Amir Buhbut reported in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv on Tuesday that,
- the IDF and Military Police forces are training for the possibility that the IDF would stage an offensive on the entire Gaza Strip, including Gaza City and other Palestinian cities, and would be compelled to govern them for an extended period.
The translation comes from INN.
Buhbut quoted an un-named military source as saying that an officer has already been chosen to be the military governor of Gaza under this scenario.
And this:
- The contingency plan also calls for setting up detention facilities that will be able to hold thousands of Palestinian detainees who are suspected of terrorist activity. “In order to hold them for a lengthy period of time, and under acceptable conditions, the preparations must be made in a clear and careful way,” the military source added.
The Military Police intend to make use of an advanced biometric system that the IDF and Defense Ministry operated prior to Hamas’s rise to power in the Gaza Strip, in order to enable the entry of Palestinians to work in Israel, and to examine those who returned through the border terminals.
“The biometric documentation process began a long time ago, but it will soon be renewed in order to ease matter for the Palestinian population that reaches Israel along with monitoring the population registry, and if we are called upon to classify the detainees or the population that is not involved in terror, we will do so successfully,” explained a military official who is involved in the training series, in preparation for the possibility of a deterioration in the Gaza Strip.
The mass detention operation, the “monitoring” of the population registry, and the “classifying” of the detainees or the population in general are all highly coercive steps, reminiscent of some of the most abusive moments in world colonial history like the “Pipeline” system that the British deployed against Kenyan nationalists (including Pres. Obama’s own grandfather) back in the 1950s.
Or, reminiscent of the steps the U.S. military took in Iraq in general, or in Fallujah or Tel Afar in particular.
Of course, Israel has its own long record of running mass detention operations. Today it holds some 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners, many of them for long periods and without charge or trial. Those thus detained include more than tree dozen members of the Palestinian parliament elected (in an election held with U.S. and Israeli approval) in January 2006.
The many different detention operations Israel ran in Lebanon during its 22-year occupation of the country, 1978-2000, were also notable. The prison it ran along with its proxy forces in Khiam was particularly notorious for the tortures enacted therein. In addition, in the aftermath of Israel’s large-scale 1982 aggression in Lebanon, it established three major detention camps, including the notorious Ansar I camp, in which it held thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese detainees.
(None of those detention/torture operations in Lebanon helped Israel to consolidate its rule in Lebanon. Instead, they further fueled the will of the Lebanese to resist the occupation, which coalesced in particular into the establishment of Hizbullah, which had not even existed prior to 1982. Now, 28 years later, Hizbullah holds a respected position in Lebanon’s parliament and government. Next week marks the tenth anniversary of the last Israeli ground forces slinking out of Lebanon in some disarray, back in May 2000.)
I do have a question, regarding this latest report from Buhbut, as to both why the military/sources “leaked” this information to him, and why the report was “allowed” to pass through Israel’s all-pervasive military censorship system.
Was it leaked, in fact, as a way of trying to scare Gaza’s population and the elected Hamas government in Gaza into making some concessions in, for example, the on-again-off-again negotiations over a prisoner release? If so, I doubt if it will have much effect.
But it does seem that some people in the Israeli military are still so frustrated and angry over the fact that the assault they waged against Gaza 18 months ago that they’re trying to figure out how to plan and launch another version of that assault that will actually succeed in dismantling Hamas’s structures in the Strip completely.
Ain’t gonna happen. (See Lebanon, above.)
خرافة
وطعن سمحان وهو يستعرض مؤلفه الجديد (الطريق إلى يبوس) بما يسمى “النقاء اليهودي” ووصفه بأنه خرافة, وقال إن “أمهات بعض ملوكهم مؤابيات نسبة لمؤاب وعمونيات “عمون” وأن مواصفات هيكل سليمان الذي ينقبون عنه تحت أساسات المسجد الأقصى تطابق أحد هياكل الكلدانيين في العراق الذي أقامه الملك جوديا الورع للإله ننجرسو، أو انليل الفاضلة, الذي كان مقاما قبل هجرة سيدنا إبراهيم لفلسطين بحوالي 300 سنة.
وقال سمحان عضو اتحاد المؤرخين العرب للجزيرة نت إن اليهود “سرقوا أرضنا ولغتنا وأرقامنا وحتى أعيادنا, فعيد كيبوريم العيد الكبير وعيد الغفران وخميس البيض والغسل أعياد فلسطينية قديمة”.
http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/38D8F44D-178C-4C33-8376-3D3DBC2AC559.htm
They are still in love with Sharon’s conventional anti-insurgency success in 1967-1970, when it was a question of a few guerillas hiding small arms among the population. They do not realize that the dispersal of Kassam and Grad rockets among the population and nuclear-tipped SCUDS coming in from Iran on the “MV Rachel Corrie” and her ilk (it is only a matter of time) have changed the game entirely. An existential war is only a matter of time. Israel is still thinking about investigating, policing, “clearing” certain Gazans of terrorist involvement, allowing them access to Israel and allowing materials and people into Gaza. It is probably time to treat the Israel/Gaza border like the Israel/Lebanon and Israel/Syria one, a hostile moonscape into an Arab Mordor, traversed by soldiers and rockets alone.
Eurosabra’s comment is quite difficult to understand. Who are “they”?
Is “An existential war is only a matter of time.” his own opinion or not?
I finally decided that it was.
An apocalyptic vision in any case. Particularly when combined with fantasy remarks like “nuclear-tipped SCUDS coming in from Iran”.
It seems that the Masada path has been chosen by Eurosabra.
Is that unusual in Israel? I doubt it.
Since this crime will be conducted as a pseudo-military operation against unarmed civilians, one may confidently predict that it will be characterised by the usual level of unjustifiable vandalism, violence and cowardice which have become emblematic of the IOF’s modus operandi.
Masada is rational, the Palestinians are applauded by the world for choosing it all the time, in every suicide bombing. Perhaps I am a bit too confident, having survived three mini-apocalypses, two of which were suicide bombings, so I expect the apocalypse to take the form of an impotent, enraged Palestinian, Iranian, or Lebanese collective suicide, a macrocosm of what I faced in a cafe, a bus, and a university cafeteria. Certain people certainly love death as I love life.
For the rest, I have often commented on the fixation of the Israeli government with returning war in Gaza to the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and the “they” of the IDF are planning more of the same coercive population control, when what is perhaps more likely to develop is a modus moriendi as in Lebanon. Either more and deadlier missiles will fly across a no man’s land, or they will not. Israel’s recurrent Foucauldian trips to Gaza are a blast from the past.