An Israeli strike over Gaza City on Tuesday
What Israel and Hamas could learn from the British Government and the IRA.
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Eamon Delaney writes:
The Israeli operation in Gaza is only the latest installment in a bleak and unending conflict. In 2009, Israel invaded Gaza with Operation Cast Lead, in 2011 there was Operation Pillar of Defence, and now there is Operation Protective Edge. They sound like the names of computer war games, but the outcome is always the same: Israel dampens down Palestinian resistance, Gaza goes back under siege and then the pressure cooker builds until Hamas decide to fling a few more rockets into Israel. And off we go again.
The present conflict is actually worse than before in that the old parameters are gone. The US has much less restraint over Israel now and little interest in getting more involved, being overstretched elsewhere and with a deteriorated relationship with Jerusalem. It remains Israel’s most steadfast ally, but the US is fed up with constant Israel settlement building in the West Bank and fed up with the insincere and meaningless ‘peace process’.
Meanwhile, the Egyptians have much less leverage over Hamas, now that Mubarak is gone, and the Muslim Brotherhood government (who were in power for the last Gaza escalation) has been replaced by a reactionary military government. So Hamas will feel, with Gaza effectively under long term siege by Israel, that it has nothing to lose and might as well go on firing rockets into Israel and showing at least token Palestinian resistance.
This is hugely challenging for Israel which now has the nightmare of an open ended, unending war with a well-resourced militant group. Especially, when the Israeli response is usually so disproportionate and results in the civilian casualties that appall the world.
And this is the crucial thing: the current proliferation of cameras, social media and rolling news has given Israel no hiding place and exposes what they do to universal condemnation, even among those who generally support them. The Israelis cannot go on fighting these disputes the way they used to. There is a huge propaganda war about Gaza on Twitter and Facebook and Israel is losing it.
But Israel insists on finding a military, and not a political, solution to the problem. It says there cannot be negotiations with Hamas as the latter doesn’t recognise Israel’s right to exist. But Sinn Fein and the IRA have never accepted British rule in Northern Ireland yet this hasn’t prevented them from doing a peace deal with the enemy. But such an approach would require a sea change in official Israeli thinking which in recent years has tacked further to the right and to non-compromise.
In fact, Hamas is a disciplined and stable organisation, unlike the old PLO, and could well be the sort of adversary that Israel could work with. It is not a wild jihadi organisation which Israel well knows and which is why it wants to curb Hamas but not destroy it. In volatile Gaza, Hamas is a preferable counterweight to the genuine (and growing) jihadi extremists.
Meanwhile, in Ireland and elsewhere, the Israeli actions provoke condemnation but much of this protest is highly selective and opportunistic. Where are these protestors when atrocities are committed by Syria or Sri Lanka or other countries? Has there ever been a march on the salubrious Iranian Embassy in Blackrock? And what about Russia, which recently absorbed the Crimea? No, instead it is really only the Zionist hobby horse, and of course, the US itself, that gets these protestors out with their placards. You will rarely see them highlighting the horrendous atrocities in African countries such as the Congo or Mali, for example.
Interestingly, when I made this point to Richard Boyd Barrett TD some time ago he appeared to acknowledge the disproportionate focus on Israel and assured me that the protestors would also be vocal on other conflicts such as Syria. But this doesn’t seem to have happened. And indeed, given the language of Boyd Barrett speaking about Gaza outside the Dail last week, you’d have to wonder how there could ever be a peace in Gaza. Boyd Barrett is not only opposed to the Israeli occupation of captured territories since 1967, as many protestors are, but to the very existence of Israel itself which he says was ‘born in apartheid and racism’. But this in itself is surely a racist statement, about a State set up in 1948 by the United Nations.
Israel may be showing a disproportionate response in its current actions- it always does- but it has had over 1500 Hamas rockets landing in their country in the past week. And only for its Iron Dome defence system, there would certainly have been many casualties. What would the Irish or French Government do if that happened to their territory? They would certainly not stand idly by.
Eamon Delaney is a journalist and former diplomat
(AFP)
