(24 October 2007)

Condoleezza does nothing

Condoleezza Rice has once again taken what amounts to a vacation in the Middle East. After much fanfare surrounding her 20 September meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, at which she declared that she would attempt to hold a Middle East peace conference and that it would be “one that is substantive and that advances the cause of the Palestinian state…and not one in which we simply meet for the sake of meeting,” she zipped around the region in a private jet and stayed at fancy hotels while accomplishing essentially nothing on the diplomatic front. By 17 October, media reports were indicating that she had gotten firm commitments to attend the conference (set to be held in Annapolis, Maryland sometime next year) from exactly no one.

More Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence

Once again, skirmishes have, over the last week or so, broken out between groups of pro-Fatah fighters and Hamas forces controlling the streets and fields of Gaza. Seven have been killed in recent weeks. Early reports, though, seem to indicate that a deal, perhaps a ceasefire or treaty of some kind, is in the works. But, then again, this is the Middle East, where broken treaties flourish like olive groves. We’ll see how this plays out. (Forgive my candor, but my optimism has been battered of late by the near-ceaseless stream of news reports about muddleheaded Palestinian youth, misled by simpleminded fiery ideologues, shooting each other in the streets, allowing the tried and true imperial strategy of divide and conquer to work on them so gullibly.)

What say the Palestinian people?

A recent poll (conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre) taken among Palestinians in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, shows an almost even split between those who think the situation in Gaza is worse under Hamas than it was before and those who feel safer now. Ignoring the seemingly obvious fact that the poll might mean a little more if polltakers had been restricted solely to those in Gaza, what it seems to tell us is, well, exactly what Palestinians have been telling us for half a century now. Their pride is unassailable, and their sovereignty will not be messed with.

Look, the Mideast Quartet has cut Gaza off. They’ve left it for dead. Electricity, water, and food are all in short supply. Unemployment is astronomical. Population density is among the highest on earth. And when ordinary Gazans aren’t worried about their children being killed by an Israeli sniper or airstrike, they’re worried about their children being killed by stray fire from the gunfight going on down the street between rival gangs of moronic Palestinian militants. It can’t get much worse.

And over in the West Bank, where aid money flows freely and unemployment isn’t nearly as high, Salaam Fayyad sits as prime minister and Mahmoud Abbas, the West’s darling, is president. An alternative can’t be more clearly available to the minds of ordinary Gazans. All that the people of Gaza have to do is say the words, and all of this misery could be…alleviated. But they stick to their guns—no pun intended. Hamas has lost some favor, but, in spite of the very real strain that its rise to power and subsequent takeover has put on the people of Gaza, folks still largely stick by their decision to elect Hamas. And, more importantly, they refuse to swallow a government picked out for them by Bush and and Israeli PM Ehud Olmert.

Nevertheless, the question of control over Gaza lingers. Hamas leader and ousted prime minister Ismail Haniyeh has hinted at a willingness to open a dialogue with Fatah, referring to his party’s hold over Gaza as “temporary.” And nearly constant protests and rallies throughout Gaza, in defiance of bans Hamas has declared on public protests, seem to indicate that Hamas’ hold over Gaza may be slipping.

Immediately following Friday afternoon prayers on 31 August, Fatah supporters organized large anti-Hamas rallies, in which thousands took part, in several cities in the Gaza Strip. About 20 were injured when Hamas tried to shut the rallies down. In response to this, Hamas has continued to operate in an openly fascist manner, banning outdoor Friday prayers throughout Gaza, beginning the first Friday of September. And on 7 September, Hamas enforced the ban in Rafah, firing into the air and arresting folks who were gathering for Friday afternoon prayers. Eleven people were hurt in the ensuing skirmishes.

On the war front

On 11 September, a Palestinian Qassam rocket struck an equipment building at the IDF’s Zikkim training base, sending flaming shrapnel into tents full of sleeping IDF soldiers-in-training. Sixty nine of them were injured, four critically. This lone rocket (Note, merely for comparison, that no one was killed.) marks the single most destructive Qassam attack on Israel ever, in terms of numbers of casualties. Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Resistance Committees claimed joint responsibility. Now, if the clear pattern that has developed over last fifty years is to be trusted, this tragedy would certainly beget another. A specter of imminent death and destruction was certainly looming over Gaza.

Three days later, a small IDF ground force entered Gaza, but their usual hell was not unleashed. Some small clashes broke out, but nothing on the level of the reaction everyone was expecting, particularly given that the IDF was under a lot of pressure from Israeli politicians and their hawkish constituents to respond with the some serious force. Then, five days after that, the Israeli government officially declared Hamas a “hostile entity,” which of course has repercussions for the civilians of the Gaza Strip. (UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon publicly condemned Israel’s declaration here.) Though Israel has already been making life pretty miserable in Gaza, this new classification allows them to further restrict the transfer of goods, reduce the amounts of electricity and fuel available, and limit the movement of civilians. In other words, it allows them to subject the civilians of Gaza to collective punishment more egregiously than ever before.

Then, on 24 September, a new party entered the fray, so to speak, calling for restraint. A group of peace-loving and prominent Israeli writers, including such wordsmiths as Amos Oz and David Grossman, submitted a petition to their government, urging it “to negotiate with Hamas to achieve a general ceasefire to prevent further suffering on both sides.” The Israeli government, in the person of foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev, dismissed this honest and straightforward logic applied to Israeli foreign policy as “counterproductive.” He said, “The position of the government of Israel…is that we must engage with the Palestinian moderates. Giving recognition and legitimacy to Hamas can only strengthen the extremists and undermine the moderates.” And then he added, almost as an afterthought, “And what is this suffering you speak of?” Okay, I made up that last part, but you get my point. These muscle-flexing warmongers make decisions as if in a vacuum, as if there aren’t hundreds of thousands who live or die by the policies they make.

Then, on Wednesday, 26 September, the Israeli government completely ignored the advice of the sage-like Israeli intellectual elite, and instead decided, rather, to bomb the hell out of Gaza. Eleven Gazans were killed in a two-day period by airstrikes and ground troop action, while nearly 30 were injured. So, it took 15 days, but here it was. The painfully predictable Israeli reaction to pretty much any militant action in Gaza (send in some tanks and choppers and indiscriminately kill things) had finally arrived, and civilians went ducking for cover while militants got busy fighting both the invading Israeli troops and, in their free time, each other.