by Mitchell Plitnick
With US bombs dropping on Iraq once again and Israeli troops having moved out of Gaza, the fighting between Hamas and Israel has faded a bit from the headlines. But the battle for the narrative of the 2014 Gaza war is now stepping up its intensity, and, as usual, the truth seems [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
With US bombs dropping on Iraq once again and Israeli troops having moved out of Gaza, the fighting between Hamas and Israel has faded a bit from the headlines. But the battle for the narrative of the 2014 Gaza war is now stepping up its intensity, and, as usual, the truth seems to be losing.
To comprehend what has happened in Gaza and Israel over the past few months, one must understand not only the underlying causes, but also the immediate triggers. It is something of a victory that one of those underlying causes, the siege of the Gaza Strip, has remained at the center of the discourse, after spending much of the past seven years off the radar and outside of diplomatic and media discussions.
One overarching point, however, has become a virtual theme not only in Israel, but also in the United States and much of Europe: this latest conflagration started as a result of Hamas rockets being fired upon Israel. Yet only a willful misreading of the timeline can bring about this conclusion.
Triggers
Two events set the current escalation in violence in motion. One was precipitative: the unity government agreement between Fatah and Hamas. That move was welcomed, however conditionally, by the US and the international community, but was bitterly opposed by Israel’s far-right government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was concerned that a unified Palestinian government would be in a better position to restart the peace process to which he is so opposed, and possibly even wrangle international pressure toward some small concessions from Israel. He needed an opportunity to shatter that unity government without incurring the wrath such open defiance could bring, especially from Europe.
The second event was the spark that gave Netanyahu just what he wanted. The kidnapping and murder of three youths from an Israeli settlement presented him with a political opportunity and he seized it.
By the morning after the event, the Israeli government knew the youths were dead. Israelis are somewhat accustomed to people being killed, but when they are held captive, the country becomes incensed. So, Netanyahu maintained a charade about the young men being alive to whip the country into a frenzy.
As the anger in Israel built up, Netanyahu stoked the Palestinian fire with a massive operation in the West Bank, targeting Hamas operatives. The Israelis did this knowing that the kidnapping was not a Hamas operation, but one perpetrated by the Qawasmeh clan, which is affiliated with Hamas but is notorious for acting on its own. Recently, Israel has tried to cover up this aspect with claims about the perpetrators having received “funding” from Hamas. But that is a thin tale; this act didn’t require any funding.
So Israeli forces swept through the West Bank, sometimes encountering resistance that resulted in several Palestinian deaths, and brought the day-to-day lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians to a halt. They arrested hundreds without charge, including many who had been released in 2011 as part of the swap for the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. That was a breach of the exchange agreement and a very sore point for Palestinians across the board.
It was at this point that one of the quietest periods in rocket fire from Gaza began to crack, although Hamas was not yet the party firing. Matters escalated from there, with all the horrors, bloodshed and destruction that we’ve since witnessed.
Facts vs. Half-Truths
That picture obviously doesn’t paint Israel in a very favorable light. So it’s no surprise that it is being distorted by the constant repetition, from a great many quarters, that “no country would tolerate rockets being fired at it or tunnels being dug across its border.”
We’ve been hearing that line or support for it even from people critical of Israel’s swath of destruction across Gaza. It is often a justification for Israel’s actions, within a criticism of Israel is “going too far,” perhaps even way too far. But this war was a lot more than a justifiable response taken too far.
Israel’s “right of self-defense” was defended like a holy relic. But little is ever mentioned about the requirement under international law for an occupying power to ensure the safety of the people under its occupation. In other words, Israel is ultimately responsible for the safety of Palestinians not only in the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Israel controls Gaza’s coastline, airspace and most of its borders as well as holding a “buffer zone” inside it. So even under the kindest interpretation, Israel is at least responsible for protecting Gaza from outside attack.
Israel is also undoubtedly absolutely responsible for the safety of its citizens. It certainly does have every right to protect Israeli civilians from attacks, whether from within or without. That, however, is not the same as the right of self-defense.
The tunnels, which have become a terrifying specter for Israelis despite the fact that they’ve been there for years in some cases and had not been used until this conflict was in full swing, did not necessitate the massive destruction that Israel caused in Gaza. Egypt managed to find a way to destroy hundreds of tunnels without levelling Rafah, for example.
It is, of course, true that countries do not tolerate cross-border fire and infiltration. But in most cases, countries avoid the whole question by not occupying territory over their border. True, Israel is not the only country engaging in occupation, but the examples are few and far between these days — relics of a bygone age when colonialism was in style. That’s why Israel is dealing with these vexing issues. Indeed, while sovereign states have the right of self-defense and the responsibility to protect their citizens, occupied people also have the right to resist — but we don’t hear that very often.
Of course, the right to resist does not mean Hamas or any other Palestinian group is justified in targeting civilians or putting civilians at undue risk with indiscriminate weapons. Any legitimate inquiry into the events of recent weeks must look at those crimes as well.
Still, the narrative needs to be kept in perspective. First, any balanced judgment of what has happened needs to recognize the capacity of each side not only for destruction, but also for avoiding undue destruction. It must also examine the scope and scale of damage suffered by each side.
A reasonable narrative must also consider the entire situation. The escalation to this conflict was caused by Israel’s attempt to shatter the Palestinian unity government. The war probably went further than Netanyahu — who is not adventurous by nature and tends to be more reluctant about engaging in large-scale military actions than most of his predecessors — really wanted. But this war did not start because Hamas increased its rocket fire. Nor did it begin with the goal of eradicating infiltration tunnels.
If people believe Israel was justified in its actions, then they should be defending the actions Israel actually took. Instead, the narrative is being shaped by an opening sentence: no country would tolerate rockets and tunnels. One hopes the entire truth will seep in, but when even many critical thinkers begin their argument that way, it’s hard to stay hopeful.
Photo: A Palestinian student inspects the damage at a UN school at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip after the area was hit by Israeli shelling on July 30, 2014. Credit: UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
There is a sure, although contemptible, way to get the attention of virtually the entire state of Israel. That is to kidnap some of its younger citizens. It worked with Cpl. Gilad Shalit, and it seems to be playing well again, this time with civilians (living in the settlements [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
There is a sure, although contemptible, way to get the attention of virtually the entire state of Israel. That is to kidnap some of its younger citizens. It worked with Cpl. Gilad Shalit, and it seems to be playing well again, this time with civilians (living in the settlements does not strip one of their civilian status under international law).
Israel, as a whole, is riveted on the fates of these three young men. There is a national outcry in Israel when kidnappings occur that is even louder than when Israelis, even young Israelis, are killed. There is a sense of urgency; that something must be done to free the captives before a worse fate befalls them. The attention is widespread and constant, in cases like Shalit’s, where the captive is kept alive, and in cases where the captives are believed or known to already be dead. Israelis press hard for a resolution to the situation, and political leaders respond, but sometimes, sadly, in self-serving ways.
Was it Hamas?
The outcry from the people of Israel over the fates of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Sha’ar, and Naftali Frankel is very real. The bluster and finger-pointing from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an insult. Netanyahu immediately laid the blame at Hamas’ feet, absurdly held the Palestinian Authority responsible, demeaned a very strong statement by Mahmoud Abbas denouncing the act and managed to defy all logic by suggesting that this event was the result of the Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas.
Beyond the visceral response, however, some perspective is needed. The media seems to have firmly latched on to the idea that Hamas is responsible for this crime. That is certainly possible, but the evidence thus far points away from that direction. Netanyahu has offered no concrete evidence for his statement whatsoever, expecting the world to simply take him at his word despite the obvious benefit for him. The media seems to have done just that, but others are more dubious.
The United States has thus far only conceded that some evidence may point to “Hamas’ involvement.” Hamas has sent out mixed signals, as they always do, but the official line has been that they had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Meanwhile the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Major General Yoav Mordechai has only said they have “a great deal of information” about the kidnappings, pointedly avoiding naming any group that might be responsible.
But whether it was Hamas or not is not really an issue for Netanyahu. The kidnapping has provided the pretext he needed to attack Hamas in the West Bank, and also hit the Palestinian Authority for their temerity in striking a unity agreement with the Islamist party against Israel’s wishes. Netanyahu quite reasonably believes he can drive a wedge between Hamas and Fatah and hasten the collapse of their unity pact, but if that fails, he very well knows that he can weaken Hamas’ presence in the West Bank through mass arrests and possibly deportations to Gaza. At the same time, he puts Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a very difficult position; Abbas cannot be seen by the international community as supporting or being indifferent to the kidnapping, but he also can’t afford to be seen by his own public to be collaborating with Israel.
Palestinian prisoners
The problem for Abbas is deeply connected with the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, an issue that has resurfaced recently as many of them have gone on hunger strike. Israel often holds Palestinians in so-called “administrative detention,” which means they are being held without charge or trial. It is supposed to last no longer than six months, but because the order can be renewed, some Palestinians are imprisoned in this fashion for years.
The other end of that spectrum, of course, is the controversial issue of Palestinian prisoners who have been convicted of violence against Israelis, especially civilians. These prisoners are often seen as heroes by the Palestinians, a source of intense friction for even the most liberal Israelis. The Israeli public, for its part, doesn’t often distinguish much between Palestinian prisoners; they are generally seen as terrorists by most Israelis, although this is not by any means universal. Many of the more liberal Israelis are not entirely comfortable with the practice of extended administrative detention, although most would acknowledge its utility if used sparingly. Most countries, it should be noted, have some system like this one when attempting to prevent violent crimes, and most have been known, on occasion, to abuse the practice; it’s just that democracies, on the whole, do not abuse it to nearly the extent that Israel does.
Currently, about 300 Palestinian prisoners, including both those that have been charged, indicted or convicted, and those who are held in administrative detention, are on a hunger strike. Israel, seeking to avoid the international embarrassment and the potential powder keg in the Occupied Territories that would result from the deaths of the strikers, is attempting to pass legislation to permit forced feeding, widely considered a grave breach of personal privacy and medical ethics.
For many Palestinians, the issues of Palestinian prisoners and Israelis being held illegally by Palestinians are intimately connected. Israel, of course, has reinforced this on several occasions by agreeing to prisoner exchanges, as they did with Gilad Shalit in 2011. So, as Israel cracks down hard on Palestinian prisoners, Palestinians, even if they object to the kidnapping of the three Israelis, are going to be frustrated if they see Abbas putting more energy and resources into finding the Israelis than dealing with the conditions of his own people in Israeli jails, many of whose lives are also currently in jeopardy.
Netanyahu’s agenda
I want to be clear, at this point, that nothing I say here should be construed as suggesting that Netanyahu does not want to find Yifrach, Sha’ar and Frankel; I’m sure he does. But Bibi is nothing if not an opportunist, and he knows from the Shalit experience that it is entirely possible that this could drag on for some time. He is not about to let the mere fact of human suffering get in the way of his political agenda.
And Netanyahu certainly has an agenda here; what he lacks, as always, is an endgame. His aim is to use the crackdown, legitimized at least for the Israeli public by the kidnapping, to punish Abbas for dropping out of the sham talks that John Kerry was piloting, and for finally coming together with Hamas to agree on a technocratic government charged with paving the way for Palestine’s first national election since 2006. Anticipating that Hamas will gain support in the West Bank, Netanyahu is also using this opportunity to weaken its infrastructure and leadership through mass arrests.
But where does he go from there? His actions will further weaken Abbas, who is already teetering on the edge of oblivion in the West Bank. And, while Hamas may be somewhat less powerful in the short-term, these actions are not going to do long-term damage.
Part of Netanyahu’s strategy here is also to try to make the case that this is the result of the Palestinian unity agreement and that the world needs to stand by Israel and, in essence, against the entire Palestinian body politic. The hope, for Bibi, is that international pressure can be brought down on Abbas to get him to agree to a deal that would appeal to Bibi’s coalition. Such a deal would include a non-contiguous Palestinian pseudo-state with virtually no Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, a continued Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley, Israeli control of Palestinian airspace… in short, the deal Bibi and Kerry were trying to force on Abbas before the talks broke down.
But it doesn’t seem to be working. The United States has dutifully expressed its outrage, but in tepid terms. The European Union took five days before condemning the kidnapping. The message to Netanyahu is that the world is indeed outraged by this act, but they don’t see it as fundamentally changing anything.
The media campaign the Israeli government orchestrated worked well within Israel, but less so outside. The attempt by the Israel Defense Forces to get a Twitter campaign going by grossly playing off the crimes of Boko Haram in Nigeria in abducting hundreds of girls to be sold into sexual or other kinds of slavery was rightly greeted outside of Israel as cheap and insulting. It was turned around by pro-Palestinian social media activists to reflect the large numbers of Palestinians held by Israel. And the timing of the whole campaign is poor, as attention is focused now on Iraq, among other, ongoing areas of tension.
That is not to say the world is unsympathetic. These are, according to all reports, three innocent young men, whose only crime was living and studying in a school in occupied territory. But that does not justify violence against them. They are certainly victims, and they are rightly seen that way in most of the world.
Sadly, the Netanyahu government cannot let such a plight speak for itself. Instead they must polish it and present it in a propaganda package that is more about demonizing all Palestinians than it is about finding the victims. The repeated references to “our boys” and calling the abductees “children” might later resonate in a way Israel doesn’t like. The young men are 19, 16, and 16 years of age, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find instances where Israel treats Palestinian youths of those ages like “children.”
The occupation does not justify an attack on civilians, not even on settlers, if they are not threatening anyone. But like every other occupation in history, it does inevitably lead to it, especially if the occupying power is putting civilians illegally into occupied territory. Such acts are criminal, but inevitable. This did not happen because Palestinians hate Jews, nor because Hamas and Fatah reached an agreement. It happened because of the occupation. When millions of people are treated unjustly, some number of them will act unjustly in response.
If people are truly concerned about young Jews like Eyal, Gilad and Naftali, they must stop playing petty politics, trumpeting extreme nationalism and valuing force over law. The only way to effectively prevent crimes like this in the future is to end the situation where millions of people are living their entire lives without rights…or hope.
This article was published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission.
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