The cease-fire that ended seven weeks of hell in Gaza is only two days old. But the countdown to the next round began as soon as the ink dried on the agreement between Israel and the Palestinian armed factions.
There’s no way getting around it. There will be another war in Gaza. The deep-rooted problems bedeviling the Palestinian people and Israel have not gone away. The cease-fire just buys more time–until the next escalation begins and death and destruction are rained down on Gaza. The only question is when that next spasm of violence breaks out. Hamas and the other factions need to re-arm. Israel’s southern communities and people in Gaza want a breather.
Yes, Hamas, the other factions and the Palestinians in Gaza are celebrating the end of a 50-day assault. They are calling it a victory. I would be celebrating too if I were in Gaza. It’s true that Palestinian fighters inflicted unexpected and heavy losses on Israeli soldiers, caused economic pain and terrified the south, and they did wring concessions from Israel on the blockade. But they are minimal concessions at best, and there is no way to enforce them. It’s a re-run of the truce that ended the 2012 conflict, but with yet more death and displacement than that last assault.
“The ceasefire terms look very much like, if not identical to, the November 2012 agreement, including a lack of implementation mechanisms,” the Palestinian analyst Noura Erakat said in a statement sent to reporters by the Institute for Middle East Understanding. “This makes the ceasefire unreliable at best, and fails to prevent another attack on the Gaza Strip in the near future.”
The cease-fire agreement reportedly promises an easing of the blockade, a blockade that is one of the deep roots of why the war broke out. Reuters has the details, though it’s telling there is no official document to refer to. Israel has apparently agreed to open its border crossings with Gaza to allow the flow of goods in, though it’s likely Israel will only let in humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials–and not allow exports and freedom of movement for the people of Gaza. And yet even the flow of reconstruction materials is something Israel can easily reverse. Who will make sure Israel keeps the border open for good? Nobody has the will or desire to. Not Egypt’s virulently anti-Hamas government, and not the U.S.
Next month, there will be more talks on issues like demilitarizing Hamas–which is not going to happen–and an airport and seaport for Gaza, which is also not likely to happen in the near-term. That these demands won’t amount to anything also increases the chances for more war.
The rest of the reasons why violence rocked Gaza remain. It is still cut off from the world, and, more importantly, from the West Bank. Israel is still bent on destroying any semblance of Palestinian unity. Hamas is still deeply isolated, though their stature has risen because of their violent resistance–the only language that Israel understands. And, of course, the occupation continues. This is a recipe for more blood-letting.
The repeated assaults on Gaza will keep happening absent a sea-change in the Western political landscape that sends a message to Israel that the state will be isolated unless it halts its occupation and blockade. It is true that each Gaza war brings that day of reckoning closer and closer. Each missile that falls on a Palestinian home or school is fuel for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. But that day of reckoning is far off. And until that day comes, there will be more suffering in Gaza and in Israel. So get ready for the next round in Gaza.
Gaza’s resistance should be re-arming and recruiting at a very rapid pace while the politicians from both sides are having tea together and talking about nothing. The political leader of one of the fighting factions that held a celebratory march today in Gaza said his group began rearming from the minute the cease-fire went into effect. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Peter Beinart thinks he has the answer…
“The next step for liberal Zionists after Gaza: a Freedom Summer with Palestinians
In an era of direct action, supporters of the two-state solution must start putting their bodies on the line.
It’s time for American Jews who support Israel but oppose the occupation to commit to large-scale, direct action of our own. And the most important place to do so is in the West Bank. Palestinians in villages like Bil’in and Nabi Saleh have been protesting, unarmed, for years against the theft of their land. But their efforts receive little attention in American Jewish circles or in the American press. Few American Jews have any idea that under the military law that governs Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel routinely criminalizes freedom of speech and assembly. Or that peaceful protesters can be held in detention for years without trial.
But if thousands of American Jews joined those protests, American Jews would know. Protesters would return home with videos to show their synagogues; hawkish parents would be appalled by the treatment meted out to their children. And the American media, which covers Jews far more intensively than it covers Palestinians, would follow. The model would be Freedom Summer, Robert Moses’ campaign to bring white college students to help register voters in Mississippi in 1964, and thus draw the nation’s eyes to oppression that garnered little media attention when practiced only against blacks.
Such an effort would not be simple. The call for Jewish volunteers would have to come from Palestinian activists themselves. There’s a risk that some protesters would throw stones. Even if American Jews came to support a two state solution, some of the people marching with them would not.
But even if protesters differed on their ultimate goal, the core message—that it is fundamentally unjust to deny people the basic rights that their neighbors enjoy because of their religion or ethnicity—might reach American Jews, and Americans overall, in a way it never has. By facilitating a human connection between Palestinians and Jews—the kind of connection Palestinians rarely make with settlers or soldiers–such a movement would also combat anti-Semitism. It would create the right kind of pressure on Israel: not military pressure but moral pressure, the kind of moral pressure that Washington still refuses to deploy.
As the Gaza War has shown yet again, Palestinians often remain invisible to American Jews except as killers and haters. And it is because their humanity remains invisible that we so easily justify their oppression. Perhaps if we placed ourselves among them, we might be able to see them as we see ourselves. And in the wake of a war that has brought only misery and destruction, those of us who still believe in a democratic Israel living alongside a democratic Palestine might create a beachhead of hope.”
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.612998
(he also celebrates J Street in the article. and I dearly love this: “There’s a risk that some protesters would throw stones”)
I personally feel that BDS and continued activism is the way forward. we can’t let up– now least of all. everybody who cares about justice for the Palestinian people need to make sure that their elected leaders hear about it!
just, like you, I’m all for BDS but it’s not going to be enough. At the rate it’s picking up steam, it would still take a couple of decades to bear fruit but by that time, there wouldn’t be anything left to save. – “Walid.
Don,t forget Walid , there will still be 5million Palestinians who will be demanding equality and the vote.
I agree , Freedom is a long way off and no one method will succeed but BDS and 1S 1P 1V and engaging seriously with the ICC process and continued Global PR will eventually grind the zionist entity down until they succumb.
Well heeled dual Citizens will flee Israel leaving only a nation made up of rabid religious nutters and hard core adherents to the Greater Israel where jobs will be scarce, tourism will be at an all time low and those that are left will soon tire of paying and dying for the religious factions who suck the life out of Israel.The streets will not be safe, real estate values will tumble and life generally will be hard for most to take.Nope, I don,t see a rosy future for Israel.
South Africa Apartheid took three decades but that was long before the advent of the level of social media that exists today.Non violent resistance is much easier to organise on a global level, see the Block the Boat campaign in Oakland last week.
Alex raises a question that I have asked myself — and not answered.
“Who will make sure Israel keeps the border open for good[s]? Nobody has the will or desire to. Not Egypt’s virulently anti-Hamas government, and not the U.S.”
As previous ceasefires have proved, they need a referee and reporter. The Jerusalem Fund does a great job with this, but they don’t have the credibility and clout they deserve. Is there some way to insist that the UN monitor the agreement? We’d at least like the world to know when the next Hamas leader is assassinated and when the rockets were fired. Sequence matters, but is the last thing that journalists sitting in Jerusalem seem to care about.
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Well, Alex, aren’t you a killjoy!
And, here, after I had already planned a big Labor Day “Gaza is Finally Free” bar-b-q and block party.
The store won’t take back so many hotdog buns and what am I going to do with all that Kickstarter potato salad??