The roll call of
dishonour is long indeed, but its highlights include:
the massacre of some 200 civilians in Tantura, as well
as large-scale massacres in at least a dozen other
Palestinian villages, during the 1948 war that
established Israel; Ariel Sharon’s attack on the village
of Qibya in 1953 that killed 70 innocent Palestinians;
the Kfar Qassem massacre inside Israel when 49 farm
workers were gunned down at an improvised army
checkpoint; a massacre in the same year in the refugee
camp of Khan Yunis, in Gaza, in which more than 250
civilians were killed; attacks on dozens of Palestinian,
Egytian and Syrian villages during the 1967 war; the
killing of six unarmed Arab citizens of Israel in 1976;
the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the
Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982;
the unremitting use of lethal force by the army against
unarmed Palestinians, often women and children, during
the first intifada of 1987-93; the aerial bombardment of
Qana in south Lebanon in 1996 that killed more than 100
civilians; and the endless “collateral damage” of
Palestinian civilians during the second intifada,
including a half-ton bomb that killed a husband and wide
and their seven children a week ago.
The true reasons for
these deaths are concealed from credulous observers by
Israel’s use of Orwellian language. When it says it is
destroying the “infrastructure of terror”, Israel means
it is crushing all Arab resistance to its territorial
ambitions in the region. The “infrastructure” includes
most Arab men, women and children because they continue
to support -- against Israel’s wishes -- their peoples’
rights to self-determination without interference from
the Israeli army.
In this sense, and
others, there is very little difference between what
Israel is doing in Gaza to overturn the democratic
wishes of the Palestinian electorate and what it is
doing in Lebanon to smash any hopes of a democratic
future for its northern neighbour. In Gaza, it wants
Hamas destroyed because Hamas is prepared to counter
Israel’s unilateral policies with its own unilateral
agenda; and in Lebanon, Israel wants Hizbullah
obliterated because it is the only force capable,
possibly, of preventing a repeat of Israel’s long
invasion and occupation of the 1980s and 1990s.
By rounding up the
Palestinian cabinet, Israel is not destroying terror, it
is clipping the political wings of Hamas, those in its
leadership who are quickly learning the arts of
government and searching for a space in which they can
negotiate with Israel. Through its rejectionist
behaviour, Israel is only confirming the doubts of those
in the Hamas military wing who argue Israel always acts
in bad faith.
Similarly in Lebanon,
Israel is holding Hizbullah less to account with its
attacks than the Lebanese people and their government,
despite the latter’s transparently shaky grip on the
country. Israel’s military strikes polarise opinion in
Lebanon, weaken Fouad Siniora and his ministers, and
threaten to push Lebanon over the brink into another
civil war.
Israel is keen to talk
about “changing the balance of power” in Gaza and
Lebanon, implying that it is trying to stregthen the
“democrats” against the “terrorists”. But this
impression is entirely false. Israeli actions are
destroying what little balance of power exists in Gaza
and Lebanon so that the two areas become ungovernable.
In Gaza, Israel has been
engineering a debilitating struggle for power between
Fatah and Hamas, while in Lebanon whatever hollow shell
of national unity has existed till now is in danger of
cracking under the strain of the Israeli onslaught.
Superficially at least,
this seems self-destructive behaviour on Israel’s part,
given that it has also been striving to detect the
fingerprints of outside actors in Gaza and Lebanon.
In the case of Gaza,
Israel points to Syria as a safe haven for the exiled
Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, to Hizbullah and Iran as
sponsors of Hamas “terror” and even to a new al-Qaeda
presence. In the case of Lebanon, Israel additionally
identifies the strong ties between Hizbullah and
Damascus and Tehran.
So why would Israel want
Lebanon and Gaza to be ravaged by factional fighting of
the kind that might make them more vulnerable to this
kind of unwelcome interference from outside?
A history lesson or two
helps clarify Israel’s reasoning.
In the occupied
Palestinian territories, Hamas was born during the
upheavals of the first intifada and encouraged by Israel
as a counterweight to the unifying secular Palestinian
nationalism of Yasser Arafat.
In Lebanon, the Shiite
militia Hizbullah was the inevitable byproduct of
Israel’s occupation of the south and its establishment
of a mostly Christian proxy militia, the South Lebanon
Army, against the Muslim majority.
In both cases it is clear
Israel hoped that, by Islamising its opponents in these
regional conflicts, it would delegitimise them in the
eyes of Western allies and that it could cultivate
sectarianism as a way to further weaken the social
cohesiveness of its neighbours.
Recently Israel has
encouraged the slide deeper into Islamic extremism
through its policies of unilateralism and its refusal to
negotiate.
The same set of policies
is being continued now in the Palestinian territories
and Lebanon: the shattering of these two societies will
only deepen the trend toward radical Islam. Islamic
movements not only offer the best hope of local
resistance to Israel for these weakened societies but
they also offer a parallel social infrastructure of
health care and welfare services as state institutions
collapse.
There is immediate
advantage for Israel in this outcome. With secular
society crushed and Islamic resistance movements filling
the void, Israel will be able to reinforce the
impression of many in the West that Israel is on the
front line of global “war of terror” being waged by a
single implacable enemy, Islam. Israel’s ability to
persuade the world that this war is being waged against
the whole “civilised” Judeo-Christian West will be made
that bit easier.
As a result, Israel may
be able to drag its paymaster, the United States, deeper
into the mire of the Middle East as a junior partner
rather than as an honest broker, giving Israel cover
while it carves up yet more Palestinian land for
annexation, puts further pressure on the Palestinains to
leave their homeland, and destablises its regional
enemies so that they are powerless to offer protest or
resistance.
For some time President
Bush has found himself in no position to criticise
Israeli actions when Tel Aviv claims to be doing no more
to the Palestinians than the US is doing to the Iraqis.
If the US allows itself to be handcuffed to Israel’s
even more extreme version of the “war on terror”, the
consequences will be dire not just for the Palestinians
or the region, but for all of us.
Jonathan Cook is a writer
and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book,
“Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and
Democratic State” is published by Pluto Press. His
website is
www.jkcook.net
