by Mitchell Plitnick
This past Tuesday saw the latest in a horrifyingly long line of atrocities in Jerusalem. Two armed Palestinians entered a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood, killed five Israeli civilians and wounded six others before police gunned the murderers down. The reactions of Israeli and Palestinian leaders are worth examining.
Hamas, unsurprisingly, praised the murders. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, equally unsurprisingly, condemned them unequivocally. In his official statement, Abbas said that he “…condemns the attack on Jewish worshippers in their place of prayer and condemns the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it.”
But this didn’t stop Israeli leaders from continuing their campaign to demonize Abbas, the Palestinian leader who has tried harder, made more compromises and sacrificed more of his own credibility to achieve a two-state solution than any of his predecessors.
“Abbas has intentionally turned the conflict into a religious one between Jews and Muslims, and the systematic incitement he leads against Jews…is the ‘go-ahead’ for these despicable terror attacks,” said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Nov. 18, the day of the attack.
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett meanwhile told reporters that “Abbas, one of the biggest terrorists to have arisen from the Palestinian people, bears direct responsibility for the Jewish blood spilt… while we were busy with delusions about the [peace] process… Abbas has declared war on Israel and we must treat that accordingly.”
Not to be outdone by the rivals within his own governing coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “This [attack] is a direct result of the incitement lead by Hamas and Abu Mazen (Abbas), incitement that the international community irresponsibly ignores.” He also dismissed Abbas’ condemnation of the attack because Abbas had said: “While we condemn this incident, we also condemn the aggression toward Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy places and torching of mosques and churches.” To Netanyahu, such a statement, though demonstrably based on factual Israeli actions and statements, is “incitement.”
Netanyahu didn’t stop there. He accused the Palestinians of “blood libel,” a term that refers to historical incidents where false charges against Jews of ritual murder were invented to incite anti-Jewish violence.
The vast majority of Netanyahu’s venom, and that of the other Israeli leaders was directed at Abbas, despite the shameful way Hamas applauded this heinous crime. There was a touch of irony to that, as on the same day of the attack, the head of the Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency charged with internal security, had declared quite clearly that “[Abbas] is not interested in terror and is not leading [his people] to terror. Nor is he doing so ‘under the table.’”
All of this raises a question: Why is the Israeli right ignoring the low-hanging fruit of Hamas and going full bore at Abbas instead? After all, Hamas praised the attack, and Netanyahu and company could easily have stopped at tainting Abbas with the argument that he was in partnership with the Islamists via the unity government. Instead, the Israelis went much farther, to the point of virtually ignoring Hamas and the other Palestinian factions who voiced support for the attack.
The explanation for this behavior involves both the long-term and the short-term. In the short run, this is all part of Netanyahu’s broader public relations campaign linking Iran, Hamas, the Islamic State and now the Palestinian Authority. This campaign has several goals: to make it politically impossible for the United States to work with Iran against Islamic State (ISIS or IS), to make a deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries more difficult, to forestall any further international scrutiny of the siege of the Gaza Strip and to legitimize harsher Israeli measures in Jerusalem, among other goals.
On most counts, the strategy is failing, with the usual exception that Israeli actions in Gaza and Jerusalem are being downplayed, although not totally ignored. But Netanyahu’s rhetoric is having more of an effect toward his long-term goal.
The endless refrain of “Iran is ISIS, ISIS is Hamas” is designed to use the universally despised Islamic State to further de-legitimize Iran and the Palestinians. The reasons for this are obvious: to paint both Hamas and Iran as such implacable enemies that Israel would be justified in any action taken against them. But Netanyahu’s rhetoric is gradually broadening its scope of Palestinian targets. By blaming incitement from Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the recent attack in Jerusalem, and by repeatedly pointing out that the PA is now run by a unity government (however dysfunctional) that includes Hamas, Netanyahu is, in effect, subtly folding the PA into the “Hamas-ISIS-Iran” equation.
The strategy is working in Netanyahu’s target areas: Israelis at home and Israel’s supporters abroad, and Washington. After the synagogue murders in Jerusalem, John Kerry sounded just like Netanyahu when he blamed Palestinian incitement, clearly including the PA, for the attack. He was followed by a slew of Congress members from both parties, some of whom singled out Abbas by name.
This is part of the Israeli right’s “solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It begins with rolling back the arrangements under the Oslo Accords. The vision is something similar to what existed before the Accords were signed in 1993. Israel would have full security control in the West Bank, and the PA would be reduced to an administrative body in the increasingly isolated Palestinian cities, towns and villages. Freedom of movement for Palestinians would be increased in the hope that their economic conditions would improve (possibly through increased Palestinian employment in Israeli businesses) and that this would be enough, with increased Israeli security, to maintain relative calm.
This is a shared vision among Netanyahu, Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, and numerous other right-wing figures in Israel, even though they each present it differently. It was sketched out in broad terms in the Israeli media recently. Another prize in the arrangement for Israel is that it would diminish the PA as the international representative of the Palestinians, thus blunting the gains the Palestinians have gotten through various international recognitions of their statehood. The PA would still exist, but it would be disconnected from the Palestinian street in the Occupied Territories. This would, indeed, resemble the pre-Oslo era.
Even if Netanyahu is ousted from the Prime Minister’s office in the near future (not likely, but possible given the current political waves in Israel), another right-wing leader would certainly be his successor. Thus, the rollback of Oslo would continue, as would the freeze in the peace process. And without a visible representative Palestinian leadership, international pressure for peace would diminish, simply because there won’t be anyone to press Israel to talk to (the United States, Europe and even the United Nations will not, in any foreseeable future, push Israel to talk with Hamas).
The Israeli right believes that this is a status quo that could be maintained indefinitely, with the occasional flare-up of violence with Gaza and sporadic, but disorganized attacks by individual Palestinians from the West Bank. And since right-wing leaders will be controlling Israel until an opposition that can sway the Israeli public toward a more moderate course coalesces, the vision will be pursued.
But we’re already seeing some of the reasons why this vision is unsustainable. Israeli radicals will continue to agitate for greater Jewish control of the Temple Mount, and any right-wing Israeli government cannot simply ignore them. That will lead to more and more individual acts of violence like the one this week in Jerusalem and the several that preceded it recently.
Perhaps the Israeli right thinks they can handle that as well, and they may be correct. But there is another aspect about the pre-Oslo existence that they may be overlooking.
The separation of the Palestinian masses from the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1980s led to the development of a more grassroots, locally based Palestinian leadership. It was that leadership, not the PLO, which created the first, and by far the more successful, Intifada. Palestinians have been yearning for a new leadership, and a new generation of leaders with popular support would be most welcome among them.
The first intifada was certainly not non-violent, but it relied much more on strikes, protests and civil disobedience than the second one did. Violence was a very minor aspect of it at first, until Yitzhak Rabin’s policy of “breaking the Palestinians’ limbs” increased it. Even so, the non-violent aspects of that uprising remained front and center. It was then that the United States, and soon after, Israel, embraced the idea of peace with the PLO, in order to end the intifada and to blunt and co-opt that new Palestinian leadership.
If such a leadership arose again, it would be impossible to ignore politically, even in Washington and Tel Aviv. But Palestinians need to hope for it, because if the Obama administration is so removed from this issue that it is willing to blame Abbas for acts that he has strongly condemned, then the Oslo rollback-vision will prove successful, and there will be even less pressure on Israel to compromise. But that would also present an opportunity for the new Palestinian leadership to encourage renewed international activism aimed at economically pressuring Israel. And that could bring real change.
There is, however, a very long road between that sort of hope and where we are right now.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The obsession in politics and diplomacy with decorum–largely a relic from the past–can easily distract people from the realities of the present. Case in point, the uproar over Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest article in the Atlantic, the headline of which, The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here, would seem important enough to warrant more attention than it has gotten so far.
Instead, the whisper of an unnamed “senior Obama administration official,” who called Netanyahu a “chickenshit,” has occupied headlines. And instead of taking a strong, or even a weak stance on Netanyahu’s repeated declarations about expanding settlement activity everywhere in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the White House has only tried to distance itself from the remark, describing it as “unauthorized” and “inappropriate.”
As Goldberg himself pointed out, the fact that Bibi is a chickenshit is not entirely a bad thing. Whatever else it does, it also makes him quite afraid to back up his rhetoric with action. Even in Gaza this summer, the ongoing slaughter seemed, from Netanyahu’s point of view, to be something that spiraled much further out of control than he had intended. Indeed, his constant shifting of the mission’s goal posts indicated the lack of any sort of planning beforehand. Political pressures kept driving him on, as they do with most of his actions. But at least the “chickenshit” was never going to attack Iran despite his bellicosity, as the United States seems to finally understand.
Being less of a leader and more of a leaf blowing in the political wind is an apt description of Netanyahu, and it is strongly suggested in Goldberg’s piece. But it also applies to the Obama administration, which has repeatedly refused to use the tools it has at its disposal to create real pressure on Israel to, at the very least, desist from its actions that are obviously intended to destroy any possibility of a two-state solution. So, chickenshit cuts both ways.
Maybe Goldberg intended the chickenshit comment to overshadow the rest of his point, maybe he didn’t. But the assertion that we are in a period of crisis for US-Israel relations is a very important one. The question is: are we?
The simple answer is no, but Goldberg is not wrong in suggesting that such a crisis could occur in the near future. One can understand why Goldberg focuses so much on personal clashes. Never in the history of Israel has there been a government that so arrogantly insulted the United States so frequently. Whether it’s Netanyahu, Finance Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, or some other member of the Knesset, anti-American statements have risen to unprecedented levels.
For their part, US officials have been getting just the tiniest bit harsher in their criticism of Israel, while Israeli officials escalate their anti-US rhetoric. And then there’s the endless stories about how much Obama and Netanyahu dislike each other, with Goldberg’s in the lead. The problem, of course, as it is presented in this narrative of interpersonal conflict, is bad communication, or mismatched personalities.
In reality, none of this is really about Bibi and Barack disliking each other. They do, but that is beside the point. It is the direction that Israel has decided to go in that is the problem.
Let’s start off by noting that the degree of the “crisis” is being massively overblown. There is a much bigger problem in Europe for Bibi than there is in the United States. The Europeans are actually threatening to take some action, not just calling Bibi names in whispers to reporters. Sweden’s recognition of Palestine as a state is just a first step in a series of actions that might be on the horizon from Europe, where Israel conducts the biggest share of its trade. When the United States gets to that point, as it has on occasion in the ever more distant past, then we can start wondering if there is a crisis in relations that might cause some small shift in the status quo.
The “chickenshit” epithet can apply to Obama just as much as it can to Netanyahu. He is a president with a non-confrontational style trying to govern with what is, arguably, the most defiant and combative Congress any president has ever had to deal with. And he is dealing with an Israeli government that is pursuing a very different strategy than its predecessors. The Israel of today no longer cares about the majority of the Jewish community in the United States. This Israel, correctly, determined that its ultimate desire to completely thwart a two-state solution and maintain an apartheid system over the Palestinians would never be acceptable to most American Jews. But most US Jews weren’t the ones providing the political power and, more importantly, the funding for congressional campaigns and for settlements in the West Bank.
The Jews that do provide these things, as well as the Christians, are right-wingers, either in their general politics or at least on Middle East policy (including policy toward the entire Arab world, Iran and Turkey). They are now the only ones Israel cares about. More liberal-minded devotees are not, at this stage, providing that much support for Israel, either economically or financially. Those of them who do provide this support will continue to check their otherwise liberal values at the Israeli door. The rest are not, in the estimate of the Netanyahu government, worth the compromises that must be made to garner their support.
In this circumstance, Israel has a freer hand in its actions. While Netanyahu announces more and more building plans in East Jerusalem and other sensitive parts of the Occupied Territories, Republicans, who stand a good chance of controlling both houses of Congress, are not criticizing Israeli actions in the slightest. Instead, as one would expect, they are attacking Obama for his insufficient support of Israel.
In this context, Israeli journalist Roi Ben-Yishai, one of Israel’s best, recently reported on Israel’s “new approach” to the Palestinians. It holds few surprises. Israel is not intending to return to talks, correctly believing they will be futile, and therefore would only make things worse. Israel’s assessment will remain correct until its own positions can be moderated by pressure like that of the Palestinians over the years.
The plan is then to have the quiescent Palestinian Authority (PA) assume control over Gaza and reinforce its control on the West Bank. In other words, marginalize Hamas throughout the Palestinian body politic. Under those circumstances, Israel would end the siege of Gaza and ease restrictions on movement in the West Bank as well. The idea is that the Palestinians can then build a functional economy, which Israel believes will cause the Palestinian people to oppose actions that could draw Israeli military reprisals. I rather doubt that would be the result, but right now, the delays in Palestinian international action imply that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is cooperating with Israel and Egypt on this effort, probably in the hope that this strategy would eliminate Hamas as a political rival.
This seems like another doomed plan, one that harkens back to old Israeli beliefs that Palestinian nationalism will eventually just go away. But we must recognize that this is happening with the silent approval of the United States. Egypt, in particular, would not work with Israel on such a plan if it believed that the United States would object. More to the point, the plan is also intended to provide the US with what it wants most: Palestinian silence. What American policy has always represented is the complete lack of importance placed on the welfare of the Palestinians, or anyone else (including ordinary Israelis) in the region, for that matter. The entire issue is only relevant insofar as it affects more “important” US concerns.
So, the Obama administration will likely allow Israel to proceed with its plans, even if it doesn’t believe those plans are likely to succeed. This is evident in the lack of material response to Israel’s direct challenge to the international consensus on a two-state solution.
The name-calling most recently highlighted by Goldberg merely reflects these disagreements and the fact that the increasingly populist and rightward tilt not only in the Israeli government but also in its population leads to verbose criticism of US officials, up to and including the president. Responses to such insults can be countered by Israel’s power in Congress in a way that more fundamental policy differences cannot. That frustrates some American officials, but it doesn’t provoke any material US response.
If Congress persists in pressuring the administration on its Iran policy, a pressure which most understand as directed by Jerusalem, Obama may well respond through the Palestinian issue. In that case, we might see a more direct counter to Israeli policies, such as a Security Council resolution condemning the settlements or even an “Obama Plan” basing a two-state solution on the 1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem. That would be a turn of events not seen in decades, but Israel has also never worked so hard to undermine US goals on foreign policy matters as it has on Iran.
But make no mistake, if the Palestinians get any respite from the Obama administration it will be because of Israel’s meddling through Congress on the Iran issue. It will not be due to any Palestinian action, much less on the insulting attitude of Israeli officials or the personal dislike between the current Israeli leader and the president of the United States. It is, ultimately, all about policy priorities, not personalities.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Former American diplomat Aaron David Miller is a frequent and worthwhile contributor to US foreign policy discussions in both Washington and the news media. His long career in Middle East diplomacy and strong focus on Israel have enabled him to clarify for the general public the many difficulties that exist under the surface of these issues. Unfortunately, as shown by his recent piece in Foreign Policy magazine, he sometimes obscures them as well.
Miller correctly points out that the Israel-Palestine conflict is not the major source of regional instability and that Secretary of State John Kerry was foolish to imply that the lack of progress on this issue had in some way become a contributing factor to the rise of the group that calls itself the Islamic State. But he also elides the enormous amount of responsibility the United States has and continues to hold not only for the Israel-Palestine conflict itself, but also for the difficulty in making any progress on the issue, let alone resolving it.
Miller states it explicitly: “Washington isn’t responsible for the impasse…The primary responsibility for fixing the problem lies with Israelis and Palestinians, and the lack of resolution is a direct result of their lack of leadership and ownership.”
That is unequivocal nonsense. It adds yet another layer to the enduring myths that surround the long-term lack of progress on this conflict. It is not lack of leadership and ownership that is the problem, it is the massive imbalance of power between the two parties that is the single biggest obstacle to a resolution. And that is an area where the United States is a major factor.
The power imbalance leads to a very simple reality: Israel has very little incentive to compromise. It is a regional superpower militarily, it has by far the most stable government in the Middle East, and it’s a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with a relatively strong economy. Israelis would undoubtedly prefer a cessation to the Palestinian rocket fire that periodically flares up as it did this past summer, and certainly want to stop incidents such as the one on October 22, when a Palestinian drove into a Jerusalem light rail station, killing an infant and wounding seven other people. But these concerns are not nearly enough to sway Israelis into the sort of compromises that would be bare minimums for a deal with the Palestinians.
From Israel’s point of view, the Palestinians’ minimal demands include a free Gaza and West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, a shared Jerusalem and the recognition of Palestinian refugee rights. In each case, there is a huge risk perceived by the Israelis.
Indeed, because most Israelis believe the narrative telling them that when Israel withdrew from Gaza and Southern Lebanon, all it got in return was rocket fire, they see a similar but much graver risk of that repeated outcome in the West Bank. In fact, most Israelis join their prime minister in rejecting the idea of giving up the Jordan Valley, a huge chunk of the occupied West Bank.
Sharing Jerusalem, and particularly the area of the Temple Mount, conjures fears of the years from 1949-67 when Israelis could not visit the holiest site in Judaism. More than that, Israel’s capture of the Old City in 1967 has become a powerful nationalistic symbol—a compromise on this issue strikes at the very heart of Israeli identity, and that arouses passionate responses.
The refugee question, which I explored in depth recently, is also seen by virtually all Israelis as implying the end of the Jewish State, something they desperately want to avoid. Finally, Israelis remain bitterly divided ideologically on many points, and there is a deep fear that making compromises will set off civil disturbances between secular, religious, nationalist and liberal camps within the country. Recent events around the Gaza war, where demonstrators for peace were repeatedly attacked, give credence to this fear.
The point is not to argue about the legitimacy or realism, or absence thereof, behind any of these fears. They are there, and they must be contended with in some fashion. But that involves confronting those fears, which, in turn, implies that Israelis perceive some pressure—be it military, economic or political—that forces them to take risks. The rewards of peace are, at best, uncertain to Israelis who don’t trust Palestinian intentions and perceive rising militancy in the Arab world and therefore an uncertain future no matter what commitments the current Arab regimes may offer. After all, as many contend, these governments may not be around for long.
Due to its position of relative power, the potential incentives for Israel are negative. The Israeli reaction to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which has not yet had any significant economic effect (though it has certainly altered the public discourse), is a testament to how worried Israel is at the prospect of true economic pressure. The Israeli government’s reaction to the EU’s relatively minor moves to adhere to its own laws regarding partnering on projects in the Occupied Territories and labeling products imported from the West Bank is further proof of this trend.
But whenever Europe, which is an even more indispensable trade partner for Israel than the US, has started to move in this direction, the United States has worked hard behind the scenes to change European minds. In a similar, but far more visible and impactful way, the US has used its veto power repeatedly at the UN Security Council to protect Israel from any consequences of its constant violations of international law. And we do this despite Israel’s defiance of stated US policy in the region.
These are the realities that Miller’s viewpoint elides. They have nothing to do with the Islamic State, and Miller is correct to chide Kerry for trying to tie the two together. But this ongoing hand-wringing about how the Israelis and Palestinians can’t be brought together needs to end. Even more, the nonsensical view that this is due to the personal mistrust between Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas has to be shunted into the dustbin. Roosevelt and Churchill didn’t trust Stalin at Yalta. Gerry Adams and David Trimble in Northern Ireland didn’t trust each other either, and many of us who were paying attention at the time can remember the constant accusations of bad faith they hurled back and forth, which were very similar to what Netanyahu and Abbas say about each other today. Yet there are also other examples of leaders coming together. It is becoming a cliché, but it is nonetheless true that peace is made between enemies, not between friends, and it is also generally made between parties that neither like nor trust each other.
The reason this is even an issue in the Israel-Palestine conflict is because of the imbalance of power. Because Israel is so powerful and because US policymakers—for reasons that have nothing to do with the Palestinians or the occupation—continue to see Israel as an indispensable ally in security, intelligence and business matters, diplomacy has become ineffective. That’s why we keep hearing excuses for the ongoing failure. Miller makes one of the classic excuses. But it all covers up for US fecklessness and for the fact that, despite the pronouncements, peace between Israel and the Palestinians may be official US policy, but it is not a high priority. Kerry, in a credit to his character and his naiveté, tried to buck this, but found that he didn’t have the diplomatic tools he thought he had.
For all of these reasons, the US bears an enormous responsibility for the ongoing and deepening conflict in Israel and the Occupied Territories. And yet, that doesn’t mean the US needs to be doing more to resolve it.
On the contrary, the US needs to do less. The American commitment to Israel’s military superiority is now law, but even without that, the ties between the US and Israeli militaries, intelligence communities and businesses are extremely deep. There is no realistic path to threatening these things.
But that doesn’t mean the United States has to keep acting to thwart European efforts to raise the price of its occupation for Israel. Nor does it mean that the US has to keep running interference for Israel at the Security Council. Most of all, it does not mean the US has to keep insisting on its exclusive role as the mediator of this conflict.
If the United States simply refrains from doing these things, and takes no other action to pressure Israel, the change in the status quo would be enormous. But that would, itself, be a major shift in US policy on the ground. And it is not going to happen as long as we delude ourselves into believing the status quo is not our fault and that we bear no responsibility for changing it.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Once again, in his speech Wednesday at the United Nations, President Obama revealed the reduced importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on his agenda. He also revealed just how out of touch his entire country is with respect to reality.
The Israel-Palestine conflict was the last specific global issue mentioned by Obama in his address to the UN General Assembly, and his wording was straight out of the playbook. It was also only mentioned briefly and without any hint that the United States would be taking any action at all on the issue.
Here’s what he said:
Leadership will also be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace. The situation in Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure anyone of the illusion that this conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home. And the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. But let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just with two states living side by side, in peace and security.
Could this have been any emptier? Just last month, Israel and Hamas were engaged in the biggest uptick in violence since the Second Intifada was in full swing.
The message from Obama comes through, though: We’re no longer interested in forcing the parties to the table. The subtext behind that is a US surrender to the stubbornness of the far-right wing government running Israel these days. The US will stop pressuring Israel for talks, and indeed, it already has. The question this raises, of course, is how the Obama administration will respond when and if the Palestinian Authority makes good on its repeated threats to bring this issue to the UN and the International Criminal Court.
In such a case, Obama will undoubtedly condemn the Palestinians’ “unilateral action”—de facto US policy dictates that when the Palestinians take action, it is to be condemned, but when Israel does the same thing, it is, at worst, “unhelpful.” Yet the real question for the Palestinians is whether the United States will have any other response outside of some pro forma public statement. Obama’s hands-off approach seems to imply that it will not, though Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be unwise to count on that.
But there’s another piece of this statement worth examining. Obama said, as he has many times, that the situation is unsustainable. He also notes that one myth that has long been held by many has been exposed as false by recent events: the notion that Palestine is the key source of instability in the region.
Obama is correct about the exposed old myth, but he merely spouts another in its place. Of course the occupation will not remain the same as it is today. It has changed some of its characteristics, almost always to the detriment of the Palestinians, many times since 1967. But the essence of the matter, the relationship between an occupying power and an occupied people locked in a conflict over land, rights, narratives, nationalism and competing claims of justice, has endured quite well over those years.
The Israeli right-wing was long aware, and often stated, that their subjugation of the Palestinians was not the main cause of instability in the region. Of course, there was a time when there was a much stronger argument for that myth. When the many Arab regimes, throughout most of the 20th century, were comfortably entrenched in power, things were pretty stable, as they often are under dictatorships that maintain their control. Under those circumstances, the cry of “Free Palestine” was heard much more loudly, as it was the only one the dictators would permit. Due to many factors (especially the US invasion of Iraq), that stability was shattered and, as one would expect, much of the Arab world, while not forgetting the Palestinians, demonstrated a focus on the miserable conditions they themselves were living in, and conflicts within their own countries. Thus, the myth was exposed.
But we need no shakeup like the Arab Awakening to see that the claim that the occupation is “unsustainable” is a myth. We really need only see that it has endured for more than 47 years, and when circumstances did threaten the status quo, Israel adapted its occupation to meet those circumstances. The most obvious example of that is the massive tightening of the occupation and even more massive expansion of settlements that constituted Israel’s response to the Oslo Accords.
Of course, it is a truism that any oppressive regime eventually meets its demise. That is clearly not what Obama means when he calls the occupation “unsustainable.” Rather, he means what so many others mean: Israel cannot continue to hold millions of Palestinians without rights. But, like so many other myths around Israel-Palestine, this one doesn’t bear scrutiny. Israel has done this for 47 years, and can do it for the foreseeable future. The demise of the occupation regime will come, as the demise of all regimes eventually come. But there is nothing particularly unsustainable about this one.
The Israeli right has become the Israeli mainstream, and they are busily coming up with ideas for how to sustain this occupation or, as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman likes to put it, to “manage” the conflict. They recognize that the fear, ingrained in the thinking of many of the early Zionist philosophers of a Jewish Israel ruling over a majority of disenfranchised Muslim and Christian Arabs is unfounded. It turns out that contrary to the expectations of the early Zionist thinkers, Israelis can live with denying rights to Arabs, and the world is prepared to tolerate it, despite the clucking of tongues it evokes.
This issue can be traced back all the way to Theodor Herzl, and it was actively dealt with by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and, most notably, by the person in charge of land acquisition for the Jewish National Fund both before and after the State of Israel was established, Yoseph Weitz. In modern times, this notion has been expressed as a “demographic time bomb,” most notably by Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert.
But there’s no reason to believe this is really a problem. After all, according to the February 2014 report of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, there are about 6,119,000 Jews in Israel and the West Bank. Between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, there are some 5,894,631 Palestinians, according to the CIA World Factbook. Given the different population growth rates, Palestinians will be a majority very soon, but the day that happens, what is going to change? On the ground, in day to day life, what will be different than the day before?
The answer, of course, is that nothing will change and the Israeli right wing understands this. The United States, on the other hand, does not appear to. More to the point, the many activists who believe that Jews going from 51% of the population to 49% of it will suddenly mean that Israel is an apartheid state, as both Olmert and another former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak warned, also do not understand that when that line is crossed nothing will change. Nothing will change when that so-called demographic time bomb goes off.
So, while right wing leaders like Naftali Bennett consider ways to continue to “manage” the Palestinians indefinitely, Obama and a great any others, in the United States, Israel, Europe and even some among the Palestinians, continue to engage in myth-making and wishful thinking.
If this conflict is ever to be resolved, the only path to it entails full acknowledgment of the realities, on the ground, in the international diplomatic sphere and in politics. Anyone who truly believes that the demographic counter clicking down to under 50% Jewish will somehow shock the Israeli people and their government into recognizing the injustice of the occupation is engaging in fantasy. Such demographic changes are gradual, and this cushions the change so it is not a shock. In 1960, Whites, who were always an overwhelming minority, made up less than 20% of the population of South Africa, and Jews are unlikely to ever be anywhere near that small a minority in Israel-Palestine.
This is only one of many myths that need to be abandoned for any kind of resolution to be possible. It’s no less important to dispel these fanciful notions than it is to counter the stereotypes of Palestinians that are so widely held in the United States, Israel and elsewhere (like “they just want to kill the Jews” for instance). One way we will know people are serious about taking on this vexing conflict is when we see them abandon false notions and recognize that Israel-Palestine can contribute to a better world simply by ending the injustice and violence. When that’s the motivation, and it is applied to both sides, we’ll be getting somewhere.
]]>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
When Israel, or any country, engages in armed conflict with a guerrilla group, even if that group controls significant territory and resources, it is a virtual truism that the longer the fighting persists, the greater the gains for the non-state actor. In Gaza, Hamas’ quasi-governmental position still leaves it [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
When Israel, or any country, engages in armed conflict with a guerrilla group, even if that group controls significant territory and resources, it is a virtual truism that the longer the fighting persists, the greater the gains for the non-state actor. In Gaza, Hamas’ quasi-governmental position still leaves it in the role of the guerrilla enemy. And with the events of the past few days, it is worth asking if Israel is not losing this “war.”
The Israeli government is pointing to several objectives, chiefly the destruction of some tunnels in Gaza that lead into Israel and at degrading and diminishing Hamas’ ability to fire rockets. While the frequency of rocket fire from Gaza has decreased somewhat in the last few days, it has obviously not stopped. And when the heat dies down, Israelis are bound to notice that the tunnels Netanyahu is making such a point about had not been used for infiltration until after the fighting began.
By the same token, Israelis might also notice that, at this writing, 35 Israelis have been killed, three of them civilians. In the five and half years since the end of Operation Cast Lead, a grand total of 38 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, combining both Gaza and the West Bank, 10 of them civilians. When a sober assessment of all this is made in Israel, the result might not look top good if Netanyahu has so little to show for it.
Hamas, on the other hand, may have quite a bit to toot their collective horns about. Yes, the death toll, which is now topping 700, is horrific, as is the number of injured (now over 4,100), not to mention the damage to Gaza’s already crumbling infrastructure and the destruction of 500 homes, some 16 mosques and two hospitals. But Hamas, despite having lost a lot of popularity over the years, is standing up to Israel and insisting on an end to its siege of the Gaza Strip, which is preventing many common goods from getting in and just about all exports from going out.
Moreover, Hamas has put all of Israel on high alert, disrupting daily life not just in the south, but as far north as Haifa, and as far east as Jerusalem. Residents of Tel Aviv are not living in “the bubble” they did five years ago; now they are repeatedly hustling to shelters when warning sirens go off. Most importantly of all, Hamas forced US and European airlines to suspend all flights to Israel for two days when a rocket from Gaza came within a mile of Ben Gurion International (BGI) airport.
That victory might be far more profound than what anyone in Gaza has so far realized. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is as apolitical as a federal agency can get, suspended flights to Israel for obvious reasons: in the wake of the downing of the Malaysian flight over Ukraine, a rocket coming that close to BGI was too much of a risk for the FAA to take.
But in the United States, any decision that Israel doesn’t like instantly becomes politicized, even though it is obvious to anyone who knows anything about the US government that the president had nothing to do with this call — it is entirely within the FAA’s bailiwick. But Israel complained that the decision sent “the wrong message,” to which the State Department replied, “The only consideration in issuing the notice was the safety and security of our citizens.”
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg immediately flew to Israel and stated that he felt as safe there as anywhere. But Bloomberg’s grandstand play also serves to undermine the rationale for this entire operation by Israel — after all, if it is that safe when fire is being exchanged, how can Israel justify their own losses, let alone the far more massive toll of death and destruction in Gaza?
Republican Senator Ted Cruz, never one to let a lunatic theory pass by unexploited, went so far as to accuse President Barack Obama of using “…a federal regulatory agency to launch an economic boycott on Israel, in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign-policy demands.” No kidding, he really said that.
With all of this tumult resulting from one rocket, Hamas can certainly claim a major win in this regard.
Hamas has also made political gains. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been working to help find a ceasefire formula. In the past, Hamas would disavow Abbas’ authority to negotiate for them, but they have not done so this time. That’s because Abbas is arguing for Hamas’ terms for a ceasefire. That makes Abbas, rather than any Egyptian or Turkish leader, the contact point between Hamas and Israel. It also symbolically demonstrates that the Palestinians have a unified government — Abbas is presenting himself as the leader of all of Palestine, including Gaza, without saying so or ruffling any of Hamas’ feathers.
Israel’s goal in starting this round of fighting was to destroy the unity deal between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Thus far, the opposite seems to have materialized. Abbas is in agreement with Hamas’ goals, and is apparently fully representing them. That represents a major failure for Netanyahu. But that outcome is far from assured.
The statement by Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, that the Palestinians would now pursue their goals through the international judicial system, seemed like a potential game-changer. It is telling, though, that after Ashrawi made her statement, welcomed by many of us who advocate for an equitable international judicial system and see its value for the Palestinians, there has been virtually no follow-up.
Indeed, going, for example, to the International Criminal Court (ICC) might have very different effects than one might imagine for the Palestinians. Unlike the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is really the one place at the UN that Israel’s complaints of unfair treatment have real merit, the ICC is not a politically driven body. Its unfortunate bias against poor countries, countries that do not have great power backing and, particularly, sub-Saharan African countries is based on what cases are brought before it, and that, sadly, is entirely dictated by politics.
But if the ICC were to investigate the fighting in Gaza, it might well be inclined to investigate both sides. And, if Palestine, with its new-found recognition as a state, were to go to the ICC, they would be placing themselves under its jurisdiction. The simple fact is that, while Israel has devastated civilians, Hamas has also been targeting civilians, albeit with much less success. That, however, is also a crime. But Israel has not joined the ICC, so it is not under ICC jurisdiction. The ICC could not compel any of its leaders to appear, much less answer charges.
Israel is reportedly considering a ceasefire deal that would be modeled after the 2006 accord achieved in Lebanon. If that were followed, the PA would assume control over Gaza. Hamas might have a tough time arguing with that, given their defense of the unity government. The PA would have, presumably, the same armament it has in the West Bank, but all other factions would be forced to disarm, surrender rockets and dismantle tunnels under international inspection. And in exchange, Israel would end its blockade of Gaza’s coastline and ease restrictions at the border crossings.
That sort of agreement would absolutely represent a Palestinian victory, but it would also mean Hamas would no longer exercise control over Gaza. They would sacrifice their ability to re-launch an armed resistance until they could find a way to re-arm clandestinely. That might prove very difficult — they haven’t been very successful at it in the West Bank, largely due to PA efforts. For the group itself, it would mean a major loss. But the objectives of the current fighting would have been achieved — ending the siege and preserving the unity government.
Netanyahu would also claim victory in such an event. But it would remain clear that the Palestinians were now unified and speaking with one voice. Abbas could no longer see Hamas as an opposition party, but as part of his constituency, and this whole experience seems to have forced him out of his habit of going along with US and Israeli diktats. The Palestinians would be strengthened politically, even as they lose Hamas’ paltry military capabilities. Netanyahu would have also failed to destroy the unity government, which is what this was all about. But a nullified Hamas would be an easy image to present as a victory to the Israeli people, who have been lied to by Bibi from the beginning and are thus largely unaware of the real aims of this onslaught.
It remains to be seen if such a ceasefire agreement is actually being considered. I really can’t see Bibi agreeing to it; he is absolutely obsessed with keeping the Palestinians divided, and his stated refusal to even consider a two-state solution means he is obsessed with good reason. I’m not at all sure Hamas would accept such a deal, even though it might boost them politically. And right now, it is Hamas, not Israel, who is dealing from a position of strength. Despite the pounding Gaza is getting, Hamas seems to have gotten the issue of lifting the siege on the table, as even the US keeps saying that the “underlying issues” must be dealt with, and even when the EU is scolding Hamas, they are also calling Israel’s acts “criminal.”
When Hamas initially refused the ceasefire, I understood, but also believed that they would eventually be forced to take that deal, and that their refusal would result in many more dead Palestinians. That latter part has proven true, and it is still possible that Israel, the US and Egypt will eventually force Hamas to accept the terms they dictated. But it’s looking less and less likely that the Egyptian ceasefire accord will be the one Hamas has to accept. Is it worth the price in blood? Only the people of Gaza can answer that question.
Photo: The ongoing Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated regions in the world, have destroyed essential infrastructure including family homes, fishermen’s boats, water systems and health centers. Credit: Mohammed Al Baba/Oxfam
]]>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
]]>The moral high ground is always a tenuous piece of property. It is difficult to obtain and is easily lost. It is seen, however, as crucial because most people, all over the world, cannot accommodate the notion that life is composed of shades of grey; they desperately need to see black and [...]]]>
The moral high ground is always a tenuous piece of property. It is difficult to obtain and is easily lost. It is seen, however, as crucial because most people, all over the world, cannot accommodate the notion that life is composed of shades of grey; they desperately need to see black and white, good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, in every situation. Nowhere is this truer than in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It has become even more important for Israel to fight this rhetorical battle because, while it can always count on mindless support from Washington and from the most radically nationalistic and zealous Zionists around the world, the current escalation and ugliness are going to be very difficult to defend to even mainstream pro-Israel liberals, let alone the rest of the world. The hasbara (propaganda) has been flowing at a rapid pace, even more than usual, as Israel struggles to maintain the treasured hold on the “moral high ground” that its own actions have increasingly undermined.
The Setup
Here is the very simple reality of what is happening now between Israel and Gaza: Israel willfully and intentionally seized upon a crime to demolish the unity government between Hamas and Gaza and, at the same time, significantly downgrade Hamas’ administrative, political, and military capabilities.
Israel, of course, could not have foreseen the kidnapping and murder of three youths on the West Bank, but once it happened, the Netanyahu government went into high gear to press its advantage. Recognizing that it needed to whip the Israeli public into a frenzy, the government put a gag order on the case to avoid revealing that it knew almost right away that the young men were dead. Under the cover of what seemed to be a kidnapping, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to attack Hamas in both the West Bank and Gaza, launching a massive military operation throughout the former and increasing its bombing raids in the latter.
Hamas, for its part, didn’t react wisely, but the politics of its situation left its leadership little choice. They had advocated kidnappings too often in the past, and they delayed stating they were not behind this incident. They finally did, and when Israel named the two suspects, it gave weight to Hamas’ denial, as the alleged murderers were part of a powerful Hebron clan that, as J.J. Goldberg put it, “…had a history of acting without the [Hamas] leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests.”
But while it is rather clear at this point that the Hamas leadership had nothing to do with the three boys’ murders, it did support the act, which played well into Netanyahu’s hands. All over Israel and all over social media, calls for revenge popped up, along with cries of “Death to the Arabs,” and horrifying, indeed genocidal, statements by Israeli politicians. Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home Party compared Palestinian children to snakes, called for a war on the entire Palestinian people, and said “They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads.” It’s difficult for even the most brazen apologist to see those words as anything other than an incitement to attack civilians without restraint.
Such words bore their fruit when a Palestinian youth of 16 years, Muhammed Abu Khdeir, was burned alive. And here, of course, is where the Israeli rhetoric ratcheted up another notch. Setting out to capture the criminals was an imperative for the Netanyahu government because it made the case that “we prosecute such murderers, while our enemy celebrates them,” a refrain that was uttered continuously in various forms.
“…That’s the difference between us and our neighbors,” Netanyahu said. “They consider murderers to be heroes. They name public squares after them. We don’t. We condemn them and we put them on trial and we’ll put them in prison.”
Not only is that rhetoric dehumanizing, it is also false. For example, the town of Kochav Yair in central Israel is named after the leader of the notorious LEHI, or “Stern Gang,” Avraham Stern, a terrorist who was summarily executed by the British. LEHI, along with the Irgun Z’Vai Leumi (or Irgun for short) was responsible for the massacre of the Palestinian Deir Yassin village in 1948, though this was after Stern’s death. The same group also boasted among its members about future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was behind, among other things, the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, British Minister for Middle East Affairs, while the Irgun was led by Menachem Begin, the first Israeli prime minister from an opposition party. Many streets are named after them.
If that’s not enough, in the settlement of Kiryat Arba one can find the Meir Kahane Memorial Park, dedicated to the late “rabbi” who called for violence against Arabs in Israel (and whose Jewish Defense League often organized violence against African-Americans in the US). And, of course, right across from that park is the tomb of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians in 1994. That grave has been turned into a pilgrimage site for radical Jews.
So, Israelis are quite capable of celebrating murderers as well. But it’s important for Netanyahu to conceal this fact for now. During the staged operation to find the “kidnapped” youths, Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinians, many, but not all associated with Hamas. They virtually closed down Hebron and the surrounding area, and entered many Palestinian cities throughout the West Bank, provoking frequent clashes with residents. Several Palestinians were killed and many were injured.
Hamas eventually took responsibility for some rockets that had been fired at Israel, and the situation continued to deteriorate. Eventually, Israel launched the current operation, which was dubbed “Solid Cliff” in Hebrew; their marketing people felt that “Protective Edge” sounded better in English.
Since then, over 100 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians and minors. Houses have been targeted and destroyed, hundreds of people injured. United Nations human rights officials have warned that Israel may be committing war crimes by targeting private homes while the United States performs its usual task of preventing the Security Council from issuing critical statements about Israeli actions.
While the US works that task, both its president and its ambassador to Israel are reassuring Israel with total support. In a stunning example of double talk, President Barack Obama offered to broker a cease-fire, but Netanyahu bluntly stated he doesn’t want one. So, naturally US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro responded by saying the US would back a ground invasion of Gaza.
War of Choice
Israeli military leaders, whose role in deciding defense strategy has become increasingly, if quietly, marginalized under Netanyahu, are not enthusiastic about the current Israeli onslaught. They understand that Hamas is not going to be defeated militarily and that this action is further degrading Israel’s standing in the world. They also understand that the impetus for this action was not security, but politics.
Netanyahu is meanwhile not striking a blow for security, or even revenge. The purpose of all this, from the deception of the Israeli people and the world about the fate of the three murdered youths, the mass arrests and provocative behavior during the staged “search” for the boys, and the following attacks on Gaza were directed not at Palestinian terrorists, but at Palestinian political leaders. While it’s true that Netanyahu envisions no exit strategy (he never does) for this operation, he does have objectives; three of them, in fact.
The first is obvious: to deliver a blow to Hamas. He is well aware that the group is already struggling financially, even more than usual, and these attacks are diverting resources toward fighting Israel and creating greater needs among Gazans.
The second is to humiliate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu is absolutely furious that Abbas acted without Israel’s permission by joining international treaties and forming a unity government — two things which, actually, are not only Palestine’s right, but Abbas’ duty. Netanyahu is showing Palestinians how ineffective Abbas is: the PA president can do nothing but sit on the sidelines. This is a stupid thing for Netanyahu to do, of course, because it undermines the man who has been keeping the West Bank quiet for Israel, but when has that ever stopped him?
Finally, and most importantly, the goal that probably spurred all of this was Netanyahu’s desperation to dismember the Palestinian unity government. Bibi knows that while a unity government might not make progress in securing Palestinian rights, the split between Gaza and the West Bank makes it utterly impossible for there to be any progress toward ending Israel’s 47-year old occupation. From the day the unity agreement was signed, Netanyahu has been enraged about it and obsessed with undoing it. He hopes that the current violence will either increase international pressure on Abbas to dissolve his partnership with Hamas or that Hamas will grow so angry at Abbas that it will walk away.
Given that the West Bank has remained largely quiet, thanks entirely to Abbas’ security forces clamping down on any protests, let alone any action against Israel, it is entirely possible that Hamas will indeed bolt from the unity arrangement. This is rather remarkable because Netanyahu continues to demonize Abbas publicly and no one wants to compliment him on maintaining order because he is doing so at the expense of enraging his own people. Most Palestinians in the West Bank see their relatives being slaughtered in Gaza while their own president not only sits by helplessly but prevents his people from even protesting.
That is Netanyahu’s agenda, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with keeping Israelis safe and secure. Indeed, as has always been the case, far more Israelis are threatened and injured when Israel attacks than at other times.
To even maintain this thin façade, Israel must continue to make the false case that it has the moral high ground. While Hamas could be easily assailed because they only target Israeli civilians, Netanyahu has still found a way to be even more criminal, Machiavellian and ruthless, and ultimately the most culpable villain here by far.
Make no mistake about what the United States is backing here. This is as pure a war of choice as any. Netanyahu has set up this fight, and has waged it. And, as always, it is the people of Gaza who pay the heaviest price. But Israelis too will bear the cost of this ruthless escapade in the long run. And the United States can only look at itself in shame as it supports this murderous and reckless endeavor.
Photo: Five people were reported killed in an air strike on Rafah, southern Gaza, on July 11. Credit: AP
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is [...]]]>
by
Mitchell PlitnickThe saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is far from over.
Even before the announcement was made that the bodies were found, clashes were reported between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the town of Halhul, where the grisly discovery was made. A massive Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence was reported, roads were closed and the area was generally closed down. The Israeli security cabinet is meeting at this writing to decide on further measures.
The only thing that seems certain right now about the Israeli response is that it will be unjust and have nothing to do with addressing the terrible crime that has just been confirmed. For the moment, at least, it appears that the perpetrators, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha, are beyond the reach of Israel. Since Israel cannot punish those who so profoundly deserve punishment, they will punish those that they can. This, sadly, is the calculus of occupation. There is already violence reported by residents of Hebron. Some might see justice in that, but ask yourself how you would feel if your son, brother or father – or just a neighbor— was a murderer and you were the one who had to pay for their crime.
There is still no evidence that the two killers, who were apparently members of Hamas, did not act alone. Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that he will hold Hamas responsible and has repeatedly called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sever the unity government that he only recently forged with Hamas. Now, Netanyahu has declared, in a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet that “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.”
What might that mean? Well, earlier, some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party described the response they wanted to see.
Danny Danon, the Deputy Defense Minister said “This tragic ending must also be the ending of Hamas! The nation is strong and ready to absorb [attacks] for the sake of a mortal blow against Hamas. … [W]e have to destroy the homes of Hamas activists, wipe out their arsenals everywhere, and stop the flow of money that directly or indirectly keeps terror alive… make the entire Palestinian leadership pay a heavy price.”
For Danon, it is not even enough that Hamas pay for this, but the Palestinian Authority as well. Yet there remains no evidence Hamas, as an organization had anything to do with this. The Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence service, issued a very telling statement about the murders: “Following intensive operational intelligence work by the Shin Bet, less than 24 hours after the kidnapping it became evident that two Hamas activists, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu Aisha, are those behind the kidnapping of the three teens.” No mention made of Hamas’ involvement; merely that the two men were members. If Bibi really has anything connecting Hamas to this crime, he’s keeping it inexplicably secret.
No matter to the outspoken Tzipi Hotovely of Likud, who said, “The despicable kidnapping and murder of the students cannot go by in silence, and those responsible in Gaza must pay the price. The government of Israel must declare a war to the death on Hamas, which is responsible for the murders, and return to the policy of [targeted] assassination.” Like Danon, Hotovely expresses no concern about the Israeli lives this will put at risk, much less those of innocent Palestinians. Nor do they care about the consequences of such actions.
One might think that these Likud members might have some interest in actually tracking down the murderers. But no, they’d prefer to cynically use this despicable crime to further a political agenda of the worst kind—one that legitimizes intense violence that will mean a far greater loss of innocent life. In this, they are joined by their fellow travelers of the American right wing. The extreme pro-occupation forces took to Twitter even before Netanyahu made his announcement to politicize and distort these events.
Whatever the two killers were thinking, their monstrous crime will yield no positive results for anyone. The PA is crippled, quite likely permanently, by its response to the initial kidnapping. Hamas has been devastated in the West Bank by the Israeli response, leaving it unable to take advantage of any political opening that might be created. The people of the West Bank will see a major crackdown, and Israel will surely follow the call of Housing Minister Uri Ariel for more settlements to be built in response. Gaza will be hit by more missiles. The only victors might be the most radical elements in the Occupied Territories, the ones Hamas has been in conflict with in Gaza and who have generally laid very low in the West Bank.
There seems to be little interest in capturing the perpetrators of the crime, and a great eagerness to make Hamas in particular and the Palestinians in general suffer for this outrage. And I’m sure that is just what will happen. The question will then become how Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the PA will respond.
Will they attempt to hit Israel back with more attacks on civilians? If they do, we may well have witnessed the beginning of a third intifada. Will they make a mere show of firing a few rockets that land harmlessly as most do? If they do that, there may be a backlash of rage that strengthen the more radical groups in the Territories. There are ISIS- and al-Qaeda-like groups there, which have seen little support among the Palestinian people, but this could change if the existing groups are seen as doing nothing in the face of Israeli aggression.
Whatever the outcome, the episode demonstrates yet again the futility of acts of violence. No one will gain from any of this, even if they think they will. And lost in it all, the murder of three young men, a heinous crime which everyone condemns, while everyone who gets hurt on both sides will have had nothing to do with it.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
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by Mitchell Plitnick
In the past, people have speculated about what Israel and the Occupied Territories would look like if the United States stopped trying to broker the mythical kind of solution that the Oslo process envisioned. Well, now we have an example.
The most radically right-wing government in Israel’s brief history was simply [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
In the past, people have speculated about what Israel and the Occupied Territories would look like if the United States stopped trying to broker the mythical kind of solution that the Oslo process envisioned. Well, now we have an example.
The most radically right-wing government in Israel’s brief history was simply waiting for an opportunity to deliver the most intense and widespread blow to the West Bank. The kidnapping of three young Israelis provided that opportunity and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized it with a vengeance. 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.
On the Palestinian side, the fundamental lack of strategy has become ever more apparent. Ditching the US-brokered process has been, for a very long time, the right move, but sloughing it off in a half-hearted way and without a substitute was unconscionably foolish. That’s especially true when you consider how much time there was to devise an alternative strategy to the US-brokered process over so many years. The result is that the Palestinian unity agreement was imperiled before it was signed by the essential incompatibility of the strategies and ideologies of Fatah and Hamas.
This is being played out on a daily basis now: Abbas appears not only weak, but like a traitor as he cooperates with Netanyahu in this massive operation that has yielded nothing with regard to the three kidnapped Israelis but has resulted in hundreds of arrested Palestinians without cause, disruption of work, school and health services throughout the West Bank, hundreds of injuries and, to date, five deaths. Hamas is fanning the flames of anger while denouncing Abbas for his quisling behavior, but it also offers no alternative, unless one foolhardily believes that yet another intifada is going to soften Israeli stances. The last intifada may have shaken up Israelis, and certainly resulted in numerous deaths and injuries in Israel, but it did no harm to Israel’s stability while killing and harming a great many Palestinians. In fact, it only hardened Israel’s positions and worsened conditions for the Palestinians. This suggests that violence, on top of being deplorable, is a foolish course for the Palestinians.
For his part, Netanyahu is playing this to the hilt. It is far from certain that Hamas, as an organization, is responsible for the kidnapping. Right now, it seems much more likely that this was a small group whose members might also have been members of Hamas, but were not acting in concert with the organization. Netanyahu, however, insists he has “unequivocal” proof that Hamas was responsible. The credibility of that claim erodes with each passing day that Bibi refuses to offer evidence for his claim.
Netanyahu’s brand of politics, like most right-wingers, functions best when the country he runs is either angry, scared, or better yet, both. The current situation creates such an atmosphere. The problem will come when and if the tension in the West Bank boils over. And that problem is going to be one that neither the United States nor much of the rest of the world will be able to ignore. They will have to choose a side.
In looking at where we’re headed right now, we must start by understanding that the US is not removed from these events. While the Obama administration has decided to take a “pause” from this conflict and certainly has other matters like Iraq and the advances of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to occupy its time, it is still Israel’s benefactor, providing arms and, quite likely, the omnipresent protective veto in the UN Security Council. So, the US is still there, whether it wants to be or not.
It will also be drawn further in if the Palestinian Authority collapses and violence in the West Bank is renewed. This seems very much to be the direction Israel is pressing matters towards. If that is the case, then it also stands to reason that the Israeli government intends to annex some part of the West Bank, using the violence as a pretext. Israel, especially given its budgetary constraints these days, is certainly not prepared to supplant the Palestinian Authority in administering the West Bank. The remainder of the West Bank would be surrounded by “Israel” and would be easily contained. From there, local councils or some such arrangements are probably what is envisioned for the lands Israel decides to leave to the Palestinians.
Netanyahu and his cohorts like Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Moshe Ya’alon are gambling that the violence of a third intifada will be enough to convince key governments — particularly, the US, UK and Germany — to tolerate the annexation. By “tolerate” I mean that they would object and “refuse to recognize” the action, much as they have with East Jerusalem, but would take no other action.
That is a huge gamble. It is far from certain that even the United States would acquiesce to such actions, and less so that Britain and Germany would. Even if they did, there would surely be a great uproar from other countries, in Europe and throughout the Muslim world, as well as from Russia, France and China. Even governments like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which are largely indifferent to the Palestinians’ plight would be unable to stay silent.
But the gambit has a few things working in Bibi’s favor as well. First, as much as the Israeli de facto annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980 outraged many, the reality of the whole city functioning as an “undivided” capital, however restlessly, has survived for over three decades since then. And that’s Jerusalem, the hottest of hotspots in this conflict. Netanyahu surely reasons that if Jerusalem didn’t start a war, there’s a good chance that annexing the Jordan Valley in a similar manner won’t either.
Moreover, the timing is very good for the annexationists. Not only are all eyes on Iraq with a few still lingering over Ukraine, but the specter of ISIS has renewed the sense of fright that the West feels toward Arabs. These will combine, Bibi surely hopes, to encourage a similar clucking of tongues while doing nothing that has greeted the excesses, both pre- and post-election, of the al-Sisi government in Egypt. Netanyahu’s assessment that he can take an outrageous step and get away with it is thus not without recent precedent. The annexation vision, if that is what Bibi is pursuing, would require years of violence to set the stage for it, or at least many months of intense fighting and bloodshed on both sides (though, as always, the Palestinians will bleed a lot more than Israel).
Abbas, however unwittingly, is helping that process along by working with Israel. Netanyahu is not allowing the Palestinian forces to do much of anything in the current operation, but Abbas is also doing nothing to support his own people. Hamas’ strategy isn’t entirely clear yet, but its obviously trying to capitalize on the Palestinian rage that fuels its support. In Hamas’ view, escalating violence plays into its basic strategy of confrontation rather than collaboration. But the question of whether or not Hamas actually has some endgame vision of how it can make any headway against the might of Israel’s forces, let alone triumph, remains yet to be answered.
So, this is what Israel-Palestine looks like without a sham peace process. Does that mean the sham is preferable? Is it better to have a normalized occupation, with all the banality of its entrenched administration and gradual assimilation of more and more Palestinian land into Israel; or is a possibly long period of bloodshed preferable? Only Israelis and Palestinians can answer that question. That said, the shameful behavior of the US, the international community, the Quartet, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian leadership has left few other options.
Israelis can alter this situation, of course, any time they want by electing a government that wants to make a peace deal. Palestinians can also affect change by developing, organizing and executing a strategy that wins them both attention and increased support in the international arena. At this point, however, both sides seem unwilling and unable to take these paths, which increases the odds of Israel-Palestine spiraling back into extreme violence.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
Photo: Gaza, June 16 — Women rally for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons on the 54th day of a mass hunger strike by the detainees and supporters. Credit: Joe Catron
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