Why Israel does what it does

ajeeb Mubarki,
For all its military might, the huge war machine which it unhesitatingly uses as the first and foremost measure against any situation, Israel seems to be somehow afraid of a few things. Why else, given that a cornerstone of Israeli tactics is deploying its equally large PR machine , did the Zionist state seemingly contrive this PR disaster by attacking the aid ships sailing to Gaza in international waters ? Because it’s afraid of resonances, that’s why.

For, this wasn’t the first act of Israeli hostility against a ship carrying civilians. It has happened before. In 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) had chartered a vessel, called al-Awda (the Return), to take a few Palestinians living in exile back to their land. The idea was dramatic, deeply symbolic. For long, the Jewish state had used, downright manipulated, the idea of the exodus, and the idea of Jews, as refugees , with nowhere else to go, going back to their ancient, promised land which they said was somehow empty.

But the founding of Israel meant the creation of another population in exile, another nation of refugees . And the symbolism of some of them returning, much the same way as so many Jews arrived in Palestine after the end of the second world war, in a ship, was too much for Israel. And the same naval unit that carried out Monday’s bloody raid on the aid flotilla, was reportedly used to sabotage and sink al-Awda in its harbour in Cyprus before it could start on its journey.

It’s these symbols that resonate and remind the world and Israel of the crime at its heart, of the inhuman siege of Gaza, of maybe even the fact that millions of Palestinian refugees are living in camps, wanting to go back to their land. And it’s just these symbols that Israel is worried about and tries very hard to negate, even erase. Just what, for instance, would the world do, would Israel itself do, if some Palestinians decide to recreate the planned journey of the al-Awda ?

It could, most probably, indulge in what it usually does: call such a ship or fleet carrying unarmed Palestinians a security threat, even an act of war. It could even sink or bomb the ship or repeat the actions it did on Monday. For, so far, despite the widespread condemnation of many of its actions and even the many reports on some such actions by international bodies that indict Israel , it has got away with things. It has, to put it rather simply, behaved as a law unto itself, quite as if basic norms of behaviour, even globally-agreed upon rules of conduct in war don’t apply to it.

But the idea, the symbol would remain. It can’t be bombed or sunk. For, it’s also a fact that just won’t go away: Israel was created by expelling and compelling the inhabitants of the land into exile. The refugees from Europe’s horror created new refugees elsewhere.

And that’s the heart of the problem. That icon of the struggle against apartheid, Nelson Mandela once called Palestine “the greatest moral issue of our times.” And were one to look at the problem that way, in a sort of ethical-moral framework, it is indeed something deeply troubling. For, Israel indicates that the oppressed of this world, of one age, can become the oppressors themselves. Those who were the victims of a vile project of racism have behaved in a racist way towards a set of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the original crime.

That is what Israel also constantly wants to hide, to cover up with its narratives of terrorism , national security and war. That is why, rather than actually taking up the many offers of peace, the many proposals presented by various actors, even Arab states themselves, eventually offering what Israel says it needs most — recognition — it seeks to stay in a state of permanent war. Israel cannot confront itself, so it indulges in the make-believe , the rhetoric, of always being threatened by something or the other, or always having to defend itself.

And it invents ‘facts on the ground’ — the grabbing of more and more Palestinian land, in the most illegal fashion, so that it can then bargain from there, if it ever has to bargain. It continually creates a new crisis so that the world then begins to work on resolving that crisis, so that the tackling the real problem, the occupation , the refugees, is delayed yet more.

Take the Gaza crisis. Just what would Israel gain, in real and actual terms, with basically squeezing the life out of 1.5 million people crammed into a tiny stretch of land? Just what lies behind the insane absurdity of a blockade where the items that are allowed inside Gaza includes cinnamon but not coriander, canned meat and tuna but not canned fruit, mineral water but not fruit juice, tea and coffee but not jam and chocolate?

The whim of the powerful, the occupier, yes. Deliberate humiliation and torture, yes. Even using the Gaza issue to try and supplant the other, main, wider one of all of Palestine for however long it can, yes. But it is also a neurosis. Like a human being lying hard, more and more, committing worse acts, while secretly being aware of having committed a very big crime.