Israel vs. Hamas: Unfinished Business

 

The ceasefire Israel and Hamas reluctantly committed to on Jan. 18 was broken today as Rockets fired from Gaza shelled southern Israel and fighter jets targeted a metal foundry allegedly used as weapons factory in Rafah. A pro-Fatah militant group claimed responsibility on the pre-dawn rocket attack on Israel. This new round of hostilities brings to a halt a short-lived truce, aggravates an already horrendous situation, and threatening a precarious peace.

 

The disproportionate military responses to Palestinian militants’ attacks garnered a large popular support base for the Olmert’s government from the security wary Israeli population. It will certainly maximize on it in the upcoming Feb. 10 election.

 

I don’t understand why Palestinian militants, Hamas and Fatah, pursue a course of action that clearly enhances Israel‘s regional security posture and advances the policies of its government. The last Israeli offensive was a clear indicator that the risks Hamas takes in its abortive rocket attacks far outweigh the gains. In fact, Hamas and Fatah’s ill-advised policies have had no political, social, or economic gains; the lives of ordinary Palestinians have been significantly degraded because of the Palestinian leadership ‘short-sightedness.

 

In his interview to Al Arabiya, President Obama states “the United States will sustain an active commitment toward reaching the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security,” while his Middle East envoy, self-proclaimed Arab American George Mitchell, was in Jerusalem on Wednesday to assure Israel that Obama’s administration is primarily committed to its security and its legitimate right to self-defense.

 

I am certain of this: there will never be peace between Israel or any current or future Palestinian government. Neither Israel nor the Palestinian leadership will prosper in a peaceful co-existence. Other power brokers such as Syria, Iran, and the United States polarize the conflict further. War is the money-maker.

 

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

 

A Thank You Note To Bush, Cheney, Rice, And Rumsfeld

Dear former President Bush, former VP Cheney, former Secretary of State Rice, and former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, the world should be thankful to you for the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-Two Noble Bondmen

 

AP photo by Hussein Malla

 

They scurried about pusillanimously like fattened experimental mice in the laboratory of US foreign policy. They feigned a modicum of concern and commiseration for the Palestinian plight and outrage and condemnation against Israel’s deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians. They projected a semblance of effort and seemed incapable of result-driven action. They are avatars of what’s considered to be the worst in world diplomacy. But their propagandist national news outlets saturated the airwaves with reports the Arab leaders were fully engaged in securing a sustainable cease-fire with Israel and a lasting reprieve for the Palestinian children; they showed footage of them in their flowing robes and expensive tailored suits making phone calls to Condoleezza Rice and Bush; they aired press-conferences with them at the United Nations where, for once, they succeeded in convincing the Security Council to pass a resolution that provided Israel with enhanced security assurances and yet, subsequently, proved to be as politically impotent as they are; when, at long last, they convened emergency summits in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, they pounded the podium while delivering bombastically disparaging and accusatory rhetoric against each other. Entrenched in their crippling tribalistic politics and personal rifts with each other, they refused to attend meetings and shunned consensus. After yet another inconsequential Arab summit in Kuwait, Amr Moussa, the secretary-General of the League of Arab States, gloomily confided to a group of journalists: “the boat is sinking.”

 

When, at 0200 on the 18^th of January, no thanks to the Arab governments, Israel, finally and in time for the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44^th United States president, declared a unilateral cease-fire, thousands of Hamas supporters, waving green banners, thronged the streets of Gaza cities to celebrate what they perceived as a “victory.” Much of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed; reconstruction is estimated to cost 2 billion dollars. Over 1,300 Palestinians died while Israel lost 9 soldiers and four civilians. Hamas rocket attacks against southern Israeli cities subsided and most smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt caved in from Israeli bunker-buster missiles. Militarily, the Israeli offensive was a deafening defeat of Hamas.

 

Politically, and in the long term, Hamas stands to gain. Fatah’s grassroots support in Gaza and the West Bank was tremendously eroded; disillusioned by the “moderate” Arab regimes, Hamas will turn exclusively to Syria and Iran. Such scenario is far from promoting peace in the region. I am convinced that achieving an enduring peace never was, nor will it ever be, an aspiration to Hamas or Israel.

 

The existence of Hamas as a legitimate government serves a paramount Israeli strategic goal in that it intensifies the Arab leaders’ fear of growing subversive movements with Islamist tendencies reckoned a clear and present danger to their undemocratic regimes. Such fear widens the political chasm between Arab governments and prevents consensus on the Palestinian issue.

 

Intelligence and military support to protect themselves from Islamist movements and other perceived threats to their governance is one of the major reasons prodding Arab governments to grovel before the United States and serve its bid for a powerful Israel in the region. In an interview with Associated Press journalist Matthew Lee, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite Bush’s unpopularity in the Middle East, “Arab leaders showered his diplomat with jewelry last year.” King Abdullah of Jordan offered her a $47,000 emerald and diamond necklace; his wife, a Palestinian, gave Rice a $5,000 jewelry box. Not to be outdone, King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia gave her gem-encrusted baubles worth $316,000, a diamond necklace with matching earrings, a bracelet and a ring worth $165,000, and a flower petal necklace worth $170,000. Others underhandedly made their ports, airfields, and bases at the disposal of US military forces and allowed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) use of their prisons and interrogators. Such sinister cooperation is not new; there are reports and eyewitness accounts that, to protect the late King Hassan II of Morocco, the CIA was instrumental in the disappearance of the Moroccan resistance leader Mehdi Ben Barka in 1965 and the dubious death of Ahmed Dlimi in 1983. Its ongoing involvement in the protection of despotic Arab regimes is well-documented by journalists and researchers.

 

In his inaugural address, President Obama warned that “those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent … are on the wrong side of history.” How many Arab governments today cling to power through means other than corruption, deceit, and the silencing of dissent?

 

None.

 

Such statement should be taken with a grain of salt. It is doubtful it signals a major shift in the foreign policy doctrine of the United States. In fact, the absence of viable political alternatives make a continued US support to Arab repressive regimes imperative to its interests and Israeli national security.

 

The recent massacre of Gazans was a needling reminder Arab Leaders serve interests other than those beneficial to their own people. It left the non-resuscitatable 2002 Arab peace initiative stretched on a cold steel gurney in a morgue in Gaza. The cause of death: the Arab leaders’ sycophancy to the United States, their inveterate subjugation of their people, and their political witlessness.

 

The Palestinian people, who carry, not a weapon, but the burden of decades of failed negotiations and policies, whose ramshackle homes are constantly commandeered by Hamas and bombed by the Israelis, who refuse to leave or are forced to stay, who bury their decapitated babies, their dreams, and their hopes, whom do they turn to?

 

 Not Hamas, Fatah, the Arab governments, the League of Arab States, or the United States. Certainly not Israel.

 

I recommend that all Palestinian families in Gaza and the West Bank adopt puppies and kittens – a dozen per family. They have a better chance to mobilize the international community (especially the Europeans and Americans) and secure a prompt cease-fire from Israel if represented by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) International whose latest operation, dubbed Operation Baghdad Pups, rescuing abandoned pets in Iraq is a tremendous success.

 

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

 

Libya’s Coming Of Age

 

The newly credentialed United States Ambassador to Tripoli, Gene Cretz, wasted no time in engaging the Libyan government in possible military cooperation in an attempt to secure the burgeoning Libyan arms market for US weapons manufacturers. The United Nations, doing the United States’ bidding, and the European Union implemented arms embargoes that came close to eradicating the Libyan domestic defense industry sparing only a skeletal state owned industry. The lifting of the embargoes in September of 2002 and 2003 respectively allowed the Libyan government to legalize multinational involvement in the sector. The Libyan government, in desperate need to reinvigorate its non-existent domestic defense industry and to upgrade its aging military inventory, has been in low-level negotiations with several international defense companies eager to establish themselves in the country. In October 2008, it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Pentagon.  

In June 2006, the Bush administration repealed Libya’s designation as a terrorism sponsoring state.  It had finally decided Qadhafi had abandoned his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and accepted liability for the 1986 bombing of a Berlin nightclub and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Since then, the political and economic relations between the two countries have been growing attracting the international investors of the defense sector who have been encouraged by such a less restrictive economic environment.

According to the State Department’s annual terrorism report, released April 30, 2008, Libya has been actively supporting European and American counter-terrorism efforts in the region. Its involvement in international counter-terrorism operations was compelled by Al-Qaeda’s alliance with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and Al-Zwahiri’s 2003 audio taped scolding of Qadhafi for pandering to the United States and terminating his support to terrorism; Al-Zawahiri also called for the toppling of Qadhafi whom he described as an “enemy of Islam.”

The United States military assistance to Libya will be spearheaded by AFRICOM. In the short term, Libyan military officers will benefit from the US International Military Education and Training Program while US military personnel train Libyan soldiers on infantry weapon systems and tactics and provide them with class II military equipment such as night vision goggles to enhance their border security.

Qadhafi, drawing a valuable lesson from Saddam’s demise in 2003 and tired of the perfunctory approach of the Arab leaders to Pan-Arab nationalism, has decided to align himself with the US, a country that attempted to assassinate him in 1986 and which he once labeled the leader of imperialism and capitalism, thus worming himself into a strategic powerbroker position in the Arab world. I find such alignment ironic.

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

The Mendacity Of Hope

 

George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC News program “This Week,” interviewed President-elect Barak Obama on his foreign policy plans for the Middle East. Mr. Obama reiterated his intention to engage Iran in a direct dialogue that will emphasize respect and translucency. He explained that his foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran will be clearly demarcated from the superciliousness and deprecation that has characterized the relations between George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The objective of his agenda will be to improve relations; such improvement can only be attained if Tehran halts its nuclear program that the United States and Israel define as hostile.

 

On the current fighting in Gaza, Mr. Obama promised that immediately after his inauguration, his foreign policy team will commit to advancing the Middle East peace process between Israel and Palestine. Such comment should bring a sigh of relief and stoke the hopes of Arab officials and non-officials who, a week earlier, voiced deep consternation that the President-elect ‘silence was a nod and a wink to a doubtful Israel conveying his unadulterated support for its “right” to exist. During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama promised the Arab and Moslem world to break away from the heavy handed and coercive tactics of the Bush administration and promote a positive approach that will foster a peaceful environment in the Middle East. Mr. Obama’s aides revealed that the president-elect will elaborate on his new positive approach in a speech he will give in a yet to be known Arab country within the first one hundred days of his presidency. 

 

What most Arab observers fail to note is that Mr. Obama has already plotted his foreign policy azimuth, or rather it has been plotted for him; it does not digress from the current administration’s stance. Last July, when he was visiting the Israeli town of Sderot, Obama sanctioned Israel’s military interventions against the Palestinians when he said: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I am going to do everything in my power to stop that.” He, however, lacked the fortitude of character to reverse the perspective and say what he would do if somebody, for years, cut off the water and electricity to his house, where his daughters slept at night, walled the doors and windows, clogged the sewers, restricted the flow of food and medicine, while constantly fumigating and blasting earsplitting sirens. On December 29, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, quoted Obama ‘statement in justifying Israel’s grievous assault on the Palestinian civilians. Mr. Obama, much like his predecessors, feels that Israel is vindicated in its genocidal and racist killing campaign against the Palestinians; he feels that if Israel’s highly uncalibrated sense of threat requires the extermination of the Palestinian population with its babies, women, and elderly, so be it. To that end, the United States, a founding sponsor of and a contracting party to the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, finances, arms, and politically supports Israel’s murdering of the Palestinians. The United States’ foreign policy has historically spurned the Rule of Law in foreign relations when it comes to endorsing Israel’s ascendancy in the region.

 

Obama’s message on his campaign trail might have been “Hope,” but it is not hope for the Middle Eastern Arab nations. The peace process his foreign policy team intends to jumpstart is in fact a war process by means of which Israel will expand its supremacy over its Arab neighbors and Iran. It is high time the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the Moslems stop believing that he is their redeemer.    

 

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

     

Roadkills On The “Road Map” For Peace

 

The murderous Israeli onslaught of Gazans continues unabated and with impunity as Israel unleashed thousands of its ground troops to foray further into the densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip killing hundreds of civilians most of whom are children, women, and non-combatant men. Hamas commanders have elected to engage the incursive Israeli forces employing Guerrilla warfare. Conventional force on force attacks on the well-equipped and better supported Israeli ground forces would have been suicidal. Instead, Hamas fighters dissolved into the Strip ’straggling cities sporadically attacking Israeli forces with anti-tank missiles and mortars; their tactics, so far, resulted in the killing of eight Israeli soldier, far less than what Israeli strategists predicted. The Israeli show of force is yielding limited results; Hamas’ mortar attacks on southern Israeli cities, albeit drastically reduced, remain a threat. Israeli military commanders are tempted to push deeper into Palestinian cities, but they are concerned that close quarter urban skirmishes will result in a higher casualty rate not among the Palestinian civilians, but the Israeli forces.

The targeting list of the Israeli army seems to be quite inclusive. Private dwellings, markets, mosques, shelters, and hospitals have been shelled just as frequently as known government and military installations. Ambulance drivers have been sniped; International relief organizations and medical personnel have been denied entry into Gaza to provide a much needed humanitarian assistance to the growing number of affected civilians. A United Nations school in the Jabaliya refugee camp sheltering mostly children, women and the elderly was shelled killing forty people. Israeli officials accused Hamas of firing missiles from the school. The accusation was categorically denied by the director of Gazan operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, John Ging.

There are no safe havens

in Gaza;

there is

no food,

no water,

no relief.

On most faces,

there is no hope;

only a raging grief

peers through the mask

of resignation;

only the wailing of the bereaved

could be heard at night

over the barking of the guns.

Only the stench of decaying bodies

under reddened concrete slabs

covers the cordite.

 

The international community’s intense efforts to broker a cease-fire were stymied by the unwillingness of Israel and the Bush administration to commit to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas remaining in power. Hamas’ leadership, bound by its 1988 charter, pledged to continue its missile attacks on Israel and its weapons smuggling operations from Egypt.

On Thursday 8^th, 2008, the Arab nations, led by Libya, a revolving non-permanent member of the Security Council, were able to garner enough votes at the United Nations to guarantee a Security Council binding resolution for an immediate cease-fire that offers the Gazans a respite and alleviates from their horrendous suffering. The resolution was approved with a vote of 14 – 0, with the US, uncharacteristically, abstaining. The US initially objected to the resolution citing its failure to address Israel’s concerns about Hamas’ weapons smuggling and missile attacks. The unequivocal support the Bush administration smothered Israel with allowed anti-US hardliners such as Iran to gain popularity while alienating pro-US Arab governments which are now seen as enablers of Israel.

The Security Council’s favorable vote on an Arab proposed resolution that was not vetoed by the US is a clear indicator the said resolution offers Israel a strategic lead and will be detrimental to the Palestinians in their future peace negotiations. The resolution, far from condemning Israel’s criminal massacre of non-combatant Palestinians in flagrant violation of international laws, gives it a diktat to inflict, with reinforced confidence and without fear of international incrimination, more violence on Gaza when the latter is deemed a security threat to the Jewish state. Considering Hamas’ radical 1988 charter, the symptomatically reckless and short-sighted policies of its leadership, Israel’s proclivity to excessive violence, and the bubbling militancy of the Palestinian population that Israel did much to exacerbate, it will only be months, if not weeks, before the butchery carries on. It is clear that Israel’s “road map” for peace is paved with Palestinian bodies.

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

On Killing Palestinian Civilians

  

It is difficult today to find reports on the polarizing Palestinian/Israeli issue unladed of hyperbole; debating the conflict hardly ever occurs without damaging irrational emotional eruptions. It is analogous to navigating a minefield. Facts have been doctored; histories rewritten; irreparable mistakes of strategic heft made by not just the Palestinian and Israeli politicians, but the US and Arab governments as well. In the midst of this whirlpool of arguments and counterarguments, facts and fallacies, through the smoke screen of political folderol, there seems to be a consensus emerging: Palestinian civilians are being exterminated on a daily basis; their children and babies are dying from bombs, diseases, malnutrition, and forced illiteracy; their minds are being stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey with jaundiced ideologies; their despondent fathers are ripe for the picking by radical fringes and political dogmatists.

Who is to blame?

Most are quick to point the finger at the Israeli government. They are, after all, still pounding the Gazan population with state-of-the-art “bunker buster” high-precision GBU-39 missiles freshly acquired from the US government. The missiles, developed by a Boeing subsidiary and which carry more wallop than the heavier and less accurate bombs used against Hezbollah in 2006, reportedly penetrated at least 35 inches of steel-reinforced concrete in US tests. Israel is testing them on Gazans not so much because their houses are 35 inches steel-reinforced concrete thick, but because their minds are impervious to the idea that democratically electing a religiously radical group opposed to the existence of the Israeli state is unacceptable.

Some analysts believe the Islamic Resistance Movement – Harakat Al Mukawama Al Islamiya (HAMAS), an offshoot of the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood was created in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdelaziz Al-Rantisi, and Mohammed Taha, to counter-balance the nationalistic Harakat Al-Tahrir Al-Watani Al-Falastini (Fatah). Fatah leadership believes the establishment of Hamas was not without the help of the Egyptian Mokhabarat and the Israeli Mossad. The Islamic organization quickly ingratiated itself with the destitute Palestinians by engaging in extensive social programs which a corrupt and fractured Palestinian Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat and saturated by Fatah bureaucrats whose allegiance was shady lacked. While Fatah was funded by the Madrid Quartet, the sources of Hamas funds remain untracked.

In the January 25, 2006 parliamentary election, an Iranian supported Hamas won the majority in the Palestinian parliament and effectively took control of all cabinet positions while Fatah was relegated to the opposition.

I observed the Palestinian Parliamentary election of 2006 with the same skepticism through which I look at all elections in the Arab World. The keystone of a democratic election is access to viable political options. The Palestinians’ choices were limited: an aging Fatah party that has done nothing but exacerbate the issue since its inception in 1954; a Hamas that is radical and undemocratic, but that has filled a social services void since 1987; Al Mustaqbal Party, a splinter group of Fatah formed on December 14, 2005, and whose founder and leader, Marwan Al-Barghouti, is serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail. How can we possibly talk of a democratic election within a tumultuous society whose psyche is ravaged by war, a society collectively enduring an upheaval caused by a chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome?

Hamas’ often inaccurate mortar and Fajr-3 rocket volleys into Israel cannot possibly be misconstrued as resistance. Despite their 45 kilometer range allowing it to reach Ashdod, Kiryat Gat, and even the outskirts of Beersheba, the Iranian-made third generation Katyusha rockets  yield low casualty rates and cause no more damage than a stable fly on a Shire horse. Hamas’ irrational military actions have nothing more than a symbolic value. Militarily, they require minimal containment from Israel; strategically, they are inconsequential to it.

The disparity between the two forces is evident and a comparison would be redundant; Israel’s retaliation is dramatically disproportionate and has historically being consistently so. Hamas is well aware the Mossad and Aman, the Israeli Directorate of Military Intelligence, know every nook and cranny of the Gaza Strip. Thanks mostly to their Palestinian informants, the Israelis have successfully been collecting on the locations of Hamas’ weapons caches, troop garrisons, and the political and military leadership residences and safe houses; they have been monitoring their communications and garroting their supply lines. Their objective, according to Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon, is to topple Hamas. Israel’s aversion to Hamas is shared by some neighboring Arab nations such as Jordan and Egypt.

International reactions to Israel’s aggression varied in intensity and substance. Hosni Mubarak, as he was meeting with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, sought to extend the truce between Israel and Hamas and lodged a formal complaint with Israel’s ambassador. But he also closed the border with Gaza blocking the only exit to safety. While anti-Israel demonstrations broke out in all the Arab capitals, the pro-US Arab governments scrambled to mount an adequate political response. Morocco’s government for instance, in order not to alienate itself from the uproar permeating the Arab street, cancelled a previously scheduled visit by Livni, while the Jordanian Foreign Minister met with her in Washington. As Israel’s attack on Gaza started, Libya welcomed Gene Cretz, a career US diplomat whose previous postings included Tel Aviv to Tripoli as the first US Ambassador to be posted in Libya in three decades. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently stated that the Bush administration’s efforts have laid a strong foundation upon which a lasting peace between the Palestinian and Israeli governments could flourish, condemned Hamas’s attacks on Israel and called for a “durable and sustainable” truce, but no immediate cease-fire. The Arab League held an inconsequential urgent meeting. The UN Security Council strongly condemned Israel’s excessive use of military force, but remains shackled by the US veto.

The support the US is providing to the Israeli operation is staggering. In addition to the unconditional veto and the “bunker buster’ missiles, the Pentagon deployed 120 US military personnel to Israel from EUCOM to provide weapon systems technical support; it is also providing Israel with 28,000 light anti-tank (LAW) tube launchers for its land forces and helping upgrade its defense forces’ Patriot anti-aircraft missiles.

The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party publically condemned the attack, but relish Israel’s aggression on a rival political party they would like to see disappear.

Hamas has no compunction using the civilian population as shields to their weapons caches and leadership and launching their mortars and missiles from heavily populated areas such as the Jabaliya well aware that Israeli anti-battery radars will lock on the point of origin of the launch and engage with suppressive anti-battery fire.

Undoubtedly, Israel is slaughtering the Palestinians, but Hamas is walking them to the slaughter house. The UN condamns; the US vetoes; the Iranians arm; the Arab governments shake Israeli hands in the back alleys of international politics while at home they deflect from their defectiveness by indulging their citizens to demonstrate against Israel – a healthy stress reliever; the Islamists collect donations to build more mosques in Gaza and recruit more suicide bombers; Palestinian children die.

Whose blame?

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

Harold Pinter: Curtain Down

After a protracted bout with cancer, the theatre iconoclast and 2005 Nobel Prize for literature winner Harold Pinter died December 24^th, 2008. Pinter was known not just as a playwright, but as an actor, theatre director, and a political activist. Since the 1950’s when he broke into the theatre business as a repertory actor using the stage name David Baron, Pinter wrote twenty-nine stage plays, twenty-six screen plays, and a substantial body of poetry, fiction, and essays. He also directed almost 50 stage, television and film productions. He is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. Pinter left instructions for his funeral; at his behest, actor and close friend Michael Gambon read from “No Man’s land” which Pinter wrote in 1974.

“And so I say to you, tender the dead as you would yourself be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life.”

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009