Well, my timing really stinks. Not the first time that the story has majorly changed between deadline-time for my column, and the time of its appearing. (And probably, given the lead-times involved, not the last.)
You can see the column of mine that appeared today in the CSM by clicking here. I wrote it Sunday, did a last-over edit late Tues evening. Just after that, I guess, all heck broke loose.
Maybe I should have seen it coming? Already, Tuesday, IDF attack helicopters had killed five in Gaza (but not the prominent Hamas pol they were aiming for, Abdel-Aziz Rantissi). Actually, I had put a quick ref to that event in an edit I did Tues afternoon, but the copy-editor took it out for lack of space.
Then Wednesday came the big bus-bomb in Jerusalem…
16 Israelis killed, and around a hundred wounded. And within hours, the IDF choppers had struck again a number of times, killing seven Paalestinians in one attack in Gaza, others elsewhere. As the NYT summed it up in this story today, “In the last three days, Israel has carried out five helicopter strikes against Hamas militants traveling in cars in and around Gaza City. Altogether, more than 20 Palestinians have been killed and more than 100 wounded. While the wanted Hamas men have been among the casualties, most of the dead and wounded have been Palestinian civilians.”
My first reaction to all this news is to mourn, mourn, and mourn. Mourn not just for those killed, those wounded for life, and all the bereaved family members of these people. But also for the loss–yet again– of the hope for peace that dared to raise its little head above the parapet just a tad, last week.
There are so many ways of looking at this latest violence. The body count is the easy part. (Though as someone who has counted–and investigated in detail, smelled– plenty of bodies in her time, I can tell you it’s actually never easy.) But it’s how you frame the body count that’s difficult.
A first analytical move is to separate number of combatants from numbers of noncombatants.
Another thing you can do is look at the perps. This is a move the mainstream US press seldom makes, because it could get a little disturbing for them. On the one side, the perps are members of a regular army with a regular command structure– that is generously funded and supported by the US taxpayer. On the other side, the perps are notably NOT the Palestinian Authority; and notably NOT folks who are recipients of any of my tax dollars.
Oh, or you can look at declared “intentions”. (Intentions are big in Western political/criminal theory.) Let’s say the IDF did not intend to kill civilians. Except in the case of Rantissi, who is a political leader, not a military organizer, evidently they did intend to kill him. Sort of like when the PFLP killed Israel’s ultra-hawkish Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi last year…
But apart from Rantissi, the people the Israelis say they were “targeting” were Hamas military operatives… Let’s assume that claim is true. Two points are relelvant there then:
(1) How about the reckless disregard for “collateral” harm being inflicted on civilians? To a civilian getting killed or maimed for life it probably doesn’t feel a whole lot different if you were one of the “targets” of a suicide bomber, than if you were “collateral damage” to the gunner in an Apache helicopter. And then…
(2) How about the whole ethics of “targeting” people for extra-judicial killings even if they be people involved in violent acts? What on earth kind of a regime would act like that??
I know! The US regime! When it targeted some alleged Qaeda people in Yemen last year… But what the US has done in terms of extra-judicial killings pales in comparison with the one hundred-plus assassinations that the Israelis have carried out in the past couple of years. (And many, many of those actions– not just the recent ones– caused considerable “collateral” damage.)
It is all so tragic.
Imagine what the planning and undertaking of such actions has done to the sensibilities of those members of the Israeli security forces involved in those activities.
And then, look at how the execution of those executions has continued to fuel hatred and distrust among the Palestinians.
Need I add at this point that, at a very simple level, this resort to crude extrajudicial violence has not worked? It hasn’t worked in the past. It won’t work in the short-term future. And it certainly won’t “work”, in terms of helping bring peace and security to Israelis, over the longer term future either.
So why the heck do they do it?
They are not, by and large stupid people, the men who run Israel’s security-cum-political establishment. At some level, you have to just know that they know that their endless ratcheting-up of the level of physical and administrative violence that they wield against the Palestinians is not going to turn Israel into a land of milk and honey. But it’s as though they are on auto-pilot; Pavlovian automata capable only of one kind of response.
There was just a hint, a couple of weeks ago, that Sharon was prepared to take a step back and try something different. That was what seemed to be happening May 26, when he told the Likud leadership that Israel couldn’t maintain an occupation rule over “3.5 million” Palestinians for an indefinite future.
I think you also need to look at the broader dynamics of this. I have so far mentioned two parties slamming into each other in a way that has severely undermined the Roadmap and Bush’s diplomacy: Hamas and the Israeli rgeime. But actually there’s a third force, too, that is much more potent as an anti-Roadmap force than the Israeli regime. That’s the settlers themselves, who’ve been keeping up a steady drumbeat of opposition to the Roadmap, and nearly had conniptions when Sharon (a) made his comment about “occupation” and (b) sent the IDF in to “dismantle” a handful of tiny uninhabited settler “outposts”.
And then, on the Palestinian side, you have poor old Abu Mazen, an extremely decent man even if not, by general reckoning, any kind of political genius…
So anyway, I need to finish this up now. But here’s my thought. When will Prez Bush get serious about telling it exactly like it is for ALL the forces that are currently acting to undermine the Roadmap? That includes the non-governmental hardliners on the Palestinian side, AND their counterparts on the Israeli side– AND the present Government of Israel.
When will we hear him say that extra-judicial killings are quite unacceptable as the policy of any body, governmental or non-governmental? When will we hear him oppose extra-judicial killings just as vehemently as he opposes terrorism? When will we see him say that US aid to BOTH parties to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute should be tied IN EACH CASE to the performance of the relevant governing authority with respect to the peace process??
Sadly, I am not holding my breath.
My expectation at this point is that the guy will fold his tent and say, “I tried so hard!! But you just can’t deal with Hamas!!”
I am sad mainly, I guess, because I am really, really disappointed.
On the other hand, I do know, better than ever before , that violence is still not going to solve this problem. So it might be a while before a majority of Israelis and Palestinians see this, too. But it will happen. One day.
Don’t blame yourself for not foreseeing the future. No one can. It was perfectly reasonable to hope that the Aqaba meeting and Bush’s engagement might do some good, and it is premature to conclude that the road map is now dead. One of the problems with instant journalism — and perhaps with blogging — is the need to draw conclusions every day about events that are inherently murky and in flux.