HRW: There needs to be criminal accountability for war crimes in Gaza
Category Archives: Palestinian Territories
Israel and its allies need to recognize that Hamas has political legitimacy
Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson write: Unity between Fatah and Hamas is currently stronger than it has been for many years. As Elders, we believe this is one of the most encouraging developments in recent years and welcome it warmly. This presents an opportunity for the Palestinian Authority to reassume control over Gaza — an essential first step towards Israel and Egypt lifting the blockade.
The Palestinian Authority cannot manage the task of administering Gaza on its own. It will need the prompt return of the EU Border Assistance Mission, an international effort to help monitor border crossings that was launched in 2005 and suspended in 2007. EU High Representative Catherine Ashton has already offered to reinstate the program, covering not only Rafah but all of Gaza’s crossings. Egypt and Israel would, in turn, cooperate with international monitors to be deployed in Gaza and along its borders, backed by a U.N. Security Council mandate to protect civilian populations. A valuable precedent for trust-building between Egypt and Israel is the international peacekeeping force operating in the Sinai, mandated by the peace treaty signed by the two countries in 1979.
The international community’s initial goal should be the full restoration of the free movement of people and goods to and from Gaza through Israel, Egypt, and the sea. Concurrently, the United States and EU should recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force. Hamas cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people — can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons. Ever since the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine, the West’s approach has manifestly contributed to the opposite result. [Continue reading…]
No innocent civilians in #Gaza, says former head of #Israel’s National Security Council
Giora Eiland is a retired Major General from the Israel Defense Forces. As head of Ariel Sharon’s National Security Council, Eiland helped draft Israel’s disengagement plan for removing Israeli military forces and settlers from Gaza.
In an op-ed for Ynet today, “In Gaza, there is no such thing as ‘innocent civilians’,” Eiland provides a rationale for making no distinction between Palestinian fighters and Palestinian children — they all in his mind belong to an “enemy state.”
[W]e must avoid the artificial, wrong and dangerous distinction between the Hamas people, who are “the bad guys,” and Gaza’s residents, which are allegedly “the good guys.” We are dealing with an enemy state, not with a terror organization which is seemingly operating from within an innocent civilian population.
He hardly needed to articulate this view as though it constitutes a policy recommendation, since it appears to be perfectly in accordance with the way in which the Israeli government, its military commanders, and its individual soldiers, have conducted the latest war.
The casualty figures, as compiled by the UN, speak for themselves:
British government minister resigns because UK policy on Gaza is ‘morally indefensible’
It used not to be such a rarity — that a top government official would resign on a matter of principle — yet in this century it has become virtually unheard of.
In her letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, Sayeeda Warsi wrote: “I have always said that long after life in politics I must be able to live with myself for the decisions I took or the decisions I supported. By staying in Government at this time I do not feel I can be sure of that.”
The Guardian reports: Lady Warsi, the senior Foreign Office minister, has resigned from the government in protest at its policy on Gaza, describing it as “morally indefensible”.
Warsi announced her departure on Twitter on Tuesday, saying: “With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister & tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza.”
In her resignation letter, Warsi said the government’s “approach and language during the current crisis in Gaza is morally indefensible, is not in Britain’s national interest and will have a long term detrimental impact on our reputation internationally and domestically”.
She said the UK’s stance was “not consistent with the rule of law and our long support for international justice”, adding: “The British government can only play a constructive role in solving the Middle East crisis if it is an honest broker and at the moment I do not think it is.” [Continue reading…]
This is Warsi’s resignation letter:
#Obama won’t end #Israel’s war on #Gaza
After an Israeli airstrike near a UN shelter which killed at least 10 people on Sunday, the State Department issued a statement saying: “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby [a UN shelter] does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”
From day one in the current war, Israel has attempted to absolve itself for responsibility for civilian casualties by arguing that they are “human shields.” What the State Department finally made clear is that describing civilians as human shields does not make their lives expendable.
The State Department has understood this legal fact from day one but it waited almost a month before asserting this with any force. And even while the Obama administration caught the media’s attention in the last few days for voicing “harsh” criticism of the Israelis, it did so at the very same time as replenishing Israel’s supply of munitions.
The New York Times reports:
For all its outrage over civilian casualties, the United States steadfastly backs Israel’s right to defend itself and shares Israel’s view that Hamas is a terrorist organization. In a world of bitter enmities, the Israeli-American dispute is more akin to a family quarrel.
The White House seems determined to tamp down the latest eruption in tensions. “The nature of our relationship is strong and unchanged,” the press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters on Monday, pointing to comments by Mr. Netanyahu over the weekend, in which he said, “I think the United States has been terrific.”
The two statements are part of a recurring pattern for this administration: an angry outburst, followed by calmer words and the grudging recognition that little is going to change in the fundamental relationship between the United States and its closest ally in the Middle East.
Disputes between the United States and Israel are hardly new. President Ronald Reagan sold Awacs surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia over Israel’s fierce objections. George H.W. Bush held up loan guarantees because of Israeli settlement construction. Bill Clinton fumed after his first Oval Office encounter with a newly elected Israeli prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu.
But the chronic nature of this tension is unusual — and, according to current and former officials, rooted in ill will at the very top. “You have a backdrop of a very acrimonious relationship between the president and the prime minister of Israel,” said Robert M. Danin, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
While tensions between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu only occasionally spill into the open, Mr. Kerry became the subject of very public and vitriolic — albeit anonymous — criticism from Israeli officials for his efforts two weeks ago to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. His proposal, the officials said, was tilted in favor of Hamas and did not do enough to protect Israel’s security.
Mr. Kerry, American officials responded, based his efforts on an Egyptian cease-fire proposal that had already been accepted by the Israelis. He submitted his ideas to the Israelis, anticipating that they would have concerns. Whatever the precise circumstances, Mr. Kerry found himself excoriated across the political spectrum in Israel.
At the White House, officials were incensed by what they saw as shabby treatment of Mr. Kerry, a loyal friend of Israel. In addition to the cease-fire and the peace talks, they noted, Mr. Kerry went to bat for Israel with the Federal Aviation Administration after it imposed a ban on commercial flights to Tel Aviv following a rocket attack near Ben-Gurion International Airport.
What does batting for Israel against the FAA mean? That at a moment when Israel seemed particularly vulnerable, the Secretary of State for the United States thought that it was his job to place the interests of Israel’s economy above those of his own citizens.
Now that a ceasefire has tentatively taken hold, the U.S. role in negotiations in Cairo, nominally promoting mediation yet predictably operating as Israel’s most loyal supporter, is to make sure that Israel’s interests take precedence above all others.
It is in Israel’s interests that it now contrive an expression of its humanitarian concerns — that after having flattened many parts of Gaza it will pay lip service to the need to consider the welfare of the population.
Yet there seems little doubt that even if the siege is “eased” is various ways, Israel’s war against Gaza will continue.
The destruction of #Gaza
July 6 (left), July 25 (right)
Upper – Gaza City
Middle – Atatra
Lower – Beit Lahiya
Larger photos and additional locations can be seen here.
One in three #Gaza children already showed signs of PTSD before the latest war
Family of Younis Bakr, 9, said he had not spoken a word since he witnessed the shelling that killed 4 of his cousins on Gaza beach on 7/17
— 48Refugee (@48Refugee) August 4, 2014
The New York Times reports: Hassan al-Zeyada has spent decades counseling fellow residents of the Gaza Strip who suffer from psychological trauma. Now, as he prepares to aid his neighbors after a new round of combat and carnage, he has a challenging new patient: himself.
An Israeli airstrike demolished Dr. Zeyada’s family home on July 20, killing six close relatives, including his mother and three of his brothers.
“You try to help the people with their suffering,” the doctor said recently in his Gaza City living room lined with psychology textbooks. “It’s totally different when you have the same experience. You lose six from your family — three brothers, your mom, one of your nephews, your sister in-law. It’s really” — he paused, red-eyed — “unexpected.”
He took a mental step back, to diagnose the hallmarks of trauma in himself: He was exhibiting dissociation, speaking in the second person to distance himself from pain, as well as denial. When he heard about new shelling near where his family lived in the Bureij refugee camp, he picked up the phone to call his oldest brother there. He had forgotten that the house was already gone, his brother already dead.
Dr. Zeyada, 50, works to destigmatize mental health care for a Palestinian population exposed repeatedly to war and displacement, practicing at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, which was led by the pioneering Palestinian psychiatrist and human-rights advocate Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj until his death from leukemia in December.
Dr. Zeyada is not the only Palestinian caregiver to become a trauma victim. In the three weeks of attacks that Israel has said are meant to root out militant rocket fire and destroy clandestine tunnels into Israel, one of Dr. Zeyada’s colleagues at the program lost a brother, and their boss, Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei, lost 26 members of his extended family, including 19 children, in a single bombing.
It is difficult — even absurd, the clinicians say at their darkest moments — to try to mend psyches in the Gaza Strip, where even in calmer times the conditions are hardly conducive to psychological health, and safety is never more than provisional under the many cease-fires that have come and gone.
People cannot flee from Gaza; Israel and Egypt keep their borders virtually sealed. Residents can flee their neighborhoods, but even United Nations schools being used as shelters in Gaza have come under deadly fire. And in downtown Gaza City, where Israel has urged people to go for safety, Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly hit apartment buildings packed with residents and refugees. One strike collapsed most of a building and killed the family of a bank employee who had fled there on Israeli instructions.
The border restrictions, stemming from an eight-year standoff between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that dominates Gaza, have steadily eroded livelihoods in Gaza, adding to a sense of powerlessness. Even during relative lulls in violence, Israeli strikes periodically kill militants — and bystanders. People who do not want Hamas and other militants to use their farm fields to fire rockets, for fear of return fire from Israel, say they cannot always stop the combatants.
The healthy processing of grief and fear works best when sufferers feel they are out of danger, Dr. Zeyada said. But that is impossible in Gaza as long as the larger conflict persists.
Sometimes, he said, he was troubled by the ethics of treating people who were likely to be traumatized again. [Continue reading…]
Why #Hamas’ rockets weren’t worth a war
Mark Perry writes: [I]n training and deploying its rocket battalions, Hamas has modeled its strategy on other liberation movements. In November 1965, the United States’ 1st Cavalry Division faced off against a number of North Vietnamese regiments in the Ia Drang Valley, in western Vietnam. What was important about the Ia Drang battle was that the Vietnamese had purposely lured U.S. units into a close-quarters fight, where the Americans could not use their artillery or helicopter-mounted missile systems. As one Vietnamese commander said in a meeting with a U.S. military commander after the war, the North Vietnamese tactic was to “grab you by your belt buckle.”
Palestinians used these same tactics during the second intifada in April 2002, when militants battled the IDF in the streets of the West Bank city of Jenin. The Jenin battleground was a close-quarters fight in which the Israeli advantage in firepower was negated by having to fight house-to-house and street-to-street. Twenty-three IDF soldiers were killed, along with 54 Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority’s president at that time, Yasser Arafat, extolled the Jenin fight as a victory, comparable in importance to Stalingrad. “It is Jeningrad,” he said.
The Jenin model has had a powerful impact on the way the Palestinians have fought subsequent wars, including in Gaza. This time, Hamas’ rockets are the lure. To stop the rockets (and unearth Hamas’ tunnels), the IDF has been forced to fight in the streets and warrens of Gaza City and Palestinian refugee camps, thereby negating Israel’s huge firepower advantage and leading to increased Israeli military casualties. In that sense, although Hamas’ rockets haven’t taken large numbers of Israeli lives, they’ve called into question the IDF’s ability to defend the Israeli populace, choked off the country’s most important international airport, and helped level the military playing field. But all of that has only been possible because the Israeli government has overreacted to what has always been a minor material threat. [Continue reading…]
What do #Gazans think of #Hamas, Abbas and #Israel’s strikes?
During a lull in the Israeli assault, Middle East Eye spoke to several residents of the Gaza Strip to find out their views on the war. Othman Swaliem, a 38 years old taxi driver, gave this response:
I never liked Hamas, because I disagree with their approach to ending conflict, but I am afraid we could not achieve our rights through other methods. Israel failed Abbas in negotiations and empowered Hamas by making people like me see them as the only option for changing a grim reality. The siege is killing people like me who need to feed 8 children. Now, Hamas sacrifices their lives and are owed our respect for trying the new approach – which is armed struggle – to end Israel’s siege and open the borders to freedom.
Islamic Jihad has always been a good fighter in the field. I’ve never had problems with them. They are softer than Hamas, but their relationship with Egypt will open doors for Hamas in Egypt, after being shut by Sisi after Morsi was pushed out.
As for Abbas, I wish he’d pay more attention to people like us who are lost in 7 years of siege and Palestinian factional divides. I understand he did his best with Israel, offering so many compromises. But, my advice to him is that he dismantles the PA and tells the world, ‘We are finished and occupying Israel must assume responsibility for providing services. If you keep an animal in a zoo, you are obliged to take care of it. You can’t just leave it to starve and die.’
When Egypt is mentioned I can’t help but see the image of Sisi. He’s done so much damage to us, bringing us to a strangulation point, because some of us stood and cheered for Morsi. I am personally being punished, because before Sisi ordered closure of the Rafah crossing, I did two or three trips from Gaza City to Rafah to meet international visitors arriving with money to spend here and new faces that brought a few smiles here among the depression. None of that exists today. Egypt carries the responsibility. I can’t say I am outwardly angry with them, but I remain silently unhappy, because although revolution ended an era of tyranny in Egypt, that tyranny has expanded to us through Israel and Egyptian regimes working together. I wish we could have back the old Egypt which we loved.
#Israel and #Hamas agree to Egypt’s proposal for 72-hour ceasefire
The Guardian reports: A definitive end to the four-week conflict in Gaza appeared possible on Monday night, with reports that Hamas and Israel had accepted a 72-hour ceasefire.
The ceasefire could be declared as early as 8am on Tuesday morning, clearing the way for further discussions about ending the four-week war in Gaza.
Representatives of Palestinian factions had been in Cairo since Sunday to agree a set of demands and a possible end to hostilities. More than 1,800 Palestinians have died, health officials in Gaza say. Israeli casualties include 64 soldiers and three civilians killed by rocket fire.
The new proposal was communicated late on Monday night to the Israelis, who accepted the ceasefire plan around midnight.
“Israel will be honouring the ceasefire from tomorrow [Tuesday] at 8:00am [0500 GMT],” an Israeli official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.
The official confirmed an Israeli delegation would be heading to Cairo for talks.
Ziad al-Nakhala, deputy secretary-general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, had earlier told the Guardian that he believed a deal will be reached.
At least one key issue for Israel – of cross-border tunnels that allow infiltration by militants – had not been discussed, al-Nakhala said, but Egyptian officials accepted the need to ease the siege of Gaza. [Continue reading…]
#Israel bombed 161 mosques in #Gaza
Middle East Monitor: Israel has so far destroyed 161 mosques in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Awqaf Minister Yousef Dois said yesterday.
He said 41 mosques were completely destroyed and 120 were partially destroyed during the war adding that a number of religious institutions have also been attacked.
Dois continued by saying Israel is taking advantage of the fact that the world’s attention is on Gaza and using this to stop Muslim worshippers from gaining access to Al-Aqsa Mosque. He said rabbis are delivering provocative speeches.
The video below apparently shows the IDF using 11 tons of explosives to blow up a mosque in Khuzaa on July 30.
Inside #Israel’s pro-war nationalist camp
#HannibalDirective: #Israel confirms that it killed 130 #Palestinians in effort to ‘rescue’ (kill) one soldier
Haaretz reports: After Friday’s abduction of 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces executed in full its “Hannibal procedure,” a protocol that calls for the massive use of force in an effort to rescue a captured soldier, even at risk to his life. As a result of the heavy fire in the Rafah area, dozens of innocent civilians were killed.
A senior General Staff officer said Sunday that “a great deal of fire was used in the area, and targets were attacked” in order to isolate it.
According to Palestinian reports, more than 130 Palestinians were killed in this onslaught, with some of the bodies located only in the days after it happened. Palestinians also accused the IDF of attacking vehicles en route to the Rafah hospital, including several ambulances.
IDF sources said that senior commanders in the field ordered the procedure implemented in full. The army knows that innocents were hurt as a result of the massive use of force after the soldier’s capture.
An IDF inquiry concluded that about 75 minutes after a cease-fire was to have taken effect on Friday morning, a Givati Brigade patrol came under heavy fire while moving toward a building where a tunnel shaft was located. Company commander Maj. Benaya Sarel and his communications officer, Staff Sgt. Liel Gidoni, were killed. The IDF now believes Goldin, a squad commander, was also killed in the incident.
Contrary to earlier reports, however, the inquiry concluded that the terrorist who came nearest the three soldiers wasn’t wearing a suicide belt, but simply continued firing his rifle until he was killed.
When other soldiers from the company arrived at the scene a few minutes later, they found three bodies, those of Sarel, Gidoni and a Hamas operative wearing an IDF uniform. They then realized that Goldin was missing. The company’s deputy commander, 1st Lt. Eitan, decided to take some of his men into the tunnel to search for Goldin, in violation of protocol.
A few hundred meters into the tunnel, the troops found some of Goldin’s personal effects, which later helped the IDF to establish that he had been killed. The tunnel itself had several branches, some of them blocked. One led into a mosque, which the soldiers searched, but it was empty. Another led to a Hamas outpost.
The IDF then sent additional forces to the area, including aircraft and observation equipment. According to an IDF source, virtually all the firepower in the south-central region of the Gaza Strip were sent to the Rafah sector, where the incident took place, on orders from Givati Brigade commander Col. Ofer Winter. This included a tank battalion and an infantry battalion, which helped search for additional tunnel shafts. These forces also laid down heavy fire “from all directions,” including tank shells, artillery bombardments and air strikes, in an effort to isolate the area where Goldin was thought to be, block all access routes to and from it and thereby ensure that nobody could either enter or leave without the soldiers noticing, the IDF source said. This was in line with the Hannibal procedure, which one senior officer said is meant to ensure that “every effort to locate the kidnapped [soldier] and the kidnappers” is made.
Anshel Pfeffer attempts to explain why Israel is willing to kill its own soldiers while attempting to “rescue” them:
Recent reports in the international media suggest that the directive is tantamount to ordering the captured soldier to be shot in order to prevent him being taken prisoner; rather, it is the suspension of safety procedures which normally prohibit firing in the general direction of an IDF soldier, specifically firing to stop an escaping vehicle.
The original order mentioned using light-arm fire, particularly selective sniper fire, to hit the captors or stop their vehicle – “even if that means hitting our soldiers. In any case, everything will be done to stop the vehicle and prevent it from escaping.”
That kind of makes sense — no effort spared in attempting to prevent a soldier being spirited away. But that’s not what just happened:
On Friday morning, when the IDF still believed that Lieutenant Hadar Goldin may have been taken alive by Hamas into an attack tunnel beneath Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the Hannibal Directive was activated to its most devastating extent yet – including massive artillery bombardments and air strikes on possible escape routes.
Massive bombardment to “save” a soldier falls into the same category of Orwellian doublespeak as the infamous need to destroy villages in order to save them (in Vietnam).
Nevertheless, Pfeffer goes on to say:
Perhaps the most deeply engrained reason that Israelis innately understand the needs for the Hannibal Directive is the military ethos of never leaving wounded men on the battlefield, which became the spirit following the War of Independence, when hideously mutilated bodies of Israeli soldiers were recovered.
So what happened on Friday? Goldin’s body was most likely hideously mutilated by an American-manufactured, Israeli-fired artillery shell and spared the risk of becoming hideously mutilated in some other way.
I’d like to hear Gilad Shalit‘s opinion on how well this rationale holds up.
The smoke screen of a two-state solution has disappeared — #Netanyahu’s plan for #apartheid
Stephen Robert writes: So much tragedy and insufferable grief now engulfs the Israel-Palestine debate that the past year’s transformation of Israeli politics is easily overlooked. Yet, it is the nutrient for the present catastrophe, and perhaps for even worse in the future.
In 2009, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a major speech at Bar Ilan University, which, though highly nuanced, purportedly supported a two state solution. His father, a darling of the right-wing, then gave an interview to Israeli TV in which he stated that his son would never approve a state the Palestinians could possibly accept. The past year has demonstrably proved the father’s prophecy.
Netanyahu’s pretense to the contrary has been demolished, both by others and himself. Since there is no other sustainable solution, Palestinians have now lost all hope of their God-given right to govern themselves with the dignity humanity demands. History informs us that when that hope is lost, radicalism will ensue. Occupiers lose in the end.
Public and private statements from officials deeply immersed in these talks suggest this Israeli government was never serious about peace. Comments by U.S. Special Envoy Martin Indyk and President Obama’s chief Middle East advisor, Philip Gordon, place considerable blame on Israel; perhaps with bluntness unprecedented for American diplomats. They cite Israel’s refusal to discuss borders, produce maps, end settlement expansion and negotiate many of the big gap issues. Indyk believes Palestinian President Abbas was humiliated and embarrassed by Israel’s coupling of settlement expansions with each release of Palestinian prisoners, implying that Abbas had agreed to pay for the prisoners. During the nine months of negotiations, Israel announced the planning of 8000 settlement units, largely outside the area likely to be part of Israel in any peace agreement. Both men also place considerable responsibility on the Palestinians, but the proportionality is notably different from previous failed attempts to broker peace.
Most important, Prime Minister Netanyahu has now removed his mask. At a recent press conference, after implying Secretary Kerry and General John Allen were naïve about Israel’s security, he proclaimed that any Palestinian state contiguous to Israel constituted an unacceptable danger. Therefore, he said, such a state must have indefinite Israeli military occupation, not only in the Jordan Valley but throughout all of its territory. It appears that the alleged supporter of two states envisions a sovereign Palestinian state – but under Israeli occupation.
Certainly Netanyahu’s position doesn’t pass the laugh test. Still, it represents a less nuanced and unrestrained hawkishness by the Israeli right wing. Perhaps because the press conference was in Hebrew, these transformational comments have been vastly under reported.
Foreign Minister Lieberman fought for the invasion of Gaza, and driving Hamas out. His goal is an occupied Gaza, as compliant as the West Bank, creating a “stable condition similar to the West Bank.”
The smoke screen of a two state solution has disappeared. Continue reading
Explosion of infectious disease in #Gaza threatens public health
Gaza Ministry of Health: The people of Gaza face enormous barriers to accessing primary health care, with only 10 of the government’s 56 Primary Health Care clinics operational, eight of UNRWA’s 22 clinics open, and most NGO clinics closed.
The majority of displaced persons have no access whatsoever to primary health care services. This is at a time when there are urgent public health problems arising from the Israeli offensive threatening the health of the entire population.
The destruction of the sole Gaza power plant leaves sewage pumps incapacitated. The lack of electricity combined with the destruction of at least 16 water wells has left 1.8 million people without access to water, according to the latest OCHA report.
It also reports that some 10,000 homes have been completely annihilated, and 450,000 people forcibly displaced, with 250,000 of them seeking shelter in UN facilities only able to cope with a fifth of that number, and another 30,000 in government schools and institutions.
The over-crowding and lack of adequate water and sanitation facilities has seen the incidence of viral meningitis skyrocket from five per day, to 53 cases today.
Diarrhoea and scabies are rampant in the overcrowded shelters, with clean drinking water all but impossible to obtain. [Continue reading…]
#Israel withdraws troops from #Gaza
Yossi Melman writes: After 27 days and 63 Israeli Defense Forces fatalities, the war is over. At least as far as Israel is concerned. The unilateral withdrawal is a political decision informed by military considerations. The IDF has set up a line of defense within the buffer zone of three kilometers from the Gaza border, parallel with moving its troops out of the Hamas-controlled enclave. Granted, should Hamas keep firing rockets, the IDF will return to operational mode and bomb Gaza from air, with the repeat of the ground incursion very much on the table.
All these moves are coordinated with Egypt. Israel’s security coordination with Egypt during the operation has been unprecedentedly close; from Israel’s viewpoint, the special relation with the north-African ally is its most important strategic asset in the region, and the main achievement from this war.
In an interview with CNN, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said: We the Palestinian people have, since 1948, have listened to the international community and U.N. and international regulations, in the hope they end the aggression against us. But the international community failed in ending the Israeli occupation and failed in helping our people to have self-determination and have its own state. Even the latest (peace) negotiations, between (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud) Abbas and (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu with Kerry as the broker, were sabotaged by Netanyahu.
Reuters reports: Israel said it would unilaterally hold fire in most of the Gaza Strip on Monday to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid and allow some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by an almost four-week-old war to go back to home.
The announcement, made first to Palestinian media, met with suspicion from Gaza’s dominant Hamas Islamists and followed unusually strong censure from Washington at the apparent Israeli shelling on Sunday of a U.N.-run shelter that killed 10 people.
An Israeli defence official said the ceasefire, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (0700 to 1400 GMT), would apply everywhere but areas of the southern town of Rafah where ground forces have intensified assaults after three soldiers died in a Hamas ambush there on Friday.
“If the truce is breached, the military will return fire during the declared duration of the truce,” the official said.
The official said east Rafah was the only urban area in which troops and tanks were still present, having been withdrawn or redeployed near Gaza’s border with Israel over the weekend.
Israel is winding down its offensive in the absence of a mediated disengagement deal with Hamas. It says the military is close to completing its main objective of destroying cross-border infiltration tunnels from Gaza and prepared to resume strikes in response to any future attacks by the Palestinians.
Hamas, whose envoys are in Egypt for truce negotiations that Israel has shunned in anger at Friday’s lethal ambush in Rafah, saw a possible ruse in the humanitarian truce announcement.
“The calm Israel declared is unilateral and aims to divert attention away from the Israeli massacres. We do not trust such a calm and we urge our people to exercise caution,” said the group’s spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri. [Continue reading…]
The future of #Israel and the decline of the American empire
In an article published soon after Operation Cast Lead in 2009 which is just as relevant now as it was then, the emeritus professor of history at Princeton, Arno J. Mayer, wrote: [B]ecause of their history of exile and want of political self-rule, Jews and their sages may well be insufficiently mindful of the theory and practice of sovereign statecraft. Admittedly, after 1945 the leaders of many of the new states of the post-colonial worlds were equally benighted. Unlike most of them, however, Israel’s political class and thinkers prize their deep connection with the West, including its philosophic and intellectual heritage, to the point of putting admission to the European Union ahead of rapprochement with the Arab/Muslim world. Yet they seem not to be conversant with the fundamental ideas of the likes of Machiavelli and Clausewitz. Respectively theorists of politics and war, both emphatically propound moderation over unrestraint. Machiavelli puts virtù at the center of his formula for the use of power and force. He does not, however, construe it as a moral principle—as virtue—but as a prescript for prudence, flexibility, and a sense of sober limits in power politics.
Clausewitz theorizes limited war for well-defined and negotiable objectives, the disposition for compromise varying in inverse ratio to the victor’s aims and demands. He cautions above all against “absolute” war in which intellect, reason, and judgment are cast aside. Although he and Machiavelli take account of the interpenetration of domestic and international politics, both conceive them as two distinct spheres. In Israel, domestic politics prevails, with little concern for the reason of international politics.
These insights are particularly relevant for small states. But blinded by their successful defiance of limits and laws, the leaders of Israel take their country of seven million people (over 20 percent of them non-Jewish, mostly Arabs) to be a great power by dint of its outsized armed forces and arms industry. They deceive themselves by assuming the Western world’s support for its military hypertrophy is irreversible. Perverting virtù they launch nearly absolute military expeditions against the radical Palestinian resistance. They also envisage striking resurgent Iran with the most modern American-made and -financed aircraft operated by American-certified Israeli pilots. Nor does Tel Aviv hesitate to send military, technical, and covert “intelligence” missions, as well as weapons, to scores of nations in the Middle East, ex-Soviet sphere, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, not infrequently in concert with Washington.
State terror is all but integral to the latest weapons and tactics with which Israel’s forces engage the Palestinian resistance fighters. Of course the latter also resort to terror, the hallmark of asymmetrical warfare. But it is Israel that sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind. A vicious, endless cycle of vengeance, driven by the clashes of Israel’s overconfident, sophisticated, and regular military forces with crude and irregular paramilitary forces, further intensifies the distrust between Israelis and Palestinians, including Israeli Arabs, most of them Muslim. Though intended to break the will of the armed militias by inflicting unbearable pain on the host society, as in Lebanon and Gaza, the collateral damage of Israel’s campaigns of “shock and awe” only serve to fire the avenging fury of the powerless. [Continue reading…]
#Netanyahu’s victory speech — back to the status quo
The swift collapse of the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire that was supposed to begin at 8am on Friday morning was presented by Israel as proof that it is impossible to make agreements with Hamas. In reality it is Netanyahu who has no appetite for negotiations or agreements because he has no intention of offering any concessions. The only form of reciprocity that he can entertain that if Palestinians keep “quiet” Israel will refrain from killing them. Whether Israel ever chooses to life the siege is a decision that will not be prompted by Palestinian demands.
The Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea writes: The press conference convened at the Kirya Base in Tel Aviv on Saturday night was meant to be a victory conference. We have been saved: The operation has ended. Hamas has been destroyed. Our forces have returned home safely.
A crowded lineup of State of Israel flags was placed behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. The flags conveyed a sense of festivity. The two officials’ faces conveyed a sense of Tisha B’Av.
Netanyahu delayed his appearance by 20 minutes because of the comments made by the family members of kidnapped officer Hadar Goldin. The family demanded defiantly that the IDF avoid leaving the Strip as long as their son was in Hamas’ hands, dead or alive.
Netanyahu and Ya’alon did not accept the demand, but were forced to rewrite their speeches. From an announcement about a unilateral withdrawal of IDF forces from the Strip, Netanyahu moved to vague, unbinding sentences, such as “all options are on the table.” When the Americans say that about Iran, we know there are neither options nor a table, that it’s all talk. I doubt Netanyahu has any options.
While Netanyahu spoke, someone hung signs against abandoning captives along the Defense Ministry walls. Everything is immediate now, even the protest. The two will have to deal with harsh criticism from the right, which will use Second Lieutenant Goldin as a flag.
For Netanyahu this is quite a difficult test, versus both his audience and the storm of emotions in all parts of the Israeli society. No one wants to go back to the prices paid for Gilad Shalit‘s return or for the bodies of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.
The cabinet convened on Friday after the Rafah incident. There was a lot of anger, great frustration, but in the end the majority decided to contain the incident. The IDF would prepare for a unilateral pullout. There would be no agreement with Hamas: The calm would be based on deterrence.
This is exactly what I suggested that the cabinet should do 11 days ago, in my column published July 24. When I heard Netanyahu on Saturday night using the exact same words to describe the advantages of deterrence without an agreement, I thought about the 33 fighters, good Israelis, who could have still been alive today if Netanyahu hadn’t been so afraid of making a decision; I thought about the hundreds of Gazan residents killed in vain; and I thought about the damage inflicted on Israel in the international arena, which will continue to escort us even after the operation.