Netanyahu's high-stakes game in
Gaza By Ramzy Baroud
Many key phrases have been presented to
explain Israel's latest military onslaught against
Gaza, which left scores dead and wounded. Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is flexing his
muscles in preparation for the Israeli general
elections in January, suggested some. It is
Israel's way of testing the administration of
Egyptian President Mahmoud Morsi, commented
others. It was a stern message to Iran, instructed
a few. Or that Israel is simply assessing its
"deterrence" capabilities. And so on.
But
there is more than those ready-to-serve analyses.
It has been four years since Israel mixed up the
cards through an unhindered
show of force. Last time it
did so was in 2008-09, in a 22-day war it termed
"Operation Cast Lead". Then, it killed more than
1,400 Palestinians and wounded over 5,000 others.
Excluding Israel's diehard supporters, the general
consensus was, including that of many UN and
international rights organizations: Israel
committed war crimes and crimes against humanity
deserving of international tribunals and due
retribution.
Of course, none took place.
The US government and media stood as an
impenetrable shield between Israel's accused war
criminals and those daring to level accusations.
Four years later little has changed. Then as it is
now, Israel was embarking on national elections,
and since "security" is Israel's enduring strategy
whether in national or international politics, it
was suddenly realized that Gaza posed a "security
threat", thus had to be suppressed or at least
taught a lesson.
Never mind that a truce
was in affect and was mostly holding up, that it
was Israel that provoked Palestinian factions to
retaliate - before the retaliation was itself
considered the original act of aggression as
willfully validated by mainstream Western media.
In 2008, Barack Obama was elected
president, and the outgoing George W Bush
administration remained largely "uninvolved", save
for the reiteration of Israel's right to defend
itself against hordes of Palestinian terrorists
and such. Some then, suggested that Cast Lead was
an Israeli trial balloon to test Obama, whom
Israel viewed with much suspicion despite all the
groveling he has done at Israeli lobby meetings to
assure Israel that a president with a middle name
such as "Hussein" will not dare demand
accountability from Israel.
Obama
eventually lived up to Israel's expectations, and
despite few hiccups in their relations, the new
administration was hardly different from its
predecessors. Under Obama, Israel remained a top
priority for American diplomacy, politics,
military and financial aid and more. However,
Israel was still dissatisfied.
Political
analysts cite a few incidents that made Netanyahu
look unfavorably at Obama from the onset. The
latter ushered in his foreign policy with the
appointment of a Middle East peace envoy and
expected Israel to work towards the resumption of
the so-called peace process. More dangerously
however, Obama spoke bluntly for the need to
freeze settlement construction, as a necessary
first step before the return to the "negotiations
table". Even Secretary of State Hilary Clinton,
who understands well the importance of Israeli
support for any ambitious US politician, was clear
regarding the settlements: President Obama, she
said, "wants to see a stop to settlements - not
some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth
exceptions".
Gradually that position
weakened, if not entirely reversed. Over the
following months and years, the Obama
administration retreated to the US' foreign policy
comfort zone regarding Israel: give generously
(even in times of economic recession), expect
nothing in return, and in the meantime ask no
questions. But it takes more to placate an
ever-demanding government as that of Netanyahu.
The Israeli prime minister is himself
troubled by fears that his palpable support of the
Republican candidate Mitt Romney, his trademark
arrogance and lecturing of Obama regarding Iran
could prove costly during Obama's new term. Not
that Obama is likely to be any less enthusiastic
about supporting Israel, but the Israeli
government is concerned that the US administration
might not adopt Israeli foreign policy priorities
as if it's an American doctrine, which has been
the case for years.
Hours after the
election results declared Obama a winner, the
Israeli media began censuring the injudiciousness
of their prime minister. Articles with such titles
as "So Sorry, President Obama, Please Forgive
Netanyahu" (Haaretz) and "Bibi Gambled, We'll Pay"
(Yedioth Ahronoth) became commonplace. Romney's
defeat was particularly sobering for Israel since
it's the first time that the power of the Zionist
lobby and the endless millions of their patrons,
such as multibillionaire gambling magnate Sheldon
Adelson were rarely as useful in determining
election results of this scale.
Truth to
be told, Obama is not only unpopular among Israeli
political elites, but among the Israeli public as
well. "In global polls, Israel is the only country
in the world that would have elected Romney over
Obama," said ABC, and with a huge margin too.
It was early morning on Wednesday November
7 in Israel and the occupied territories when the
US election results were declared. The Israeli
cabinet swung into action, and the Israel army was
quickly deployed to seek provocations at the Gaza
border.
An earlier incident on November 5,
where an apparently mentally unfit man, Ahmad
al-Nabaheen was shot dead by Israeli troops,
heightened tension, although a truce remained in
effect. On November 8, however, Israel sought its
casus belli as it moved in on Gaza with
tanks and attack helicopters. An early victim was
a 12-year-old boy gunned down while playing
soccer. Palestinians retaliated, although
projectiles inside Israel caused no damage. One
Israeli soldier was injured near the border with
Gaza and more firing was reported by Palestinian
fighters aimed at an Israeli military jeep,
injuring four. Two more children were killed in an
open soccer field on November 10, prompting more,
although still guarded, Palestinian retaliation.
Another civilian in Gaza was killed the following
day when Israel bombed the funeral tent set up to
mourn the victims of past days.
On
November 12, Egypt was concluding yet another
truce between Israel and resistance factions. But
that turned out to be a diplomatic embarrassment
for Egypt, as the man who agreed to the text of
the truce on the Palestinian side, the leader of
the Hamas armed resistance in Gaza, Ahmed Jabari,
was himself assassinated by an Israeli missile on
November 14.
No other meaning can be
extracted from Jabari's murder but the fact that
Israel had decided to pull the Palestinians into
an all-out war. Scores of Palestinians, many of
whom civilians, were killed in the subsequent
days. Palestinians extended the range of their
projectiles into areas near Tel Aviv and as far as
Jerusalem. Three Israelis were reportedly killed.
Israel's obsession with security often, if
not always, leads it to create the very conditions
that compromise on its own security, so that its
leaders may demonstrate the authenticity of their
original claim. It is a strange logic that is as
old as the state of Israel itself. But the timing
of the latest war on Gaza, as in the previous one,
partly meant to push the subject of Israel's
security on the top of the new administration's
agenda, rife with crises and challenges. No US
administration risks initiating its term in office
with an open confrontation with Israel. The
conventional wisdom in Washington is that in times
of war, Israel is right even if it's wrong, as it
often is. Not even Barack Hussein Obama is strong
enough to change that reasoning.
"We
strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from
Gaza into Israel," said Jay Carney, the White
House spokesman. "There is no justification for
the violence that Hamas and other terrorist
organizations are employing against the people of
Israel."
Now that Israel is once more
pushing its agenda as an American priority, the
time is ripe for further escalation and for more
saber-rattling against Iran, Hezbollah and
whomever else Israel perceives as an enemy.
Israeli causalities will be used to demonstrate
Israel's supposed vulnerability, and Palestinian
deaths will buttress Netanyahu's rightwing
government as Israel's unbending guardian against
those who continue to pose "an existential threat"
to the Jewish state. The truth, of course, remains
the least relevant.
Ramzy
Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) is an
internationally syndicated columnist and the
editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book
is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's
Untold Story.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times
Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
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