[R-G] Israel's fait accompli in Gaza

[Anthony Fenton]

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/200914102257130539.html
Israel's fait accompli in Gaza
  By Eric S. Margolis
   UPDATED ON:
Sunday, January 04, 2009
16:49 Mecca time, 13:49 GMT

There are two completely different versions of what is currently  
happening in Gaza.

In the Israeli and North American press version, Hamas - 'Islamic  
terrorists' backed by Iran - have in an unprovoked attack fired deadly  
rockets on innocent Israel with the intent of destroying the Jewish  
state.

North American politicians and the media say Israel "has the right to  
defend itself".

True enough. No Israeli government can tolerate rockets hitting its  
towns, even though the casualty totals have been less than the car  
crash fatalities registered during a single holiday weekend on  
Israel's roads.

The firing of the feeble, home-made al-Qassam rockets by Palestinians  
is both useless and counter-productive.

It damages their image as an oppressed people and gives right-wing  
Israeli extremists a perfect reason to launch more attacks on the  
Arabs and refuse to discuss peace.

Israel's supporters insist it has the absolute right to drop hundreds  
of tonnes of bombs on 'Hamas targets' inside the 360sq km Gaza Strip  
to 'take out the terrorists'.

Civilians suffer, says Israel, because the cowardly Hamas hide among  
them.

Actually, it is more like shooting fish in a barrel.

Omitting facts

As usual, this cartoon-like version of events omits a great deal of  
nuance and background.

Seventy per cent of Palestinian children suffer from psychological  
trauma [GALLO/GETTY]
While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli  
blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law  
and the Geneva Conventions.

According to the UN, most of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian refugees  
subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian  
children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological  
trauma.

Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel,  
equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage  
dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.

Gaza is one of the world's most-densely populated places, a vast  
outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they  
threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch home-made  
rockets.

Call it a prison riot, writ large.

Eyeing the elections

When the so-called truce between Tel Aviv and Hamas expired on  
December 19, Israeli politicians were in the throes of preparing for  
the February 10 national elections.

Israeli politics are playing a key role in this crisis.

Ehud Barak, the defence minister and leader of the Labour party, and  
Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the Kadima party, are  
trying to prove themselves tougher than Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line  
Likud party - and one another.

Israel's elections are only six weeks away, and Likud was leading  
until the air raids on Gaza began. Kadima and Labour are now up in the  
polls.

The heavy attacks on Gaza are also designed to intimidate Israel's  
Arab neighbours, and make up for Israel's humiliating 2006 defeat in  
Lebanon, which still haunts the country's politicians and generals.

A fait accompli

When the air raids on Gaza began, Barak said: "We have totally changed  
the rules of the game."

He was right. By blitzing Hamas-run Gaza, Barak presented the incoming  
US administration with a fait accompli, and neatly checkmated the  
newest player in the Middle East Great Game - Barack Obama, the US  
president-elect - before he could even take a seat at the table.

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The Israeli offensive into Gaza now looks likely to short-circuit any  
plans Obama might have had to press Israel into withdrawing to its  
pre-1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem.

This has pleased Israel's supporters in North America who have been  
cheering the war in Gaza and have been backing away from their earlier  
tentative support for a land-for-peace deal.

Israel's successes in having Western media portray the Gaza offensive  
as an 'anti-terrorist operation' will also diminish hopes of peace  
talks any time soon.

Obama inherits this mess in a few weeks. During the elections, Obama  
bowed to the Israel lobby, offering a new US carte blanche to Israel  
and even accepting Israel's permanent monopoly of all of Jerusalem.

As he concludes forming his cabinet, his Middle East team looks like  
it may be top-heavy with friends of Israel's Labour party.

Obama keeps saying he must remain silent on policy issues until George  
Bush, the outgoing US president, leaves office, but his staff appear  
happy to avoid having to make statements about Gaza that would  
antagonise Israel's American supporters.

Obama will take office facing a Middle East up in arms over Gaza and  
the entire Muslim world blaming the US for the carnage in Gaza.

Unless he moves swiftly to distance himself from the policies of the  
Bush administration, he will soon find himself facing the same  
problems and anger as the Bush White House.

Arab deal killed

Israel's Gaza offensive is also likely to torpedo the current Saudi- 
sponsored peace plan, which had been backed by all members of the Arab  
League.

The plan, now likely defunct, had called for Israel to withdraw to its  
1967 borders and share Jerusalem in exchange for full recognition and  
normalised relations with the Muslim world.

Arab governments will now be unable to sell the deal as they face a  
storm of criticism from their own people over their powerlessness to  
help the Palestinians of Gaza.

Egypt, in particular, is being widely accused of collaborating with  
Israel in further sealing off and isolating Gaza. It seems highly  
unlikely they will be able to advance a peace plan with Israel for now.

This is a bonus for right-wing Israelis, who have always been dead set  
against any withdrawal and strongly supported the attack on Gaza.

Other Israeli factions who were always lukewarm about the Saudi peace  
plan are now unlikely to reconsider it.

Israel's security establishment is committed to preventing the  
creation of a viable Palestinian state, and refuses to negotiate with  
Hamas. Unable to kill all of Hamas' men, Israel is slowly destroying  
Gaza's infrastructure around them, as it did to Yasser Arafat's PLO.

Israel's hardliners point to Gaza and claim that any Palestinian state  
on the West Bank would threaten their nation's security by firing  
rockets into Israel's heartland.

Mighty information machine

Israel is confident that its mighty information machine will allow it  
to weather the storm of worldwide outrage over its Biblical punishment  
of Gaza. Who remembers Israel's flattening of parts of the Palestinian  
city of Jenin, or the US destruction in Falluja, Iraq, or the Sabra  
and Shatilla massacres in Beirut?

The US media has focused on the rockets being fired on Israel from  
Gaza [GALLO/GETTY]
Though the torment of Gaza is seen across the horrified Muslim world  
as a modern version of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising by Jews against the  
Nazis during World War Two, Western governments still appear bent on  
taking no action.

Though Israel's use of American weapons against Gaza violates the US  
Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts, the docile US  
Congress will remain mute.

Israel's assault on Gaza was clearly timed for America's interregnum  
between administrations and the year-end holidays, a well-used Israeli  
tactic.

Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as long as Israel refuses to  
recognise Hamas and the rights of millions of homeless Palestinian  
refugees.

It calls for a non-religious state to be created in Palestine, meaning  
an end to Zionism. Ironically, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and  
late leader of Hamas, had spoken of a compromise with Tel Aviv shortly  
before he was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

An inherited mess

Israel's hopes that it can bomb Gazans into rejecting Hamas are as ill- 
conceived as its failed attempt in 2006 to blast Lebanon into  
rejecting Hezbollah.

The Fatah regime on the West Bank installed by the US and Israel after  
Yasser Arafat's suspicious death will be further discredited, leaving  
the militants of Hamas as the sole authentic voice of Palestinian  
nationalism.

Hamas, the militant but still democratically elected government of  
Gaza, is even less likely to compromise.

The Muslim world is in a rage. But so what? Stalin liked to say "the  
dogs bark, and the caravan moves on," and as long as the US gives  
Israel carte blanche, it can do just about anything it wants.

The tragedy of Palestine will thus continue to poison US relations  
with the Muslim world.

Those Americans who still do not understand why their nation was  
attacked on 9/11 need only look to Gaza, for which the US is now being  
blamed as much as Israel.

Unless Israel can make 5 to 7 million Palestinians disappear, it must  
find some way to co-exist with them. Israeli leaders on the centre and  
right continue to avoid facing this fact.

The brutal collective punishment inflicted on Gaza will likely  
strengthen Hamas and reverse any hopes of a Middle East peace in the  
coming years.

Eric S. Margolis is an author, syndicated foreign affairs columnist,  
broadcaster, and veteran war correspondent. His latest book is  
American Raj: America and the Muslim world.

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al  
Jazeera.