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Who killed the “peace process”? Not Israel — it was dead long before the Gaza war.

The Peace Process is in Jeopardy? I Wonder Why!
by Barry Rubin

Whatever became of reality, at least in analyzing the Middle East? Consider the following:

With every image of the dead in Gaza inflaming people across the Arab world, Egyptian and Jordanian officials are worried that they see a fundamental tenet of the Middle East peace process slipping away: the so-called two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state coexisting with Israel. — NY Times

So begins an article in the New York Times that explains the peace process is failing and the two-state solution slipping away. It is one more example of an obsessive narrative whose key premise is this: the Palestinians can never be responsible for anything.

Of course, the Arab world’s public reaction to the Gaza war is not pushing it in a more moderate direction. Yet on a governmental level — and compared to past such crises including the 1982 Lebanon war, 2000-2005 Palestinian intifada, and 2006 Israel-Hizballah war — most governments have come as close to being pro-Israel as you are ever going to see them. Privately, they make clear they want Hamas beaten. Publicly, they are far more reserved in their speech and passive in their reactions.

That’s the big story. As for the Arab street, that much-exaggerated phenomenon, since when have governments followed its dictate?

Yet there’s even more to this kind of argument quoted above: the implication that only Israel is responsible for the peace process’s poor prospects and a Palestinian rejection of a two-state solution, and only now is it happening.

(more…)

What did I tell you (“Did Hamas shoot Palestinian truckers?“)?

The IDF was not responsible for the death of a Palestinian aid worker contracted to the UN and the wounding of two others on Thursday, the IDF Spokesman said Saturday.

“An IDF investigation has found that it was not the army who fired on a UN truck at the Erez crossing,” the IDF Spokesman’s Office said. The IDF is not sure who fired on the truck, and is still investigating.

“The army further wishes to point out that the Palestinian wounded were evacuated by the Red Cross to the Israeli border, where they were taken by Israeli medical personnel for treatment at Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital,” the IDF told The Jerusalem Post…

The version of events that claimed the IDF had attacked the aid convoy was widely disseminated in the global media, and it was only on Friday afternoon that the IDF posited a different theory...

Foreign press reports [based on UNRWA statements — ed.] said the dead Palestinian and two others were hit by tank shells. A MDA medic at the scene told the Post that soldiers in the field said Hamas snipers targeted the aid workers. A Post probe revealed that the two wounded Palestinians were being treated at Barzilai for gunshot wounds [not shrapnel from tank shells — ed.].

Reacting to the IDF’s assertion that it did not fire on the UN convoy last Thursday, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the UN “was careful to source its information from eyewitnesses on the ground.”

Gunness added that the UN was keen to “clear the fog of war” and get to the bottom of the incident. — Jerusalem Post (my emphasis)

1. Great job, Jerusalem Post!

2. UNRWA is in no way impartial.

3. I’ve heard Chris Gunness interviewed on NPR. He is vehemently anti-Israel.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, UNRWA, Chris Gunness

No matter how well the IDF does in this war, the ultimate outcome will depend on the end-game. Chances are it will not be ended by every last Hamas operative being killed or captured, so we know there will be some kind of settlement, some kind of agreement between Israel and…somebody. What would an acceptable settlement look like?

Ending the Gaza War: Choices, not Solutions

By Barry Rubin

Last December, Hamas unilaterally ended its ceasefire with Israel and escalated the kind of cross-border attacks continually attempted even during the ceasefire. With massive public support, Israel struck back against a neighboring regime which daily attacked its citizens and called for its extermination.

For decades, Israel’s history shows a general pattern: its neighbors attack, Israel responds, Israel wins the war, and the world rushes to ensure that its victory is limited or nullified. If, as sometimes happens, the diplomatic process really improves the situation and provides progress for peace that, of course, is beneficial.

Yet Israel’s experience has shown that international promises made in return for its material concessions are often broken. Most recently, in 2006 the international community pledged to keep Hizballah out of south Lebanon and curb its arms supply, failed totally, yet took no action in response to this defeat. Israel is understandably skeptical.

In addition, Israelis know that Hamas is totally dedicated to their personal and collective destruction. The group will not moderate, cannot be bought off, and will not respect any agreement it makes. As a result, the usual kinds of diplomatic tools — concessions, confidence-building, agreements, moderation resulting from having governmental responsibilities, will not work. Any solution short of Hamas’ fall from power will bring more fighting in future.

What should happen is that the international community cooperates in the removal of the Hamas regime. It is an illegal government, brought to power by an unprovoked war against the Palestinian Authority (PA) which was the internationally recognized regime in the Gaza Strip. Hamas may have won the elections but it then seized total power, suspended representative government, and destroyed the opposition.

Moreover, Hamas is a radical terrorist group which openly uses antisemitic rhetoric and actively seeks to wipe Israel off the map. It oppresses the Palestinian population and leads them into endless war. It teaches young Palestinians that their career goal should not be as a teacher, engineer, or doctor but as a suicide bomber.

From a strategic standpoint, Hamas is a member of the Iran-Syria alliance which seeks to overthrow every Arab regime in the Middle East and replace it with an anti-Western, war-oriented, radical Islamist dictatorship. Hamas’ survival is a big threat to both Western interests and to those of Arab nationalist regimes. Keeping Hamas in power is equivalent to an energetic Western diplomatic effort to have kept the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan, despite its role in the September 11 attacks.

If, however, the world is not going to support Hamas’ fall from office, Israel cannot bring about this result by itself.  At the same time, the world will be making a big mistake if it pushes for a ceasefire at any price, thus encouraging future violence and terrorism, not only regarding Gaza but also in the region generally.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza

Last night I was present at a demonstration in which about 20 pro-Israel people faced at least 400 pro-Palestinians. It was disproportionate!

One Palestinian I met said that he didn’t like Hamas either, but Israel’s reaction was ‘disproportionate’. It got me thinking about what would be a ‘proportionate’ response to the Hamas rockets falling on Israel. Here are some ideas:

• Every time a Hamas rocket kills a random Israeli, Israel should find an equivalent Palestinian (child for child, etc.) and kill him or her. Amputations could be treated in a similar fashion.

• Every time a Hamas rocket falls in a populated area, Israel should fire an artillery shell into a populated part of Gaza.

• Israel should invade Gaza, but stop and withdraw when as many Palestinian civilians have been killed as Israelis. This is a bit problematic: should we count just those Israelis killed by Hamas rockets, or should we include those killed in suicide bombings? And what about Islamic Jihad? Should their victims be included?

Or how about this: Israel should do what is necessary to end the rocket fire and other aggression by Hamas, and ensure that it cannot be restarted, while hurting the smallest number of innocent Palestinians as possible.

Oh, wait a minute, Israel is already doing that.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, proportionality

Sometime contributor to FresnoZionism.org Barry Rubin is a fan of Winston Churchill, as am I. He sent us the following quotation which — I hope — sums up the Israeli attitude to this war:

Winston Churchill to the Canadian parliament, December, 30, 1941:

We did not make this war, we did not seek it. We did all we could to avoid it. We did too much to avoid it. We went so far at times in trying to avoid it as to be almost destroyed by it when it broke upon us. But that dangerous corner has been turned, and with every month and every year that passes we shall confront the evil-doers with weapons as plentiful, as sharp, and as destructive as those with which they have sought to establish their hateful domination….We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”

Technorati Tags: Winston Churchill, Israel