by Stuart Littlewood
Friday, November 23rd, 2012
Israel’s latest brainless onslaught has spectacularly backfired.
First, the courage and resilience of the
Palestinians in Gaza has won the hearts and minds of the world. In Stephen
Lendman’s words,
“we’re all Gazans now”.
The Hamas government, which has been forced to
operate under impossible conditions ever since it was elected in 2006, earns
grudging admiration and can hold its head high. Hated in the West because they
are not for sale, Hamas should be accepted as a key player in the diplomatic
process from now on.
Israel comes out of it smelling even worse than
before and is now universally despised. It has shown itself to be the ultimate
terror state and should be booted out of the United Nations.
The quisling Abbas, who skulked in the shadows
and whose diplomatic machinery in the capitals of the world remained silent
during the slaughter, ought to accept the revolver on the silver tray. He has no
democratic legitimacy, no popular mandate. He’s finished.
The West’s leaders, from Obama, Clinton, Cameron
and Hague down, who support the Zionist psychopaths, promote their vile purpose,
reward their non-stop atrocities and even lie their heads off to defend them,
are exposed for what they are – enemies of peace and unfit to serve in the
governments of decent people.
For the benefit of those who prattle about terror
killings, here is the score. In the 12 years since the first Intifada (September
2000) up to the end of September 2012 Israel killed 6,550 Palestinians in their
homeland. Of these 1,335 were children. Over the same period Palestinians killed
590 Israelis in their homeland, including 85 children. This is a
kill-ratio of 11 to 1. When it comes the children the Israelis are even more
proficient achieving a kill-ratio of nearly 16 to 1. The figures, which now need
updating to include the latest slaughter, come from the Israeli human rights
organisation B’Tselem which keeps count of such things.
No national leader worth his salt would tolerate
his countrymen being unlawfully reduced in this way. The West perhaps is
beginning to realise that Gaza too has a right to defend itself, and that right
is non-negotiable.
Will Mr Obama, Ms Clinton, Mr Cameron and Mr
Hague continue to pledge undying support for a regime capable of such butchery?
I expect the answer to be ‘yes’ because these statistics aren’t new, the
shutters should have come down on those responsible years ago. This quartet’s
determination to perpetuate the cruel occupation when they could end it with a
snap of the fingers means they are probably beyond redemption.
All these things and many more combine to turn
the tide. One can sense that civil society across the globe is disgusted with
Israel’s crimes against humanity and disrespect for the religious heritage of
the Holy Land.
Who are the terrorists now?
Inappropriate use of the T-word
by people with sinister motives is one of the biggest obstacles to a just
solution. Why does Britain blindly accept America’s branding of Hamas as a
terrorist organization? As John Pilger and others have pointed out, Hamas is the
Arab world’s only democratically elected government and draws its popularity
from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor of 64 years.
There’s nothing wrong with the definition of
terrorism in GW Bush’s Executive Order 13224, Section 3 -
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/terror/terror.pdf
– which the US uses to outlaw and crush any individual, organisation or nation
that gets in its way. The joke is that it fits the US itself, and its special
buddy Israel, like a glove. And they can’t see it.
But it would be difficult objectively to classify
Hamas as a terror government given decades of brutal occupation, dispossession,
economic suffocation, ethnic cleansing and denial of human rights at the hands
of a lawless neighbour. The correct word for them is “guerrilla”, as General Sir
Mike Jackson said last Sunday.
When democratically elected Hamas foiled a CIA
coup in 2007, John Pilger noted that the event was (and still is) reported in
the western media as “Hamas’s seizure of power”. Furthermore, Hamas is never
described as a government, let alone a democratic one, as it should be. Neither
does the West acknowledge Hamas’s generous offer of a ten-year truce and support
for a two-state solution, with just one condition: that the Israelis obey
international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders.
Added to which Norman Finkelstein, in his book
This Time We Went Too Far, says: “In June 2007 Hamas foiled a putsch
orchestrated by the US, Israel and elements of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas
has been repeatedly accused of ‘seizing control’ when it was
correctly taking action to enforce its authority.”
[my italics]
It’s all about maintaining Israel’s
‘deterrence capacity’
Israel tried to justify Operation Cast Lead Mk1,
launched in December 2008, by claiming self-defence against rocket attacks but
the main motives, says Finkelstein, were to restore Israel’s “deterrence
capacity” and counter the threat posed by a new Palestinian “peace
offensive”.
Deterrence capacity is about “keeping Arabs so
intimidated that they could not even conceive of challenging Israel’s freedom to
carry on as it pleased, however ruthlessly and recklessly”. The 1967 war had
been unleashed for that same purpose.
He explains how Hamas’s readiness to accept a
two-state solution (on the internationally recognised pre-1967 borders) and the
June 2008 ceasefire brokered by Egypt together caused Israel a dilemma in view
of its aversion to any permanent peace. Foreign minister Tzipi Livni wanted a
period of calm but said any extended truce “harms the Israeli strategic goal,
empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognises the movement”.
Israel’s strategic goal, of course, was (and still is) to retain the valuable
parts of the West Bank by making the occupation permanent. Israel therefore
would need to provoke Hamas into resuming its attacks “then radicalise or
destroy it, thereby eliminating it as a legitimate negotiating partner”.
Let’s keep that in mind in the weeks and months
ahead. Israel won’t want the truce to last too long. And the Zionist regime’s
strategic goal won’t have changed. Hamas are in the way ánd must be crushed. So
we can expect the Israeli offensive to continue, perhaps by other means at
first.
Furthermore, Israel is neurotic on the question
of its own legitimacy and insists that Hamas acknowledge the Jewish state’s
right to exist. This is comical considering the manner in which it came into
being and the arm-twisting by the US to push the 1947 partition plan through the
UN. Up till then Britain, which undertook the mandated responsibility for
Palestine, had promised a Jewish homeland “within” Palestine, with all Jews
living there as Palestinian citizens.
The question whether the UN acted lawfully in
giving away 56% of another people’s lands to racist interests that owned only 7%
will continue to be asked. Furthermore Israel today refuses to define its
borders, so the question for Hamas (and everyone else) is: what exactly are we
supposed acknowledge or recognise even if we were in the mood to do so? Israel
has expanded its 56% to 78% by land-grab and ethnic cleansing. Its snaking
separation wall annexes even more.
So the incessant bleating for everyone to
recognise its ‘right to exist’ is seen by many as a fraudulent way of claiming
legitimacy on whatever borders Israel’s brutal military can push to. If Hamas
buckle they’ll ‘legitimise’ and sign away all of Israel’s territorial gains at
the Palestinians’ expense – past, present and future. But Hamas, says
Finkelstein, “draws a very clear distinction between Israel’s right to exist,
which it consistently denies, and the fact of its existence, and it has stated
explicitly that it accepts the existence of Israel as a fait
accompli…”
In the meantime, where is Israel’s recognition of
the Palestinians’ right to exist in their homeland and their right to
self-determination?
We wait to see if the international community at
long last ensures that Gaza can rebuild, restore public health, enjoy a modicum
of normal life and trade freely with the outside world.
Uprooted Palestinian 
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