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TechnoratiThe Siege of Gaza Is Going to Lead to a Violent Escalation
Far from helping settle the Middle East conflict, the US and Europe are fuelling it with their contempt for democracy
There is, it seems, an unbridgeable gap between the western world's apparent recognition of the dangers of Palestinian suffering and its commitment to do anything whatever to stop it. This week the collective punishment of the people of Gaza reached a new level, as Israel began to choke off essential fuel supplies to its one and a half million people in retaliation for rockets fired by Palestinian resistance groups. A plan to cut power supplies has only been put on hold till the end of the week by the intervention of Israel's attorney general.
Both moves come on top of the existing blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel since last year's election of Hamas and the confiscation of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes it is obliged to pass on as part of previous agreements. And instead of being restrained by the US or European Union, both have deepened the crisis by imposing their own sanctions and withdrawing aid. The result has, inevitably, been further huge increases in unemployment and poverty. But far from discouraging rocket attacks, they have risen sharply - though the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths has been running at more than 30 to one, compared with four to one at the height of the intifada five years ago.The UN's senior official in Gaza, Karen Koning-Abu Zayd, yesterday branded Israel's intensification of the Gaza siege as a violation of international law: despite its withdrawal two years ago, Israel continues to control all access to the Gaza Strip and remains the occupying power both legally and practically. Not that the situation is much better in the occupied West Bank. Despite the US and Israel's fatal backing for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his emergency government of a non-existent state, Israeli demolitions, land seizures, settlement expansion, assassinations, armed incursions, segregated road-building and construction of the land-grabbing separation wall continue apace in the territory where Abbas's nominal writ supposedly runs.
There are now 563 checkpoints in the West Bank, squeezing this already constricted piece of land into apartheid-style cantons, and making free movement or normal economic activity entirely impossible. All this is in contravention of international law; much of it directly violates UN security council resolutions, such as resolution 446 against Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. But, whereas the occupied people face sanctions and international isolation, the occupiers pay no penalty at all. On the contrary, they are aided and armed to the hilt by the US and its allies.
Given the speed at which Israel continues to create facts on the ground, it's no surprise that even Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned a few days ago that the "window for a two-state solution" could be closing. But it is of course her government that has underpinned this takeover at every stage. And having preached democracy as the salvation of the Middle East, the US and its allies demonstrated what that meant in practice when it greeted the winners of the Palestinian elections with a political and economic boycott.
Unless Hamas recognised Israel, renounced violence and signed up to agreements it had always opposed, the western powers insisted, the Palestinian electorate would be ignored. No such demands, needless to say, have been made of Israel. The US and Israel then went one step further, funding and arming a section of the defeated Fatah leadership in an attempt to overthrow Hamas's administration. When that failed, the US encouraged Abbas to impose an unconstitutional administration of his own and blocked any power-sharing with Hamas, which is the precondition for Palestinian advance.
Instead, the US is gearing up for a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, from which Hamas is excluded and which almost nobody believes offers any prospect of real progress towards a settlement. Its main appeal to the Bush administration is perhaps that it can be seen to be doing something about the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time when it needs to corral its Arab allies for the coming confrontation with Iran. For the Palestinians, it's maybe just as well that the Israeli government is resistant to any timetable for statehood - let alone serious negotiation on Jerusalem, refugees and final borders - as any agreement that such a weak leadership could now secure would not stand a chance of being accepted by its people.
Already, Hamas and the other non-Fatah Palestinian parties are preparing to stage their own conference in Damascus to coincide with the Annapolis jamboree. Their aim is to challenge the right of Abbas, who has never had any of the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat, to represent the Palestinian people in negotiations over its future. While they were prepared to accept him as a negotiator for a national unity government, there will be no acceptance of deals made by a figure many Palestinians now regard as simply operating under US and Israeli licence.
Nor should there be any interest in such a setup for anyone who wants to see a lasting settlement of the conflict. As in previous periods when political progress has been blocked, there are clear signs that pressures for a return to wider resistance are building up on the Palestinian side. The head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, said on Monday that he did not expect a new intifada if Annapolis failed because the Palestinian public was "exhausted and lacks leadership". It's true that any new upsurge in violence is likely to be different from in the past. But Palestinians are also well aware that it was the first intifada that led to the Oslo agreement, for all its weaknesses, and the second intifada that triggered Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas has mostly held back from armed action against Israel in the past couple of years, though it has allowed attacks by others. That may be about to change. This week Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, declared that "every passing day brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza", while Hamas leader Ahmad Nimr told a rally that the movement was now ready to "strike inside the heart of Israel, the occupation entity" if Israel did not stop its killings in Gaza. Hamas has a variety of options - including rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the West Bank over the much-vaunted security barrier - that could dramatically escalate the conflict. The wider international interest in a just settlement could not be more obvious.
s.milne@guardian.co.uk
© 2007 The Guardian
15 Comments so far
Show AllGREATBEAR215: I agree with you, but I don't think the international community can "grow teeth" any more -- they've already reached senility and all their teeth have fallen out : )
Israel needs to face international sanctions for her abuse and mistreatment of the Palestinians. Enough is enough.
Engaged in a war of genocide against the Palestinians-if Israel will not stop; Israel should be stopped. International pressure should be brought to bear against Israel. Complaints are constantly being filed against Israel; but nothing is ever done. The international community needs to "grow some teeth," here.
In the name of God, the All Merciful, the Mercy-giving
Thank You for your comments Mark Abrams.
Ranaan: proves that "our God" is real? NO! It proves that God allows human beings to have full choice in their actions/decisions. And it proves that some humans will abuse that freedom of choice through their arrogance and contempt of their fellow humans. God, for your information, is not partisan to ANY group of his human creation. He rewards those who are just, who are humble, and those who stand up for their rights. Not those who are aggressive or oppressive, no matter what they claim about God or religion or anything.
Here is a verse from the Quran that addresses this:
"Moreover, both the Jews and the Christians say:
We are the children of God,
And his most beloved!
Say to them:
Why, then, does He punish you for your sins?
Rather,
You are but human beings
Among all others
That He has created!
He forgives
Whomever He so wills.
And He punishes
Whomever He so wills.
For to God alone belongs
All dominion over the heavens
And the earth
And all that is between them.
Thus to stand for Judgment before Him
In the Hereafter
Is the ultimate destiny of every human being."
Raanan G writes:
"as far as I'm concerned, the existence of Israel after six victorious wars against far numerically superior armies proves that our God is real."
Okay, you're a typically deluded religious military extremist, but see if you can wrap your mind around this: What the six victorious wars prove is that Israel was always militarily superior, in modern weapons, training, aggressive tactics and preparation, if not always in manpower (although a key fact about the 1948 war is Israeli numerical superiority of well-trained soldiers).
Israel was better armed and more aggressive, and killed many times more Arabs than Arabs killed Israelis. That's how they won.
No, the problem didn't start in the 1930s, it started earlier, and hostility and violence escalated on both sides. But the Israelis have held the upper hand since 1948, and are most responsible for the present situation. The Palestinians have been offering peace based on two states, 1948-1967 Israeli borders, since the mid-1970s, but Israel has preferred to keep colonizing the West Bank and its aquifers. And terrorism? The Israelis are always the bigger terrorists. So it goes.
rsterling1, You asked what they think they will accomplish if they fire rockets?
I imagine they see themselves as having no other options.
What mechanism do they have open to themselves to stop settlers from taking more of the internationally recognized occupied land? Land is taken, the UN except four nations protest, nothing happens.
Were they given a choice about the placement of the security walls? How can they stop it?
They finally elected their own government in what is recognized as a free election, the US, EU, and Israel destroy them for it. Self-determination is not allowed.
The uncontrolled militants will fire rockets, the hardliners will get their justification for a military incursion. Gaza and West Bank will shrink. Start over.
If the occupied lands shrink in size every year, then mathematically, there will come a time when no Palestinian will live on it; what will have been Israel's solution to their problem?
The Jews started the problem with violence in the 1930s? For years and years, beginning around 1920, cowardly Arab thugs engaged in violent riots in which they killed at random, destroyed power lines in Jewish settlements, took pot shots at Jewish-owned buses and killed farm animals in Jewish collective farms. For years, the Jewish Agency preached "hagvalah," or restraint. It was only in the late 1930s that you had the beginning of Jewish terrorism with the Irgun.
And by the way, as far as I'm concerned, the existence of Israel after six victorious wars against far numerically superior armies proves that our God is real.
Raanan G
kucinich
Israel the great trouble maker.
I believe it has a Masada complex and is urging its own destruction.
It is going to happen.
I sympathize with them-but then I also sympathize more with what they are doing to the arabs, since as Gandhi observed, the Jews started the trouble by using force in the 30s.
And let's not overlook the shame of countries like Egypt or Jordan which could alleviate the problems overnight by opening their borders. Or perhaps Europe would have done the same if a foreign power came into Luxenbourg and claimed it as their own country-and forced the neighboring countries to enforce its borders. Somehow I think Europeans would have shown a little more sympathy--then again, maybe not.
Israel wont fight like it did in the 60s--they are soft, while the arabs have become more battle hardened.
Israel needs to open the sea and air space to Gaza, as well as disband any interior check points in the West Bank. Hamas needs to get over the destruction of Israel as their ultimate goal and stop the rocket attacks. Without good faith on both sides nothing will be accomplished.
Even if Hamas was NOT throwing rockets, the Israeli government would be finding another excuse to continue stealing the land and water of the long time Palestinian establishment.
The conflict is not about religion but pure unadulterated theft of one people's land by another people, aided and abetted by outside interests. The religious dressing used to describe the conflict is a distraction from the real goals - land and water that have belonged to others for centuries.
I agree with littlem85. The Palestinians are doing what they can with a corrupt government of their own against brutal oppressors.
I wonder how any peoples in Europe, Africa, Asia or the Americas would have responded to a Jewish state carved out of their territory with the connivance of the rest of the world.
Just a simplistic thought to ponder.
It is surely foolish for a little country like Israel surrounded by large oil rich enemy countries to escalate a conflict that promises to become a nuclear war that could engulf the world. Jews are said to be smart. But their "if we go, the world goes with us" strategy is certainly not going to win Likud supporting jews any friends.
Besides bringing on the rapture, the only reason U.S. Xtians support Israel is that it is our biggest military base in the Middle East. They mostly hate jews along with every other race, but everybody wants to control Middle East oil.
I don't know about Europeans, but besides having their share of Likud supporters, I suspect they don't want to get left out of their share of Middle East oil by not being involved in the looting process. Peace brothers.
In the name of God, the All Merciful, the Mercy-giving
Great article.
When pushed to such a degree people will and must fight back.
It's easy from our lofty positions of security and comfort to question the Palestinians tactical/militaristic moves, but they really have no other choice.
There is simply nothing wrong with them attacking this force of occupation and oppression (so called "Israel") that threatens to wipe them out on a second-by-second basis.
So, I don't think it's playing into the hands of the ZE (Zionist Entity), and even if things seem to get worse before they get better because of Hamas launching attacks, I think the fact that they are keeping up the fight all this time is very commendable.
It rarely (somehow) makes it into the American press but there have been polls done in Israel and the occupied territories. Yes "occupied". I believe in international law, shame on me. The polls show that massive majorities of Israelis and Palestinians want to come to terms with each other. The polls also show that each side strongly distrusts the other. The world isn't doing much to change that.
Right from the time of Britain in Egypt, in an effort to create a buffer against the Ottomans, the British brought in boatloads of Jewish people. The Jews would be less porous than the local Moslems. At the same time, the British were making promises to the local Arabs, later to be reneged upon.
Even today, a Londoner, recently converted from Catholicism to Judaism, can pick up sticks and settle on land worked by a Palestinian family for generations. This is repugnant.
Nevertheless, I am optimistic. People of goodwill will (eventually) find a solution. They will either find a two state solution or a one state solution.
As we all know, it was a joint Israeli/U.S. effort to counterbalance the PLO. Talk about blowback!!!
Just listen to the recent flood of Israeli officials giving interviews and speeches with their everchanging facts in an attempt (seems successful) to demonize the Palestinians further - not just Hamas - and the Iranians.
One official raised the specter of Gaza.
Another trivia - who owns Gaza?
Excellent article. But I wonder what Hamas thinks it will accomplish if they do launch attacks or suicide bombings inside Israel. It would seem to play into the hands of Israel ... just as the Quassams do.