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withdrawn from southern Lebanon and from Gaza.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.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn