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."
http://www.independent.co.uk/
About Johann Hari:
Since he began work as a journalist, Johann has been attacked in
print by the National Review, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail,
John Pilger, Daniel Craig, Peter Oborne, Private Eye, the Socialist
Worker, Cristina Odone, Jon Gaunt, the Spectator, Andrew Neil, Mark
Steyn, the British National Party, Medialens, al Muhajaroun and
Richard Littlejohn.
'Prince' Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, has
accused Johann of "waging a private jihad against the House of
Saud". (He's right). Johann has been called 'Maoist' by Nick Cohen,
"Stalinist" by Noam Chomsky, 'Horrible Hari' by Niall Ferguson, "an
uppity little queer" by Bruce Anderson, 'a drug addict' by George
Galloway, "fat" by the Dalai Lama and "a cunt" by Busted. 
