Israel planned Gaza attack nearly one year ago, says academic

Manama: Israel launched its attacks on Gaza to foil a peaceful offensive by Hamas, said American academic Norman Finkelstein.

Finkelstein dismissed claims that Hamas was responsible for the onslaught, saying that there was no evidence that supported the "misconceptions".

"There is no evidence in my opinion to support this claim. The records show very clearly that, as Israeli newspapers themselves reported, the attack on Gaza had been planned as early as March 2007," said Finkelstein, ahead of two lectures he is delivering in Manama on "the real motives behind Israel's massacre in Gaza" and on the power of the Israeli lobby in the US.

Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, has often accused Israel of using the genocidal Nazi campaign against Jews to justify its actions against Palestinians.

He said that Israel had two reasons to launch the attacks that lasted 22 days and resulted in the death of more than 1,300 Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza's infrastructure.

"Number one, because of the defeat they suffered in 2006 in the war with Hezbollah. After that they wanted to demonstrate to the Arabs that Israel was still a fighting force and one that could still inspire terror in the Arab world," he said.

His argument echoes an analysis presented by Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, who has said that the attacks "reflected the deep feeling among average Israelis that the country had to regain its deterrent capacity" and that "this operation is an attempt to re-establish the perception that if you provoke or attack you are going to pay a disproportionate price."

The second motive for the Israeli attacks, said Finkelstein, is that "Hamas was becoming too moderate, making statements that it was willing to settle conflict in accordance with the Arab League Peace plan of 2002."

He said that the trend "was deemed a disaster for the Israelis" since a peace deal would have deprived Israel of an excuse to seize control of Palestine and Israel would have to revert to the 1967 borders.

In an interview last March with the Journal of Palestine Studies, Khalid Mishal, the head of Hamas's Political Bureau, said that "there is an opportunity to deal with this conflict in a manner different from how Israel and, behind it, the US is dealing with it today."

"There is an opportunity to achieve a Palestinian national consensus on a political program based on the 1967 borders, and this is an exceptional circumstance, in which most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders," Mishal was quoted as saying.