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
]]>What a difference four years can make! Almost a week into Operation Pillar of Defense and the Israelis have yet to make the case for the necessity of continuing the attacks on Gaza in order to prevent Iran’s expansion of its influence in the region. No more President Shimon Peres [...]]]>
What a difference four years can make! Almost a week into Operation Pillar of Defense and the Israelis have yet to make the case for the necessity of continuing the attacks on Gaza in order to prevent Iran’s expansion of its influence in the region. No more President Shimon Peres saying, “Our goals are clear. We do not want to make Gaza a satellite of Iran.” No more conceiving of the war against Hamas as a war to check Iran’s ambition and also a push-back, giving Israel and Western allies “a unique chance to deal a strategic blow to Iranian expansionism.”
To be sure, some things have not changed. The imbalance of martial power reflected in callous Israeli aerial attacks on Gaza’s civilian population is still a thorn in global conscience. The collective punishment of Gaza’s population also remains a painful demonstration of Western hypocrisy regarding human rights and dignity. But in comparison to four years ago, the relative silence on Gaza’s connection to Iran or the implications of this war for Iran’s strategic position in the region is hard to miss.
It is possible that I am speaking too soon and, like the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead, once the human costs and efficacy of attacks in terms of stated objectives begin to be questioned, the narrative will shift and the argument for sustenance of war, refusal of ceasefire, or the “need for a hard enough blow to Hamas to restore Israel’s deterrence” will shift and Iran will somehow be brought into the equation. Certainly, the reported use of Iranian-made Fajr 5 rockets creates that potential. This piece, for instance, is already forwarding the idea that Iran may not have relinquished its “grip on Hamas” and “reports of the demise of the Axis of Resistance (Iran-Syria-Hamas) may have been greatly exaggerated.”
But there are also reasons to think otherwise. Clearly, the completely changed political landscape of the region has something to do with this. The tragedy in Syria and Hamas’ public break with Iran over the latter’s Syria policy makes it hard to see a hard blow to the former in terms of implications for Iran. But more importantly, it is the changed dynamics of the region that has made Iran irrelevant or of no use at this moment. All eyes and pressures are on Egypt’s President Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood.
Both Hamas and the Israeli government have cause to put pressure on Morsi for different reasons. Hamas has every reason to leverage the post-Arab Spring importance of public opinion and its historical links to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to put itself into a stronger position than when the conflict began. It wants Egypt to help end Israel’s five-year-old embargo along with some sort of acceptance on the part of Israel and the US that Hamas is here to stay and must be engaged with in a non-military fashion.
Israel, on the other hand, has cause to show the opposite. It hopes to show that the change in Egypt has not brought any Arab spring dividend for Hamas. Nothing can show this better than Morsi’s inability to do anything different than what former President Mubarak used to do.
In any case, the bottom line is that in the midst of all these complexities, there may be little room for the insertion of Iran. So far at least, no one is asking for Tehran’s help and few are blaming it for emboldening Hamas. Interestingly, there is also very little bluster coming out of Tehran. The usually unreliable Farsnews is reporting that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called Morsi and thanked him “for his efforts to establish tranquility, security, and stability in Gaza.” He also went on to say that “there must be a specific plan to prevent the continuation of killings and bloodshed and on the basis of consultation with other countries a consensus must be created in the international arena against the Zionist regime’s aggression.” That’s about it, so far. Pretty mild, I would say, and conceding of Egypt’s leadership.
- Farideh Farhi is an independent researcher and an affiliate graduate faculty member in political science and international relations at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
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