Hamas will not back down from its highly successful strategy, and Fatah cannot sustain an overt collaboration with Israel in these circumstances. Time is running out, the situation in Gaza is beyond catastrophic and political pressure is mounting on Israel to stop treating Gaza like the biggest open air concentration camp in the world. This is why Hassan Nasrallah is quite correct when he warns that "Gaza has entered a danger circle" and that the Palestinians there "should take extreme caution": an invasion of Gaza is probably imminent.
Israel's policy towards the Gaza issue is at least as phenomenally stupid as it is evil. In fact, I consider it a perfect case study in Neocon short-term thinking. Let's take a look at the context, at what has happened, at what is going on now and at where all this leads.
The main, over-arching, issue Israel, as a self-described "Jewish state", is facing today is not terrorism or Iranian nukes but demographics. Israel, as the last openly racist state on the planet, considers it vital to keep a Jewish majority within its borders. This is why a council of rabbis gets to decide who qualifies as "Jew" and who does not, and why the so-called law of return makes any Jew on the planet eligible for relocation to Israel and Israeli citizenship (even if this Jews is non-religious, does not speak Hebrew or Yiddish, and does not care in the least about Israel) while those Arabs who were born in today's Israel and who were expelled from their homes and towns are not allowed to return even though such a right is enshrined in international law. The problem is that a full 20 percent of the Israeli population is not Jewish and that the Palestinian birth rate is much higher (both in the Occupied Territories and in Israel proper) than among Jews.
The Israeli elites came up with a two-tiered solution to this issue: first, an Apartheid-like system was set up inside Israel to deprive the non-Jews from most of their civil and political rights; second, Israel withdrew from Gaza and agreed to a "two state solution".
This is what can be called the "Two Walls" policy: the creation of a legal "invisible wall" inside Israel (Apartheid) and the simultaneous creation of a visible wall separating Israel from a series of Palestinian Bantustans under tight Israeli control.
While Israel could unilaterally withdraw from Gaza because it is an isolated and contiguous piece of land in the south of the country, a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank is not an option: there are too many settlements, "Jews-only" roads, natural resources and military positions in the West Bank to allow the Israelis to leave. A system of Bantustans could ONLY be achieved if an Israeli withdrawal was negotiated with some kind of compliant Palestinian authority willing to do Israel's bidding. Enter Fatah.
Over the years Fatah transformed itself from a liberation movement to a collaborationist force, a kind of "Palestinian franchise of the Israeli Shin Bet". The Fatah leadership is amazingly corrupt, even by Middle-Eastern standards, and more than willing to do anything Israel tells is as long as it is allowed to remain in power. As a result, Fatah and Israel now really need each other: Fatah to remain in power, and Israel to put a Palestinian face to its occupation, of course, but even more so to negotiate a two state solution acceptable to Israel.
For all its other faults, of which there are many, Hamas will never agree to the Bantustanization of the West Bank. So the "Two Walls" policy is totally predicated on keeping Fatah in power in the West Bank at any cost. Should the Fatah regime collapse in the West Bank the entire edifice of Israel survival as a racist state would be at risk.
In this context, the policy chosen by Israel in Gaza is baffling by its boundless stupidity: by totally refusing to deal with Hamas and by blockading Gaza and creating a humanitarian disaster Israel has made the open collaboration of Abbas with the "Jewish state" politically impossible. Things are now getting so much out of control that, according to Arab news reports, Abbas is considering resigning.
In contrast, the Hamas policy in Gaza has proven nothing short of brilliant. By overthrowing Fatah and thus freeing Gaza from Israeli control Hamas made it possible for the Palestinians to sustain a campaign of Kassam missile strikes (directed mainly, but not only, against the Israeli town of Sderot). These cheap missiles, which are worse than useless in a military sense, have proven a fantastically powerful political weapon which now threatens to bring down the Abbas-Olmert alliance and, therefore, the entire Israeli plan on how to solve the Palestinian issue.
What an irony indeed, that the most powerful and bloated military and security apparatus in the Middle-East, backed by an imperial superpower, has had its most vital policies totally foiled by homemade rockets which no army in the world would ever want to have, even for free!
How did the "Jewish state" ever get itself in such a situation?! By its boundless arrogance, by its utter contempt for "the Arabs", by its mantrically repeated belief that "the Arabs only understand force" and by its racist delusion that the "dumb Arabs" would never be able to outsmart the presumably brilliant Jewish mind.
Israel is now truly facing an existential threat, at least as the last racist state on the face of the earth: that threat is its own boundless and self-defeating arrogance, further exacerbated by a phenomenally incompetent leadership.
There can be no doubt that Olmert has proven himself to be the single worst Israeli leader ever (the fact that he was ehtusiastically supported by the single worst President in US history did not help, of course). Now that is has become painfully obvious that everything Olmert ever did failed, the situation is becoming extremely dangerous for the entire region.
God willing, Olmert and Dubya will just sit out the rest of their time and we can only hope that the publication of the Winograd report at the end of the month will result in Olmert's resignation, although none of the Israeli political leaders likely to succeed him look too promising either (and some look outright deranged, like Avigdor Lieberman).
Alas, a change in leadership and political course in Israel is not something very likely. I consider it much more likely that Israel will re-occupy Gaza. It will be packaged with the usual rhetoric about "self-defense", "anti-terrorism", "restoration of law and order" and "reinstatement of the only democratic and legitimate political Palestinian authority" (Fatah). It is likely to be a bloody, but short operation, supported by Fatah goons who will enter Gaza right behind the IDF and whose return to power will herald a new reign of terror against the resistance to Israel.
Needless to say, that would be as bloody as it would be useless as it would kill any prospects for a "two state" solution negotiated with the Fatah regime in Ramallah which, being even more hated than today, will become as dependent on Israeli forces to protect it as any Jewish settlement.
Olmert is too weak to seriously negotiate, and Dubya is too stupid to put pressure on him (most definitely not in an election year anyway). Hamas will not back down from its highly successful strategy, and Fatah cannot sustain an overt collaboration with Israel in these circumstances. Time is running out, the situation in Gaza is beyond catastrophic and political pressure is mounting on Israel to stop treating Gaza like the biggest open air concentration camp in the world. This is why Hassan Nasrallah is quite correct when he warns that "Gaza has entered a danger circle" and that the Palestinians there "should take extreme caution": an invasion of Gaza is probably imminent.
Comments
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and another one
21.01.2008 23:42
I wish to see engagement with these sort of posts at the forthcoming indymedia network gathering. I think a lot of people are waiting for a statement from the IMC kollektive about such posts, covering
a) are they regarded as news or non-news
b) are they regarded, if not as outrightly anti-semitic, as laying the groundwork for an anti-semitic left
I for one would like to continue to post reports of direct action and protest to IMC but find that they increasingly dissappear beneath a wall of Israel/Palestine posts. Maybe the answer is to only use the local IMCs for direct action reports?
anarchist
Another What?
22.01.2008 01:55
"Is indymedia now regarded as a breeding and recruiting ground for the Antisemitic International?"
Nope. There's nothing "antisemitic" about criticizing the violent supremacist Cult currently attempting to wipe an entire People off the map.
Another example of this Plant attempting to silence any and all debate on Israel on IMC, as criticism and condemnation of this Apartheid State swells worldwide, due to the increased extremity of Israeli and Israeli-inspired warfare and brutality.
Israeli fuel blockade may halt food handouts, UN warns
Mark Tran and agencies
Monday January 21, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
Palestinians try to buy bread from a bakery in Gaza City during Israel's fuel blockade. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty
Food aid to residents in Gaza could be suspended unless Israel reopens the border, a UN agency said today.
The warning came amid a resurgence of violence between Israel and Hamas Islamists, and the halting by Israel of crucial fuel supplies to the coastal strip.
(Meaning increased attacks on Gaza by Israel. The attacks, which were planned long before the Annapolis Conference, have doubled since the meetings, killing a great number of Palestinians, a report by Ha'Aretz saying at least of the victims are civilians.)
"Because of a shortage of nylon for plastic bags and fuel for vehicles and generators, on Wednesday or Thursday we are going to have to suspend our food distribution programme to 860,000 people in Gaza if the present situation continues," said Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief Works Agency, which distributes food aid to 860,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Unwra distributes basic food parcels in Gaza consisting of items such as pulses, flour and packaged milk. The situation in the territory, which has been under a western economic embargo since Hamas took power last June, is already bleak.
(The embargo was imposed in an illegal move to punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas to power.)
"We are already seeing signs of malnutrition and there have been cases or rickets [a cause of weak bones through a lack of vitamin D]," Gunness said.
Israel, however, showed little signs of easing what is effectively an economic blockade of Gaza in response to a barrage of rocket fire aimed at its southern towns.
(This is not about the rockets. The rockets are a response to the imposition of these illegal measures of Collective Punishment. Israel's own defence staff warned that this would result from these measures. It appears now that this is exactly what Israel had hoped to provoke, and sadly, much of the media is allowing them to 'justify' their premeditated aggression based on the reaction to their illegal provocations.)
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Palestinians in Gaza might have to go without Israeli-supplied petrol for their cars as long as militants continue to fire rockets across the border.
(It's not about cars. It's about hospitals and aid/food. And in making such a statement, he is acknowledging that this is Collective Punishment, which is a War Crime.)
"As far as I'm concerned, all the residents of Gaza can walk and have no fuel for their cars, because they have a murderous terrorist regime that doesn't allow people in the south of Israel to live in peace," Olmert said in a broadcast.
(No doubt the Palestinians can see the irony in such a statement.)
The UN and the EU have urged Israel to restore the flow of fuel amid fears of a humanitarian disaster. Lebanon and Syria called for an emergency Arab summit to discuss the Israeli blockade.
The Syrian foreign ministry demanded "an immediate end to the collective punishment and Israeli crimes", saying Israel was violating "the simplest rules of human rights".
(The UN, EU, and aid organizations agree.)
The pro-western Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, described developments in Gaza as a serious escalation of Israel's "racial discrimination and blatant human rights violations against Palestinians, under the pretext of confronting Hamas".
Palestinian officials warned of a catastrophe in health services in Gaza because of Israel's decision to halt fuel shipments, which has forced the shutdown of Gaza's sole only power plant.
"We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery patients or stop operating rooms," said a health ministry official, Moaiya Hassanain.
Israel last night refused to reopen crossings or allow fuel supplies in after the most intense fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza for more than a year. Nearly 40 Palestinians have been killed in the past week, at least 10 of them civilians.
Electricity officials shut Gaza's only power plant just before 8pm (6pm GMT) yesterday. Gaza bakeries stopped operating because of the blockade, bakers said, because they had neither power nor flour. Fresh pitta bread is a staple food for Gazans.
Israel denied its economic measures would cause widespread suffering.
"We will do everything to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and I can guarantee to you that there will not be a humanitarian crisis in Gaza," said Shlomo Dror, an Israeli defence spokesman.
Arye Mekel, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, accused Hamas of creating an artificial emergency, calling the blackout a "ploy ... to attract international sympathy".
(Israeli policy is all that's needed to build international sympathy. No stunts are necessary.)
Hamas said five hospital patients had died because of the power cut. But health officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied this.
Israel imposed the fuel blockade in response to rocket fire that has virtually paralysed life in southern Israeli towns. The upsurge of fighting last week followed an Israeli anti-rocket operation in Gaza.
(Destroying the Interior Ministry had nothing to do with the rockets Israel's Collective Punishment have provoked.)
The Israeli deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, said there were signs the blockade was working, as the number of rockets fired dropped sharply today. The army said five were fired yesterday, down from 53 over the previous two days.
As well as fuel from Israel to power its electricity plant, Gaza receives about 70% of its electricity direct from Israel. That energy supply had not been stopped, Israel said. The Gaza power plant supplies most of the remaining electricity. Israeli officials acknowledge its fuel supply has been stopped.
The EU criticised Israel for punishing all of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants and urged it to restart fuel supplies and open border crossings.
"I have made clear that I am against this collective punishment of the people of Gaza," the EU external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said in a statement.
"I urge the Israeli authorities to restart fuel supplies and open the crossings for the passage of humanitarian and commercial supplies."
Ferrero-Waldner said the decision to close border crossings and stop fuel provision "will exacerbate an already dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and risks escalating an already difficult situation on the ground".
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation but still controls the borders and shipment of supplies.
Hamas seized power in Gaza from the rival Fatah faction, which is based in the West Bank and led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
(This after the US and Israel used corrupt elements of Fatah in a failed Coup attempt against Hamas.)
UN says Gaza facing food shortage
Most of Gaza's 1.4m people depend on humanitarian aid
UN food aid to about 860,000 people in the Gaza Strip will have to be suspended within days if Israel's blockade continues, the UN has warned.
Spokesman Christopher Gunness said the UN relief agency UNWRA was running short of nylon for plastic bags and fuel for vehicles and generators.
Israel closed Gaza's borders last Thursday in response to rocket attacks by Gaza-based militants.
(The rockets are a response to Israel's imposition of Collective Punishment!)
The EU says Israel is "collectively punishing" the Hamas-run territory.
Egypt has urged Israel to lift its border closure and the crisis is being discussed by the Arab League.
With fuel supplies hit by the blockade, Gaza's only power plant, which produces 27% of the territory's electricity needs according to a recent UN report, was shut down on Sunday night.
I have made clear that I am against this collective punishment of the people of Gaza
Benita Ferrero-Waldner,
EU External Relations Commissioner
Israel says it is still providing power to Gaza, putting its current contribution at nearly 70%, while Egyptian power stations account for the remainder.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that while Israel does not want to provoke a humanitarian crisis, it does want to make people's lives "uncomfortable".
(Which is illegal ... That's all the rockets are about.)
In another development, overnight Israeli air strikes in the Gaza City area killed one Palestinian and injured several others. Israel said it had been targeting militants transporting rockets.
On Monday morning residents awoke to closed petrol stations and shuttered bakeries unable to bake bread - a staple food in Gaza.
Generators are supplying critical power to hospitals
Generators are being used to maintain critical power supplies to hospitals but there are fears that supplies of diesel could soon run out.
Mr Olmert insists the Israeli action is limited to cutting fuel supplies for vehicles.
(But that is contradicted by the facts.)
"As far as I'm concerned, all the residents of Gaza can walk and have no fuel for their cars, because they have a murderous terrorist regime that doesn't allow people in the south of Israel to live in peace," he said.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Ary Mekell told the BBC on Monday that the energy crisis in Gaza was a "a fabrication and a stage production by Hamas".
"There is no shortage of electricity - we provide 70% of the electricity for Gaza through electric cables and this is nothing to do with the fuel supplies," he said.
GAZA'S ELECTRICITY SOURCES
Gaza uses 187 megawatts of electricity
Israel supplies 64% of this, and Egypt 9%
The remaining 27% is produced by Gaza's power station
Israel supplies the fuel oil for the Gaza power station
Source: UN report, May 2007
A report by the UN humanitarian affairs agency Ocha in May 2007 estimated that Israel supplied 64% of Gaza electricity, the local power station - 27%, and Egypt - 9%.
After decades of occupation, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but it still controls the territory's borders and supplies.
Hamas - branded a terrorist organisation by the Israel, the US and the EU - has been in charge of Gaza since June, when it drove out rivals Fatah.
More than 200 rockets and mortars have hit Israel from Gaza since an Israeli operation against militants on Tuesday that left 18 Palestinians dead, the Israeli military says.
Foreign concern
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak telephoned Mr Olmert to warn him of the humanitarian effects of the blockade, and urged him to "stop the Israeli aggression".
Israel says border closures will stop if the rocket attacks end
He also raised the possibility of reopening the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Israel insists should remain closed.
Arab League officials gathered in Cairo for an emergency meeting but it is unclear what action it can take other than pushing for humanitarian relief.
The most significant action would be to reopen Gaza's crossing into Egypt but this would probably prove too controversial a step for the Egyptian government, the BBC's Ian Pannell reports.
In other reaction:
The UK said it did not support the Israeli blockade and called for all parties to work for the reopening of the crossings. Reports that electricity has been cut because of fuel shortages are particularly alarming, it said
International aid agency Oxfam said Gaza's water and sanitation system was "running on empty" with most pumps due to shut down by Tuesday
EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner spoke out against "this collective punishment of the people of Gaza" and called for an end to the blockade
Iran called on foreign ministers of Islamic states to convene on the crisis
Jordan said it was "deeply concerned" about Israeli "military violations" and Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora said Israel was escalating "racial discrimination... under the pretext of confronting Hamas"
Zionist Extremism Key Impediment to Peace
And yet another one!
22.01.2008 03:29
These obsessives love Neturei Karta, Gilad Atzmon because they can cite them as 'Jews I'd be friends with'.
This stuff has put me off doing some informative posts on ecological issues, I do most of them elsewhere instead.
I am not objecting to Palestine Today which seems to be much more in the spirit of the Indymedia ethos.
Thank you also yawn @
Strepsil
Indeed
22.01.2008 04:16
I was just pointing out that this is yet another example.
"Take widely available news media reports on Israel and concoct the most paranoid, demonising interpretation ..."
That's not necessary. The reports of Israel's crimes are enough to condemn them.
You're simply trying to mischaracterize this condemnation, because you cannot argue the facts. You simply don't want anyone talking about them.
Zionist Extremism Key Impediment to Peace
@ strepsil
22.01.2008 16:07
another one
strepsil - soothing war crimes?
22.01.2008 18:16
another one: "I find it interesting that you've been put off posting your own reports here. I've been thinking of the doing same, but indymedia is still an indespensible tool for direct action activists. where else can i post? maybe there's a divide here between people who use indymedia as an outreach forum to (mis)inform readers about Israel and others who just want to put posts up about their latest action?"
Omar Barghouti: "It seems European elites are currently determined never to oppose Israel, no matter what crimes it commits. It is as if the bellowing -- and increasingly hypocritical -- slogan upheld by Jewish survivors of European genocide, "Never Again!", is now espoused by European elites with one difference: the two letter, 's' and 't', are added at the end."
How does it feel to be at one with the elite?
................................................................................
Samud