ISRAEL PREFERS WAR RATHER THAN PAY THE PRICE OF PEACE
From the Israeli socialist magazine, Challenge.
by Yacov Ben Efrat
Israel’s military operation called Molten Lead started on Saturday, December 27, 2008 and took more than 200 lives in its first day, much to the satisfaction of the Israeli public. Already on Friday there were cries of “Go get ‘em!” from the columns of the leading newspapers, and on Saturday the Gazans got what Israelis have long been wishing them. This was no spontaneous operation, no mere response to the recent firing of rockets on the towns of the Negev. In the preceding half year of calm, while warning that Hamas was arming itself, Israel carefully planned the attack to extract the highest possible price.
Officially, the campaign was intended to return that calm to the area under conditions more favorable to Israel. But the aims go farther. Israel is trying to bring Hamas back to the negotiating table with Egypt on terms that will be good for the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its president, Abu Mazen. Hamas failed to use the six-months calm “constructively” by reaching a deal with Abu Mazen, and now it is paying the price. Israel wants it to end armed resistance, recognize the legitimacy of the Oslo Accords, and accept the terms of the Quartet. In other words, Hamas is supposed to yield its control over Gaza and blend into the PA as a minor partner.
The countdown started in November when, rejecting an Egyptian proposal, Hamas failed to attend a meeting with the PA in Cairo. For Israel’s Gaza campaign is no solo performance. The step was coordinated with Jordan and Egypt—and won Abu Mazen’s blessing too. The Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas belongs, constitutes the main opposition to the Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian regimes. We have here the same Arab-Israeli axis that went against Hezbollah in Lebanon two years ago. Again it has total support from the White House. This time too, Israel serves as the executive agent, whose task is to reduce the common enemy.
Hamas, for its part, has made all possible mistakes. The first was its takeover of Gaza in June 2007, which caused the Israeli blockade to harden, harming civilians. The latest mistake was its resumption of armed struggle against Israel.
Hamas wants its rule over Gaza to be acknowledged, so that it can then compete with the PA for the West Bank. It has played a double game. On the one hand, it took part in the democratic process of the PA elections three years ago—even coming out victorious. On the other hand, the PA and its elections were a creation of the Oslo Agreement, which Hamas refuses to recognize.
Khaled Mashal, leader of the movement, has not contented himself with opening fronts against the PA and Israel. He has also provoked the Egyptian regime, not only by rejecting its proposals, but also by demanding that it open the Rafah Border, an act that would violate Egypt’s international commitments. At the grassroots level, Hamas has joined the Muslim Brotherhood in a campaign of incitement against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
For all these reasons, Gaza today stands alone against Israeli military might. From his refuge in Damascus, Mashal calls for a third Intifada, although the Palestinians have not yet recovered from the second. While Hamas lusts for power, ordinary Palestinians are tired, confused, and above all frustrated. On one side they have Abu Mazen, who is ready to swallow all the frogs Israel puts on his plate. On the other side they have Hamas, caught in the conception that its regime is God’s will, even at the cost of Heaven Now.
Within three minutes of starting its operation, Israel had killed or wounded hundreds. It is not difficult to imagine what will happen after three weeks of this. The purpose is to introduce Hamas to earthly reality—and, if possible, to restore the respect that Israel lost in Lebanon two years ago. In this regard, we may define Molten Lead as a repair operation for the second Lebanon War, in accordance with the recommendations of the Winograd Commission that investigated the debacle.
But what is Israel’s real situation? Is it as strong as it is trying to appear by spilling blood in Gaza? What effect will the pictures of torn bodies, scattered in the yard of the Police Academy, ultimately have on Israelis? Or the piercing shrieks of the mothers? Most Israelis want to reach some form of normality and become a society that, in the words of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, “it’s fun to live in.” Where is the “fun” in such massacres, recycled for 60 years?
During the last 40 of those years, Israel has systematically trampled another people, refusing to end the Occupation. The Palestinians have lost all rights. Their life proceeds amid settler pogroms, military roadblocks, closures, separation walls, and grueling poverty. Olmert has said (but only after it was clear he was on the way out) that there won’t be any choice for Israel but to withdraw from all the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem. If that is really his position, he has wasted his term in empty talk. In action, Israel’s position is the opposite. It does not withdraw, it does not dismantle even the outposts it calls illegal, most of the settlers remain in their homes, the army continues to control the borders, and Gaza continues to sink in despair.
Molten Lead has no political justification. Even if Hamas does return to the negotiating table, Israel will have nothing to offer. For it remains as unwilling as ever to pay the price of peace—that is, to end the Occupation. Because it has not paid, the rockets fall on Sderot and other Negev towns. Israel then uses the rockets as an excuse for continuing not to pay. Another excuse is the “no partner” mantra. When Israel says it is ready for a Palestinian state, it does not mean in all the Occupied Territories—its talk of a state, therefore, is wool over the eyes. Israel’s unwillingness to pay is the source of Hamas’s strength. The movement rests on three pillars: poverty, the weakness of the PA, and the lack of a diplomatic prospect.
It is Israel that plunged Gaza into its present condition. The disengagement of 2005 was unilateral, refusing any role to the PA and leaving the field open for the Hamas takeover. The responsibility for what is now occurring in Gaza rests, therefore, almost exclusively on Israel. Perhaps Molten Lead will end, indeed, in an “improved” cease-fire. Perhaps we shall soon see the Hamas leadership in Cairo again. But a renewal of calm will result in no solution. What solution can there be as long as the Territories continue to sink in corruption, poverty and despair? How long will it take until a new calm gives way to another massacre?
And how long can Israeli society go on living as an Occupier? How long until the country’s internal social gaps, together with the ever worsening conflict, land a blow many times worse than rockets from Gaza? The basic problem isn’t Hamas. It is the nationalist consensus of Israel’s political parties, which have prodded the present transitional government to carry out this massacre, whose only real purpose is to continue putting off the price of peace.
In late 1941, during the invasion of the USSR, a small advance patrol of Waffen-SS soldiers was ambushed near Taganrog. About seven or so troops, no more than a dozen. When other Nazis found their bodies, they found signs of mutilation. As a reprisal, their unit killed all the Soviet prisoners of war and all civilians who fell into their hands over the coming days - about 13,000 or so.
Does this wholesale approach to reprisals remind you of anything happening right now?
Comment by does tres muchas Vietnam — 30 December, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
That’s ironic. Post a plea for peace and tolerance under the name of a demand for warfare across the world made by a bloodthirsty maniac. I suppose it’s an example of the unity of opposites, right?
Comment by Mr History — 30 December, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
In “Ordinary Men”, a description of a German police battalion’s part in the Holocaust in occupied Poland in 1942-3, there is mention of a German police NCO being shot dead. As a reprisal, the Germans ordered that several hundred Poles be shot. After shooting a number of Polish non-Jews, the police commander decided to complete his quota by slaughtering Jews in a nearby ghetto, which he did. I forget the exact total but I think it was a ratio of 300 or 400:1. It might even have been 500:1.
Does this kind of ratio remind anybody of events in Gaza?
Comment by dos tres muchas Vietnam — 30 December, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
From challenge:
‘We say that another way must be found, even if the road is long. Israelis and Palestinians, while demanding the right of Palestinians to a united sovereign state on all lands conquered in 1967, must strive toward a secular, democratic and socialist horizon’.
Er, what about the lands stolen in 1948?
And why omit the fact that Hamas were elected by the people of Gaza? A fact all the TV and radio news channels (including NPR), newspapers and the White House seem to ignore while calling them terrorists.
It is Israel who are the terrorist state.
Comment by Peter Hine — 31 December, 2008 @ 5:33 am
‘vietnam’ - your citing of the nazi holocaust is interesting given that hamas does not believe the nazi holocaust of jews took place!!!!!!!!!!
Hamas of course - like todays neo nazis - wishes to see the annhilation of the state of israel. Perhaps you do too?
Comment by leigh richards — 31 December, 2008 @ 9:28 am
“Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don’t take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, “told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms.” Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.”
Comment by TH Respect Survivor — 31 December, 2008 @ 10:08 am
The Israelis obviously picked up their 500:1 reprisal kill ratios from somewhere. Where else than from the Nazis, who made a regular practice of it?
Deep down, you probably realise that Israel is engaging in a abominable crime, and you are flailing around in an attempt to justify it.
Comment by dos tres muchas Vietnam — 31 December, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Yes, Israel is engaged in a stupid, murderous and counterproductive action, but why is it that saying that is never enough? Dos tres muchas Vietnam and some others (remember the banners on Palestine Solidarity demonstrations equating the star of david to the swastika?) seem to be almost wetting themselves to say that hey, look, those Jews are Nazis. Does doing so make them feel better?
Comment by ross bradshaw — 31 December, 2008 @ 11:23 am
The author of “Holocaust for Beginners”, a detailed yet concise guide to what happened, and written in the 1990s, noted that Israel seemed to be copying the Nazi tactic of massive reprisal, long before these latest events in Gaza. Since the Holocaust is cited as justification every time the Israelis kill Palestinians or other Arabs, it would be surprising if parallels between Israeli and Nazi actions were not also found. The parallels are, after all, there.
Of course, colonial regimes in general have often reacted to even small-scale resistance actions with massive reprisals. In many ways Zionism is a sort of late flowering of colonialism. The Nazis had a colonial project too, in eastern Europe.
Comment by dos tres muchas Vietnam — 31 December, 2008 @ 11:43 am
Still wetting yourself, dos tres muchas… Just because some book does too does not make your views fine. I would also oppose the use of the Holocaust as any justification for the current attack. Perhaps dos tres muchas could tell me where this has been used to justify the current bombing? I am not saying it has not been used, simply that I have not seen it.
Comment by ross bradshaw — 31 December, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
Books are wonderful things. You should read more of them. Get you out of that little Zionist bubble you inhabit.
I used to be pro-Israel once. Then when their Falangist allies (interesting name, don’t you think?) murdered Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila, I was reminded of the Kaunas massacre in 1941. The Nazis had driven out the Soviets, and Lithuanian “patriots” set to work beating the local Jews to death in the city square with iron bars. In pictures you can see the German troops standing around watching it. They aren’t doing the killing. They are just letting it happen. Like the “IDF”, 1982.
Comment by dos tres muchas vietnam — 31 December, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
The Israeli Government wants to show its tough to ward off the threat of the even more right wing Likud in the upcoming elections. The people of Gaza and to a lesser extent Southern Israel are the victims of the cynical militarism of the Israeli Government, its likely to push the population of Gaza further into the hands of Hamas, rather than cause problems for them.
Comment by green socialist — 31 December, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
#11. So… because I object to dos tres muchas vietnam using Holocaust imagery to describe the Israeli bombing I live in a Zionist bubble? Perhaps he/she could reread my postings, does my describing the Israeli bombing as “stupid, murderous and counterproductive” sound like the line of the Zionist Federation?
As to reading books, well, I do read the odd one - in fact I publish them… two of my forthcoming books are on Israel/Palestine, both anti-occupation. Strange thing to do from a Zionist bubble. Oh, and I do know a bit about Sabra and Shatila,one of our writers has just returned from a spell in Shatila where he has been writing a book that I commissioned.
But dos tres muchas (have you got a real name?) doesn’t answer my open question, when has Holocaust imagery been used to justify the current bombing? Dos tres muchas said it had been, do tell me where? If it has been, I deplore it. If it hasn’t been, why mention it?
Comment by simple simon — 31 December, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
“‘vietnam’ - your citing of the nazi holocaust is interesting given that hamas does not believe the nazi holocaust of jews took place!!!!!!!!!!”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/12/hamascondemnstheholocaust
Comment by James — 2 January, 2009 @ 1:26 pm