files.tikkun.org/current/article.php?story=20070616224228533
Join the Network of Spiritual Progressives Understanding What Just Happened in Gaza Posted Saturday, June 16 2007 @ 10:42 PM PDT The triumph of Hamas was a goal of Israeli policy--though now they have no clue about what to do. Discussion by Uri Avnery, and a discussion on Amy Goodman's show. EDITORI'S NOTE: For many years, Tikkun has argued that a goal of Israeli policy has been to strengthen Hamas sufficiently so that it's power in Palestine could be used as an irrefutable 'proof" to the West that Palestinians couldn't be trusted to run a state of their own, and that therefore all it could be allowed would be the bantistun version of a state--little Palestinian enclaves cut off from each other by a sourrounding Israeli Army and the Israeli settlers. It was for this reason that Ariel Sharon came up with the "unilateral withdrawal from Gaza" strategy as his alternative to what might have been growing pressure for Israel to accept the terms of the Geneva Accord negotiated by MK and former Israeli official negotiator with Palestinians Yossi Beilin. Sharon's alternative was "unilateral withdrawal," rejecting the notion of talking to the Palestinian Authority then under control of Fatah and the pro-non-violence President Abbas. As we pointed out at the time, if Israel had negotiated an end to its presence in Gaza with Abbas, they would have strengthened the credibility of this pro-peace faction of the Palestinian world. Instead, by leaving unilaterally without negotiating with Abbas, they gave great credence to Hamas, which could say that it was Hamas' armed resistance that had chased Israeli troops out of Gaza, and that ll of the non-violence posturing of Abbas had won him nothing but being ignored and labeled "not a partner for peace" by Sharon and then by Ehud Olmert who became prime minister after Sharon had a stroke. Ariel Sharon was no fool: his strategy was to strengthen Hamas so that the pressure from the rest of the world to give Palesitnians a state would dramatically abate, as it did. Now the strategy has paid off better than Sharon and Olmert had dreamt: with visions of Palestinians fighting each other in the streets, many people in the world are saying "see how these people never could run a state." On the other hand, much as I agree with Avnery that the situation is a set-up that was created by the Occupation and the brutality of Israeli treatment of Palesitnians, including the slow starvation of the people of Gaza, I find it morally troubling that none of the champions of Palestinians in this country like Abunimah (see below in the interview with Amy Goodman) can face up to the following point: even when Jews were forced to live under real starvation conditions and wild-overcrowding in the ghettoes of Nazi Germany and then the concentration camps, they did not take up systematic violence aganst each other. There is something in the culture of the Palestinians, or of the Arab world, or of the Muslim world (you tell me which, I'm not sure) that is too tolerant of violence, and too willing to excuse it, whether it be in the disgusting violence of Sunnis vs. Shias that took place in the Iraq/Iran war and in the current civil war in Iraq, in Lebanon, and now the struggle in Palestine. We at Tikkun who have always been critical of those distortions in the Jewish world that have allowed Jews to deny the realities of the horrible oppression visited on the Palestinian people by Israel and have consistently criticized those elements in Jewish culture that contribute to the denial or even active support for Israeli war crimes agains the Palestinian people and last summer against the Lebanese, we who have consistently criticized the war ethics that have allowed Christians to fight Christians for centuries, have a right to ask Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians to be similarly PUBLICLY critical of those elements in their own culture that have led to such distortions in their world. And that new approach is the only way we are ever going to see anything but an endless blame game and endless violence. org/home/he/channels/avnery/1181993439/ WHAT HAPPENS when one and a half million human beings are imprisoned in a tiny, arid territory, cut off from their compatriots and from any contact with the outside world, starved by an economic blockade and unable to feed their families? Some months ago, I described this situation as a sociological experiment set up by Israel, the United States and the European Union. They proved that human beings react exactly like other animals: when too many of them are crowded into a small area in miserable conditions, they become aggressive, and even murderous. The organizers of the experiment in Jerusalem, Washington, Berlin, Oslo, Ottawa and other capitals could rub their hands in satisfaction. The scientists want to know what happens if the blockade is tightened still further. WHAT HAS caused the present explosion in the Gaza Strip? The timing of Hamas' decision to take over the Strip by force was not accidental. It has no interest in provoking the Egyptian regime, which is busy fighting the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother-organization of Hamas. Also, the organization has no interest in providing Israel with a pretext for tightening the blockade. But the Hamas leaders decided that they had no alternative but to destroy the armed organizations that are tied to Fatah and take their orders from President Mahmoud Abbas. The US has ordered Israel to supply these organizations with large quantities of weapons, in order to enable them to fight Hamas. The Israeli army chiefs did not like the idea, fearing that the arms might end up in the hands of Hamas (as is actually happening now). President Bush has chosen a local leader for every Muslim country, who will rule it under American protection and follow American orders. In Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan, and also in Palestine. Hamas believes that the man marked for this job in Gaza is Mohammed Dahlan. For years it has looked as if he was being groomed for this position. The American and Israeli media have been singing his praises, describing him as a strong, determined leader, "moderate" (ie obedient to American orders) and "pragmatic" (ie obedient to Israeli orders). And the more the Americans and Israelis lauded Dahlan, the more they undermined his standing among the Palestinians. Especially as Dahlan was away in Cairo, as if waiting for his men to receive the promised arms. In the eyes of Hamas, the attack on the Fatah strongholds in the Gaza Strip is a preventive war. The organizations of Abbas and Dahlan melted like snow in the Palestinian sun. How could the American and Israeli generals miscalculate so badly? They are able to think only in strictly military terms: so-and-so many soldiers, so-and-so many machine guns. But in interior struggles in particular, quantitative calculations are secondary. The morale of the fighters and public sentiment are far more important. The members of the Fatah organizations do not know what they are fighting for. The Gaza population supports Hamas, because they believe that it is fighting the Israeli occupier. Their opponents look like collaborators of the occupation. The American statements about their intention of arming them with Israeli weapons have finally condemned them. In this respect all nations are the same: they hate collaborators of a foreign occupier, whether they are Norwegian (Quisling), French (Petain) or Palestinian. IN WASHINGTON and Jerusalem, politicians are bemoaning the "weakness of Mahmoud Abbas". They see now that the only person who could prevent anarchy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank was Yasser Arafat. He created several security apparatuses that competed with each other, in order to prevent any single apparatus from carrying out a coup-d'etat. Arafat was able to negotiate, sign a peace agreement and get his people to accept it. But Arafat was pilloried by Israel as a monster, imprisoned in the Mukata'ah and, in the end, murdered. The Palestinian public elected Mahmoud Abbas as his successor, hoping that he would get from the Americans and the Israelis what they had refused to give to Arafat. If the l...
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