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<td width="280"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wpxi.com/news/ap/top-news/1-in-5-of-gaza-dead-are-children/ngjBL/" style="color:rgb(153,0,0);text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="293" width="280" apple-inline="yes" id="357C18EF-5279-4D6B-A692-9574ADCEB963" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:EBBDA813-8521-4861-BE00-12E409F53C4D"></a></td>
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<div><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39142.htm" target="_blank"></a>
<div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="7"><b>Who is Winning?<br>
</b></font></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5"><br>
<b>By Uri Avnery</b><br>
<br>
</font></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman"><font size="5">July 18, 2014 "</font><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/" style="text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><font size="5">ICH</font></a><font size="5">"
-</font></font></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">- WHAT WOULD history look like if it were written in the style of the "Solid Cliff (a.k.a. Protective Edge) operation?</font></span>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">For example:</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Winston Churchill was a scoundrel.[*]</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">For five years he kept the population of London under the unceasing fire of the German Luftwaffe. He used the inhabitants of London as a human shield in his crazy war. While the civilian
population was exposed to the bombs and rockets, without the protection of an "iron dome", he was hiding in his bunker under 10 Downing Street.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">He exploited all the inhabitants of London as hostages. When the German leaders made a generous peace proposal, he rejected it for crazy ideological reasons. Thus he condemned his
people to unimaginable suffering.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">From time to time he emerged from his underground hideout to have his picture taken in front of the ruins, and then he returned to the safety of his rat hole. But to the people of
London he said: "Future generations will say that this was your finest hour!"</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The German Luftwaffe had no alternative but to go on bombing the city. Its commanders announced that they were hitting only military targets, such as the homes of British soldiers,
where military consultations were taking place.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The German Luftwaffe called on the inhabitants of London to leave the city, and many children were indeed evacuated. But most Londoners heeded the call of Churchill to remain, thus
condemning themselves to the fate of "collateral damage".</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The hopes of the German high command that the destruction of their homes and the killing of their families would induce the people of London to rise up, kick out Churchill and his
war-mongering gang, came to naught.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The primitive Londoners, whose hatred of the Germans overcame their logic, perversely followed the coward Churchill's instructions. Their admiration for him grew from day to day,
and by the end of the war he had become almost a god.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">A statue of him stands even today in front of the Parliament in Westminster.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">FOUR YEARS later the wheel had turned. The British and American air forces bombed the German cities and destroyed them completely. A stone did not remain on a stone, glorious palaces
were flattened, cultural treasures were obliterated. "Uninvolved civilians" were blown to smithereens, burned to death or just disappeared. Dresden, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, was totally destroyed within a few hours in a "fire storm".</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The official aim was to destroy the German war industry, but this was not achieved. The real aim was to terrorize the civilian population, in order to induce them to remove their
leaders and capitulate.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">That did not happen. Indeed, the only serious revolt against Hitler was carried out by senior army officers (and failed). The civilian population did not rise up. On the contrary.
In one of his diatribes against the "terror pilots" Goebbels declared: "They can break our homes, but they cannot break our spirit!"</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Germany did not capitulate until the very last moment. Millions of tons of bombs did not suffice. They only strengthened the morale of the population and its loyalty to the Führer.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">AND SO to Gaza.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Everyone is asking: who is winning this round?</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Which must be answered, the Jewish way, with another question: how to judge?</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The classical definition of victory is: the side that remains on the battlefield has won the battle. But here nobody has moved. Hamas is still there. So is Israel.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian war theorist, famously declared that war is but the continuation of policy by other means. But in this war, neither side had any clear political
aims. So victory cannot be judged this way.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The intensive bombing of the Gaza Strip has not produced a Hamas capitulation. On the other hand, the intensive rocket campaign by Hamas, which covered most of Israel, did not succeed
either. The stunning success of the rockets to reach everywhere in Israel has been met with the stunning success of the "Iron Dome" counter-rockets to intercept them.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">So, until now, it is a standoff.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">But when a tiny fighting force in a tiny territory achieves a standoff with one of the mightiest armies in the world, it can be considered a victory.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">THE LACK of an Israeli political aim is the outcome of muddled thinking. The Israeli leadership, both political and military, does not really know how to deal with Hamas.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">It may already have been forgotten that Hamas is largely an Israeli creation. During the first years of the occupation, when any political activity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
was brutally suppressed, the only place where Palestinians could meet and organize was the mosque.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">At the time, Fatah was considered Israel's arch-enemy. The Israeli leadership was demonizing Yasser Arafat, the arch-arch-terrorist. The Islamists, who hated Arafat, were considered
the lesser evil, even secret allies.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">I once asked the Shin-Bet chief at the time whether his organization had created Hamas. His answer: "We did not create them. We tolerated them."</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">This changed only one year after the start of the first intifada, when the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was arrested. Since then, of course, reality has been completed reversed:
Fatah is now an ally of Israel, from the security point of view, and Hamas the arch-arch-terrorist.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">But is it?</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Some Israeli officers say that if Hamas did not exist, it would have to be invented. Hamas controls the Gaza strip. It can be held responsible for what happens there. It provides
law and order. It is a reliable partner for a cease-fire.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">The last Palestinian elections, held under international monitoring, ended in a Hamas victory both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When Hamas was denied power, it took it in
the Gaza strip by force. By all reliable accounts, it enjoys the loyalty of the large majority in the territory.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">All Israeli experts agree that if the Hamas regime in Gaza were to fall, far more extreme Islamic splinter groups would take over and plunge the Strip, with its 1.8 million inhabitants,
into complete chaos. The military experts don't like that.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">So the war aim, if one can dignify it as such, is not to destroy Hamas, but to leave it in power, though in a much weakened state.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">But how, for God's sake, does one do that?</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">ONE WAY, demanded now by the ultra-right-wingers in the government, is to occupy all of the Gaza Strip.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">To which the military leaders again answer with a question: And then what?</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">A new permanent occupation of the Strip is a military nightmare. It would mean that Israel assumes the responsibility for pacifying and feeding 1.8 million people (most of whom, by
the way, are 1948 refugees from Israel and their descendants). A permanent guerrilla war would ensue. No one in Israel really wants that.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Occupy and then leave? Easily said. The occupation itself would be a bloody operation. If the "Molten Lead" doctrine is adopted, it would mean more than a thousand, perhaps several
thousands of Palestinian dead. This (unwritten) doctrine says that if a hundred Palestinians must be killed in order to save the life of one Israeli soldier, so be it. But if Israeli casualties amount to even a few dozens of dead, the mood in the country will
change completely. The army does not want to risk that.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">FOR A moment on Tuesday it seemed as if a cease-fire had been achieved, much to the relief of Binyamin Netanyahu and his generals.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">But it was an optical illusion. The mediator was the new Egyptian dictator, a person loathed by Islamists everywhere. He is a man who has killed and imprisoned many hundreds of Muslim
Brothers. He is an open military ally of Israel. He is a client for American largesse. Moreover, since Hamas arose as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, General Abd-al-Fatah Al-Sisi hates them with all his heart, and does not hide it.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">So, instead of negotiating with Hamas, he did something exceedingly stupid: dictate a cease-fire on Israeli terms without consulting Hamas at all. Hamas leaders learned about the
proposed cease-fire from the media and rejected it out of hand.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">My own opinion is that it would be better if the Israeli army and Hamas negotiated directly. Throughout military history, cease-fires have been arranged by military commanders. One
side sends an officer with a white flag to the commander of the other side, and a cease-fire is arranged – or not. (An American general famously answered such a German offer with "Nuts!").</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">In the 1948 war, on my sector of the front, a short cease-fire was arranged by Major Yerucham Cohen and a young Egyptian officer called Gamal Abd-al-Nasser.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Since this seems to be impossible with the present parties, a really honest broker should be found.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">In the meantime, Netanyahu was pushed by his colleagues/rivals to send the troops into the Strip, to try at least to locate and destroy the tunnels dug by Hamas under the border fence
to stage surprise attacks on border settlements.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">WHAT WILL be the end of it? There will be no end, just round after round, unless a political solution is adopted.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">This would mean: stop the rockets and the bombs, end the Israeli blockade, allow the people of Gaza to live a normal life, further Palestinian unity under a real unity government,
conduct serious peace negotiations, MAKE PEACE.</font></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><cite><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">[*] The first part of this article was published Wednesday in Haaretz.</font></cite></p>
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><i><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81.</font></i></span>
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<p align="">In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.</p>
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