In life, some phenomena cannot be
explained by ordinary logic or technical language,
let alone official discourses. How did Gaza manage
to fight back with such ferocity and undying vigor
in quelling the latest Israeli war despite years
of a bloody siege and one-sided war in 2008-9? It
simply cannot be explained by the outmoded
language of today's media analysts.
Notwithstanding, a new reality is about to emerge.
During the 2008-09 "Operation Cast Lead",
Israel killed over 1,400 Palestinians and wounded
over 5,000 others. It was like shooting fish in a
barrel. Most victims were civilians as is always
the case in such wars of "self-defense''. A United
Nations investigation published in September 2009
concluded there is "evidence indicating serious
violations of international human rights and
humanitarian law were committed by Israel during
the Gaza
conflict, and that
Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes,
and possibly crimes against humanity."
Back then, there was no shortage of
indictments and condemnations, as will surely
emerge from this latest eight-day war on Gaza.
Many spoke of how the tide of public opinion is
turning against Israel, how the self-declared
Jewish State was losing its command over an
ever-skewed narrative of David versus Goliath, of
how the US would no longer be able to shield
Israel against the profound anguish of millions of
besieged people imploring the world for help and
solidarity.
Much of this was in fact true,
but equally true was that Israel succeeded in
dragging Gaza and the rest of Palestine back to
the same status quo - despite the heinous crimes
committed four years ago - that preceded the war.
Former Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, told
journalists on January 12, 2009 that her country
was deliberately "going wild' in Gaza to "restore
... Israel's deterrence. Hamas now understands
that when you fire on its citizens it responds by
going wild - and this is a good thing."
It
certainly was good enough for the United States,
but also for many European powers who giddily
wined and dined with Livni in Brussels, shortly
after the war, as if thousands of people had not
been killed and wounded or that whole families
hadn't just perished for no fault of their own and
as if a whole nation was not still in mourning for
its lost children, men and women.
It is
not that Israel was particularly crafty in
restoring its standing among official western
circles in the last four years, thus giving it the
needed confidence to assault Gaza once more. The
fact is that Israel never lost that standing to
begin with. These very powers (starting with
Washington and London) never ceased backing Israel
with the latest killing technology, bolstering
Israel's economy despite their own economic woes
and of course, supporting Israel's "right to
defend itself" at every available opportunity.
The 22-day war on Gaza of 2008-09 was in
actuality a continuation of another long war,
which is difficult to demarcate by specific dates
and times. Palestinians in Gaza (as in the rest of
the occupied territories) have been dying at rates
that decelerate and accelerate depending on the
political mood in Tel Aviv.
In 2008,
embattled Kadima party officials sought war to
boost their rating among a war and
security-obsessed public. In 2012, national
elections in Israel are upon us once more. In both
cases, Palestinian blood had to be exacted in that
same bloody game of Israeli politics. And all
rising stars in Israeli politics needed to be
there to impress the ever-approving public.
When "more than 90% of Israeli Jews
support Gaza war" (Ha'aretz, Nov 19), it becomes
less shocking to read Gilad Sharon (son of former
Israeli Prime Minister and repeatedly accused war
criminal Ariel Sharon) writing in the Jerusalem
Post: "There should be no electricity in Gaza, no
gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they'd
really call for a ceasefire ... We need to flatten
entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza.
The Americans didn't stop with Hiroshima - the
Japanese weren't surrendering fast enough, so they
hit Nagasaki, too."
Yet what was thought
of as another hunting season of Gaza's civilians
and fighters alike didn't turn out as desired.
"Operation Pillar of Cloud' was meant as to
present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak with ample
opportunities so that they may wave their fingers
in threatening gestures and score as many
political points as they could before
international pressure mount. Instead, it ended up
being a political debacle of historic proportions.
Israel's trial balloons were downed by
hundreds of Palestinian rockets that reached as
far as northern Tel Aviv and even west Jerusalem.
What was meant to break the resistance, so that
Palestinians may never dare complain of
occupation, of Israel-imposed political isolation
and suffocating siege, along with Israel's
"deterrence' wars, resulted in a new strange
reality that sent Israelis everywhere seeking
shelter. When sirens blared, Israel came to a halt
as Israelis experienced bloody glimpses of what
Palestinians experience too often.
There
were 167 Palestinians killed and over 1,000 were
wounded. Six Israelis were killed, including a
soldier who died from his wounds after a ceasefire
was achieved through Egypt on November 21. But it
was not the amount of spilled blood that made this
war different, for the ratio of horrific deaths
remains tilted. It was different because of the
nature of the message that Hamas and other
resistance factions delivered. Even starved and
besieged Gazans are capable of fighting back after
six long years of a hermetic blockade that forced
them to dig hundreds of tunnels seeking salvation
through neighboring Egypt.
In Ramallah,
the Palestinian Authority, with little credibility
to begin with, became more irrelevant than ever
before. Mahmoud Abbas tried to impose himself as a
party in the conflict by speaking of a popular but
peaceful resistance in a televised speech. He
conveniently explained the Israeli war as an
attempt to coerce him not to seek the now-secured
non-member state status for Palestine at the
United Nations. And as Israeli leaders struggled
to understand the new variable in their unfair war
equation with the Palestinians, Arab officials
poured into Gaza signaling that this time around
things would be different. The Americans took
notice too.
Just as the US media spoke of
a shift in US foreign policy focus to East and
Southeast Asia, the alarming nature of the new war
forced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to rush
to Israel to offer its support and solidarity.
European leaders did the same. The lines were
being demarcated once more. This time Gaza was a
dividing point of regional and international
politics, its resistance being the main factor
behind a seismic shift.
Many in Israel
tried to distort the facts by explaining that a
ceasefire for Hamas would be good for Israel as it
would bring "quiet" to border communities. Thus
the Israeli objectives were achieved in a
roundabout sort of way. Ha'aretz military
correspondent Amos Harel labored to soften the
blow by saying "The art of measuring the level of
deterrence power is far from an exact science.
Nobody expected that failed actions against
Hezbollah in 2006 would lead to six-and-a-half
years of quiet (which for the time being persists)
on the Lebanon border".
However, Israel's
intentions were not exactly about achieving peace
and tranquility. For decades, Israel's sought to
have complete monopoly over violence, thus the
right to punish, deter, intervene, occupy and
"teach lessons' to whomever it wanted, whenever it
wanted. Its recent targeting of Sudan, its past
strikes against Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, appalling
wars in Lebanon, and constant threats against Iran
are all cases in point.
Certainly,
something big has changed. Not that Palestinians
managed to narrow the imbalance of power, but that
they succeeded in imposing their resistance as a
factor in Israel's "security" equation that was
exclusively determined by Israel.
Despite
their heavy losses, thousands of Palestinians
danced with joy throughout the Gaza Strip. They
kneeled and prayed among the rebels, thanking God
for their "victory". Masked armed men were crowded
by jubilant Gazans cheering for resistance. Israel
and its benefactors began assigning blame by
pointing the finger mostly at Iran. But their
words drowned in the echoes of Palestinian chants.
All parties know that something fundamental has
been altered, although the battle is anything but
over. A war of a different kind is about to begin.
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
(Pluto Press, London).
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