David Rieff writes about the Israel-Gaza exchange on this blog (I post his e-mail with his permission):
I've just read your thoughtful post on the Gaza imbroglio and think I understand why you arrive at the conclusions you do even if I am far closer to De Boer and Larison. I am certainly not one of those left-liberals unwilling to accept the basic truth of the 'Huntington view' that you cite. To the contrary, it seems to me folly to understand the world in any other way. Nonetheless, I think you quite dramatically misstate one of the essential elements of what led up to this renewal of hostilities: the continuing Israeli blockade of Gaza throughout the truce period. I really don't see you can on the one hand regret the support given to Hamas by the population of Gaza while at the same time ignoring one of the essential reasons for that support. have you ever been to Gaza? I have. It is poor, but richer than many places, including Haiti in our backyard. But what makes it remarkable is its hopelessness. And in that context, believing that anything is better than the status quo may not be a sensible conclusion, but surely it is an understandable one. If Israel was not going to loosen the restrictions on access and ingress in a period of relative calm, when was she going to do so? After a final settlement? You might as well say after the Second Coming!Yes, the Israelis had legitimate security concerns, but, acting in tandem with the Egyptians (with whom they have already been acting in tandem in bottling up the Gazans --- viz. the Mubarak government's tacit support for the current Israeli attack), they could have loosened it. Desperate people will listen to counsels of despair, whether they live in Gaza City or anywhere else. None of this exculpates Hamas. They should not have abrogated the truce. But even if one leaves the question of the proportionality of the Israeli response to one side (for there, Geneva Conventions or no Geneva Conventions, while the Israeli response is clearly in law a breach of the proportionality rule in the laws of war, I can see the Huntingtonian case for disproportionality), there is the question of Israel's right to maintain the effective sealing of Gaza ad infinitum. For this, again, absent a settlement, the right the Israelis claim. And frankly, as long as the Israelis effectively --- I am not concerned with their intentions, though of course I know defenders of Israel consider this a crucial point --- make a decent life in Gaza impossible, I can't see sympathizing with their actions.
I wrote back to David and told him he'd put his finger on what's easily the weakest part of my position: that Israel besieged Gaza during the truce period, leaving the Gazans with little to lose by fighting back in some way. All the same, I wrote, what choice did the Israelis have when confronted by a fanatical regime in Gaza, one dedicated to their extermination? Should Israel not have laid siege to Gaza, would Hamas have imported better and stronger missiles, and put Israel in greater danger than it is today? Is there any way out of this? He responded:
As to your questions, they are spot on. I suppose my answer is as follows. With regard to the West Bank, what troubles me is that Israel wants both the security wall and control over the West Bank. It's not a question of appeasing the Palestinians --- I agree they are unlikely to be appeased. But if we are talking about security, the biggest threat to Israel as far as I can see if that, for geostrategic but more for internal political reasons, it is the only modern state unwilling to define its own borders. I do think there is an issue of justice here, above all given the demographics. For example, on current trends, Arabs will comprise a substantial majority of the population between the Mediterranean and the Jordan in a few decades. If Israeli maintains its hold on the West Bank and Gaza (not by occupation but by what is, in laws of war terms, a state of siege --- something whose importance I think even Israel's most thoughtful defenders rather underestimate) until it really becomes the Herrenvolk democracy that the far left has long accused it of being? But to answer your question directly, I think the siege is --- as Fouche said of Napoleon's decision to execute the Duc d'Enghien --- worse than a crime, it's a blunder. All this death to accomplish what?It may seem odd to you --- it certainly seems paradoxical to me --- but were the Israelis to decide to reoccupy Gaza on security grounds, I would at least find their claim of the missiles and Hamas incarnating an existential threat a serious one. But meting out death from the air, followed by a ground incursion. What can that possibly do except strengthen Hamas politically even if it weakens the organization militarily and institutionally for a while?
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" allbetsareoff
January 3, 2009 4:06 PM
– The real solution to this, and most of the other crises in the Middle East, is a systematic redrawing of the map of the region that would provide secure, contiguous homelands for groups that currently are oppressed or endangered minorities: Jews, Christians (Catholic-Maronite, Orthodox, Armenian and Coptic), Kurds and Islamic religious/ethnic subgroups such as the Alawites and Druze. A peaceful, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society being inconceivable for the forseeable future, the Mideast needs a Congress of Vienna- or Versailles-style settlement to replace the botched Anglo-French map drawn after World War I. (Remember, Egypt, Syria and Persia/Iran are the only historically real countries in the region – every other state is a colonial construct.) Close call, I’d say, as to whether such a thing would be harder to pull off than an Israeli-Palestinian settlement."
I would argue that is precisely the combination of ethnic-nationalism and self-determination that has led to so much of the violence of the past 80 years. A lot of this, of course, dates back to 1919 with the settlement of World War I, which fueled everything from German aggression to Iraq's current borders to the establishment of Israel. But even aside from the consequences of the 1919 settlement, in countries all over the world now, small ethnic and religious groups are taking up arms and demanding independence. Where does this all end? Do we want Mindanao to end up looking like the Balkans, a patchwork of neighborhood sized ethnic enclaves armed to the teeth at each other? Do we want this in Kashmir, in the Congo? Ethnicity is no good way to draw borders, because ethnic groups are malleable, they overlap, they divide nuclear families and religions. Self-determination is one thing, but groups should be encouraged to achieve this within the scope of VIABLE multi-ethnic nation-states with defensible borders.
Another Believer -
I know this is sort of off topic, okay entirely off-topic, but I am wondering what you think of the role of chaplain in the military? I ask because, I'm interested to know what benefit our soldiers are getting out of the chaplains (from your experience out in the field). I'm also probably going to be one (yes, the third or fourth Buddhist chaplain in the US military, and as I understand it the first one in the NG) - after my packet is approved by the chaplain board.
Baldy,
Rather, they need a whole new generation of being exposed to the realities of what CAN be, rather than what they're force-fed daily.
That's rather wishful thinking. It requires not just a change in the behavior of the Palestinians, but also of the Arab world and the Israelis. Gaza is a tiny place, not even the size of a county in the United States, and the Palestinians there don't live in a hermetically sealed environment, they swim in the waters created by their neighbors.
Which is not to excuse Palestinian behavior one iota, but to point out that much of what they get force-fed daily originates in Egypt and Israel, not in Gaza proper.
please educate youselves ,who could govern or live like that?
http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/
The populations of Gaza and Israel have to see what a vision of peace is, how it will be implemented, and the tangible benefits of the peace. There have been little windows of this, but nothing consistent. A major part of the problem is that Israel--in large part due to the circumstances of its founding--has a political system that allows its most extreme opponents (in Israel and among the Palestinians) to drive its policy.
As a result of this, attempts to arrive at a peace process are held hostage to Hamas (or whichever radical group that succeeds them), and the extremist settler movement, to the detriment of most Israelis and Palestinians.
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