The
Real Goal Of The Slaughter
In Gaza
By Jonathan Cook
02 January,
2009
Countercurrents.org
Ever
since Hamas triumphed in the Palestinian elections nearly three years
ago, the story in Israel has been that a full-scale ground invasion
of the Gaza Strip was imminent. But even when public pressure mounted
for a decisive blow against Hamas, the government backed off from
a frontal assault.
Now the world waits for Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to send
in the tanks and troops as the logic of this operation is pushing
inexorably towards a ground war. Nonetheless, officials have been
stalling. Significant ground forces are massed on Gaza’s border,
but still the talk in Israel is of “exit strategies”,
lulls and renewed ceasefires.
Even if Israeli tanks do lumber into the enclave, will they dare to
move into the real battlegrounds of central Gaza? Or will they simply
be used, as they have been in the past, to terrorise the civilian
population on the peripheries?
Israelis are aware of the official reason for Mr Barak’s reticence
to follow the air strikes with a large-scale ground war. They have
been endlessly reminded that the worst losses sustained by the army
in the second intifada took place in 2002 during the invasion of Jenin
refugee camp.
Gaza, as Israelis know only too well, is one mammoth refugee camp.
Its narrow alleys, incapable of being negotiated by Merkava tanks,
will force Israeli soldiers out into the open. Gaza, in the Israeli
imagination, is a death trap.
Similarly, no one has forgotten the heavy toll on Israeli soldiers
during the ground war with Hizbollah in 2006. In a country such as
Israel, with a citizen army, the public has become positively phobic
of a war in which large numbers of its sons will be placed in the
firing line.
That fear is only heightened by reports in the Israeli media that
Hamas is praying for the chance to engage Israel’s army in serious
combat. The decision to sacrifice many soldiers in Gaza is not one
Mr Barak, leader of the Labor Party, will take lightly with an election
in six weeks.
But there is another concern that has given him equal cause to hesitate.
Despite the popular rhetoric in Israel, no senior official really
believes Hamas can be destroyed, either from the air or with brigades
of troops. It is simply too entrenched in Gaza.
That conclusion is acknowledged in the tepid rationales offered so
far for Israel’s operations. “Creating calm in the country’s
south” and “changing the security environment” have
been preferred over previous favourites, such as “rooting out
the infrastructure of terror”.
An invasion whose real objective was the toppling of Hamas would,
as Mr Barak and his officials understand, require the permanent military
reoccupation of Gaza.
But overturning the disengagement from Gaza -- the 2005 brainchild
of Ariel Sharon, the prime minister at the time -- would entail a
huge military and financial commitment from Israel. It would once
again have to assume responsibility for the welfare of the local civilian
population, and the army would be forced into treacherous policing
of Gaza’s teeming camps.
In effect, an invasion of Gaza to overthrow Hamas would be a reversal
of the trend in Israeli policy since the Oslo process of the early
1990s.
It was then that Israel allowed the long-exiled Palestinian leader,
Yasser Arafat, to return to the occupied territories in the new role
of head of the Palestinian Authority. Naively, Arafat assumed he was
leading a government-in-waiting. In truth, he simply became Israel’s
chief security contractor.
Arafat was tolerated during the 1990s because he did little to stop
Israel’s effective annexation of large parts of the West Bank
through the rapid expansion of settlements and increasingly harsh
movement restrictions on Palestinians. Instead, he concentrated on
building up the security forces of his Fatah loyalists, containing
Hamas and preparing for a statehood that never arrived.
When the second intifada broke out, Arafat proved he had outlived
his usefulness to Israel. His Palestinian Authority was gradually
emasculated.
Since Arafat’s death and the disengagement from Gaza, Israel
has sought to consolidate the physical separation of the Strip from
the much-coveted West Bank. Even if not originally desired by Israel,
Hamas’s takeover of Gaza has contributed significantly to that
goal.
Israel is now faced by two Palestinian national movements. The Fatah
one, based in the West Bank and led by a weak president, Mahmoud Abbas,
is largely discredited and compliant. The other, Hamas, based in Gaza,
has grown in confidence as it claims to be the true guardian of resistance
to the occupation.
Unable to destroy Hamas, Israel is now considering whether to live
with the armed group next door.
Hamas has proved it can enforce its rule in Gaza much as Arafat once
did in both occupied territories. The question being debated in Israel’s
cabinet and war rooms is whether, like Arafat, Hamas can be made to
collude with the occupation. It has proved it is strong, but can it
be made useful to Israel, too?
In practice that would mean taming Hamas rather than crushing it.
Whereas Israel is trying to build up Fatah in the West Bank with carrots,
it is using the current slaughter in Gaza as a big stick with which
to beat Hamas into compliance.
The ultimate objective is another truce stopping the rocket fire out
of the Strip, like the six-month ceasefire that just ended, but on
terms even more favourable to Israel.
The savage blockade that has deprived Gaza’s population of essentials
for many months failed to achieve that goal. Instead, Hamas quickly
took charge of the smuggling tunnels that became a lifeline for Gazans.
The tunnels raised Hamas’s finances and popularity in equal
measure.
It should come as no surprise that Israel has barely bothered to hit
the Hamas leadership or its military wing. Instead it has bombed the
tunnels, Hamas’s treasure chest, and it has killed substantial
numbers of ordinary policemen, the guarantors of law and order in
Gaza. Latest reports suggest Israel is now planning to expand its
air strikes to Hamas’s welfare organisations, the charities
that are the base of its popularity.
The air campaign is paring down Hamas’s ability to function
effectively as the ruler of Gaza. It is undermining Hamas’s
political power bases. The lesson is not that Hamas can be destroyed
militarily but that it that can be weakened domestically.
Israel apparently hopes to persuade the Hamas leadership, as it did
Arafat for a while, that its best interests are served by co-operating
with Israel. The message is: forget about your popular mandate to
resist the occupation and concentrate instead on remaining in power
with our help.
In the fog of war, events may yet escalate in such a way that a serious
ground invasion cannot be avoided, especially if Hamas continues to
fire rockets into Israel. But whatever happens, Israel and Hamas are
almost certain in the end to agree to another ceasefire.
The issue will be whether in doing so, Hamas, like Arafat before it,
loses sight of its primary task: to force Israel to end its occupation.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest book is “Disappearing Palestine:
Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website
is www.jkcook.net.
This article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae),
published in Abu Dhabi.