Israel, Hamas and a colonial war that cannot succeed

Israel's 22-day onslaught against Gaza laid waste much of the territory and caused the death of more than 1,300 Palestinians, mainly civilians. The blitz followed a brutal, nearly two-year siege of Gaza which had already resulted in widespread malnutrition among children and the deprivation of the general population of basic needs. Far from being a mere response to rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel's assault was, as Nur Masalha argues, a calculated attempt to topple the democratically elected Hamas government and crush Palestinian resistance.

IN an echo of the first and second Lebanon wars of 1982 and 2006, the people of Gaza experienced a massacre by a murderous Israeli regime using American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters to attack a string of civilian targets it linked to Hamas. Twenty-two days of air strikes, which were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded and destitute stretches of land on earth, killed over 1,300 people and injured thousands. The strikes not only killed scores of ordinary policemen and destroyed every police station in Gaza, but killed and injured thousands of civilians; one air strike killed groups of young people in a busy street in Gaza City on 27 December. Seven of the dead were students on their way back home from a UN college for Palestinian refugees. By any standards, this murderous blitz is a crime against humanity, taking place against a largely defenceless civilian population in what has been described as the largest concentration camp in the world.

'Operation Cast Lead'

This widely-expected repetition of Israel's campaign was carried out after nearly two years of a silent but no less brutal Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip. The ferocity of bombings and the ongoing siege of Gaza have little to do with the often ineffectual Qassam rockets fired at southern Israel. In fact 'Operation Cast Lead' took place in the context of a fairly successful ceasefire with Hamas. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, 'long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind "Operation Cast Lead" campaign against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip'. Quoting sources in the Israeli defence establishment, Haaretz reported that Defence Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israeli army to prepare for the campaign over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

The plan of action that was implemented in 'Operation Cast Lead' remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the Israeli army carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian fighters on Israeli army troops. On 19 November 2008, following a number of ineffectual Qassam rockets which exploded inside Israel, the military plan was brought for Barak's final approval.

On 18 December, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Barak met at army headquarters in Tel Aviv to approve the campaign. However, they decided to put the mission on hold to see whether Hamas would hold its fire after the expiration of the ceasefire. They therefore put off bringing the plan for the Israeli Cabinet's approval, but they did inform Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the developments. While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the campaign, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak that Israel had decided to strike at Gaza. In June 2008 Egypt had brokered the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, June 2008

Hamas leaders - like the leaders of Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War of 2006 - appeared to have been surprised by the ferocity of the Israeli onslaught. In mid-June 2008, after months of indirect negotiations brokered by Egypt, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had been agreed. Hamas's support for a  ceasefire  (or hudna)  is  not  new. Five years earlier, in June 2003, after nearly three years of intifada that had cost the Palestinians more dearly than ordinary Israelis, Hamas began calling for a ceasefire and even agreed to suspend suicide attacks inside Israel.

The June 2008 ceasefire, which Egyptian intelligence officers spent many weeks trying to arrange, went into effect on 19 June. It was primarily aimed at bringing an end to fighting which had resulted in the death of more than 600 Palestinians, many of them civilians, and several Israelis, since the last ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed in April 2007. According to Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, in the first five months of 2008 the fighting in and around Gaza left eight Israeli soldiers and six civilians dead; on the Palestinian side the death toll stood at 362, of whom at least 156 did not take part in hostilities.

The ceasefire was designed to last initially for six months. According to its terms, Hamas was to halt its attacks on Israel and the latter was to cease military incursions into the Gaza Strip. According to the agreement, if the cessation of hostilities lasted for three days, Israel would then ease its blockade of Gaza, allowing vital supplies into the territory. In the case of further progress in the indirect negotiations mediated by Egypt, Israel would then allow more commodities into Gaza and Egypt would open the Rafah crossing for two to three days per week. Moreover, a week after the ceasefire takes hold, Egypt would host indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israeli representatives to broker a prisoner deal that would swap Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit - captured by Palestinian fighters in 2006 - with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Hamas had earlier conditioned the release of Shalit on the freeing of 450 Palestinian prisoners, of whom Israel had publicly stated that it would only release 70.

It was not the first time that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had been announced. Previous ceasefire arrangements did not last for long. But this one looked more promising. The June deal was based on assurances from both Hamas and Israel to Egypt.

However, on 26 June 2008, barely a week after the ceasefire, Israel declared that its border crossings with Gaza would remain closed. This prompted Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri to accuse Israel of breaching the ceasefire terms: 'If this closure continues, it will render the deal for calm meaningless.' He added that the commitment of Hamas to the deal hinged on Israel's  lifting of the siege of Gaza and the opening of all the crossings. Israel, on the other hand, claimed it had reinstated the blockade on 25 June 2008 in response to Qassam rockets fired from Gaza by Islamic Jihad fighters. Apparently the rocket attack was in retaliation for the Israeli army's killing of an Islamic Jihad commander in the occupied West Bank. Israel, furthermore, maintained that the truce covered only Gaza - not the West Bank. On 1 July 2008 Israel closed all its cargo crossings with Gaza, after accusing Hamas of firing a rocket at southern Israel the previous night in violation of the truce. Hamas spokesman Abu Zuhri responded by saying that the closing of the crossings was unjustified and was another indication that the Israeli government was intent on undermining the ceasefire. However, Hamas generally adhered to the ceasefire (tahdia, or lull).

Israel's siege of the Strip

In December 2008, as the Gaza Strip entered its sixth month of the ceasefire with the Israelis, the movement of people and goods from and to the Strip remained paralysed and 80% of the population lived below the poverty line. The 1.5 million people of Gaza have been starved, with widespread malnutrition among children. Back in 2005, after its unilateral withdrawal from the Strip, Israel maintained total control over Gaza's borders, its electricity, food and medical supplies. Since the election of Hamas in early 2006, the people of Gaza have been subjected to a silent but no less brutal Israeli campaign: a blockade that has caused hundreds of deaths - especially among children - many from malnutrition. In June 2007 Israel had decided to tighten its blockade of the Strip.

The imposition of what the UN and international human rights organisations described as collective punishment on Gaza's 1.5 million people included an economic blockade that allowed very limited supplies of food, fuel and aid into the territory. Israel also continued a series of military incursions and air strikes in what it claimed was a response to the firing of rockets and mortars into Israel. Ostensibly the Israeli sanctions were designed to pressure Hamas to halt its rocket attacks on southern Israel. But the siege had driven many ordinary Gazans deeper into destitution and confined them to prison-like conditions in their tiny coastal territory. The tightening of the Israeli blockade made the situation in Gaza desperate as Egypt also sealed its border with Gaza after June 2007, re-opening the border only occasionally on humanitarian grounds. The Israeli blockade of Gaza was supported by the US, which boycotted Hamas and backed the West Bank Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas in its political struggle against Hamas. Throughout the first half of 2008, Israel's crossings with Gaza were closed to everything but some humanitarian aid and limited fuel, food and medical supplies. 

The siege of Gaza and the Western boycott of the democratically-elected government of Hamas all contributed to the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions in the Strip. Although Israel had quit Gaza in 2005, it still controlled the Strip's coast, key crossings and airspace. Home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, many of them refugees from what became Israel in 1948, the Gaza Strip suffered extreme hardship and poverty as a consequence of the tightening of Israeli blockade since June 2007. The once relatively thriving industry in Gaza came to a virtual standstill because of the Israeli blockade on commercial imports and exports. The deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza was made acute by the fact that some Gaza businessmen were profiteering from cheap goods smuggled from northern Sinai in Egypt.

In mid-September 2007 the World Bank published a report which painted a particularly alarming picture of the dire economic conditions in Gaza: the closure since June 2007 of the Karni cargo crossing between Gaza and Israel was causing a collapse of the Strip's industry and agriculture; children under 15, comprising half of the population of Gaza, would soon be thrust onto a 'non-existent labour market'. In addition to the Israeli blockade, the Western boycott of Hamas was having a major impact on Gaza's economy. The World Bank further warned that any discussion of economic recovery with the PA in the West Bank would not be sufficient without involving Hamas in Gaza.

In January 2008, under pressure from UN agencies and international human rights organisations, Israel agreed to allow humanitarian food and medical supplies to enter Gaza at the rate of 50 lorries a day. Israel also agreed to deliver about 500,000 litres of diesel oil and petrol a day for vehicles, industry and power stations - this was after a 10-day total embargo. But this move fell far short of meeting international demands or warding off a humanitarian crisis in Gaza; electricity was still being cut for hours every day. UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe, stated that, due to Israel's continuing blockade, only 32 truckloads of goods entered Gaza between 18 and 29 January 2008, causing a backlog of some 224 trucks belonging to various UN agencies to build up. Prior to the tightening of the Israeli blockade in June 2007, an average 250 UN trucks of goods entered Gaza daily. UN agencies and humanitarian organisations had been complaining for months that the Israeli blockade prevented them from delivering the necessary quantities of aid required to meet the needs of the population of Gaza.

In early 2008 the situation in Gaza remained dire even though the Israeli authorities were now allowing limited quantities of fuel and other basic necessities to enter Gaza. Amnesty International complained that rolling power cuts continued to affect Gaza's hospitals and health clinics severely. In March 2008, a coalition of eight UK humanitarian and human rights organisations issued a statement which explained that Gazans were living through their worst humanitarian crisis since 1967.

Egyptian complicity in the siege

Street demonstrations throughout the Arab world have targeted Egyptian embassies in Beirut, Amman, and elsewhere in protest against Egypt's active complicity in the siege of Gaza.

Egypt's complicity in the siege was exposed when, on 31 December 2007, hundreds of Palestinian pilgrims returning from the Hajj in Saudi Arabia to Gaza went on the rampage in temporary desert camps in northern Sinai, after the Egyptian authorities insisted that they return via a Gaza border crossing from Egypt controlled by the Israeli army. The Palestinian protesters demanded to enter Gaza via the Egyptian terminal at Rafah - the main Egyptian terminal through which the pilgrims had left for the Hajj in Mecca. Since Israel imposed its blockade against Gaza, the Rafah crossing had become Gaza's main gateway to the outside world. The Palestinian protesters, among 1,100 persons who had been transferred by buses from their Red Sea ferries to the Sinai capital of El Arish, smashed windows and burned mattresses and blankets in the desert camps. A 67-year-old woman, Khadra Massoud, collapsed and died during a scuffle between the pilgrims and Egyptian policemen.

Egypt had allowed a few thousand to leave via its Rafah crossing because it did not want to be accused of stopping Muslims making the Hajj. But subsequently President Hosni Mubarak decided to yield to Israeli demands to send the pilgrims back via two Israeli-controlled crossings: Kerem Shalom and Erez. The Israeli army had intended to arrest Hamas activists who were among the pilgrims. Hamas, on the other hand, criticised the Egyptian decision and insisted on the right of the pilgrims to enter via Rafah and not what it described as the 'Erez crossing of death'.

On 23 January 2008 thousands of Gaza residents surged into Egypt after Hamas fighters blew up the Egypt-Gaza border wall, in a bid to end the siege of Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians, using private cars and pick-up trucks, surged into Egyptian territory in northern Sinai. The following day dozens of Egyptian police gathered at the Egypt-Gaza border and directed traffic away from the smashed frontier wall, while the government of Egypt sought to assure its American allies that it would soon reseal its border with Gaza. However, on 24 January thousands of Palestinians continued to flow through the wrecked border fence into Egypt and dozens of Palestinians could also be seen returning to Gaza loaded with groceries and food. On 27 January, despite Egyptian attempts to reseal the border, hundreds of Palestinians continued surging into Egypt although the Egyptian police managed to prevent many Palestinians from going to the regional capital, El Arish, and limited the entry of cars from Gaza.

At this point Egypt was more interested in bringing Hamas and the West Bank PA together, and was no longer pretending to boycott Hamas. However, the PA persisted in refusing to recognise the authority of Hamas in Gaza. Border control between Gaza and Egypt, the PA declared, was a matter for Egypt, the Europeans, Israel and the PA: 'There is no fifth party called Hamas,' the PA insisted. PA President Abbas wanted the PA to share control of the Rafah crossing with Egyptian and European monitors. However, in response, Hamas's spokesman in Gaza, Abu Zuhri, stated that the old Rafah crossing arrangements were a thing of the past.

   On 27 January 2008 Abbas met Israeli Prime Minister Olmert in Jerusalem partly to discuss Hamas's demolition of the Gaza-Egyptian border fence and the collapse of their joint strategy of isolating Hamas. However, Abbas and Olmert came up with no new answers. Israel was not particularly happy with the suggestion that the PA share control of the Rafah crossing with Egyptian and European monitors. With its determination to tighten the siege of Gaza, Israel was sceptical about the capabilities of the PA. Shlomo Dror, a Defence Ministry spokesman, stated: 'As long as Hamas is determined to keep the crossing open, it will be very hard for either the Palestinian Authority or Egypt to close it. They don't have the power. Egypt is restricted to 750 armed police there. In the end, Hamas is going to control it.'

On 3 February the Gaza border was finally sealed by Egyptian forces - but not before many thousands of besieged Gazans had crossed into Egypt where they stocked up on much-needed supplies. However, Egypt re-opened the Rafah crossing occasionally on humanitarian grounds. For instance, on 1 July 2008 Egypt opened the crossing for two days to allow hundreds of Palestinians stranded on both sides of the fence to cross. However, on 9 July it was reported that more than 1,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were still trapped in the northern Sinai as the Egyptian authorities were trying to force them back into Gaza. According to Amnesty International, the Egyptian authorities prevented the Gazans from travelling abroad to receive medical treatment which was not available in Gaza or to reach their places of work and study in different countries.

A joint strategy: Israel, the US and the Palestinian Authority

On 23 March 2008 Hamas and Fatah signed up to the Sanaa Declaration, a Yemeni-brokered agreement designed to achieve reconciliation between the two main rival Palestinian factions. After Egypt, Yemen became the latest country to try to revive talks between the two factions. The statement was signed after a week of talks by Fatah's parliamentary leader Azzam al-Ahmad and Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzuk. The Yemeni initiative envisaged new Palestinian elections, the creation of a government of 'national unity' and the restructuring of the Palestinian security forces along national rather than factional lines.

However, only hours after the signing of the agreement, an apparent dispute broke out over just what was included in the deal. Abbas's chief negotiator, Saeb Erakat, insisted that Hamas must agree to end its control of Gaza, allow the PA back into the Strip, accept the PA 'obligations' towards the 1993 Oslo accords and accept the principle of negotiation with Israel for a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. Hamas, contrary to many misconceptions, is not averse to the concept of the two-state solution. But Hamas demanded that Abbas restore the 'national unity' government led by Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh, which had won parliamentary elections in January 2006 - a government dismissed after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. For Hamas, long-term peace depended not on endorsing the Oslo accords, but on resisting and ending Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including dismantling Jewish settlements and opening the crossing points into the Strip to enable trade and aid into the territory. Although the 'Sanaa Declaration' showed that Hamas was willing to engage in dialogue with the PA, the differences in strategy between the two organisations remained huge and Hamas - unlike the PA - remained an anti-colonial movement determined to resist the de facto annexation of parts of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.

Since the beginning of the Israeli blitz against Gaza, the Bush administration, predictably, has been blaming Hamas, while mainstream media in the US have presented the Israeli atrocities in Gaza as a reaction to the Qassam rocket attacks. In recent years the US has been training Palestinian soldiers to take over the occupation from Israeli forces in parts of the West Bank. The US is running a discreet US-led programme to bolster the military capability of PA President Abbas, by funding and training members of his presidential guard and his 'National Security Force' (NSF). The NSF is the result of a security 'reform package' partly funded by the US and Britain and tacitly supported by Israel. The US has funded a training programme for NSF recruits in neighbouring Jordan that is designed to produce 3,500 well-trained Palestinian soldiers. Apparently about 1,200 have already passed out and the next battalion of 500 has begun its course. Britain also sent a small group of officials under a British Brigadier to design what amounts to a 'senior staff level' training course for commanders not just from the NSF but from other Palestinian security structures including the police.

This joint Israeli-US-PA strategy was designed to undermine the support for Hamas in the West Bank - although Israel is far from being convinced the revamped NSF can be trusted entirely with providing security in an area where hundreds of thousands of its colonists have been 'settled' in violation of international law. However, after the June 2008 ceasefire the joint Israel-PA strategy focused on combating the growing support for Hamas across the West Bank. The Israeli army continued to raid offices of Palestinian associations in the West Bank linked with Hamas and detain Hamas political activists. On 7 July Israeli troops raided the offices of a Palestinian charity in Nablus (Tadamun association) linked to Hamas. Similar raids were carried out by the Israeli army in the areas of Ramallah, Hebron and Qalqilya.   

From 1982 to 2008

Both the 2008 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel and the latter's decision to launch its latest devastating attack on Gaza echo the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which also took place in the context of a long and successful ceasefire with Yasser Arafat's PLO at the time. Both 1982 and 2008 were long planned and designed to achieve much larger Israeli strategic goals. Both sought to change local and regional realities and the reality of Palestinian resistance. The 1982 invasion of Lebanon had as its primary goal the destruction of Arafat's PLO, while the 2008 campaign clearly aimed to destroy Hamas. Israel's blitz also came ahead of a general election due on 10 February 2009 and the Gaza campaign was partly driven by internal Israeli calculations. Israeli leaders believed they could bomb Hamas into submission, create new realities on the ground and simultaneously boost their election fortunes and, in the process, the fortunes of a compliant Palestinian Authority - all to be  achieved before Barack Obama took office. Clearly both Arafat's PLO in 1982 and Hamas now were perceived as major obstacles to Israeli colonisation plans in the West Bank. As Palestinian academic Bishara Doumani observed, both in 1982 and 2008 Israeli politicians assumed that their electoral prospects rise in direct proportion to the number of Palestinians their army kills.

But even if a prolonged military campaign in Gaza were to weaken Hamas militarily, the organisation, which is essentially a social movement, cannot be destroyed and Palestinian resistance to apartheid and settler colonialism cannot be eliminated. Hamas itself has always directed most of its energies and resources primarily toward providing services to the community, especially responding to its immediate hardships and concerns. Hamas is involved in a wide range of social activities and is deeply rooted in the Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

So far offical Arab response has been pathetic. By contrast the Arab street has been outraged. The street demonstrations all over historical Palestine, in Egypt and across the Arab world, in Turkey, and most European capitals are a major asset available to the Palestinians and their supporters.

However, that worldwide mass mobilisation could diminish if Hamas were to renew its tactic of carrying out suicide bombings against civilian targets deep inside Israel in response to a possible forthcoming invasion of Gaza. Hamas was the first Palestinian group to use suicide bombers in the 1990s as a tactic of resisting settler colonialism. But Palestinian suicide bombing, as a product of brutal Israeli occupation, was always a policy of desperation. Furthermore Hamas only embarked on suicide bombing campaigns as a response to extreme provocations by Israelis, such as the Hebron massacre of 1993, in which Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli physician and army reserve captain, massacred 29 Palestinians in the Hebron shrine. On 4 February 2008, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up, killing one Israeli. The Israeli police shot dead his accomplice in the attack in a shopping centre in Dimona, a southern desert town. Hamas claimed responsibility for this suicide bombing, which was the first to be carried out by a Hamas member inside Israel since 2004. On 8 February Israeli troops backed by tanks, helicopter gunships and warplanes killed seven Palestinians, including a schoolteacher, in a raid in the Gaza Strip. On 6 March a Palestinian suicide attack at a religious Jerusalem yeshiva killed eight students. This was followed by brutal Israeli attacks in Gaza and the West Bank. As in the pre-2004 period, Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli urban centres were counterproductive and politically damaging. In any case, targeting civilians cannot be justified legally, ethically or morally.

One thing is clear: there is no military solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But as with Israel's disastrous assault on Lebanon in 2006 or its earlier siege of the PLO in Beirut in 1982, this murderous blitz is the latest phase in Israel's colonial war against the Palestinians - a war that cannot be won. But above all, Israeli war crimes must be prosecuted - just as the international community did for the victims of genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina - partly as a deterrent to a genocide against the people of Palestine.

For an agreed future, apartheid in Palestine-Israel must be dismantled and religion has to be separated from the state. Also, the national goals of both peoples, Palestinians and Israelis, must become inclusive. The only obvious alternative to the failure of the two-state solution is to envisage the creation of a democratic framework which respects the right of equal citizenship of all inhabitants of Palestine-Israel (including the return of those ethnically cleansed by Zionism), irrespective of religious affiliation. 

Dr Nur Masalha is Reader in Religion and Politics and Director of the Centre for Religion and History at St Mary's University College, UK. He is the author of many books on Palestine-Israel, including The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel (London: Zed Books, 2007).

*Third World Resurgence No. 221/222, January-February 2009, pp 15-19