AT PENPOINT
While the world watches, Israel is preparing to go into the Gaza Strip after an horrific aerial bombardment which killed 2300 Palestinians, but its war aims are as murky as those of the Hamas attack for which the Israeli attack is being launched. One motive which is not realized is that of revenge. It is not so much revenge for the killing and kidnapping of Jews, but revenge for the way that the Israeli Defence Forces were unable to prevent those attacks, having their defences overwhelmed by the original Hamas attack, and by the intelligence failure made evident by the surprise achieved by the Palestinians.
The IDF has great influence within Israel, because of the universal conscription, which means that everyone has served before the colours. Another effect has been that military men have often made a career in politics, and three former chiefs of defence staff (or heads of the Israeli IDF) have even become prime minister. Indeed, even now, one of the members of ‘war Cabinet’ created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is Benny Gantz, a former chief of defence staff.
One of Israel’s problems is that the ‘war’ is asymmetric. After all, it is not against a state. The previous wars Israel has fought have all been against states. This war is against Hamas. This means that formulating war aims is that much more difficult, because it is engaged in what is essentially a police action.
In 1967, Israel fought the Six-Day War, which was almost ideal, in that it ended in Israel occupying the Sinai Desert from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and handing out a defeat to the Arab countries. In 1973 it is true that the Egyptian forces broke through the Bar Lev Line, the fortifications erected by the IDF, then under the command of Lt Gen Haim Bar Lev in the Sinai.
True, the Egyptians did not do all that well, but the doggedness with which its forces resisted the Israelis at the Chinese Farm redeemed something of the military honour they had lost in 1967. Though Egypt had achieved strategic surprise, at the end of the War, they had not lost all their gains in the Sinai, but they had not been able to stop Israeli armour from crossing into the Egyptian mainland and poising itself to reach the Nile. However, one view is that the 1973 War led to the Camp David Accords, when Egypt exchanged land for peace, getting back the Sinai in exchange for recognising Israel.
One of the consequences of the current invasion has been to expose all the governments of the Arab world, and the wider Islamic world. While the peoples have expressed solidarity with the people of Gaza, the governments have done nothing. This deafening silence, out of fear of the USA, is why the Palestinians are in the plight they are in.
It could be argued that the Camp David Accords led to the Oslo Accords, in which PLO chief Yasser Arafat accepted a two-state solution, perhaps because he was aware that support for the Palestinian cause was crumbling. It did not help that the PLO’s main non-Arab backer, the USSR, had collapsed.
One of the main features of the present attacks is that the IDF has not got to expand once again, and it is appropriate that it is doing so in the area where it had evacuated last. It occupied Gaza in 1967, along with the West Bank territories, and vacated them only when it handed over to the newly-elected Hamas government in 2006, when it had already evacuated the settlements it had built there. It had also invaded Lebanon and occupied a portion, vacating it in 1985, but retaining a 12-mile buffer zone, which it is sticking to despite Hezbollah efforts to vacate it.
Perhaps the Gaza incursion illustrates that Israel is sitting on a powder-keg in the form of the West Bank. The West Bank not only contains Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the most sacred place for Muslims outside of the Arabian Peninsula, but is also the focus of Israeli settlement activity. Being much larger than the Gaza Strip, and containing East Jerusalem, it is much more crucial to a future Palestinian state.
The two-state solution legitimizes the existence of Israel, which had no real right to exist. However, Israeli settlements continue to be built in the West Bank, and the roads linking them mean that the West Bank is broken up into many little pieces, and it is virtually impossible to establish an state there. At least the Gaza Strip is in one piece The Strip has a population of 2 million, mostly Palestinian refugees who fled Palestine in 1948, with 600,000 still living in camps.
Any attempt to expel them would create yet more refugees, and though few would be refugees twice, most would belong to such families. Pakistan has had a similar experience. A large number of Biharis went to East Pakistan in 1947, and then came to West Pakistan in 1971 (this is apart from those who had to stay behind in Bangladesh). The MQM found scions of such families among their most committed and extremist cadres. Wherever the Palestinians now displaced go, they will carry the turbulence of that double forced migration. Israel will find to its cost that whatever it does in Gaza will not get it security, not unless it wipes out all Palestinians.
However, as Jews showed the world during the Holocaust, such ‘final solutions’ are not easy to achieve, as the people one tries to eliminate simply will not die. Another problem for Israel is that there is a significant Palestinian diaspora. While it may persuade the USA, the EU and Australia, to name a few, to look the other way while it kills its own Palestinians, it will not be able to persuade them to hand over theirs.
Pakistan should find the actions of Israel in the Gaza Strip interesting, not just because of the eerie resemblance to the Bihari issue, but because what Israel does in the Occupied Territories, India does tomorrow. India tilted towards the Palestinians for some time, because of a fascination with PLO chief Yasser Arafat, but when the Janata Dal government started building ties back in the 1970s, it started a process which ended in 1992 with the establishment of an Indian embassy in Tel Aviv, under a Congress government, making the relationship bipartisan.
Still, so far it seems India has been learning, using in Indian-Occupied Kashmir methods tested by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. Most notable is that of changing the demographic balance. Jewish settlements are doing in the West Bank what India is doing by issuing domicile certificates to persuade Hindus to move to Kashmir. Israel made the Arabs withdraw their political and diplomatic support for Palestinians. India made Pakistan do the same for Kashmir.
The genocide of the Palestinians will not win Israel security, but it won’t stop them trying. Similarly, Partition occurred because of historical realities, but that won’t stop the BJP from trying to reverse it.
The unfortunate reality is that the kind of ethnic cleansing the Israelis are trying to commit on the Palestinians is what the Hindus, especially but not only the BJP, would like to commit on Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims. Congress supporters might not wish to dirty their hands with such genocide, but they would not lift a finger to prevent it from happening.
One of the consequences of the current invasion has been to expose all the governments of the Arab world, and the wider Islamic world. While the peoples have expressed solidarity with the people of Gaza, the governments have done nothing. This deafening silence, out of fear of the USA, is why the Palestinians are in the plight they are in.
It has also exposed the Western countries, and their unseemly scrambling over another to express support for Israel. They have seemingly lost all concern for human rights in their bid to satisfy their domestic Zionist lobbies.
