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No Happy Endings in Gaza |
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 by Haim Watzman, December 30, 2008 |
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I’ve got war refugees in my home today. I mean my daughter’s fellow second-year students from the animation program at Sapir College, located right next to Sderot. The campus is under fire and has shut its gates, so these budding cartoonists are unable to work on their projects or attend their classes. The studies are so intense, and the creative energy so high, that they all look like lost souls when they are denied their storyboards and cameras.
Their displacement is nothing compared to the suffering the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been enduring since Saturday, nor compared to that of the permanent residents of Sderot and other southern Israeli towns near Gaza, those who don’t have homes up north to flee to.
When my daughter and her classmates enrolled at Sapir, they knew they’d be studying under fire. But that advance knowledge doesn’t mean that they don’t long to study and draw in peace.
Israel’s attack on Gaza is unlikely to achieve that. Israelis should be wary by now of national leaders who promise that this war, finally, will end Palestinian (or Hezbollah, or whatever) attacks on Israel. It’s unlikely to bring an end to Hamas rule in Gaza, as Tom Segev noted in yesterday’s Ha’aretz. Gazans aren’t the prisoners of Hamas tyranny—this is the government they chose, and pressure and suffering simply reinforces their solidarity and their loyalty to their leadership. And as my South Jerusalem blogging partner Gershom Gorenberg noted yesterday, we shouldn’t necessarily want Hamas to fall. A chaotic, leaderless Gaza Strip will be even worse for Israel than one ruled by Islamic militants.
The current operation is the bloodiest one Israel has ever launched against its Palestinian neighbors. Inevitably, in a place as densely populated as the Gaza Strip is, the civilian death toll is high. That will increase Palestinian and Arab resentment against Israel and lead again to charges from foreign governments and human rights organizations that Israel is guilty of war crimes. The death and destruction that Israel is wreaking on Gaza, they have already begun to charge, is incommensurate with the damage to property and only occasional loss of life inflicted by the missiles and mortars that Palestinian fire from Gaza into Israel.
That’s true, but there’s a fundamental error in the logic. Israel does not need to wait for 300 of its civilians to be killed for it to launch an attack that kills 300 Palestinians. The six-month truce that ended this month brought a welcome respite to both sides, but it ended with Israel facing a better-armed enemy, one capable of doing far more damage. Improved Hamas missiles can reach as far as Be’ersheva and Ashdod, which are both major population centers and home to critical civilian and military infrastructure, including power plants and one of Israel’s major ports.
Israel needs to set back Hamas’s home-grown arms industry and to destroy the tunnels that have been used to import heavy arms into the Gaza Strip. Hamas also needs to understand that, under attack, Israel will be no less united and determined than the Palestinians are. A new modus vivendi needs to be created—one in which Israel permits food, medicine, and vital civilian supplies to enter Gaza in exchange for a Hamas commitment to stop using independent local militias as a proxy for attacking Israel. At the same time, both sides need to begin talking, directly or indirectly—and with the inclusion of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank—to create long-range understandings and to work towards a diplomatic accommodation.
This almost certainly means that Hamas will continue to fire missiles on Sderot from time to time, and the Israel will continue to attack targets in the Gaza Strip. Neither side will be prepared to give up its military options until and if a permanent settlement is achieved. A managed, low-level conflict is a realistic, achievable, and worthwhile goal. If Israel sets its war aims higher, it will be operating under the same kind of delusion that has in the past led it into costly and embarrassing military fiascos.
It’s easy for both the military and civilian leaderships to get carried away. What seems like success and crisp, efficient military execution in the first part of an operation leads to the temptation to set higher goals and pursue the operation further. Let’s not let that happen this time around. Happy endings are nice, but we’re not living in a cartoon.
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Herbert Kaine
While you whine about Israel's self defence, you pose no solutions. Hamas is religiously bound to conquer Palestine, while your faith in the zionist dream pales in comparison to the hamas faithful. Hamas will never agree to a long term cease fire because he knows that Israel will never be united, since Hamas enablers such as yourself will wring their hands. Next week Im sure you will write a column how the rude cartoonists that you are hosting are leaving the toilet seat up and thus outstaying their welcome
zbird
I'm not sure why you think the Hamas leadership would agree to the modus vivendi you propose--Hamas was losing support under the ceasefire and its political gains from the current offensive will inevitably be more enduring that its military losses. The more their population suffers, the stronger they become.
I don't really see any exit from this mess at all.
--Z
Fishman
"The death and destruction that Israel is wreaking on Gaza, they have already begun to charge, is incommensurate with the damage to property and only occasional loss of life inflicted by the missiles and mortars that Palestinian fire from Gaza into Israel."
You are correct! The IDF should fire crudely made, innaccurate, untargetable weaponry arbitrarily in the direction of Gaza. Russian-made GRAD missiles are a good choice, and Israel can patch up its relations with the Kremlin. Then things would be "commensurate".
Options for comparative tratment include:
the forcible relocation of all Israeli Arabs to Syria, Lebanon or Jordan with full confiscation of property as ws done with the Mizrahi Jews in 1948.
deliberate bombing of Palestinian civilian targets, mosques, Madrassas, discos, buses.
yonahred
I am in no position to assert what Israel should or could achieve in its current military response to the Hamas decision to end the truce.
But this does not mean that I can't recognize a falsehood when I see one.
"Gazans aren't the prisoners of Hamas tyranny- this is the government they chose."
False! The elected government which included a presidency of Fatah and a parliament with a Hamas majority was deposed in a coup in June of 2007 and replaced by the tyranny of Hamas without any constraints of democracy or constitution. Or did you sleep through June of 2007?
It is hard to take your recommendations seriously when you can't even get your facts straight.
arendth
I am an ardent supporter of Israel within the pre-1967 borders. I would commit American troops to secure her borders. Israel has, in my opinion, at most, a few years left ot make peace. Since there are over 4 million palestinians and 5.5 million jews and the average family size of the palestinians is twice the size of the Jewish family demographics is in their side. If the palestinians simply wait 15 years they will be the majority of the whole area. In the 1920's Ireland made a seperate peace with England even though northern ireland was not included. Israel cannot make peace with Hamas now. Israel can make peace with Fatah and show the whole world that it can make peace. Give Fatah the west bank and East jeruselem. Have peace with fatah! If need be continue war with Hamas. If a just peace is acheived between Israel and Fatah then perhaps the support for Hamas will fade, or at least Israel will be fighting a one front war. And no one in the world can say that Israel is an occupier. Occupation has not been good for Israel, being an occupier changes you and takes you where you do not want to go.
Make peace where you can, war where you must.
Harry Arendt
Shootingsparks
the zionist's goal is complete genocide or relocation of all the palestinians, and theft of the land, that they only do it incrementally, under the guise of extending the security area. The jews have created a nightmare apartheid situation in Gaza. I have read accounts in Jewish newspapers of Zionists having been arrested for launching rockets into Sderot, manufacturing the excuse for more Israeli theft.
Israel drops raytheon bunker busters on an unarmed, undefended densely populated city...there is no justification for this shit, it is only an excuse for more Zionist theft and opression....
Milk and Honey-ite
I work in a business that serves many Israeli Arabs and my child studies within a student population of almost 50% Israeli Arabs. I say from my own pertinent observations that there is no legitimate reason that Arabs in any district of Israel or its occupied territories need to align themselves to Hamas. Life is good for all of us who cooperate with one another and life can be just as good, if not better, for all who chose to follow the path of cooperation instead of derision. The choice of Arabs in Israel or near to Israel is not Hamas or anarchy. The choice need not involve Hamas at all. Many sound and legitimate diplomatic and democratic institutions are in place that allow a pro-life choice of one party or another. And I should add that the proof of the pro-life choice is a very lucrative economic base and very good standard of living. Hamas is only credible because of its militancy, it offers no good or lasting improvement of life to anyone, especially not to anyone living in Gaza.
amusedkitty
Just offer them all citizenship and it will all be over.
The trouble with cats is that they've got no tact. - P. G. Wodehouse