December 30, 2008
As Israel began it's aerial bombardment on the Northern Gaza Strip on Dec. 27, 2008 and one hears stories of children killed in their homes while they sleep one cannot but think of the madness of it all, the so-called "collateral damage".
I lay this madness squarely on the shoulders of Hamas and the Gaza Palestinians themselves; surely they knew that firing rockets into Israel in recent days following the expiration of the 6 month cease-fire with Israel would invite a military response. In one of the most densely populated areas in the world and with the propensity of Hamas to use civilian infrastruture to carry out it's activities, civilian casualties were not only inevitable but a apparently a political boon in the minds of the madmen who comprise the Hamas leadership. To experience the madness and implacable hostility of Hamas towards Israel one need only read it's founding charter.
The Palestinians Gazans will experience nothing but hardship, privation, further humiliations and military attacks from Israel as long as Hamas is allowed to run free in Gaza. It is incumbent on the Gazans to get rid of Hamas and to whatever extent they allow Hamas to have free play within Gaza is the extent to which it is the Gazans themselves who are responsible for their sorry plight.
Israel has found itself locked in a virtual civil war for 60 years now, during which time were sandwiched in wars against their Arab neighbors. Israel and the Palestinian Arabs have found themsleves locked in an embrace of death and fear for these sorry decades and the only way out is for the Palestinians to end their hostility against Israel and come to realize that they have no cards to hold.
If the Palestinian Arabs had had a leader like Robert E. Lee rather than Yassir Arafat things might be far different in the former Palestine today but such was not to be. Imagine the American South at the end of the Civil War in 1865 with a leader like Yassir Arafat rather than Robert E. Lee and with an organization like Hamas operating. Not conceding the reality of their defeat, the former Confederate States of America would have been ground into dirt for as many decades as the South continued to fight a post-war campaign of guerilla and terrorist activities.
In the American South, the city of Vicksburg which had undergone a bitter siege at the hands of Union forces, didn't again celebrate the 4th of July til World War II since that was the date of the city's surrender. Can you imagine that bitterness would have been compounded had the South fought on in a terrorist campaign for decades after the military option had been taken from them? Hamas firing rockets into Israel is no more or less than this idea brought to life. I certainly have compassion for the plight of the Gazans but they are going about this entirely the wrong way. How much compassion can one have for a grown man who continues to bang his head against a wall and does the same for his children as well?
Make no mistake, Hamas is an organization of madmen; perhaps generations of being on the losing end of a de facto civil war has made them into madmen and their grass roots support among the Gazan Palestinians further evidence of this madness. One can only take so much humiliation, so many days, weeks and years as a second class citizen in a land you consider your own. Nevertheless, reality is reality and Palestinian Arabs must come to grips with a reality they refuse to acknowledge and that is defeat. It does no good whatsoever to the Palestinians in Gaza to answer a closed border with Israel with rocket attacks. What else could Israel have done but to close it's borders with Gaza in light of the hostility emanating from the Gaza Strip? If this is an example of what would happen if Israel were to allow the creation of a Palestinian State side by side with Israel then Israel will never allow such a state to come to pass.
The idea of a solution may itself be problematic. By this I mean that the hope for a solution for the Palestinian Arabs may have forever passed in 1948 when the Arabs somewhat smugly chose to fight and then been furthered squandered between 1948 and 1973. During a time of war both parties are hopeful of victory but there is ofter a definitive loser and if the loser is subsequently held in a state of captivity and occupation what solution is there to that? It's like trying to define a solution to the occupation of Japan after World War II or a solution to the South's occupation by the North after the American Civil War; it's not even the right question to ask because it is not a question of a solution per se but of the reality of defeat. There is only one "solution" to that scenario and that is total capitulation.
Unfortunately for the Palestinian Arabs the original conflict was over land and once the civil war started the winners and losers would share the same land much as was the case in the American Civil War although that war was not over land. However, in both the Palestinian-Jewish conflict in Palestine and the American Civil War there were no occupying armies that would eventually go home as in the case of Japan and Germany in World War II because the combatants already were home. This scenario presents it's own specific problems as opposed to cross border wars and the problems are mainly dealt to the losers. To say that there is a "solution" to such a problem may exist only in the realm of semantics.
One fact that I cannot understand is this: why, from 1948 to 1967, when both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were in control of Arabs, namely Egypt and Jordan, was there no attempt to create a Palestinian State? Why lay the onus for this on Israel? It was during the 1967 war involving Israel, Egypt and Jordan that Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank. After that, suddenly, the very Arab states which denied a Palestinian State to Palestinian Arabs for 20 years were in favor of that very state. This is sheer rigamorole. It is a rhetorical stance that says, I am right when I am right and I am right when I am wrong.
It is not a question of a solution when you have thrown the dice and lost but a question of capitulation. When a culture continues to fight after their armies have been militarily defeated the only thing that is certain is that the loser will be ground down to ever newer levels of humiliation and suffering. This is exactly what has happened to the Palestinian Arabs in the former Palestine. Even a dog has the instincts to lay on it's back and show it's neck in defeat so it won't be killed; the winner needs to experience this type of capitulation or it's lights out.
In the case of Gaza Hamas is precisely the wrong instrument to deliver any hopes of peace or hope for Gaza. The only hope for the Palentinian Arabs is to put down their weapons and start thinking like Martin Luther King and Gandhi.
I can't speak for the rest of the world but Americans don't think much of the type of crazy bravado where a high school football team tells the Pittsburgh Steelers that they will bury them after the high-schoolers have lost 157 games in a row. For Hamas to make crazy declarations that the Israelis will find only graves in Gaza if they invade is simply nuts and there is no excuse for willingly inviting destruction on a million and a half Gazans with this type of rhetoric which has absolutely nothing to back it up but 60 years of military defeats; it is the very definition of insanity.
For Hamas to claim that Israel will dig their own graves in invading Gaza is typical insane rhetoric that the Western world has heard all to often and dismissed as delusional. In fact, Hamas may be digging it's own grave with it's bluster and such actions may have put yet another small piece of muslim land in harm's way. Hezbollah, ensconced in Lebenon to the north of Israel's border may come to regret their own actions in challenging the Israeli military.
Israel needs lands and it is not a giant leap of logic to suggest that Israel may simply tell Lebanon that if they cannot exert sovereignty over it's own territory and reign in Hezollah that Israel will do it for them and invade and claim that land for themselves. Don't look for Israel to stand by and do nothing the next time Hezbollah decides to send rockets over the border. Israel took the Golan Heights for strategic reasons and may decide to take a piece of Lebanon as well.
For some reason Israel's incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah in 2006 is regarded as a victory for Hezbollah. I see it as a victory only in the minds of Hezbollah and it's followers. Hezbollah may very well come to regret another such "victory".
For Israel to allow the formation of a sovereign Palestinian State on their borders that is hostile to them would be it's own form of madness. The only answer is for the Palestinian Arabs to realize the true nature of their position in the region and that position is of a culture that has been on the losing end of a civil war for 60 years and has absolutely no cards to hold. Palestinians Arabs must bite the bullet and suffer the humiliation of surrendering themselves to the military reality as did the South in 1865 and Japanese in August of 1945 in order to end the greater humiliation and destruction of being ground into dust by Israel.
Meanwhile, the innocent children of Gaza experience terror, death and further indoctrination by their parents who allow rockets to be fired into Israel; what choice will some of these terrrorized children have but to have feelings of hatred towards Israel - how would you feel if you were 11 years old and a wall collapsed onto you and your 4 year old sister as you slept and your sister died next to you? Utter madness. After the first Israeli airstrikes Hamas vowed revenge in an utter vacuum of logic; madness.
You can see evidence of the indoctrination of Palestinian children here: it's a YouTube called "Children of Hamas". Israeli propaganda? Sure. On the other hand, the video isn't a lie.
From a distance it is hard to imagine what in the world Hamas was thinking of when they decided to fire rockets into Israel; surely they knew that Israel would respond militarily and so one must imagine that was exactly what the Hamas leadership wished but to what end? I have absolutely no idea how Hamas thought that such actions would benefit Gaza. Perhaps they wished to remind the world and their allies that they were still capable of some kind of action or control, perhaps it was to keep funding from their allies alive.
Ostensibly, one of Hamas' greatest complaints is the sealed border between Gaza and Israel but it should be noted that Egypt has had it's own border with Gaza mostly sealed since Hamas took power in Gaza in June, 2007. Israel still supplies electricity to Gaza but would clearly like to wash their hands of the problem and perhaps permanently seal it's border with Gaza, hoping perhaps for Egypt to eventually exert some kind of sovreignty over Gaza. Egypt for it's part is tip-toeing a line between pressure from muslims to aid Gaza and fears of Hamas spreading it's radicalism into Egypt. Hamas is an outgrowth of the Egyptian Brotherhood which has been banned in Egypt.
Gazans have been building tunnels under the Egyptian-Gaza border for some time now, mostly to acquire retail supplies and petrol but Israel has made accusations that the tunnels have been being used to smuggle into Gaza the very rockets Hamas has been launching into Israel. During the current conflict Israel has been bombing the tunnels. Gazans themselves consider the tunnels to Egypt a lifeline because of shortages of food and other basics and there must be a de facto acceptance on the part of the Egyptian government in favor of the existence of these tunnels for so many to exist.
Jonathan Ferziger, writing for Bloomberg online a few days before the Israeli attack wrote, "Ninety percent of all products entering Gaza each month --as much as $40 million worth of contraband -- comes through the tunnels from Egypt, Shaban says. The underground network is also a crucial source of revenue and weapons for the militant Islamic Hamas movement, which charges a one-time digging fee of 11,000 shekels ($2,750) for each tunnel."
Israel ended it's occupation of the Gaza Strip in Sept. of 2005 after an occupation lasting 38 years which Gazans celebrated at the time though with reservations. Nevertheless it is what Gazans wanted and the first step towards some kind of independance for Palestinian Arabs but if the rocket attacks are an example of what will occur in an expansion of the idea of an independant Palestinian State then Gaza has been a miserable blow to the aspirations of the Palestinian people. As a laboratory of a future Palestinian State, Gaza has been an utter failure and the Palestinians Arabs have had the misfortune to be saddled for decades with some of the most terrible leadership in the history of any great movement.
At the end, with the Israeli army having left after 3 weeks of punishing violence in Gaza, Hamas declares victory and blithely blames the deaths of hundreds of civilians on Israel as if the Gazans were having a tea party next to a totally open border with Egypt and the Israeli army simply decided to kill muslims because they don't like them or consider them human. To say that the people of Gaza are divorced from reality is an understatement of the first degree and speaks to the entirety of the reason the Palestinian Arabs find themselves in their current and historical predicament. Hamas' reasons for firing rockets into Israel before the invasion is simply pitiful to listen to. Not since the Soviet Union's policy of propaganda and disinformation have such a pack of lies been thrown about in the face of the world's media.
There is not an ounce of quit in the Palestinian Arabs and this can often be a great quality in a people and never giving up can make one a winner. By the same token, one must also know when to quit and live to fight for a brighter day in a smarter way. The Palestinian Arabs have a choice of looking at the world the way they want it to be or the way it is and they have failed to do the latter for 60 long and utterly miserable years.