Who Profits?

Dominique Edde

What does Israel intend to gain at the conclusion of another bombing operation, this time called Cast Lead? The provision of security for Israeli citizens. The elimination of Hamas. Do we know from history even one example which proves this system works? Operation Grapes of Wrath, which included the Qana massacre in 1996? It strengthened Hezbollah and ended with a withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin, in the spring of 2002? Operation Paved Road, two months later? The years 2002-2003 were bloody for the Israeli population with 293 killed.

What about Operation Rainbow in 2004? Or Judgment Day four months later in the northern Gaza Strip, that had the same dire results? Murder of the Hamas political leaders, about which Israel bragged without shame? Suicide bombings reached their height in 2005, and at the beginning of the following year Hamas received an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections. Appropriate Response, or the second world war in 2006 that destroyed an entire country and resulted in the death of more than 1000 civilians, of whom 32% were children? Here also, Israel destroyed and gained no tangible results; war booty? The exchange of two corpses of Israeli soldiers in exchange for 5 prisoners and tens of bodies of Lebanese and Palestinians.

What do Hamas leaders gain as they continue to shoot rockets on Israel?

Why do they continue when in exchange they receive one hundred times worse? There is no argument that says the opposition movement fighting the occupation is prepared to lose activists in order to make advances. Why do they continue when every rocket volley results in a flood of fire? Or when the action is so costly in terms of human life, so unprofitable from a political perspective, so unpopular on the international scene? What is the logic of this insistence? True – Israel stole from Hamas its democratic victory in the elections; true also that the overarching dispossession of Hamas from its right to be in power dangerously isolated the group, such that we will never know what it would have done had it been treated as a dialogue partner. However, precisely when the enmity is high and the means are minimal, more preparedness and creativity is required. And these two things are both shockingly lacking. Why do Hamas leaders feel the obligation to be seen as more and more radical, at the cost of their credibility and the lives of their members? Why the same failure to hear the fear from the future of the Israelis, and to prefer not being understood over the desire to understand? What do they profit from the rejection of recognition of Israel? A card for future negotiations? Perhaps precisely by placing the card on the table they would succeed in gaining additional cards, and to place the law and justice at the centre of the argument?

What did the head of the Palestinian Authority achieve for its people by its absolute submission to the United States and Israel? From concession to concession, from handshake to handshake, nothing was achieved apart from the PA remaining in power. It confused between openness and submission, it puts in danger the unity of the Palestinian people while the corruption which resulted in defeat for its party continues with no response. The speakers for a topic of which there is nothing more just, Abbas and his friends did not succeed better than the Hamas in presenting a coherent, crafted and honour inspiring discourse. A discourse that can create a movement, spark the imagination, which speaks with its head high and at eye level with the Israelis. He sold the achievements of the first Intifada in a fre sale, began to enjoy cooperation, the sterile negotiations, everything representing one hundred hears of political bankruptcy of the Arab world.

How did the American administration profit from its unconditional support of Israeli policies?

The US administration gained the protection of the special relationship with its strategic ally in the Middle East, in whose hands – this is no longer a secret – are nuclear weapons. The question remains: do the results of the American-Israeli policies over the past forty years justify this strategic choice? In three primary levels it appears that this policy is not succeeded and is even dangerous:

1. Basis of political rule through the employment of unrestrained military power Both in Iraq and the occupied territories, this method did not succeed. Not during the first Gulf War in 1991, not in the West Bank, nor in Gaza; not in the 2006 Lebanon war and not during the five year (and counting) second Gulf War.

2. Ethnic division as a means of control Beyond the systematic policies of cantonization and segmentation of the occupied territories, everything demonstrates that the Israeli regime did not abandon the dream of deporting the non-Jewish population from Israel. To promote everywhere the policies of separation, to divide the area into ethnic pieces. Gaza is the piece of the piece of the piece. The support of the United States for separation policies, primarily on the basis of religion, with the very real danger of ethnic cleansing, exposes the entire world to the worst of all, according to which every population group will be forced to close in on itself, in its city, its street, its ghetto. Is there a need to bring examples proving that an end to difference and intermingling is essentially the organization of death?

3. Implementation of tricks and manipulations instead of international law The Oslo peace agreements collapsed, and with it the peace they were supposed to bring. How? By leaving all the settlements in their place. From the relations of contempt toward the Palestinians and Arabs in general, from negotiating only with those subordinate themselves to it, and to wring from it concession after concession, from playing and preferring a piece of land between here and there – here a piece from Jerusalem, there an additional settlement – and how do the strong profit? Through its hatred of the weak? Its defeat? Not only. What we are witness to is the gradual transformation of a situation in which negotiations could have been held to a volatile reality with no outlets. If Israel and the United States continue to ignore the humiliation and crazy desperation threatening everyone, this desperation will spread from country to country like gunpowder, and in such escalation each day will be an expendable day. If they insisted on not asking themselves how the rock thrower of 1987 transformed into a human bomb twenty years later, more and more young people will forget life and become candidates for death. Why not simply say these things? If together, the United States and Israel did not succeed thus far in protecting the future of Israel, this is because their method is not effective. If they will not change it in Gaza, that hell, it will be the bearer of both our future and their future.