[R-G] Avi Shlaim: Israel Committing “State Terror” in Gaza Attack, Preventing Peace

[Anthony Fenton]

Leading Israeli Scholar Avi Shlaim: Israel Committing “State Terror”  
in Gaza Attack, Preventing Peace
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/14/leading_israeli_scholar_avi_shlaim_israel

The assault on Gaza is entering its nineteenth day, with no end in  
sight. Israel continues its intense bombardment of the territory as  
Israeli troops edge closer to the heart of Gaza City. Nearly 1,000  
Palestinians have been killed, more than 4,400 injured, many of them  
women and children. Thirteen Israelis have died over the same period,  
ten of them soldiers. We speak with Oxford professor Avi Shlaim. He  
served in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and is widely regarded as  
one of the world’s leading authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict.  
[includes rush transcript]


Guest:

Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford  
University who served in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s. He is the  
author of numerous books, most notably The Iron Wall: Israel and the  
Arab World. His latest book is Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in  
War and Peace. Avi Shlaim is widely regarded as one of the world’s  
leading authorities on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli assault on Gaza is entering its nineteenth  
day, with no end in sight. Israeli warplanes are continuing their  
bombardment, launching over sixty air strikes overnight. Meanwhile,  
Israeli troops have edged closer to the heart of the densely populated  
Gaza City and are engaged in street fighting with militants.

Since Israel’s offensive began on December 27th, nearly 1,000  
Palestinians have been killed. More than 4,400 have been injured, and  
an estimated 90,000 have fled their homes. Thirteen Israelis have died  
over the same period, ten of them soldiers, including four by so- 
called “friendly” fire.

As the war continues, humanitarian concerns are mounting. The chief UN  
aid official for Gaza, John Ging, has appealed to the international  
community to protect Gaza’s civilians, calling it a “test of our  
humanity”.

Meanwhile, a UN watch group has accused Israel of showing a “manifest  
disrespect” for the protection of children in Gaza. According to the  
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, more than 40 percent of those  
killed in Gaza are women and children.

On Tuesday, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross  
visited Gaza and said what he saw was shocking. ICRC president Jakob  
Kellenberger said, “It is unacceptable to see so many wounded people.  
Their lives must be spared and the security of those who care for them  
guaranteed.”

Despite a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution last week, Israeli  
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the military operation will continue.

Our next guest is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading  
authorities on the Arab-Israel conflict. Avi Shlaim served in the  
Israeli army in the mid-1960s. He is now a professor of international  
relations at Oxford University. In an article in The Guardian  
newspaper of London, he says he has never questioned the legitimacy of  
the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. But he says its  
merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions.  
Professor Avi Shlaim is the author of a number of books, most notably  
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. His latest book is Lion of  
Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace. Avi Shlaim joins us  
today from Oxford University in Britain.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!

AVI SHLAIM: Thank you. I’m happy to be on your program in these very  
sad times.

AMY GOODMAN: As you look at what’s happening in Gaza from your vantage  
point, well, many miles away in Britain, can you talk about the kind  
of trajectory your evaluation has taken, where you started in your  
thoughts about Israel and where you are now?

AVI SHLAIM: As you mentioned, I did national service in the Israeli  
army in the mid-1960s. And in those days, Israel was a small state  
surrounded by enemies, and the nation was united in face of the  
surrounding Arab states. We all felt total commitment to the state of  
Israel and to the defense of the state of Israel. The Israeli army is  
called the Israel Defense Forces, and it was true to its name.

But 1967, the war of June 1967, was a major turning point in the  
history of Israel and the history of the region. In the course of the  
war, Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from  
Jordan and Sinai from Egypt. After the war, Israel started building  
civilian territories in the occupied territories in violation of  
international law. So Israel became a colonial power and an imperial  
power.

And I, for my part, have never questioned the legitimacy of the  
Zionist movement. I saw it as the national liberation movement of the  
Jewish people. Nor did I ever question the legitimacy of the state of  
Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I reject, what I reject  
totally, absolutely and uncompromisingly, is the Zionist colonial  
project beyond the 1967 borders. So we have to distinguish very  
clearly between Israel proper, within its pre-1967 borders, and  
Greater Israel, which began to emerge in the aftermath of the June ‘67  
war and has completely derailed the Zionist project.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, specifically talk about Gaza, how it has  
developed and where it is today, right now under assault by the  
Israeli military.

AVI SHLAIM: In a long-term historical perspective, I would begin with  
the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. I wrote a book, which you  
mentioned in your introduction, called The Iron Wall: Israel and the  
Arab World. It is a history of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948.  
It’s a very long book, but I can summarize it for you in one sentence,  
that throughout its sixty years, Israel has been remarkably reluctant  
to engage in meaningful negotiations with its Arab opponents to  
resolve the dispute between them and only too ready to resort to  
military force in order to impose its will upon them. And the current  
vicious Israeli onslaught on the people of Gaza is the climax of this  
longstanding Israeli policy of shunning diplomacy and relying on brute  
military force.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to Professor Avi  
Shlaim. He is professor of international relations at Oxford  
University, served in the Israeli military. His latest book is called  
Lion of Jordan. He is one of the world’s leading scholars on the Arab- 
Israel conflict. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest right now is Oxford University Professor Avi  
Shlaim. He teaches international relations at Oxford University. He’s  
speaking to us from Oxford right now, leading authority in the world  
on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

We’ve had a number of debates here on Democracy Now!, Professor  
Shlaim, over the past weeks about what’s happening in Gaza and those  
who support the Israeli military continually say that in 2005, three  
years ago, Israel pulled out of Gaza entirely. You have a different  
picture of what happened under Ariel Sharon in August of 2005. Explain  
how you see the withdrawal of Israeli military at that time.

AVI SHLAIM: President Bush described Ariel Sharon as a man of peace.  
I’ve done a great deal of archival research on the Arab-Israeli  
conflict, and I can honestly tell you that I have never come across a  
single scintilla of evidence to support the view of Ariel Sharon as a  
man of peace. He was a man of war, a champion of violent solutions, a  
man who rejected totally any Palestinian right to self-determination.  
He was a proponent of Greater Israel, and it is in this context that I  
see his decision to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in August of 2005.

The withdrawal was officially called the unilateral Israeli  
disengagement from Gaza. I would like to underline the word  
“unilateral.” Ariel Sharon was the unilateralist par excellence. The  
reason he decided to withdraw from Gaza was not out of any concern for  
the welfare of the people of Gaza or any sympathy for the Palestinians  
or their national aspirations, but because of the pressure exerted by  
Hamas, by the Islamic resistance, to the Israeli occupation of Gaza.  
In the end, Israel couldn’t sustain the political, diplomatic and  
psychological costs of maintaining its occupation in Gaza.

And let me add in parentheses that Gaza was a classic example of  
exploitation, of colonial exploitation in the postcolonial era. Gaza  
is a tiny strip of land with about one-and-a-half million Arabs, most  
of them—half of them refugees. It’s the most crowded piece of land on  
God’s earth. There were 8,000 Israeli settlers in Gaza, yet the 8,000  
settlers controlled 25 percent of the territory, 40 percent of the  
arable land, and the largest share of the desperately scarce water  
resources.

Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally, not as a  
contribution, as he claimed, to a two-state solution. The withdrawal  
from Gaza took place in the context of unilateral Israeli action in  
what was seen as Israeli national interest. There were no negotiations  
with the Palestinian Authority on an overall settlement. The  
withdrawal from Gaza was not a prelude to further withdrawals from the  
other occupied territories, but a prelude to further expansion,  
further consolidation of Israel’s control over the West Bank. In the  
year after the withdrawal from Gaza, 12,000 new settlers went to live  
on the West Bank. So I see the withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of  
2005 as part of a unilateral Israeli attempt to redraw the borders of  
Greater Israel and to shun any negotiations and compromise with the  
Palestinian Authority.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Avi Shlaim, Israel says the reason it has  
attacked Gaza is because of the rocket fire, the rockets that Hamas is  
firing into southern Israel.

AVI SHLAIM: This is Israeli propaganda, and it is a pack of lies. The  
important thing to remember is that there was a ceasefire brokered by  
Egypt in July of last year, and that ceasefire succeeded. So, if  
Israel wanted to protect its citizens—and it had every right to  
protect its citizens—the way to go about it was not by launching this  
vicious military offensive, but by observing the ceasefire.

Now, let me give you some figures, which I think are the most crucial  
figures in understanding this conflict. Before the ceasefire came into  
effect in July of 2008, the monthly number of rockets fired—Kassam  
rockets, homemade Kassam rockets, fired from the Gaza Strip on Israeli  
settlements and towns in southern Israel was 179. In the first four  
months of the ceasefire, the number dropped dramatically to three  
rockets a month, almost zero. I would like to repeat these figures for  
the benefit of your listeners. Pre-ceasefire, 179 rockets were fired  
on Israel; post-ceasefire, three rockets a month. This is point number  
one, and it’s crucial.

And my figures are beyond dispute, because they come from the website  
of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. But after initiating this war, this  
particular table, neat table, which showed the success of the  
ceasefire, was withdrawn and replaced with another table of  
statistics, which is much more obscure and confusing. Israel—the  
Foreign Ministry withdrew these figures, because it didn’t suit the  
new story.

The new story said that Hamas broke the ceasefire. This is a lie.  
Hamas observed the ceasefire as best as it could and enforced it very  
effectively. The ceasefire was a stunning success for the first four  
months. It was broken not by Hamas, but by the IDF. It was broken by  
the IDF on the 4th of November, when it launched a raid into Gaza and  
killed six Hamas men.

And there is one other point that I would like to make about the  
ceasefire. Ever since the election of Hamas in January—I’m sorry, ever  
since Hamas captured power in Gaza in the summer of 2007, Israel had  
imposed a blockade of the Strip. Israel stopped food, fuel and medical  
supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip. One of the terms of the  
ceasefire was that Israel would lift the blockade of Gaza, yet Israel  
failed to lift the blockade, and that is one issue that is also  
overlooked or ignored by official Israeli spokesmen. So Israel was  
doubly guilty of sabotaging the ceasefire, A, by launching a military  
attack, and B, by maintaining its very cruel siege of the people of  
Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel calls Hamas “terrorist.” What is your definition  
of “terror”?

AVI SHLAIM: My definition of “terror” is the use of violence against  
civilians for political purposes. And by this definition, Hamas is a  
terrorist organization. But by the same token, Israel is practicing  
state terror, because it is using violence on a massive scale against  
Palestinian civilians for political purposes. I don’t hold a brief for  
Hamas. Hamas is not a paragon of virtue. Its leaders are not angels.  
They harm civilians indiscriminately. Killing civilians is wrong,  
period. That applies to Hamas, and it applies equally to the state of  
Israel.

But there are two points I would like to make about Hamas, and that is— 
the first point is that it was elected in a fair and free election in  
January 2006. It was an impeccable election, monitored by a number of  
international observers, including President Jimmy Carter. So it is  
not just a terrorist organization. It is a democratically elected  
government of the Palestinian people and the representative of the  
Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as the West Bank.

And the second point that I would like to make is that since coming to  
power, Gaza has moderated its political program. Its charter is  
extreme. Its charter denies the legitimacy of a Jewish state. The  
charter calls for an Islamic state over the whole of historic  
Palestine. The charter has not been revived, but since coming to  
power, the leadership of Hamas has been much more pragmatic and stated  
that it is willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the state  
of Israel for twenty, thirty, forty, maybe even fifty years.

Thirdly, Hamas joined with Fatah, the rival group, the mainstream  
group, on the West Bank in a national unity government in the summer  
of 2007. That national unity government lasted only three months.  
Israel, with American support, helped to sabotage and to bring down  
that national unity government. Israel refused to deal with a  
Palestinian government which included Hamas within it. And shamefully,  
both the United States and the European Union joined in Israel in this  
refusal to recognize a Hamas-dominated government, and Israel withdrew  
tax revenues, and European Union withdrew foreign aid, in a shameful  
attempt to bring down a democratically elected government.

So, I do not defend Hamas, but I think that it hasn’t received a fair  
hearing from the international community, and Israel has done  
everything to sabotage it all along.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Shlaim, you say it’s done everything to  
sabotage it, except at the beginning, when you say it supported Hamas  
to weaken Fatah, which it now supports.

AVI SHLAIM: Indeed. Israel has always played the game of divide and  
rule. This is a very good tactic in times of war, to divide your  
enemies and pick them off one by one. No one can complain about that.  
But divide and rule isn’t a good tactic in times of peace. If your aim  
is to achieve peace with the Arabs, then you should want unity among  
the Palestinians and unity in the Arab world. But Israel continued to  
play this game of divide and rule.

Hamas emerged in the course of the First Intifada in the late 1980s.  
It is the Islamic resistance movement. The mainstream movement, Fatah,  
was led by Yasser Arafat. And Israel gave tacit encouragement and  
support to the Islamic resistance in the hope of weakening the secular  
nationalists led by Yasser Arafat. It was a dangerous game to play,  
because the end result of this game was that Hamas emerged as the  
strongest Palestinian political party.

And Israel helped Hamas inadvertently in another way, because Fatah  
signed the Oslo Accord with Israel in 1993. It expected the Oslo  
Accord to lead to a two-state solution. And yet, Israel, after the  
election of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, reneged on the Israeli side of  
the deal. So, the Oslo Accord, the Oslo peace process wasn’t doomed to  
failure from the start. It failed because Israel, under the leadership  
of the Likud, reneged on its side of the deal. So that left the  
Palestinians with nothing but misery and poverty and frustration and  
ever-growing Israeli settlements on the land. And it was this context  
that led to the success of Hamas at the last elections. So Israel has  
a lot to explain in the rise to power of the Hamas movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Avi Shlaim, we only have a minute, but I want  
to ask you where you see the solution at this point. Barack Obama will  
be president on Tuesday in just a few days. Hillary Clinton will be  
Secretary of State.

AVI SHLAIM: The solution—this is a political conflict, and there is no  
military conflict to—there is no military solution to this conflict.  
The only solution lies in negotiations between Israel and Hamas about  
all the issues involved. President-elect Obama is a very impressive  
man and a very intelligent man and a very fair-minded man. He hasn’t  
demonstrated any courage in the course of this crisis. He hasn’t taken  
any position. He hasn’t called for an immediate ceasefire. So the  
first step is an immediate ceasefire, and the next step would be  
negotiations between all the sides about restoring the ceasefire and  
then moving on to stage two, which is a political settlement to this  
tragic hundred-year-old conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: And Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who said in  
her confirmation hearing yesterday she wouldn’t negotiate with Hamas?

AVI SHLAIM: Yes, but there are other signs from the Obama campaign  
that they would be willing to consider low-level, indirect contacts  
with Hamas. And one has to be grateful for small mercies, so small,  
minor, low-level contacts with Hamas could lead to a proper dialog in  
due course. So I remain optimistic that sanity and rationality would  
take over in American foreign policy after the dreadful last eight  
years.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Avi Shlaim, thank you very much for being with  
us. Professor Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at  
Oxford University, served in the Israeli military—among his books,  
Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace—known as one of  
the leading authorities in the world on the Israel-Palestine conflict  
and Arab-Israel conflict. Among his other books, The Iron Wall.