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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lost no time in
exploiting Hamas' capture of an Israeli soldier to justify Israel's
long-planned re-occupation of the Gaza Strip and mass arrest of the
Hamas leadership. In his haste, he has inadvertently achieved a rare
thing. He has managed to reduce the absurdity of Israel's position to a
known ratio: 9000 to 1.
Nine thousand captured Palestinians languish in Israel's
notorious "security prisons", including 380 children and 115 women.
Every day Israeli troops and Border Police kidnap, interrogate, torture
and imprison Palestinians, often by the dozen. The arrest raids never
stop, regardless of summits, truces, or cease-fires. It is estimated
that 650,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel since the
current occupation began in 1967.
Arrest and incarceration is such a common experience that
it has become a virtual rite of passage for Palestinian boys; men go to
prison. In the past year we've read several reports of pre-teen boys,
some as young as 8, approaching Israeli soldiers and asking, even
begging, to be arrested.
But God forbid that even one of Israel's tender teen
warriors should be captured in battle, as young Gilat Shalit was. That
would be going too far. That would justify blowing up key bridges and
destroying the electricity source of two-thirds of the Gaza Strip.
Columns of invading tanks and scores of US-supplied jet fighters and
combat helicopters would be required to hunt for the missing soldier,
and attack the Palestinian Interior Ministry. From top to bottom, little
Gaza would be subjected to yet another round of fierce shelling from
land, air, and sea. All in a day's hunt.
After years of bargaining with Hizbullah "terrorists" over
prisoners captured during Israel's occupation of Lebanon, Israelis know
that this hysteria over a single soldier is only a ruse. But that
doesn't stop them from falling for it all over again, and Olmert appears
to have public support for his new version of total war on the Gaza
Strip, cynically code named 'Operation Summer Rain'. The score is 9000
to 1 and the Israelis are outraged. It should be 9000 to 0.
Accelerating Humanitarian Catastrophe
The western world seemed surprised by the scale and
severity of Israel's collective punishment. As if it could join the war
on Hamas by destroying Palestine's economy and not also encourage
lawless Israel to destroy Hamas by any means necessary.
European and UN diplomats have expressed concern that the
economic siege is succeeding too quickly. The fundamentals of social
order and sheer survival in the occupied territories are collapsing
sooner than anticipated, while the band-aid of humanitarian aid promised
by the Quartet remains on the drawing board, largely due to persistent
US obstruction.
In 2003, international aid agencies compared the economy of
the occupied Gaza Strip to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Malnutrition
was endemic, poverty rates were over 50 percent, and unemployment was
chronically high.
It is far worse today. Prior to this week's operation, Gaza
faced a "humanitarian catastrophe" according to the UN and others. The
international economic embargo has compounded the damage already
inflicted by Israel's repeated closures of Gaza's borders, which have
been shut more than they've been open this year. Most of an entire
harvest has rotted while awaiting shipment. For several months Gaza has
been living a hand-to-mouth existence. More than once the Strip has run
out of critical staples like flour, sugar, and salt.
Now more than 800,000 people have no electricity. The
Israeli attack on the central substation's transformer was precisely
devastating-repairs are expected to take several months. For most, no
power means no water.
Perhaps Israel disagreed with its European allies. Perhaps
it decided the Palestinians weren't starving fast enough, so thirst,
disease, and heat prostration had to be added to "the mix" of tactics to
"persuade" the Palestinian people to abandon the government they
elected.
The citizens of Gaza now have no access to the outside
world, very little food and water, no fuel, and little or no
electricity, refrigeration, and air conditioning in the middle of a
brutally hot summer. The Israeli army is back in force, a third of the
bankrupt Palestinian Legislative Council is in Israeli jails, and the
unpaid and unsupplied health care system has essentially collapsed.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who is responsible
for the day-to-day operations of this expanding nightmare, has assured
us that he is a "man who seeks peace...I do not look forward to battle."
When this Moroccan-born labor leader and Peace Now member took the helm
of Israel's Labor Party last year, he was greeted with a blizzard of
liberal hosannas hailing a political "earthquake", the return of
Israel's peace movement, and other wonders.
As if Israel's aspiring politicians hadn't always climbed
to the top on the backs of dead Palestinians. Now the peaceful Mr.
Peretz is indictable for war crimes perpetrated in the planning and
conduct of Operation Summer Rain. He is on his way.
Dangers of the Peace Process
In its latest step up the escalator of compound violence,
Israel has deployed a new blunt instrument to ensure that "there is no
partner for peace". Now, if it decides it doesn't like a Palestinian
diplomat, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar for example, it can simply
imprison him on terrorism charges. And if it doesn't like the results of
a free and fair Palestinian election, it can simply kidnap the elected
government. This week, more than 60 Hamas party members of the
Palestinian government have been arrested, including the heads of
several ministries.
One challenge in following and predicting the path of
Israel's foreign policy is that one can never be sure whether the next
move will be a diplomatic proposal or an assassination.
The murders of Swedish diplomat Count Bernadotte in 1948
and Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin in 2004 (and probably Yasser Arafat, as
well) bookend more than five decades of chronically violent diplomatic
relations, in which the assassination of difficult leaders has always
been an option.
It was recently revealed that in 1953, future Prime
Minister Menachem Begin directed a failed plot to assassinate West
German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, simply to stop a reparations
agreement the Chancellor was negotiating with the Israeli government.
True to form, Israel has now delivered a letter to PA
President Mahmoud Abbas in which it threatens to assassinate Prime
Minister Ismail Haniyeh if Gilat Shalit is not released unharmed.
So now it's a soldier for a prime minister. Any equation
can be made, as long as it is wildly disproportionate and morally
untenable. The point is always the same: the life of a Palestinian is
barely worth consideration in comparison to the life of a Jew. Their
value belongs to a different order of magnitude. A number of Israeli
rabbis question the very humanity of Palestinians. While attempting to
apologize for the recent deaths of 14 Palestinian civilians by Israeli
shelling, Mr. Olmert reportedly asserted that "threatened" Israeli lives
are "even more important".
How can Israel deliberately destroy the economy and
critical infrastructure of a starving people, arrest their government,
and threaten to assassinate their leader, while the "international
community" does nothing?
The US government's determination to join Israel in
destroying the Palestinians is obvious. Perhaps the EU's obsession with
gathering Israel into its future Mediterranean empire has shriveled its
moral obligation to the Palestinians down to spare change and servings
of Javier Solana's hypocrisy.
Or maybe today's moral paralysis is the cumulative effect
of doing nothing to stop Israel's crimes for the past fifty-eight years.
Perhaps moral cowardice grows with repetition, until war crimes become
an 'understandable and measured response' and fascism is welcome at the
front door. Whatever the causes, the trend seems clear: International
law is dying with the Palestinians. |
