Israel's Onslaught on Gaza: Criminal, for Sure; But Also Stupid
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
In
contrast to the grim forecasts of many fine contributors to this site
over the past days, your CounterPunch editors have been inclined to
take the view that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, appalling though the
carnage has been, is not only a crime but a blunder, like the attack on
Lebanon in 2006, which demonstrated Israel’s military weakness, and the
corruption of its armed forces after long years of bravely tormenting
unarmed Palestinian peasants at check points, sawing down their olive
groves and crushing their homes with bulldozers and high explosive.
The
left has a tendency to demonize its enemies in terms of proficiency in
administering their dastardly onslaughts. Through this optic, the
claims of the arms manufacturers are always taken at face value,
whether about the effectiveness of bunker busters, or devices to detect
Hamas’ Qassams. In our latest newsletter we print a long interview with
Hamas’ leader in Damascus, Khaled Meshal, conducted by CounterPuncher
Alya Rea, myself and others, including former US Senator James
Abourezk. Meshal made a case for Israel’s decline in military
effectiveness:
Meshal:
Since 1948, if we want to draw a curve of Israel’s progress, do you
think that this curve is still heading up, or maybe is at a plateau, or
is heading down? I believe that the curve is now in descent. And today,
the military might of Israel is not capable of concluding matters to
Israel’s satisfaction. Since 1948, you may notice that Israel has
defeated 7 armies. In ’56 they defeated Egypt. In ’67 they defeated 3
countries: Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. In ’73, the war was somewhat equal
in both sides between Egypt and Israel, if not for Nixon’s airlift to
Israel’s forces at that time, the map of the world would be different.
In ’82 Israel defeated the PLO in Beirut.
Khaled Meshal. Photo by Alexander Cockburn. Copyright 2009.
But
since ’82, 26 years ago, Israelis has not won any war. They did not
defeat the Palestinian resistance, and they did not defeat the Lebanese
resistance. Since that time, Israel has not expanded but has
contracted. They have withdrawn from southern Lebanon and from Gaza.
These are indicators that the future is not favorable to Israel. Then
today Israel, with all its military capabilities – conventional and
unconventional – are not enough to guarantee Israel’s security. Today,
with all these capabilities, they can’t stop a simple rocket from being
launched from Gaza.
Hence
the big question is, can military might ensure security? Hence, we may
say that when Israel refuse the Arab and the Palestinian offer, a state
of Palestine on the border of 1967, Israel is losing a big opportunity.
Some years down the road, a new Palestinian generation, new Arab
generations, may not accept those conditions, because the balance of
power may not be in Israel’s favor.
Hamas,
as I remarked last week, has been greatly strengthened by the current
attack and the status of President Abbas reaffirmed as a spineless
collaborator with Israel; Mubarak likewise; Syria and Turkey alienated
from Western designs; Hezbollah and Iran vindicated by the world
condemnation of Israel’s barbarous conduct. For months Israel besieged
Gaza, starving its civilian inhabitants of essential supplies with no
effective international reproach. It’s hard to take dramatic
photographs of an empty medicine bottle, but easy to film a bombed out
girl’s dorm or a Palestinian mother weeping over the bodies of her five
dead daughters, featured on the front page of the Washington Post two weeks ago. Efforts to keep reporters out of Gaza have not been
entirely successful, and both UN and Red Cross workers on the ground
have sent outraged reports denouncing Israel’s barbarities. They have
also been fierce State Department memos from USAID workers.
As
we go into the weekend, an admittedly toothless resolution in the UN
calling for a ceasefire was not vetoed by the US. The UK Guardian ran a
story on Friday suggesting that my view expressed last week, that there
were two ways to read Obama’s initial silence about the onslaughts –
which he was finally forced to break after Israel killed nearly 50
women and children trying to shelter in the UN School. The Guardian
story began:
The
incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's
doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist
organisation, sources close to the transition team say.
The
move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the
US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the
Bush presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has
designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed
a law banning US financial aid to the group.
The
Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions
in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct
diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by
advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is
growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracizing Hamas
is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts
through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret
process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel
did not become aware of the contacts until much later.
One
has to caution that there could be more than one reason for such a leak
from the transition team – including an alert to the Israel lobby to
start piling on the pressure to head off any such contacts. With men
like Emanuel and “special assistant on the Middle East” Dan Kurtzer at
Obama’s elbow, I imagine the Israeli embassy won’t have much difficulty
in monitoring Obama’s plans, though his National Security Advisor, Jim
Jones, apparently once filed a report to Condoleezza Rice with
criticisms of Israel’s conduct so harsh that the whole report was
hastily deep-sixed.
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