Anyway, since there have been a few requests, I’ll close this thread and start a new one.

Update: The new thread is here:

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/01/05/eyeless-in-gaza-ii/

Gaza being forced to become part of Egypt – to abandon its weapons and link with the Egyptian economy – is perhaps the only sustainable hope for this tiny, tragic strip of land.

Three questions:

1. “Forced” by whom?

2. What would be the nature of this magical force?

3. Why on earth would Egypt want Gaza?

Nothing but the destruction of Israel will satisfy Hamas and elements of the media, and any accessions are just incremental gains in that objective, viwed as signs of weakness, and reaffirmation for Hamas that their objectives are righteous and align with Allah. How do you negotiate with that?

This is a textbook case of the perils of living in the eternal present.

The influence of Islamism on the population of Palestine is very recent. Until the arrival of Hamas all major parties and factions in Palestine were secularist.

Hamas arose from the ashes of the failure of the PLO.

What caused that failure?

1. The kleptocratic leadership of the PLO which used the great cause of combatting Israel as a blind for their own corruption. Israel is not to blame for this.

2. Israeli humiliation of the secularist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. In the light of that humiliation, Hamas appeared to many Palestinians, and not only those living in the Gaza Strip, as the only way forward. Israeli arrogance helped to create this situation.

Israel can negotiate with that by giving respect to Palestinian enemies of Hamas. Instead of humiliating them and making them enablers of genocide, allow Fatah to claim some genuine achievement of the just demands of Palestinians. And the most immediate of those is illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

Of course, it can be argued that the governing classes of Israel want and need Hamas to exist as a credible threat in order to discipline their own population in Israel. Thus, as I suggested way upthread, Hamas and the Israeli Right are in a toxic co-dependency relationship.

@413: My big theme has been that Israel has damaged its own interests by its methods in Gaza.

I don’t see any sign that any attempts at concessions (i.e., handing back Gaza) have won them any points with Hamas or the media. Equally, any decisive military response to provocations produces hysterical shrieking.

Nothing but the destruction of Israel will satisfy Hamas and elements of the media, and any accessions are just incremental gains in that objective, viwed as signs of weakness, and reaffirmation for Hamas that their objectives are righteous and align with Allah. How do you negotiate with that?

Israel is like the country dog in the city. If she stands still they try to screw her and if she runs they bite her on the arse.

A non-military negotiated solution might work if the Israelis were negotiating with people in this thread, but they’re not, are they?

Who could have (a) averted the war; (b) terminated it after the first strikes; (c) prevented the land incursion

(a). Israel, by continuing negotiations to lift the blockade and stop the rockets. Instead, as discussed previously, the have gone for a “shock and awe” military approach, for political reasons at great human cost.

Since the start of “Operation Cast Lead” more than 485 Palestinians have been killed, including 80 children, and more than 2,500 wounded in Gaza, according to Gaza medics.

(b). Israel, as per above, and by not continuing to rule out negotiations.

(c). Israel, ditto.

The question is how does Israel avert this threat?

My comments on this thread have been about ways and means, not rights and wrongs.

My big theme has been that Israel has damaged its own interests by its methods in Gaza.

The only territory which Hamas can claim to represent is Gaza – which is not/not occupied. The West Bank is administered by Fatah, its other enemy.

That argument is unsustainable. Neither Fatah nor Hamas claim that the legal status of the two parts of the PA has been altered by the conflict between them. Neither area has declared independence nor has either area seceded from the other.

Hamas claims to represent all of the PA. Hamas had a majority of seats in the LC of the PA until Fatah expelled Hamas mambers, jailing several of them.

Hamas has an excellent claim to represent all of the PA in just the same way as Charles de Gaulle had an excellent claim to represent occupied France during WWII, or that Abraham Lincoln had an excellent claim to be recognised as president of the seceding states of the US during the American Civil War.

But I do agree with you that Hamas claims much more than is presently encompassed by the PA. Hamas wants to eradicate the Zionist entity.

Would success in that endeavour involve ethnic cleansing of Jews? I fear it would.

Peterc: What do you think Israel was trying to do in agreeing to the hudna? D’you think that wasn’t negotiating?

Who broke the hudna? Who could have (a) averted the war; (b) terminated it after the first strikes; (c) prevented the land incursion – and just by agreeing to stop sending the rockets over?

Oh yes – Israel. I should’ve guesssed.

Thus the answer to your question “what occupation” is “Palestinian land”.”

But what is ‘Palestinian land’, Katz? To me it’s clear that for Hamas, it refers to the territory now occupied by Israel. Gaza is not occupied. The only territory which Hamas can claim to represent is Gaza – which is not/not occupied. The West Bank is administered by Fatah, its other enemy. ‘Occupation’ refers to the land now described as Israel. Hamas has said it over and over and over again. How many times do they have to say it? Are we not to believe Nizar Rayyam?

I’m worn out after a week on this bloody thread, but I’d still defy anyone to produce a persuasive statement from Hamas to the contrary.

I wonder at how that will corrode a people’s spirit over time. I salute the refuseniks, and the brave Israelis who oppose their state’s actions.

They know David has become Goliath.

Here’s an interesting article (not the whole thing).

Why Israel went to war in Gaza

01.04.2009 | The Observer
By Chris McGreal

‘Are you a target if you voted for Hamas?’ Last night Israel sent its ground forces across the border into Gaza as it escalated its brutal assault on Hamas. As a large-scale invasion of the Palestinian territory appears to be getting under way, Chris McGreal reports from Jerusalem on Israel’s hidden strategy to persuade the world of the justice of its cause in its battle with a bitter ideological foe

It is a war on two fronts. Months ago, as Israel prepared to unleash its latest wave of desolation against Gaza, it recognised that blasting Hamas and “the infrastructure of terror”, which includes police stations, homes and mosques, was a straightforward task.

Israel also understood that a parallel operation would be required to persuade the rest of the world of the justice of its cause, even as the bodies of Palestinian women and children filled the mortuaries, and to ensure that its war was seen not in terms of occupation but of the west’s struggle against terror and confrontation with Iran.

After the debacle of its 2006 invasion of Lebanon – not only a military disaster for Israel, but also a political and diplomatic one – the government in Tel Aviv spent months laying the groundwork at home and abroad for the assault on Gaza with quiet but energetic lobbying of foreign administrations and diplomats, particularly in Europe and parts of the Arab world.

A new information directorate was established to influence the media, with some success. And when the attack began just over a week ago, a tide of diplomats, lobby groups, bloggers and other supporters of Israel were unleashed to hammer home a handful of carefully crafted core messages intended to ensure that Israel was seen as the victim, even as its bombardment killed more than 430 Palestinians over the past week, at least a third of them civilians or policemen.

The unrelenting attack on Gaza, with an air strike every 20 minutes on average, has not stopped Hamas firing rockets that have killed four Israelis since the assault began, reaching deeper into the Jewish state than ever before and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing. Last night Israel escalated its action further, as its troops poured across Gaza’s border, part of what appeared to be a significant ground invasion. And a diplomatic operation is already in full swing to justify the further cost in innocent lives that would almost certainly result.

Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the UN until a few months ago, was brought in by the Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and political groundwork has been under way for months.

“This was something that was planned long ahead,” he said. “I was recruited by the foreign minister to coordinate Israel’s efforts and I have never seen all parts of a very complex machinery – whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the prime minister’s office, the police or the army – work in such co-ordination, being effective in sending out the message.”

In briefings in Jerusalem and London, Brussels and New York, the same core messages were repeated: that Israel had no choice but to attack in response to the barrage of Hamas rockets; that the coming attack would be on “the infrastructure of terror” in Gaza and the targets principally Hamas fighters; that civilians would die, but it was because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons factories among ordinary people.

Hand in hand went a strategy to remove the issue of occupation from discussion. Gaza was freed in 2005 when the Jewish settlers and army were pulled out, the Israelis said. It could have flourished as the basis of a Palestinian state, but its inhabitants chose conflict.

Israel portrayed Hamas as part of an axis of Islamist fundamentalist evil with Iran and Hezbollah. Its actions, the Israelis said, are nothing to do with continued occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza or the Israeli military’s continued killing of large numbers of Palestinians since the pullout. “Israel is part of the free world and fights extremism and terrorism. Hamas is not,” the foreign minister and Kadima party leader, Tzipi Livni, said on arriving in France as part of the diplomatic offensive last week.

…

And when the killing started, Israel claimed that the overwhelming majority of the 400-plus killed were Hamas fighters and the buildings destroyed part of the infrastructure of terror. But about a third of the dead were policemen. Although the police force in Gaza is run by Hamas, Buttu said Israel is misrepresenting it as a terrorist organisation.

“The police force is largely used for internal law and order, traffic, the drug trade. They weren’t fighters. They hit them at a graduation ceremony. Israel wants to kill anyone associated with Hamas, but where does it stop? Are you a legitimate target if you work in the civil service? Are you a legitimate target if you voted for Hamas?” she said.

Similarly, while Israel accuses Hamas of risking civilian lives by hiding the infrastructure of terror in ordinary neighbourhoods, many of the Israeli missile targets are police stations and other public buildings that are unlikely to be built anywhere else.

Israel argues that Hamas abandoned the June ceasefire that Tel Aviv was prepared to continue. “Israel is the first one who wants the violence to end. We were not looking for this. There was no other option. The truce was violated by Hamas,” said Livni.

However, others say that the truce was thrown into jeopardy in November when the Israeli military killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid on Gaza. The Palestinians noted that it was election day in the US, so most of the rest of the world did not notice what happened. Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into Israel. Six more Palestinians died in two other Israeli attacks in the following week.

“They were assaulting Gaza militarily, by sea and by air, all through the ceasefire,” said Buttu. Neither did the killing of Palestinians stop. In the nearly three years since Hamas came to power, and before the latest assault on Gaza, Israel forces had killed about 1,300 people in Gaza and the West Bank. While a significant number of them were Hamas activists – and while hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians in fighting between Hamas and Fatah – there has been a disturbing number of civilian deaths.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says that one in four of the victims is aged under 18. Between June 2007 and June 2008, Israeli attacks killed 68 Palestinian children and young people in Gaza. Another dozen were killed in the West Bank.

In February, an Israeli missile killed four boys, aged eight to 14, playing football in the street in Jabalia. In April, Meyasar Abu-Me’tiq and her four children, aged one to five years old, were killed when an Israeli missile hit their house as they were having breakfast. Even during the ceasefire, Israel killed 22 people in Gaza, including two children and a woman.

Perhaps crucial to the ceasefire’s collapse were the differing views of what it was supposed to achieve. Israel regarded the truce as calm in return for calm. Hamas expected Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza that the latter said was a security response to the firing of Qassam rockets.

But Israel did not end the siege that was wrecking the economy and causing desperate shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Gazans concluded that the blockade was not so much about rocket attacks as punishment for voting for Hamas.

Central to the Israeli message has been that, when it pulled out its military and Jewish settlers three years ago, Gaza was offered the opportunity to prosper. “In order to create a vision of hope, we took out our forces and settlements, but instead of Gaza being the beginning of a Palestinian state, Hamas established an extreme Islamic rule,” said Livni. Israeli officials argue that Hamas, and by extension the people who elected it, was more interested in hating and killing Jews than building a country.

Palestinians see it differently. Buttu says that from the day the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, they set about ensuring that it would fail economically. “When the Israelis pulled out, we expected that the Palestinians in Gaza would at least be able to lead some sort of free life. We expected that the crossing points would be open. We didn’t expect that we would have to beg to allow food in,” she said.

Buttu notes that even before Hamas was elected three years ago, the Israelis were already blockading Gaza. The Palestinians had to appeal to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, to pressure Israel to allow even a few score of trucks into Gaza each day. Israel agreed, then reneged. “This was before Hamas won the election. The whole Israeli claim is one big myth. If there wasn’t already a closure policy, why did we need Rice and Wolfensohn to try to broker an agreement?” asked Buttu.

Yossi Alpher, a former official in the Mossad intelligence service and an ex-adviser on peace negotiations to the then prime minister, Ehud Barak, said the blockade of Gaza is a failed strategy that might have strengthened Hamas. “I don’t think anyone can produce clear evidence that the blockade has been counterproductive, but it certainly hasn’t been productive. It’s very possible it’s been counterproductive. It’s collective punishment, humanitarian suffering. It has not caused Palestinians in Gaza to behave the way we want them to, so why do it?” he said. “I think people really believed that, if you starved Gazans, they will get Hamas to stop the attacks. It’s repeating a failed policy, mindlessly.”