Category: Gaza08-09

Egypt: Free Philip Rizk!

I tried to call Philip Rizk in Cairo today, but he didn’t answer.
Philip is a courageous and principled young man, of joint Egyptian and German nationality, who has done some tremendous work supporting civil-society organizations in Gaza, including by working there for two years under the auspices of Church of England emissary Canon Andrew White.
For the past few years, both when he was in Egypt and when he was in Gaza (as very recently), Philip contributed to his great blog Tabula Gaza.
Two nights ago, he was picked up by the police here in Egypt while returning to Cairo after taking part in Gaza-solidarity activities in Qalyoubia, north of the city.
I met Philip and his equally dedicated sister Jeanette when I was last in Egypt two years ago, and was strongly impressed to hear about the programs he was involved in in Gaza, under Canon White’s auspices.
That Reuters report says this:

    Rizk and a group of activists had been holding a march in the rural areas north of Cairo in solidarity with Palestinians… according to Salma Said, an activist who was with Rizk when he was detained.
    A spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said he had received no word of the detention.
    Said said police had detained their vehicle for several hours and then said they wanted to talk with Rizk. They put him in a vehicle with no licence plates and sped off. Other policemen then blocked the activists’ vehicle to prevent them from following.
    “We don’t know where he is, and there is no formal charge,” Rizk’s sister [Jeanette] said. She added that the German embassy had been notified and were attempting to locate him.

I don’t know how much aid the German government gives the Egyptian government. But I imagine it’s a lot. Egypt is the top recipient of US aid after Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Why should the governments of any democracies give aid to a government that treats nonviolent social activists like Philip or thousands of others also detained in Egypt without any hint of due process as harshly as this?
I urge all JWN readers to do what they can to help free Philip Rizk.
Also, read the recent blog-posts on Tabula Gaza in which he writes about his most recent visit(s) to Gaza, over the past couple of weeks.

Zahar in Egypt; timing of ceasefire?

Gaza-based Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, who was named Foreign Minister in the all-Hamas government in summer 2007, today emerged from his “secure location” in Gaza to cross into Egypt. He was at the head of a four-person team heading to Cairo to participate in the indirect (Egypt-mediated) negotiations with Israel over the terms for a Gaza-Israel ceasefire.
Zahhar and the Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh are thought to be at the head of the list for the Israeli government’s completely illegal campaign of assassinations of political leaders.
The timing for Zahhar’s emergence and current diplomatic mission surprised me a little. It’s hard to think that Hamas or anyone else believes that this close to an Israeli election, any Israeli government would be willing to commit to a firm– i.e. written and publicly witnessed– agreement with Hamas. And getting close to an agreement is what would seem to be indicated by Zahhar going to take part in the Cairo talks, in person.
On the other hand, I’m sure he has plenty of other reasons to go to Cairo. One may be just to “show his face” in public. Inside Egypt, he could certainly do that– provided he has, as I assume he has, good guarantees of his safety from the Egyptian security organs. Inside Gaza, it would presumably be a lot more risky for him to appear in public, given the widespread presence of Israeli drones and other surveillance and assassination platforms. (Also, if the Israelis attack him in Egypt, and he’s under Egyptian protection, it would cause a massive international incident between Israel and Egypt. In Gaza, tragically, the Palestinians have no recognized state authority to protect them.)
There might be a good reason for Zahhar to show his face in public, given that last week some of the Israeli hasbara organs were spreading rumors he was badly injured. (But I note that, wily and courageous as he is as a politician and strategist, as far as I can figure he doesn’t have anything like the same strong symbolic value as a charismatic leader and captivating orator that, for example, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has, in Lebanon.)
But Zahhar also presumably has a lot of other movement business to conduct in Egypt and with people and networks in other countries that are not under such intense Israeli control as Gaza is.
Anyway, let’s hope that a serious ceasefire agreement can be concluded very soon. As Bob Pastor noted in the session I heard him speak at last week, it needs to have the following elements:

    1. It should be written down in a text that is made public.
    2. The agreed text should be signed by authoritative representatives of both parties (Israel and Hamas); and their signatures and the authenticity of the text should be attested to by one or more trusted third parties.
    3. It must mandate the cessation of all hostile acts by both sides. (The definition of what constitutes a “hostile act” by Israel may well need to be spelled out. For example, shouldn’t Israeli overflights of the Strip of all kinds be forbidden? In normal inter-state agreements, it would be enough to say that each sides must respect the territorial integrity of the other. This is not a normal inter-state agreement.)
    4. It must allow for the lifting of the siege of Gaza. (Pastor noted, btw, that the pre-2006 rate of goods crossing into Gaza was 750 trucks/day. That is the rate that should be restored. Since the siege was imposed in January 2006, the rate has always been far, far lower than that.)
    5. The agreement must have a third-party monitoring and verification mechanism. Pastor said this should be provided by the Quartet. Personally I’m not sure either that the Quartet is the best candidate for this, or, indeed, that it really has any continuing relevance at all… I saw a report that mentioned a possibility that Turkey and France might jointly help monitor a re-opened Rafah crossing (that is, the crossing for people, not goods, between Gaza and Egypt.) Maybe their role could be expanded into a broader ceasefire-monitoring role?

On monitoring and verification, it’s important to note that the Israelis always hate such agreements, which they see (quite rightly) as hobbling the extensive freedom they like to retain to act just as they want, militarily, against their neighbors.
I note, too, that in Lebanon Hizbullah won a crucial achievement in 1996 when, after the brutal election-related war that PM (now President) Shimon Peres launched against them that year, he was forced to sign a ceasefire agreement that included, for the first time ever, an international monitoring mechanism. That monitoring group was made up of representatives of the governments of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, France, and the US.
The 1996 ceasefire was considerably stronger, and better for Lebanon, than the one that had preceded it, which was concluded at the end of Israel’s 1993 war of choice against Lebanon. The 1993 agreement contained no provision for monitoring, and thus gave Israel considerable leeway to launch the 1996 war.
(Oh, did I mention that Peres lost the election in 1996, anyway? He did so mainly because the Palestinian Israelis stayed home from the voting booths in droves, in protest at the war. Thy might do the same this time around. But it would be less decisive, because Labour is nowhere near sitting close to victory.)
Anyway, after the conclusion of the 1996 agreement, Israel could no longer play around militarily in Lebanon as freely as it had before, because now the French and the Americans were watching their every move there. That situation formed an essential backdrop to the decision that Ehud Barak made when, as newly elected Labour PM three years later, he decided to simply pull Israel’s troops out of Lebanon completely, and unilaterally (i.e., without negotiations.)
Of course, back in he late 1990s, there was also a fairly strong peace– or anyway, pro-withdrawal– movement inside Israel. It was spearheaded by the “Four Mothers” group, founded by mothers of IDF soldiers serving in the dangerous theater that Lebanon was for the IDF in those years.
Now, there are many different factors in the political and strategic equation between Israel and Hamas. But it would still be really good for the people of Gaza if Hamas and Israel could conclude a durable ceasefire that ends up working.
And yes, it would be fine, too, if the PA/Fateh could be brought into the arrangement. Probably an advantage, as the Palestinians could then hope to resurrect the final peace negotiations much more quickly, as well.

At IPS: ‘Mideast: A truce too big to fail?’

My latest news analysis for IPS, “Mideast, a truce too big to fail?”, went up on their website yesterday.
Doing these weekly pieces for them is an interesting experience so far. It provides a kind of running record of the “big” developments each week, as I see them, in Middle East war-and-peace issues. I think I need to find a way to aggregate them, and am trying to figure out the best way to do that. For now, maybe just paste each one as it comes out into either a special blog or a special category on this blog?
I truly don’t have time to do this right now. If anyone wants to volunteer to help, could you contact me? Thanks!

Gaza ceasefire-consolidation talks update

I’ve been busy recently: I’ve been in New York with editors and (separately) the new grandbaby… Also, preparing for my next reporting trip to the Middle East, which starts this afternoon as I head off from freezing Washington DC to Cairo.
Cairo is the place where negotiations have been continuing over the past two weeks to consolidate the still extremely shaky, in-parallel, and un-negotiated brace of reciprocal ceasefires across the Israel-Gaza border that went into operation January 18.
A negotiated, and therefore mutually agreed, ceasefire is absolutely essential if the military actions that have already marked the period since January 18 are to be prevented from escalating, at any moment’s notice, into yet another full-blown war between Israel and Gaza. This negotiation need not be direct. In fact, both sides at this point probably prefer strongly not to deal directly with the other. But it does– as Jimmy Carter’s point-man Bob Pastor pointed out at the excellent panel discussion of his that I attended last week– need to be written down, and to have some form of third party authentication, oversight, or even more preferably still a continuing, third-party verification and monitoring mechanism. (Evident parallels there with the development of Israel-Hizbullah relations that took place between 1993 and 1996. Btw, the 1996 war was also launched by an Israeli PM as a part of his general election campaign… )
Bob Pastor said that Hamas and the Israeli government had notably disagreed, thoughout last summer and fall, about what exactly Israel had promised, regarding lifting the siege on Gaza, in the Egyptian-negotiated, six-month-long, mutual ceasefire (tahdi’eh) the two sides reached on June 18 last year; and that’s why, if the new ceasefire is to have any durability t needs to be written down, signed, and counter-signed. It also makes elementary sense that, in a situation of such grave mutual distrust, any agreement needs to be written down, signed by authorized representatives of both parties– and those signatures and texts authenticated by a third party whose third-party role is trusted and authorized by both of them.
Several Hamas people have expressed grave distrust in the role that Egypt has been playing as mediator/intermediary. But apparently Egypt– and in particular, Egyptian intel boss Omar Suleiman– is still trusted “enough” by both parties that he is once again the main intermediary/channel between them.
That’s one reason why it’ll be interesting for me to be in Cairo. From there I’ll proceed to Amman, Israel, and Palestine and perhaps also Syria, depending on a number of things.
As far as I understand the Hamas-Israel negotiation, Hamas has been adamant that any renewed ceasefire agreement must include solid provisions for lifting the siege that Israel has imposed on Gaza ever since Hamas won the January 2006 elections. The present Israeli government, for its part, is facing tough elections next Tuesday. The war on Gaza did not go nearly as well as Olmert, Livni, and Barak had hoped. The intermittent descent of Gaza-launched rockets onto southern Israel that has occurred– along with many Israeli military actions against Gaza– even since January 18, reminds Israeli voters that the Olmert government has not “solved” the problems with Gaza that the war was, they had promised, intended to solve. Pressure from (and support for) the rightwing Israeli parties has intensified…
Under these circumstances, it’s unclear to me whether Olmert even has any motivation at all to conclude– far less announce!– any ceasefire agreement with Hamas before next Tuesday. Probably the only thing that just might make such an agreement acceptable to Israeli voters, in their current state of great anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Hamas frenzy, would be if it included the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli POW who has been held by unidentified militant groups in Gaza since June 2006, and by Hamas since it took control of the Strip in June 2007.
Hamas wants to keep the prisoner-exchange negotiations separate from the Gaza-ceasefire (and siege-lifting) negotiations. More than two dozen elected Hamas negotiators from the West Bank– including the speaker of the Palestinian parliament– have been held by Israel, without charges, as apparent bargaining chips for Shalit. Israel also holds a further 11,000-plus Palestinian detainees in its extensive complex of prisons for political prisoners. Most of these are being held without trial. Many of them are Hamas supporters and activists– though they come from all branches of the Palestinian national-liberation movement.
The rightwing Likud party is now clearly expected to win in Tuesday’s elections– and parties even further to the right like Avigdor Lieberman’s “Israel Beitenu” party have been moving up in the polls. Israel Beitenu now outranks Ehud Barak’s Labor Party as #3 in the opinion polls. (This marks yet another phase in the long decline of Israel’s once completely dominant Labour Party, which I have chronicled since 1998.)
… In other news, George Mitchell returned to DC a couple of days ago after completing his first “fact-finding” tour of the Middle East in connection with his role as the special envoy appointed jointly by Pres. Obama and Sec. Hillary Clinton. He reported back to both Clinton and Obama– in the White House’s Oval Office, yesterday. Tuesday, Clinton had earlier jumped the gun in terms of public announcements, by declaring that Hamas would still have to meet the three tired old, and very exclusionary “requirements” before it could be included in any US peacemaking. (Commitments not to use armed force and to recognize Palestinian rights have notably not been reciprocally required from the Government of Israel.)
Time has been running out for Obama to say something principled and clear about our country’s own strong interest in and commitment to a fair and durable Israeli-Palestinian peace, in time for that statement to resonate effectively with Israeli voters before they go to the polls Tuesday.
That’s a pity. I guess Obama has had a few other things to deal with, like the still-imploding national economy and the tanking of his nomination of old buddy Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services. But he really does need to keep his eye on this Israeli-Palestinian ball; and I hope that george Mitchell is dedicated to helping him do that.
This matter certainly can’t be left to the uncertain capabilities and understanding of Hillary Clinton.
Well, that’s it for now… Watch this space for continuing field updates as I travel. (Also, given how clunky the hosting service has become here at JWN, I’m considering shifting over to WordPress sometime soon. No change for JWN readers, though Don and Scott, as occasional authors, will need to get the new info when I do that. But until I can get that switch organized, I’ll probably be doing a lot of Delicious-ing of online resources I find helpful– check them out on the JWN sidebar. I’ll also be Twittering as the spirit moves me. So check that out, too. I’ve figured how to do that from my cellphone… I think.)

Obama: What if this happened to your girls?

When he was on the campaign trail, Pres. Obama gave Israel nearly “carte blanche” to act as it wanted against Gaza by saying– in southern Israel– that if his daughters were threatened by rocket attack in the same way that kids in southern Israel were, then he couldn’t imagine what he would do in response.
So I hope he reads this piece by Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise in the NYT today, about what happened to Sabah Abu Halima’s family in Atatra, Gaza during the recent war:

    The phosphorus smoke bomb punched through the roof in exactly the spot where much of the family had taken refuge — the upstairs hall away from the windows.
    The bomb, which international weapons experts identified as phosphorus by its fragments, was intended to mask troop movements outside. Instead it breathed its storm of fire and smoke into Sabah Abu Halima’s hallway, releasing flaming chemicals that clung to her husband, baby girl and three other small children, burning them to death.

But that’s not all. Later on,

    Omar Abu Halima and his two teenage cousins tried to take the burned body of his baby sister and two other living but badly burned girls to the hospital on that Sunday.
    The boys were taking the girls and six others on a tractor, when, according to several accounts from villagers, Israeli soldiers told them to stop. According to their accounts, they got down, put their hands up, and suddenly rounds were fired, killing two teenage boys: Matar Abu Halima, 18, and Muhamed Hekmet, 17.
    An Israeli military spokeswoman said that soldiers had reported that the two were armed and firing. Villagers strongly deny that. The tractor that villagers say was carrying the group is riddled with 36 bullet holes.
    The villagers were forced to abandon the bodies of the teenage boys and the baby, and when rescue workers arrived 11 days later, the baby’s body had been eaten by dogs, her legs two white bones, captured in a gruesome image on a relative’s cellphone. The badly burned girls and others on the tractor had fled to safety.
    Matar’s mother, Nabila Abu Halima, said she had been shot through the arm when she tried to move toward her son. Her left arm bears a round scar. Her son came back to her in pieces, his body crushed under tank treads.

Bronner and Tavernise’s piece is tragic. (Though the NYT gave it an inappropriate headline, I think.)
It’s also notable because they make a point of noting how many Palestinians were killed by Israel’s security forces in the 39 months between the IDF’s supposed withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, and the outbreak of the hostilities last December: about 1,275.
Israeli hasbaristas have argued throughout this time that the siege the Israeli government has maintained around Gaza has been the main (or sometimes, the only) Israeli “response” to the rockets launched against Hamas and other militants in Gaza over this time. I have always argued that this was never a simple situation of “rockets versus siege” but that during this period, in addition to the siege, the Israelis maintained very lethal military ops against Gaza, as well.
Also, few if any of Israel’s actions against Gaza have been undertaken solely “in response to” Palestinian rocketings. There has always been a cycle of violence; and very frequently (including, most notably, last December 27) Israel has been the one to initiate a new round or significantly escalate an existing round. The number of Israelis killed by the Gazans’ for the most part extremely primitive, home-made bottle rockets has been very low. Certainly, far fewer than 100 killed over that same time. (Though Bronner and Tavernise somehow omit to mention the number. I believe it’s available at B’tselem’s site.)
But anyway, main point of post: Pres. Obama, what would you do if your family members got treated the same way Sabah Abu Halima’s family got treated? I am assuming, of course, that you and everyone else agrees that a Palestinian life is every bit as valuable as an Israeli life…

ICRC head Kellenberger (and Rabbani) on the Gaza crisis

Our friend Christiane writes from Lausanne, Switzerland, that she has found– and translated for us– an important interview about Gaza conducted with Jakob Kellenberger, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). You can find her great translation (very lightly edited by me), here. Big thanks for your work there, Christiane!
I assume that most JWN readers realize that the ICRC holds a very special position among international non-governmental organizations because, since the very beginning of the codification of International Humanitaran Law (IHL, aka the ‘Laws of War’) in the 1850s, all the governments that have signed onto these important treaties– the ‘Hague’ series, the ‘Geneva’ series, etc– have thereby agreed that the Geneva-based ICRC will be the depositary and, if you like, the trustee for the whole process. No other NGO occupies anything like such an authoritative role in interpreting and guarding the integrity of IHL.
The ICRC and the whole emerging body of IHL importantly predated both the establishment of the League of Nations (which occurred after World war I) and that of the UN in 1945. Thus, even before there were global inter-governmental organizations of that sort there was IHL, and there was the ICRC in a position to act as continuing guarantor of the important protections IHL provides to those who are victims of war. Granted, its performance has often in the past been flawed– most notably, during many of the vicious counter-insurgency campaigns that European powers waged against national independence movements over the first 120 years of the ICRC’s existence, and its performance during the European Holocaust against the Jewish, Roma, gays, and handicapped populations of Nazi-ruled countries. But over time the ICRC has worked much more fully to underline and work for the equal concern for all human persons that is, after all, one of its foundational values.
Kellenberger was the only head of any human-rights or humanitarian organization who made a point of going to visit Gaza in person at the earliest time he could, to assess the consequences of the Israeli assault on the Strip’s population.
Anyway, here is the link to the original French version of the Kellenberger interview, which was published in the Swiss daily 24 heures, yesterday.
Christiane writes, ” To sum it up, Kellenberger is issuing the same call as Helena concerning Gaza.” That is, I’m assuming, the point he makes about the urgency of the need for a political solution of the problem faced by Gazans (and all other Palestinians.) Though there certainly is currently a physical-needs humanitarian crisis in Gaza of the highest order, as I’ve noted before the crisis is not only, and indeed not even centrally, one of the basic human needs of Gaza’s 1.5 million people. It is quintessentially a political crisis.
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has been deliberately caused and exacerbated by the intentional policies of siege, encirclement, and physical destruction that successive Israeli governments have pursued toward its civilian population; and it could be ended quickly and successfully if those policies were abandoned. Gaza is not the drought-torn Sahel. Its population is well educated and– until the latest Israeli assault– it had a pretty good infrastructure capable of supporting rapid socio-economic reconstruction and development. Those assets could all be rapidly reactivated if Israel would only lift the siege and agree to reasonable and sustainable terms to stabilize the very fragile parallel-ceasefire situation created on January 18.
On a related note, I have just read the sharp criticism that Mouin Rabbani (formerly with the Crisis Group) has just written, of the way that Human Rights Watch has dealt with Israel-related concerns over the years, including during the Gaza crisis.
Rabbani raises some of the same criticisms that I’ve raised about HRW in the past, though his analysis of the organization’s one-sidedness is much deeper than anything I have ever written.
Human Rights Watch does, without a doubt, do a lot of good work in the Middle East. For that reason I recently accepted an invitation from the organization to stay on their Middle East advisory committee for a further year. However, many of the criticisms that Rabbani raises are well documented, and serious. His analysis of the tentativeness of the language with which HRW raises the “possibility” of Israeli infractions of IHL, versus the often strident tone with which it denounces possible infractions by Arab actors, is particularly thought-provoking; and my advice to my colleagues and friends at HRW is that they engage very seriously with these criticisms if they want their work to be widely respected throughout the whole Middle East.

ElBaradei shows the way: Boycott the BBC!

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has cancelled two interviews he was scheduled to give to the BBC, over the Beeb’s refusal to air the charity appeal for Gaza.
Excellent decision, Mr. ElBaradei. How many other decisionmakers and “news sources” around the world will now follow suit?
Lots, I hope.
I’m just trying to figure out if news consumers should also join this boycott. I think so.

BBC: Land of pure lunacy!

You totally have to hand it to the BBC that they have an advanced case of the Monty Pythons… Today, they have a lengthy piece of analysis on their website titled “Who will rebuild Gaza?”
The bolded intro para says this:

    Even as aid agencies struggle to meet the immediate needs of those left injured, homeless and traumatised by the Israeli operation in Gaza, concerns are growing that reconstruction efforts could become bogged down in a complex political tangle.

What, BBC? Aid to Gaza getting “bogged down in politics”?
Do you guys have no sense of self-awareness, no sense of shame at all??
The BBC Board of Governors has been busy for many days now blocking all attempts by a coalition of blue-chip UK charities to air a short fundraising video for Gaza on the Beeb’s government-provided airwaves.
This latest piece of analysis makes no mention of the BBC’s shameful role.

Note to a young Israeli friend

One notable thing that happened at our panel discussion on Gaza, at Georgetown University Thursday night, was that a young Israeli student directed a question at me asking why I had said that “all Israelis are stupid”– and also asserting that her country had had “no choice” but to launch the war on Gaza.
I replied that I had never said “all Israelis” are stupid– though I had certainly pointed out the counter-productive nature, from every point of view, of the decision her country’s government had made to launch the most recent war; and I’d pointed out too, with some sadness, that that decision seemed to have received high levels of support from Jewish Israelis.
But certainly not from all of them– as I had also pointed out in my main presentation.
What I’d referred to specifically was this extremely insightful (and courageous) article, published on December 31 in the WaPo by a Jewish Israeli social-work lecturer called Julia Chaitin. Chaitin, by the way, lives in southern Israel so has a deep understanding of the concerns and fears of the people who live there.
Her whole article is worth reading and re-reading. She wrote:

    This war is wrong. It is wrong because it cannot achieve its manifest goals — long-term “normal” life for the residents of the Negev region. The war is morally wrong because most of the victims are Palestinian and Israeli civilians whose only “crime” is that they live in Negev or Gaza. This war is wrong because it is not heading toward a viable solution of the conflict but is instead creating more hatred and greater determination on the part of both peoples to harm one another. It is wrong because it is leading to stronger feelings that we have nothing to lose by striking further, with greater force. This war is wrong because, even before the last smoke rises from the rubble and the last ambulance carries the dead and wounded to hospitals, our leaders will find themselves signing a new agreement for a cease-fire.
    And so this is an unnecessary, cruel and cynical war — a war that could have been avoided if our leaders had shown courage during the months of the cease-fire to truly work toward creating better lives for people whose only crime is that they live in the south.
    Since the Israeli air force began bombing Gaza, it has been almost impossible to speak openly against the war. It is difficult to find public forums that welcome a call for a new cease-fire and for alternative solutions to the conflict — ones that do not rely on military strength or a siege of Gaza. When people are in the midst of war, they are not open to voices of peace; they speak (and scream) out of fear and demand retribution for the harms they have suffered. When people are in the midst of war, they forget that they can harness higher cognitive abilities, their reason and logic. Instead, they are driven by the hot structures of their brains, which lead them to respond with fear and anger in ways that are objective threats to our healthy survival. When people are in the midst of war, voices calling for restraint, dialogue and negotiations fall on deaf ears, if their expression is allowed at all…

This analysis is so true. I have seen it in many, many theaters of conflict… That people who normally have full command of their capacities for both rational thought and human empathy suddenly lose those faculties when they’re thrown into a situation of great– and often officially stoked– mass fearfulness.
Hey, we’ve certainly seen that happen in the USA in the past eight years… (Thank goodness that for now, at least, we seem to have escaped from the worst of that mass fear here, though many of its effects still linger.)
Anyway, thinking a bit more about Julia Chaitin’s marvelous article these past couple of days, I have also been thinking about the generally sad state of the Israeli peace movement.
Remember back in 1982 when, after the revelations of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, some 600,000 Israelis took to the streets in utter disgust, and just about forced the downfall of the government? That was fully one-fifth of the country’s entire population at the time!
Where is the Israeli peace movement today– at a time when it’s been revealed that roughly the same number of civilians as died in Sabra and Shatila were killed directly by the IDF itself in Gaza? (Whereas in S&S, Sharon’s IDF had subcontracted the killing work to the Lebanese Falangist militias.)
The general weakness of Israel’s peace movement is a cause for real sadness. It also means the politics of the peacemaking that’s so badly needed now will be much more complex than it might otherwise have been.
However, the fact that there is no broad peace movement of the kind there was from, roughly, 1978 through 1998 means that the Jewish Israeli voices we do hear speaking out clearly in favor of ending the occupation(s), concluding fair and durable peace agreements, and building a culture of mutual respect with Israel’s neighbors are more valuable than ever…
Voices like those of Julia Chaitin… or Naomi Chazan (most recently, here and here), or Uri Avnery and his colleagues at Gush Shalom…
And as for sad old argument that Israel “had no choice” but to launch the war against Gaza? There are numerous other things it could have done to defuse tensions along its border with the Strip, other than launch the “shock and awe” war of December 27- January 18.
The Israeli government could have:

    1. Placed considerably more value on the tahdi’eh (ceasefire) it concluded– through the Egyptian intermediary– back last June, and sought to fulfill the terms of that ceasefire and then use it as a basis for building an even more robust agreement with Hamas and the rest of the Palestinians. It didn’t do that. It did nothing to lift the siege, as the Hamas negotiators would happen as the ceasefire progressed. That ceasefire had a six-month initial term, and for the first four and half months it was pretty well observed by both sides. But then, on Nov 4– election day in the US– the Israeli government authorized a large-scale IDF operation against Gaza that directly contravened the terms of the ceasefire and set in motion a new cycle of violence that, though it went through ups and downs, set the stage for the failure of the ceasefire-extension negotiation.
    2. Even though the ceasefire-extension negotiations at the end of November and the beginning of December were held in a situation of cross-border tensions, still, the Israeli government could have pushed for a successful extension and strengthening of the ceasefire. True, the Hamas negotiators made clear they would only do so if the Israelis agreed to lift the siege of Gaza. So why didn’t the Israeli government make strenuous efforts to explore ways for that to happen– even including ways to verify that the re-opened borders would not allow a significant rearming by Hamas? Those ways exist. They are being actively explored by the diplomats right now. So why– as both Chaitin and Chazan write– did Israel have to go through this ghastly and damaging war in order to arrive at a diplomatic place it could have reached in mid-December without launching that war at all?
    3. In general, if someone is doing something that really bothers or harms you, there are always scores of ways that intelligent people can use to try to prevent them from taking those harmful acts. So maybe Israel didn’t want to talk to Hamas directly? It could talk through the Egyptians or the Turks, or numerous other potential intermediaries. So Hamas had its own conditions, too? Why not? They are people, after all, and could not be expected simply to lie down under the harsh siege forever without demanding that it be lifted. (Also, a blockade/siege is, strctly speaking itself an act of war.) Besides, having a Gaza population that is busily engaged in economic development and through that development acquires an increasing socio-economic stake that it would be reluctant to put at risk in a renewal of hostilities with Israel surely makes a lot more sense, for Israelis, than having 1.5 million neighbors in Gaza who feel a deep sense of grievance and also feel they have little or nothing to lose in any new round of hostilities?

Well, now at least we have a president in Washington who has called on his supporters to “lay aside childish things”… and hopefully childish attitudes of selfishness, self-referentiality, and racism, as well.
So let’s hope that the six million Jewish Israelis can now join this new global movement and grow up a bit… grow out of thinking that their needs always have to come first and that they can behave as they darn’ well please in wrecking their neighbors’ lives.
I’m just not sure that this can happen fast enough to change the outcome of the election in Israel February 10. When, as I’ve noted before, Israel’s opposition Likud Party now looks very well positioned to pull of a significant victory.
(Which is, as I’ve also noted, yet another way in which the present Israeli government’s decision to go to war looks totally stupid and counter-productive. Oh my. War and fear really do have the most amazing capacity to addle people’s brains… )

American weapons, Palestinian suffering, and the needs of peace

The United States is very far from a “neutral party” in the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. As I’ve noted before, the US government not only gives Israel essential political support (e.g. by blocking resolutions at the security Council); it also provides most of the high-tech arms the Israelis use against their opponents including during the assault on Gaza.
This recent short report by Bill Hartung and Frida Berrigan shows that,

    Israel’s intervention in the Gaza Strip has been fueled largely by U.S.-supplied weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars:
    · During the Bush administration (from FY2002 through FY2009) Israel has received over $21 billion in U.S. security assistance, including $19 billion in direct military aid under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program.
    · The bulk of Israel’s current arsenal is composed of equipment supplied under U.S. assistance programs. For example, Israel has 226 U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter and attack jets, over 700 M-60 tanks, 6,000 armored personnel carriers, and scores of transport planes, attack helicopters, utility and training aircraft, bombs, and tactical missiles of all kinds.
    · During 2008 alone, the United States made over $22 billion in arms sales offers to Israel, including a proposed deal for as many as 75 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters worth up to $15.2 billion; nine C-130J-30 aircraft worth up to $1.9 billion; 4 Littoral combat ships and related equipment worth as much as $1.9 billion; and up to $1.3 billion worth of gasoline and jet aviation fuel.

Hartung and Berrigan have tracked US arms transfers to Israel for some years now. Go to that link above– and to the onward links from there– to learn more details, including about which US military-industrial corporations won those contracts from the Pentagon, which helped yet further to boost their shareholders’ profits.
I was interested to be reminded how many F-16s Israel has in its air force. 226! What on earth are they all for? Where on earth do they even park that many large hulks of metal?
The F-16s and Israel’s Apache helicopters performed many deadly deeds in the recent war, including destroying a university, several schools, and the seat of the Palestinians’ elected legislature. I also learned Thursday that the headquarters of the truly excellent Gaza Community Mental Health Program was badly damaged in the shelling. (More details here.)
Someone– I forget where– quoted a Hamas supporter as saying if the Israelis really are as terrified of the Palestinians’ arsenal of extremely primitive rockets as they claim to be, then he would be happy to trade that entire arsenal for just one of Israel’s F-16s. Well, the IOF would still have 225 other F-16s left, of course. But you get the general drift of the argument…
Meantime, we US citizens need to start holding our own government– administration and congress– accountable for the absolutely vital, multi-pronged support it has given to Israel’s war on Gaza.
We should call for a total ban on all arms supplies to the Middle East pending the conclusion of final-status peace agreements between Israel and its three neighboring nations of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Those peace agreements will certainly include provisions for longer-term follow-on arms control and security regimes. But we need to start implementing this arms embargo now. Perhaps it will help persuade Israelis that they need to solve their problems at the negotiating table, not by sowing death and destruction among their neighbors.
But if the US goes on arming one side to the conflict while pretending to be a “neutral mediator” in the peacemaking?? That idea is simply laughable.