Gaza war: The myth and reality

The war started on Dec 27 when the Israeli Air Force launched a massive attack on Gaza. Israel said it was responding to Hamas’s firing rockets into Israel. This upsurge in rocket fire, Israel charged, broke the June ceasefire or tahediyah.

Was Israel merely responding to the rocket fire and is it true that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefire? In reality, Israel is not just responding to the rocket fire. Israel wants this war. It has been planning it even before the June ceasefire as reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Dec 28. There are several reasons for the war.

First is the Israel general elections due Feb 10. Polls before the war show that the present coalition government between Kadima and Labour would lose.

Kadima headed by Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, would get about 20 seats, Labour headed by Ehud Barak, the defence minister, 11 seats, and Likud under Benyamin Netanyahu, the opposition leader, 34 seats. Note that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will step down after the elections because of several scandals affecting him.

After the air attacks, polls show that Livni would get 28 seats, Barak 16 seats and Netanyahu 28 seats. Thus the present coalition government would continue in power. However, if the ground attacks get bogged down in Gaza, they could still lose to Netanyahu. This was why Barak had been reluctant to send in the ground troops.

Going to war to win elections is a tried and tested method as Uri Avnery, the Israeli veteran politician and peace activist, said, writing in Counterpunch on Jan 2. Menachem Begin in 1981 during his election campaign attacked an Iraqi nuclear reactor. Similarly Shimon Peres during his election campaign in 1996 launched the Grapes of Wrath invasion of Lebanon. (But in this case the war went badly and he lost the elections.) Avnery claims, "Barak and Tzipi are now resorting to the same old trick."

'Act of revenge'

Second reason why Israel wants the war is that Olmert and the Israel Defenve Forces (IDF) want to redeem themselves after being blamed for the failure of the Lebanon war against Hezbollah in 2006.

Furthermore, Avi Shlaim, an Israeli professor of international relations at Oxford University, said that Hamas drove out the IDF from Gaza in 2005 ( Guardian , Jan 7). This is revenge for the IDF against Hamas. Thus both Olmert and the IDF were itching for war.

Third, the failed Lebanon war marred Israel's image as an invincible foe. It needs to reestablish that image. As reported by Salon.com on Jan 16, Olmert told the visiting delegation from AIPAC (American-Israel Public affairs Committee, the most important Israel lobby in the US), "Israel's aim (in attacking Gaza) was to provide a strong blow to the people of Gaza so that they would lose their appetite for shooting at Israel."

Israel's wars with its enemies, whether with Lebanon, Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, have always had the aim of invoking fear of massive retaliation. This can be seen in the massive air bombardment of Lebanon in 2006, and previously in 1982 and so on, or its invasion of Jenin in the West Bank.

Lastly, Israel wants the war because it does not want peace. This is at odds to Israel's repeated pronouncements that it wants peace but it has no ‘partners for peace’ on the Palestinian side. The fact is, when there is peace then negotiations are to follow for a final peace: the establishment of a Palestinian state. And the fact is, Israel does not want a Palestinian state.

To the world, Israel claims that it accepts the two-state solution and it is the PLO then and now Hamas that are opposed to it. Both the PLO and Hamas have now accepted the two-state solution. But as remarked by Sara Roy of Harvard University, an expert on Gaza's economy, "Israel has consistently rejected a viable two-state solution because it insists on maintaining control of the West Bank." ( Informed Comments: Global Affairs , Jan 4)

Looking at the platforms of the three main Israeli parties makes this clear. According to Prof Norman Finkelstein in his book, ' Beyond Chutzpah ', the Labour Party is only willing to accept "a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty." And with colonies (settlements) under its sovereignty. Likud is even clearer: "No Palestinian state will be established west of the Jordan River." i.e., West Bank and Gaza cannot be Palestine.

Kadima's position as published by the Jewish website Ynews states that, "Kadima further pledges to keep large settlement blocs and maintain the unity of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel." Maintaining the unity of Jerusalem within Israel goes against the international consensus that East Jerusalem belongs to Palestine which hopes to make it its capital.

Uri Avnery, the Israeli peace activist, makes Kadima's position even clearer. Kadima's then leader and current prime minister Olmert indicated in 2006 what his plan was for the West Bank to be implemented via the separation/annexation wall surrounding the West Bank: "It annexes 58 percent of the West Bank. What it leaves to the Palestinians (altogether, 11 percent of pre-1948 Palestine) is chopped up into isolated enclaves, cut off from the world."

This wall has been constructed in many places as shown in the United Nations 2007 map. In many places it cuts deep into the West Bank annexing it to Israel. This includes many Israeli settlements/colonies built in the West Bank. The wall has been ruled by the World Court as illegal.

Who broke the ceasefire?

So peace would lead to negotiations for a (viable) Palestinian state and thus it needs to be avoided by Israel. To avoid peace it creates situations where there is no peace, such as through assassination or liquidation and war. Some examples given by Norman Finkelstein of the Israeli approach is illustrative.

Meretz Party leader in 2002 declared, "Just when there is a period of calm, we liquidate." And from Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli education minister: "Sharon and his army minister, apparently fearing that they would have to return to the negotiating table, decided they have to do something and liquidated Raed Karmi (a local militia leader)."

Also, in 2005, after a lull in the hostilities, Ahmed Rantisi of Hamas was liquidated after talking too much about peace. I remember this case well because I remember the relatively long period of peace and Rantisi was pushing for peace and negotiations. I was thinking that Israel wouldn't like this and he could be liquidated. And sure enough, he was bombed along with civilian bystanders.

In the present war, Israel does not want to continue with the June ceasefire. It wants war for the reasons discussed above. It blames Hamas for breaking the ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel. But others dispute this. "It was not Hamas but IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid on Gaza on Nov 4 that killed six Hamas men," according to Avi Shlaim, the Oxford professor.

And Uri Avnery agrees: "And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the ceasefire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas."

And if the purpose of Israel going to war is to stop Hamas from firing its rocket as it claims, "Jerusalem could have stopped the rocket attacks long ago by lifting its siege of Gaza" according to Ephraim Halevy, a former head of Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service. ( The Independent , Dec 29)

And why did Hamas go to war? First of all it was responding to Israeli attacks on Nov 4 and 17 by firing rockets. And then having to respond to Israel’s bombardment on Dec 27. But if Hamas was to initiate a war it would have some strong reasons.

First, the June ceasefire was supposed to lead to Israel lifting economic and food blockade of Gaza. It did not happen. As Avnery said: "The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings…The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war."

Before the blockade, 500 to 600 truckloads were delivered daily to Gaza. During the ceasefire only 90. The Gazaans were, and are, starving. As Dov Weisglas, Arial Sharon's adviser said, we are putting Gazaans on a diet.

Gaza was not only not allowed to obtain imports but it was not allowed to export either. Thus the economy was totally ruined. Officially, nearly half of Gazaans are unemployed but unofficially more like 70 percent. Eighty percent of them still subsist on less than US$2 a day, that is, below the poverty line.

Third reason for Hamas to go to war is that Israel is still occupying Palestine (the West Bank) and controlling and blockading Gaza even though it has evacuated from Gaza. The evacuation was not to give freedom to Gaza as claimed by Israel but because the IDF lost to Hamas as Avi Shlaim said. And the evacuation allows Israel to concentrate, and to have more control, over the West Bank, which is more valuable than Gaza. In fact after evacuating 8,000 settlers from Gaza, 12,000 were settled in the West Bank the next year.

Large water acquifier

Why is Israel not allowing a Palestinian state? First of all, the West Bank has a large water aquifer that Israel wants, and in fact is now already using, i.e. stealing. In a land that is water deficient this large aquifer is highly prized.

Second, Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, believe that the biblical Israel (Eretz or Greater Israel) extends the whole of Palestine, as well as Jordan, Golan Heights, Sinai and southern Lebanon. The Orthodox Jews are very influentialin Israel and they will not allow a Palestinian state. They make up the bulk of the settlers on Palestinian land.

As Prof Finkelstein charged, Weizmann, the first president of Israel, and his prime minister Ben-Gurion "saw [the 1948] partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole Palestine..."

To prevent a viable Palestinian state, Israel puts in measures to make it hard to achieve an independent Palestine. Putting Jews-only colonies/settlements in West Bank (and previously Gaza) is to facilitate seizure of Palestine - by putting "facts on the ground." Colonies are connected by "Jews-only-roads" on Palestinian soil (which is apartheid).

To prevent Palestinians from getting into the colonies and to restrict travel between various Palestinian enclaves, checkpoints were established - increasing from about 500 in 2007 to 700 in 2008 causing much misery to Palestinians. At least 13 mothers have given birth at the checkpoints because they had to wait so long to be allowed through.

With some 268,000 settlers (2006 figures), it will be very difficult for Israel to allow a Palestinian state to be formed. If pulling out 8,000 settlers from Gaza in 2005 caused so much opposition and trouble, what more pulling out from the West Bank. The present Israeli policy of putting more settlers is to make sure it will be hard for future administrations to allow a viable Palestinian state. As Avi Shlaim said: "Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace." And, "Israel had a choice and it chose (Palestinian) land over peace."

Avi Shlaim ends his piece in The Guardian by saying: "This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria."

By these three criteria, the US too is a rogue state, not least for always supporting Israel’s wars.

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ROSLI OMAR is an associate professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Malaya. This article is based on his presentation at the Gaza War Forum held at the Bar Council Auditorium on Jan 9.