Gaza Conflict Background

THE LAND AND PEOPLE  -  Gaza is small, 25 miles long and 5 miles wide on average - 139 square miles.  (That is less than one-tenth the size of Rhode Island and only twice the area of the District of Columbia.)  With just 6 percent of the area of the combined Palestinian territories, Gaza is separated from the nearest point in the West Bank by some 25 miles of southern Israel.  But with almost 1.5 million people, Gaza has over 37 percent of the local Palestinian population.  More than a million Gazans are registered refugees who trace their heritage to families displaced in 1948 from their ancestral homes in what is now the State of Israel.

THE ECONOMY   -   Life under Israeli occupation was always hard in Gaza, but especially after employment opportunities for Palestinians in Israel were drastically reduced in response to the second  intifada.  By 2005 the per capita annual income in Gaza was $722; unemployment stood at 35%; almost two-thirds of people lived on $2 per day or less.  Even that level was sustained only by a doubling of international aid which added nearly $400 to the area’s per capita annual income.[i]   Circumstances worsened after the Hamas electoral victory in June 2006.  Israel, supported by much of the international community, dramatically curtailed Gaza’s exports and imports and refused to allow the transfer of increased foreign funds and assistance that would have eased the human catastrophe.  “According to the World Bank, Palestinians are currently experiencing the worst economic depression in modern history.” [ii]   By April 2006, 79% of Gazan households were living in poverty and over half of the population was being fed by the United Nations as the only way to avoid famine.[iii] 

THE OCCUPATION  -   From the partition of 1948 until the war of 1967, Gaza was administered by Egypt.  Since then Gaza has been under Israeli control.  First there was formal occupation by troops and the establishment of a settlement enclave of 8,000 Israelis on a quarter of the Gaza territory including 40 percent of the arable land.[iv]  Because of the deteriorating economic situation and rising nationalist sentiments, Palestinians of Gaza increased their resistance to the occupation.  In August 2005, the Israeli government carried out a much heralded “unilateral” withdrawal from Gaza when it became obvious that no grand political settlement with the Palestinian Authority was in sight.  While Israel regarded that as an end to occupation, Palestinians did not see it as freedom.  Even after troops and settlers were withdrawn, Israel maintained control of all entry points into Gaza; constricted trade as it chose – limiting the flow of electricity, fuel, production and transportation equipment, spare parts and consumer goods; controlled access to the sea - closed port facilities and disallowed commercial fishing; destroyed Gaza’s airport and patrolled the airspace.  In only the most narrow and technical sense did Israeli occupation end in 2005.  In reality, the whole of Gaza has been turned into a prison controlled by Israel from the outside.

HAMAS  -  Almost all Palestinians detest the occupation; resistance to it grew as a negotiated two-state solution proved fruitless and as economic, social and political life deteriorated .  Israel, thinking that Fatah was the most serious threat to its control over Palestinians, supported the development of Hamas - a religious movement created in 1987 and modeled on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - as a Palestinian political alternative.  Hamas did indeed resist Fatah, which was regarded by many Palestinians as hopelessly corrupt and totally ineffective in ending the occupation.  But Hamas also took the lead in resisting and attacking Israel where possible.  Relying on support from outside the occupied territories, it maintained a military wing but also assumed responsibilities for delivering much needed social services to the people of Gaza.  In 2006, the United States pressed for elections in both the West Bank and Gaza assuming that Fatah would win handily and put the Hamas challenge to rest.  Instead, Hamas won a decisive parliamentary majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council but failed in attempts to form a government.  After an abortive unity government with Fatah, in 2007 Hamas took total control of Gaza by driving out Fatah loyalists. 

Israel, with the backing of the United States, responded by imposing an ever tightening economic blockade on Gaza combined with a refusal to have any contact with Hamas.  (The lesson: democracy is a dispensable ideal when it produces the wrong results!)  Hamas reciprocated by increasing its attacks on nearby Israeli towns using poor quality, often locally made, short-range rockets.

THE PARADIGM OF ATTACKS AND CEASEFIRES  -  Israel maintains that over the eight years preceding the present war, Hamas fired 8,500 rockets (western media often refer to “thousands”) from Gaza into Israel killing 20 civilians.  Less well reported is Israel’s campaign of political assassinations against Palestinian leadership that accompanied its siege of Gaza and together have left 1,700 Palestinians dead.[v]  Internal and international pressures on both Israel and Hamas brought a ceasefire that collapsed in April 2007.  Renewed fighting killed 600 Palestinians and 18 Israelis before the next ceasefire that began in June 2008.  It was to last six months but began to unravel six weeks early.  On November 5, Israel carried out a military incursion into Gaza to destroy a tunnel it said was being constructed by militants to kidnap Israeli troops.  In the process, six Gazans were killed.  Predictably, Hamas responded, firing 30 rockets into Israel which caused no casualties and little damage.[vi]  With the ceasefire breached and set to expire on December 19, 2008, a larger war was only a few charges and counter-charges away.

ISRAEL’S HAMAS WAR OF 2008-09 -  On December 27, Israel began a one-week air bombardment.  There were over 100 airstrikes in the first four minutes targeting sites in all of Gaza’s towns and cities.  The air campaign was followed on January 3 by a massive ground invasion supported by tanks, artillery, gunboats and unopposed aircraft.  There is no symmetry in the two forces.  Israel has a modern, standing military force of 176,500 opposing 20,000 Hamas fighters.[vii]  On January 16, The  Washington Post reported, “Dozens of Palestinians died Thursday, bringing the toll to more than 1,090, according to Palestinian health officials.  A Gazan Health Ministry official…said 375 children, 150 women and 14 medical staffers were among the dead.  He said 5,000 people had been injured.  Thirteen Israelis have been killed, including three civilians.”[viii]    Other media sources have noted that at least 4 of the Israeli deaths were from “friendly fire” - meaning they were killed by other Israelis.  Describing their Hamas opposition, a 20-year-old Israeli sergeant said, “They are villagers with guns.  They don’t even aim when they shoot.”[ix]  Or, as a Lutheran pastor retired from ministry in Jerusalem put it, “It is not war that we are witnesses to; it is carnage.”[x] 

WHY DID ISRAEL STRIKE WITH SUCH FORCE?  -  Israel has consistently maintained that it had no choice but to attack Hamas to bring an end to its persistent firing of rockets into Israel.  One of its concerns was that Hamas had used the recent 6-month ceasefire to bring more accurate and longer-range rockets into Gaza through an extensive system of tunnels under the border with Egypt.  Hamas’ early rockets were limited to targets within 10 miles, but by December 2008, there were attacks on Ashdod and Beersheba, cities up to 25 miles away.  The government voiced fears that even longer-range rockets were being introduced that would make much of the Israeli population vulnerable.

However sincere these concerns, the Gaza invasion was in the planning for months and cannot be regarded as having been triggered by recent Palestinian military strikes.[xi]  New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman ponders whether the real goal was “the education of Hamas or the eradication of Hamas?”[xii]  He hopes the former because if teaching Hamas a lesson is the goal, then perhaps a thousand dead will be enough and calm can be resumed.  But if the goal is the destruction of Hamas, there are worse horrors ahead.

The horrors of the present attack are terrible enough.  Israeli losses are sobering – 13 dead including 3 civilians and 317 wounded including 84 civilians.  But it is the magnitude of the Palestinian losses that have awakened global consciousness: over 1200 have been killed, among them at least 765 civilians including hundreds of women and children, and over 5,300 have been wounded.[xiii] 

None of this measures the impact of the physical damage done to countless homes, shops, factories, mosques and the basic infrastructure of schools, water and sewage systems, roads and vehicles.  Despite the Israeli policy of denying entrance of foreign reporters into Gaza, daily images made their way into our newspapers and television that hint at the breadth of the damage done and that may yet spawn massive outbreaks of disease and create an even larger humanitarian disaster.   While Israel maintains that it targeted only Hamas facilities, the destruction seems excessive if not indiscriminate.  Charges that both the blockade and Israel’s strategies of battle amount to punishment of the entire population of Gaza cannot be lightly dismissed.

WHY NOW?  -  One answer is politics.  Israel has marketed the war as being against Hamas rather than against Gaza or Palestinians.  This is consistent with having established the blockade in the wake of the electoral victory of Hamas in 2006.  The hope of using an invasion to force a change of political leadership in Gaza is only an extension of the same logic.

While Israel has every right to be anxious and angry about the years-long, annoying, damaging and sometimes deadly rocket attacks by Hamas, there was no significant escalation prior to the launch of the current war.  Both Israeli and international critics have pointed to Israel’s February 10 election as a major factor in the decision to mount an invasion of Gaza.[xiv]  Parties and individual candidates want to establish their credentials as being strong in defending Israel from attacks.  Nothing accomplishes that better than a winnable war justifiable as necessary to keep the nation’s people safe.

U.S. politics are also a part of the timing.  Israeli government figures have made no secret of the desire to get a ground war over before the inauguration of Barak Obama.  That a unilateral ceasefire was declared by Israel two days before the January 20 event lends support to the notion that Israel attacked while it had the full support of President Bush and that it wanted to have things quiet for the coming of a new U.S. administration.

WHAT WAS THE AMERICAN ROLE?  -  While Americans recoil at the bloodshed, little attention is given to our own government’s role in the Gaza war.  Two factors enter in directly.  The fighter jets and attack helicopters that carried out the bombing campaign and provided ground support for Israeli troops are gifts of the United States.  Not often mentioned in the war coverage is that these come with a congressional proviso that such weapons be used only in Israel’s defense.  While Israel regards every military action as defensive, it may be less clear to Americans that a kill ratio of 100 Palestinians to one Israeli is a measure of Israel’s defensive posture.

The second American role in Israel’s Gaza war effort was in the United Nations.  News stories were plentiful noting that the United States was the sole abstainer in the U.N. Security Council resolution of January 8 calling for an immediate ceasefire.  It is curious, however, how little attention U.S. media gave to the Reuters report of how this came about.  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had fostered the resolution and worked hard negotiating the language for a ceasefire.  Just 10 minutes before the scheduled vote, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Washington demanding to speak with President Bush even though he was currently giving a speech in Philadelphia.  Later Olmert recounted, “They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him.  I told him, ‘You can’t vote in favor of this resolution.’   (Bush) said, ‘Listen, I don’t know about it, I didn’t see it, I’m not familiar with the phrasing.’  Olmert said he then told Bush: ‘I’m familiar with it.  You can’t vote in favor.’’’

“Arab ministers said after the U.N. vote that Rice had promised them the United States would support the resolution, but then made an about-face after talking to Bush.”[xv]  

The Reuters report notes that U.S. government sources denied that the call from Olmert forced Secretary Rice to abstain, but the outline of events is not disputed.  While embarrassing and emasculating to the American President, the story comports well with the extraordinary deference Israel is regularly given in defining U.S. Middle East policy.  The underlying question is whether the U.S. has a regional policy distinct from that of Israel, or if presidents and congresses of both parties have simply adopted the position of rubber-stamping whatever the then current Israeli government does or demands.

How that question is answered will significantly affect whether there will be a Palestinian-Israeli peace that transcends just another ceasefire in Gaza.

WHAT DO ISRAEL AND HAMAS WANT IN ANOTHER CEASEFIRE?  On January 19, 2009, Israel declared a unilateral end to its Gaza action and began a withdrawal of troops with the goal of completing it before the Obama inauguration.  Hamas followed with announcement of a one-week ceasefire to allow Israel’s  complete withdrawal of forces.

What does Israel seek from this ceasefire?  The general answer is: an immediate end to rocket attacks on Israel, a commitment that they will not be resumed and international cooperation to assure that Hamas will not be resupplied with other and more advanced weapons.  In other words, Israel would like to have a return to the pre-invasion circumstance, minus an ability of Hamas to strike out at Israel.  Thus perhaps the real summary of Israel’s goal in this invasion and the present ceasefire harkens back to the 2002 words of Moshe Yaalon, then Chief of Staff of Israeli Defense Forces: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”[xvi]   

That of course, in no way addresses the concerns of Gazans.  What they want is an end to the blockade imposed after the Hamas electoral victory in June 2006.  The siege has destroyed the meager economy of Gaza and plunged an already destitute people into penury that threatens starvation.  The damages of war have only exacerbated this condition of need.  According to a report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on the tenth day of the war:

“More than a million Gazans still have no electricity or water, and thousands of people have fled their homes for safe shelter;

“Gaza’s water and sewage system is on the verge of collapse, 75% of Gaza’s electricity has been cut off;

“The sewage situation is highly dangerous, posing serious risks of the spread of water-borne disease;

“Hospitals are unable to provide adequate intensive care to the high numbers of casualties.  There is also an urgent need for more neuro-, vascular-, orthopedic- and open heart- surgeons.”[xvii] 

Reuters reports that the battle destroyed 4,000 buildings and that it will take $1.6 billion to repair the infrastructure damage.[xviii]  King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has pledged $1 billion to the $2 billion reconstruction fund Palestinians seek to establish.  Israel, however, has declared that it will continue to control entry of all reconstruction materials and that the UN will be required to account “for each and every dollar they spend” to assure that no benefit or credit goes to Hamas.[xix]    

Whether there can be broad reconstruction under such tight Israeli control is doubtful.  But even if the damage of war is repaired, that will not be enough.  Yet another ceasefire that merely restores a hopeless circumstance for the people of Gaza will also doom Israel’s hope for a normal life for its people.  Only peace with the Palestinian people, in both Gaza and the West Bank, can assure that.

WHAT WOULD PEACE LOOK LIKE?

The necessary elements of such a peace are widely acknowledged:

·       Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side in mutual security.  That must clearly involve an end to all attacks by Palestinians on Israel;

·       An end to Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories of 1967 except for negotiated land exchanges;

·       A Palestinian state that is economically viable and geographically contiguous;

·       Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of both states with the secured interests and access of the three religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam;

·       A mutually accepted resolution of the claims of refugees;

·       An acceptable negotiated agreement on the use of water and other resources;

·       And the diplomatic recognition of Israel by the Palestinian state and the other surrounding Arab states within boundaries agreed upon.

It is to be hoped, however, that peace would go beyond cold acceptance and ultimately evolve into the intermingling of the life and institutions of two peoples and their states.

Getting to such a peace will be difficult under any circumstances, but it will be impossible if:  1) Hamas and other Palestinian leaders refuse to subordinate political rhetoric to economic, social and political progress on the ground; and 2) Israel persists in being an occupier, engaging in actions that demean Palestinians and disavow their rights as persons and corporately as a state.

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Prepared by Walter Owensby, January 23, 2009