On the Future of Gaza
by Adel Safty
The War of Punishment and Frustration
The Israeli assault on the Palestinians pitted one of the most powerful armies in the world against a political movement with a crude military organization, using home-made rockets.
Yet Israeli leaders have discovered that wiping out Hamas is not an easy task if only because Hamas’s significance lies in what it symbolises — the resistance to occupation and dispossession.
Indeed, Israeli leaders have already admitted after eighteen days of punishing assault that they had not been able to wipe out Hamas. This is perhaps because the assault was not really a war against an army, but was a war of punishment directly aimed at the Palestinian people. Angry about the 2006 election of Hamas, Israel is frustrated that the Palestinians have refused to give up their struggle for independence, and has chosen to punish them for their resistance. Consider the massive use of force against a vastly inferior enemy, and the killing of innocent civilians which Israeli leaders claim it is not deliberate but which they ought to have known would be the inevitable result of their massive violence. This military punishment comes on top of a siege which amounts to a campaign of starvation and the imprisonment of 1.5 million people. Richard Falk, UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories, called for protective action for the Palestinians against “the persisting and wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life.”
Christopher Gunness, the spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, told the public radio program Democracy Now, that the situation in Gaza was “absolutely horrifying. The people of Gaza are terrorized. They’re traumatized. And they are trapped.”
Then there is the number of people killed from both sides, reflecting the gross inequality of the confrontation and attesting to its punishing nature: 1300 Palestinians were killed, many of them civilians, compared to thirteen Israelis, most of whom were soldiers.
The ferocity of the assault on Gaza was compounded by its sheer inhumanity. Amnesty International, citing “indisputable evidence” collected by its fact-finding team that visited Gaza, reported on January 19 that “The Israeli army used white phosphorus, a weapon with a highly incendiary effect, in densely populated civilian and residential areas of Gaza City.”
The scale of punishment and destruction inflicted on the people of Gaza was captured by two Israeli writers (Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff) who concluded in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that: “Gaza has been hurled back into the 1940s.” Punishment as the goal of the Gaza assault was in fact openly admitted by Israeli officials who were reported by the New York Times as saying that “an offensive that caused average people to suffer put pressure on Hamas in real and specific ways.”
Historically, the encounter of Zionism with the Palestinians was written in blood. It could not have been otherwise given the Zionist goal of colonizing Palestine; for the Palestinians could not have been expected to submissively acquiesce in the loss of their country.
Zionist leaders were well-aware of this fact, but considered violently displacing the Palestinians from their country necessary to make way for the European Jews.
Theodore Hertz, the father of political Zionism, candidly stated that for Zionism to succeed in Palestine “might takes precedence over right.” Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the extreme right wing Zionist leaders whose direct disciples formed the Likud party and came to power in Israel in the 1970s, recognized that: “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force.”
Therein, of course, lies the principle contradiction of Israeli policy which continues to occupy and dispossess the Palestinians while simultaneously proclaiming a desire for peace.
Israeli leaders could have stopped all rockets from Gaza by ending the occupation, or even by ending the siege of Gaza and the collective punishment of the Palestinians. But the issue is not really about rockets from Gaza; the real issue is more fundamental: it is about whether the Zionist project of using force to displace and dispossess the Palestinians is compatible with peace. Are Israeli leaders ready to declare the end of the colonizing project and be satisfied with 78 percent of Palestine? Judging by the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, which violates the obligation to freeze all settlement activities stipulated in the roadmap “peace process” (which was accepted by the parties, the USA, Russia, the EU, and the UN), Israeli leaders are not ready yet to end Zionism’s colonial nature. Peace with the Palestinians would bring colonization to an end; a state of belligerency serves as a cover for its continuation.
The absence of real Israeli interest in a just and lasting peace with the Palestinians has been candidly admitted by Dov Weissglas a senior aid to Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. Weissglass told Haaretz that the goal of the withdrawal from Gaza was “the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.” This whole package of the roadmap “has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.”
The punishing assault on Gaza is also an expression of the frustrations of Israeli leaders whose consistent use of force has failed to completely subjugate the Palestinians. Despite the expulsion in 1948, and the loss of Palestine; despite the massacres from Deir Yassein in 1948 to Sabra and Shatilla in 1982, despite the oppression of the occupation since 1967; despite the repeated assaults on the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians refuse to be defeated.
The irony is that by launching a massive, punishing war against Hamas, the Israelis may be legitimizing them in the eyes of many and at the expense of Fatah, as the symbol of that refusal to be defeated.
The future of Gaza will depend on whether or not the two-state solution of the conflict is still a viable option. A settlement could rehabilitate the Fatah faction and put an end to the need for resistance, thus diminishing the appeal of Hamas. A reunited Palestinian entity — geographically and politically — will then be faced with the task of reconstruction of the shattered Palestinian society. In the absence of peace, the continued punishment inflicted by Israel, and the growing poverty and despair are likely to further radicalise Palestinian society in Gaza and estrange it from the West Bank.
Adel Safty’s new book, Might Over Right: How the Zionist Took Over Palestine, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky, and published by Garnet (England). 2009
–ADEL SAFTY
The Dark Days: Fortress Israel’s Final Stand
I am a product of South African apartheid. Born to a Black South African father and African American mother, I lived the first eight years of my life under one of the most racist governments in the world.
I witnessed firsthand how the White South African government — through mass arrests, dispossession, denial of freedom of movement, and targeted assassinations — tried to break the will of the people. I saw how Black South Africans and their supporters would cry out, “this is nothing short of racism and ethnic cleansing.” But the standard refrain from the government was always the same: “We are fighting against communism and terror. What we are trying to do is keep the country safe from chaos.” This was code for wanting to keep the country safe for all its white citizens. But it wasn’t merely the government that co-opted this stance. The recruitment of academics and the media also helped perpetuate the myth that the state’s majority Black population would one day try rise up and kill all the good white folks.
So for me, watching the carnage that Israel rained down upon the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, creates an eerie sense of déjà vu.
As images from Israel’s assault began to beam across the world and millions took to the streets in protest, the Israeli propaganda machine began to mobilize. The state, through its media and with the help of its academics, broadcasted one unanimous voice. Israel is engulfed once more by righteous indignation that translates into destructive policies in the Gaza Strip.
Through its own media Israel broadcasted daily that the suffering of those who died from rocket attacks, those whose skin was burning from white phosphorus , those who sought shelter in hospitals and UN schools, only to have them bombed by the Israeli military, were merely an unfortunate side effect of Israeli’s righteous self defense. The state — much like the apartheid government of South Africa — presents itself as the victim of unrelenting rocket attacks by Hamas militants, and even the academic world is recruited to explain how warped and crazed the people of Gaza are for supporting such a group of terrorists.
In essence, this state with the fourth largest army in the world, which faces no serious threat from any of its neighboring countries, and which is generously supplied with the latest F-16’s, Apache helicopters and nearly $6 billion each year by the United States — is actually the victim in all of this.
And with this attitude comes the unfathomable reasoning that what occurred in Gaza does not need to be apologized for. There is no remorse from the state and its leaders, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, or Defense Minister Ehud Barrack. In his well researched and meticulously documented work The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote:
“the aim of the Zionist project has always been to construct and then defend a ‘white’ (Western) fortress in a ‘black’ (Arab) world. At the heart of the refusal to allow Palestinians the Right of Return is the fear of Jewish Israelis that they will eventually be outnumbered by Arabs. The prospect this calls up — that their fortress may be under threat — arouses such strong feelings that Israelis no longer seem to care that their actions might be condemned by the whole world.”
Indeed, throughout the 22-day siege Livni, Olmert, and Barrack all reiterated that the use of F-16s, Apache helicopters, and phosphorus weapons — even if civilians were killed in the process — were all legitimate in the fight against “so called” terror in Gaza and to secure the safety of Israel’s citizens.
This is a constant theme that Israel and its apologists use to explain the actions of the state against its Arab neighbors in general and the Palestinians in particular. The roots of this are found in Zionist ideology. Every response by Israel, no matter if it is occupation of the West bank and Gaza, the Jenin massacre of 2002, the Lebanon war of 2006, home demolitions, or the killing of journalists, activists, children, women and old men, has always been portrayed as a righteous event that is justified self-defense and done with a heavy heart by a nation that solely wishes to live in peace with its Arab neighbors.
But there is a funny thing about this sort of self-righteousness — it can come back to bite you.
While the siege raged on millions of people all over the world took to the streets to express their outrage at what Israel was doing. In Indonesia 1.5 million marched; on the second day of the offensive hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Beirut; Venezuela recalled their ambassador from Tel Aviv and sent the Israeli counterpart home and Bolivia followed suit; Mauritania and Qatar severed political ties with Israel, and Turkey lambasted Israel at the World Economic Forum as Israeli President Shimon Peres sat and fumed. In unusually strong terms The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which very rarely issues public comments, said it believed Israel had breached international humanitarian law. The ICRC accused Israel of delaying ambulance access to a house where relief workers found four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces. It took four days before the Israeli army granted the ICRC access to the children.
In South Africa, parliamentary ministers gave the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Dov Segev-Steinberg, a severe tongue-lashing, accusing his government of perpetrating “racist” abuses against the Palestinian people “that make apartheid look like a Sunday school picnic”.
The aim of this horrible conflict was to stop Hamas resistance fighters from firing rockets into southern Israel and to remove the government from power. In both attempts it is clear that Israel failed.
Israel’s attempt to justify the bombing of a UN school, from which they claimed fighters fired upon their troops, turned out to be a lie. Tens of women and children were murdered in the assault.
Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East yet by a margin of 26 – 3, the Israeli Central Elections Committee decided to ban the Balad Party from running in the upcoming election. By a margin of 21 – 8, they also banned the United Arab List-Ta’al (UAL-T).
The Arab parties earned the ire of the most hawkish elements in the Israeli government by publicly opposing the war in the Gaza Strip.
The fortress that Israel had long set up to ‘protect its citizens’ is cracking.
No more can the world sit by as it did in South Africa and let the slaughter of innocents continue. No more can the narrative of any conflict begin with the ridiculously one sided statement that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Zionist lobbies must be countered in the United States; boycott and divestment must commence; mainstream media must be challenged; and political and military leaders in Israel who have committed war crimes must be brought to justice.
We are now in the darkest days of this conflict. Israel no longer seems to care what the world thinks of its actions. Mass slaughter of innocents is seen as a justifiable means to combat terror, and Israeli leaders make no apologies for the hell that the region’s 1.5 million residents have endured. These are the same dark days, the darkest hours that I remember going through in South Africa just before the light showed through and a new dawn arose. Just like in South Africa, where Blacks can now vote, hold public office and live and go where they choose, the dawn will break for the Palestinians too. They will emerge from these dark hours.
The only question we need ask ourselves now is how long will the dark days remain?
Naji Ali is the producer and host of Crossing The Line: Life in Occupied Palestine (http://ctl.ibsyn.com). He was born to activist parents and spent the first 8 years of his life in South Africa. He returned from 1990 – 1995 and was detained and tortured for nearly two years. He also has lived and worked in Palestine in the Old City of Hebron from 2002 – 2004
–NAJI ALI
