Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ Gaza leadership, condemned the U.S. killing of Osama Bin Laden. “We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior,” he said. “We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.” (The P.A. applauded the killing, as, of course, did Prime Minister Netanyahu.)
OK. On the one hand, al-Qaida is not the sticking point here; it was not disagreement over Bin Laden that held up the 2000 or 2008 peace talks, and Israel isn’t skeptical of reconciliation—that is, of a unified Palestinian sovereign that prominently includes Hamas—because Hamas refused to celebrate, and in fact condemned, the death of one of the world’s worst men.
But Hamas’ take on Bin Laden’s killing is nonetheless unbelievably disturbing. (It is also far from shocking: Both Hamas and al-Qaida are jihadist entities; longtime Bin Laden mentor Abdullah Azzam helped found Hamas. So, let’s dispense with the myth that this was merely a case of “bad P.R.” on Hamas’ part. This isn’t P.R.; this is policy. And that remains true even if Hamas was motivated in part to shore up its hardline flank. It’s very simple: Hamas is against the killing of Bin Laden.) You can make compromises—you can make peace—with those with whom you disagree, even vehemently. But you have to be living on the same planet. And people who unequivocally condemn the killing of Bin Laden are not living on the same planet as mainstream Israelis, and Israelis shouldn’t be required to move to that planet in order to make peace.
So, while the most immediately obvious contradiction is that between the Hamas and P.A.—the group that mourns the jihadist and the group that celebrates his death may have a tough time seeing eye-to-eye going forward—the most important one is that between Hamas and Israel, America, and the West. The reconciliation deal yet again proves a useful heightening of contradictions. This time, that heightening is a clear defeat for the forces that favor peace
With each incident, the wedge is hammered deeper and the hostility grows between the two halves of what is meant to be a future Palestine, just as the U.S. relaunches Mideast talks at the White House this week in hopes of getting an agreement within a year.
The talks aim to create a Palestinian state, but it appears unlikely any deal could be implemented as long as the split persists, particularly if Hamas - shunned by Israel and the West as a terror organization - remains in charge in Gaza.
In the West Bank, touted by the international community as the cradle of a democratic Palestine, rights violations committed in the name of protecting that vision could end up destroying it, rights activists say.
Walter Reich sheds some light on Israelis' profound doubts about the prospects for peace after the failure of the Oslo process, the fallout from recent attempts to withdraw from territories, and the rise of Hamas. "Any effort to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians," he writes, "must reckon with the fact that bitter experience has taught many Israelis to doubt that their foes want a lasting concord."
He offers a list of ten beliefs and fears contributing to Israelis' despair over the prospects for peace.
The Palestinians will never accept the existence of Israel, and systematically teach their children that they must never do so, either.
It’s this belief, probably more than any other, that causes Israeli despair.
Israelis have grown accustomed to being pilloried in the most crude and violent terms in Palestinian mosques. And they’ve grown accustomed to media controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that regularly undermine the readiness to accept Israel alongside a future Palestinian state—that glorify suicide bombers, quote Muhammad as saying that Jews must be killed, accuse Israelis of poisoning and spreading AIDS among Palestinians, deny that the Holocaust happened, claim that Jews never had a history in the land and that there was never any Temple in Jerusalem, and insist that Jews should leave the area and go back to their “original” homelands—Europe and Ethiopia.
Israelis might feel reassured that peace is possible if it were promoted in the Palestinian Authority’s education system; even if the current Palestinian generation isn’t ready to accept the Jewish state, maybe a future one will. But they know that Palestinian students study maps in their textbooks on which Israel doesn’t exist and watch television programs aimed at young people that identify cities in Israel as being part of Palestine.
Moreover, the other Palestinian territory—Gaza—is governed by a group, Hamas, that is forthright in declaring that it will fight until Israel is gone, and that promotes this ideology in every way it can in its own media and education system. Even if the Palestinian Authority were to foster the ideal of coexistence among its students, what about the students in Gaza?
Palestinians attack Israel from behind civilian human shields, but any response by Israel, however careful, that harms those civilians is condemned, while the tactic itself, which is a crime of war, is ignored.
Israelis have concluded that this new form of warfare has undercut the effectiveness of the military strength on which they long relied. They know they have a powerful army—the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF—that faces, in the cases of the Palestinians and Hezbollah in Lebanon, adversaries that lack tanks or planes. But Israelis have discovered that their military superiority is blunted, even useless, when their adversaries are willing to use the very people whose cause they claim to champion as shields behind which to fire rockets. That’s what happened during Israel’s three-week incursion into Gaza in the winter of 2008–09, which it launched after being bombarded by thousands of rockets. And that’s what happened during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Palestinians’ ally on Israel’s northern border, which hid its rockets in schools, mosques, and hospitals, so that Israel couldn’t target the rockets without also destroying those schools, mosques, and hospitals—and killing civilians. Like the United States and other countries fighting in the Middle East, Israel doesn’t know how to fight such a war. And when it tries, it’s accused of war crimes. Israelis worry that the military they built to defend their country can’t do it without bringing upon Israel international condemnation.
Inbar explains why those who claim to be defending the Palestinians' interests are wrong to pressure Israel to end its blockade of Gaza. On that point, I think he is right. However, I'm not convinced by his claim that the Netanyahu administration's recent adjustments to the blockade substantively diminish Israel's security. I get the sense that these movements they are symbolic more than anything--a sign between Israel, on the one hand, and the U.S. and Israel's few allies in Europe, on the other. Israel has been tinkering with the specifics of the blockade on a regular basis in order to strike a balance between limiting potentially harmful materials from entering Gaza and letting purely civilian goods through. If, in exchange, Israel can get them to resist the demagogic calls for a UN investigation, and/or to show some more spine with regard to Iran and Erdogan, then I am all for it. That Israel's friends and quasi-friends are willing and able to step up...well, I will believe that when I see it.
The entrenchment of Hamas rule in Gaza amplifies the schism in Palestinian society and strengthens Hamas' influence in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. It is also a slap in the face of President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the PA, who demanded the blockade's continuation. Hamas' achievement here further undermines whatever ability--albeit a very limited ability--the Palestinian national movement had to move toward compromise with the Jewish state."
The easing of the blockade reflects the success of a Hamas propaganda campaign to depict the situation in Gaza as a humanitarian disaster. While Gaza is not prospering, the standard of living there is generally higher than in Egypt--a little noticed fact. The ability of this Goebbels-type propaganda to entrench a tremendous lie in the consciousness of the international community testifies to the continued vulnerability of naive westerners to sophisticated psychological warfare and to the complicity of much of the western press in this enterprise.
The step taken by the Israeli government also significantly helps Hamas strengthen its grip on Gazans, as Hamas controls the distribution of any goods entering its territory. Moreover, even if Hamas allows for a general improvement in the daily lives of all Gazans, this reduces the incentive for regime change, which should be part of the western goal to give Gazans a better future. Strengthening this radical theological regime in the eastern Mediterranean, which is linked to revolutionary Iran, defies western rational thinking.
The entrenchment of Hamas rule in Gaza amplifies the schism in Palestinian society and strengthens Hamas' influence in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. It is also a slap in the face of President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the PA, who demanded the blockade's continuation. Hamas' achievement here further undermines whatever ability--albeit a very limited ability--the Palestinian national movement had to move toward compromise with the Jewish state.
Posts
