Article by New Statesman -Israel must acknowledge Hamas as the democratic choice of a majority of Palestinians

Published 8 January 2009 : The New Statesman

The devastating air assault on the Gaza Strip which began on 27 December, and the ground invasion that followed, are the latest stages in the unequal war between the state of Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by the acronym Hamas. The onslaught has so far led to the deaths of more than 600 Palestinians, many of them children, including those killed in an air strike on the UN-run al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Since Hamas's unexpected victory in legislative elections in January 2006, Israel has been attempting to loosen the organisation's grip on the Palestinian territories. Although the elections were widely acknowledged to be free and fair, neither Israel nor any of its western allies was prepared to recognise a Palestinian Authority run by what they regard as a terrorist organisation. A civil war broke out between Hamas and Fatah, Israel's so-called partner for peace which runs the PA, and in June 2007, Hamas fighters ousted their rivals from Gaza. The Israelis responded by imposing a blockade on the coastal territory, and Fatah began attempting to excise Hamas from the West Bank.

As Edward Platt reported in the New Statesman recently ("Israel v Hamas: the war that can never end", 3 November 2008), Hamas derives much of its support from the network of charitable institutions it runs and on which many Palestinians depend for survival. Having outlawed Hamas's executive and military wings, the PA and the Israeli army began to close down the schools and orphanages, claiming that they had become breeding grounds for a new generation of terrorists and a means of raising funds for terrorist activities. Hamas called it a "declaration of war on the poor and the needy". It was.

In Gaza, the campaign proceeded by even blunter means. At the end of February, Israel launched a five-day strike intended to put an end to the barrage of Qassam rocket fire that various paramilitary groups, including Hamas's military wing, had been directing from Gaza into southern Israel. Like the current campaign, it ended with incursions by the Israeli army, and resulted in the deaths of many non-combatants; according to the Palestinian human rights organisation al-Mezan, 65 of the 119 Palestinians killed were civilians.

"Operation Warm Winter" did not immediately achieve its aim of ending the barrage, but a ceasefire came into effect in June and held for six months. As usual, both sides blame the other for breaking it, though the first recorded incident of the latest stage of the war occurred on 4 November, when Israeli special forces entered the Gaza Strip and killed six militants. On 5 November, Hamas resumed its rocket attacks and Israel increased the severity of the blockade, which it had never fully lifted, and which has turned Gaza into a kind of open prison, a place of misery and hopelessness. Supplies of food, fuel and medicine were cut off and it was plain that a humanitarian disaster was developing.

In the circumstances, that Hamas continued to fire rockets into Sderot and other towns in south-west Israel was a grotesque and pointless provocation. Yet it could claim, with some justification, that it was only responding to the greater Israeli aggression of the blockade, and its defiance may play well to a section of its domestic audience. But the majority of the population that it claims to represent has suffered terribly as a result. Public opinion in Israel demanded a response to the relentless Qassam attacks that had led to the deaths of 24 of the country's citizens, and, predictably, it has come in time - and with George Bush still nominally in power in the US - to restore the prospects of Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, foreign minister and defence minister in the current coalition government, who will lead Kadima and Labour in next month's elections.

Yet it is hard to see how Israel will benefit from its instinctive reversion to force, grotesquely disproportionate in this latest war. It is also hard not to see this invasion of Gaza, as well as the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, as proxy wars in the larger conflict with Syria and Iran.

The campaign is unlikely to damage Hamas as much as Israel seems to hope - its military wing need only retain a rudimentary fighting capacity to claim a victory of sorts, and because of its willingness to resist the invasion, it may yet emerge from the conflict with its status enhanced. It is hard to predict what Hamas will do next; its pronouncements are often contradictory, yet it seems to have accepted the idea of establishing a Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders. However, with prospects for a two-state solution rapidly receding, such openings should be exploited to the full, and we must hope that President-elect Obama has a broader grasp of the needs of the region than the callous and inadequate administration seeing out its last days in office.

When the fighting ends, international pressure must be brought to bear to ensure the blockade is lifted and the next truce must be monitored with greater vigilance than the last. Yet, so long as Israel remains committed to Hamas's destruction, and Hamas continues to strike against Israeli civilians, there will be no lasting peace. It may be unpalatable to deal with a group that endorses suicide bombing and which is virulently anti-Semitic, but Israel, and its sponsor, the US, must acknowledge Hamas as the democratic choice of the Palestinians and seek grounds for compromise. In the long run, negotiations will provide a more effective and infinitely more humane way of protecting Israeli citizens than attempting to batter the Gazans into submission.

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A REVENGE STRATEGY

Haim Baram

Published 08 January 2009 in THE NEW STATESMAN

Israel’s politicians, and people, are seeking total victory in Gaza. They won’t get it

On Monday 5 January, Israel's relatively easy war suddenly became a nasty entanglement. Five soldiers were killed and 30 were wounded by "friendly fire", an inevitable phenomenon in battles inside urban areas. The suave expressions have been wiped off the faces of some of the television commentators here, but most Israelis still believe that the Israel Defence Forces are on their way to victory, avenging the humiliation of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. I choose the word "avenging" with care. Israel's policy is driven not only by an outburst of emotional machismo, but also a calculated strategy, aimed at restoring the IDF's credibility. Psychologically the Israeli people (not only their leaders) badly need a total victory over the hated and widely demonised Hamas regime in Gaza, and remorse over the plight of the civilians is confined to small enlightened circles, devoid of any real influence among the general public.

The war in Gaza is unequivocally supported by the extreme right: the settlers and their backers inside Israel proper. Seasoned observers here take this for granted. Right-wing Zionists would support any war against Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular. But the "confron tational right" (extreme pro-settler parties and some Likud politicians) was not in a position to launch the new war in Gaza. Its supporters merely assumed their usual role as its cheerleaders.

The architects of the atrocious, arguably criminal, bombing of Gaza and the ensuing invasion were the leaders of the nationalistic centre - Tzipi Livni of Kadima and Ehud Barak of Labour, respectively Israel's foreign minister and minister of defence. Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud opposition and the candidate certain to win the elections on 10 February, has, in his unique style, fluctuated between confrontational public statements and international-statesman-like pretensions.

Netanyahu harnessed himself to the government propaganda machine, achieving at a stroke three important aims: proving his loyalty to the elected government; endearing himself to the incoming regime in the US (which is looking for a more moderate stance from Israel); and fulfilling his role as leader of the right wing within the nationalistic centre. The bulk of the all-important Israeli middle class supports the nationalistic centre; the general election will only determine the relative strength of its components.

This façade of unity is very fragile, however, and the customary recriminations will ensue as soon as the first real setback in the campaign is made public. There is an old mechanism at work here, which characterises most of our wars. A general enthusiasm at the outset is followed by an orgy of self-righteousness and vilification of our enemies. The next stage is self-pity, combined with inevitable remorse over our own crimes against the enemy. The last phase is prolonged breast-beating, culminating in an investigation into the mishandling of the campaign.

The role of the Israeli media in this predictable situation is truly lamentable, many journalists in the national press and broadcast media acting as semi-official spokesmen for the government's war machine. The civilian casualties in Gaza have been consistently described as a natural result of collateral damage. Many Israelis justify the carnage by explaining that the victims had elected a Hamas government of their own free will.

Hamas cannot be exonerated from its share of responsibility for the crisis, nor can Israel be expected to tolerate the constant shelling of its citizens in the south. But Israel, like its American patrons, has decided to ignore the results of the Palestinian Authority elections in January 2006, and snub the mediators. This crisis is the direct result of a decision by Israel's nationalistic-centre politicians, aided and abetted by the Bush administration, to seek a confrontation with Islam.

Are there viable alternatives to Israel's strategy in Gaza? They certainly exist: Israel could recognise the Hamas government, negotiate with its leaders, lift the siege on Gaza and stop its anti-Muslim propaganda. But the national consensus in Israel, led by the three major parties, prevents them from being even seriously debated.

Nevertheless, Hamas is a reality, and wiping it out is not only immoral, but impossible. The likelihood is that hostilities will end soon, without a complete victory for any party. The Israeli and Palestinian peoples will pay the price - though the latter are destined to suffer far more.

In the long term, only Barack Obama can bring about a new regional atmosphere and mastermind creative and daring initiatives. Indeed, 20 January has never seemed so far away.

Haim Baram is a writer based in Jerusalem and was a founding member of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace