[Reader-list] Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

[Shilpa Phadke]

Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

Monday, 29 December 2008


The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza;
we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every
morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza
Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight
back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have
convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer
they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have
hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside
of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to
have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled
the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it
is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave. They live out their
lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower
blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world:
the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as
they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 –
there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government
says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam
rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered.
How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative,
and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we
want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to
rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in
order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's
senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The
disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount
of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political
process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the
Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of
their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have
been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions -
but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was
not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of
Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a
two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to
reclaim the whole of historic Palestine. So, partly in response to this
pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto
acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli
government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced
that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to
reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and
refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food,
fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the
Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of
food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The
United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was
last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their
machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling
around the streets, scavenging for food.

It was in this context – under a collective punishment designed to topple a
democracy – that some forces within Gaza did something immoral: they fired
Qassam rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. These rockets have killed
16 Israeli citizens. This is abhorrent: targeting civilians is always
murder. But it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim now to
speak out for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians
as a matter of state policy.

The American and European governments are responding with a lop-sidedness
that ignores these realities. They say that Israel cannot be expected to
negotiate while under rocket fire, but they demand that the Palestinians do
so under siege in Gaza and violent military occupation in the West Bank.

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week,
Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises.
Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the
current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli
cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce,
but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting
two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West
Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough –
rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the
former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the
Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have
recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the
foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the
establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They
are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead
them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on
compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi
Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that
could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to
choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to
turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only
one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the
Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on
"their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and
control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with
responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank
standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel
to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at
all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will
have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and
compromise with them.

The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli
writer Larry Derfner. He says: "Israel's war with Gaza has to be the most
one-sided on earth... If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end
it, the ball is not in Hamas's court – it is in ours."

The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-true-story-behind-this-war-is-not-the-one-israel-is-telling-1214981.html