JVP News Roundup: Cutting Power to Gaza

Recently, Israel declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity," a designation which in turn permitted Israel to take a number of punitive steps against Gaza. Last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced that Israel would begin depriving Gaza of electricity in response to the ongoing missiles being fired at Israel from Gaza. The move has been put on temporary hold because Israel's attorney general, who recognized the inherent contradiction between the decision and the government's declaration that it would not "cause a humanitarian disaster" among the Gazan population. Israel's high court also ruled that, while it would not enforce a petition brought by rights groups to stop the cutoff, the state had five days to prove that the move would not cause the level of crisis the rights groups claimed.

The declared reasoning behind Israel's decision to cut off power to Gaza is absurd on its face. It was said that diminishing the supply of power to Gaza would force Hamas to choose between supplying power for Gaza's residents or for the missile launchers. While Hamas has not done anything to stop the missiles, it is also well known and universally agreed (including by Israeli military and political leaders) that Hamas is not firing the missiles. Thus, cutting the power will have effect on this.

The idea that increasing the already monumental misery of the ordinary people of Gaza will cause them to rise up against their Hamas leaders is also absurd. In fact, it's the very definition of insanity--trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result the next time.

So we hardly need the statements of Israel's military leaders that this is not actually intended to stop the missiles and protect the innocent people of Israel from attack. But there are reasons for Israel's decision.

One is to prepare the public ground for a massive incursion into Gaza, one that will be much larger and of a far longer duration than the numerous, smaller incursions that have occurred over the past year. Public support for such a move is necessary because such an operation is very likely to cause many deaths and much destruction in Gaza but is also likely to cost Israel a good number of soldiers. It is also very unlikely to solve the problem of missiles being launched from Gaza. Israel knows where the missiles are coming form and can attack those places, but the launchers are mobile. They're likely to get some of them, but not nearly all, and, as a result, they may earn a brief respite from the missiles, but they will resume before too long.

However, such an operation will have a seriously destabilizing effect on what little organization there is in Gaza, further undermining Hamas' rule. Thus, one hope that Israel is harboring is that the invasion will give Fatah a chance to reclaim Gaza. This makes matters much more neat for Israel in its dealings with Mahmoud Abbas and makes it clear that acquiescence will serve the Palestinian better than resistance. This isn't a terribly likely scenario, but even if it fails to come about, Israel will at least be able to say it had acted against terrorism.

The second goal behind the move to cut the power to Gaza is to continue a process whereby Israel relinquishes its obligations to Gaza. This is a path fraught with dangers for Israel.

Israel is, in essence, claiming it has no responsibility for Gaza any longer. It can then permanently close its borders with Gaza and leave the Strip to fend for itself. The obvious problem will be that Israel would still wish to maintain control over the Gaza shoreline and airspace, as well as working with Egypt to restrict movement along the Gaza-Egypt border.

It is possible that Israel may be willing to eventually relinquish this control. The price will surely be the termination of the rocket attacks. In fact, though, the two are not as related as they appear to be on the surface. The Israeli restrictions, as well as Egyptian efforts, are not preventing weapons from reaching Gaza, whether they be rockets or small arms. Despite the howling from the Israeli right, Egypt is making efforts to curb the smuggling, but they have their own security issues; it is not going to be their top priority under any circumstances, though Israel is working to make it so. The draconian measures being imposed on Gaza are very effective at stopping the flow of food, power, water...virtually everything EXCEPT weapons.

But this is less about the actual flow of arms, or even of the necessities of living, as it is about two other goals for Israel. One is to prevent Mahmoud Abbas from seeking to realign with Hamas in the wake of what is likely to be a failed peace conference at Annapolis. But the more important goal is to communicate not only to the Palestinians but also to the rest of the world that an independent Palestinian entity, should one come about, will be very much on its own. It is the ultimate expression of "us here and them there" which is the principle that has underpinned the Oslo process.

The simple fact, however, is that this is not realistic. Contrary to the wishes of both most Israeli leaders and overly-idealistic Palestinians, the West Bank, even if Israel were to completely pull back to the pre-1967 lines (and much more so if Israel, as it is likely to do, keeps some portion of it) and Gaza cannot sustain their populations on their own. The resources and infrastructure simply aren't there, nor are the requisite support systems from outside or the governmental structure inside to build such an infrastructure.

It will be necessary, in the event anything resembling a viable Palestinian state comes into being (a possibility which is becoming more remote with each passing day, as even Condoleezza Rice seems to be starting to realize) for Israel to not only continue to provide the infrastructure needs of the Palestinians of both the West Bank and Gaza but also to assist, along with the international community, in building a Palestinian infrastructure that can finally be independent. But this will take time, much more than a matter of months.

If any peace plan is to succeed, it must be based on this kind of cooperation. It cannot be based on a quick and complete separation. Indeed, a durable peace will be one where interaction between Israel and Palestine, or Israelis and Palestinians, develop a relationship with each other of cooperation and mutual benefit.

In the Occupied Territories

Meanwhile, the closure of Gaza continues to have profound effects. The intense deprivation in Gaza, and declining conditions in the West Bank, make any sort of international diplomacy much more difficult, said the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon. He mentioned the factional fighting among Palestinians as well as ongoing Israeli settlement activity as well as Israel's failure to deliver on its promise of removing checkpoints and roadblocks.

Even before the announcement of the power reduction, Israel has been gradually tightening the closure on Gaza, including making it much harder for those in desperate need of medical care to cross into Israel.

Amnesty International has also released a report detailing some severe human rights abuses in the ongoing fighting between Hamas and Fatah in the Occupied Territories.

In Israel

A riot at a prison in the Negev desert which holds Palestinian prisoners left one dead and dozens wounded, both prisoners and guards, and set off protests in the Palestinian Territories. While the details are not entirely clear, as they are not likely to be in prison situations, it seems that a generally poor atmosphere in the prisons (where prisoners are housed in tents) was set off by a routine, albeit intrusive, inspection of quarters and escalated quickly from there.

Israel refused to comment on PA accusations that they prevented 500 police officers from reaching their deployment in Nablus. The incident serves as an example for the difficulties the PA has in providing its own security under occupation, while its failure to do so gives ammunition to the Israeli right in its accusations that the PA is either unwilling or unable to provide such security measures.

In a similar vein, much was made of an alleged plot among Fatah members, including some in the PA security services, to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (whom, it was announced today, is suffering from prostate cancer). Amira Hass of Ha'aretz does an excellent job of putting this story in perspective.

In the United States

Once again, we have an example of the terribly destructive role so-called "Christian Zionists" play in the tangled web of this conflict. Christian groups have, for years, worked hard to populate the settlements, most successfully with those fleeing from the former Soviet Union. Now they are working on Iran. The major difference is that, when the USSR collapsed there really was a great upsurge in anti-Semitism, putting Jews there at risk, although many stayed and some did quite well as Russia opened itself to Western markets. In Iran, despite the recent tensions, no such shift has been reported, or even rumored. The attempt to destabilize the oldest Jewish community still in existence in the Muslim world is contemptible. Using false claims of danger to Jews in Iran, in the present climate is also dangerous in the extreme. Unfortunately, these groups have consistently shown little real regard for the well-being of Jews other than to shed crocodile tears when it suits their propaganda aims and support their use of Jews as tools to advance their apocalyptic vision. Many influential Jewish groups who work with such Christians would do well to look at what kind of anti-Semites they are in bed with, all the more so before they start hurling such an invective carelessly at others.

Despite an avalanche of innuendo and impressive, if unverifiable, evidence collected by the US government, the prosecution was unable to convict any of five people from the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation, which the US accused of funding Hamas. In the end, enough jurors were able to see past the atmosphere of fear we live in and the attempt to convict based on innuendo and bias the US mounted against HLF. They simply realized the US had not proven its case, which was a particularly difficult task given that the groups HLF was accused of giving to in support of Hamas were not on the US list of terrorist groups when the money was sent there. The government has said they are going to retry the counts of the case that were deadlocked and led the judge to declare a mistrial.

Finally, in a note that could be a portend of a different future in American policy, one of Israel's staunchest supporters in the House of Representatives, Gary Ackerman (D-NY), a Jewish representative, teamed with an Arab American Republican, Charles Boustany (R-LA) to introduce a bill that would support the president using funds for various means of support for the Palestinian Authority. No conditions were attached to the funding. An array of mainstream peace groups supported the bill and its bi-partisan nature and grounding in Ackerman's hands essentially forced AIPAC to back the bill as well. This is a smart way of redirecting policy away from the aggressive confrontations that AIPAC normally advocates.

Still, it is wise not to become overly optimistic. While the Ackerman-Boustany demonstrates what can be achieved with smart politics, it is hardly a sea change. In a similar vein, this report in the Saudi Arabian Arab News vastly overstates the importance of Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns telling an Arab-American audience that Israel should halt its settlement activity. This has long been stated American policy, but one that the US has not vigorously pursued with Israel, and there is no reason to believe that such a statement, particularly one made to an Arab audience, was meant as anything other than a crowd-pleaser.


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