In my earlier post, I was looking at the public debate among non-official Israelis over the course of the Gaza war. The more important debate, of course, is that inside the Israeli cabinet.
A Haaretz reporting team writes today that officials in the defense ministry, which is headed by Labour Party leader Ehud Barak favor ending the war via,
- a clear agreement with Hamas, even if it is not enshrined in a written document, [whereas] Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is considering another idea.
She reportedly believes that it might be better to aim for a situation in which there is no clearly set-out agreement, but Israel would make clear beforehand that it would respond forcefully to any firing from Gaza after hostilities ended.
[PM Ehud] Olmert, for his part, has conditioned any future truce between Israel and Hamas on the establishment of an international mechanism to monitor the cease-fire.
These are fascinating differences– if the Haaretz report is based on accurate reporting, as I assume is probably the case.
The cabinet contains, obviously, some non-trivial internal political tensions, given that Israelis have a general election February 10 in which Barak is leading a party that will be running against Kadima, the party led by Livni– as well as against Likud, which keeps up strong pressure on both Labour and Kadima from the rightwing/hardline direction.
Hence, I’m assuming, the resistance both Barak and Livni evince to the idea of any written-down agreement that would also involve Hamas signing onto it, directly or indirectly, and therefore involve some prior negotiations with Hamas.
This is starting to look more and more like Shimon Peres’s ill-fated war venture of 1996. He felt he needed to launch that war– which was against Hizbullah in Lebanon– in March of 1996, because he faced elections within a short number of weeks. He knew he was under a lot of pressure from Likud (then as now led by “Bibi” Netanyahu), and he felt he needed somehow to “burnish” his militaristic credentials to the generally bellophilic Israeli voting public.
That war was a disaster– for Peres; for Israel’s strategic project of using military coercion to get its way in Lebanon; and for the whole broader strategic “credibility” of Israel’s power of deterrence. Read the details, here.
Long story short: Israel’s public, by and large, just “loved” that war, especially at the beginning; but Peres and his commanders fatally overshot their military mark, couldn’t figure out how or when to end the war; the IDF ended up killing hundreds or thousands of Lebanese civilians, including in Qana; and Israel finally had to succumb to international pressure that forced them to enter into a negotiated ceasefire with Hizbullah that for the first time ever would be monitored by an international monitoring team– a facet of the agreement that helped assure the stability of the ceasefire but also considerably restricted Israel’s “freedom of action” inside Lebanon over the years that followed.
Oh, and Peres lost that election to Netanyahu, anyway. Not least because the Palestinian Israeli voters whom he could otherwise have fairly strongly relied upon were so disgusted by his war that they stayed home from the polls in droves.
(In Lebanon, four years later, a completely depleted and demoralized Israeli occupation force slunk out of the country altogether in June 2000, under a new plan for “unilateral”, i.e. un-negotiated, Israeli troop withdrawals that was hatched by– yes, none other than Ehud Barak. Hizbullah has increased its power and influence in Lebanon in the eight years since then…)
In the current war, Olmert’s reported position of favoring some form of international monitoring mechanism seems the most constructive to me. And remember, there is no way you could get any such mechanism into place without involving Hamas in the negotiation over its deployment and terms of reference. Also, as noted above, a third-party monitoring mechanism can help assure the stability that both citizenries so desperately need.
Olmert, of course, is not running as head of any of the parties in the election, so he perhaps feels he can afford for his position to be more “statesman-like” and less unredeemedly belligerent than those of either Livni or Barak? Also, he is the current prime minister, so he should be able to wield executive power over Barak if they came to a serious disagreement over how to end this war?
But no, I don’t think it would be that easy for him to do that…
Oops, maybe these three highly competitive people should have had all these discussions and figured out a joint plan on how to end the war before they got into it?
The internal politics within Israel’s cabinet may well end up making the termination of this conflict very complex and long-drawn-out indeed.
I must have missed something. Wasn’t Olmert accused of some monetary fraud somewhere? Or just plain old thievery? Why is he still in the good graces of the chosen ones.
When Hamas last had a cease fire with Israel (broken by Israel during an incursion into Gaza on 4th Nov), the agreement to have its borders open wasn’t met. So now, after killing over 400 and the destruction of government buildings, universities, police stations and mosques, Israel wants ANOTHER cease fire on its terms. A ship ‘Dignity’ carring aid from Cyprus to Gaza was rammed and almosr suck by Israeli gunboats.
The international community needs to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza have adequate food, fuel and medical supplies and that people are free to come and go.
Perhaps then, we can hope to see security for Israel and decent living for Palestinians in Gaza.
I see no reason to believe that any international agreement will include Hamas or that international monitors will report Israeli attacks.
The end to this is likely to be more unilateralist BS, a PR stunt to mark the end of the most violent part of the Israeli operations, but one which will not include a true Israeli cease fire as most of us understand the words. The blockade, targeted assassinations, and the occasional 50# bomb will not be reported as violations to the cease fire.
Anything Hamas does, however, will be sensationalized.
In other words, business as usual…
Mustafa Barghouti – Palestine’s Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood
Dr. Mustafa Baghouthi
Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative
Helena, I still feel that you are taking out the alleged dramatis personae as if they were dolls from a cupboard, and arranging them so as to re-enact a narrative and rehearse a message. Whereas this false narrative and message is what we should be subverting, destroying, and not re-creating.
Why is it again “fascinating” to ponder what these alleged insiders are thinking? As if they, from the vantage point of a cupboard, as it were, have some better view of the mayhem than we have, when even the murdering troops can have very little idea of what they are doing all together.
Why do you encourage us to believe Ha’aretz at this moment, when experience says that this is the last time to believe anything that Ha’aretz, or any other Israeli public newspaper has to say?
At least it must be possible, critically, to say that the sub-text of all the words and the actions is that the real actors are not known, will not be known, and therefore will never have to account for themselves. The colonisers never account to the colonised. That much is obvious. The colonisers also do not account to each other. That side of things must also be exposed, and not covered over with an imaginary soap-opera, courtesy of Ha’aretz.
Personalities count, of course they do. But there are also times when public personalities obscure, and this is one of them. I don’t believe any of what the Israeli and “Western” media are saying. I believe that the medium is the message and the medium is Israeli death and destruction, not Israeli political soap-opera.
Helena, I still feel that you are taking out the alleged dramatis personae as if they were dolls from a cupboard, and arranging them so as to re-enact a narrative and rehearse a message. Whereas this false narrative and message is what we should be subverting, destroying, and not re-creating.
Why is it again “fascinating” to ponder what these alleged insiders are thinking? As if they, from the vantage point of a cupboard, as it were, have some better view of the mayhem than we have, when even the murdering troops can have very little idea of what they are doing all together.
Why do you encourage us to believe Ha’aretz at this moment, when experience says that this is the last time to believe anything that Ha’aretz, or any other Israeli public newspaper has to say?
At least it must be possible, critically, to say that the sub-text of all the words and the actions is that the real actors are not known, will not be known, and therefore will never have to account for themselves. The colonisers never account to the colonised. That much is obvious. The colonisers also do not account to each other. That side of things must also be exposed, and not covered over with an imaginary soap-opera, courtesy of Ha’aretz.
Personalities count, of course they do. But there are also times when public personalities obscure, and this is one of them. I don’t believe any of what the Israeli and “Western” media are saying. I believe that the medium is the message and the medium is Israeli death and destruction, not Israeli political soap-opera.
In other words, the decision to cease, or to reduce the rate of killing, will be military, and arbitrary, like the decision to commence the killing. The very arbitrariness of these decisions is part of their message. Perhaps it is the whole message. It is the message of the torturer: You are helpless. We are going to do what we want with you. Without any reasons given. Without any reasons at all. We are going to kill you when we feel like it. Cover stories will be given, and endlessly repeated at international level, but we will all know that they are not true. The untrue cover stories are part of the helplessness. They are part of the torture.
(Is my previous post, to which this one refers, coming through? I don’t know yet. If not, I will have to post it yet again.)
“a true Israeli cease fire is one in which Israel is free to fire at will with impunity while the mildest complaint from the other side is deemed a violation.
The problem is, the only plan the Cabinet had is to win the elections. The Gaza op is totally irrelevant to their thinking. More here:
http://samsonblinded.org/blog/idf-operation-in-gaza-israeli-elections-show.htm
No country or international organization has done anything. Israel has learned and demonstrated that they face no restraints for whatever increasingly radical actions they may want to make.
While we may wonder about what they will accomplish or how they will make a final resolution of this war, one thing is certain.
Israel has won and they will be able to do whatever action they wish. They can commit war crime with no restraints and they will continue to take land and demolish Palestinian houses and olive groves with no reaction by any Arab country, the Arab League, the European Union, the UN, and certainly not from Obama or anyone else in the U.S.
I understand why many would be happy about electing an African American, but our current inaction and the President-elect’s disregard for the plight of a group of people driven from their homes and farms is among the most racist acts in modern history.
Bob Spencer
Laura Rozen has a bit more.
Ha’aretz:
….Israel has thus far refused to officially discuss a cease-fire, but in practice it is conducting an indirect and hesitant dialogue with Hamas. As of yet, however, there is no official mediator.
Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of Hamas’ political bureau, has been calling for a cease-fire for two days now. However, communications with the organization’s leadership in Gaza are hampered because all its leaders have gone underground for fear of Israeli assassination attempts, while Israel’s air strikes have disrupted the Strip’s communications networks. Paradoxically, the same measures that have hampered Hamas’ military response are also impeding efforts to end the fighting.
Israel will insist that any truce include a complete, long-term halt to the rocket fire from Gaza. In exchange, it will apparently agree to reopen the border crossings at some point, though no final decisions have been made. …
http://www.warandpiece.com/http://www.warandpiece.com/
Hi Helena,
Please keep writing, your coverage is important and I read you every day.
Eric
“They can commit war crime with no restraints and they will continue to take land and demolish Palestinian houses and olive groves with no reaction.”
Is there a word for “overkill” in Hebrew? There certainly seems to be none in international diplomatic lexicon, at least any that’s applicable to friends of USA.
Uri Avnery
“When a Jewish immigrant from France murdered an Arab taxi driver near Tel Aviv, he told interrogators that he viewed Arabs as “animals” and that as far as he was concerned, killing an Arab was no different than slaughtering an animal.
Israel’s former Chief Rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, viewed as a great Talmudic sage, reportedly petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombings of Palestinian population centers in Gaza, arguing that a ground invasion of the world’s most crowded spot would endanger Israeli soldiers.”
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand,” said Shmuel Elyahu, the son of Mordechai Elyahu, quoting his father. “And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.””
they will continue to take land and demolish Palestinian houses and olive groves
They Will continue to take land
It’s not “overkill”. This is free-base killing. There is no restraint of any kind. That is the point of it. This is post-humanist war. It is supposed to be irrational. It is anti-humanist war. It worse than a crime against, it is a war against humanity. We are all in the firing line.
“A few days after Christmas I came downstairs, put the television on and saw smoke pyres emanating from buildings and it shook me to the core,” she said.
“I was thinking, as a mother and as a human being, how was this going to be a solution to peace?
“It’s a question of human rights, human values that goes beyond Jewish, Muslim, nothing to do with any of that. There has to be a place ultimately where people come to the table.”
UK Singer Annie Lennox
first to to blame are our Arab governors.It’s a shame on them all without exception. Gaza became a cemetery and till now they couldn’t reach any decisive decision for puting an end to this bitter massacre.
Long life for resisstance.
Hafid
First – Thank you Helena for your postings. I read them every day.
I am skeptical of their ever being peace in the Middle East mainly because it has not happened since 1948. Sixty years!!!
When I ask my Palestinian friends about Israel’s right to exist- they never say yes. They still consider the land held by Israel to be theirs.
And of course when I ask my Israeli or Jewish friends – they say it is theirs.
This seems to be the main sticking point.
So I’m sorely skeptical.
If any Palestinians or Israelis care to relieve me of this skepticism, I would be much obliged.
Signed,
A Seeker
Norm, do you understand WHY your Palestinian friends cannot acknowledge Israel’s “right to exist”?
And what justification do your Israeli and Jewish friends offer for their claim that the land held by Israel is theirs?
Thanks Salah for posting the BBC report of London based “stars” … which included excerpts of Annie Lennox…. profound.
Hope I can find her full speech. What say the odds are that the US media won’t touch it?
I got a call from a once rather famous Christian singer — and a passionate supporter of Israel. She was bereft and heart-sick….
We talked for hours…. even outlined a book in the process. Among the questions she asked, how is blind support for this sort of “iron fist” collective punishment “blessing Israel?”
And
“How will the desert ever bloom if you soak it in innocent blood?”
Israeli citizens may be pounding their chests over this, but even her most ardent friends are belatedly starting to ask questions they never dreamed of before….
Norm, I’m sorry that I’m neither Palestinian nor Israeli, but I do have an answer for you. It is this: that the South Africa struggle took not 60 or 61, but nearly 350 years to turn around. This Palestine situation is not a contradiction of fats and the thins, or of Guelphs and the Ghibellines or of any other arbitrarily constructed pair. This is a colonial struggle. As soon as you can see that much, the way out of it is clear. I think you should abandon your skeptisism and instead study how others have dealt, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with all of the difficulties that are attached the situation in the Holy Land right now, including the question of land, which, by the way, cannot be thought of without people.