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.
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