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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>June 26,
2007<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=5><b>Can the Arab World be Turned into Gaza's
Jailers?<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Divide and Rule,
Israeli-Style</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>
By JONATHAN COOK<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><i>Nazareth.<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>he boycott by Israel and the international
community of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces
with Hamas' recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy, one
of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. "Starving, drying
up and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do not weaken
political movements. On the contrary Reality has refuted the chorus of
experts and commentators who preached [on] behalf of the boycott policy.
This daft notion that it is possible to topple an elected government by
applying pressure on a helpless population suffered a complete
failure."<br><br>
But has Levy got it wrong? The faces of Israeli and American politicians,
including Ehud Olmert and George Bush, appear soot-free. On the contrary.
Over the past fortnight they have been looking and sounding even more
smug than usual.<br><br>
The problem with Levy's analysis is that it assumes that Israel and the
US wanted sanctions to bring about the fall of Hamas, either by giving
Fatah the upper hand so that it could deal a knockout blow to the
Palestinian government, or by inciting ordinary Palestinians to rise up
and demand that their earlier electoral decision be reversed and Fatah
reinstalled. In short, Levy, like most observers, assumes that the policy
was designed to enforce regime change.<br><br>
But what if that was not the point of the sanctions? And if so, what
goals were Israel and the US pursuing?<br><br>
The parallels between Iraq and Gaza may be instructive. After all, Iraq
is the West's only other recent experiment in imposing sanctions to
starve a nation. And we all know where it led: to an even deeper
entrenchment of Saddam Hussein's rule.<br><br>
True, the circumstances in Iraq and Gaza are different: most Iraqis
wanted Saddam out but had no way to effect change, while most Gazans
wanted Hamas in and made it happen by voting for them in last year's
elections.
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745325556/counterpunchmaga">
<img src="http://www.counterpunch.org/../bloodreligion.jpg" alt="[]"></a>
Nevertheless, it may be that the US and Israel drew a different lesson
from the sanctions experience in Iraq.<br><br>
Whether intended or not, sanctions proved a very effective tool for
destroying the internal bonds that held Iraqi society together.
Destitution and hunger are powerful incentives to turn on one's neighbour
as well as one's enemy. A society where resources -- food, medicines,
water and electricity -- are in short supply is also a society where
everyone looks out for himself. It is a society that, with a little
prompting, can easily be made to tear itself apart.<br><br>
And that is precisely what the Americans began to engineer after their
"shock and awe' invasion of 2003. Contrary to previous US
interventions abroad, Saddam was not toppled and replaced with another
strongman -- one more to the West's liking. Instead of regime change, we
were given regime overthrow. Or as Daniel Pipes, one of the
neoconservative ideologues of the attack on Iraq, expressed it, the goal
was "limited to destroying tyranny, not sponsoring its replacement
Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its
burden."<br><br>
In place of Saddam, the Americans created a safe haven known as the Green
Zone from which its occupation regime could loosely police the country
and oversee the theft of Iraq's oil, while also sitting back and watching
a sectarian civil war between the Sunni and Shia populations spiral out
of control and decimate the Iraqi population.<br><br>
What did Washington hope to achieve? Pipes offers a clue: "When
Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims [that is, US
occupation forces and their allies] are less likely to be hurt. Civil war
in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic
one." In other words, enabling a civil war in Iraq was far
preferable to allowing Iraqis to unite and mount an effective resistance
to the US occupation. After all, Iraqi deaths -- at least 650,000 of
them, according to the last realistic count -- are as good as worthless,
while US soldiers' lives cost votes back home.<br><br>
For the neocon cabal behind the Iraq invasion, civil war was seen to have
two beneficial outcomes.<br><br>
First, it eroded the solidarity of ordinary Iraqis, depleting their
energies and making them less likely to join or support the resistance to
the occupation. The insurgency has remained a terrible irritation to US
forces but not the fatal blow it might have been were the Sunni and Shia
to fight side by side. As a result, the theft of Iraq's resources has
been made easier.<br><br>
And second, in the longer term, civil war is making inevitable a slow
process of communal partition and ethnic cleansing. Four million Iraqis
are reported to have been forced either to leave the country or flee
their homes. Iraq is being broken up into small ethnic and religious
fiefdoms that will be easier to manage and manipulate.<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>Is this the model
for Gaza now and the West Bank later?<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>It is worth recalling that neither
Israel nor the US pushed for an easing of the sanctions on the
Palestinian Authority after the national unity government of Hamas and
Fatah was formed earlier this year. In fact, the US and Israel could
barely conceal their panic at the development. The moment the Mecca
agreement was signed, reports of US efforts to train and arm Fatah forces
loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas became a newspaper staple.<br><br>
The cumulative effect of US support for Fatah, as well as Israel's
continuing arrests of Hamas legislators in the West Bank, was to strain
already tense relations between Hamas and Fatah to breaking point. When
Hamas learnt that Abbas' security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, with US
encouragement, was preparing to carry out a coup against them in Gaza,
they got the first shot in.<br><br>
Did Fatah really believe it could pull off a coup in Gaza, given the
evident weakness of its forces there, or was the rumour little more than
American and Israeli spin, designed to undermine Hamas' faith in Fatah
and doom the unity government? Were Abbas and Dahlan really hoping to
topple Hamas, or were they the useful idiots needed by the US and Israel?
These are questions that may have to be settled by the
historians.<br><br>
But with the fingerprints of Elliott Abrams, one of the more durable
neocons in the Bush administration, to be found all over this episode, we
can surmise that what Washington and Israel are intending for the
Palestinians will have strong echoes of what has unfolded in
Iraq.<br><br>
By engineering the destruction of the unity government, Israel and the US
have ensured that there is no danger of a new Palestinian consensus
emerging, one that might have cornered Israel into peace talks. A unity
government might have found a formula offering Israel:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>* limited recognition inside the pre-1967 borders in return for
recognition of a Palestinian state and the territorial integrity of the
West Bank and Gaza;<br><br>
<dd>* a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel ending its campaign of
constant violence and violations of Palestinian sovereignty;<br><br>
<dd>* and a commitment to honour past agreements in return for Israel's
abiding by UN resolutions and accepting a just solution for the
Palestinian refugees.<br><br>
</dl>After decades of Israeli bad faith, and the growing rancour between
Fatah and Hamas, the chances of them finding common ground on which to
make such an offer, it must be admitted, would have been slight. But now
they are non-existent.<br><br>
That is exactly how Israel wants it, because it has no interest in
meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians or in a final agreement. It
wants only to impose solutions that suit Israel's interests, which are
securing the maximum amount of land for an exclusive Jewish state and
leaving the Palestinians so weak and divided that they will never be able
to mount a serious challenge to Israel's dictates.<br><br>
Instead, Hamas' dismal authority over the prison camp called Gaza and
Fatah's bastard governance of the ghettoes called the West Bank offer a
model more satisfying for Israel and the US -- and one not unlike Iraq. A
sort of sheriff's divide and rule in the Wild West.<br><br>
Just as in Iraq, Israel and the US have made sure that no Palestinian
strongman arises to replace Yasser Arafat. Just as in Iraq, they are
encouraging civil war as an alternative to resistance to occupation, as
Palestine's resources -- land, not oil -- are stolen. Just as in Iraq,
they are causing a permanent and irreversible partition, in this case
between the West Bank and Gaza, to create more easily managed territorial
ghettoes. And just as in Iraq, the likely reaction is an even greater
extremism from the Palestinians that will undermine their cause in the
eyes of the international community.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Where will this lead the
Palestinians next?<br><br>
</b></font>Israel is already pulling the strings of Fatah with a new
adeptness since the latter's humiliation in Gaza. Abbas is currently
basking in Israeli munificence for his rogue West Bank regime, including
the decision to release a substantial chunk of the $700 million tax
monies owed to the Palestinians (including those of Gaza, of course) and
withheld for years by Israel. The price, according to the Israeli media,
was a commitment from Abbas not to contemplate re-entering a unity
government with Hamas.<br><br>
The goal will be to increase the strains between Hamas and Fatah to
breaking point in the West Bank, but ensure that Fatah wins the
confrontation there. Fatah is already militarily stronger and with
generous patronage from Israel and the US -- including arms and training,
and possibly the return fo the Badr Brigade currently holed up in Jordan
-- it should be able to rout Hamas. The difference in status between Gaza
and the West Bank that has been long desired by Israel will be
complete.<br><br>
The Palestinian people have already been carved up into a multitude of
constituencies. There are the Palestinians under occupation, those living
as second-class citizens of Israel, those allowed to remain
"residents" of Jerusalem, and those dispersed to camps across
the Middle East. Even within these groups, there are a host of
sub-identities: refugees and non-refugees; refugees included as citizens
in their host state and those excluded; occupied Palestinians living
under the control of the Palestinian Authority and those under Israel's
military government; and so on.<br><br>
Now, Israel has entrenched maybe the most significant division of all:
the absolute and irreversible separation of Gaza and the West Bank. What
applies to one will no longer be true for the other. Each will be a
separate case; their fates will no longer be tied. One will be, as
Israelis like to call it, Hamastan, and other Fatahland, with separate
governments and different treatment from Israel and the international
community.<br><br>
The reasons why Israel prefers this arrangement are manifold.<br><br>
First, Gaza can now be written off by the international community as a
basket case. The Israeli media is currently awash with patronising
commentary from the political and security establishments about how to
help avoid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the possibility of
air drops of aid over the Gaza "security fence" -- as though
Gaza were Pakistan after an earthquake. From past experience, and the
current menacing sounds from Israel's new Defence Minister, Ehud Barak,
those food packages will quickly turn into bombs if Gaza does not keep
quiet.<br><br>
As Israeli and US officials have been phrasing it, there is a new
"clarity" in the situation. In a Hamastan, Gaza's militants and
civilians can be targeted by Israel with little discrimination and no
outcry from the international community. Israel will hope that message
from Gaza will not be lost on West Bank Palestinians as they decide who
to give their support to, Fatah or Hamas.<br><br>
Second, at their meeting last week Olmert and Bush revived talk of
Palestinian statehood. According to Olmert, Bush "wants to realize,
while he is in office, the dream of creating a Palestinian state".
Both are keen to make quick progress, a sure sign of mischief in the
making. Certainly, they know they are now under no pressure to create the
single viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza once promised
by President Bush. An embattled Abbas will not be calling for the
inclusion of Gaza in his ghetto-fiefdom.<br><br>
Third, the separation of Gaza from the West Bank may be used to inject
new life into Olmert's shopworn convergence plan -- if he can dress it up
new clothes. Convergence, which required a very limited withdrawal from
those areas of the West Bank heavily populated with Palestinians while
Israel annexed most of its illegal colonies and kept the Jordan Valley,
was officially ditched last summer after Israel's humiliation by
Hizbullah.<br><br>
Why seek to revive convergence? Because it is the key to Israel securing
the expanded Jewish fortress state that is its only sure protection from
the rapid demographic growth of the Palestinians, soon to outnumber Jews
in the Holy Land, and Israel's fears that it may then be compared to
apartheid South Africa.<br><br>
If the occupation continues unchanged, Israel's security establishment
has long been warning, the Palestinians will eventually wake up to the
only practical response: to dissolve the Palestinian Authority, Israel's
clever ruse to make the Palestinian leadership responsible for
suppressing Palestinian resistance to the occupation, thereby forcing
Israel to pick up the bill for the occupation rather than Europe. The
next stage would be an anti-apartheid struggle for one state in historic
Palestine.<br><br>
For this reason, demographic separation from the Palestinians has been
the logic of every major Israeli policy initiative since -- and including
-- Oslo. Convergence requires no loss of Israel's control over
Palestinian lives, ensured through the all but finished grid of walls,
settlements, bypass roads and checkpoints, only a repackaging of their
occupation as statehood.<br><br>
The biggest objection in Israel to Olmert's plan -- as well as to the
related Gaza disengagement -- was the concern that, once the army had
unilaterally withdrawn from the Palestinian ghettoes, the Palestinians
would be free to launch terror attacks, including sending rockets out of
their prisons into Israel. Most Israelis, of course, never consider the
role of the occupation in prompting such attacks.<br><br>
But Olmert may believe he has found a way to silence his domestic
critics. For the first time he seems genuinely keen to get his Arab
neighbours involved in the establishment of a Palestinian
"state". As he headed off to the Sharm el-Sheikh summit with
Egypt, Jordan and Abbas this week, Olmert said he wanted to "jointly
work to create the platform that may lead to a new beginning between us
and the Palestinians".<br><br>
Did he mean partnership? A source in the Prime Minister's Office
explained to the Jerusalem Post</i> why the three nations and Abbas were
meeting. "These are the four parties directly impacted by what is
happening right now, and what is needed is a different level of
cooperation between them." Another spokesman bewailed the failure so
far to get the Saudis on board.<br><br>
This appears to mark a sea change in Israeli thinking. Until now Tel Aviv
has regarded the Palestinians as a domestic problem -- after all, they
are sitting on land that rightfully, at least if the Bible is to be
believed, belongs to the Jews. Any attempt at internationalising the
conflict has therefore been strenuously resisted.<br><br>
But now the Israeli Prime Minister's Office is talking openly about
getting the Arab world more directly involved, not only in its usual role
as a mediator with the Palestinians, nor even in simply securing the
borders against smuggling, but also in policing the territories. Israel
hopes that Egypt, in particular, is as concerned as Tel Aviv by the
emergence of a Hamastan on its borders, and may be enticed to use the
same repressive policies against Gaza's Islamists as it does against its
own.<br><br>
Similarly, Olmert's chief political rival, Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud,
has mentioned not only Egyptian involvement in Gaza but even a Jordanian
military presence in the West Bank. The "moderate" Arab
regimes, as Washington likes to call them, are being seen as the key to
developing new ideas about Palestinian "autonomy" and regional
"confederation". As long as Israel has a quisling in the West
Bank and a beyond-the-pale government in Gaza, it may believe it can
corner the Arab world into backing such a "peace
plan".<br><br>
What will it mean in practice? Possibly, as Zvi Barel of Haaretz
speculates, we will see the emergence of half a dozen Palestinian
governments in charge of the ghettoes of Gaza, Ramallah, Jenin, Jericho,
and Hebron. Each may be encouraged to compete for patronage and aid from
the "moderate" Arab regimes but on condition that Israel and
the US are satisfied with these Palestinian governments'
performance.<br><br>
In other words, Israel looks as if it is dusting off yet another
blueprint for how to manage the Palestinians and their irritating
obsession with sovereignty. Last time, under Oslo, the Palestinians were
put in charge of policing the occupation on Israel's behalf. This time,
as the Palestinians are sealed into their separate prisons masquerading
as a state, Israel may believe that it can find a new jailer for the
Palestinians -- the Arab world.<br><br>
Jonathan Cook</b> is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.
He is the author of the forthcoming
"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745325556/counterpunchmaga">
Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic
State</a>" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United
States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is
<a href="http://www.jkcook.net/">www.jkcook.net<br><br>
<br><br>
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