fired into Israel on the very day of the final withdrawal and escalated rapidly into a continual barrage, often scores in a single day. Qassam manufactories exist all over Gaza – indeed, it appears to be the only viable industry in the Strip. The casings delivering the explosive payload are commonly made from traffic light posts, of which there are, reportedly, none remaining in Gaza. These rockets are unguided, and can only be fired in the general direction of their target. They appear crude, but they are in fact fully fit for purpose.
Every Qassam is fired with the specific objective of killing or maiming Israeli citizens, or destroying their property, or both. Often they do. Many civilians have been killed by Qassams, and many others injured. But beyond killing and destroying, the missile barrage is intended to create such a climate of fear in Israel’s southern towns that their inhabitants are forced to evacuate north to find safe havens. Even if the imprecisely-aimed rockets fail to find a human target, they still get the job half done.
These rockets are fired from within densely populated civilian areas of the Strip, and are protected by the civilian infrastructure. The purpose of such siting is twofold: to deter military retaliation by Israel, and to ensure that civilian casualties are almost inevitable in the event of a strike from the air or by ground artillery. Such casualties are useful to Hamas in garnering international sympathy. Whether Israel retaliates or not, Hamas wins, either way.
It is not quite fair to say, as many have done, and angrily, that the government of Ehud Olmert has done nothing in the face of these attacks. It has struck back at specific launch sites, often killing the launch crews. It has restricted movement across its border with Gaza to interdict shipment of materials capable of being weaponised, and to detect and detain or kill suicide operatives. In 2006 it launched a major operation into Gaza to try to recover a kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. ‘Summer Rains’ was unsuccessful, and Shalit remains captive in the hands of Hamas or one of its proxies.
But nothing succeeded in stemming the rockets’ barrage or relieving the pressure on the southern towns. Because the range from Gaza is so short, the residents of Sderot and other neighbouring towns have only a few seconds to reach cover when the alert is sounded. They have no idea where the missiles will land, and the general atmosphere of fear and confusion is heightened by the fact that firings are deliberately timed to coincide with the beginning and end of the school day. So children and their parents have particular cause for dread.
No effective missile defence system can be implemented to protect the south of Israel, because the Qassams have no guidance system to lock onto. Electronic counter-measures, the conventional defence against missiles, are therefore virtually impossible. This, too, the terrorists well know. That’s why they’re content - for now - with their clumsy rockets.
Sporadic punitive responses apart, Israel held its hand, despite some posturing and rhetoric. This provoked bitter and understandable complaints from the beleaguered residents of the south that they had been sacrificed for the sake of international public and media opinion, and that the government had failed utterly to uphold its obligation to protect its citizens. Until the current operations, it was difficult to deny there was a large measure of justice in that claim.
This has gone on almost every day for three years. At no time did Hamas or Islamic Jihad or other terrorist groups show the slightest inclination to terminate the barrage except on terms manifestly unacceptable to Israel – which is why, of course, those were the only terms ever offered.
All this while, Israel continued to supply power, fuel, medical supplies and other necessities to an enemy government sworn to destroy it by force and terror. Such shipments were routinely appropriated by Hamas and used as bargaining chips for political gain within the Strip, where criminal, terrorist and clan groupings - Hamas itself among them - vie for power and position. On occasion, in response to particularly vicious attacks, Israel temporarily suspended the delivery of humanitarian aid, and limited the supply of fuel.
In June this year, Egypt brokered an agreement for there to be a six-month hudna (a lull, or pause) in the rocket barrage. Importantly, this was not a truce – a formal suspension of hostilities - although it is sometimes described as such.
Many in Israel believed the hudna would be used to re-stock and re-supply in preparation for the next wave of attacks, in accordance with Islamic tradition. Few believed that it would either be honoured by Hamas when it was in force, or renewed when it expired. Prudently, and with the lessons of Lebanon and the findings of the Winograd Commission in mind, the IDF, now under the control of Minister of Defence Ehud Barak (a very capable soldier, whatever some might think of him as a politician), made extensive preparations for a wide-ranging response should the barrage be renewed at the end of the hudna.
The rocket firings did not cease, as required by the agreement. They continued throughout the period of the hudna, although in greatly diminished numbers. Despite claims to the contrary, I have seen no credible evidence that Hamas offered to renew the pause on terms remotely acceptable to Israel either during the hudna or after its expiry. Throughout the hudna, the government of Israel pretty much sat on its hands. As we now know, it was biding its time.
On 19th December, Hamas formally and unilaterally announced that the hudna was terminated, and publicly declared they would not renew it. Rocket firings recommenced with particular ferocity, reaching Sderot and Ashkelon, in particular. On the 21st alone, 50 rockets fell. On the 24th, sixty. The Negev was manifestly under siege. Israel itself was under siege.
Nine days after the hudna ended, with the rocket fire unabating, Israel struck at Gaza in force, with multiple air strikes targeting Hamas personnel and infrastructure. Warning messages were sent via SMS through the cell-phone network, and leaflets were also air-dropped, advising residents to stay clear of Hamas installations as they were about to be attacked. In doing so, of course, Israel sacrificed the advantage of surprise, and presumably gave many of its targets the opportunity to escape. It did so in order to minimise civilian casualties.
Perhaps again recalling the experience of Lebanon, when the international media turned venomously against it, the IDF also released videos of the strikes as a public relations effort. This was despite the fact that it thereby revealed its own military capabilities to the enemy - and to other enemies in the region, such as Iran, whom it will likely prompt to take anticipatory counter-measures. These videos (posted on YouTube, among other Web locations) demonstrated unequivocally that the attacks were targeted with pin-prick precision to minimize the likelihood of casualties among non-combatants. Inevitably, however, given Hamas’ deliberate tactics of operating from civilian areas, some non-combatants were killed in the attacks, along with hundreds of militants.
That is the sequence as I understand it. If it is wrong, I am happy to be corrected. But if it is correct, it demonstrates that the statement with which I began this post is wholly sustainable. Israel acted properly and lawfully in attacking Hamas in Gaza to protect its citizens. It did so after Hamas unilaterally ended the hudna - which, on any reading, was a last-ditch effort to prevent war - and directed a ferocious and unremitting rocket barrage into southern Israel.
War is always messy, and no doubt mistakes will be made. They always are. But in prosecuting this war, on the evidence to date, Israel is fully observing its constitutional, military, legal, and more broadly, its moral responsibilities. Whilst attacking its enemy in strength, it is employing every measure possible, within the limits of current military technology and doctrine, to reduce the level of risk to non-combatants to a minimum. And it is doing so in a horrendously difficult battlespace that would challenge even the most effective military force on this or any other planet.
It needs to be said, with a twist of bitterness, that none of the above is true of Israel’s enemies. And neither, by some kind of strange and malevolent alchemy, is it ever expected to be.
Next: The path to peace and its obstacles
December 28, 2008 at 11:18 am by Yaser · Filed under Uncategorized
It is now around 5 p.m in Damascus city ,till now I have not watched a single news bulletin ,which is very odd for me, I just turned on the local T.V station in the morning ,a direct coverage was on of a demonstration to denounce the Israeli aggression on the Gaza strip , the reporter on the ground lost her nerve and started saying that she wished the bombs of Hamas were to land on their heads and explode (she was talking with someone representing Hamas and the question was about the weak Arab response to the atrocities committed by the Israeli army in Gaza ),so by “their heads” she was referring to the heads of the heads of the “moderate ” Arab states, that was followed by much more rhetoric and propaganda about the brave resistance and the coward Arab regimes that are somewhat accused of treason to the Palestinian cause ,which reminded me very much of the rhetoric during and after the 2006 war in Lebanon, but what struck me this time is the unapologetic tone with which most of the people interviewed spoke with ,in addition to the journalists who compromised their journalistic objectivity to give their opinion criticizing and pointing the finger at Egypt over and over again, they all talked about the need for unity then lashed at Egypt and the Palestinian authority and all the rest of the moderation camp in a “if you are not with us you are against us” fashion ,for conspiring against the resistance .
So in this same manner I ask Egypt to withdraw its forces from the occupied land , to open all crossings with Gaza and to stop immediately all aggression against the innocent civilians in the Gaza strip.
December 21, 2008 at 1:23 pm by Yaeli · Filed under Uncategorized
I recently watched an interview with a Rabbi from Chabad Lubavitch, the movement that ran the Nariman House that was attacked by the terrorists in Mumbai and all of those taken hostage inside killed. He was talking about how such a tiny number of people, only 10 terrorists, were able to create so much death and mayhem and destruction and he asked “if such a small number of people can do so much damage and harm to the world, why cannot the rest of us working together create so many times more good in this world?” It should be the case that even just a small number of people –say 10, working together to create healing and solutions, should be able to do good on the same scale as those 10 did harm, right?
We here at GNblog are a small number of people, but we are also very dedicated to creating a better world. I’m wondering if we can come up with some ideas of things we could do to really make a significant difference in the world, beyond what our dialogue and exchanges and the bonds we’ve formed here between ourselves (which is pretty darn nifty on its own!). Ideas? Suggestions? Do you think it is possible or do you think that someone with a gun is always going to be able to do so much more harm than those armed with ideals and good intentions?
November 18, 2008 at 8:56 am by Yehuda Berlinger · Filed under Iran, Israel
Blogger: Hossein Derakhstan
Source: Middle East Analyst
Reported in JPost.
October 14, 2008 at 10:40 am by Yaser · Filed under Uncategorized
A very important advancement to redress Syrian Lebanese relations ,the decree issued by Syrian president that paves the way to establish a Syrian Embassy in Lebanon
A “diplomatic mission for the Syrian Arab Republic at the embassy level will be established in the Lebanese capital,” Assad said in a decree carried by the official Syrian news agency SANA
more..
the funny thing is that I was actually surprised ,I have heard people more than often say that it is hard to get information out of Syria, but being very enthusiastic for the establishment of diplomatic relations and following every bit of news that indicate a Syrian move in this direction ,I have experienced first hand just how much it is hard to know anything about what the regime is up to , to tell the truth in the last period I was very pessimistic and started to think that this whole talk was just a bluff by the regime and no concrete steps will be taken .
however after the official part of this is out of the way there is much to do ,I have been following the website of the Lebanese Forces recently and I have been discovering how much misconceptions some parties in Lebanon have about Syria ,and how this ignorant( sometimes can be described as racist )views and opinions reflect an existent sentiment in Lebanon that in turn affect the political positions taken by various political leaders.
I believe that unless some minimum bar of mutual respect is achieved there is no point in exchanging ambassadors, I know that my Lebanese friends will agree.
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Big Pharaoh
Carmel
Dalia
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Shifaa
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