Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe

[PhillyActivists]

Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe

January 04, 2009 By Richard Falk
Source: Huffington Post

For eighteen months the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza 
experienced a punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a 
variety of traumatizing challenges to the normalcy of 
daily life. A flicker of hope emerged some six months ago 
when an Egyptian arranged truce produced an effective 
ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the 
cross-border periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell 
harmlessly on nearby Israeli territory, and undoubtedly 
caused anxiety in the border town of Sderot. During the 
ceasefire the Hamas leadership in Gaza repeatedly offered 
to extend the truce, even proposing a ten-year period and 
claimed a receptivity to a political solution based on 
acceptance of Israel's 1967 borders. Israel ignored these 
diplomatic initiatives, and failed to carry out its side 
of the ceasefire agreement that involved some easing of 
the blockade that had been restricting the entry to Gaza 
of food, medicine, and fuel to a trickle.

Israel also refused exit permits to students with foreign 
fellowship awards and to Gazan journalists and respected 
NGO representatives. At the same time, it made it 
increasingly difficult for journalists to enter, and I was 
myself expelled from Israel a couple of weeks ago when I 
tried to enter to carry out my UN job of monitoring 
respect for human rights in occupied Palestine, that is, 
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza. 
Clearly, prior to the current crisis, Israel used its 
authority to prevent credible observers from giving 
accurate and truthful accounts of the dire humanitarian 
situation that had been already documented as producing 
severe declines in the physical condition and mental 
health of the Gazan population, especially noting 
malnutrition among children and the absence of treatment 
facilities for those suffering from a variety of diseases. 
The Israeli attacks were directed against a society 
already in grave condition after a blockade maintained 
during the prior 18 months.

As always in relation to the underlying conflict, some 
facts bearing on this latest crisis are murky and 
contested, although the American public in particular gets 
99% of its information filtered through an exceedingly 
pro-Israeli media lens. Hamas is blamed for the breakdown 
of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, 
and by the alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. 
But the reality is more clouded. There was no substantial 
rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel 
launched an attack last November 4th directed at what it 
claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing 
several Palestinians. It was at this point that rocket 
fire from Gaza intensified. Also, it was Hamas that on 
numerous public occasions called for extending the truce, 
with its calls never acknowledged, much less acted upon, 
by Israeli officialdom. Beyond this, attributing all the 
rockets to Hamas is not convincing either. A variety of 
independent militia groups operate in Gaza, some such as 
the Fatah-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade are anti-Hamas, 
and may even be sending rockets to provoke or justify 
Israeli retaliation. It is well confirmed that when 
US-supported Fatah controlled Gaza's governing structure 
it was unable to stop rocket attacks despite a concerted 
effort to do so.

What this background suggests strongly is that Israel 
launched its devastating attacks, starting on December 27, 
not simply to stop the rockets or in retaliation, but also 
for a series of unacknowledged reasons. It was evident for 
several weeks prior to the Israeli attacks that the 
Israeli military and political leaders were preparing the 
public for large-scale military operations against the 
Hamas. The timing of the attacks seemed prompted by a 
series of considerations: most of all, the interest of 
political contenders, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak and 
the Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in demonstrating their 
toughness prior to national elections scheduled for 
February, but now possibly postponed until military 
operations cease. Such Israeli shows of force have been a 
feature of past Israeli election campaigns, and on this 
occasion especially, the current government was being 
successfully challenged by Israel's notoriously militarist 
politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, for its supposed failures 
to uphold security. Reinforcing these electoral 
motivations was the little concealed pressure from the 
Israeli military commanders to seize the opportunity in 
Gaza to erase the memories of their failure to destroy 
Hezbollah in the devastating Lebanon War of 2006 that both 
tarnished Israel's reputation as a military power and led 
to widespread international condemnation of Israel for the 
heavy bombardment of undefended Lebanese villages, 
disproportionate force, and extensive use of cluster bombs 
against heavily populated areas.

Respected and conservative Israeli commentators go 
further. For instance, the prominent historian, Benny 
Morris writing in the New York Times a few days ago, 
relates the campaign in Gaza to a deeper set of 
forebodings in Israel that he compares to the dark mood of 
the public that preceded the 1967 War when Israelis felt 
deeply threatened by Arab mobilizations on their borders. 
Morris insists that despite Israeli prosperity of recent 
years, and relative security, several factors have led 
Israel to act boldly in Gaza: the perceived continuing 
refusal of the Arab world to accept the existence of 
Israel as an established reality; the inflammatory threats 
voiced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together with Iran's 
supposed push to acquire nuclear weapons, the fading 
memory of the Holocaust combined with growing sympathy in 
the West with the Palestinian plight, and the 
radicalization of political movements on Israel's borders 
in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas. In effect, Morris 
argues that Israel is trying via the crushing of Hamas in 
Gaza to send a wider message to the region that it will 
stop at nothing to uphold its claims of sovereignty and 
security.

There are two conclusions that emerge: the people of Gaza 
are being severely victimized for reasons remote from the 
rockets and border security concerns, but seemingly to 
improve election prospects of current leaders now facing 
defeat, and to warn others in the region that Israel will 
use overwhelming force whenever its interests are at 
stake.

That such a human catastrophe can happen with minimal 
outside interference also shows the weakness of 
international law and the United Nations, as well as the 
geopolitical priorities of the important players. The 
passive support of the United States government for 
whatever Israel does is again the critical factor, as it 
was in 2006 when it launched its aggressive war against 
Lebanon. What is less evident is that the main Arab 
neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, with their 
extreme hostility toward Hamas that is viewed as backed by 
Iran, their main regional rival, were also willing to 
stand aside while Gaza was being so brutally attacked, 
with some Arab diplomats even blaming the attacks on 
Palestinian disunity or on the refusal of Hamas to accept 
the leadership of Mamoud Abbas, President of the 
Palestinian Authority.

The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its 
inhumane worst: producing what Israel itself calls a 
'total war' against an essentially defenseless society 
that lacks any defensive military capability whatsoever 
and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by 
F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means 
is that the flagrant violation of international 
humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, 
is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the 
bodies pile up. It additionally means that the UN is once 
more revealed to be impotent when its main members deprive 
it of the political will to protect a people subject to 
unlawful uses of force on a large scale. Finally, this 
means that the public can shriek and march all over the 
world, but that the killing will go on as if nothing is 
happening. The picture being painted day by day in Gaza is 
one that begs for renewed commitment to international law 
and the authority of the UN Charter, starting here in the 
United States, especially with a new leadership that 
promised its citizens change, including a less militarist 
approach to diplomatic leadership.

Note:  Falk was appointed to six-year term as a United 
Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human 
rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.