[Peace-discuss] Richard Falk on the Gaza catastrophe

[Brussel Morton K.]

As an aside, Falk's cogent analysis should put to rest the claim that  
the U.S. necessarily dictates Israel's actions.

Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe
January 04, 2009
By Richard Falk
Source: Huffington Post

Richard Falk's ZSpace Page

Join ZSpace

For eighteen months the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza experienced  
a punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a variety of traumatizing  
challenges to the normalcy of daily life. A flicker of hope emerged  
some six months ago when an Egyptian arranged truce produced an  
effective ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the  
cross-border periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell harmlessly  
on nearby Israeli territory, and undoubtedly caused anxiety in the  
border town of Sderot. During the ceasefire the Hamas leadership in  
Gaza repeatedly offered to extend the truce, even proposing a ten- 
year period and claimed a receptivity to a political solution based  
on acceptance of Israel's 1967 borders. Israel ignored these  
diplomatic initiatives, and failed to carry out its side of the  
ceasefire agreement that involved some easing of the blockade that  
had been restricting the entry to Gaza of food, medicine, and fuel to  
a trickle.

Israel also refused exit permits to students with foreign fellowship  
awards and to Gazan journalists and respected NGO representatives. At  
the same time, it made it increasingly difficult for journalists to  
enter, and I was myself expelled from Israel a couple of weeks ago  
when I tried to enter to carry out my UN job of monitoring respect  
for human rights in occupied Palestine, that is, in the West Bank and  
East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza. Clearly, prior to the current  
crisis, Israel used its authority to prevent credible observers from  
giving accurate and truthful accounts of the dire humanitarian  
situation that had been already documented as producing severe  
declines in the physical condition and mental health of the Gazan  
population, especially noting malnutrition among children and the  
absence of treatment facilities for those suffering from a variety of  
diseases. The Israeli attacks were directed against a society already  
in grave condition after a blockade maintained during the prior 18  
months.

As always in relation to the underlying conflict, some facts bearing  
on this latest crisis are murky and contested, although the American  
public in particular gets 99% of its information filtered through an  
exceedingly pro-Israeli media lens. Hamas is blamed for the breakdown  
of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the  
alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is  
more clouded. There was no substantial rocket fire from Gaza during  
the ceasefire until Israel launched an attack last November 4th  
directed at what it claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza,  
killing several Palestinians. It was at this point that rocket fire  
from Gaza intensified. Also, it was Hamas that on numerous public  
occasions called for extending the truce, with its calls never  
acknowledged, much less acted upon, by Israeli officialdom. Beyond  
this, attributing all the rockets to Hamas is not convincing either.  
A variety of independent militia groups operate in Gaza, some such as  
the Fatah-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade are anti-Hamas, and may  
even be sending rockets to provoke or justify Israeli retaliation. It  
is well confirmed that when US-supported Fatah controlled Gaza's  
governing structure it was unable to stop rocket attacks despite a  
concerted effort to do so.

What this background suggests strongly is that Israel launched its  
devastating attacks, starting on December 27, not simply to stop the  
rockets or in retaliation, but also for a series of unacknowledged  
reasons. It was evident for several weeks prior to the Israeli  
attacks that the Israeli military and political leaders were  
preparing the public for large-scale military operations against the  
Hamas. The timing of the attacks seemed prompted by a series of  
considerations: most of all, the interest of political contenders,  
the Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni,  
in demonstrating their toughness prior to national elections  
scheduled for February, but now possibly postponed until military  
operations cease. Such Israeli shows of force have been a feature of  
past Israeli election campaigns, and on this occasion especially, the  
current government was being successfully challenged by Israel's  
notoriously militarist politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, for its  
supposed failures to uphold security. Reinforcing these electoral  
motivations was the little concealed pressure from the Israeli  
military commanders to seize the opportunity in Gaza to erase the  
memories of their failure to destroy Hezbollah in the devastating  
Lebanon War of 2006 that both tarnished Israel's reputation as a  
military power and led to widespread international condemnation of  
Israel for the heavy bombardment of undefended Lebanese villages,  
disproportionate force, and extensive use of cluster bombs against  
heavily populated areas.

Respected and conservative Israeli commentators go further. For  
instance, the prominent historian, Benny Morris writing in the New  
York Times a few days ago, relates the campaign in Gaza to a deeper  
set of forebodings in Israel that he compares to the dark mood of the  
public that preceded the 1967 War when Israelis felt deeply  
threatened by Arab mobilizations on their borders. Morris insists  
that despite Israeli prosperity of recent years, and relative  
security, several factors have led Israel to act boldly in Gaza: the  
perceived continuing refusal of the Arab world to accept the  
existence of Israel as an established reality; the inflammatory  
threats voiced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together with Iran's supposed  
push to acquire nuclear weapons, the fading memory of the Holocaust  
combined with growing sympathy in the West with the Palestinian  
plight, and the radicalization of political movements on Israel's  
borders in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas. In effect, Morris argues  
that Israel is trying via the crushing of Hamas in Gaza to send a  
wider message to the region that it will stop at nothing to uphold  
its claims of sovereignty and security.

There are two conclusions that emerge: the people of Gaza are being  
severely victimized for reasons remote from the rockets and border  
security concerns, but seemingly to improve election prospects of  
current leaders now facing defeat, and to warn others in the region  
that Israel will use overwhelming force whenever its interests are at  
stake.

That such a human catastrophe can happen with minimal outside  
interference also shows the weakness of international law and the  
United Nations, as well as the geopolitical priorities of the  
important players. The passive support of the United States  
government for whatever Israel does is again the critical factor, as  
it was in 2006 when it launched its aggressive war against Lebanon.  
What is less evident is that the main Arab neighbors, Egypt, Jordan,  
and Saudi Arabia, with their extreme hostility toward Hamas that is  
viewed as backed by Iran, their main regional rival, were also  
willing to stand aside while Gaza was being so brutally attacked,  
with some Arab diplomats even blaming the attacks on Palestinian  
disunity or on the refusal of Hamas to accept the leadership of  
Mamoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority.

The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst:  
producing what Israel itself calls a 'total war' against an  
essentially defenseless society that lacks any defensive military  
capability whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks  
mounted by F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means  
is that the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as  
set forth in the Geneva Conventions, is quietly set aside while the  
carnage continues and the bodies pile up. It additionally means that  
the UN is once more revealed to be impotent when its main members  
deprive it of the political will to protect a people subject to  
unlawful uses of force on a large scale. Finally, this means that the  
public can shriek and march all over the world, but that the killing  
will go on as if nothing is happening. The picture being painted day  
by day in Gaza is one that begs for renewed commitment to  
international law and the authority of the UN Charter, starting here  
in the United States, especially with a new leadership that promised  
its citizens change, including a less militarist approach to  
diplomatic leadership.




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20090104/4bae010d/attachment-0001.html