Many aspects of the current assault on Gaza pass under the radar screens of world conscience.
The media
double standards in the West on the new and tragic Israeli escalation of
violence directed at Gaza were epitomised by an absurdly partisan New
York Times front page headline: "Rockets Target Jerusalem; Israel
girds for Gaza Invasion" (NYT, Nov 16, 2012). Decoded somewhat, the
message is this: Hamas is the aggressor, and Israel when and if it launches a
ground attack on Gaza must expect itself to be further attacked by rockets.
This is a stunningly Orwellian re-phrasing of reality.
The true
situation is, of course, quite the opposite: Namely, that the defenseless
population of Gaza can be assumed now to be acutely fearful of an all out
imminent Israeli assault, while it is also true, without minimising the reality
of a threat, that some rockets fired from Gaza fell harmlessly (although with
admittedly menacing implications) on the outskirts of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
There is such a gross disproportion in the capacity of the two sides to inflict
damage and suffering due to Israeli total military dominance as to make
perverse this reversal of concerns to what might befall Israeli society if the
attack on Gaza further intensifies.
The
reliance by Hamas and the various Gaza militias on indiscriminate, even if
wildly inaccurate and generally harmless, rockets is a criminal violation of
international humanitarian law, but the low number of casualties caused and the
minor damage caused, needs to be assessed in the overall context of massive
violence inflicted on the Palestinians. The widespread non-Western perception
of the new cycle of violence involving Gaza is that it looks like a repetition
of Israeli aggression against Gaza in late 2008, early 2009, that similarly
fell between the end of American presidential elections and scheduled Israeli
parliamentary elections.
Pointing
fingers
There is
the usual discussion over where to locate responsibility for the initial act in
this renewed upsurge violence. Is it some shots fired from Gaza across the
border and aimed at an armoured Israeli jeep or was it the targeted killing by
an Israeli missile of Ahmed Jabari, leader of the military wing of Hamas, a few
days later? Or some other act by one side or the other? Or is it the continuous
violence against the people of Gaza arising from the blockade that has been
imposed since mid-2007?
The assassination
of Jabari came a few days after an informal truce that had been negotiated
through the good offices of Egypt, and quite ironically agreed to by none other
than Jabari acting on behalf of Hamas. Killing him was clearly intended as a
major provocation, disrupting a carefully negotiated effort to avoid another
tit-for-tat sequence of violence of the sort that has periodically taken place
during the last several years.
An
assassination of such a high profile Palestinian political figure as Jabari is
not a spontaneous act. It is based on elaborate surveillance over a long
period, and is obviously planned well in advance partly with the hope of
avoiding collateral damage, and thus limiting unfavourable publicity. Such an
extra-judicial killing, although also part and parcel of the new American ethos
of drone warfare, remains an unlawful tactic of conflict, denying adversary
political leaders separated from combat any opportunity to defend themselves
against accusations, and implies a rejection of any disposition to seek a
peaceful resolution of a political conflict. It amounts to the imposition of
capital punishment without due process, a denial of elementary rights to
confront an accuser.
Putting
aside the niceties of law, the Israeli leadership knew exactly what it was
doing when it broke the truce and assassinated such a prominent Hamas leader,
someone generally thought to be second only to the Gaza prime minister, Ismail
Haniya. There have been rumours, and veiled threats, for months that the
Netanyahu government plans a major assault of Gaza, and the timing of the
ongoing attacks seems to coincide with the dynamics of Israeli internal
politics, especially the traditional Israeli practice of shoring up the image
of toughness of the existing leadership in Tel Aviv as a way of inducing
Israeli citizens to feel fearful, yet protected, before casting their ballots.
Under
siege
 |
| By far the bloodiest strike was in northern Gaza City where a Israeli missile killing nine members of the Al-Dallu family, five of them children. |
Beneath
the horrific violence, which exposes the utter vulnerability, of all those
living as captives in Gaza, which is one of the most crowded and impoverished
communities on the planet, is a frightful structure of human abuse that the
international community continues to turn its back upon, while preaching
elsewhere adherence to the norm of "responsibility to protect" whenever
it suits NATO. More than half of the 1.6 million Gazans are refugees living in
a total area of just over twice the size of the city of Washington, DC. The
population has endured a punitive blockade since mid-2007 that makes daily life
intolerable, and Gaza has been harshly occupied ever since 1967.
Israel
has tried to fool the world by setting forth its narrative of a good faith
withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, which was exploited by Palestinian militants at
the time as an opportunity to launch deadly rocket attacks. The
counter-narrative, accepted by most independent observers, is that the Israeli
removal of troops and settlements was little more than a mere redeployment to
the borders of Gaza, with absolute control over what goes in and what leaves,
maintaining an open season of a license to kill at will, with no accountability
and no adverse consequences, backed without question by the US government.
From an
international law point of view, Israel's purported "disengagement"
from Gaza didn't end its responsibility as an Occupying Power under the Geneva
Conventions, and thus its master plan of subjecting the entire population of
Gaza to severe forms of collective punishment amounts to a continuing crime
against humanity, as well as a flagrant violation of Article 33 of Geneva IV.
It is not surprising that so many who have observed the plight of Gaza at close
range have described it as "the largest open air prison in the
world".
The
Netanyahu government pursues a policy that is best understood from the
perspective of settler colonialism. What distinguishes settler colonialism from
other forms of colonialism is the resolve of the colonialists not only to
exploit and dominate, but to make the land their own and superimpose their own
culture on that of indigenous population. In this respect, Israel is well
served by the Hamas/Fatah split, and seeks to induce the oppressed Palestinian
to give up their identity along with their resistance struggle even to the
extent of asking Palestinians in Israel to take an oath of loyalty to Israel as
"a Jewish state".
Actually,
unlike the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel has no long-term territorial ambitions
in Gaza. Israel's short-term solution to its so-called "demographic
problem" (that is, worries about the increase in the population of
Palestinians relative to Jews) could be greatly eased if Egypt would absorb
Gaza, or if Gaza would become a permanently separate entity, provided it could
be reliably demilitarised. What makes Gaza presently useful to the Israelis is
their capacity to manage the level of violence, both as a distraction from
other concerns (eg backing down in relation to Iran; accelerated expansion of
the settlements) and as a way of convincing their own people that dangerous
enemies remain and must be dealt with by the iron fist of Israeli militarism.
No peace
In the
background, but not very far removed from the understanding of observers, are
two closely related developments. The first is the degree to which the
continuing expansion of Israeli settlements has made it unrealistic to suppose
that a viable Palestinian state will ever emerge from direct negotiations. The
second, underscored by the recent merger of Netanyahu and Lieberman forces, is
the extent to which the Israeli governing process has indirectly itself
irreversibly embraced the vision of Greater Israel encompassing all of
Jerusalem and most of the West Bank.
The fact
that world leaders in the West keep repeating the mantra of peace through
direct negotiations is either an expression of the grossest incompetence or
totally bad faith. At minimum, Washington and the others calling for the
resumption of direct negotiations owe it to all of us to explain how it will be
possible to establish a Palestinian state within 1967 borders when it means the
displacement of most of the 600,000 armed settlers now defended by the Israeli
army, and spread throughout occupied Palestine. Such an explanation would also
have to show why Israel is being allowed to quietly legalise the 100 or so
"outposts", settlements spread around the West Bank that had been
previously unlawful even under Israeli law. Such moves toward legalisation deserve
the urgent attention of all those who continue to proclaim their faith in a
two-state solution, but instead are ignored.
This
brings us back to Gaza and Hamas. The top Hamas leaders have made it abundantly
clear over and over again that they are open to permanent peace with Israel if
there is a total withdrawal to the 1967 borders (22 percent of historic
Palestine) and the arrangement is supported by a referendum of all Palestinians
living under occupation.
Israel,
with the backing of Washington, takes the position that Hamas as "a
terrorist organisation" that must be permanently excluded from the
procedures of diplomacy, except of course when it serves Israel's purposes to
negotiate with Hamas. It did this in 2011 when it negotiated the prisoner exchange
in which several hundred Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons in
exchange for the release of the Israel soldier captive, Gilad Shalit, or when
it seems convenient to take advantage of Egyptian mediation to establish
temporary ceasefires.
As the
celebrated Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member, Uri Avnery,
reminds us a cease-fire in Arab culture,hudna in Arabic, is
considered to be sanctified by Allah, has tended to be in use and faithfully
observed ever since the time of the Crusades. Avnery also reports that up to
the time he was assassinated, Jabari was in contact with Gershon Baskin of
Israel, seeking to explore prospects for a long-term ceasefire that was
reported to Israeli leaders, who unsurprisingly showed no interest.
Waiting
for justice
There is
a further feature of this renewal of conflict involving attacks on Gaza. Israel
sometimes insists that since it is no longer, according to its claims, an
occupying power, it is in a state of war with a Hamas governed Gaza. But if
this were to be taken as the proper legal description of the relationship
between the two sides, then Gaza would have the rights of a combatant,
including the option to use proportionate force against Israeli military
targets. As earlier argued, such a legal description of the relationship
between Israel and Gaza is unacceptable. Gaza remains occupied and essentially
helpless, and Israel as occupier has no legal or ethical right to engage in war
against the people and government of Gaza, which incidentally was elected in
internationally monitored free elections in early 2006.
On the
contrary, its overriding obligation as Occupier is to protect the civilian
population of Gaza. Even if casualty figures in the present violence are so far
low as compared with Operation Cast Lead, the intensity of air and sea strikes
against the helpless people of Gaza strikes terror in the hearts and minds of
every person living in the Strip, a form of indiscriminate violence against the
spirit and mental health of an entire people that cannot be measured in blood
and flesh, but by reference to the traumatising fear that has been generated.
We hear
many claims in the West as to a supposed decline in international warfare since
the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. Such claims are to some
extent a welcome development, but the people of the Middle East have yet to
benefit from this trend, least of all the people of Occupied Palestine, and of
these, the people of Gaza are suffering the most acutely. This spectacle of one-sided
war in which Israel decides how much violence to unleash, and Gaza waits to be
struck, firing off militarily meaningless salvos of rockets as a gesture of
resistance, represents a shameful breakdown of civilisation values. These
rockets do spread fear and cause trauma among Israeli civilians even when no
targets are struck, and represent an unacceptable tactic. Yet such
unacceptability must be weighed against the unacceptable tactics of an Israel
that holds all the cards in the conflict.
It is
truly alarming that now even the holiest of cities, Jerusalem, is threatened
with attacks, but the continuation of oppressive conditions for the people of
Gaza, inevitably leads to increasing levels of frustration, in effect, cries of
help that world has ignored at its peril for decades. These are survival
screams! To realise this is not to exaggerate! To gain perspective, it is only
necessary to read a recent UN Report that concludes that the deterioration of
services and conditions will make Gaza uninhabitable by 2020.
Completely
aside from the merits of the grievances on the two sides, one side is
militarily omnipotent and the other side crouches helplessly in fear. Such a
grotesque reality passes under the radar screens of world conscience because of
the geopolitical shield behind which Israel is given a free pass to do whatever
it wishes. Such a circumstance is morally unendurable, and should be
politically unacceptable. It needs to be actively opposed globally by every
person, government, and institution of good will.
Richard Falk is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian
human rights.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source : http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/2012111874429224963.html
