What Has Failed In Palestine,
Will Fail In Iraq
By Ali AbunimahElectronic Iraq
28 November 2003
Just as many senior Israeli military officials are openly criticizing their government's tactics in the occupied Palestinian territories, the United States is repeating in Iraq many of Israel's worst mistakes. This will doom efforts to stabilize Iraq and restore its independence."In a tactic reminiscent of Israeli crackdowns in the West Bank and Gaza," reported the Detroit Free Press on November 18, "the U.S. military has begun destroying the homes of suspected guerrilla fighters in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, evacuating women and children, then leveling their houses with heavy weaponry...Family members at one of the houses, in the village of al Haweda, said they were given five minutes to evacuate before soldiers opened fire."
This is precisely the tactic for which human rights organizations and even the U.S. government have repeatedly condemned Israel.
Near the Iraqi town of Dhulaiya, U.S. forces reenacted another scene familiar to Palestinians. "The bulldozers worked for 10 days, methodically clearing the date palms and citrus groves as 200 soldiers sealed off the area," according to a November 5, report in Newsday. "Townspeople looked on helplessly, while jazz music blared from speakers mounted atop the soldiers' trucks," the report said, adding, "Iraqis are quick to make a comparison with Israel's actions in the Palestinian territories, where Israeli forces regularly clear fields as a security measure - and as a form of communal punishment."
In The Independent, Phil Reeves reported that the town of Awja, near Tikrit, "is the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but transported to Iraq." Reeves, a long-time Palestine/Israel correspondent, described a town "imprisoned by razor wire. The entrance is guarded by soldiers, protected by sand bags, concrete barricades and a machine-gun nest. Only those people with an identification card issued by the occupation authorities are allowed in or, more importantly, out." (18 November 2003)
Other aspects of life in Palestine are creeping into Iraqis' daily experience. The Los Angeles Times reported that due to the insecurity felt by the U.S. occupation forces, "body searches have become a constant of daily life." Times reporter Alissa Rubin observed that, "ordinary residents now may have their bodies patted down, pockets turned inside-out, and the contents of purses, briefcases and grocery bags scrutinized several times a day. A trip to the hospital, attendance at a university class, entrance to a government office or a stop to pray at a major mosque involve highly physical encounters with total strangers." (25 November 2003)
The growing similarities between Iraq and Palestine are due in part to the inexorable logic of military occupation, which in order to maintain control (or avoid losing it totally), must draw ever greater numbers of innocent people into the net of oppression. But worryingly, some of the American tactics in Iraq are deliberately copied from Israel.
The Los Angeles Times reported on November 22, that
"Facing a bloody insurgency by guerrillas who label it an 'occupier,' the military has quietly turned to an ally experienced with occupation and uprisings: Israel." In the last six months, the report adds, "U.S. Army commanders, Pentagon officials and military trainers have sought advice from Israeli intelligence and security officials on everything from how to set up roadblocks to the best way to bomb suspected guerrilla hide-outs in an urban area."
Americans should be alarmed that their government is seeking advice on how to run the occupation of Iraq from an Israel whose bloody methods have not only failed for thirty-six years to bring "security" and end resistance to the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but have been often condemned by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International as "war crimes."
Rather than taking catastrophically bad advice from Israel, the U.S. ought to listen to those top Israelis who increasingly acknowledge that these kinds of repressive measures have only stiffened all Palestinians' resolve, while Israeli civilians are less secure than ever before from suicide bombings by Palestinian extremists.
Israel's hard-line military chief of staff, Major General Moshe Ya'alon sparked uproar last month when he told journalists that Israel's repressive tactics against the Palestinian population were generating explosive levels of "hatred and terrorism."
Four former chiefs of Israel's internal security service, Shin Bet , echoed Ya'alon's views. One ex-Shin Bet chief, Avraham Shalom, told Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper, "we must once and for all admit there is another side, that it has feelings, that it is suffering and that we are behaving disgracefully...this entire behavior is the result of the occupation."
Brig. Gen. Yiftah Spector, one of Israel's most decorated fighter pilots, said of his country's occupation of the Palestinians, "We're in a more serious situation than the U.S. was in Vietnam."
While the Bush administration says its actions are for the welfare and freedom of the Iraqi people, the administration's desire to highlight "progress," and the media's focus on U.S. casualties, is making the suffering the occupation is causing for Iraqis all but invisible. Civilians are regularly killed and maimed by jittery U.S. soldiers. Although it's hard to get numbers, since the U.S. hasn't tried to count Iraqi casualties, Boston Globe reporter Charles Sennott told NPR's Fresh Air program that he recently visited Baghdad hospital wards full of civilians shot by American soldiers.
A leaked CIA report earlier this month predicted that harsher military tactics would drive more Iraqis to the insurgents' side. While the bleak situation prompted the Bush administration to hastily seek a quicker handover of power to Iraqis, it also launched a broad new military campaign, "Operation Iron Hammer," that may nullify all the political efforts to win the confidence of Iraqis. In effect, the administration has two contradictory policies.
Americans should also be aware that in the wider Arab and Muslim worlds, the strikingly similar images of both occupations, feed the mounting anger and fear about United States foreign policy, and in the worst case fuel the extremism the U.S. says it wants to fight.
This policy confusion is not surprising, since Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld still seems to be in denial about the reality in Iraq. In an interview with Japan's NHK network on November 15, Rumsfeld said the security situation in Iraq could be roughly compared with the crime levels in Tokyo or Chicago, and asserted that all in all, the occupation is "doing very well." Rumsfeld, unable or unwilling to admit the devastating impact of the policies in occupied Iraq on world public opinion, has also resorted to blaming the messenger -- once again lashing out at the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya satellite networks who bring the images into millions of Arab homes. Rumsfeld even approved of a recent decision by Iraq's U.S.-created "Governing Council" to shut down Al-Arabiya's offices in Iraq. So much for a free media.
With such attitudes prevailing, it is no wonder Marco Calamai, the senior Italian member of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) resigned a week after the November 12 bombing in the Iraqi city of Nasiriya that killed thirty-one people including nineteen Italians. Calamai told Italy's Unita newspaper that the CPA's woeful failure to understand Iraqi society had created "delusion, social discontent and anger" and had allowed terrorism to "easily take root." He added that the only way to save the situation is for the U.S. to hand over power to a U.N.-led interim authority.
This, not military escalation, remains the best of a bad set of options. But on current performance it seems the Bush administration has neither the inclination nor the international credibility to seize it while it is still available.
Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of Electronic Iraq and The Electronic Intifada websites.