Israel’s
Aim: To Make
The Gazan Prison Even More Secure
By Jonathan Cook
07 January,
2009
Countercurrents.org
Nazareth:
There are two persistent myths about the aim of Israel’s
onslaught on Gaza: the first that it is an entirely defensive move,
a way to end the rocket fire of Hamas; and the second that it is designed
to restore the army’s credibility after its failure to cow Hizbollah
in 2006.
No doubt the Israeli army has been itching to repair its battered
image, and for sure the rocket attacks from Gaza create domestic pressures
that are only too clear to an Israeli government about to face an
election.
But it is a gross misunderstanding of what is unfolding in Gaza to
believe Israel’s motives are capricious. The politicians and
generals have been preparing for this attack for many months, possibly
years -- a fact alone that suggests they have bigger objectives than
commonly assumed.
Israel seized this particular moment -- with western politicians dozing
through the holidays and a changeover of administrations in Washington
-- because it ensured the longest period to implement its plan without
diplomatic interference.
The pressure on Israel to reach a political settlement will grow,
however, as the inauguration of Barack Obama on Jan 20 approaches.
That explains why, as the army brings ever greater force to bear on
Hamas’s urban heartlands, the outlines of an Israeli plan are
starting to become visible.
Despite talk in Israel that a chance to topple Hamas is within reach,
that option does not have to be pursued. Israel’s aims can be
achieved whether Hamas stays or falls -- as long as it is crushed
politically.
Certainly, a permanent re-occupation of the enclave with its 1.5 million
inhabitants is not desired by Israel, which withdrew its settlers
and soldiers in 2005 precisely because the demographic, economic and
military costs of directly policing Gaza’s refugee camps were
considered too high.
It therefore needs another ceasefire similar to the one that expired
on Dec 19. The questions are: who will “sign” it and what
will be its terms?
Writing in The Jerusalem Post newspaper this week, Martin Kramer,
a leading Washington neoconservative, suggested that Israel’s
goal was to forge an agreement with Mahmoud Abbas and restore his
rule in Gaza. “Hamas would swallow the pill in the name of ‘national
unity’,” he argued.
The idea that Mr Abbas and his Fatah party can ride into the Gaza
Strip on the back of Israeli tanks may be a fantasy that makes sense
to the neocons who brought us “regime change” in Iraq,
but few in the Israeli government or army seem to believe it is feasible.
In any case, the distinction between Fatah’s “rule”
over the West Bank ghettoes Israel has created and Hamas’s oversight
of the prison that Gaza has become is one Israel appears keen to maintain.
The Israeli vision for the West Bank, in which significant parts are
annexed, depends on its political severance from Gaza.
Instead, Israel is again pursuing its favourite mode of diplomacy:
unilateralism. According to officials quoted in the local media, it
wants a deal that is approved by the United States and western governments
but passes over the heads of Hamas and the Palestinians.
At a recent cabinet meeting, Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, put
it this way: “There is no intention here of creating a diplomatic
agreement with Hamas. We need diplomatic agreements against Hamas.”
According to the latest reports, the ceasefire would require, as before,
that Hamas prevent all rocket fire out of the Strip, but it would
also introduce what officials are vaguely terming a “mechanism”
on the only border with Gaza not under Israel’s control.
During its lengthy blockade, Israel has been able to prevent goods,
including food, medicines and fuel, from entering the Gaza Strip through
crossing points on its two land borders while its navy patrols the
sea coast. But Gaza also shares a short southern land border, next
to the town of Rafah, with Egypt.
Before the 2005 disengagement, Israel sought to control this fourth
border too by bulldozing swathes of Palestinian homes to create a
no-man’s land between Rafah and Egypt. This area, overlooked
by military watchtowers, was referred to as the Philadelphi corridor.
After the withdrawal, Israel hoped the steel wall along the Rafah
border and its oversight of the crossing point into Egypt would ensure
that nothing went in or out without its approval.
However, a small private industry of tunnelling under the wall quickly
burgeoned, becoming a lifeline for ordinary Gazans and a route for
smuggling in weapons for Hamas.
Egypt had little choice but to turn a blind eye, despite being profoundly
uncomfortable with an Islamic party ruling next door. It faces its
own domestic pressures over the humanitarian catastrophe that has
been visibly created in Gaza.
Israel believes the current invasion will have achieved nothing unless
this time it regains absolute control of the Rafah border, undercutting
Hamas’s claims to be running the Strip. The “mechanism”
therefore requires that technical responsibility is lifted from Egyptian
shoulders.
According to the Israeli plan, it will pass to the Americans, whose
expertise will be called on to stop the tunnelling and prevent Hamas
from rebuilding its arsenal after the invasion comes to an end.
Israel may additionally seek the involvement of international forces
to diffuse the censure the Arab publics are likely to direct at Egypt
as a result.
Once Hamas has no hope of rearming and cannot take any credit for
the Gazans’ welfare, Israel will presumably allow in sufficient
supplies of humanitarian aid to pacify western governments concerned
about the images of Gaza’s cold and hungry children.
Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian analyst, believes that in this scenario
Israel would probably insist that such supplies come only through
the Egyptian crossing, thereby “fulfilling another strategic
aim: that of making Gaza Egypt’s responsibility”.
And once the Gazan albatross is lifted from Israel’s neck, Mr
Abbas and his West Bank regime will be more isolated than ever. Undoubtedly,
the hope in Israel is that, with Gaza disposed of, the pressure will
grow on the Palestinian Authority to concede in a “peace”
deal yet more Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
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.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae),
published in Abu Dhabi.