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January 14, 2009

Israel's war propaganda, adopted as facts by the gullible US media, portrays the full-scale invasion of Gaza as a legitimate act of self-defense. Having completely destroyed the physical infrastructure for Palestinian self-rule in Gaza, Israel will now step into the ‘power vacuum’ by re-introducing the status quo ante, notes Kaveh L Afrasiabi.

Israel is on its way to re-possessing the Gaza Strip, despite a UN Security Council Resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire and mounting international criticisms, and the Israeli army that initially claimed a modest goal of "a new agreement with Hamas" has now all but admitted that the intention of Operation Cast Lead is to "topple Hamas."

"Gaza battle isn't a one-time conflict, won't end in accord," Israel's Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, has been quoted by Jerusalem Post, in rather sharp contrast to two weeks ago when Livni and other Israeli officials were quoted on the front pages of New York Time denying that their intention was to "reoccupy Gaza." Slowly but surely, as the Israeli army inches closer to its military objectives against Hamas, albeit with certain international costs and financial and human toll in the face of stiff Palestinian resistance forcing Israel's use of reservists in the Gaza operation, the fog of war is thinning with respect to Israel's intentions -- of reoccupying a parcel of land and restoring military rule over 1.5 million mostly refugees three and a half years after "unilateral disengagement" that followed nearly forty years of oppressive occuptaion.

Having completely destroyed the physical infrastructure for Palestinian self-rule in Gaza, Israel will now step into the "power vacuum" by re-introducing the status quo ante that, in the words of Israeli pundit Tom Segev "left behind a terrible heritage of oppression, beravement and hostility." Israel’s prisons, already crowded with some 13,000 Palestinian inmates, are now bracing for thousands of fresh inmates from Gaza, the West Bank as well as among the Israeli Arabs, who are expressing sympathy with their brethren under siege in Gaza . Of course, this will intensify the image of "democratic" Israel as a "carceral society" and give more credence to the dissenting voices, such as former Speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, who has compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the "Second Reich's treatment of German Jews". Still, Israeli leaders, benefiting from uncritical support from Washington , have vested their hopes on their ability to sell their military invasion of Gaza to the rest of the world as a "lesser evil" than putting up with the threat of Iran-backed "Islamofascists".

Thus, rationalizing the re-occupation as a valid response to "a good will gesture (of unilateral disengagement) that backfired," various Israeli pundits have interpreted the Gaza war as ending "once and for all the prattling sermonizing that calls upon Israel to engage in land for peace," to paraphrase Victor Sharpe writing for Israel National News. This has serious ramification for Washington's lip service to "Middle East peace talks" and even of reviving "Oslo Peace" in the wake of Annapolis peace conference of November 2007 (where Israeli leaders hinted that they may give up the West Bank in exchange for peace): Expansionist Israel, already trippling its settlements in West Bank since signing the Oslo Accords, is in no mood for any territorial concession. On the contrary, in light of Israel’s preponderant military power, its appetite for colonizing more and more Palestinian land is crystal clear.

The Return of Jewish Settlements to Gaza

"First of all, what is needed is the prevention of a power vacum by reestablishment of strong permanent Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip. However, it that presence is a military presence only, its permanence and even its justification is questionable," writes Tzipora Liron in Jerusalem Post. At the moment, no one in Israel is broadcasting it too loudly, yet all the indications are that we are about to witness a new and expanded influx of Jewish settlers in Gaza . Already, the 4000 or so ex-Gaza settlers and their allies in the government and the media are being increasingly vocal about "time to rebuild Gush Katif" as well as other "former Jewish communities in Gaza, such as Dugit." Claiming that Hamas had used the abondaned communites "as training grounds," the Israeli rationale for re-introducing Jewish settlements in Gaza is, again, primarily couched in the language of "Israel's security." As in the past, this is a language and discourse that has little or no qualm about stepping on other people's rights, welfare, and securities in order to create optimum conditions for the national security of state of Israel.

Of course, this is a self-serving and dubious rationalization that is based on a seemingly national consensus in Israel that Ariel Sharon's August 2005 withdrawal of forces was a "terrible mistake that brought today's situation about," to quote a recent writing in Haaretz. As usual, the government of Israel exonerates itself of any blame for instigating the Gaza crisis into the full-scale war that is today, conveniently putting all the blames on Hamas for breaking the fragile cease-fire. Israel's claim has been disputed by, among others, former US president Jimmy Carter, who in his latest opinion column in Washington Post, has categorically stated that Hamas leaders were willing to extend the truce if Israel agreed to lift the siege, but that Israel "proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted." Carter also mentions that contrary to all the Israeli and US propaganda blaming Hamas for fractures in the 6 months truce, this "fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza."

But, of course, Gaza alone is not the target of Jewish settlement and a similar campaign in West Bank and East Jerusalem is under way that makes it increasingly impossible to realize the US-backed idea of a "viable Palestinian state." Systematic efforts by Israel to expand Jewish homes on Palestinian land in West Bank have been accompanied by growing acts of violence against the Palestinians, e.g., by "violent, messianic and anarchistic" Jewish settlers who, per a report in Jerusalem Post last December, went on a rampage in Hebron, warranting a pundit, Yossie Alper, to pose the pertinent question: "Where was the heavy security contingent in Hebron where the extremist settlers went...torching houses and cars, stoning and shooting?"

The West Bankization of Gaza

Israel's war propaganda, adopted as facts by the gullible US media, portrays the full-scale invasion of Gaza as a legitimate act of self-defense "to bring a long-term end to the attacks on Southern residents," to paraphrase Israel's Interior Minister, Meir Sheetriti, yet the sinister objective of balkanization of Gaza and replicating the West Bank's dismemberment and increasing fragmentation, enforced by some 7000 check points, in Gaza is at this point rather clear. Having declared with much fanfare its ability to "bisect Gaza" on day one of the ground invasion, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) has steadily leaked out its "contingency plans," as if plans are being drawn up commensuarate with the instant developments on the ground in the theater of conflict, when, in fact, there are strong evidence of a carefully-planned invasion as far back as within weeks of Israel's withdrawal in Summer of 2005; the re-invasion of Gaza was scripted from the outset in a partial disengagement that kept Israel as "capricious jailers" of Gazan population by virture of Israel's iron grip on Gaza's borders, airspace, and coasts. The "terrible mistake" that Israelis are now supposedly regreting is largely a public relations put on, as any one mildly familiar with the history of Israel-Palestinian conflict readily realizes that Israel's unwillingness to forego its "neo-colonial expansionist" elan, to invoke French author Maxime Rodinson's apt description of the logic of state-making in Israel, is the real impetus behind its military campaign in Gaza today.

Indeed, how history repeats itself. "The IDF is not working against the people of Gaza but against Hamas and the terrorists," write the IDF flyers in Arabic thrown at the helpless Gazan population trapped inside their homes with Israeli bombs exploding all around them. This is an old tactic, i.e., terrorizing the natives and giving them "fair warning" to leave their homes or face harm, harking back to Deir Yassin's massacre of Palestinian villagers in (April) 1948, setting off waves of refugees fleeing for their lives, subsequently many settling in what they mistakenly took for a safe haven -- in Gaza, not realizing that expelling them from the Stip was on Israel's agenda.

"That would be a barbaric operation," Moseh Dyan, Israel's Defense Minister in the Six Day 1967 war is reported to have said in reaction to the suggestion, by the then Labor Minister, Yigal Alon, to expelling the Palestinians from Gaza. 42 years later, in mounting a most savage military campaign that has hit hospitals, UN schools, hundreds of homes, and causing a growing wave of refugees, eliciting the strongest condemnation by the UN officials and human rights organizations, Israel's true intention in Gaza is increasingly clear: a politics of exterminism that uses the excuse of Hamas (and Islamist) menace to take its above-said logic of creation to the next level. Yet, in so doing, with Gazan population sealed in from all directions, Israel has yet to find a solution that back in 1967 led Dyan counsel against the occupation of Gaza: "Let others worry about them." But, then again, if there is no "them" and there is a Gaza without Gazans, that is, the ultimate solution written into the underlying logic of Israel’s totality of action against the Palestinians everywhere, then there is nothing to worry about, is there?

Kaveh L Afrasiabi is director and founder of the non-governmental organization Global Interfaith Peace, and has taught political science at Tehran University, Boston University, and Bentley College.