Avi Shlaim

Avi Shlaim
The Guardian
January 7, 2009

 
A wounded Palestinian policeman
gestures while lying on the ground outside
Hamas police headquarters following
an Israeli air strike in Gaza City.
Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through
understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in
May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials
bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On
2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin,
that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state
headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this
judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza,
and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened
the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s
and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within
its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project
beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with
security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to
establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military
control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the
most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of
the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny
strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza’s prospects
were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic
under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development.
To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers
of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a
captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was
actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their
subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings
essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish
settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable
obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the
symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only
8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers
controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion’s share of
the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders,
the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable
misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living
conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful
precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a
unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and
destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic
resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis
out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces.
To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution
to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000
Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an
independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply
incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders
of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank
to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a
peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist
expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in
what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest.
Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the
withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian
people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel’s settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control
all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted
overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force
enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying
low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants
of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of
authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to
promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine
it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab
regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the
Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the
Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and
fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority
brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to
recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is
purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising
the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax
revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a
significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions
not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor
but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for
their own misfortunes. Israel’s propaganda machine persistently purveyed
the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence
with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism,
that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible
with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are
a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no
worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is
a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political
programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of
its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state
solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity
government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel.
Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian
factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order
to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now
Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow
their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American
neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian
civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national
unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007
to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination
of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government.
In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian
people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim
of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its
leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel’s terms. The undeclared aim is to
ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a
humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence
and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general
election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all
the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness.
The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing
blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the
failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel’s cynical
leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab
regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term
in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the
crisis on Hamas,* vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an
immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground
invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression
but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room
for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between
David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted – a small and
defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and
overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied,
as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity
overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome
of bokhim ve-yorim, “crying and shooting”.

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied
the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous
adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak – terror. Militants from
Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against
Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a
six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets
is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public
to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel
had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of
rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves.
In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by
rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290
Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel
as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel’s entire record is one of unbridled and
unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained
the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view
of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the
ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation
of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities.
Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel
restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas
canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies
to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of
Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it
did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly
forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its
spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel
established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this
directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that
Israel’s objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel’s forces
are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel’s spin doctors
have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in
essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel’s actions from the rhetoric of
its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did
so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s
objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow
of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their
rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of
indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought
the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian
catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel’s
insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an
eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400
Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion
of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks
from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that
Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept
firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and
martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the
two communities. The problem with Israel’s concept of security is that it
denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only
way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks
with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a
long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20,
30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason
it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table:
it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it
difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with
“an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates
international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises
terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel
fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s
real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but
military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with
new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course
free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory
to do so.