Another round of hostilities broke out in the middle of November and the Arab League foreign ministers rushed off to Cairo to discuss, yet again, the interminable Israel-Palestine conflict (make that occupation), but came up with no solution. Their visit of solidarity with Gazans and statements by Egypt, Tunisia and Qatar constitute a good new start, for a change.
There can be no rational discussion of this chronic problem without first recognising that Israel has been all along in breach of UN resolutions and that the hermetic siege of Gaza is illegal and must be lifted. As Noam Chomsky stated, last Saturday: “When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land. That’s not defence ... It is not a war, it is murder.” We also know that Israel’s recent actions of so-called self defence were preceded one week earlier by the killing of two Palestinian children, and later 11-month-old Omar Masharawi, who was fatally burned all over his little body. Then there was the assassination of Ahmad Jabari, who was described by Aluf Benn of Ha’aretz as Israel’s enforcer of the previous ceasefire. As Dan Freeman-Maloy said in The Bullet, last Friday, fabricating pretexts for aggression on the southern front is, after all, a vibrant tradition, as old as the state itself.
Why the flare up right now? There are several speculations, the main one being the upcoming Israeli elections, when voters tend to select those who make them feel safe against external threats. The other main one, I believe is the Arab Spring itself! The new feeling of confidence in the future in most Arab populations is likely to be worrying the government of Israel and it needed to be nipped in the bud. After all, the Emir of Qatar spent a couple of days in Gaza, undoubtedly promising financial aid and potential diplomatic support. Other Arab and Muslim heads of state, like Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, might possibly follow suit. Importantly, the hermetic seal round Gaza, which was willingly applied by the ever-compliant Hosni Mubarak, has been broken by new Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi, who seems to be doing quite well in Egypt, despite all the dire predictions of failure of his government, which shares with Hamas the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
When Israel launches its aerial or ground attack against the defenceless Gazans, they have nowhere to hide in the most densely populated piece of land on earth. After all, the 1.7 million population of Gaza represents 25 per cent of all Palestinians, confined to 1.4 per cent of the area of what was British Mandate of Palestine. Unlike Israelis, Gazans have no bunkers or free spaces to escape to. They simply hunker down in their miserable apartments and homes, and wait for fate to select who would die that day.
The failure of Benjamin Netanyahu to bully President Barack Obama into starting a senseless war with Iran, in which the casualties would be huge numbers of young Americans, not Israelis, must have been extremely disappointing and possibly humiliating. In the past, it was a matter of saying “Jump!” and hearing the answer “How high?” Israel will find it very difficult to accept that the influence of the Arab world, and with it the Muslim world, has changed forever since the Arab Spring. Netanyahu’s pathetic sketch of, and pompous lecture on the Iranian bomb, seems to have been met with silent derision by many.
More people than ever, including Jews who believe in human rights for all, are speaking openly about the injustice meted to Palestinians. Many groups are forming alliances. The Arabs themselves have not been good at that so far, but this is also changing. They are learning how to communicate respectfully with potential supporters and are narrowing the information gap, using social media effectively, thus bypassing the corporate media. International stars, of the calibre of Desmond Tutu, have not shied away from expressing their opinion. Last Friday, in an article titled ‘Excuse Me While I vomit’, Alan Hart said: “I imagine I am not the only one who feels the need to vomit when Israel’s Goebbels justifies the Zionist state’s ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks by air and sea on the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, the prison camp which is home to 1.5 million besieged and mainly impoverished Palestinians.”
The people of Gaza have shown an incredible degree of resilience that few others can match. It is this resilience that will defeat Israel in the end. Yes, the invading army, including the 75,000 reservists, will carry out a scorched-earth invasion, inflicting huge structural damage in its search for the more sophisticated missiles. It will round-up many in the Hamas leadership and lead those who survive, in shackles, into prison cells; and it is likely to kill many more than the 1,500 killed four years ago. As Johnny Punish wrote, in Veterans Today, last Saturday: “Yeah, let us bottle up a whole culture and population and then call them terrorists. And when they resist, bomb them into submission.”
All this will be tweeted across the globe. But in the end, the 75,000 reservists will have to leave that penitentiary and go home. Israel will feel somewhat safer, until the next round, when the balance of power will have shifted even further. As Gilad Atzmon wrote last Sunday: “They can kill, they can destroy, they can deliver misery to the entire region, but for some reason they never prevail.”
Notwithstanding the slowly and gradually changing balance of power, Israel remains disproportionately strong and supremely confident that it can repel any attack that threatens it. After all, according to a report by Louis Rene Beres, submitted to the Ninth Annual Herzliya Conference in 2009, it “would turn their own cities to vapour and ash”.
Dr Qais Ghanem is a retired neurologist, radio show host, poet and novelist. His two novels are Final Flight from Sana’a and Two Boys from Aden College. His non-fiction, My Arab Spring, My Canada, was published by Amazon.
