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Briefing 90

(Other relevant items: The Israel Challenge from the British Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Also: an illuminating exchange on Democracy Now between radical academic Norman Finkelstein and an official from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.)

ISRAELI CRIMES AGAINST PEACE
The Israeli Government bombs power stations (a war crime), bombs bridges with no military value (a war crime), kidnap ordinary citizens, elected representatives and Government ministers (more crimes), overflies the Syrian capital without permission (more criminality) and re-invades the Gaza Strip (another war crime). These crimes are not designed to secure the release of a captured Israeli soldier, but to destroy the threat of peace, and especially the growing moderation of the elected Hamas Government.

ISRAELI STATE TERRORISM
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy writes in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

'It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns. It is not legitimate to kidnap half a government and a quarter of a parliament. A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organisation.'

The British group 'Jews for Justice for Palestinians' took out a full-page advertisement in The Times on 6 July (p. 33). It said, in part:

'We watch with horror the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure [Israeli] Corporal Gilad Shilat's safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that end. Instead it is using its enormously superior military might to terrorise an entire people.'

We are witnessing Israeli state terrorism - and EU/British complicity.

HOSTAGE SHALIT AND THE KIDNAPPED PALESTINIANS
Corporal Gilad Shalit was captured, in uniform and on armed duty near a checkpoint, on 25 June 2006. Chris McGreal of the Guardian reported: 'To Palestinians he is a prisoner of war - a legitimate target as a soldier in the uniform of an army that has killed dozens of civilians in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks - and a bargaining chip.' McGreal pointed out that 'Israel holds about 9,000 Palestinian prisoners. One thousand of them are detained without charge or trial, and often exist in a Kafkaesque world of having to prove their innocence without ever being told what it is they are accused of.'

The Israeli military see Cpl Shalit's capture by Palestinian militiamen as an act of war. 'But the Israelis themselves crossed the border just a couple of days before the corporal was taken to apprehend two Palestinian militiamen.' (McGreal, Guardian, 30 June)

BREAKING THE PEACE
Time magazine observes: 'it's difficult to see how some Israeli tactics, particularly the strike on the Gaza power supply, can do much other than deepen the Palestinians' misery.' (10 July, p. 35) What else can 'these tactics' do? They can break the elected Palestine Authority, and they can break the hope of peace. That is their purpose:

'A senior Israeli security official says some members of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government believe the crisis is an opportunity to smash the authority of Hamas, the militant organization that won control of the Palestinian Authority earlier this year. That aim became evident when Israeli forces arrested eight Palestinian Cabinet ministers and 40 Hamas parliamentarians in the West Bank, who may be charged with membership in terrorist organizations, affiliation with terrorist leadership and other violations. Israeli Interior Minister Ronnie Bar-On tells Time that the arrests had been planned for weeks and that the ministers would not be used as bargaining tools to win Shalit's release.' (p. 34)

According to knowledgeable Palestinians, bringing down the Hamas Government 'could boost the group's more militant factions, which would prefer to abandon the political process and return to armed struggle.' Time quotes Saied Zourob, an official from Gaza belonging to the Fatah party that was displaced from government by Hamas: 'now the Israelis are pushing people toward Hamas and the resistance.' (p. 35) Time notes: 'The fallout from the Shalit saga is only hardening attitudes on both sides.' (p. 34)

These were the predictable, and therefore intended, consequences of the actions Israel has taken - actions which have undermined rather than strengthened Cpl Shalit's chances of survival. Journalist Con Couglin points out that when the last Israeli soldier was abducted - Nachshon Waxman in 1994 - all that happened was the West Bank was closed off to allow a rescue attempt by Israeli special forces. (Telegraph, 30 June)

Pushing Hamas as an organization, and the Palestinians as a people, away from negotiations and towards violence is a rational goal for Israeli policy (in the short term), if Israel is set on domination rather than peace.

HAMAS-FATAH
Undermining the elected Government and the Hamas leadership was a particularly urgent task because of the signs that Hamas moderates were building a united front with the Fatah movement. On 27 June, after months of tortuous negotiation between the two political rivals, a deal was finally struck on the basis of a document drawn up by Palestinian political prisoners:

'Fears of an Israeli assault on Gaza have all but overshadowed the agreement between Hamas and Fatah over the so-called "prisoners' document", which brings to an end months of tensions that have seen gun battles between armed forces loyal to the two groups... the "prisoners' document" is hoped to address international concerns by toning down Hamas' insistence on armed force and its implacable opposition to the existence of Israel. Negotiator Salah Zeidan said preparations were being made for a formal signing ceremony. "All political groups are prepared for a mutual ceasefire with Israel," he said.' (Guardian, 27 June)

It was a huge step for Hamas to formally accept a Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, implicitly accepting the right of Israel to exist, and to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, which explicitly acknowledges that right. Times Foreign Editor Bronwen Maddox remarks: 'From Hamas, which has steadily advocated the annihilation of Israel, this amounts to a dramatic about-turn.' (29 June, p. 36)

The threat of a firm Palestinian ceasefire by the main armed groups, and a major diplomatic initiative from the Palestinian side involving a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders has been averted - perhaps permanently - by the violent Israeli assault on Gaza.

Author Patrick Seale comments that Israel

'abhors the recent Hamas-Fatah accord... becuse it threatens to produce a Palestinian partner ready to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Israel has no intention of ever returning to those borders. It is no accident that its assault followed immediately on the Palestinian accord. Israel will do everything to avoid a negotiation. Hence, it deliberately inflicts inhumane hardships on the Palestinians in order to radicalise them and drive the moderates from the scene.' (Guardian, 3 July, p. 29)

THE REAL HISTORY OF THE PEACE PROCESS
Western apologists portray the Middle East 'peace process' as one of Israeli offers and Arab rejection. In fact, the Palestinians and their Arab sponsors gravitated towards the international consensus - a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders - by the mid-1970s (see Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle). This solution has been blocked by the United States and Israel.

It is said that the two-state solution was rejected by the Palestinians, who walked out of negotiations at Camp David in mid-2000, after being offered an allegedly reasonable deal. In fact, Israeli scholar Ron Pundak points out that the Israeli position at the end of Camp David was that 12 per cent of the West Bank should remain in Israeli hands, in two strips dividing the West Bank into three sections, and cutting off all three fragments from East Jerusalem, the centre of Palestinian life and institutions. This was clearly absolutely unacceptable to the Palestinians. (See map on p. 46 of Pundak's 'From Oslo To Taba: What Went Wrong', available as a pdf from The Peres Center for Peace which Pundak heads.)

At subsequent negotiations in Taba in January 2001, Israeli negotiators tacitly conceded that they could have given more ground - and cut their demands in half. The talks were then called off by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, not by the Palestinians. (BBC, 29 Jan. 2001)

THE SHAMEFUL ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
The Financial Times comments:

'the lack of active mediation by the world community has made containment of the conflict all the more difficult. With the US and the EU ostracising Hamas, the scope for diplomatic intervention has been limited. Israel has apparently felt under little pressure to restrain its actions.' (30 June, p. 6)

The current assault is in part due to the European Union's imposition of collective punishment on the Palestinians, breaking off aid and diplomatic relations because the 'wrong people' won the election. By removing the small EU brake on Israeli policy, we share responsibility for Israel's actions.

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Briefing 90