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<h1><b>The Myth of Israeli
Retaliation</b></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20099" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20099<br>
</a>December 31, 2008 By <b>Dan Freeman-Maloy</b> <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>With the Palestinian death toll from
Israel's latest air and naval assault on Gaza passed 350 and steadily
climbing (an estimated 1500 more have been wounded), diplomats, advocates
and journalists the world over appear prepared to continue facilitating
the massacre.<br><br>
Noting that "success or failure of the media effort can affect the
window which the IDF has to fulfill its operational objectives," the
Jerusalem Post
<a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230456523464&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">
on Tuesday</a> quoted former Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman expressing
his satisfaction on the diplomatic front. "We haven't seen dramatic
condemnations [from world leaders], only the expected and generic calls
for calm and ceasefire." (Though UN General Assembly president
Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann has been a laudable exception to this rule.)
While the Post attributed "this welcome window" to "a new
culture of coordination among the agencies responsible for managing
Israel's media message in times of crisis," it is far too charitable
to downplay the culpability of Western political classes by taking their
feigned ignorance at face value.<br><br>
Meanwhile, within the Israeli political system, the prospect of an
escalating slaughter of Palestinians is meeting scattered opposition,
mostly on logistical and diplomatic grounds. Still, the logic of the
Israeli elections cycle is pushing in the direction of greater violence,
and war planners are
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051025.html">reportedly</a>
incorporating into their calculations strong calls from the Hebrew press
for Israeli forces to abandon "restraint" and broaden
operations. Indeed, one needn't look further than the liberal Israeli
daily Ha'aretz to encounter crass appreciation of the violence. Yoel
Marcus
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051031.html">writes</a>
unapologetically that "I will not conceal my enjoyment of the flames
and smoke rising from Gaza that have poured from our television screens.
The time has finally come for their bellies to quiver and for them to
understand that there is a price from their bloody provocations against
Israel."<br><br>
"Their bloody provocations against Israel." Because once again,
Israel has been provoked, and is within its rights to retaliate.<br><br>
If it were not for its endless, mindless repetition, this nonsense
wouldn't deserve a moment's attention. But the farce of "Palestinian
provocation/Israeli retaliation" presently frames not only
mainstream news coverage, but also the official diplomatic statements
emanating from the United States, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and
Canada. Such historical amnesia cannot possibly be genuine.<br><br>
Under these circumstances, it is worth recalling some very basic
information about Gaza and the timeline of the conflict surrounding
it.<br><br>
Consider the description provided by the late Canadian Lt.-Gen. E.L.M.
Burns, chief of staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision
Organization from 1954-1956, who in this capacity was responsible for
monitoring Israel's oft-violated armistice arrangements with adjacent
countries. Burns, hardly a political activist or anti-colonial figure,
was a professional soldier appointed by a Canadian diplomat quite
friendly towards Israel, Lester B. Pearson. Published in 1962, his
account of his service includes the following description of
Gaza:<br><br>
"The Strip is about forty kilometres long, and averages eight and a
quarter kilometres in width; thus it contains about 330 square kilometres
[360 is currently the accepted figure]. There are about 310,000 Arab
residents in the Strip, 210,000 of them refugees from the southern parts
of Palestine now occupied by Israel. Thus there are about 1500 persons to
the square kilometre of arable soil -- about 3900 to the square
mile ... <br><br>
"One does not see people starving or dying of disease in the
streets; nevertheless the Gaza Strip resembles a vast concentration camp,
shut off by the sea, the border between Palestine and the Sinai near
Rafah, which the Egyptians will not permit them to cross, and the
Armistice Demarcation Line which they cross in peril of being shot by
Israelis or imprisoned by the Egyptians. They can look east and see wide
fields, once Arab land, cultivated extensively by a few Israelis, with a
chain of kibbutzim guarding the heights or the areas beyond. It is not
surprising that they look with hatred on those who have dispossessed
them."[1]<br><br>
Five years after this was published, in 1967, Israel invaded Gaza and
subjected it to direct military rule. Decades later, Hamas emerged, and
decades later still, fired some rockets at such cities as Ashkelon -- an
Israeli city which just incidentally had supplanted the Palestinian
community of Majdal, the last of whose inhabitants were ethnically
cleansed by Zionist forces in 1950, its former residents mostly driven
into Gaza. And now, "retaliating" against suggestions that
Hamas might use its limited military leverage to open crossings from the
Gaza Strip and achieve a broadened ceasefire including the West Bank,
Israel is hammering at Gaza from the skies and the sea with advanced
military equipment, while Israeli ground forces assemble amidst threats
of a broadened assault.<br><br>
For all their disigenuous diplomatic rhetoric, Israeli planners know full
well that the future they are offering Palestinians in Gaza -- one of
peaceful, acquiescent starvation -- is simply not viable. Indeed, the
point was made recently at the Weinberg Founders Conference (organized by
the AIPAC-affiliated Washington Institute for Near East Policy) by Maj.
Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, former head of the Strategic Planning Branch
and the Operations Branch of the IDF. Eiland
<a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=423">
observed</a> that "Gaza is an extremely small piece of land, 300
square kilometres, in which today there are 1.5 million people who live
there. In the year 2020 there will be 2.5 million people. Does anyone
really believe that those 2.5 million people who will live in Gaza in 12
years will live happily only because there is a peace agreement?"
Even taken alongside his proposed solution (enlarge Gaza into Egypt,
establish a regional security framework which would operate independent
of and over Palestinians, etc.), Eiland's comments point to the extremely
dangerous future facing Palestinians in Gaza.<br><br>
In the short term, it remains unclear for how long Israel will subject
this densely populated prison to air strikes and naval bombardment,
whether a massive ground invasion will materialize (or perhaps the
"localized cleansing operations" advocated by the
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051031.html">Marcus
article</a> cited above), and just how suffocating a ceasefire
arrangement Israel will receive international license to pursue. But the
idea that a shift from slaughter back to mere economic suffocation would
be a reasonable Israeli concession needs to be forcefully wiped away, or
the prospects for the coming period will be horrifically bleak.<br><br>
In the meantime, as the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (the remnant
from the ethnic cleansing of 1948) commit the heresy of asserting the
humanity of Israel's Palestinian victims, the politics of Israeli racism
are turning inward in accord with longstanding trends. In her speech to
the Knesset on Monday, Israeli foreign minister and Kadima candidate for
prime minister Tzipi Livni declared that the Gaza massacres were "a
test of the leadership of the Arab public in Israel. You are leading the
Arab population here on a thin rope. The thin line between what is
allowed and what is forbidden must not be crossed -- between legitimate
and illegitimate, between right and wrong. Each of you must choose a
side, and the choice is between Arab and Jew."[2] Likud leader
Benjamin Netanyahu
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051032.html">promised</a>
that if elected, he would know how to deal with "Hamas' supporters
from within -- with an iron fist," referring to demonstrations in
predominantly Arab communities against the ongoing assault. Avigdor
Lieberman, head of the far-right Israel Beiteinu and an avid advocate of
racism against Palestinian citizens,
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051011.html">called</a> for
Arab parliamentarians in Israel (who are voicing principled criticism of
the Gaza slaughter) to be "exiled," alleging they form part of
a "fifth column" responsible for "acts of treason at a
time of war".<br><br>
At this point, shifting blame to Hamas or other Palestinians for these
Israeli atrocities is not just a mistake, it is an alibi. And the fact
that it's a common one shouldn't make it any more tolerable.<br><br>
<br>
Notes:<br><br>
[1] E.L.M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin &
Company Limited, 1962. (pp. 69-70)<br>
[2] "Israeli foreign minister addresses Knesset, justifies Gaza
operation," December 30 2008, BBC Monitoring Middle East.<br><br>
<br><br>
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