To
Die With The Philistines?
By Uri Avnery
20 December,
2007
Countercurrents.org
The most famous words ever spoken
in Gaza were the last words of Samson (Judges, 16, 30): "Let me
die with the Philistines!"
According
to the Biblical story, Samson took hold of the central pillars of the
Philistine temple and brought down the whole building upon the Lords
of the Philistines, the people of Gaza and himself. The teller of the
story sums it all up: "So the dead which he slew at his death were
more than they which he slew in his life."
A story of
suffering, destruction and death. It may be about to repeat itself now,
only with the roles reversed: the temple may be brought down by the
Palestinians (who took their name from the Philistines), and among the
dead will be the Lords of Israel.
WiLL GAZA
turn into a Palestinian Massada (the place where, a thousand years later,
Jewish defenders chose mass suicide rather then fall into the hands
of the Romans)?
The people
of Gaza are worried. The Hamas fighters are preparing for action. The
chiefs of the Israeli army are both worried and preparing for action.
For months
now, the political and military leaders of Israel have been discussing
the "big operation": a massive invasion of the Gaza Strip
in order to put an end to the launching of rockets into Israel.
The army
chiefs, who are usually raring to go into battle, are not eager this
time. Not at all. They want to avoid it at almost any cost. But they
are fatalistic. Everything now depends on blind chance. For example,
if tomorrow a Qassam rocket falls on a house in Sderot and kills a whole
family, there will be such an outcry in Israel that the government may
feel compelled to give the order, even against its better judgment.
For every
Israeli military or political planner, the Gaza strip is a nightmare.
It is about 40 km long and 10 km wide. In this 360 square kilometers
of parched desert, hardly twice the area of Washington DC, there are
crowded 1.5 million human beings, almost all of them destitute, who
have nothing to lose, headed by a militant religious movement. (It might
be remembered that in the 1948 war, the Jewish community in Palestine
amounted to less than 650 thousand people.)
For months
now, the Hamas leadership in Gaza has been accumulating weapons, which
are smuggled into the Strip through the many tunnels under its border
with Egypt (as we smuggled weapons into the country on the eve of the
1948 war). True, they have got no artillery or tanks, but they now possess
very effective anti-tank weapons.
According
to the estimate of our military, an invasion of the Gaza Strip may cost
the lives of a hundred Israeli soldiers and thousands of Palestinian
fighters and civilians. The Israeli army will deploy tanks and armored
bulldozers, and the world will see terrible pictures - the same kind
of pictures that our army tried to suppress and that caused a world-wide
outcry against the "Jenin Massacre" during the 2002 "Defensive
Shield" operation.
Nobody can
know how this operation will develop. Perhaps the Palestinian resistance
will collapse after all, and the predictions of numerous Israeli casualties
will be proved false. But it is also possible that Gaza will turn into
a Palestinian Massada, a kind of mini-Stalingrad. This week, in one
of the "routine" incursions by the Israeli army, an RPG (rocket-propelled
grenade) penetrated one of the renowned Israeli-produced Merkava Mark-3
tanks, and it was a miracle that the four crew members were not killed.
In a big, bloody battle, such miracles cannot be relied on.
The nightmare
does not end there. No doubt, the Israeli army will overcome the resistance,
whatever the price on both sides, perhaps by demolishing whole neighborhoods
and massive slaughter. But what then?
If the army
leaves the strip quickly, the situation will revert to what it was before
and the launching of the Qassam rockets will be resumed (if it stops
at all). That would mean that the whole operation will have been in
vain. If the army remains there - what alternative would it have? -
it will be compelled to take on the full responsibility of an occupation
regime: feeding the population, running the social services, establishing
security. All this in a situation of a vigorous and ongoing guerilla
war, which will turn the lives of both occupier and occupied into hell.
For an occupier,
Gaza has always been problematic. The Israeli army has left it three
times already, and each time the joy was great. "Gaza - goodbye
and good riddance!" was always a popular slogan. When Israel made
peace with the Egyptians, they adamantly refused to accept Gaza back
at all.
It is no
accident that both intifadas started in Gaza. (The first, exactly 20
years ago this week, broke out when an Israeli truck collided with two
cars full of Palestinian workers, which Palestinians took to be a deliberate
Israeli reprisal. The second exploded after Ariel Sharon's provocative
visit to the Temple Mount, when Israeli policemen shot and killed outraged
Muslim protesters.)
The Hamas
movement itself, which is today celebrating its 20th anniversary, was
born - also no accident - in Gaza.
No wonder
that our army chiefs shrink back from re-conquering the Gaza Strip.
They do not relish the idea of playing the role of the Lords of the
Philistines in the story of the Palestinian Samson.
THE PROBLEM
is that nobody knows how to undo the Gordian knot left behind by Ariel
Sharon, that master-weaver of such knots.
Sharon initiated
the "Separation Plan" - one of the worst follies in the annals
of this state, which are so rich with follies.
As will be
remembered, Sharon dismantled the settlements and evacuated the Strip
without a dialogue with the Palestinians and without turning the territory
over to the Palestinian Authority. He did not leave the inhabitants
of the Strip any possibility of leading a normal life, but turned the
territory into a giant prison. All connections with the outside world
were cut - the Israeli navy cut the sea lanes, the border with Egypt
was effectively sealed, the airport remained destroyed, the building
of a harbor was prevented by force. The promised "safe passage"
between the Strip and the West Bank was hermetically sealed, all crossings
in and out of the Strip remained under total Israeli control, to be
opened and closed arbitrarily. The employment of tens of thousands of
Gazan workers in Israel, on which the livelihood of almost the entire
Strip depended, was terminated.
The next
chapter was inevitable: Hamas took military control over the Strip,
without the helpless politicians in Ramallah being able to intervene.
From the Strip, Qassam rockets and mortar shells were launched at the
neighboring Israeli towns and villages, without the Israeli army being
able to stop them. One of the most powerful armies in the world, with
the most sophisticated weapons, is unable to counter one of the most
primitive weapons on earth.
Thus a vicious
circle was set up: the Israelis choke the people in the Strip, Gazan
fighters bombard the Israeli town Sderot, the Israeli army reacts by
killing Palestinian fighters and civilians, the people from Gaza launch
mortars at the kibbutzim, the army carries out incursions and kills
Palestinian fighters daily and nightly, Hamas brings in more effective
anti-tank weapons - and no end in sight.
AN ORDINARY
Israeli has no idea of what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The disconnection
is absolute. No Israeli can enter the Strip, almost no Palestinian can
get out.
This is the
way most Israelis see things: We left Gaza. We dismantled all the settlements
there, in spite of the fact that this caused us a profound national
crisis. And what happens? The Palestinians just keep shooting at us
from inside the strip and turn life in Sderot into hell. We have no
alternative but to turn their lives, too, into hell, in order to get
them to stop.
This week
I heard a report from one of the most credible individuals in Gaza -
Dr. Eyad Sarraj - a well-known psychiatrist, peace and human rights
activist. Here are some of the things he told a small circle of Israeli
peace activists:
Israel blocks
all imports into the strip, except for a short list of about half a
dozen basic articles. 900 trucks used to be employed daily for the imports
and exports of the Gaza Strip, now their number is reduced to 15. For
example, no soap is allowed in.
Local water
is undrinkable. Israel does not let in bottled water. Nor does Israel
allow the importation water pumps. The price of water filters has gone
up from $40 to $250, there are no spare parts at all for filters. Only
the well-to-do can still afford them. However, chlorine is let in.
There is
no import of cement. When there is a hole in the ceiling, it cannot
be repaired. The building site for the children's hospital stands silent.
There are no spare parts of any kind. A medical instrument that goes
out of order cannot be repaired. Not even incubators for babies or dialysis
equipment.
The severely
sick cannot reach hospital - neither in Israel, nor in Egypt or Jordan.
The few permits issued are often delivered after a deadly delay. In
many instances, patients are condemned to death.
Students
cannot reach their universities abroad. Foreign citizens who happened
to be visiting Gaza cannot get out if they have a Palestinian ID. Palestinians
who have contracts to work abroad are not allowed to leave. Some Palestinians
were allowed to pass through Israel on the way to Egypt, but were not
allowed in by the Egyptian authorities and had to return to Gaza.
Practically
all enterprises have been closed and their workers thrown onto the street
for lack of raw materials. For example, the Coca Cola factory has closed
down. After 60 years of occupation - first by the Egyptians and than
the Israelis - almost nothing is produced in the Strip, except oranges,
strawberries, tomatoes and the like.
Prices in
the Gaza Strip have risen sky-high - fivefold and even tenfold. Life
is now more expensive in Gaza than in Tel-Aviv. The black market is
flourishing.
How do people
exist? The members of extended families help each other. Well-to-do
people support their relatives. UNRWA brings in the most basic foodstuffs
and distributes them to the refugees, who are the majority of the inhabitants.
IS THERE
another way out besides a massive invasion? Of course there is. But
it requires imagination, boldness and a readiness to act contrary to
established patterns.
An immediate
cease-fire can be achieved. According to all the indications, Hamas,
too, is ready for it, provided that it is general: both sides must stop
all military actions, including "targeted liquidations" and
the launching of Qassams and mortar shells. The crossings must be opened
for free movement of goods in both directions. The passage between the
Strip and the West Bank must be opened, as well as the border between
the Strip and Egypt.
Such a calming
of the situation may encourage the two competing Palestinian governments
- Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza - to start a new dialogue,
under the auspices of Egypt or Saudi Arabia, in order to heal the rift
and set up a unified Palestinian national leadership that will have
the authority to sign peace agreements.
In place
of the cry "Let me die with the Philistines", let us take
the words of Dylan Thomas: "And death shall have no dominion!"
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