The hole blown by Hamas in the Gaza-Egypt border fence has finally punctured the bubble of delusion surrounding the U.S.-Israeli Middle East policy. In a moment reminiscent of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, through the breach surged some 350,000 Palestinians — fully one fifth of Gaza’s total population, as my friend and colleague
With some carefully placed semtex (or whatever the Palestinian sappers use), Hamas managed to take advantage of the impossible situation the U.S.-Israeli policy had created for Mubarak and for President Mahmoud Abbas, to once again emerge on top. Then again, it ought to be noted that Hamas is blessed by the brutal ineptitude of its enemies.
Rob Malley and Hussein Agha, in a characteristically sharp analysis last week noted that Israel, Abbas and Hamas were confronting one another in a three-way standoff in which each was obsessed with preventing any rapprochement between the other two. But Hamas has now forced the issue. The Israelis have no choice but to recognize that the group’s control of Gaza is an intractable reality, that will force the Arab world and Abbas himself to accelerate efforts to restore Palestinian unity. And Israel will have no choice but to pursue the cease-fire option offered by Hamas as the most effective means for ending rocket fire out of Gaza.
In that sense, of course, Hamas has done Israel a favor, presenting it with a fait accompli that can allow it to stand down from an unworkable and morally untenable position evolved by the dunder-headed combination of the Bush Administration and the two Ehuds, Olmert and Barak (whose return to the center stage of Israeli politics is a sure sign that Israel has run out of ideas… Next up, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu — take that one to the bank.)
By breaking the siege, Hamas has opened the way for a range of new possibilities, including movement toward restoration of a single Palestinian government (by inviting Abbas to once again send PA units to guard the border with Egypt), cooperation with Egypt over managing Gaza’s affairs, and even movement towards a cease-fire with the Israelis.
It remains to be seen whether Israel has the imagination to seize the opportunity — to the extent that Olmert is still taking directions from Washington, I wouldn’t bet on it. Then again, as Malley points out in another of his must-read pieces, the alternative is war.
The whole Annapolis strategy is based on the false premise that Arab leaders could be rallied to the purpose of isolating Hamas (and also Iran) through blockades and even military action in furtherance of U.S. and Israeli objectives. The hole in the wall in Gaza is an eloquent tombstone to President Bush’s Middle East policy. The post-Bush era has begun, a moment of great promise for all in the region who hope to live in peace and security.
Let’s not forget, that before they were included in the mythical “Palestinian people,” Gazans were referred to more honestly as what they are: Egyptians.
Gaza was part of Egypt until 1967, when the nationality of its inhabitants was magically transformed. During the peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt in the late 1970’s Israel offered to return Gaza to Egypt together with the Sinai penninsula, but Sadat refused. He knew what these people are like.
As they cross through the barrier and out of Gaza, they are merely going home. I hope they stay there.
Before they were a mythical people who found an “empty” land they were Europeans, Perhaps someday the refugee camps will go home.
Actually, Ed, most of the Palestinians of Gaza are refugees driven out of Israel during the ethnic cleansing of 1948… I guess you just want to complete that ethnic cleansing, don’t you? I guess the Hasbara community is fired up and ready to go today…
Ethnic cleansing? You mean what Hamas is trying to do to Jews? Arab refugees, like refugees all over the world, are refugees of war, not the peaceful creation of nations. If Arabs had not gone to war to destroy Israel in 1948 and 1967, there would be neither Arab nor Jewish refugees of those wars. But Israel took in the Jewish refugees from Syria, Jordan, Egypt and other Jewish refugees of Arab wars. What have Arab countries done with the refugees they created? Lied to them, as they’ve lied to you, about how easy it would be to destroy Israel and get rid of the Jews. THAT is ethnic cleansing.
Ed, give it a rest, you’re reading from some of the most tired and hackneyed sections of the Hasbara playbook. Wasting our time here, actually. (As ever, which I suspect is your Hasbara mission, actually…)
Man, Tony, those hasbara really like to demonstrate their ignorance, don’t they?
And the racism that lies beneath is barely veiled at all…
Tony, certainly glad that you are back. I have missed your commentaries over the last month.
we cant handle whats up in Iraq (sunni or latter) let alone Iran
Hamas have taken the initiative here in an intriguing new way– and their move wi9ll have consequences far beyond the tight confines of Israel/Palestine.
Y’all should read what I’ve been writing about today;’s events at my blog, including here and here. Partly this uses material I gathered in earlier interviews with Haniyeh and Zahhar in Gaza. I also conducted an interview last week with Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, and shall be sharing much more from that interview over the days ahead.last week.
Bottom line: Hamas’s leaders have very adroitly taken advantage of the very auspicious (for them) situation created in the region by George Bush’s dunder-headed trip round the region over the past couple of weeks.
E writes: “Let’s not forget, that before they were included in the mythical “Palestinian people,” Gazans were referred to more honestly as what they are: Egyptians.
Gaza was part of Egypt until 1967, when the nationality of its inhabitants was magically transformed.”
Yes, Ed, that’s what persecution tends to do, i.e., stimulate solidarity and establish identity. They probably would have remained “Egyptians,” had they not been so brutalized.
Delia, dear, don’t look now but your intense ignorance is showing. Gazans have never considered themselves Egyptians. More than 80% of the Strip’s residents are Palestinian refugees from within 1948 Israel. Between 1949 and 1967 the Strip was administered by Egypt. But (unlike Jordan in the West Bank in those years) Egypt never attempted to annex Gaza and never conferred Egyptian citizenship on its residents. They have always been and remain Palestinians.
By the way, have you ever been to Gaza or met any Gazans? If you had, I am sure you could have found out these basic facts yourself. Instead of which, you parrot these untruths, whose source is– what?
Btw, if anyone is really interested in learning more about what’s going on in Gaza, the politics, the stakes, etc, please go on over to my Just World News blog. I’ve been covering this story for many years.
Reply to Ed’s comments:
“Let’s not forget, that before they were included in the mythical “Palestinian people,” Gazans were referred to more honestly as what they are: Egyptians.”
“As they cross through the barrier and out of Gaza, they are merely going home. I hope they stay there.”
Dear imbecile Ed, who cares if the Gazans were or are Egyptians your heartless bastard.
Simply they are human beings that have been reduced down to living like beasts through the blockade imposed by the Nazi like regime and government of Israel and its inhuman fascistic army.
Have a heart for the suffering people regardless where and who the F*** they come form.
I hope you and your family will one day wind up in a situation like that so you can taste some suffering.
Respectfully and sincerely
KB, what a hypocrite you are! First you wish suffering on me and my family, and then sign off “respectfully?”
All of the suffering of the Palestinians is on their own heads and their leaders heads. It is ALL the result of their rejection of the legitimacy of a state for the Jewish people. They have repeatedly sacrificed opportunities for a state of their own simply because it required accepting Israel. When they are more serious about creating a nation than they are about destrying one, it will quickly come to pass.
They are choosing to suffer rather than have a Jewish state in Palestine. It is a bad choice, but it is theirs.
Ed,
And are the more than 200,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank (and the thousands who had settled in Gaza before Mr. Sharon so “magnanimously” pulled them out) – all in contravention of so many UN resolutions. . . are they too the result of the Palestinian rejection of Israel’s legitimacy? Isn’t an equally – if not more – important reality here the Zionist (both Jewish and Christian) rejection of the legitimacy of the Arab claim to Palestine?
Tony and Helena: you are lights unto us all. Thank you.
Yes, John, they too are the result of Arab rejectionism, for they live on land gained in Arab wars to destroy Israel. Of course, to you, it’s OK for Arabs to live in Israel, but not for Jews to live in “Palestinian territory.”
No, there is no Zionist rejection of the legitimacy to the Arab claim to Palestine, just the Arab claim to ALL of Palestine. In other words, the root cause is the Arab apartheid claim that only Arabs may have nations in this part of the world.
We all remember Mandela’s apartheid claim that only Blacks may have nations in Southern Africa.
If Israel accepts a post-Apartheid agreement to create a state to which all refugees can return (Jewish refugees supposedly from 2,000 years ago along with converts, descendants of converts and descendants of those who left more than 2,000 years ago voluntarily as well as Arab refugees from the 1948 war) then Hamas, the Arab states and the Arab populations will be satisfied. The injustices of the 1948 colonialist era will have been rectified and all of this blog section debating can come to an end.
So Ed, I’m sure you’ll agree to end Arab Apartheid the way the Afrikaaners ended Mandela’s Apartheid – by creating a single state that does not discriminate based on ethnicity or religion. Of course, I could not agree more.
Arnold, your racism is showing. Everyone can have a state except the Jews. That is the Arab strategy. 24 arab states, no Jewish state. That is apartheid. The single state you envision would indeed make Hamas happy. Jews would be slaughtered in the streets until there were none left and another islamist theocracy would be established.
That wouldn’t end Arab apartheid, it would appease it.
That’s why you couldn’t agree more.
But what about Mandela’s racism?
I appeased Mandela’s black Apartheid. Everyone can have a state except the Afrikaaners.
Did you oppose Mandela’s racist Apartheid dreams?
I oppose all apartheid, like the version which holds that the West Bank must be “Judenrein.”
So you oppose the Apartheid that there are over 50 black states in Africa, but no Afrikaaner state?
You consider Mandela just as racist as you consider me?
Don’t try to analogize Africa with the middle east.
For one thing, Afrikaaners did not have a 3000 year connection with South Africa, as Jews have had with Israel.
For another, Jews are not forbidding Arabs from living in Israel, or even participating in goveernment. But Jews living in the west bank are “an obstacle to peace.”
That is the apartheid I oppose.
Arnold, you may not have noticed but Ed’s sole purpose here is to distract us… There really is very little point in engaging him. Perhaps if we ignore him, he will go away..;)
I can take a hint. No real dialogue wanted here. I’ll go away from here, as you desire, but the truth of my points, like my posts, will remain.
Ed said: “They have repeatedly sacrificed opportunities for a state of their own simply because it required accepting Israel.”
Actually, Ed, you have that backwards. In 1988, Arafat accepted the two-state solution, the right for Israelis to live in peace and security, and renounced violence. So who sqandered opportunities for peace?
oops, you’re right Tony. didn’t see your last post.
The Zionazis have clearly shown that they are not worthy of a state given their practice of terrorism since even before the inception of the state of Israel.
Incidentally, I don’t get why the Jews should have a state. I thought that Judaism was a religion, not a race. I also recall that when Iran became an Islamic nation officially, it was condemned around the world as a theocracy.
Of course there is only one solution now, as is becoming increasingly clear. A state for all of the inhabitants of historic Palestine, to include the Jews, and also the refugees from the Nabka and their descendants in a constitutionally secular state with equal rights for all. Who could possibly argue against such a settlement based on equality of rights of the residents of that land?
The Zionazis have outdone themselves, and the world is losing patience. It is only a matter of time now for a truly just settlement to come about.
RazorEdge said: “I don’t get why the Jews should have a state. I thought that Judaism was a religion, not a race.”
It may yet generate yet more Eds, but it’s an interesting question.
Why is it that, amid all this talk about who did what to whom, the basic question of the legal and moral validity of the creation of the state of Israel is rarely mentioned?
Would we have had the same problems, I wonder, if Israel had been created in Africa, as was the original intention?
Hallo Tony jou ou tert. Groete hier uit Kaapstad. Dis great om jou blog te ontdek hier in die kuberruimte. Hoop dit gaan goed in New York.
Hello there Zionist, racist, facsist ED
Dialogues with people like you is like talking to a stone wall.
As of my hypocracy regarding my wish to your family, it still stands because you still have no heart for these suffering bastards. Therefore you deserve that.
Remember you zionazi pig it is an eye for an eye.
Again respectfully
KB
PS. do not bother to comment because I will no longer reply to you.
“Wehrmacht logic of collective punishment…”
This is stupid hate speech. It isn’t even smart hate speech. According to Tony, Hitler’s army was famous because it prevented people from going shopping.
Respond or not, I cannot let your accusations stand. I do have compassion for all suffering people. It has never been my position that Palestinians are not suffering. Unlike you, It has not been my position that they, or anyone, deserve to suffer. It is only that, in seeking the cause of the suffering, you come to the wrong address. Israel is a country defending its citizens from attacks on civilian centers. The Palestinians and many other Arab leaders have never accepted any option which included the continuing existence of Israel. No state will negotiate away its existence, or allow its peoplet to be massacred.
When Palestinians accept an option that includes the continued existence of Israel, they can have virtually everything ELSE they want .
But they have repeatedly opted for the destruction of Israel OVER everything else. They demonstrate this with their glorification of death for that goal and their hate education.
“The Palestinians and many other Arab leaders have never accepted any option which included the continuing existence of Israel.”
No need to address the rest of your GIYUS claptrap – this claim is so demonstrably false that it completely invalidates any need to take a single word you write seriously.
Really? If so, Start demonstrating!
The Saudi peace initiative, launched in 2002 and revived – to the indifference of Israel – in 2007. As for the numerous other examples, I’m not your research drone. But, do us all a favour by continuing to reveal your ignorance.
The Saudi initiative required the “right of return”, which we all know (please don’t pretend you don’t) would result in the end of Israel. That was as phony as the Oslo accords, which were simply a pretense for Arafat to begin arming up for the second intifada.
When Arafat had the chance to really deliver statehood for the Palestinians with President Clinton’s help, he refused, because that agreement would include the survival of Israel, and because his army of suicide murderers was ready to go into action.
How about an honest answer, for a change. Oh, I forgot, there isn’t one.
“The Saudi initiative required the “right of return”, ”
Um, no, wrong again. It spoke of a ‘just solution’ to the refugee problem, and it was also stated that the parameters laid out were merely a basis for negotiation, and could be altered. Anyway, stop trying to shift the goalposts: you said that no Arab leader has ever accepted the existence of Israel. Given that two Arab states have diplomatic relations with Israel, this is just wrong. Doesn’t the GIYUS handbook provide help for dealing with this uncomfortable fact?
“which we all know (please don’t pretend you don’t) would result in the end of Israel.”
Didn’t the dream of racially pure states go out around, oh, 1945?
I never said “no Arab leader”, check my post, I said many arab leaders have refused.
It isn’t Israel looking to be racially pure. Read its declaration of independence, which asks arab residents to stay. This was put there to counter the call of Arab leaders, such as the Grand Mufti, demanding that all Arabs leave.
It is the arab world seeking racial purity. That’s why they call Jews living in the west bank an obstacle to peace. Peace as they see it is just like peace as Hitler saw it: Jew-free.
So tell me, do you accept the notion that peace should be founded on the principle of establishing Palestine as a state for arab people the Israel as a state for Jewish people?
If not, you are by necessity saying the Jewish State of Israel must cease to exist. Since no state on earth can be expected to peacefully terminate its own existence, you would be saying that war is preferable to accepting Israel. That is 1948 – 2008 cause of both arab and Jewish suffering.
You’re both right. Plenty of people on both sides are seeking racial purity, and are willing to use increasingly ad hominem attacks on civilians to this end.
It’s a nice ideal to think that we can have a biracial state in the Holy Land, where Jews and Palestinians live peacefully under one state. But there are aspiring genocidaires on both sides, that might one day come to power–5 years, 50 years, 500 years.
If these genocidaires gain power, there has to be somewhere to run. Somewhere in which the victims will be safe, regardless of what happens. That is why each people needs a seperate homeland. There are Nazis on both sides.
Ed:
Let’s also call some of the most right-win, racist , violent and obnoxious settlers currently cluttering up the west Bank what they are – our fellow Americans. I have frequently read accounts in Israeli newspapers of Arab children being terrorized in Hebron by men in ski-masks who spoke in English with American accents.
We should never have allowed dual nationality to enable these thugs to use this country as a citizenship of convenience and to allow continued electoral access to people who have lived overseas for 10-30 years and have no intention of ever living here again AND are not thinking of the interests of the US when they do vote.
This obsession with another country is also true for many Cubans and some Vietnamese and others but note that a prominent American-Israeli , Hillel Halkin, wrote in the J Post in 2004 hat he would not vote in our presidential election due to unease that many in Israel voted with Israeli and not American interests in mind.
We checked the Israeli papers the day after Bush left and there on the front page of the J Post was an Israeli government spokesman brushing off Bush’s comments and stating that some settlement building would continue. Nice. GWB should aim for something more achievable in his final year like turning water into wine.
Worth a read is a piece written for Shalom Achshav by another American-Israeli , Gershom Goremberg – one of the sanest articles I have seen about the wrong-headedly indulgent US policies towards Israel, Among other things he wants the US to get tough, put an end to the settlement enterprise and empty them all out once and for all and suggests that we may, reluctantly ,have to finance the resettlement in Israel (or back home to the US?) of these zealots. Reluctant as I am to throw more money down this particular black hole I think he’s right. It’s going to cost all Americans one way or the other whether they care about this whole mess or not.
Tony:
Do you think the Israelis are intentionally trying to drive Gazans into Egypt, knowing that it is very risky politically for Mubarak to secure the border by force?
Tony:
Do you think the Israelis are intentionally trying to drive Gazans into Egypt, knowing that it is very risky politically for Mubarak to secure the border by force? In other words, Israel will continue to make the Palestinians’ lives miserable so they have no choice but to leave.
But if we are going to call Apartheid South Africa what it called itself, a White state, then we actually do have an example of a state peacefully negotiating itself out of existence.
“They are choosing to suffer rather than have a Jewish state in Palestine.”
Comical. Resisting an ideology that immediately discrimminates them and reduces them to second-class citizens is something that humans do not want to tolerate. Why even Israelis are dissenting over the notion of a “Jewish state”. For a more detailed analysis, see Lawrence of Cyberia’s blog. Here’s an excerpt:
“Amos Oz has written that the concept is absurd…Avrum Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset, describes the definition as inflammatory and suicidal…Shulamit Aloni, does not accept that Israel is a “Jewish state”, as the term makes second-class citizens of Israelis who are not Jews…Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman finds it “nonsensical” that non-Jews should be expected to acknowledge the multi-ethnic state of Israel as existing for only one of its peoples. The late Israel Shahak, formerly Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote that declaring a “Jewish state” is not only discriminatory against Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, but also incompatible with the democratic rights of its Jewish ones…
And discomfort with the idea of a “Jewish state” isn’t an exclusively secular, leftist concern, but is also opposed by some ultra-Orthodox Jews, who reject as blasphemous the very idea of establishing the “unholy” institutions of a political entity and calling it “Jewish”…”
Was the very creation of Israel a botched political compromise? Imposed as it was by narrow minded colonialists with their own interests foremost and little if any appreciation of the kind of cultural, religious and political ill will they were creating, should the world now be condemning the entire post WW1 consensus, and admitting that Israel’s “legitimacy” is founded on some very dubious moral parameters? Should the people who created this mess, the international community, now re-group in Paris to ask themselves, in the light of historical events and new, modern, political understanding, whether they need to revisit the whole idea and impose a more rational, balanced solution on the area than they did in 1948?
How long before the world opens its eyes and realizes US/ British policy is the root of all the evil done to the palestine people who are imprisoned while we ignore this injustice and blindly watch them suffer. Just like South Africa Freedom Fighters will win in Time.
Zionism is the true Evil behind all this Pain.
Yasmin:
My opinion is that the threat the refugees in Gaza pose to Israel is that (a) they are close enough to Israel to be an irritant and (b) they believe they should have the right to return, which would upset Israel’s status as a Jewish state.
Palestinians leaving Gaza and going to bordering parts of the Sinai does not change (a) or (b). But Palestinians having movement between the Sinai and Gaza means Israel cannot control people or goods flowing into Gaza, which means they have the potential to be much more of an irritant than they were before. And there are other benefits to Hamas and the whole constellation of anti-Zionist Palestinians forces.
So Israel definitely did not do this on purpose. If the situation stabilizes as it is today, this is the biggest Israeli defeat in a long time.
justworldnews.org – Helena Cobban has the best coverage of the ramifications of Hamas’ breakout from a Western leftist perspective.
debka.com – Debka File reaches the same basic conclusions from a right-wing Israeli/military perspective
Clearly I don’t do irony well in print. And yes, Helena, I have been to Gaza–several times.
Why should israel have any rights ????? they treat their foes like the nazis treated them . It is plain disgusting that the world ignores the plight of Palestine. Human Right abuses comes natural for israel.
Ed you are a fool …. Oneday may your family suffer
This is great stuff and I actually appreciate you posting it for us to read. I will grab your RSS and continue to listen to your revelations because they seem both expedient, and valid.