Hamas’
Shock And Awe
By Sam Bahour
19 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
recent overrunning of Gaza by Hamas militants was the equivalent to
the United States’ Shock and Awe campaign in Iraq. Both campaigns
were conducted outside the realm of international law and were violent
and brutal, albeit each relative to their respective resources and internal
contexts; both claimed to be ‘preemptive’ in nature; and
both events placed the Palestinian people and struggle for national
liberation in even a more precarious position.
Shock and Awe is a US invention
in the same way that the US flavor of “shrink wrapped” democracy
is a US creation. As the Bush Administration failed to export its understanding
of democracy to Iraq via the US military, the US’s second regional
blunder was trying to impose US democracy in occupied Palestine by using
a proxy governing body called the Palestinian Authority. The US’s
weapon of choice for Palestine was to dangle millions of dollars as
bait, there for the taking if the Palestinian leadership showed total
obedience. While US and other donor countries channeled billions of
dollars to ‘promote’ democracy and ‘build’ Palestinian
security forces, Hamas was busy learning the intricacies of the US game
of military shock and awe and imposed democracy. During the last 17
months, Hamas attempted both, successfully: they won democratically
held elections, as confirmed by election observer President Jimmy Carter,
and then went on to overrun Gaza by brute force.
One thing Hamas did not do
during this short time was govern. Correctly blaming their inability
to govern on the Israeli and US-led economic blockade and the blatantly
illegal Israeli policy of arresting Hamas-affiliated ministers and lawmakers,
Hamas was given a free ride -- permitted to sit in the seat of authority
without having to assume the full responsibility of governance. Instead
of respecting the outcome of elections that one if its own past presidents
monitored, the US allowed the Palestinian people to remain unable to
define Hamas either as a legitimate governing body or as a failed experience.
US meddling in other peoples internal affairs is the norm in the Middle
East, but in Palestine, that norm was violently challenged last week
in Gaza.
While Palestinian President
Yasir Arafat was still alive, the US initiated the process of restructuring
the Palestinian political system. The US forced Arafat to accept the
creation of the position of prime minister, then they proceeded to demand
that the bulk of the Palestinian President’s authority be transferred
from President Arafat to the newly appointed Prime Minister. Then the
US created a series of political hoops that Arafat would have to jump
through to remain in the political game, of which the most relevant
given today’s crisis was the restructuring of the Palestinian
security forces. Millions of dollars and tons of equipment were dumped
on the multitude of Palestinian security agencies and a high-profile
US security ‘expert,’ U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Dayton,
set up shop in Israel to make sure the Palestinian security forces were
developing strategically, those same security agencies that were overrun
in Gaza in a matter of hours. Then, Palestinians, under extreme pressure
from the US, held legislative and municipal elections and when the results
were not to the US’s liking, the Bush Administration mobilized
the world to boycott the Palestinians -- people and government alike.
While all of this was going
on, Israel maintained its hypocritical posture of the past 10 years
-- talking peace while at the same time destroying any chances for a
peaceful settlement. In the hopeful days of the Oslo Peace Accords,
Israel accelerated its illegal Jewish-only settlement-building in the
West Bank like never before. When a Jewish extremist assassinated Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Oslo framework was, for all intents
and purposes, buried with him. To make sure the central Oslo principle
of ‘land for peace’ would never be resurrected, Israel violently
increased its attempts to bring about the collapse of Palestinian society
via ‘targeted’ assassinations, home demolitions, uprooting
of olive groves, over 500 military checkpoints, withholding $800 million
in Palestinian tax revenues, nightly arrests, building of an internationally-proclaimed
illegal separation wall on Palestinian lands, and on and on. This is
the true context leading to the violence in Gaza. All of this -- and
the international community watched, while continuing to fund the status
quo and, all the while, referencing Israeli obligations in the already
buried Oslo Peace Accords.
Thus, today’s events
did not drop out of the sky unexpectedly. A 4-part mixture of 40 years
of Israeli occupation, a US-led coup to collapse a democratically elected
Palestinian government, a shift in internal Palestinian power-sharing
after over 40 years of a single-party monopoly on authority, and most
importantly, the international community’s failure to uphold its
obligations under International Humanitarian Law – the Fourth
Geneva Convention to be specific: All contributed to bringing us to
where we are today.
The international community
has a clear decision to make, and the decision must be made now. Will
the community of nations bring about an abrupt end to the four-decade-old
Israeli occupation that has caused so much death and destruction to
both Palestinians and Israelis? To end the occupation today would mean
to do the near impossible task of salvaging a sovereign Palestinian
state on all of the land that was acquired by force by Israel in 1967.
Barring this, the international community will likely continue to appease
the Israeli occupiers, thereby forcing the Palestinians to revert back
to calling for possibly the only remaining viable solution, the formal
creation of one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River
for all its citizens.
Given the Israeli refusal,
even today, to classify the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East
Jerusalem, as “occupied lands” and the refusal to mark the
Green Line (1949 Armistice Line) in most of the textbooks in their schools,
all indications are that the Israelis have already decided that there
is no room, on the ground, for another state between Israel and Jordan,
although in cheap verbal discourse one may be led to believe that such
a state already exists and that its citizens are squabbling over ministerial
positions.
The US and Israel, drunk
on power and addicted to war, have enlisted many in the region to do
their dirty work. As the US and Israel try to distance themselves from
their many colossal failures -- from Iraq to Palestine -- by engineering
the creation of banana republics to serve their narrow self-interests,
millions of common folk fall deeper into poverty and extremism.
Palestinians may be at a
low point in their history and corrective action is undoubtedly on the
horizon. The Palestinian people have a collective memory like that of
an elephant, and as such the rampage and killings in Gaza by fellow
Palestinians will not be legitimized or swept under the rug. Most likely,
Hamas’ brutal actions in Gaza will mark the beginning of the end
of Hamas as we know it today. With Hamas in the picture, or otherwise,
the Palestinians will maintain a pluralistic society and political system
that will continue to resist, as has been the case since the outset
of this struggle, all foreign intervention in its internal affairs,
be it Western, Iranian or Arab.
The present is volatile and
the future is bleak, but one thing remains constant: When all the dust
settles, there will still be an occupied and dispersed people -- the
Palestinians -- and a colonial, military occupier -- Israel. No Shock
and Awe campaign, from Hamas or Israel, and no imposed democracy, from
Fatah or the US, will change this equation. Until Palestinians are free
-- all Palestinians -- the world would be well advised, for all our
sakes, not to turn its back on our just struggle.
- The writer is a Palestinian-American
living in El-Bireh/Ramallah and may be reached at [email protected].
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