Israel Changing Landscape of Palestine Existence
Gazans Undergo Shock Therapy Before Bitter Solution Is Enforced
Jan 6, 2009
How many civilian deaths will it take to finally declare a humanitarian crisis -not "impending" crisis as the UN warns- in Gaza? On the “positive” side, it took over 40 Palestinian civilian deaths when Israel bombed a UN school January 6, 2009, to break President-elect Barack Obama’s baffling silence towards the atrocities committed in Gaza, with him finally admitting he was “deeply concerned”. While Obama continues to gain political ground internally by cutting taxes -and stretching government deficit, he is quickly losing any political leverage his election might have given him from the 1 billion Muslims around the world.
As we speak, 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza are undergoing the most brutal form of shock therapy to date, in preparation for a bitter medicine concocted in back-room deals to seal the fate of the 50-year Palestinian struggle for statehood.
The Illusion of Peace
Hamas’s election victory came 13 years after the Oslo Accord brought desperate suffering to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The general international consensus blames the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and its inability to control the many rebellious factions that continued to threaten the security of Israel. However, the reality on the ground tells a difference story. Israel had no real incentive to consider a "just" peace. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein illustrates two main factors that effectively ended any serious Israeli political will to give peace a chance. The influx of over a million Jews from the persecution of Boris Yeltsin’s brutal dose of economic shock policies in the former Soviet Union, allowing Israel to free itself from its dependence on Palestinian laborers, and the successful rise of the Israeli counter-terrorism industry. Afterall, who better to provide surveillance and terrorist profiling expertise than an occupation force that has succeeded in maintaining its security in the midst of a sea of Muslim enemy states?
Within 7 years of the Oslo Accord, Israel doubled its illegal settlers and illegally claimed key water reserves back to Israel. So Oslo “meant for Palestinians ...disappearing markets, less work, less freedom -and crucially, as the settlements expanded, less land,” says Klein. It is in this atmosphere of complete exasperation that Hamas won transparent, free, democratic elections in the Occupied Territories.
Change the Reality on the Ground
Contrary to popular belief, “the elephant in the room” is not Hamas but the fact that Israel has unilaterally -with international support- succeeded in killing any viable possibility for Palestinians to have a state.
When the White House urges Israel “to change the reality” in Gaza, what it essentially calls for is a change in the political landscape of the Palestinian struggle.
For Hamas to be accepted as a legitimate elected representative of the Palestinian people, Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni clearly stated on December 31, 2008, that it must accept the three requirements of the quartet: to accept the right of Israel to exist; to denounce violence and terrorism; and to accept formal agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas will not recognize the right of Israel to exist until Israel recognizes the right of Palestine to exist. As for agreements between Israel and Palestine -well, Palestinians have already tried the 70% poverty rate “dividend” of “peace” and look where that got them.
Former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh made it very clear in The Washington Post January 3, 2009, that “Israel has no reason to end [the fighting in Gaza] until Hamas rule is brought to an end." Without Hamas, and with a corrupt, broken Palestinian Authority, the only solution will be the bitter medicine underway.
The Bitter Medicine
Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton admitted in The Washington Post January 5, 2009, that while unpopular, the only viable solution on the ground now is what he calls the “three-state option”: it is obvious that a Palestinian state can never be established now as it stands. Gaza will be under Egyptian control and whatever is left of West Bank land (minus the wall, the settlements, and water resources) under Jordanian sovereignty. As promised when Oslo was concluded in 1993, the average Palestinian will feel the “dividends of peace” after financial and political support will start pouring in from the defunct Arab League and the West. Israel will get its security. The reality of Palestinian nationhood will be changed.
For now, the only reality for Palestinians is that their lives have very little value in the global exchange market. 100+ have to die for every Israeli life lost.
The chasm between East and West has never been deeper. The international community -with the complicity of some regimes in the Middle East- has taken no serious action to end the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. While the US earnestly debates Oprah Winfrey’s weight gain, 1.5 million Palestinians have been “put on a diet” for over 19 months according to Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
