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Can the Arab world be turned into Gaza’s jailers?
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth
06/26/07 "ICH"
--- - The boycott by Israel and the international community
of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces with
Hamas’ recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy,
one of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. “Starving,
drying up and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do
not weaken political movements. On the contrary … Reality has
refuted the chorus of experts and commentators who preached [on]
behalf of the boycott policy. This daft notion that it is
possible to topple an elected government by applying pressure on
a helpless population suffered a complete failure.”
But has Levy got it wrong? The faces of Israeli and American
politicians, including Ehud Olmert and George Bush, appear
soot-free. On the contrary. Over the past fortnight they have
been looking and sounding even more smug than usual.
The problem with Levy’s analysis is that it assumes that Israel
and the US wanted sanctions to bring about the fall of Hamas,
either by giving Fatah the upper hand so that it could deal a
knockout blow to the Palestinian government, or by inciting
ordinary Palestinians to rise up and demand that their earlier
electoral decision be reversed and Fatah reinstalled. In short,
Levy, like most observers, assumes that the policy was designed
to enforce regime change.
But what if that was not the point of the sanctions? And if so,
what goals were Israel and the US pursuing?
The parallels between Iraq and Gaza may be instructive. After
all, Iraq is the West’s only other recent experiment in imposing
sanctions to starve a nation. And we all know where it led: to
an even deeper entrenchment of Saddam Hussein’s rule.
True, the circumstances in Iraq and Gaza are different: most
Iraqis wanted Saddam out but had no way to effect change, while
most Gazans wanted Hamas in and made it happen by voting for
them in last year’s elections. Nevertheless, it may be that the
US and Israel drew a different lesson from the sanctions
experience in Iraq.
Whether intended or not, sanctions proved a very effective tool
for destroying the internal bonds that held Iraqi society
together. Destitution and hunger are powerful incentives to turn
on one’s neighbour as well as one’s enemy. A society where
resources -- food, medicines, water and electricity -- are in
short supply is also a society where everyone looks out for
himself. It is a society that, with a little prompting, can
easily be made to tear itself apart.
And that is precisely what the Americans began to engineer after
their “shock and awe” invasion of 2003. Contrary to previous US
interventions abroad, Saddam was not toppled and replaced with
another strongman -- one more to the West’s liking. Instead of
regime change, we were given regime overthrow. Or as Daniel
Pipes, one of the neoconservative ideologues of the attack on
Iraq, expressed it, the goal was “limited to destroying tyranny,
not sponsoring its replacement … Fixing Iraq is neither the
coalition’s responsibility nor its burden.”
In place of Saddam, the Americans created a safe haven known as
the Green Zone from which its occupation regime could loosely
police the country and oversee the theft of Iraq’s oil, while
also sitting back and watching a sectarian civil war between the
Sunni and Shia populations spiral out of control and decimate
the Iraqi population.
What did Washington hope to achieve? Pipes offers a clue: “When
Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims
[that is, US occupation forces and their allies] are less likely
to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian
tragedy but not a strategic one.” In other words, enabling a
civil war in Iraq was far preferable to allowing Iraqis to unite
and mount an effective resistance to the US occupation. After
all, Iraqi deaths -- at least 650,000 of them, according to the
last realistic count -- are as good as worthless, while US
soldiers’ lives cost votes back home.
For the neocon cabal behind the Iraq invasion, civil war was
seen to have two beneficial outcomes.
First, it eroded the solidarity of ordinary Iraqis, depleting
their energies and making them less likely to join or support
the resistance to the occupation. The insurgency has remained a
terrible irritation to US forces but not the fatal blow it might
have been were the Sunni and Shia to fight side by side. As a
result, the theft of Iraq’s resources has been made easier.
And second, in the longer term, civil war is making inevitable a
slow process of communal partition and ethnic cleansing. Four
million Iraqis are reported to have been forced either to leave
the country or flee their homes. Iraq is being broken up into
small ethnic and religious fiefdoms that will be easier to
manage and manipulate.
Is this the model for Gaza now and the West Bank later?
It is worth recalling that neither Israel nor the US pushed for
an easing of the sanctions on the Palestinian Authority after
the national unity government of Hamas and Fatah was formed
earlier this year. In fact, the US and Israel could barely
conceal their panic at the development. The moment the Mecca
agreement was signed, reports of US efforts to train and arm
Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas became a newspaper
staple.
The cumulative effect of US support for Fatah, as well as
Israel’s continuing arrests of Hamas legislators in the West
Bank, was to strain already tense relations between Hamas and
Fatah to breaking point. When Hamas learnt that Abbas’ security
chief, Mohammed Dahlan, with US encouragement, was preparing to
carry out a coup against them in Gaza, they got the first shot
in.
Did Fatah really believe it could pull off a coup in Gaza, given
the evident weakness of its forces there, or was the rumour
little more than American and Israeli spin, designed to
undermine Hamas’ faith in Fatah and doom the unity government?
Were Abbas and Dahlan really hoping to topple Hamas, or were
they the useful idiots needed by the US and Israel? These are
questions that may have to be settled by the historians.
But with the fingerprints of Elliott Abrams, one of the more
durable neocons in the Bush administration, to be found all over
this episode, we can surmise that what Washington and Israel are
intending for the Palestinians will have strong echoes of what
has unfolded in Iraq.
By engineering the destruction of the unity government, Israel
and the US have ensured that there is no danger of a new
Palestinian consensus emerging, one that might have cornered
Israel into peace talks. A unity government might have found a
formula offering Israel:
* limited recognition inside the pre-1967 borders in return for
recognition of a Palestinian state and the territorial integrity
of the West Bank and Gaza;
* a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel ending its campaign
of constant violence and violations of Palestinian sovereignty;
* and a commitment to honour past agreements in return for
Israel’s abiding by UN resolutions and accepting a just solution
for the Palestinian refugees.
After decades of Israeli bad faith, and the growing rancour
between Fatah and Hamas, the chances of them finding common
ground on which to make such an offer, it must be admitted,
would have been slight. But now they are non-existent.
That is exactly how Israel wants it, because it has no interest
in meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians or in a final
agreement. It wants only to impose solutions that suit Israel’s
interests, which are securing the maximum amount of land for an
exclusive Jewish state and leaving the Palestinians so weak and
divided that they will never be able to mount a serious
challenge to Israel’s dictates.
Instead, Hamas’ dismal authority over the prison camp called
Gaza and Fatah’s bastard governance of the ghettoes called the
West Bank offer a model more satisfying for Israel and the US --
and one not unlike Iraq. A sort of sheriff’s divide and rule in
the Wild West.
Just as in Iraq, Israel and the US have made sure that no
Palestinian strongman arises to replace Yasser Arafat. Just as
in Iraq, they are encouraging civil war as an alternative to
resistance to occupation, as Palestine’s resources -- land, not
oil -- are stolen. Just as in Iraq, they are causing a permanent
and irreversible partition, in this case between the West Bank
and Gaza, to create more easily managed territorial ghettoes.
And just as in Iraq, the likely reaction is an even greater
extremism from the Palestinians that will undermine their cause
in the eyes of the international community.
Where will this lead the Palestinians next?
Israel is already pulling the strings of Fatah with a new
adeptness since the latter’s humiliation in Gaza. Abbas is
currently basking in Israeli munificence for his rogue West Bank
regime, including the decision to release a substantial chunk of
the $700 million tax monies owed to the Palestinians (including
those of Gaza, of course) and withheld for years by Israel. The
price, according to the Israeli media, was a commitment from
Abbas not to contemplate re-entering a unity government with
Hamas.
The goal will be to increase the strains between Hamas and Fatah
to breaking point in the West Bank, but ensure that Fatah wins
the confrontation there. Fatah is already militarily stronger
and with generous patronage from Israel and the US -- including
arms and training, and possibly the return of the Badr Brigade
currently holed up in Jordan -- it should be able to rout Hamas.
The difference in status between Gaza and the West Bank that has
been long desired by Israel will be complete.
The Palestinian people have already been carved up into a
multitude of constituencies. There are the Palestinians under
occupation, those living as second-class citizens of Israel,
those allowed to remain “residents” of Jerusalem, and those
dispersed to camps across the Middle East. Even within these
groups, there are a host of sub-identities: refugees and
non-refugees; refugees included as citizens in their host state
and those excluded; occupied Palestinians living under the
control of the Palestinian Authority and those under Israel’s
military government; and so on.
Now, Israel has entrenched maybe the most significant division
of all: the absolute and irreversible separation of Gaza and the
West Bank. What applies to one will no longer be true for the
other. Each will be a separate case; their fates will no longer
be tied. One will be, as Israelis like to call it, Hamastan, and
other Fatahland, with separate governments and different
treatment from Israel and the international community.
The reasons why Israel prefers this arrangement are manifold.
First, Gaza can now be written off by the international
community as a basket case. The Israeli media is currently awash
with patronising commentary from the political and security
establishments about how to help avoid a humanitarian crisis in
Gaza, including the possibility of air drops of aid over the
Gaza “security fence” -- as though Gaza were Pakistan after an
earthquake. From past experience, and the current menacing
sounds from Israel’s new Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, those
food packages will quickly turn into bombs if Gaza does not keep
quiet.
As Israeli and US officials have been phrasing it, there is a
new “clarity” in the situation. In a Hamastan, Gaza’s militants
and civilians can be targeted by Israel with little
discrimination and no outcry from the international community.
Israel will hope that message from Gaza will not be lost on West
Bank Palestinians as they decide who to give their support to,
Fatah or Hamas.
Second, at their meeting last week Olmert and Bush revived talk
of Palestinian statehood. According to Olmert, Bush “wants to
realize, while he is in office, the dream of creating a
Palestinian state”. Both are keen to make quick progress, a sure
sign of mischief in the making. Certainly, they know they are
now under no pressure to create the single viable Palestinian
state in the West Bank and Gaza once promised by President Bush.
An embattled Abbas will not be calling for the inclusion of Gaza
in his ghetto-fiefdom.
Third, the separation of Gaza from the West Bank may be used to
inject new life into Olmert’s shopworn convergence plan -- if he
can dress it up new clothes. Convergence, which required a very
limited withdrawal from those areas of the West Bank heavily
populated with Palestinians while Israel annexed most of its
illegal colonies and kept the Jordan Valley, was officially
ditched last summer after Israel’s humiliation by Hizbullah.
Why seek to revive convergence? Because it is the key to Israel
securing the expanded Jewish fortress state that is its only
sure protection from the rapid demographic growth of the
Palestinians, soon to outnumber Jews in the Holy Land, and
Israel’s fears that it may then be compared to apartheid South
Africa.
If the occupation continues unchanged, Israel’s security
establishment has long been warning, the Palestinians will
eventually wake up to the only practical response: to dissolve
the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s clever ruse to make the
Palestinian leadership responsible for suppressing Palestinian
resistance to the occupation, thereby forcing Israel to pick up
the bill for the occupation rather than Europe. The next stage
would be an anti-apartheid struggle for one state in historic
Palestine.
For this reason, demographic separation from the Palestinians
has been the logic of every major Israeli policy initiative
since -- and including -- Oslo. Convergence requires no loss of
Israel’s control over Palestinian lives, ensured through the all
but finished grid of walls, settlements, bypass roads and
checkpoints, only a repackaging of their occupation as
statehood.
The biggest objection in Israel to Olmert’s plan -- as well as
to the related Gaza disengagement -- was the concern that, once
the army had unilaterally withdrawn from the Palestinian
ghettoes, the Palestinians would be free to launch terror
attacks, including sending rockets out of their prisons into
Israel. Most Israelis, of course, never consider the role of the
occupation in prompting such attacks.
But Olmert may believe he has found a way to silence his
domestic critics. For the first time he seems genuinely keen to
get his Arab neighbours involved in the establishment of a
Palestinian “state”. As he headed off to the Sharm el-Sheikh
summit with Egypt, Jordan and Abbas this week, Olmert said he
wanted to "jointly work to create the platform that may lead to
a new beginning between us and the Palestinians”.
Did he mean partnership? A source in the Prime Minister’s Office
explained to the Jerusalem Post why the three nations and Abbas
were meeting. “These are the four parties directly impacted by
what is happening right now, and what is needed is a different
level of cooperation between them.” Another spokesman bewailed
the failure so far to get the Saudis on board.
This appears to mark a sea change in Israeli thinking. Until now
Tel Aviv has regarded the Palestinians as a domestic problem --
after all, they are sitting on land that rightfully, at least if
the Bible is to be believed, belongs to the Jews. Any attempt at
internationalising the conflict has therefore been strenuously
resisted.
But now the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office is talking openly
about getting the Arab world more directly involved, not only in
its usual role as a mediator with the Palestinians, nor even in
simply securing the borders against smuggling, but also in
policing the territories. Israel hopes that Egypt, in
particular, is as concerned as Tel Aviv by the emergence of a
Hamastan on its borders, and may be enticed to use the same
repressive policies against Gaza’s Islamists as it does against
its own.
Similarly, Olmert’s chief political rival, Binyamin Netanyahu of
Likud, has mentioned not only Egyptian involvement in Gaza but
even a Jordanian military presence in the West Bank. The
“moderate” Arab regimes, as Washington likes to call them, are
being seen as the key to developing new ideas about Palestinian
“autonomy” and regional “confederation”. As long as Israel has a
quisling in the West Bank and a beyond-the-pale government in
Gaza, it may believe it can corner the Arab world into backing
such a “peace plan”.
What will it mean in practice? Possibly, as Zvi Barel of Haaretz
speculates, we will see the emergence of half a dozen
Palestinian governments in charge of the ghettoes of Gaza,
Ramallah, Jenin, Jericho, and Hebron. Each may be encouraged to
compete for patronage and aid from the “moderate” Arab regimes
but on condition that Israel and the US are satisfied with these
Palestinian governments’ performance.
In other words, Israel looks as if it is dusting off yet another
blueprint for how to manage the Palestinians and their
irritating obsession with sovereignty. Last time, under Oslo,
the Palestinians were put in charge of policing the occupation
on Israel’s behalf. This time, as the Palestinians are sealed
into their separate prisons masquerading as a state, Israel may
believe that it can find a new jailer for the Palestinians --
the Arab world.
Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, is the
author of “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and
Democratic State” (Pluto Press, 2006). His website is
www.jkcook.net
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