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January 03, 2009

What is Israel's real objective?

The New York Times asks the question: Is the Real Target Hamas Rule?. It's a good question.

...while it may sound decisive to speak of taking Hamas out of power, almost no one familiar with Gaza and Palestinian politics considers it realistic. Hamas legislators won a democratic majority in elections four years ago, and the group has 15,000 to 20,000 men under arms...

And while there are plenty of Gazans who would prefer Fatah, they seem hardly organized or strong enough to become the new rulers, even with the help of former colleagues in exile in Ramallah who say, anyway, that they would never be willing to ride into Gaza on the back of an Israeli tank. In fact, the longer Israel pounds Gaza, the weaker Fatah is likely to become because it will be seen as collaborating.

Indeed, Fatah leader and Palestinian President Abbas, who has NOT been lobbing missles and mortars into Israel, is condemning this invasion of Gaza.

Not only are there practical reasons why the rhetoric coming out of Israel right now makes little sense... politically, it makes little sense historically either.

Military crackdowns on the Palestinians hasn't ever accomplished the proffered goals. Not once. Ever. Each and every time whatever Palestinian entity was in Israel's crosshairs has come out of it stronger than before. The Pakistan Observer takes a crack at explaining why while tying what's going on in Gaza with the slow-motion failure of our military adventure in Afghanistan.

Both America and Israel will have to learn the hard way that this is wrong because in both cases we are facing not just a fight with some terrorists as many would like us to believe, but what is going on is a full-fledged popular uprising of people who fight for their soil, their survival and their future. And because of that they will not give in. The story of Gaza is the same as that of Algeria fighting the French colonist some years ago: you can’t have it both ways. If you want democracy and swear on elections you have to be ready to accept the outcome whatever it may be. The US who thinks that this is true only for some and not for others and they should be the ones to decide for how to oust the democratically elected Islamist government of Algeria with the result of many years of brutal civil war.

Now, I'd be the first to agree that whomever wrote this piece is putting a bit of spin on it which reflects that person's perspective. But the germ of truth is in there too. Not the least of which is the fact that Hamas was democratically elected, whether Israel likes that fact or not.

Think about this for a minute. Israel indeed has very successfully used her military to accomplish somewhat similar objectives... but ONLY with respect to her Arab neighbors who were not fighting for their own land, homes and futures.

Huge numbers of Palestinian noncombatants fled the fighting or were evicted during Israel's war of independence and their homes and lands were either seized or allowed to be seized by the nascent Israeli government. Few of those civilians have ever been allowed back into Israel. And the same dynamic took place during later wars - Palestinian noncombatants fled the fighting, their homes and lands were seized and the owners were barred from coming back.

Consider this: Hamas didn't exist back then, although plenty of outright terrorism was practiced by Jews and Arabs alike. Hamas was formed in the refugee camps populated by Palestinians who were being denied the right to return to their own homes and lands. Thus, the attempts to parse what's going on right now as a simple matter of firing missles into Israel for no other reason than to kill Jews is intellectually bankrupt and morally repugnant.

Back to the NYT piece.

The likelier result of a destruction of the Hamas infrastructure, then, would be chaos, anathema not only to the people of Gaza but also to those hoping for peace in southern Israel.

Yet in its campaign so far, which has killed scores of children and other bystanders, Israel has not spared the trappings of Hamas sovereignty or limited itself to military targets. It says that the mosques it has destroyed were weapons storehouses and that the Islamic University, which it has hit repeatedly, housed explosives factories. But it has also reduced many government buildings to rubble without any claim that they were military in nature. (emphasis is mine)

Hamas and Israel are led by the insane. Not only the moral and ethical problems inherent in their approach (and eye for an eye leaves everyone blind...), but it's simply not practical either. By far the most successful resistance campaigns by indigenous people in history have been the product of PEACEFUL resistance, not ARMED resistance.

But too few care... about any of this. They're sitting in the comfort of their own homes, utterly detached from the suffering on both sides, rooting on one side or the other as if this were nothing more substantial than a game between sports teams.

The blood continues to flow.

The seeds of future fighting are being sown as I type this post.

The insane are in control.

Posted by Kevin at January 3, 2009 01:45 PM