My own position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been one of distaste for either side. I find I am sympathetic to motivations and unsympathetic to rationalizations for violence. I don’t think the Palestinians or the Israelis have a sound basis for the acts of violence they commit.
I had been thinking of writing a post about the efficacy of rocket firing. What Jeff recently wrote hits the nail on the head (emphasis mine):
Apologists include not only those who defend Israeli violence, but those who defend whatever diminutive forces are still launching rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. This has nothing to with the right of an occupied people to resist – such rocket attacks are not resistance. The rocket attacks from Gaza have no logical basis. Engaging in war, engaging in violence, should at the least have a rational basis in the expectation that it will improve one’s situation. However, it is abundantly clear (and has been for some time) that not only are such attacks not improving the plight of Gazans, but with a grand total of 5 fatalities, while providing a pretext for Israel to respond, are almost completely ineffective while increasingly contributing to the decimation of the civilian population of Gaza. One might even suggest that those behind the rocket attacks are in collusion with Israeli military planners, so ineffective are such tactics.
Why do they fire rockets? Why engage in such counterproductive actions? Its incredibly suspicious. Its as if, whoever is firing the rockets, wants Israel to escalate.
The rub is that if the Israelis are behind it, the rocket firing is both expected and lauded by Hamas (so it would blend in). If Hamas is behind it, then how high a civilian cost are they willing to pay to slowly de-legitimize Israel’s statehood? It would take hiding in civilian homes when firing rockets to a whole new level of vile. Perhaps Hamas is simply pulling a Bush and hoping a little warfare and a common enemy will bolster their support.
My gut instinct is that what Hamas should be doing is staging massive acts of civil disobedience. They should be engaging in actions that leave the world with no recourse but to offer support. Because make no mistake. With the invasion and the rockets and bombings aside, the Palestinian people are oppressed. They are oppressed by the Israelis, and by the surrounding nations who are in various degrees complicit in the state of isolation and poverty the Palestinians are boxed into.
By the same token, one might ask of Israel what it stands to gain by invading? Its costing them their legitimacy:
The original Zionist concept of a collaborative, diverse haven for an oppressed class of people has mutated into an ultra-militaristic state which has violently oppressed the people whose land was taken for that purpose. No state has an inherent right to exist (did the Soviet Union? Do countries whose borders have been drawn by occupying forces?), and for many well outside of the Middle East, Israel is losing any legitimacy it may have possessed.
Jeff is absolutely right. And all the invasion will accomplish (as he notes further down in a post I recommend reading in its entirety) is inciting more reciprocal violence. Israel should, rather than resorting to violence, shame and deligitimize Hamas for the attacks. As it stands now, any such efforts would be so concentrated in their hypocrisy they might prove fatal upon observation by rational people.
What do you think? What should the Palestinians be doing, right now? What should the Israelis be doing, right now? What should the US and the UN do?
Posted under Politics
This post was written by Dan on January 8, 2009
Ok… I’ll take a shot at that question. I’ve been in Iraq, I’ve had mortars ineffectually fired at me… day in and day out… they never killed anyone… they would occasionally hit something… but even that was rare. I’d say they do it because when someone is constantly firing at you, even if they don’t hurt you, it puts you on edge… makes you feel paranoid and under siege at all times. It wears you down mentally and emotionally. Maybe you don’t get hurt, but maybe you know someone who almost got hurt… maybe they still have nightmares about it. I don’t think the rockets are really about hurting people, I think they’re about wearing down the enemy’s will to engage in a prolonged battle.
Kate,
Hmmmm, that’s a very good point. The problem is that the rockets are both providing an excuse and inciting the grossly disproportionate response. I can see that being the motivation, but I wonder why they can’t see it isn’t effective?
I agree that the rocket attacks are ineffective and erroding the moral high ground of Palestinians, but I think Hamas fires them because they can’t think of anything better or more effective to do. Palestinians have staged peaceful protests and acts of civil disobedience and they have garnered a lot of international support but it really hasn’t gotten them anywhere. Maybe they need to sustain it for a longer period of time or to be better at making their vocies heard. The current conflict differs from previous ones in which acts of non-violent disobedience were effective in that in many of those instances (India with Ghandi and the US south with MLK) those societies could not function without the participation of the oppressed population. Israel has long been working on seperating itself from the Palestinian population and aren’t nearly as reliant on them for cheap labor as they once were. One last reason why Hamas might be using such a clearly ineffective and morally dubious approach is that they can still say to the Palestinian people at least we are doing something. I think their popularity among the Palestinian people is bolstered by their ability to contrast their approach to the PLO’s peace process and ultimatly the attacks may be aimed at shoring up their internal support.
Once again, just hazarding a guess here, I’m thinking that maybe the point if you’re Hamas isn’t to win the battle, but to stay in power. A full scale military victory isn’t possible. They know they’re not going to wipe Israel off the map. They don’t have the means to take on Israel, let alone the US. But I also think that Hamas knows why they came to power.
They came to power because there is a lot of anger and frustration in Palestine. Without getting into a discussion about all the reasons the Palestinians might wish to do harm to and seek retribution from Israel, I think we can safely say that there are some unresolved issues that many people in Palestine feel can only be resolved through violence. Therefore, I don’t believe that any leader who renounced violence against Israel would be seen as legitimate. Elections were held. Violence prevailed. I think that should tell us something about the mood on the streets in Gaza.
Returning to the question of the rockets, I actually think they’re kind of a win-win for Hamas. Either Israel ignores them and Hamas gets to maintain their stature without suffering any real losses, or Israel overreacts like they have this time and Hamas gets to stir up anti-Israeli sentiment around the world. I’m quite certain that the past few weeks have been a tremendous recruiting tool for Hamas. Given what’s happening in the Gaza strip, do you really think the Palestinians are just going to turn around and decide to forgive and forget?
Even though I am for armed revolution, I question Hamas launching rockets into Israel. My perception is like a midget taking on a giant before taking a self defense course. It’s a ludicrous albeit knee jerk response to an aggressor. If Israel does not have to pay infiltrators to launch the rocket attacks, the results are the same. In a past rally against Greyhound Bus Lines, I witnessed someone break out of the demonstration, and took a big rock and broke a window on a Greyhound bus. Everyone else around me seemed as puzzled as I was. No one was clapping for him or cheering his act. My immediate reaction was that he was an agent provocateur hired by Greyhound, or part of the police.
I cannot be sure, that those firing rockets into Israel are getting paid by Israel, but that they are helping Israel have a pretext to retaliate, of that I have no doubt.
One solution is for those of us in the USA, to realize that the US and Israel are joint partners in crime. That the US Government should be exposed for its role in rejecting the Goldstone Report, for using its Corp of Engineers to help build an underground barrier to help bolster the siege of Gaza., and for backing Israel in general. Without US backing,, Zionism would not exist, the siege would end. So the more Americans, become aware of what really is happening in Gaza, the more pressure can be put at the source, the US Government. The pressure could take the form of solidarity strikes, Unions refusing to load cargo bound for Israel, pressuring or exposing US companies doing business with Israel and combating the Zionist misinformation about the Palestinian struggle.
But until we have a world revolutionary party capable of leading all this, I doubt much will happen.