[Peace-discuss] Gaza…

[Brussel Morton K.]

An analysis by Phyllis Bennis of the current catastrophe/crisis.  
There is tremendous anger and frustration that is not quite reflected  
here.

What is to be done? Phyllis says "everything". The power imbalance  
means that desperate acts can be expected by those on the weak end of  
the power spectrum.  --mkb

Talking Points: The Gaza Crisis
Phyllis Bennis, Institute For Policy Studies



The death toll in Gaza continues to rise. The carnage is everywhere  
-- city streets, a mosque, hospitals, police stations, a jail, a  
university bus stop, a plastics factory, a television station. It  
seems impossible, unacceptable, to step back to analyze the situation  
while bodies remain buried under the rubble, while parents continue  
to search for their missing children, while doctors continue to labor  
to stitch burned and broken bodies back together without sufficient  
medicine or equipment. The hospitals are running short even of  
electricity -- the Israeli blockade has denied them fuel to run the  
generators. It is an ironic twist on the legacy of Israel's  
involvement in an earlier massacre -- in the Sabra and Shatila camps,  
in Lebanon back in 1982, it was the Israeli soldiers who lit the  
flairs, lighting the night sky so their Lebanese allies could  
continue to kill.

But if we are serious about ending this carnage, this time, we have  
no choice but to try to analyze, try to figure out what caused this  
most recent massacre, how to stop it, and then how to continue our  
work to end the occupation, end Israel's apartheid policies, and  
change U.S. policy to one of justice and equality for all.

**************

The Israeli airstrikes represent serious violations of international  
law - including the Geneva Conventions and a range of international  
humanitarian law.
The U.S. is complicit in the Israeli violations - directly and  
indirectly.
The timing of the air strikes has far more to do with U.S. and  
Israeli politics than with protecting Israeli civilians.
This serious escalation will push back any chance of serious  
negotiations between the parties that might have been part of the  
Obama administration's plans.
There is much work to be done.
*************

Violations of International Law
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip violate important tenants of  
international humanitarian law, including violations of the Geneva  
Conventions. The violations include both obligations of an Occupying  
Power to protect an Occupied Population, and the broader requirements  
of the laws of war that prohibit specific acts. The violations start  
with collective punishment -- the entire 1.5 million people who live  
in the Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Israel's claim that it is "responding to" or "retaliating for"  
Palestinian rocket attacks is spurious. The rocket fire as currently  
used is indeed illegal -- Palestinians, like any people living under  
a hostile military occupation, have the right to resist, including  
the use of military force against the occupation. But that right does  
not include targeting civilians. The rockets used so far are unable  
to be aimed with any specificity, so they are in fact aimed at the  
civilians who live in the Israeli cities and towns, and so are  
illegal. The rocket fire against civilians should be ended -- as many  
Palestinians believe, because it does not help end the occupation,  
but also because it is illegal under international law. However, that  
rocket fire, illegal or not, does not give Israel the right to punish  
the entire population for those actions. Such vengeance is the very  
essence of "collective punishment" and is therefore unequivocally  
prohibited by the Geneva conventions.

Another Israeli violation involves targeting civilians. This  
violation involves three aspects. First, Israel claims the airstrikes  
were targeted directly at "Hamas-controlled" security-related  
institutions. Since the majority Hamas party controls the government  
in Gaza, virtually all the police departments and other security- 
related sites were hit. Those police and security agencies are  
civilian targets -- not military. They are run by the Hamas-led  
government in Gaza, an institution completely separate from Gaza's  
military wing that has carried out some (though by no means the  
majority) of the rocket attacks. Second, some of the attacks directly  
struck incontestably civilian targets: a plastics factory, a local  
television broadcasting center. And third, the incredibly crowded  
conditions in Gaza, one of the most densely populated sites in the  
world, mean that civilian casualties on a huge scale were an  
inevitable and predictable result. Such targeting of civilian areas  
is illegal.

The U.S. is also directly complicit in the violations of the Geneva  
Convention inherent in Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel's  
actions --keeping Gazans locked in the Strip; closing the border  
crossings to almost all fuel, food, equipment and other basic  
humanitarian goods; preventing UN and other international human  
rights monitors and journalists from entering, and more -- have all  
been backed and supported by the U.S. and others in the international  
community. The resulting humanitarian crisis -- reaching catastrophic  
proportions even before the current air attacks -- is partly the  
responsibility of the United States.

Still another violation involves the disproportionate nature of the  
military attack. The airstrikes have killed at least 270 people so  
far, injured more than 1,000, many of them seriously, and many remain  
buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise. This  
catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any  
claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians. (It should  
be noted that this escalation has not made Israelis safer; to the  
contrary, the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on  
Saturday after the Israeli assault began, was the first such casualty  
in more than a year.)

Key human rights officials, particular the UN's Special Rapporteur  
for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Professor Richard Falk,  
as well as Father Miguel d'Escoto, President of the General Assembly,  
have issued powerful statements identifying Israeli violations of  
international law as well as the UN's obligations to protect the  
Palestinian population. (Falk statement) But so far there has been no  
operative response from the UN Security Council. The Council  
statement, issued 28 December, was completely insufficient,  
essentially equating the culpability of the Occupying Power and of  
the occupied population for the violence that has so devastated Gaza.  
And the statement makes no reference to violations of international  
law inherent in the Israeli assaults, or in the siege of Gaza that  
has so drastically punished the entire population. There is a clear  
need for the General Assembly to step in to reclaim the UN's role of  
protecting the world's people, certainly including the Palestinians,  
and not just responding to the demands of the world's powerful.

U.S. Complicity
The United States remains directly complicit in Israeli violations of  
both U.S. domestic and international law through its continual  
provision of military aid. The current round of airstrikes have been  
carried out largely with F-16 bombers and Apache attack helicopters,  
both provided to Israel through U.S. military aid grants of about $3  
billion in U.S. taxpayer money sent to Israel every year. Between  
2001 and 2006, Washington transferred to Israel more than $200  
million worth of spare parts for its fleet of F-16's. Just last year,  
the U.S. signed a $1.3 billion contract with the Raytheon corporation  
to provide Israel with thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and "bunker  
buster" missiles. In short, Israel's lethal attack today on the Gaza  
Strip could not have happened without the active military support of  
the United States.

Israel's attack violated U.S. law -- specifically the Arms Export  
Control Act, which prohibits U.S. arms from being used for any  
purpose beyond a very narrowly-defined set of circumstances: use  
inside a country's borders for self-defense purposes. The Gaza  
assault did not meet those criteria. Certainly targeting police  
stations (even Israel did not claim Gazan police forces were  
responsible for the rockets) and television broadcast centers do not  
qualify as self-defense. And because the U.S. government has  
confirmed it was fully aware of Israeli plans for the attack before  
it occurred, the U.S. remains complicit in the violations. Further,  
the well-known history of Israeli violations of international law  
(detailed above) means U.S. government officials were aware of those  
violations, provided the arms to Israel anyway, and therefore remain  
complicit in the Israeli crimes.

The U.S. is also indirectly complicit through its protection of  
Israel in the United Nations. Its actions, including the use and  
threat of use of the U.S. veto in the Security Council and the  
reliance on raw power to pressure diplomats and governments to soften  
their criticism of Israel, all serve to protect Israel and keep it  
from being held accountable by the international community.

Timing of Israel's Attack on Gaza
The Israeli decision to launch the attacks on Gaza was a political,  
not security, decision. Just a day or two before the airstrikes, it  
was Israel that rejected Hamas's diplomatic initiative aimed at  
extending the six-month-long ceasefire that had frayed but largely  
stayed together since June, and that expired 26 December. Hamas  
officials, working through Egyptian mediators, had urged Israel to  
lift the siege of Gaza as the basis for continuing an extended  
ceasefire. Israel, including Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, of the  
"centrist" (in the Israeli context) Kadima Party, rejected the  
proposal. Livni, who went to Egypt but refused to seriously consider  
the Hamas offer, is running in a tight race for prime minister; her  
top opponent is the further-right Benyamin Netanyahu of the  
officially hawkish Likud party, who has campaigned against Livni and  
the Kadima government for their alleged "soft" approach to the  
Palestinians. With elections looming in February, no candidate can  
afford to appear anything but super-militaristic.

Further, it is certain that the Israeli government was eager to move  
militarily while Bush was still in office. The Washington Post quoted  
a Bush administration official saying that Israel struck in Gaza  
"because they want it to be over before the next administration comes  
in. They can't predict how the next administration will handle it.  
And this is not the way they want to start with the new  
administration." The Israeli officials may or may not be right about  
President Obama's likelihood of responding differently than Bush on  
this issue -- but it does point to a clear obligation on those of us  
in this country who voted for Obama with hope, to do all that is  
necessary to press him to make good on the "change" he promised that  
gave rise to that hope.

Obama and Future Options
The escalation in Gaza will make it virtually impossible for any  
serious Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at ending the  
occupation. It remains uncertain whether sponsorship of an immediate  
new round of bilateral negotiations was, in fact, on Barack Obama's  
initial post-inauguration agenda anyway. But the current crisis means  
that any negotiations, whether ostensibly Israeli-Palestinian alone  
or officially involving the U.S.-controlled so-called "Quartet," will  
be able to go beyond a return to the pre-airstrike crisis period.  
That earlier political crisis, still far from solved, was  
characterized by expanding settlements, the apartheid Wall and  
checkpoints crippling movement, commerce, and ordinary life across  
the West Bank, and a virtually impenetrable siege of Gaza that even  
before the current military assault, had created a humanitarian  
catastrophe.

So What Do We Do?
The immediate answer is everything: write letters to Congressmembers  
and the State Department, demonstrate at the White House and the  
Israeli Embassy, write letters to the editor and op-eds for every  
news outlet we can find, call radio talk shows, protest the U.S.  
representatives at the UN and their protection of Israeli crimes. We  
need to engage with the Obama transition process and plan now for how  
we will keep the pressure on to really change U.S. policy in the  
Middle East. We should all join the global movement of outrage and  
solidarity with Gaza. There are a host of on-line petitions already  
-- we should sign them all. The U.S. Campaign to End Israeli  
Occupation is compiling action calls on our website --  
www.endtheoccupation.org. We have to do all of that.

But then. We can't stop with emergency mobilizations. We still have  
to build our movement for BDS -- boycott, divestment and sanctions,  
to build a global campaign of non-violent economic pressure to force  
Israel to comply with international law. We have to challenge U.S.  
military aid that scaffolds Israel's military aggression, and U.S.  
political and diplomatic support that prevents the UN and the  
international community from holding Israel accountable for its  
violations. We have to do serious education and advocacy work,  
learning from other movements that have come before about being brave  
enough to call something what it is: Israeli policies are apartheid  
policies and must be challenged on that basis.

We have a lot of work to do.
____________________________________

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and of  
the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include  
Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer in FAQ  
format which many will find useful for education work in this urgent  
period. (www.interlinkbooks.com)

Thanks to Josh Ruebner of the U.S. Campaign for some of the  
background on U.S. military aid.
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