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.
