Adam Horowitz writes:
The year in Gaza started on January 23, 2008. That is when, under the stifling pressures of Israeli, and internationally-supported, siege the Gazans broke out. Hamas was credited with blowing several holes in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt in what was widely compared to a prison break. Over 20% of Gaza’s resident’s streamed across to Egypt to buy desperately needed provisions, including food and building materials.
Well, 2008 is ending in much the same way. Today according to Ha’aretz:
Gaza residents on Sunday breached the border fence with Egypt in several places and hundreds have crossed the frontier prompting Egyptian border guards to open fire, said officials and witnesses on both sides of the border.
An Egyptian security official said there were at least five breaches along the 9 mile (14 kilometer) border and hundreds of Palestinian residents were pouring in. At least 300 Egyptian border guards rushed to the area to reseal the border, the official added on condition on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
A resident of the Gaza Strip side of the border, Fida Kishta, said that Egyptian border guards opened fire to drive back the Palestinians. Residents also commandeered a bulldozer to open new breaches.
One question that will wait until after the wave of fighting is over is what ultimately is Israel’s plan in Gaza? Why did Israel decide to attack Gaza now, what was the calculation, what were all the goals? How did the impending end of the Bush administration fit into their thinking? And perhaps more cynically, how did the upcoming Israeli elections affect the decision?
One piece of common sense that has been repeated ad nauseum is that the Israeli attacks were in response to Qassam attacks on Israel. Ezra Klein has already done a good job responding to that, and while it is impossible to deny that the missiles were perceived to pose a great threat to the Israeli towns around Gaza (I’ve visited Sderot and have seen it first hand), the fact also remains that the missiles have been shot for seven years, and have been effectively halted with truce agreements. Why attack?
In her article “If Gaza Falls . . .” Sara Roy reminds us not only of the correct timeline of events, but also the big picture of Israel’s possible intentions:
Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then.
Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form.
Roy is not the first to imagine that Israel wants to split the Palestinians permanently in half. Writing in The National, Jonathan Cook quoted Eyad Sarraj, the head of Gaza’s Community Mental Health Programme:
The question remains: what does Israel expect the response of Gazans to be to their immiseration and ever greater insecurity in the face of Israeli military reprisals?
Eyad Sarraj, the head of Gaza’s Community Mental Health Programme, said this year that Israel’s long-term goal was to force Egypt to end the controls along its short border with the Strip. Once the border was open, he warned, “Wait for the exodus.”
Are we beginning to see the exodus? Recent polls have shown that over 40% of Gazan residents would emigrate if given the chance. Does Israel sense this is the time to create the conditions to promote this emigration? Is this the campaign to destroy Gaza once and for all?
Writing back in January after the first jail break, Tony Karon said, “The hole blown by Hamas in the Gaza-Egypt border fence has finally punctured the bubble of delusion surrounding the U.S.-Israeli Middle East policy.” If only that were true.
Related posts:
- Undoing Exodus in Gaza: Alice Walker bears witness to a catastrophe
- How to think about the missiles that terrorize Sderot, by Adam Horowitz, who’s been there
- International reputation be damned: Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and refuses to cooperate in UN war crimes investigation
- Horowitz: How can I celebrate a Jewish liberation story while Gaza is starving?
- Read the fine print: Only one-third of US pledge at Gaza conference to go to Gaza, none of it for rebuilding
{ 11 comments }
Its not true.
There is delusion on all sides of this. Certainly on the activists' side still here refusing to criticize Hamas in any way. PHIL?
There is no delusion on the Israeli side that it cannot responsibly accept the shelling of civilians, or the planned shelling of civilians (the significance of the cave intervention).
BOTH sides tested the waters. Edging slightly further over the line.
We're all gullible.
Richard,
Three things. 1. Plenty of people criticize Hamas, that is totally irrevelant to what is going on now in Gaza. Hamas has no responsibility for the fact that nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed in the past two days. You're falling for Israeli and US pr. What would you want to critize Hamas for in this case? This is not about the missiles, its not going to stop the missiles. Only ending the conflict will do that.
2. Israel has been accepting the shelling of its citizens for 7 years. People in Sderot told me they knew the government didn't care about them. Shimon Peres was in Sderot the same day I was to calm anger at the government. This is not about helping Sderot. This will in fact hurt Sderot. They will catch the brunt of the response. Not Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem. One IDF commander in Sderot told me (off the record), "the Qassams are like rocks, we cannot stop them."
3. The bombing campaign of the past two days is not "Edging slightly further over the line." This is the mass slaughter of innocent people and destruction of a society. Hamas does not have the capacity to do this even if they wanted to. You are looking for balance where it doesn't exist.
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RE: "And perhaps more cynically, how did the upcoming Israeli elections affect the decision?"
***
ANALYSIS / With Gaza raid, Barak is back in the political ring
By Yossi Verter, Haaretz Correspondent (Israel)
Two months after Ehud Olmert was elected as Israel's prime minister, the Second Lebanon War broke out. Two months before Olmert departs, the military campaign in the south breaks out.
But Olmert isn't the story here; he's on his way to the Prime Minister's Bureau pensioners' ward. Ehud Barak is the story here. The man who, until yesterday, had to remind the Israeli voter of his existence with self-ridicule on billboards and satirical shows is returning to the political ring with force. In the coming days, weeks maybe, Barak will stand in he center of the public's attention. For better or worse, he's in his element.
The beginning of the raid in Gaza bears the wily and deceptive fingerprint of Barak, the Israel Defense Forces most highly decorated combat soldier. This does not make him the most suitable candidate for the premiership, but it may deliver him and his party from the humiliating defeat the polls are predicting………
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050437.html
**************************************
FROM "THE AMERICAN PROSPECT":
Until recently, (Moshe) Feiglin hasn't hidden his goals. On the Jewish Leadership website, a Hebrew document proposes principles for a constitution for Israel. It would include a high rabbinic court, chosen only by clergy, that would overturn any legislation it saw as contradicting Jewish religious law……Israel would lay claim not only to the West Bank and Gaza, but also to all of Jordan……
ENTIRE ARTICLE –
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_rebel_prince
… or the planned shelling of civilians (the significance of the cave intervention).
Hamas has every bit as much of a right to prepare for war as the IDF. Do you seriously expect them to roll over and give away their only bargaining chip? One can say with complete accuracy EXACTLY the same thing about Israeli procurement of artillery munitions, small-arms ammunition, and bulldozers, etc. If Israelis thought that the cease-fire was violated by Hamas preparing to defend Gaza, they are staggeringly self-righteous and arrogant fools. I have not seen any credible evidence that Hamas violated the cease-fire first, and I am unconvinced that they made no good-faith efforts to prevent other groups from doing so. The Israeli government has a long history of brazen lying. They may be telling the truth this time, but I won't believe it until I see credible evidence, or substantiated reports of such evidence from neutral observers.
Tragically, violence is the tool that ejected Israeli colonists from Gaza, not negotiations, because the ruling parties of the Israeli state were unwilling to let its representatives sit down at the table, any table, with the good-faith intention of working towards a stable and just peace. The threat of violence is the only tool Hamas has to force Israelis to take Palestinians concerns seriously. One of the reasons that the PA has so little credibility is because there is a crystal clear temporal correlation between extended sham 'peace' negotiations and increases in Israeli ethnic cleansing and colonization. The whole point of REAL negotiations is to come to an agreement to NOT use military forces.
It appears now that 'the horse has left the barn'. Israelis and American Zionists are too worked to exercise either good sense in the quest for peace or compassion for the innocent, and after the recent slaughter, I doubt many Palestinians are either. The extremists have their war, their victory. Now the innocent will die in increasing numbers, and not just in Israel and and the OPT, and when the war ends, as it must eventually, the mountain of reeking corpes will not belong just to the extremists, but to those who have called themselves moderates, and have not opposed the rising crescendo of doom.
A pox on both your houses
… or the planned shelling of civilians (the significance of the cave intervention).
Hamas has every bit as much of a right to prepare for war as the IDF. Do you seriously expect them to roll over and give away their only bargaining chip? One can say with complete accuracy EXACTLY the same thing about Israeli procurement of artillery munitions, small-arms ammunition, and bulldozers, etc. If Israelis thought that the cease-fire was violated by Hamas preparing to defend Gaza, they are staggeringly self-righteous and arrogant fools. I have not seen any credible evidence that Hamas violated the cease-fire first, and I am unconvinced that they made no good-faith efforts to prevent other groups from doing so. The Israeli government has a long history of brazen lying. They may be telling the truth this time, but I won't believe it until I see credible evidence, or substantiated reports of such evidence from neutral observers.
Tragically, violence is the tool that ejected Israeli colonists from Gaza, not negotiations, because the ruling parties of the Israeli state were unwilling to let its representatives sit down at the table, any table, with the good-faith intention of working towards a stable and just peace. The threat of violence is the only tool Hamas has to force Israelis to take Palestinians concerns seriously. One of the reasons that the PA has so little credibility is because there is a crystal clear temporal correlation between extended sham 'peace' negotiations and increases in Israeli ethnic cleansing and colonization. The whole point of REAL negotiations is to come to an agreement to NOT use military forces.
It appears now that 'the horse has left the barn'. Israelis and American Zionists are too worked to exercise either good sense in the quest for peace or compassion for the innocent, and after the recent slaughter, I doubt many Palestinians are either. The extremists have their war, their victory. Now the innocent will die in increasing numbers, and not just in Israel and and the OPT, and when the war ends, as it must eventually, the mountain of reeking corpes will not belong just to the extremists, but to those who have called themselves moderates, and have not opposed the rising crescendo of doom.
A pox on both your houses
slight revision due to typos and other errors, last paragraph
It appears now that 'the horse has left the barn'. Israelis and American Zionists are too worked-up to exercise either good sense in the quest for peace or compassion for the innocent, and after the recent slaughter, I doubt many Palestinians are either. The extremists have their war, their victory. Now the innocent will die in increasing numbers, and not just in Israel and and the OPT, and when the war ends, as it must eventually, the mountain of reeking corpses will not belong just to the extremists, but to those who have called themselves moderates, and have not opposed the rising crescendo of doom.
"A pox on both their houses", is exactly the abdication of the effort for peace, that is an utter failure of the left.
We've heard it a million times. We in the west get to ignore the mutual suffering and mutual aggression.
We get to play games like "noone proved it me".
Hamas HAS other alternatives, but they do not fit political militancy. And militancy is their stock in trade. Without militancy, they are Fatah or only a Muslim charity.
You enable them and the worst cycle of sentiment, by saying that their only option was violence.
The difference between an extremist and a moderate is that an extremist is numbed by their anger and ideology and do not care who is harmed. A moderate cares ALL OF THE TIME, and to EVERY PARTY.
I am personally publish in multiple locations on the web, and my comments elsewhere include criticism of Israeli actions.
HERE, I note the renunciation of the term "cycle of violence".
BOTH Israel and Hamas are engaged in internal political campaigns, and in both cases the violence that they undertake on civilians IS a political advertisement.
So what other options would you say that Hamas has Witty?
Let's test your claim to moderation by seeing if you have any concern for the Palestinians at all….
To state "we recognize Israel's right to be Israel within 1967 borders, and will prohibit the use of military force against Israeli civilians in the areas that we have jurisdiction, regardless of the status of borders."
"We will participate fully with the Palestinian Authority, and fully adhere to laws and agreements that prior administrations of the Palestinian Authority has implemented."
"We will use all international and bi-lateral methods to assert a mutually healthy peace with our neighbor Israel."
"We recognize that we have participated in a cycle of violence, that has been and is avoidable, IF we apply diplomatic means to accomplish our social objectives."
"We respect Judaism and regard it as a valid religious path in the world, and will defend Jews rights to practise as Jews in the areas of our jurisdiction, and in our relations with other Arab communities."
"We will continue to assert for the rights of Palestinians for equal due process under the law, for all current and historical legal claims."
"And in return for the dispossession of 700,000 Palestinians from Israel with its 1967 borders, Israel recognizes the right of said Palestinians to reparations in annual X sum per stirpes, to be paid
for by Israel itself and no other, and Israel will prohibit the use of military force against Palestinian civilians in all areas of its jurisdiction. "
"Israel recognizes that it has participated in a cycle of violence, that has been, and is avoidable, IF Israel applies diplomatic means to accomplish its social objectives."
"We respect Islam and Christianity and other religions of the Palestinian people, and will defend Palestinian rights to practice
their religions in the areas of our jurisdiction, and in our relations with other Arab communities."
"We will provide Palestinians with equal due process under internationally recognized law, for all current and historical legal
claims and remove all settlements in the OT by X date, and we will
tear down the wall and end the blockade of the OT by X date; as
well, Israel will no longer have the right to be present in any way
in the air space over the OT."
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