The
U.S. Role In The Gaza Tragedy
By Stephen Zunes
27 June , 2007
Fpif.org
There
is much blame to go around regarding the tragic turn of events in the
Gaza Strip. While Hamas is the most immediate culprit, responsibility
also rests with Fatah, Israel – and the United States.
The seizure of power in the
tiny coastal territory by Hamas militants after bitter factional fighting
with Fatah militiamen has only encouraged anti-Palestinian hardliners
in Israel and the United States who claim that the Palestinians are
unworthy of statehood and that Israel should continue its occupation
and colonization of major segments of Palestinian territory seized by
the Israeli armed forces in June 1967. The scenes of the bloody infighting
among Palestinians have seemingly reinforced racist notions common in
the United States and Israel, as exemplified by the statement by former
Israeli Prime Minister and recently re-elected Labor Party leader Ehud
Barak’s that Israel was “a villa in the jungle.”
The vast majority of ordinary
Palestinians, meanwhile, are disgusted at the behavior of both Hamas
and Fatah, who see it as little better than gang warfare and a tragic
setback in their struggle for freedom against foreign military occupation.
Whether the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip or the newly established parallel
government in Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank will be
recognized as legitimate by the Palestinians themselves remains to be
seen.
As much responsibility as
the Palestinian leadership itself must bear for the current situation,
none of this would have happened if the U.S. government had lived up
to its responsibilities as guarantor of the Oslo Accords and self-proclaimed
chief mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. U.S. refusal
to force Israel to live up to its legal obligations to end its colonization
drive in the West Bank and withdraw from the occupied territories in
return for security guarantees has led much of the Palestinian population
to give up on the peace process and embrace groups like Hamas, which
demand control of all of historic Palestine.
A Siege, Not a Withdrawal
The myth perpetuated by both the Bush administration and congressional
leaders of both parties was that Israel’s 2005 dismantling of
its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of military
units that supported them constituted effective freedom for the Palestinians
of the territory. American political leaders from President George W.
Bush to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly praised Israel for
its belated compliance with a series of UN Security Council resolutions
calling for their withdrawal of these illegal settlements (despite Israel’s
ongoing violations of these same resolutions by maintaining and expanding
their illegal settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights). Pelosi,
for example, called Israel’s pullout a “courageous”
and “gut-wrenching” decision that constituted “a decisive
milestone on the road to peace” toward which the Palestinians
have responded by violence, proving that the “conflict is not
over occupation…it is over the fundamental right of Israel to
exist.”
In reality, however, the
Gaza Strip has remained effectively under siege. Even prior to the Hamas
victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections last year, the Israeli
government not only severely restricted – as is its right –
entry from the Gaza Strip into Israel, but also controlled passage through
the border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt as well. Israel
also refused to allow the Palestinians to open their airport or seaport.
This not only led to periodic shortages of basic necessities imported
through Egypt but resulted in the widespread wasting of perishable exports
– such as fruits, vegetables and cut flowers – vital to
the territory’s economy. Furthermore, Gaza residents were cut
off from family members and compatriots in the West Bank and elsewhere
in what many have referred to as the world’s largest open-air
prison.
Since the election of a Hamas
majority in Palestinian parliamentary elections last year, international
sanctions led to a reduction in government spending by the Palestinian
Authority by more than half, severely reducing available health care,
education and other basic services and dramatically increasing unemployment
and malnutrition.
In addition, Israeli bombing,
shelling, and periodic incursions in civilian areas in the Gaza Strip
during the past year have killed over 200 civilians, including scores
of children. Bush administration officials, echoed by Pelosi and other
Democratic leaders, have justifiably condemned rocket attacks by some
Hamas-allied units into civilian areas of Israel (which have resulted
in scores of injuries but only one death), but have defended Israel’s
far more devastating attacks against civilian targets in the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza Strip’s population
consists primarily of refugees from Israel’s ethnic cleansing
of most of Palestine almost 60 years ago and their descendents, most
of whom have had no gainful employment since Israel sealed the border
from most day laborers in the late 1980s. Crowded into only 140 square
miles and subjected to extreme violence and poverty, it is not surprising
that many would become susceptible to extremist politics, such as those
of the Islamist Hamas movement. Nor is it surprising that under such
conditions, people with guns would turn on each other.
Undermining the Unity Government
When factional fighting between armed Fatah and Hamas groups broke out
this spring, Saudi officials negotiated a power-sharing agreement between
the two leading Palestinian political movements. U.S. officials, however,
unsuccessfully encouraged Abbas to renounce the agreement and dismiss
the entire government. Indeed, ever since the election of a Hamas parliamentary
majority last year, the Bush administration had been pressuring Abbas
and Fatah to stage a coup and abolish parliament.
The national unity government
put key ministries in the hands of Fatah members and independent technocrats
and removed some of the more hard-line Hamas leaders and, while falling
well short of Western demands, Hamas did indicate an unprecedented willingness
to engage with Israel, accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip and negotiate a long-term cease fire with Israel. For the
first time, this could have allowed Israel and the United States the
opportunity to bring into peace talks a national unity government representing
virtually all the factions and parties active in Palestinian politics
on the basis of the Arab League peace initiative for a two-state solution
and UN Security Council resolution 242. However, both the Israeli and
American governments refused.
Instead, the Bush administration
decided to escalate the conflict by ordering Israel to ship large quantities
or weapons to armed Fatah groups to enable them to fight Hamas. Israeli
military leaders initially resisted the idea, fearing that much of these
arms would end up in the hands of Hamas, but – as Israeli journalist
Uri Avnery put it – “our government obeyed American orders,
as usual.” That Fatah was being supplied with weapons from Israel
while Hamas was fighting the Israelis led many Palestinians –
even those who don’t share Hamas’ extremist Islamist ideology
– to see Fatah as collaborators and Hamas as liberation fighters.
This was a major factor leading Hamas to launch what it saw as a preventive
war or a counter-coup by overrunning the offices of the Fatah militias
and, just as the Israelis feared, many of these newly-supplied weapons
have indeed ended up in the hands of Hamas militants.
The United States also threw
its support to Mohammed Dahlan, the notorious Fatah security chief in
Gaza, who – despite being labeled by American officials as “moderate”
and “pragmatic” – oversaw the detention, torture,
and execution of Hamas activists and others, leading to widespread popular
outrage against Fatah and its supporters.
Alvaro de Soto, who recently
stepped down from his term as the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle
East Peace Process, stated in his confidential final report leaked to
the press a few weeks before the Hamas takeover that “the Americans
clearly encouraged a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas” and
“worked to isolate and damage Hamas and build up Fatah with recognition
and weaponry.” De Soto also recalled how in the midst of Egyptian
efforts to arrange a cease fire following a flare-up in factional fighting
earlier this year, a U.S. official told him that “I like this
violence…it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”
Weakening Palestinian Moderates
For moderate forces to overcome extremist forces, the moderates must
be able to provide their population with what they most need: in this
case, the end of Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip and its occupation
and colonizing of the remaining Palestinian territories. However, Israeli
policies – backed by the Bush administration and Congress –
seem calculated to make this impossible. The noted Israeli policy analyst
Gershon Baskin observed, in an article in the Jerusalem Post just prior
to Hamas’ electoral victory, how “Israel 's unilateralism
and determination not to negotiate and engage President Mahmoud Abbas
and the Palestinian Authority has strengthened the claims of Hamas and
weakened Abbas and his authority which was already severely crippled
by … Israeli actions that demolished the infrastructures of Palestinian
Authority governing bodies and institutions.”
Bush and an overwhelming
bipartisan majority in the U.S. Congress have also thrown their support
to the Israeli government's unilateral disengagement policy that, while
withdrawing Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip, has expanded them
in the occupied West Bank as part of an effort to illegally annex large
swathes of Palestinian territory. In addition, neither Congress nor
the Bush administration has pushed the Israelis to engage in serious
peace negotiations with the Palestinians, which have been suspended
for over six years, despite calls by Abbas and the international community
that they resume. Given that Fatah's emphasis on negotiations has failed
to stop Israel's occupation and colonization of large parts of the West
Bank, it's not surprising that Hamas' claim that the U.S.-managed peace
process is working against Palestinian interests has resonance, even
among Palestinians who recognize that terrorism by Hamas' armed wing
is both morally reprehensible and has hurt the nationalist cause.
Following Hamas’ armed
takeover of Gaza, the highly respected Israeli journalist Roni Shaked,
writing in the June 15 issue of Yediot Ahronoth, noted that “The
U.S. and Israel had a decisive contribution to this failure.”
Despite claims by Israel and the United States that they wanted to strengthen
Abbas, “in practice, zero was done for this to happen. The meetings
with him turned into an Israeli political tool, and Olmert’s kisses
and backslapping turned Abbas into a collaborator and a source of jokes
on the Palestinian street.”
James Zogby, director of
the Arab-American Institute in Washington, observed correctly that “at
every turn in the last seven years, the Bush administration has turned
a blind eye to Israel’s aggressive expansion in the West Bank
and its systematic humiliation of the people there, and its assault
on Gaza. In this context, it was plainly stupid for the administration”
to reject the outcome of the Palestinian parliamentary elections and
“frustrate Saudi efforts to reconcile that outcome with the demands
of the international community.”
Only Sticks
M.J. Rosenberg of the Israeli Policy Forum, a liberal pro-Israel think
tank based in Washington, noted how the United States “offered
no carrots, only sticks. And we didn’t even make much of an effort
to strengthen Hamas’s arch-enemy, President Mahmoud Abbas, with
Congress hastening to impose redundant and insulting conditions even
on aid that was intended for him.”
De Soto’s report to
the UN Secretary General, in which he referred to Hamas’ stance
toward Israel as “abominable,” also noted that “Israeli
policies seemed perversely designed to encourage the continued action
by Palestinian militants.” Regarding the U.S.-instigated international
sanctions against the Palestine Authority, the former Peruvian diplomat
also observed that “the steps taken by the international community
with the presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that
will live in peace with its neighbor Israel have had precisely the opposite
effect.”
Some Israeli commentators
see this strategy as deliberate. Avnery noted, “Our government
has worked for year to destroy Fatah, in order to avoid the need to
negotiate an agreement that would inevitably lead to the withdrawal
form the occupied territories and the settlements there.” Similarly,
Rosenberg observed, “the fact is that Israeli (and American) right-wingers
are rooting for the Palestinian extremists” since “supplanting...
Fatah with Islamic fundamentalists would prevent a situation under which
Israel would be forced to negotiate with moderates.”
The problem, according to
Avnery, is that “now, when it seems that this aim has been achieved,
they have no idea what to do about the Hamas victory.”
Among the few American elected
officials to recognize the folly of U.S. policy has been Ohio Congressman
and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who noted that
“the chaos and factional violence in Gaza that ultimately led
to the Hamas military takeover…demonstrates a failure of President
Bush’s strategy.” This and similar statements which have
allied Kucinich with Israeli and Palestinian moderates have resulted
in strong rebukes from most of his rivals for the 2008 presidential
nomination.
Last year, former President
Jimmy Carter presciently warned that in trying to “punish Hamas,
we’ll actually going to be punishing the Palestinian people who
are already living in deprivation. And it’s going to turn the
Palestinian people even more against the West and against Israel and
make Hamas seem to be… their only friend.” As with Kucinich,
in response to such calls for moderation, Carter has been harshly criticized
by Pelosi and other Democratic leaders.
Current U.S. Policy
Since their humiliating defeat in the Gaza Strip, Fatah militia have
been engaging in a wave of arrests and kidnappings of Hamas activists
in the West Bank. This has led to fears of a popular backlash if the
repression goes too far. Furthermore, while Hamas’ popular support
has traditionally been less in the West Bank than in the Gaza Strip,
where the majority of its residents live in impoverished refugee camps,
the Islamist group’s support is still quite strong in the West
Bank as well. Indeed, the weakness of Fatah’s resistance to the
Hamas uprising in the Gaza Strip – despite having a larger number
and better-armed fighters than Hamas – is indicative of their
continued weak political standing.
Despite its dubious constitutionality,
President Abbas announced a new emergency cabinet without any Hamas
participation within days of Fatah’s ouster from the Gaza Strip,
and included some prominent technocrats, reformers and independents.
His new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is a highly intelligent economist
and former World Bank official who lived for most of his adult life
in the United States. He served as the representative for the International
Monetary Fund to the Palestine Authority before briefly becoming its
Finance Minister in 2005 in a belated effort by Abbas to clean up the
Fatah government’s chronic corruption. Fayyad then formed a small
centrist party with scholar and human rights activist Hanan Ashrawi
to challenge both Fatah and Hamas in last year’s parliamentary
election, but their slate received only 2.4% of the vote. Though a sincere
nationalist and reformer, Fayyad’s close ties to the United States
and international financial institutions, coupled with his poor electoral
performance, raises questions regarding his legitimacy in the eyes of
most Palestinians.
The makeup of his new government
is not Abbas’ biggest problem, however. The Palestinians recognize
that the United States has defended repeated Israeli attacks against
Palestinian population centers, supported the Israeli seizure of the
Gaza Strip and vetoed a series of UN Security Council resolutions and
blocked enforcement of a series of others calling on Israel to abide
by international humanitarian law. They are aware that the Bush administration
and Congress have endorsed Israel’s annexation of Arab East Jerusalem
and surrounding areas, funded Israel’s occupation and colonization
of the West Bank and defended Israel’s construction of an illegal
separation barrier deep inside occupied Palestinian territory.
They also know how the United
States has rejected Palestinian proposals for a permanent peace with
Israel in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian
territory while backing Israeli plans to annex much of the West Bank,
confining the Palestinians into tiny cantons surrounded by Israel. As
a result, the strong U.S. backing shown so far by Washington for Abbas’
new government may not help its credibility among the Palestinian population.
Indeed, it is already been widely labeled as a collaborationist regime
due to its strong backing from Israel and the United States.
Israel has announced it will
unfreeze funds seized from the export of Palestinian goods to Abbas’
new government. The government’s hope is that by improving the
quality of life for Palestinians, it will show how much better things
are under Fatah than under Hamas and weaken support for the Islamists.
Concrete Political Initiatives
However, unless there are concrete political initiatives as well, this
will not be enough.
Abbas has called for peace
with strict security guarantees for Israel, including the dismantling
of Hamas’ militias, in return for an independent state on the
22% of Palestine occupied by Israel since 1967, and has even expressed
his willingness to accept minor and reciprocal border adjustments. Polls
show that a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
would accept such an agreement.
Israel has refused that offer,
however, insisting on its right to annex large swaths of West Bank territory,
including Arab East Jerusalem, in such a way that would make a contiguous
and viable Palestinian state impossible. Under this Israeli plan –
endorsed by the Bush administration and a broad bipartisan majority
of Congress – Israel would be able to control Palestinian air
space, Palestinian water resources, and movement in and out of the Palestinian
entity and between its separated territories. These non-contiguous Palestinian
cantons, therefore, would more closely resemble the infamous Bantustans
of apartheid South Africa than a viable independent state. And, unless
the Palestinians have strong prospects that a viable independent state
will eventually emerge, the credibility of Abbas’ government will
erode and the appeal by the radicals of Hamas will grow.
The Israeli government, with
no apparent objection from the United States, has thus far refused to
even put a freeze on the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank
that are eating up ever more Palestinian land needed to make a Palestinian
state viable. Furthermore, Israeli occupation forces have yet to lift
the scores of checkpoints paralyzing economic life in the West Bank.
Israel also continues to refuse to release Palestinian prisoners, including
Marwan Barghouti, the charismatic Fatah reformer who would be the most
likely Palestinian leader to unite the country in accepting a two-state
solution with Israel. Such confidence-building measures are critical
in the period prior to a resolution of the important final status issues
if talks are to move forward and extremists are to be marginalized.
However, as a result of the
Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli newspaper
Yediot Ahronot, “the Prime Minister’s advisers [declared]
the Palestinian Authority dead, [saying] there is no one to talk to…and
that the Bush administration will not put pressure on Olmert at this
stage to come up with ideas for renewing the negotiations with Abbas
and promoting a diplomatic solution.”
As Robert Malley, Middle
East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis
Group and former and former National Security Council member and special
assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs under President Bill Clinton, has
noted how “Almost every decision the United States has made to
interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged.”
Hamas’ armed takeover
of the Gaza Strip has shown this to be all too true, and the U.S. embrace
of Abbas’ new government without concomitant pressure on Israel
may prove to have similar results.
Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He
is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the
author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism
(Common Courage Press, 2003.
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