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Since Hamas's suicide attack on an Israeli
post on the Gaza border on April 19, the Israeli military has escalated
its attacks on the enclave. This revenge campaign reached a peak on
April 28 when Israeli shelling resulted in the slaughter of an entire family,
a mother and four children, in Beit Hanun.
The tragedy shocked even world and Israeli public opinion, which seems
to have become inured to the constant killing in Gaza, in which every
other day or so a few supposed "militants" —and, by the way,
a bystander or two—are killed by Israeli aircraft, artillery, or
infiltration teams.
As in the case of similar massacres in Gaza in the past, the Israeli
Defense Force (IDF) sought to put the blame on the Palestinian
resistance. It claimed that the Israeli missiles fired in the direction
of the home of the unfortunate Palestinian family had touched off
explosives carried by "militants."
The Israeli liberal Zionist daily Haaretz carried a news analysis in
its April 29 issue that drew the conclusion that, in the context of its
campaign against Gaza, the IDF was not likely to be able to avoid the
blame for the tragedy in Beit Hanun: "It is hard to imagine that
the army, after seven and a half years of the second intifada, does not
appreciate the need to immediately respond in the media. Most likely is
that photos, if it has them, do not provide unequivocal evidence to
boost the IDF's claims.
"It is also doubtful whether the release of photographs will make
a difference. The Hamas media warned Monday of an Israeli ‘campaign to
exterminate the Palestinian people.’ The scenes from Beit Hanun offered
perfect proof as far as the radical Islamic group is concerned. The
foreign media, who only emerge from their slumber after scenes like
this, are also certain who is responsible for the killing of women and
children: Israel."
Squeezed harder and harder by the Israeli siege of Gaza, Hamas, the
Palestinian faction that rules the territory, has been trying to break
out both by military attacks on the border checkpoints and by mass
demonstrations. The effects of the siege have obviously created
desperation in the people of Gaza, but so far masses have not responded
to Hamas' appeals for giant demonstrations on the border in defiance of
the Israeli military.
The people of Gaza are all too familiar with
the ruthlessness of the Zionist authorities and, it seems, most of them
are unwilling to sacrifice themselves for the principles of the Islamic
fundamentalist Hamas.
The Islamic organization did achieve a success on Jan. 23 in breaking through
the border with Egypt, but the Egyptian government has shown its
determination to prevent another mass escape of the Palestinians by
reinforcing its military deployment along the frontier. It has also
prevented goods from moving into the border area, to dissuade
Palestinians from trying to cross to buy the supplies denied them by
the Israeli blockade.
Certainly, the Egyptian government's complicity with the Zionists in
maintaining the siege of Gaza discredits it even more (it was never
popular) in the eyes of the public in the Arab and Muslim world. And
that is sufficient reason, if there were no other, for Cairo to try to
negotiate with the Israelis to reduce their pressure on Gaza. At the
end of April, Hamas and other Palestinian factions announced that they
were prepared to accept a "truce" with Israel brokered by
Egypt.
The proposed agreement would include a pledge by the Palestinian groups
not to attack Israel in return for Israel’s ceasing its attacks on
Gaza. The Israeli government has said that it is willing to stop its
premeditated murder if the Palestinians stop firing their crude
missiles into southern Israel. So, a cession of this war of attrition
seems both reasonable and possible.
However, in its April 29 analysis, Haaretz argued that the IDF has no
interest in a truce: "Israel was drawn into a hudna [truce] after
Egyptian pressure and the government's concerns that a major ground
operation in Gaza would result in heavy IDF casualties. But the
government is not pleased with the idea of a cease-fire: It seems there
is a zero-sum game mentality dominating the political leadership. After
all, they argue, if Hamas is so desperate for a cease-fire, it can't be
a good thing for Israel.
"Khaled Meshal, the head of the Hamas politburo in Damascus, did
nothing to assuage Israel's concerns on Sunday, when he declared that
any cease-fire will be a temporary hiatus in the fighting, which will
allow Hamas to strengthen its ranks for the next confrontation. It is
therefore no wonder that the IDF is pushing to carry out as many
strikes as possible before a cease-fire."
What the liberal Zionist journal apparently meant by a "zero-sum
game" is that the political leadership of Israel assumes that the
conflict between Palestinians and Zionists is a life or death struggle,
and that therefore compromises represent a defeat. In fact, they are a
defeat for the Zionists' real goal of conquering and assimilating all
the Palestinian territories.
As for all the Palestinian factions, including Hamas, they are the
weaker party. They have no practical possibility for wiping out Israel
in the foreseeable future, and really, in the long run, they have
nothing to gain by wiping out the Zionist colony.
Hamas has been and remains vague about how long a "truce" it
will accept with Israel. Its real position seems, in fact, no different
than that of its rival, Fatah. That is, it accepts "the Zionist
entity" as a reality, but will not accept it as legitimate because
it has stolen the land of the Palestinians. By demanding that the Palestinians
accept the Zionist state as legitimate, the Zionists seek only to
humiliate them.
The basic problem for Hamas, as for the other Palestinian factions, is
that they have no political program for defeating Zionism. Fatah offers
only the perspective of some utopian historical compromise with
Zionism, while Hamas offers only the perspective of a military victory
in some distant future.
The Palestinian movement in the past did come up with a program for
politically defeating Zionism, the perspective of a democratic secular
Palestine, in which Arabs and Jews could live together on the basis of
equality. There was subsequently a political regression from that
position, and that is one of the reasons for the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism and a transfer of hope for the Palestinian people from
the world of reality to the world of faith.
Reality has not been conjured away. It has asserted itself with a
vengeance. The Palestinian people have shown great courage, even if it
is the courage of desperation.
But they are not invincible. The Israeli rulers know that they can
eventually be broken, as any people can. If they are broken, however,
it will be a tragedy for all humanity, a destruction of basic human
dignity from which all humanity will suffer. And it will also be a
defeat for human solidarity, if world public opinion allows the torture
of the Palestinians to continue.
It is essential that the protests against the Israeli siege of the
people of Gaza (and the people of the West Bank are being besieged too)
be increased. They have an effect.
One example is the mission of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who
has denounced the Israeli system as apartheid. Although the current
regime in Washington has taken its distance from Carter, his mission
undoubtedly represented the awareness in American ruling circles that
the U.S. cannot continue to be seen as supporting the Israeli campaign
to break the Palestinian people. And without U.S. support, the Israeli
rulers will have to draw back from it.
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