http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9636.shtml
After the unremitting hell that Israel has inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza, one can only feel relief and even joy at the ceasefire agreed between Hamas and the Jewish state that took effect this week. Its significance extends well beyond Gaza and opens new possibilities as the disastrous Bush Doctrine begins to lose influence.
Since the beginning of this year, Israeli occupation forces and settlers have killed over 400 Palestinians, including dozens of children and several babies, already exceeding the entire death toll for 2007. One hundred and fifty were killed during a few days of Israeli bombing of Gaza in early March. This year seven Israelis have been killed in conflict-related violence, including four by mortars or rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.
Some have sought to exclusively blame Hamas for the high Palestinian death toll, saying that the rockets resistance fighters were firing into Israel were "useless" and "toys," and gave Israel the excuse to "retaliate" implying that resistance itself was to blame for the occupier's violence. But the fallacy of this claim is exposed by the fact that the absence of rockets fired from the West Bank and the renunciation of resistance by the US-backed Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, has not spared Palestinian communities there from daily and escalating Israeli violence.
Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed dozens of Palestinians all over the West Bank and injured hundreds of others, including many civilians in their homes, or taking part in peaceful demonstrations against the ongoing destruction and seizure of their land. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, up to mid-June, Israeli occupation forces had carried out over 827 military incursions into West Bank communities (an average of five per day) and had kidnapped or arrested 1,334 civilians since the start of the year. In addition to land confiscation and settlement construction, the Israeli army ransacked, destroyed or closed dozens of non-governmental organizations, radio stations, bakeries and other civic institutions and demolished many homes in the West Bank.
Abbas' appointed prime minister Salam Fayyad called on Israel to extend the truce to the West Bank, demanding "All those Israeli military operations in areas under our control must cease." Although Hamas has announced it will unilaterally observe the truce in the West Bank, Israel has not agreed to extend it there.
Israel's massacres in Gaza were never about stopping rocket fire; as Israeli leaders repeatedly stated, they were intended to break the will of the civilian population and force it to turn against the resistance factions and towards the US and Israeli-backed Ramallah Authority. If Israel had wanted to stop the rockets the easy way to do that would have been to accept any one of the truce offers repeatedly proffered by Hamas.
Instead, as Haaretz's Akiva Eldar put it, Hamas by refusing to buckle under, "once again proved that force is the only language Israel understands." Hamas has achieved a mutual ceasefire and negotiations with Israel are under way to reopen Gaza crossings and exchange prisoners.
The ceasefire also suggests that -- at least for now -- Hamas has managed to achieve some measure of tactical deterrence. Despite constant Israeli threats to wage an all-out war in Gaza, there is a pervasive sense among Israelis that "a lengthy presence, even partial, in the Gaza Strip could turn into a copy of the First Lebanon War, where our soldiers became sitting ducks, targets of roadside bombs and ambushes, for 18 years," as Haaretz military analyst Yoel Marcus put it.
The Israel-Hamas agreement underscores the failure of the policy of military terror, siege and starvation against Gaza supported by the US, the EU and some Arab states. But it also fits into a wider regional picture of the declining influence of the Bush Doctrine.
For years, the US has tried to divide the region into US-backed "moderates" (Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf states, Abbas' Palestinian Authority and the Fouad Siniora government in Lebanon) in an alliance anchored by Israel and Saudi Arabia, and arrayed against so-called "extremists" (including Hamas, Hizballah and Syria) whom the US alleged were mere pawns of Iran.
The US banned its clients from having any dealings with "extremists," even though this brought Palestine and Lebanon to the brink of civil war. Despite constant injunctions by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that talking to the "extremists" is useless, governments are doing it anyway. If not peace, then rapprochement has been breaking out all over the place: after tense confrontations and fighting in May, the Lebanese government and Hizballah-led opposition struck a power-sharing accord mediated by Qatar. Israel and Syria have been engaged in negotiations mediated by Turkey. The Gulf States have moved to patch up relations with Iran.
1 comment:
It`s true, there seems to be a move toward a rapprochement between the belligerents in the Middle East, on the other hand, both Israel and the US (including presumptive presidential candidates Obama and McCain) have recently ratched-up threats against Iran. It`s quite on the cards then, that these `signs of hope` is really a geo-political tactic to neutralise Syria, Hizbillah and Hamas, along with client Arab states, before an agressive war against Iran is launched. Let`s keep in mind, that the aims of both the US and the Zionist state, have not changed.
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