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Siege of Gaza may short-circuit border plans
Toronto Sun
4th January 2009
Eric Margolis
The endless cycle of attacks and reprisals between Israel and Hamas finally exploded last week as their shaky six-month truce expired.
While Israeli F-16 jets dropped tons of bombs on tiny, 360-sq.-km Gaza -- the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel -- Israel's Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, asserted, "We have totally changed the rules of the game."
He was right. By blitzing Hamas-run Gaza, the world's largest outdoor prison, packed with 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, Barak presented the incoming U.S. administration with a fait accompli and neatly checkmated the newest player in the Mideast Great Game -- that other "Barack," Barack Obama -- before he could even take a seat at the table.
Israel's politics played a key role. Labour Party leader Barak, and Kadima leader, Tzipi Livni, sought to prove themselves tougher than Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline Likud Party. Elections are only six weeks away and Likud leads. The Gaza assault was designed to intimidate Israel's Arab neighbours, and make up for Israel's humiliating 2006 defeat in Lebanon.
Israel's siege of Gaza may short-circuit any plans Obama had to press Israel into withdrawing to its pre-1967 war borders and sharing Jerusalem. Angry Israelis are in no mood for compromise. Hamas's stupidity in firing homemade rockets at Israel has undermined the credibility of a future Palestinian state.
Israel's security establishment remains dead set against allowing a viable Palestinian state, refuses to negotiate with hated Hamas, and will keep starving Gaza. Unable to kill all of Hamas' men, Israel is destroying Gaza's infrastructure, as it did to Yasser Arafat's PLO.
Israel believes its mighty information machine will allow it to weather the storm of worldwide outrage over its Biblical punishment of Gaza. Who remembers Israel's flattening of parts of the rebellious Palestinian city of Jenin, or the U.S. destruction in Falluja, Iraq? As Stalin liked to say, "the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on."
WEAPONS
Though Israel's use of American weapons against Gaza violates the U.S. Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts, the docile U.S. Congress will remain mute.
Hamas, the militant but democratically elected government of Gaza, is even less likely to compromise. Its rival, the lapdog Fatah regime on the West Bank installed by the U.S. and Israel after Arafat's mysterious death, will be further discredited.
Many in the Arab world believe Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia colluded with the U.S. and Israel to crush Hamas. These U.S.-backed autocracies fear Hamas' revolutionary message of liberation from western domination, social welfare policies, violence, and war on corruption.
But the "Guernica" of Gaza, as some call it, will further undermine these U.S.-backed regimes, whose people, outraged by Gaza's suffering, are branding their leaders U.S. stooges.
This comes as the three-decade dictatorship of Egypt's 80-year old president, Husni Mubarak, winds down.
Syria has broken off peace talks with Israel. The Muslim world is in a rage. So what? As long as the U.S. gives Israel carte blanche, as the outgoing Bush administration did once more over Gaza, it can do just about anything it wants. Let the dogs bark.
Mideast mess
Such is the mess Obama will inherit in less than three weeks. During the elections, Obama offered a new U.S. carte blanche to Israel. His Mideast team looks to be top heavy with friends of Israel's Labour Party.
Chances Obama will make any progress towards a real Mideast peace seem dim. Many right wing Israelis and Hamas, who feed off one another, will be delighted.
The tragedy of Palestine will continue to poison America's relations with the Muslim world and make it, as on 9/11, and Israel, objects of more attacks.
Unless Israel can make up to seven million Palestinians disappear, it must find some way to co-exist with them.
But the collective punishment of Gaza will likely strengthen Hamas and set back hopes of any reconciliation by years.
The field is now left to Hamas' suicide bombers and homemade rockets, and to Israel's F-16Is and tanks.
Copyright © 2009, Canoe Inc.
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