by Marsha B. Cohen
This month the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration had slowed the shipment of hellfire missiles to Israel after it bombed a UN school in Gaza on Aug. 3 with the US-made weapon. The White House has insisted that weapons transfers to Israel have not been [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
This month the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration had slowed the shipment of hellfire missiles to Israel after it bombed a UN school in Gaza on Aug. 3 with the US-made weapon. The White House has insisted that weapons transfers to Israel have not been suspended or halted, and that the administration is only “taking extra care to look at these shipments.” Yet some analysts understood the unusual decision as a warning message to Tel Aviv about the use of disproportionate force. Whether or not that’s true, it’s no secret that the United States is Israel’s biggest source of military assistance, even if the White House has not been completely aware of the extent of that support.
Two years ago, Congress passed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act (P.L. 112-150), which reiterated, as a matter of policy, the US commitment “to help the Government of Israel preserve its qualitative military edge amid rapid and uncertain regional political transformation.” It expressed the non-binding “sense of Congress” favoring various possible avenues of cooperation: providing Excess Defense Articles to Israel; enhanced operational, intelligence, and political-military coordination; expediting the sale of specific weaponry including F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft, refueling tankers, and “bunker buster” bombs; as well as an US-Israel cooperative missile defense program and additional aid for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system.
Iron Dome: Approaching $1 billion—and Beyond
Iron Dome, a dual mission system built by Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which doubles as a very short range air defense system and an interceptor of incoming rockets, mortars and artillery, has received $720 million in American funding since the program’s inception in 2011. Israel currently has nine batteries, each costing about $100 million. The price tag for every Tamir missile fired by the Iron Dome system costs an estimated minimum of $50,000, with two missiles responding to every incoming rocket that is considered a threat to Israeli lives and property.
US support for Iron Dome will soon surpass $1 billion. In March, the Pentagon asked for $176 million for the program for Fiscal Year 2015, which begins Oct. 1, but the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee raised the Iron Dome appropriation to $351 million on July 15—more than half the $621.6 million it had appropriated for Israeli missile defense for the upcoming year. A week later, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent a letter to Senate leaders and key committee chairpersons relaying the Israeli government’s request for an immediate $285 million of emergency allocation for Iron Dome. On Aug. 1—a Friday afternoon—the House (398-8) and Senate both approved adding an additional $285 million to Iron Dome’s funding, which was followed by President Obama’s signature the following Monday morning.
As of last week, according to Y-Net, Iron Dome reportedly had a 90% success rate during the first month of “Operation Protective Edge,” intercepting more than 600 rockets headed toward Israeli population centers from Gaza.
Autopilot Foreign Policy
After Israel’s bombing of the UN school in Gaza, and the huge loss of Palestinian civilian lives due to the war, the Obama administration apparently became aware that it was unformed about, and had very little control over US military assistance to Israel. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported Aug. 14 that President Obama had just discovered that the US military was authorizing and providing weapons shipments to Israel without his knowledge.
Unknown to many policy makers, Israel was moving on a separate track to replenish supplies of lethal munitions being used in Gaza and to expedite the approval of the Iron Dome funds on Capitol Hill.
On July 20, Israel’s defense ministry asked the US military for a range of munitions, including 120-mm mortar shells and 40-mm illuminating rounds, which were already stored at a pre-positioned weapons stockpile in Israel.
The request was approved through military channels three days later but not made public. Under the terms of the deal, the Israelis used US financing to pay for $3 million in tank rounds. No presidential approval or signoff by the secretary of state was required or sought, according to officials.
The White House then instituted a review process over armaments being shipped to Israel, instructing the Pentagon and the US military to hold a transfer of Hellfire missiles. According to Haaretz:
Against the backdrop of American displeasure over IDF tactics used in the Gaza fighting and the high number of civilian casualties caused by Israel’s massive use of artillery fire rather than more precise weapons, officials in the White House and the State Department are now demanding to review every Israeli request for American arms individually, rather than let them move relatively unchecked through a direct military-to-military channel, a fact that slows down the process.
One senior US official said the decision to tighten oversight and require the pre-approval of higher-ranking officials for shipments was intended to make clear to Israel that there is no “blank check” from Washington in regards to the US-made weapons that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uses in Gaza.
For its part, the State Department has denied reports that it has been kept in the dark about US to Israel weapons transfers. Last week spokeswoman Marie Harf disagreed with the WSJ‘s assessment that the executive branch had been blindsided, and attributed any apparent delay to “inter-agency process.”
The Times of Israel has since reported that the holdup of the Hellfire missiles has been resolved; the weapons will soon be on their way. Although the anonymous Israeli official who operated as a source for the story didn’t specify when the weapons would be arriving, according to Israel’s Channel 10 news, “the incident is behind us.”
]]>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
With a 72-hour truce apparently holding in Gaza and Israel having ended its ground operation, now seems like a fair time to assess where things stand. Has anyone emerged from this war in a better position? Is there anything that can, at least in a cynical and Machiavellian sense, be [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
With a 72-hour truce apparently holding in Gaza and Israel having ended its ground operation, now seems like a fair time to assess where things stand. Has anyone emerged from this war in a better position? Is there anything that can, at least in a cynical and Machiavellian sense, be called a victory?
Palestine
It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of the physical destruction was borne by the people of Gaza. At this point, the numbers are just horrifyingly grim: 1,968 dead — 1,626 of whom were civilians — and 7,920 wounded. While we don’t have a precise percentage, we do know that there are at least 2,111 children and 1,415 women among the wounded.
The already mangled sole power plant in Gaza was damaged even further, leaving most of the strip without electricity. The United Nations Development Program estimates between 16 and 18,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed and over half a million Gazans (out of a population of roughly 1.8 million) have been internally displaced.
As one report put it, “…almost every piece of critical infrastructure, from electricity to water to sewage, has been seriously compromised by either direct hits from Israeli air strikes and shelling or collateral damage.”
This is clearly the worst hit Gaza has taken, demonstrably more severe than Operation Cast Lead (2008-09). Even so, there seems to be no appetite there for a return to the status quo ante from the mass media, social media or my own interactions; the call for an end to the seven-year Israeli blockade of Gaza as part of a lasting ceasefire persists.
Concomitantly, Hamas, though still facing the same problems as before (an inability to pay civil employees, increasing isolation in the region due to the decline of the Muslim Brotherhood and little leverage of their own to address Gaza’s economic woes) has been strengthened politically by Israel’s onslaught.
Once again, Hamas survived without conceding, and that grants them a considerable boost. It won’t last forever, of course, but they have re-established themselves as the leaders in confronting Israel. The unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah has also apparently survived the fighting, though in practice the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure makes implementation there much more difficult. Palestinian unity was the primary reason that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lied to the Israeli public about the fates of the three murdered Israelis in June — the event that sparked the spiral into this violence. That, too, can be counted as a victory.
The relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is very unclear. It seemed strained in June, as Israel swept through the West Bank under the pretext of looking for the three youths who they knew were already dead. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continued his security cooperation with Israel during this time and even prevented demonstrations against Israel’s actions after the fighting started in Gaza.
But as the fighting wore on, Abbas, who at first supported Egypt’s ceasefire proposal that Hamas could not accept, began supporting Hamas’ demands to end the fighting. By the end, Abbas was accusing Israel of war crimes, threatening to sign the Rome Statute and thereby bringing Israel to the International Criminal Court, and calling for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted. Officially, the PA has not broken the unity agreement — another major victory for Hamas.
Yet Hamas could not have missed the signals of this round. They managed to increase global awareness of the blockade, but found themselves being pressured by the Arab League. Turkey and Qatar remain Hamas’ only allies, but they proved largely ineffectual against the United States, Egypt, and the Saudis (despite the Saudi rhetoric, which was varied and clearly unsympathetic to Hamas but sympathetic to Gazan civilians).
At this point, efforts again appear geared at getting the PA back into the business of controlling Gaza’s borders. For Hamas, that will be a mixed blessing. If it happens with the unity agreement intact, then Hamas will have won itself a clear place in the Palestinian political system, and Israel will have to accept it if they let the PA administer the border crossings. Israel won’t like that at all, but the US, Egypt and the Saudis may push hard for such an arrangement in the interest of stability. This would also be a step toward ending Hamas’ control over the strip, to the extent that there is anything that can legitimately be called Palestinian control in Gaza.
Israel
The Israelis are not buying into Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim of decisive victory in this operation, but they are overwhelmingly supportive of his decisions. In part, this reflects an appreciation of reality — Israel did a lot of damage in Gaza, but didn’t do itself a lot of good. The other part is that most Israelis believe that Netanyahu didn’t really want things to go this far.
Bibi whipped his country into a racist frenzy when those young men were kidnapped. Knowing Israeli sensibilities as he does, Bibi knew that their deaths would end the story, but a kidnapping would continue to enrage hard-line sectors of the Jewish populace. The idea was to drum up popular support for a series of actions against Hamas which, Netanyahu hoped, would shatter the Palestinian unity deal.
But Bibi’s right flank immediately started pressuring for escalation. Bibi didn’t want that, but once Hamas started fighting back in earnest, the political pressure for a broader operation was more than he could resist. The pressure continued, as did Hamas’ firepower, probably more than Bibi expected them to use. As matters escalated, Netanyahu had to keep re-defining the mission’s goals. First it was punishing Hamas for the murders, then it was a “quiet for quiet” arrangement — in other words a straight up ceasefire.
That idea was not met with public approval. By this time, Israelis were considerably frightened. Hamas’ rockets were penetrating much farther into Israel than ever before, and while the Iron Dome defense system limited the actual damage, it did not limit the spread of fear. So, the Israeli goals became diminishing Hamas’ rocket ability and eliminating what Israel called “terror tunnels.”
The tunnels are very frightening to Israelis and Israel appears to have eliminated them. But there are two big problems with this narrative. Firstly, destroying the tunnels was the main focus of the ground operation, but Egypt managed to destroy hundreds of them without a military attack; they simply flooded them from the Egyptian side. The second problem is that, while Israeli fears about the tunnels are understandble, it’s worth noting that Israel has known about them for quite a while and Hamas hadn’t used them until this round of fighting began.
So what, really, did Israel achieve? It caused Hamas to use about two-thirds of its rockets, but those can be replenished, and at the point of the ceasefire, Hamas and other factions were still firing at will. Israel destroyed Hamas’ tunnels, but they had been there for years and were posing only a potential threat. Israel meanwhile failed to destroy the unity agreement, at least for now.
These gains were bought by Israel at the price of Palestinian blood, and a higher domestic death toll than Israel is accustomed to (67, including three civilians). As much as it appears like Tel Aviv doesn’t care about that price, it is clear that Israel’s image took a major hit in this engagement. Formerly sympathetic media showed injured Gazan children and destroyed neighborhoods. Even the United States expressed concern about the disregard for civilian life and called the attack on a United Nations school that was housing refugees “disgraceful.” The UK is now reviewing all military sales to Israel, and Spain has suspended all military sales.
Those things should not be overstated. England and Spain are merely expressing their displeasure at Israel’s total disregard for civilian life in Gaza and will re-commence their sales to Israel in due course. Despite its occasional statements, the US has repeatedly defended Israel throughout this episode and is using the ceasefire to send more supplies to its ally.
Still, Israel has definitely come out of this appearing far more villainous than Hamas. That’s going to make a difference going forward. Israel may no longer be able to bury the issue of the Gaza blockade, a form of collective punishment that has only helped solidify Hamas’ rule in Gaza and has deprived the people while failing to prevent the buildup of Hamas’ rockets. No one bought into the anti-Iran portion of Netanyahu’s rhetoric, another failure for Israel. Even in the US Jewish community, this onslaught shook a lot of pro-Israel faith and sent other Jews out of their living rooms and into the streets.
I see nothing but an illusion of victory here for the Israeli right. And for the rest of the country, the surge in extreme nationalism made Israel look a lot more like a fascist state than the Middle East’s “only democracy.”
The United States
There’s really little to say here. The US will look back at its actions in the Middle East in 2014 as one of the lowest periods in its diplomatic history. Secretary of State John Kerry failed to broker a ceasefire, and when he finally got one, it was broken within two hours. While both sides had different stories about who really broke the ceasefire, the Israeli narrative dominated and allowed Netanyahu to tell the United States not to “second-guess him” about Hamas.
Leaks to Israeli media disparaged both President Barack Obama and Kerry. The US again showed the world that while it does have the power to pressure Israel, it is not going to use it, no matter how bloody Israel’s actions become or how many times it insults its American patron. The US meanwhile stands alone in defending Israel’s actions.
The Obama administration has occasionally had some good ideas about the Middle East, but has repeatedly shown it doesn’t have a clue about how to implement them. It paints itself as an advocate for peace, but shows no willingness to back up its words in the face of Israeli resistance. That’s why it’s more important now than ever for Europe or some other outside party to push its way past the US in dealing with this issue.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On Monday, I attended the National Leadership Assembly for Israel. The gathering was more than a little disquieting.
Big names were in attendance and addressed the audience including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, House Speaker John Boehner, Former Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, current [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On Monday, I attended the National Leadership Assembly for Israel. The gathering was more than a little disquieting.
Big names were in attendance and addressed the audience including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, House Speaker John Boehner, Former Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, current Chairman Ed Royce, Senator Ben Cardin, Ambassador Dennis Stephens of Canada, and Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer. Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and other groups also all spoke. One of the most troubling aspects was that they mostly all had the same thing to say.
Some speakers went further than others. Paul De Vries, the evangelical preacher and president of the New York Divinity School, called Hamas “evil” and said the Islamic State was Hamas’ “twin.” While most statements were not that stark, every speaker placed full blame for all the casualties in Gaza on Hamas. Israel was defended without an ounce of criticism and not even a hint from anyone that maybe, just maybe, the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian children in less than one month could mean that Israel is not taking enough care to avoid harming civilians.
The vice chairman of the conference of presidents, Malcolm Hoenlein, summed it up this way: “Hamas exists to kill; Israel sometimes has to kill to exist. (There must be) no more pressure on Israel to do what it thinks is not in its best interest.”
But it was the conference of presidents’ chairman (who is not as powerful as Hoenlein), Robert Sugarman, who really chilled my bones.
“We are not there,” Sugarman said. “We are not experiencing the rocket attacks. Whatever our personal views may be, we must continue to support the decisions of the government (of Israel). And we must continue to urge our government to support them as well.”
Sugarman knows his audience. There can be no doubt that this particular audience entered the room in passionate support of Israel. He was speaking to the broader Jewish and pro-Israel Christian community across the country. And he was speaking to something worth noting.
Why, one wonders, did Sugarman feel a need to address “whatever our personal feelings are?” What he understands is that this onslaught is making pro-Israel liberals uncomfortable. Yes, they’re uniformly concerned about Hamas’ ability to keep ringing the sirens not just in southern Israeli cities like Sderot and Ashkelon, but also in much of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Yes, they’re worried about their friends and relatives.
Yet they can’t avoid the images of devastated Gaza on their televisions and computers. Despite continuing anti-Palestinian bias, the tone of the media coverage of this chapter of the confrontation between Israel and Hamas is markedly different from what we’ve seen in the past. Many more images of injured children, destroyed houses, and general carnage are reaching people, and they’re disturbing quite a few who, in the past, found it much easier to give Israel unequivocal support.
Sugarman is worried. He knows very well that when pro-Israel voices become critics of Israeli policies, the Conference of Presidents and, yes, even AIPAC are weakened. He is not sanguine about the turning tide of opinion. He is not deluding himself that the lock-step support of Congress behind every one of Israel’s claims and actions in this onslaught is invulnerable. US policy changes only at a glacial pace unless a calamity pushes it forward. Congress, certainly in this case, will change even more slowly. But Sugarman realizes that such a change can come as Israel portrays itself as ever more heartless, ever more militant and ever more right-wing.
Sugarman is also aware that the hardcore supporters of the most extreme Israeli policies are not the heart and soul of the punch that the Conference of Presidents and AIPAC carry in Washington. Many of the masses from whom they raise money, whose votes and donations Congress values, are essentially liberals who have always had to balance their values with their support for Israel and the occupation.
That support was initially shaken way back in 1987 with the first intifada. I would argue that this, among other factors, was perhaps the key reason that the United States and, soon after, Israel, changed its tactics and embraced a “peace process.” But since the second intifada and the 9/11 attacks, a much more militaristic and rigid rejectionism has gripped both countries, culminating in what we have today where the Israeli government openly, albeit informally, rejects the idea of a two-state solution and the United States accordingly offers Netanyahu unwavering support.
But the Lebanon War in 2006, Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 and, most powerfully, the current attacks on Gaza have all produced images of Palestinian civilians — women and children — being killed and maimed by a massive Israeli onslaught that appears wildly out of proportion to the stated objectives. The more liberal-minded people among pro-Israel Christians and Jews in the US and Europe also often read Israeli newspapers. There they find that Israel knew about Hamas’ tunnels for quite some time and did nothing — and, not to be lost in the shuffle, that Hamas also didn’t use them for any sort of militant or terrorist activity until after this operation started.
That’s what Sugarman is worried about. But what I worry about is his proposed remedy.
Sugarman tells his listeners not to listen to their conscience or their own judgment but to blindly follow Israel over this Solid Cliff.
This chills me on three levels. First and foremost, as a person of conscience and a critical thinker, mindlessly following the decision of any government is anathema to democracy. People, not politicians, must be the ultimate arbiter of policy. Granted, that’s not the way the world is, but it is the world we must work towards.
I also feel horror at this message as a citizen of the United States. Our foreign policy has rarely been humane or even sensible. That’s not limited to the Middle East by any means, although it’s probably most focused there these days. But the idea that we should surrender any foreign policy decisions to the judgment of Israel, a country that has moved very far to the right in the past fifteen years and which is embroiled in a vexing, long-term ethnic conflict is simply terrifying and unacceptable. If the United States ever decides to really remove itself from this conflict — and that means ending our obstruction of UN actions that are critical of Israel and stopping the $3.5 billion per year of military aid as well as our many joint military operations — then there would be a case for letting Israel handle its business without US interference. Until then, the responsibility of the United States is clear even if it has failed to live up to it at every turn. That’s something that needs to be addressed seriously, rather than by just exacerbating the problem.
Finally and most personally, I am filled with dread by Sugarman’s call as a Jew. Is there a more pernicious anti-Semitic trope than that of dual loyalty? Yet here is the leader of a major Jewish organization calling for Jews and other US citizens to subsume their country’s foreign policy to the whims of the Israeli government. Such a call is anathema to the very essence of the Judaism I and many others, including many who support Israel even in this onslaught, have come to embrace. Judaism was founded on critical thinking and asking tough questions. More than that, can there be better fuel for those who only wish harm upon Jews wherever we may be than for so prominent a figure as Sugarman to call for a US policy amounting to nothing more or less than “do exactly what Israel tells you to do, no questions asked?”
Sugarman’s words should be a wake-up call for US citizens about the weakness of Israel’s case in its repeated devastation of Gaza. It should also be ringing in the ears of Jews everywhere. Even if you can’t be concerned about hundreds of dead civilians in Gaza, you can probably still realize that it’s not just Netanyahu who is increasing hatred of Jews around the world. So-called “Jewish leaders” like Sugarman are also fomenting massive anti-Semitism that will eventually come back to haunt us all.
Photo: Palestinians walk past the collapsed minaret of a destroyed mosque in Gaza City, on July 30 2014 after it was hit in an overnight Israeli strike. Overnight Israeli bombardments killed “dozens” of Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 16 at a UN school, medics said, on day 23 of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Credit: Ashraf Amra
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Like many of us, I’ve been very busy on social media since Israel began its military operation in Gaza. I see a lot of ignorant nonsense there, and it’s not limited to the pro-Israel side. I also see a lot of shoddy thinking and ignorance of the facts. Since [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Like many of us, I’ve been very busy on social media since Israel began its military operation in Gaza. I see a lot of ignorant nonsense there, and it’s not limited to the pro-Israel side. I also see a lot of shoddy thinking and ignorance of the facts. Since I had to study up a lot of this for my job as the Director of the US Office of B’Tselem, I thought I might set the record straight.
“War crimes”
Various memes make the rounds in discussions of war crimes. One that I found particularly laughable was “Even the UN says Hamas is committing war crimes but they say Israel only might be.” I’ve also seen defenses of Hamas’ firing of missiles at civilian targets in Israel based on Palestinians’ right of self-defense.
Here is the long and short of it: War crimes are defined as “Serious violations of international humanitarian law constitute war crimes.” That’s going to encompass pretty much every violation that might become a public issue in any conflict.
International law recognizes that civilians are going to be hurt, killed and dispossessed in war. The obligation of combatants is to do all they can to minimize the death and destruction if they do need to operate in areas where it is likely that civilians will be hurt.
As a result, when Israel proclaims its innocence of violating these laws, no matter how suspicious we may be, enforcers of international law cannot declare that war crimes have been committed without an investigation. Reasonable people who are not international lawyers can make assumptions, but the investigation needs to happen, and it is always possible, especially when the conflict involves an area as densely populated as Gaza, that it will turn out that the state in question did its best to avoid civilian casualties. High civilian casualty numbers are not proof, but they obviously raise suspicions.
On Hamas’ side, this is true as well, but Hamas makes no secret of its use of weapons which, by their very nature, cannot be used in a manner that can discriminate between civilian and military targets. So, while the UN or other bodies would still investigate and make a case before taking any action, Hamas is committing war crimes. It’s not unfair to say so.
In this case, however, Israel has declared that the homes of leading Hamas activists (and those of other factions) are legitimate targets. They have, in fact, willfully bombed such houses during these engagements as a result. Unlike the 2002 assassination of Salah Shehade, where Israel claimed (falsely, many say) to have believed Shehade to be alone in the building they bombed, Israel has made no such claims this time around. Therefore, it is also not unfair to say that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, even before an investigation.
If not for Iron Dome, there would have been many more Israeli casualties
This statement seems to make sense, but the numbers don’t back it up. A study done through July 14, when rocket fire into Israel was at its most intense, showed that the number of rockets being fired from Gaza was fewer than in Operation Cast Lead and the frequency of hits was about the same.
I’m all for Iron Dome. Any defensive system whose purpose is to protect civilians is something I consider an absolute positive, and I only wish more countries would invest in such systems, endeavoring to protect, rather than avenge, their civilians. The concern that iron Dome would make Israel even more reckless and grant it even more impunity does not seem to be borne out by its actions in the current onslaught. Those actions, brutal as they are, are no worse than what Israel did in 2008 and 2012 to Gaza or what it did in 2006 to Lebanon. So, yeah, please let’s see more Iron Domes in the world.
By the same token, however, it doesn’t seem like Iron Dome is actually protecting Israeli civilians nearly as much as the rockets’ lack of any sort of targeting ability.
Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people
Opponents of Israeli policies in the United States and in Israel itself have an uphill battle against an entrenched propagandistic view of the entire conflict. We do ourselves no favors by using bombastic, easily assailable language in making our arguments.
Genocide has a specific meaning in international law. It does not mean large scale killing. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide provides that definition:
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
There is no evidence that this is what Israel is trying to do. Indeed, the best evidence that Israel is not doing this is the simple fact that the Palestinian population, in both the West Bank and Gaza, continues to grow, despite the occupation and all its concomitant hardships.
Would Israel like to find a way to get rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank and cut off Gaza? Sure, but that is not genocide, it is ethnic cleansing, and frankly, that’s bad enough. Israel has done that very gradually over the years, confiscating more and more land, forcing Palestinians into ever smaller enclaves and turning Gaza into one big open air prison.
Making claims that are contradicted by the facts, especially the weighty accusation of genocide, is irresponsible and self-defeating; it plays right into Israel’s propaganda hands.
Hamas is exercising legitimate self-defense
It is absolutely true that an occupied people has the right to resist its occupiers. It is also true that the unusual nature of Israel’s occupation makes it very difficult for guerrilla groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and others to take any violent action that would conform to international legal standards. As international legal expert Noura Erekat puts it: “Hamas has crude weapons technology that lacks any targeting capability. As such, Hamas rocket attacks ipso facto violate the principle of distinction because all of its attacks are indiscriminate. This is not contested.”
It is also true that Israel itself does not differentiate between attacks on its civilians and its soldiers. It views them as equally illegitimate and labels it all “terrorism,” even though legally, Israeli soldiers are combatants while on duty. Take, for example, the killing of IDF soldier Natanel Moshiashvili in 2012. The IDF statement about his death plainly states: “The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians or IDF soldiers, and will operate against anyone who uses terror against the State of Israel.”
Nonetheless, the fact that Palestinians are mostly unable to strike exclusively at Israeli military targets does not mean that it is suddenly legal to use indiscriminate weapons or to target civilians. These are war crimes, and any credible investigation must investigate both sides while also taking into account the massive differences in capabilities and power of the two. Israel must also be scrutinized more closely because it has a far greater ability to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants than Hamas.
Hamas is using human shields
Saying something over and over again doesn’t make it true, but it does make a whole lot of people believe it. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu willfully and repeatedly lied to the Israeli public and the world about Hamas’ complicity in the kidnap and murder of the three young Israeli settlers, which sparked this latest round. He kept saying he had proof that he never produced, and now the Israeli police are admitting what everyone who was actually paying attention at the time knew: this was an independent act of violence.
It’s the same with the human shield argument. Like genocide, the term “human shield” has a legal definition. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “… the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.” Again, as Erekat wrote: “International human rights organizations that have investigated these claims have determined that they are not true.” Erekat correctly cites reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which focused on past engagements. There is also doubt being cast by journalists in Gaza today.
In fact, no evidence has ever been presented to support the accusation apart from the high number of civilian casualties and Israel’s word. On the other hand, Israel’s own High Court had to demand that Israel stop using human shields. That happened in 2005, but the practice continued.
In any case, even the presence of human shields does not absolve or mitigate Israel’s responsibility to minimize civilian casualties. Again quoting Erekat: “Even assuming that Israel’s claims were plausible, humanitarian law obligates Israel to avoid civilian casualties…In the over three weeks of its military operation, Israel has demolished 3,175 homes, at least a dozen with families inside; destroyed five hospitals and six clinics; partially damaged sixty-four mosques and two churches; partially to completely destroyed eight government ministries; injured 4,620; and killed over 700 Palestinians. At plain sight, these numbers indicate Israel’s egregious violations of humanitarian law, ones that amount to war crimes.”
Finally, one last point and one more citation of Noura Erekat. The claim that Israel is merely acting in self-defense fails on a number of counts. As I and others have been saying from the beginning, the Netanyahu government willfully and cynically used the murders of three Israelis as an excuse to provoke Hamas with mass arrests and widespread activities that included the deaths of nine Palestinian civilians before this operation started. That removes the self-defense argument from the start. But more than that, the Gaza Strip, despite it being emptied of settlements and soldiers, remains under Israeli control, and is thus occupied territory, contrary to Israel’s claims. Please check out Erekat’s excellent write-up of what this means for the right of self-defense. And please note, she never denies that Israel has a right to protect its own civilians, but that is not the same thing.
Photo: International and Palestinian volunteers accompanied Civil Defense and other rescue crews, as well as family members, into Shujaya, a neighborhood by the separation barrier in the east of Gaza City, in an attempt to locate survivors of overnight and ongoing shelling by the Israeli army on July 20. Credit: Joe Catron
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
We’ve all seen it in movies and television shows. A man with a gun is pointing at an innocent, making demands of the “good guys.” When our heroes do not deliver, the man shoots the innocent and tells our heroes that it was their fault. Do we buy it? Of course not.
by Mitchell Plitnick
We’ve all seen it in movies and television shows. A man with a gun is pointing at an innocent, making demands of the “good guys.” When our heroes do not deliver, the man shoots the innocent and tells our heroes that it was their fault. Do we buy it? Of course not.
On or around August 6, 1945, US Air Force jets dropped copies of two leaflets on Japanese cities, including Nagasaki, according to the Harry S. Truman Library. Both included a similar message: You saw what we did to Hiroshima. If you don’t want the same thing to happen to you, overthrow your emperor. Failing that, flee your cities.
In fact, the leaflets were dropped on Nagasaki (and Hiroshima) only after the city had been hit with an atomic bomb. Previously, leaflets had been dropped on dozens of Japanese cities warning of devastating bomb attacks (these did not reference atomic bombs), and indeed those cities were devastated. But, of course, with so many cities being targeted, it would not have been possible for Japanese citizens to flee in great numbers even if their government would have permitted such mass flight.
So why drop the leaflets at all? This memo describes the purpose as psychological warfare aimed at Japan. It has been noted elsewhere that it has the ancillary benefit of making these strikes, both the carpet bombings and the atomic attacks, seem much more humane to US citizens and the rest of the world. Does all of this sound familiar?
It should, because we’ve heard much the same story coming from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the moment the latest Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip began. We’ve been told ad nauseum about the great care Israel takes to avoid Palestinian casualties. They drop little bombs on rooftops just before the big bombs. They send text messages and automated phone calls. And yes, they drop leaflets.
So why, with all these extraordinary measures, are the vast majority of the dead and injured in Gaza civilians? Why have more than 100 Gazan children been killed? Why are 35-50,000 Gazans displaced, and why are all of these numbers growing and getting more disproportionate with each passing day?
Israel wants you to think that Hamas is using these civilians, the children as well, as human shields. At this point, there are only three groups of people who could possibly believe that in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary: 1) Those who are simply ignorant; 2) Those who will believe anything Israel says no matter what; and 3) The congenitally stupid. Sadly, it seems these groups comprise a very large part of the population in the West.
Despite that unfortunate reality, there does appear to be a strong sense that Israel is acting, at the very least, disproportionately or irresponsibly. Much, though far from all of the mainstream coverage of the fighting has focused on the devastation being experienced in Gaza. It is reminiscent of the 2008-09 onslaught, dubbed Operation Cast Lead, but in that event, the comparatively (and one must stress that word) negative coverage of Israel’s action took much longer to coalesce.
Really, it is astounding that people can continue to cling to the frankly absurd notion that “Hamas is responsible” for the civilian casualties in Gaza. I oppose almost everything Hamas stands for; they are a regressive, anti-democratic, faith-based organization with antiquated ideas about women, and with repressive ideas of government. The organization clearly did rise to prominence through acts of terrorism, and they continue to commit war crimes.
But their crimes are clearly dwarfed by Israel’s actions. Columnist Dalia Scheindlin described Gaza as “…an area that [Israel] has already imprisoned by occupation from 1967, and then through suffocating border, movement, import and export control since 2007. Its residents have been stateless since 1948.” None of that just happened; Israel did that, and security concerns cannot justify such actions, according to international law. Not to mention basic ethics.
In this case, however, loathe as I am to admit it, it is Hamas that is the one standing and seeing the innocent being held hostage, and who has to watch as Israel kills the innocent for Hamas’ refusal to surrender. One can question, as I certainly have, whether Hamas made the right choice in rejecting a ceasefire which they had good reason to see as little more than terms of a surrender in order to stop Israel before it pushed things even further, as it did this past weekend in the Gazan town of Shujaya. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was Israel holding the gun to the head of the Palestinian civilians. It is not, and has never been, the other way around.
The notion that Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties is belied by the reality that Israel has made no secret of the fact that it targets the homes of Hamas leaders where their children, and their families live. It is belied by eyewitness accounts of Israeli actions. Even the United States has told Israel it is “not doing enough” to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza. Coming from America, that is a very damning indictment indeed to be directed at Israel in what is generally perceived here in the US as a time of war.
Finally, one has to ask the Israeli government this question: when you tell the Palestinians to run, where, in one of the most overcrowded places in the world with sealed borders, are they supposed to run?
Secretary of State John Kerry forgot he was at Fox News when, during a commercial break, he spoke on the phone to an aide and said, sarcastically about Israel’s efforts, “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.” Fox aired it immediately to put Kerry on the spot, and Kerry of course scrambled to cover his tracks, but his perspective was already out.
There can be little doubt that the US and our good friend in Egypt, General-President al-Sisi would love to see Netanyahu wipe out all of Hamas, but that is not possible. Meanwhile the Obama administration has to be concerned about the potential for the latest Gaza onslaught to cause the West Bank to boil over, and possibly even get intertwined with broader regional conflicts. Every civilian death raises that possibility a little higher.
But there remains a steadfast refusal to confront Israel, especially on a “security matter,” and never mind that Netanyahu willfully set this entire scenario up from the moment he heard about the deaths of the three young Israeli settlers last month. Incredibly, on the same day as his gaffe, Kerry told CNN that “Israel is under siege by” Hamas. Apparently, Hamas is sealing off Israel’s borders, ports and airspace and severely limiting most goods and almost all exports from crossing the borders. This is turning reality on its head. But it is no less than what we have come to expect from public US pronouncements.
Still, it seems like much of the global public, and even much of the mainstream media, is starting to understand that this Israeli government, much more than the ones in the past, is the one holding the gun to the heads of innocents. Perhaps the massive rise in street hooliganism so reminiscent of fascism and right-wing authoritarianism in so much of the world is attributing to this growing reality.
Whatever the cause, it cannot have escaped Israel’s notice that even the United States is having a hard time supporting Netanyahu’s story with a straight face given the blatant discrepancy between the facts as everyone sees them and the Israeli line. As with the US in 1945, the purpose of the leaflets is to sell the story, not to protect civilians. But this isn’t 1945, and people can see a lot more for themselves. In any case, Israel may have used this tactic one time too often.
Photo: Rescue crews search for survivors in Shujaya after the Israeli attack which left 72 dead in the town. Credit: Joe Catron/ Published under a Creative Commons License
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The two ceasefire proposals aimed at ending the accelerated violence in Gaza and Israel also offer one of the best illustrations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The circumstances and the content of each proposal demonstrates very well why outside pressure is necessary to end this vexing, seemingly endless struggle and [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The two ceasefire proposals aimed at ending the accelerated violence in Gaza and Israel also offer one of the best illustrations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The circumstances and the content of each proposal demonstrates very well why outside pressure is necessary to end this vexing, seemingly endless struggle and just how differently Israelis and Palestinians view both current events and the conflict as a whole.
Let’s look at the two proposals. Egypt, acting as the United States normally does, worked out the details of its ceasefire idea primarily with Israel. The deal reflects the Israeli and Egyptian agenda: it mostly follows the formula of “quiet for quiet,” essentially bringing back the status quo ante of early June. It offers Hamas a vague promise of future negotiations to address the siege of the Gaza Strip. But this is hardly something Hamas will put stock in. The 2012 ceasefire agreement, which was negotiated by then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a man much friendlier to Hamas than the current Egyptian leadership, also made such a promise and it never came to anything. Finally, Egypt says it is willing to open the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt more widely but only if Hamas allows Palestinian Authority security to police it instead of their own people.
It’s not hard to see why Hamas viewed that offer, and its exclusion from the talks, more like a call to surrender than a ceasefire. Indeed, that’s what it was. The offer was likely made with the expectation that Hamas would refuse it. That is one reason, along with the fact that I don’t see them getting a better deal from continued fighting, that I thought Hamas should have taken it. But it is perfectly understandable that they did not.
Hamas recently confirmed its terms for a ceasefire: Israel should lift the siege it has imposed on the strip for the last seven years, and release all the prisoners it arrested last month during its sweep of the West Bank while the Netanyahu government was keeping the Israeli public and the world from immediately finding out that the three youths who were ostensibly being searching for were already dead. In exchange, Hamas would agree to a ceasefire.
Those terms are undoubtedly unacceptable for Israel, and Egypt for that matter. They won’t because they don’t have to. Each of them, by themselves, is far more powerful militarily than Hamas. Together, they are even more so, and they have the backing of the United States, quite openly. More discreetly, they also have the backing of much of the Arab leadership in Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf states, which, with the exception of Qatar, generally despise Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ ideological forebears.
Therefore, Israel and Egypt will follow the most basic rule of international politics: might makes right. They will ignore minor details like peace, security for both Gazans and Israelis, and most of all, international law. They will do this because they can.
But really, what is Hamas demanding? That they be set free from a crippling siege that has remained in full force with only minor and occasional amelioration through ceasefires and flare-ups alike. That seems like a perfectly reasonable demand, an expectation, even, especially since Israel claims that it is no longer an occupying power in Gaza. Inside, that may be true, but Israel controls the airspace, the offshore areas and the overwhelming majority of Gaza’s borders, except for the southern one, which Egypt controls. It permits only limited amounts of supplies into the strip, bars many things like chemicals and building materials entirely and allows almost no exports. According to most international law experts, Israel has the responsibilities of an occupying power proportionate to the control it exerts. Thus, Israel is not responsible for internal policing of Gaza, but it is responsible for the effects of its control — meaning the siege is illegal.
Hamas, and most Palestinians, surely see the demand to lift the siege as a minimal one. Hamas is not, after all, demanding that the entire occupation regime be lifted for a ceasefire to take place, nor that Israel, for example, repair the damage it has done to Gaza’s only power plant or compensate Gaza for the destruction of its airport.
But the majority of Israelis see the siege as a defensive measure. They believe lifting it will enable Hamas to reload with much more and better weapons and then they will strike much harder and might, at that point be able to deliver a real blow to Israel, something far beyond their ability right now. Most Israelis do not see the Egyptian proposal as a Hamas surrender, but rather as a very reasonable return to the status quo ante.
Israelis believe their leaders when they say they are not targeting Gazan civilians, despite the rather conclusive evidence to the contrary (such as bombing an open beach with children playing on it, destroying a hospital with patients in it, bombing the homes of Hamas leaders with their families inside, etc.). Palestinians see the destruction of civilians, homes, and Gaza’s infrastructure as justifying firing rockets at Israel. Israelis see Hamas as willing to sacrifice its own civilians in order to kill Jews. Palestinians see Israel as offering them a choice of being bombed to death relatively quickly or starved to death more slowly.
The point is not whether one view or the other is right or wrong (we all obviously have an opinion on that, myself included). The point is that these are two completely irreconcilable views. When we combine that with the massive imbalance of both political and, especially, military power involved and the sense both sides have that they cannot afford to be seen as letting the “violence of the other” dictate the terms of the ceasefire, we see the impasse. So where does that leave us?
Ultimately, it is more than likely that Israel’s overwhelmingly greater ability to cause death and destruction, along with the fact that Hamas (and Gaza in general) has very few countries willing to stand up for it in the international arena, will force Hamas to accept a deal that closely resembles the one they just rejected. But all that will do is reset the clock to ticking down to the next round.
If there were a genuine desire to find a way to stop this endlessly repeating loop, there would need to be forceful international mediation. Such mediation cannot come from those countries that stand with Israel against Hamas (Egypt, the US) nor those who have the reverse position (Turkey, Qatar). It can only come from an international delegation, either under the auspices of the UN or in the form of a committee from a variety of countries. There would need to be international guarantees and sanctions applied to both sides (and, crucially, actually enforced) for violations of any agreement.
That, of course, is not something Israel would ever accept. It has no reason to sacrifice its impunity, because it has might — militarily, economically and politically — on its side. And as long as that is true, it simply has no good reason to moderate its position. In this regard, it acts like any other country. And the ineffectual Hamas rockets, terrifying though they may be to so many in Israel, are not coming anywhere near giving Israel any incentive to change.
The bottom line: it is the United States, which unconditionally runs interference for Israel in the Security Council and which arms Israel and completely ignores the fact that Israel uses US-made weapons in blatant contravention of US law, that is fueling this fire. It will support Israel in its refusal to allow any other outside party to mediate, and will certainly ensure that Israel retains its impunity. And the US will do this against the better judgment of its president and secretary of state, both of whom are well aware that the security of Israelis and the very lives of Palestinians both depend on ending the 47-year old occupation, lifting the siege of Gaza and allowing the Palestinians to achieve their freedom. Such is the effect of domestic politics in the United States, and it is playing out in blood in the Gaza Strip right now.
Photo: Relatives and friends of the al-Kaware family carry 7 bodies to the mosque during their funeral in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, on July 9, 2014. The father, a member of the Fatah movement, and his 6 sons were all killed the day before in an Israeli air strike that targeted their home. Credit: AFP/Thomas Coexthomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images/Used under a Creative Commons license
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be sure, the direct result of that proposal not meeting any of Hamas’ demands for a ceasefire and, because as one Israeli official put it, “…we discovered we’d made a cease-fire agreement with ourselves.” The dynamics of this turn of events are important and tell us much about how the ground has changed in the region. We first must ask why Hamas rejected the Egyptian proposal. They have been rather clear about their reasons:
Those reasons may show a certain rationality in Hamas’ refusal to accept a ceasefire. Wisdom and real concern for the innocents suffering under Israel’s bombings are far less apparent, however. In fact, Hamas’ refusal to accept the ceasefire completes the process of wiping from the memory of much of the world the fact that Israel initiated this round of fighting.
Rarely has Netanyahu been more accurate than earlier yesterday, when he said “[If Hamas] doesn’t accept the ceasefire proposal…Israel will have all the international legitimacy to broaden its military activity in order to achieve the necessary quiet.” Indeed, Hamas’ decision does exactly that. There will still be expressions of concern from various quarters, but for the most part, pressure on Israel to stop its onslaught from the US, EU, UN and even many Arab states will diminish essentially to zero. It is hard to imagine that the refusal is going to lead to a better deal. The only thing that might, and only might, do that is a massive uptick in civilian deaths from where the number is at now. Hardly something anyone would wish for. So, while Hamas may have had very good reason to reject this deal, it does not seem that rejection is a better option.
Indeed, one may argue that accepting the ceasefire deal with certain reservations may have put Hamas in a better position. At least the massive uptick in death and destruction in Gaza would have been stemmed, even if temporarily.
Egypt’s New Position
Hamas has issued a statement rejecting further Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire. They will now accept only Turkey or Qatar in that role. Those are, not coincidentally, the only two significant states who support the political goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the new Egyptian regime joins Saudi Arabia and many of the Gulf States in despising.
Egypt has now demonstrated that not only has its position on Hamas hardened since the ouster of the Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi, it is even more antagonistic to Hamas than former President Hosni Mubarak. Given this, it is likely that the role Mubarak frequently played as a broker between Israel and Hamas is not one that the current General/President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi can assume, and this was a failed attempt to show that he could.
This will please Netanyahu, who is surely seeing the new Egyptian regime as much more to his liking than anything that ever came before it. But it is going to complicate matters for the United States, all the more so as Israel is not likely to accept Turkey or Qatar as an intermediary. Without Egypt as a broker, the US is going to have a much harder time stabilizing these periodic escalations between Israel and Hamas. This, again, may suit Netanyahu, who believes US President Barack Obama is much too quick to try to end conflicts. But it also makes Israeli decisions as to when to back off more complicated, as the US will not be able to give Israel a way out that shields its leadership at least a little from the political fallout of ending these operations while Hamas is still in control of the Strip.
Hamas’ weakened position
Hamas is facing serious isolation. Egypt was surely never very sympathetic to Hamas, even when Morsi was in office. It is now even more firmly in the US-Israeli camp. Hamas’ support for Syrian rebels and the slow thaw of relations between the United States and Iran has (to Netanyahu’s chagrin) cooled the Hamas-Iran relationship, and Qatar has had to back away to some degree from its support of the Brotherhood and its affiliates like Hamas due to pressure from other Gulf states. This is why, despite the forecasts by many that this latest round will end with the status quo more or less maintained, Netanyahu, and probably also Mahmoud Abbas, believes a severe blow can now be struck against Hamas.
Netanyahu believes, not without reason, that this can be done without resorting to the kind of all-out assault, and even re-occupation, which is being pushed by his right flank in Israel. Consider the Islamist group’s current position. It was already struggling to pay workers in Gaza and had been arguing with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah about who bears the responsibility. Egypt’s harder line has been stifling the “tunnel economy,” which was the only method for bringing many goods and supplies into Gaza that Israel would not permit to pass through its blockade. Hamas seemed to have nothing but rhetoric to offer to deal with the situation, and it was losing standing among the Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Islamic Jihad and other, more radical Palestinian factions, which Hamas was generally preventing from taking violent actions against Israel from Gaza, were accusing Hamas of abandoning its revolutionary ideals. Add to this the loss of much of its support from the rest of the Arab and Muslim world, in the wake of the decline of the Brotherhood throughout the region, and it’s not hard to see why Netanyahu believes that, even if the outcome of the current fighting is merely an agreement to go back to the way things were, he will still come out a big winner.
He may be right. But it is more likely that Israel’s continued attacks will cause the various factions to rally together, as they have in the past, strengthening Hamas’ position. It is also more likely to exacerbate the already dire predicament Abbas is in, as he has cracked down in the West Bank to prevent anti-Israel protests during the fighting, sacrificing what little respect and confidence the Palestinians had left in the PA President.
To Cease or not to Cease
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions fighting in Gaza can certainly make the case that they have successfully stood firm under Israel’s attacks while demonstrating that they can shoot their missiles throughout Israel. The rockets being used in many cases were actually made in Gaza, along with what they have been able to smuggle in from outside. The fact that the locally made rockets include some of the medium range ones that have been penetrating farther into Israel than ever before is one reason Hamas is perhaps in less of a rush than one might think to stop the fighting.
The calculus, though, is cold and fails on a number of levels. The most obvious failure is the suffering of the people of Gaza. Over 190 Gazans have been killed, the vast majority civilians. These deaths do raise a great deal of anger among Palestinians against Israel, but to what end? There does not seem to be any victory, or even small gains, on the horizon for which these people are dying. When the fighting dies down, Israel will be the same villain in Gaza it always was, but people are surely going to wonder why the fighting went on for as long as it did with no gains in sight. And that is really the nub of it — there seems to be no hope for Hamas to achieve any of its goals, such as lifting the maritime blockade on Gaza or easing the border crossings. If they are hoping that other forces — such as those in Lebanon, which have lobbed a few projectiles across the border and to which Israel has responded quite forcefully — will be opening another flank against Israel, they are not paying attention to events in Syria and Iraq, which are occupying the efforts of Hezbollah and other parties that might be willing to engage Israel.
There simply isn’t an endgame that represents progress for Hamas. In 2012, when then-Egyptian President Morsi brokered an agreement, Hamas could claim a few minor concessions from Israel (which never really materialized once there was no pressure on Israel to follow through with them). There will be nothing of that sort here, but Hamas seems to be desperately clinging to the hope that it can extract something to base a claim of victory on.
That’s a terrible gamble. It is much more likely that the refusal to agree to a ceasefire is giving Netanyahu exactly what he wants: the chance to deliver a blow to a weakened Hamas regime in Gaza. Hamas has given Netanyahu the means to do this without having to overcome the global opposition that was apparent at the beginning of the current fighting. Their refusal is understandable. Israel has repeatedly failed to live up to prior agreements, and this entire thing does look very much like a setup cooked up by Egypt and Israel.
Still, it seems like the rejection of the ceasefire plays into Netanyahu’s hands even more than going along with it would have. Hamas was faced with two bad options. Some may say they chose the lesser of two evils, but they seem to have opted for the path of salvaging some pride while losing more innocent lives and gaining nothing.
Photo: A school in Gaza after an Israeli bomb attack.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Sometimes I just cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to be an Arab citizen of the United States, much less a Palestinian one.
There are many people with personal connections to Israel and to Gaza who are frightened, safely sitting in the US and worrying about their friends and family in [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Sometimes I just cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to be an Arab citizen of the United States, much less a Palestinian one.
There are many people with personal connections to Israel and to Gaza who are frightened, safely sitting in the US and worrying about their friends and family in that region. A lot of them draw comfort from their communities and from the various sources, mostly social media, where they can find not only reports, but also messages of sensitivity and solidarity for their people (often at the expense of the other). But the experience is still very different for Jews and Arabs. Especially in Washington, DC, a Jewish-American citizen can always take comfort that no matter how worried she may be about her relatives in Be’ersheva or Ashkelon or Sderot, the US government is expressing support for Israel. But a Palestinian citizen? Not so much.
Right now, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is pushing nearly identical bills through the House of Representatives, which has already passed one, and the Senate. The bills — both “Sense of Congress” bills, which express a view but bring about no concrete action – declare absolute support for Israel, call Hamas’ violence “unprovoked,” and, in the Senate version only, call on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the Palestinian unity government.
What can that feel like to a US citizen who has relatives or friends in Gaza?
While Hamas’ indiscriminate firing at Israeli civilians is reprehensible and criminal, claiming its attacks were unprovoked is simply incorrect. As I detailed previously, the attacks were not only provoked, but the provocation was clearly planned by the Netanyahu government. This isn’t exactly ancient history; all this began just a few weeks ago. But the narrative in Washington, in most of the mainstream media, and in much of Israel has been completely turned on its head. Israel’s actions in bringing about these events have been forgotten.
The Senate, probably more keenly aware than most House members that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s goal from the beginning was to dismember the Palestinian unity “government,” added that clause to its call. But what is really striking here is not just the usual one-sidedness of an AIPAC-backed resolution. That is, of course, expected.
What is truly stunning is the stark absence of any mention of the people getting killed. None of those people, so far, are in Israel. At this writing, the death toll in Gaza stands at 174 people, of whom at least 32 are children. 80% of those killed are estimated by the United Nations to have been non-combatants.
No one who pays any attention to the politics of Israel-Palestine would expect Congress to blame Israel for those deaths. No one would expect Congress to comment on the illegal bombings of private homes by Israel, which have killed dozens of innocents. No one would expect Congress to question whether this entire operation constitutes “legitimate self-defense” as permitted by international law.
But even Congress, as intertwined with AIPAC as it has been for so long, could be expected to express some regret at the loss of life. In the past, congressional statements have included such regrets, often saying that they are inevitable because of Hamas’ actions, its embedding itself in civilian areas, etc. They could have done this again. But even that gesture, it seems, is too much for this Congress.
What message does that send to Palestinian-Americans? To all Arab citizens?
It sends the message that Arab life, and especially Palestinian life, is not just cheap, it’s meaningless. It sends that message not only to those citizens, but to all US citizens, and it communicates to the entire world that the deaths of Palestinians are not worth any notice by the United States.
But by allowing AIPAC to speak for us all through our Congress we are allowing the collective voice of the United States to scream to the world that the immeasurably greater destruction raining down on innocent Gazans means nothing to us. The only consolation, and it is microscopic, is that the bills have received fewer co-sponsors – 41 in the Senate and 166 in the House — than what AIPAC bills normally acquire. So far it has received insufficient support for an immediate vote, and has been referred to the Foreign Relations Committee. AIPAC will be pushing the committee hard to get it through.
If it comes to the Senate floor, it will almost certainly pass. Yet no matter how supportive of Israel one may claim to be, it is hard to imagine the moral justification for a statement from Congress that offers, at this time, exclusive support for Israel, where, thankfully, no one has been killed, while not even mentioning Gaza, which has lost 174 people and counting. Is this really a message that the majority of Americans would want to send to the rest of the world? I think not.
Photo: Children play atop a bullet-riddled building in Gaza on April 10, 2011. Credit: UN/Shareef Sarhan
The last few months have gone rather well for the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, in the sense of advancing its prime objective of indefinitely extending the occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory by ensuring failure of any diplomatic efforts to end the occupation. Netanyahu’s success in this regard has been [...]]]>
The last few months have gone rather well for the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, in the sense of advancing its prime objective of indefinitely extending the occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory by ensuring failure of any diplomatic efforts to end the occupation. Netanyahu’s success in this regard has been due both to his own tactical skill and to the luck of outside events.
Netanyahu achieved failure of the latest U.S. attempt to revive a peace process worthy of that name partly through the preemptory demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” He also successfully used the stratagem of striking a deal with the Palestinian Authority that involved release of Palestinian prisoners, reneging on that deal by construing its meaning differently than originally intended, and then blaming the P.A. for not proceeding anyway with substantive talks as if nothing untoward had happened. The Israelis had to take some mild off-the-record blame for the breakdown from the Americans, but nothing that wasn’t manageable.
More threatening to the Israeli government’s strategy than John Kerry’s diplomatic efforts was the latest effort by Hamas and Fatah to bridge their differences and jointly support a single Palestinian government. These intra-Palestinian acts of reconciliation have always been a problem for Netanyahu’s strategy because they involve creating a negotiating partner that can speak for the great majority of Palestinians and because they belie the Israeli allegation that Hamas wants nothing but the destruction of Israel. The Hamas-Fatah deal and subsequent creation of a cabinet of technocrats clearly involved Hamas moving toward Mahmoud Abbas’s position rather than the other way around. This latest reconciliation appeared even more threatening to Netanyahu’s approach than the previous ones because it showed more sign of sticking. Perhaps most disturbing to Netanyahu is that the Obama administration indicated it was willing to work with any jointly supported Palestinian government that emerged from the deal.
Netanyahu has given the same vehement and unyielding reaction he has given to the previous efforts at Palestinian reconciliation, such as withholding tax revenue that belongs to the Palestinians. What most enabled him, however, to sustain his strategy in the face of this latest challenge—and here is one place where the luck of events has helped him—was the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu immediately blamed Hamas and repeatedly promised evidence, which still hasn’t been forthcoming, that the group was responsible for the crime. Two men with ties to Hamas have been named as suspects. They are at large but their families’ homes have already been demolished. No proof of guilt was furnished beforehand, but Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank is an everyday occurrence anyway.
The crime provided the occasion for the Israeli government to strike back more broadly and forcefully than that. As Mitchell Plitnick has described it, “Under the cover of searching for the kidnapped youths, Netanyahu launched a massive operation to cripple Hamas in the West Bank, further humiliate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and punish the entire Palestinian population for calling for a halt to the charade of the ‘peace process’ and, worse, moving toward a unified leadership.” This forceful stirring of the pot by Israel, which has involved the detention of hundreds of Palestinians and the death of several of them at the hands of Israeli security forces, helps to put any peace diplomacy even farther out of reach. It enables American supporters of Netanyahu’s government to say for the umpteenth time that the time is not “ripe” for peace negotiations—and the government they support will do what it has to do to ensure that the time will never be ripe.
Netanyahu’s strategy has benefited recently from other distractions, which have diverted any energy and attention that might otherwise be directed toward establishment of a Palestinian state. The principal distraction that Netanyahu has relied on has been, of course, his demonization of Iran. Other events have helped him. The world’s attention was diverted greatly for a time by the crisis in Ukraine. Then came widespread alarm over the Sunni extremist group in Iraq and Syria that now calls itself the Islamic State. The latter scare has been even more useful for Netanyahu, who used it as another excuse to insist that Israeli troops must continue to occupy the Jordan River Valley indefinitely. Never mind that the chief of Mossad dismisses the notion of an Islamic State army marching across Jordan to invade Israel; the excuse still has a crude geographic appeal.
So Netanyahu has peace diplomacy right where he wants it: in the trash bin, but so far without having to shoulder unequivocal international blame for putting it there. His very success over the last few months in this regard, however, may over the next few months lead to reactions that will complicate further execution of his strategy. That the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation has gone as far as it has—farther than previous attempts—may lead many Palestinians to see it as a best shot at a genuinely comprehensive peace, one that would cover Gaza as well as the West Bank. Continued vehement Israeli rejection of this best shot may lead Palestinians to conclude that they have no shot—none, that is, at negotiating a bilateral accord with any Israeli government that looks at all like the current one. One resulting possibility—which the current volatility in the Palestinian territories shows is dangerously close to becoming a probability—is outbreak of a new full-blown intifada, an uprising with widespread violence.
Even without a new intifada, there are two other strategy-complicating possibilities. One is for the Palestinian Authority (presumably in the form of its Hamas-backed but non-party government) to drop its previous restraint in seeking the full involvement of international organizations in helping the Palestinians out of their plight and moving toward real statehood. The other is for the Palestinian Authority to dissolve itself, end the fiction that what exists in the West Bank is anything other than continued Israeli military occupation, and stop being an accessory to that occupation. Netanyahu in effect encourages Palestinians to reach that latter conclusion, and to realize that the P.A. is not really a government at all, when he does things such as disdaining Abbas’s attempts to help in finding the killers of the Israeli teenagers and berating the P.A. even though the crime occurred in a portion of the West Bank where the P.A. has no security functions at all.
But Netanyahu is always focused on the short term, and he probably is not worrying much right now about those possibilities. It also is because he is focused on the short term that success in his strategy in fending off Palestinian statehood is not at all success for Israel. In fact, it is quite contrary to the long term interests of Israel and damaging to its prospects for living as a peaceful, prosperous, liberal state. The Netanyahu strategy fails to recognize that clinging to all the land to the Jordan River makes it impossible for Israel to be both a Jewish and a democratic state.
The strategy is one that entails unending conflict and animosity. As Israel sinks ever more deeply into hard-core apartheid, a corrosive effect continues to be seen in the public attitudes and morality of many Israelis as well as many Palestinians, an effect that is disturbing to the many other Israelis who are still thoughtful and humane. The phenomenon in question has become increasingly apparent in recent years in an intolerance in Israel that has evolved into overt hatred and prejudice against Arabs, matching anti-Jewish hatred that can be found on the other side. (Anti-Semitism probably is not the appropriate term in this context, only because both Jews and Arabs are Semites.)
In this atmosphere, nonofficial acts of inhumanity and violence become more likely—such as the killing of the three Jewish teenagers and the subsequent killing, possibly after being burned alive, of a Palestinian Arab teenager. The atmosphere also infects official acts. Those acts include much of what happens in the West Bank every week, including all those demolitions of homes. It also has reportedly included in the past few days the brutal beating by Israeli police of another Palestinian teenager—a cousin of the one who was burned and killed.
The victim of the police beating is an American: a high school sophomore from Tampa, Florida who was visiting his relatives. If the reports about his beating are confirmed, this ought to be an occasion for the U.S. to pull its kid gloves off at least a bit more in dealing with Netanyahu’s government. When Israeli police are beating up U.S. citizens, the U.S. government ought to do more to steer the Israeli government off its disastrous path. Call it tough love if you prefer, but the emphasis needs to be on the toughness.
This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
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