Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumGaza myths and facts: what American Jewish leaders won't tell you
Myth: Gaza is free. Fact: it has been under Israeli occupation since 1967 to this very day.By Peter Beinart
If youve been anywhere near the American Jewish community over the past few weeks, youve heard the following morality tale: Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005, hoping the newly independent country would become the Singapore of the Middle East. Instead, Hamas seized power, ransacked greenhouses, threw its opponents off rooftops and began launching thousands of rockets at Israel.
American Jewish leaders use this narrative to justify their skepticism of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. But in crucial ways, its wrong. And without understanding why its wrong, you cant understand why this war is wrong too.
Lets take the claims in turn.
Israel Left Gaza
Its true that in 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israels more than 8,000 settlers from Gaza. (At Americas urging, he also dismantled four small settlements in the West Bank). But at no point did Gaza become its own country. Had Gaza become its own country, it would have gained control over its borders. It never did. As the Israeli human rights group Gisha has detailed, even before the election of Hamas, Israel controlled whether Gazans could enter or exit the Strip (In conjunction with Egypt, which controlled the Rafah checkpoint in Gaza's south). Israel controlled the population registry through which Gazans were issued identification cards. Upon evacuating its settlers and soldiers from Gaza, Israel even created a security perimeter inside the Strip from which Gazans were barred from entry. (Unfortunately for Gazans, this perimeter included some of the Strips best farmland).
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.608008
Israeli
(4,159 posts)Pro-Israel commentators claim Israel had legitimate security reasons for all this. But that concedes the point. A necessary occupation is still an occupation. Thats why its silly to analogize Hamas rocketsrepugnant as they areto Mexico or Canada attacking the United States. The United States is not occupying Mexico or Canada. Israel according to the United States government has been occupying Gaza without interruption since 1967.
To grasp the perversity of using Gaza as an explanation for why Israel cant risk a Palestinian state, it helps to realize that Sharon withdrew Gazas settlers in large measure because he didnt want a Palestinian state. By 2004, when Sharon announced the Gaza withdrawal, the Road Map for Peace that he had signed with Mahmoud Abbas was going nowhere. Into the void came two international proposals for a two state solution. The first was the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, in which every member of the Arab League offered to recognize Israel if it returned to the 1967 lines and found a just and agreed upon solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees. The second was the 2003 Geneva Initiative, in which former Israeli and Palestinian negotiators publicly agreed upon the details of a two state plan. As the political scientists Jonathan Rynhold and Dov Waxman have detailed, Sharon feared the United States would get behind one or both plans, and pressure Israel to accept a Palestinian state near the 1967 lines. Only an Israeli initiative, Sharon argued, will keep us from being dragged into dangerous initiatives like the Geneva and Saudi initiatives.
Sharon saw several advantages to withdrawing settlers from Gaza. First, it would save money, since in Gaza Israel was deploying a disproportionately high number of soldiers to protect a relatively small number of settlers. Second, by (supposedly) ridding Israel of its responsibility for millions of Palestinians, the withdrawal would leave Israel and the West Bank with a larger Jewish majority. Third, the withdrawal would prevent the administration of George W. Bush from embracing the Saudi or Geneva plans, and pushing hardas Bill Clinton had donefor a Palestinian state. Sharons chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, put it bluntly: The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.
Its no surprise, therefore, that the Gaza withdrawal did not meet minimal Palestinian demands. Not even the most moderate Palestinian leader would have accepted a long-term arrangement in which Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza while maintaining control of the Strips borders and deepening Israeli control of the West Bank. (Even in the 2005, the year Sharon withdrew from Gaza, the overall settler population rose, in part because some Gazan settlers relocated to the West Bank).
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.608008
Israeli
(4,159 posts)In fact, Sharons advisors did not expect withdrawing Gazas settlers to satisfy the Palestinians. Nor did not they expect it to end Palestinian terrorism. Ehud Olmert, a key figure in the disengagement plan (and someone who himself later embraced Palestinian statehood), acknowledged that terror will continue after the removal of Gazas settlers. The key word is continue. Contrary to the American Jewish narrative, militants in Gaza didnt start launching rockets at Israel after the settlers left. They began a half-decade earlier, at the start of the second intifada. The Gaza disengagement did not stop this rocket fire. But it did not cause it either.
Hamas Seized Power
I can already hear the objections. Even if withdrawing settlers from Gaza didnt give the Palestinians a state, it might have made Israelis more willing to support one in the future - if only Hamas had not seized power and turned Gaza into a citadel of terror.
But Hamas didnt seize power. It won an election. In January 2006, four months after the last settlers left, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem chose representatives to the Palestinian Authoritys parliament. (The previous year, they had separately elected Abbas to be the Palestinian Authoritys President). Hamas won a plurality of the vote - forty-five percent - but because of the PAs voting system, and Fatahs idiotic decision to run more than one candidate in several districts, Hamas garnered 58 percent of the seats in parliament.
To the extent American Jewish leaders acknowledge that Hamas won an election (as opposed to taking power by force), they usually chalk its victory up to Palestinian enthusiasm for the organizations 1988 charter, which calls for Israels destruction (The president of the New York board of rabbis said recently that anyone who voted for Hamas should be considered a combatant, not a civilian). But thats almost certainly not the reason Hamas won. For starters, Hamas didnt make Israels destruction a major theme of its election campaign. In its 2006 campaign manifesto, the group actually fudged the question by saying only that it wanted an independent state whose capital is Jerusalem plus fulfillment of the right of return.
Dont get me wrong. Im not suggesting that by 2006 Hamas had embraced the two state solution. Only that Hamas recognized that running against the two state solution was not the best way to win Palestinian votes. The polling bears this out. According to exit polls conducted by the prominent Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, 75 percent of Palestinian votersand a remarkable 60 percent of Hamas voterssaid they supported a Palestinian unity government dedicated to achieving a two state solution.
So why did Hamas win? Because, according to Shikaki, only fifteen percent of voters called the peace process their most important issue. A full two-thirds cited either corruption or law and order. Its vital to remember that 2006 was the first Palestinian election in more than ten years. During the previous decade, Palestinians had grown increasingly frustrated by Fatahs unaccountable, lawless and incompetent rule. According to exit polls, 85 percent of voters called Fatah corrupt. Hamas, by contrast, because it had never wielded power and because its charitable arm effectively delivered social services, enjoyed a reputation for competence and honesty.
Hamas won, in other words, for the same reason voters all across the world boot out parties that have grown unresponsive and self-interested after years in power. Thats not just Shikakis judgment. Its also Bill Clintons. As Clinton explained in 2009, a lot of Palestinians were upset that they [Fatah] were not delivering the services. They didnt think it [Fatah] was an entirely honest operation and a lot of people were going to vote for Hamas not because they wanted terrorist tactics
but because they thought they might get better service, better government
They [also] won because Fatah carelessly and foolishly ran both its slates in too many parliamentary seats.
This doesnt change the fact that Hamas election confronted Israel and the United States with a serious problem. After its victory, Hamas called for a national unity government with Fatah for the purpose of ending the occupation and settlements and achieving a complete withdrawal from the lands occupied [by Israel] in 1967, including Jerusalem, so that the region enjoys calm and stability during this phase. But those final wordsthis phasemade Israelis understandably skeptical that Hamas had changed its long-term goals. The organization still refused to recognize Israel, and given that Israel had refused to talk to the PLO until it formally accepted Israels right to exist in 1993, its not surprising that Israel demanded Hamas meet the same standard.
Still, Israel and the U.S. would have been wiser to follow the counsel of former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, who called for Sharon to try to forge a long-term truce with Hamas. Israel could also have pushed Hamas to pledge that if Abbaswho remained PA presidentnegotiated a deal with Israel, Hamas would accept the will of the Palestinian people as expressed in a referendum, something the groups leaders have subsequently promised to do.
Instead, the Bush administrationsuddenly less enamored of Middle Eastern democracy--pressured Abbas to dissolve the Palestinian parliament and rule by emergency decree. Israel, which also wanted Abbas to defy the election results, withheld the tax and customs revenue it had collected on the Palestinian Authoritys behalf. Knowing Hamas would resist Abbas efforts to annul the election, especially in Gaza, where it was strong on the ground, the Bushies also began urging Abbas former national security advisor, a Gazan named Mohammed Dahlan, to seize power in the Strip by force. As David Rose later detailed in an extraordinary article in Vanity Fair, Condoleezza Rice pushed Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to buy weapons for Dahlan, and for Israel to allow them to enter Gaza. As General Mark Dayton, US security coordinator for the Palestinians, told Dahlan in November 2006, We also need you to build up your forces in order to take on Hamas.
Unfortunately for the Bush administration, Dahlans forces were weaker than they looked. And when the battle for Gaza began, Hamas won it easily, and brutally. In response, Abbas declared emergency rule in the West Bank.
So yes, members of Hamas did throw their Fatah opponents off rooftops. Some of that may have been payback because Dahlan was widely believed to have overseen the torture of Hamas members in the 1990s. Regardless, in winning the battle for Gaza, Hamaswhich had already shed much Israeli blood - shed Palestinian blood too.
But to suggest that Hamas seized power - as American Jewish leaders often do - ignores the fact that Hamas brutal takeover occurred in response to an attempted Fatah coup backed by the United States and Israel. In the words of David Wurmser, who resigned as Dick Cheneys Middle East advisor a month after Hamas takeover, what happened wasnt so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.608008
Israeli
(4,159 posts)Israel responded to Hamas election victory by further restricting access in and out of Gaza. As it happens, these restrictions played a key role in explaining why Gazas greenhouses did not help it become Singapore. American Jewish leaders usually tell the story this way: When the settlers left, Israel handed over their greenhouses to the Palestinians, hoping they would use them to create jobs. Instead, Palestinians tore them down in an anti-Jewish rage.
But one person who does not endorse that narrative is the prime mover behind the greenhouse deal, Australian-Jewish businessman James Wolfensohn, who served as the Quartets Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement. In his memoir, Wolfensohn notes that some damage was done to the greenhouses [as the result of post-disengagement looting] but they came through essentially intact and were subsequently guarded by Palestinian Authority police. What really doomed the greenhouse initiative, Wolfensohn argues, were Israeli restrictions on Gazan exports. In early December [2005], he writes, the much-awaited first harvest of quality cash cropsstrawberries, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers and flowersbegan. These crops were intended for export via Israel for Europe. But their success relied upon the Karni crossing [between Gaza and Israel], which, beginning in mid-January 2006, was closed more than not. The Palestine Economic Development Corporation, which was managing the greenhouses taken over from the settlers, said that it was experiencing losses in excess of $120,000 per day
It was excruciating. This lost harvest was the most recognizable sign of Gazas declining fortunes and the biggest personal disappointment during my mandate.
The point of dredging up this history is not to suggest that Israel deserves all the blame for its long and bitter conflict with Hamas. It does not. Hamas bears the blame for every rocket it fires, and those rockets have not only left Israelis scarred and disillusioned. They have also badly undermined the Palestinian cause.
The point is to showcontrary to the establishment American Jewish narrativethat Israel has repeatedly played into Hamas hands by not strengthening those Palestinians willing to pursue statehood through nonviolence and mutual recognition. Israel played into Hamas hands when Sharon refused to seriously entertain the Arab and Geneva peace plans. Israel played into Hamas hands when it refused to support a Palestinian unity government that could have given Abbas the democratic legitimacy that would have strengthened his ability to cut a two state deal. And Israel played into Hamas hands when it responded to the groups takeover of Gaza with a blockade thatalthough it has some legitimate security featureshas destroyed Gazas economy, breeding the hatred and despair on which Hamas thrives.
In the ten years since Jewish settlers left, Israeli policy toward Gaza has been as militarily resourceful as it has been politically blind. Tragically, that remains the case during this war. Yet tragically, the American Jewish establishment keeps cheering Israel on.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.608008
King_David
(14,851 posts)What's your opinion ?
There was no blockade until the rockets started .
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Just as blowing up thousands of civilians does.
sabbat hunter
(6,835 posts)was never meant to be an independent country, but part of Palestine with the area known as the West bank.
Israel has every right to control its own borders. and that means it can control who is allowed in or out of the country. People complain that "Israel did not allow hamas to control its own borders" But what they really are saying is that they wanted Israel to give up control of its border with Gaza.
Prior to Hamas violent takeover of Gaza ( after it won a plurality of the election not a majority) there was no blockade in place. It wasn't until Hamas launched missiles at Israel that the blockade was put in to place.
whosinpower1
(85 posts)Prior to Hamas taking over, Israel occupied Gaza with some 8000 settlers. There WAS rocket fire coming out of Gaza, even during this time.
Of course, there would be no blockade when settlers were living there.
The blockade may have been put in place to stop the rockets....but it has proven to be a total failure. If that is the prime justification-it does not work.
sabbat hunter
(6,835 posts)is that AFTER the settlers were pulled out, there was no blockade of Gaza until Hamas violently took over the enclave and attacked Israel.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)The US-Israeli assault on Gaza escalated in January 2006, a few months after the formal withdrawal, when Palestinians committed a truly heinous crime: they voted "the wrong way" in a free election. Like others, Palestinians learned that one does not disobey with impunity the commands of the master, who never cease to orate about his "yearning for democracy" without eliciting ridicule from the educated classes, another impressive achievement.
Since the terms "aggression" and "terrorism" are inadequate, some new term is needed for the sadistic and cowardly torture of people caged with no possibility of escape, while they are being pounded to dust by the most sophisticated products of US military technology - used in violation of international and even US law, but for self-declared outlaw states that is just another minor technicality.
Also a minor technicality is the fact that on December 31, while terrorized Gazans were desperately seeking shelter from the ruthless assault, Washington hired a German merchant ship to transport from Greece to Israel 3000 tons of unidentified "ammunition." The new shipment "follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip," Reuters reported. "Israel's intervention in the Gaza Strip has been fueled largely by U.S. supplied weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars," said a briefing by the New America Foundation, which monitors the arms trade. The new shipment was hampered by the decision of the Greek government to bar the use of any port in Greece "for the supplying of the Israeli army."
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20090119.htm
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)day.
King_David
(14,851 posts)Every single last Jew left Gaza.
There was no blockade until the Hamas murder rockets started.
There now are Hamas murder tunnels.
There is no occupation of Gaza.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)King_David
(14,851 posts)It's fact
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)On the night of August 24, 2005, Israeli troops shot dead three teenage boys and
two adults in a West Bank Palestinian refugee camp. An army communiqué
claimed the five were terrorists, killed after opening fire on the soldiers.
An investigation by Israels leading human rights organization, BTselem, and
its leading newspaper, Haaretz, found, however, that the teenagers were unarmed
and had no connection with any terrorist organizations, while neither of the
two adults was armed or wanted by the Israelis.[1]
In Israel, as elsewhere, its prudent to treat official pronouncements with skepticism.
This is especially so when it comes to the peace process.
Israels announcement that it would withdraw from the Gaza Strip won high praise in the American media as a major step toward ending the occupation of Palestinian land. Human rights organizations and academic specialists were less sanguine, however.
In a recent study entitled One Big Prison, BTselem observes that the crippling economic arrangements Israel has imposed on Gaza will remain in effect. In addition, Israel will continue to maintain absolute control over Gazas land borders, coastline and airspace, and the Israeli army will continue to operate in Gaza. So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands, it concludes, Israels claim of an end of the occupation is questionable.[2]
The respected organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) is yet more emphatic that evacuating troops and Jewish settlements from inside Gaza will not end the occupation: Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around its periphery, and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control.[3]
The worlds leading authority on the Gaza Strip, Sara Roy of Harvard University, predicts that Gaza will remain an imprisoned enclave, while its economy, still totally dependent on Israel after disengagement and in shambles after decades of deliberately ruinous policies by Israel, will actually deteriorate.[4] This conclusion is echoed by the World Bank, which forecasts that, if Israel seals Gazas borders or curtails its utilities, the disengagement plan will create worse hardship than is seen today.[5]
in full: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2005/Oct-10/95615-judge-israels-deeds-not-words.ashx#axzz3AnQVOWXQ