Yesterday in Ha’aretz, Zvi Ba’rel wrote wisely that the siege of Gaza has become a siege of Israel: that the destruction of Palestinian freedom is causing Israel to become a besieged state in world opinion.
It’s true that unlike Gaza’s inhabitants Israelis are still free to leave the state, to import and export goods and even to go abroad to study. But the siege is setting in. It isn’t just the boycott…. It is the sense that Israel is increasingly isolating itself within its righteousness, magnifying the genuine and the imaginary threats, once again using the military language that speaks of the “high” or “low” probability of war, no longer confident of the U.S. position toward it and seeing most European states as political rivals.
This is true. You cannot destroy people’s lives and freedom, as Israel does in the occupied territories including Gaza, and escape the consequences.
And the question naturally arises: Why did the United States allow its closest ally to do this?
And part of the answer is that even rightwing American officials knew this was a crazy policy, and could not stop it.
I would turn to the latest revelation from Wikileaks. In 2006, three months after Hamas stunned the world by winning parliamentary elections for the Palestinian Authority, Stuart Levey, the U.S. Under Secretary of Treasury whose job it was to block int’l funds for terrorism, traveled to Israel to discuss the country’s strategy visavis Hamas. And when the Israelis said they were going to begin a “financial siege” of Hamas, Levey repeatedly expressed concerns about the strategy.
You will see in the cable excerpt below, from May 2006, that even Stuart Levey— who as a student at Harvard was an ardent Zionist working at the knee of Marty Peretz and trying to save Israel from rightwing extremists (I’ll be getting to this in days to come)– is freaked out by the Israeli attitudes and concerned about their potential to create havoc.
When Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, describe their plans to put “a noose” around Hamas’s neck, as Levey puts it, he expresses fears that there is no “strategic end game” and that the measures will only bring “violence and chaos.” As they have.
What this document demonstrates is that even in the neoconservative Bush administration, where Israel could do no wrong, smart people understood that Israel was out of control. And they could do nothing to stop it from proceeding on a hellbent course.
In 2008, the US Embassy in Israel would send a worried cable to Washington saying that Israel was starving the Gazan economy with the purpose of putting Gaza “on the brink of collapse.” The US Embassy was obviously disturbed by this trend:
Embassy Tel Aviv has encouraged the GOI to review its policy on Gaza liquidity, as requested by the Office of the Quartet Representative and the PA.
But again, Israel did what it wanted. And the Americans fell into line. As I will show in days to come (thank god for Wikileaks) Levey worked to choke Hamas. He embraced the Israeli agenda and did his best to punish Hamas in international financial dealings. And on Charlie Rose a year ago, Levey lumped Hamas in with Al Qaeda, and Charlie Rose said, Why Hamas? Everyone doesn’t hate Hamas. And Levey kinda agreed, and said, “I think we have to play the hand we’re dealt and do the best we can under the circumstances.”
Reading between the lines: the Israelis drove this policy.
What is my bottom line? Not that the Israel lobby isn’t powerful. Stuart Levey, late disciple of Marty Peretz, winner of prizes from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, wouldn’t have been a policymaker without the lobby’s support. Not that the U.S. was not utterly complicit in the Gaza siege. I am saying that Israel is out of control, it is virtually a rogue state, but it’s our rogue state, and there is almost nothing that even slightly levelheaded officials can do to control it.
I’m saying that our political structure built over several decades, including the core structure of the special relationship (Congress/the-lobby/the media, etc), a relationship that John Mearsheimer says is unprecedented in history, means that Israel actually has the upper hand whenever it wants to play the security card. Their extreme right and our Israel lobby work together: Netanyahu comes to Congress and gets 29 standing ovations, without any guff from the media.
Which is why I think the Obama administration’s bottom line is, We’ll give them anything (the West Bank, for instance) to keep them from dropping tactical nukes on Iran.
From the May 2006 Tel Aviv cable describing Levey’s talks with Livni and others. Remember, this is a “centrist” Israeli gov’t, proceeding with crazed measures:
Foreign Minister (FM) Livni proposed a strategy of pressuring Hamas with a financial siege for three to four months to see how Hamas would respond. She asked Treasury Under Secretary (U/S) for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey for USG assistance in preventing Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) from international banks into Palestinian accounts.
Project Manager for Economic and Humanitarian Aid to the PA Eli Avidar took issue with a British proposal to create a mechanism for the international community to donate to the Palestinian people. According to Avidar, the GOI agrees in principle to the establishment of an internationally monitored fund or NGO to channel donations to Palestinians not involved with Hamas. He stressed that the GOI would not support any plan, including the current British proposal, to pay Palestinian salaries with such a fund. He reported that British diplomats had recently told him that a British delegation would soon travel to Washington to brief the USG on their proposal. …
Avidar reported that on May 1, Misr Bank in Cairo attempted a few electronic fund transfers (EFT) into individual Palestinian accounts at the Bank of Palestine in Gaza. He characterized this action as a “”test run”” to gauge GOI and international reactions before conducting large scale EFT into individual accounts. Avidar asked U/S Levey to warn Misr Bank against such activity by declaring that they are not operating according to FATF regulations. U/S Levey advised that it was not such a simple matter, and that Hamas was not a designated terrorist organization in most parts of the world. U/S Levey asked MFA officials what they envisioned as the strategic &end-game,8 but did not receive a specific answer….
FM Livni expressed her fear that Hamas will gain legitimacy as both a channel for international funding to the Palestinians and as a political partner for future negotiations with the GOI. To counter the legitimization of Hamas, she proposed a pressure strategy for the next three to four months, during which time the USG and GOI should “”draw a very hard line”” against foreign funding of Palestinian activities. U/S Levey asked, &what is our end game? To put a noose around Hamas, neck?8 Livni claimed that it would take two to three months before any humanitarian crisis would emerge, and that the best policy for now was to apply pressure and “”wait and see”” how Hamas responds. Concerned, U/S Levey asked, &where will we be three months from now? Will there be violence and chaos or are we going to figure out a way to avert a humanitarian crisis?8
