Medical facilities are in ruins, and most of the food, water, electricity, fuel and petrol supplies are interrupted whilst thousands of people are left without shelter because so many houses, schools and hospitals have been destroyed. There is no end to the description of the destruction of the Gaza Strip or of the sufferings of the Palestinians of Gaza, and the point of this article is not to provide facts and numbers, which would only provide an incomplete picture of the situation, but to put this humanitarian tragedy in perspective by emphasising the historical context of the invasion of Gaza.
Some readings and interpretations of this so-called “war” have already been provided in this same newspaper by Louis Sallerson and Erik Schulwolf (The Amherst Student, Jan. 28, 2009). Sallerson wondered about the impact on the prospects for peace that the Israeli invasion of Gaza would have, concluding his article on the hopeful note that peace could be saved by an Israeli withdrawal from settlements and “strong leaders” able to maintain the “moderation of the Palestinian national movement.”
This assumes that Israeli settlers are willing to leave the West Bank. Unfortunately, as the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz (March 8, 2009) reported, the “number of settlers living in the West Bank increased by 4 percent in 2007, and The Jerusalem Post (Jan. 28, 2009) pointed out that “the settler population grew from 270,000 in 2007 to 285,000 in 2008.” Hardly a sign of good will.
The second assumption of Sallerson’s article is that Palestinian leaders have influence over a homogenous territory and that the Palestinian national movement is unified and follows the same direction. Palestine was under Ottoman domination, then under British mandate until 1948 — when the State of Israel was created. After the 1948 war, what was called “Palestine” was the Gaza Strip, under Egyptian administration, and the West Bank of the Jordan River, under Jordanian administration. Both areas were invaded in 1967 and placed under Israeli domination. Finally, this domination was further extended by the Oslo Agreement (1993-1995), which split Palestine into two separate dots on a map. This does not mention the illegal settlements (U.N. Resolution 242) in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, the system of separation of roads, or the checkpoints, which totally forbid any kind of territorial continuity and prevent the Palestinian people from accessing elementary things, such as having a job in another part of the Palestinian “Territory” or being with family and friends. Trying to find a united Palestinian national movement — on discontinuous territory — or hoping for “moderation” in these conditions turns out to be quite unlikely.
These references to history are not at all a digression from the current events in the Gaza Strip. If one wants to grasp the origin of the violence in Israel and Palestine, one need consider the long — too long — series of colonisation and partitions of this area. One need think about the endless succession of unfair international treaties and the abandonment of the Palestinian people by other Arab nations, as well as by the international community. What of the Palestinian people now? The historian Elias Sanbar describes Palestinians as “invisible,” “silent,” “absent,” “denied” (Figures du Palestinien, 2004).
As we powerlessly witness this humanitarian catastrophe, we may want to ask ourselves if the Palestinians’ anger is abnormal. What happens when someone like you and me is deprived of his liberty? Or more precisely: What happens when the only thing you have known for years is humiliation? The social scientist Ghassan Hage describes humiliation as “the experience of being psychologically demeaned — treated like less than a human being, by someone more powerful than you, without a capacity to redress the situation” (Public Culture, 2003). For more than 60 years, Palestinians have been ignored and stepped upon. Noam Chomsky writes: “They [the Palestinians] have neither wealth, nor power, so they are granted no rights, by the most elementary principles of statecraft. […] The status of Palestinians has been even lower than that of other worthless people; their value is not zero, but negative” (Z Magazine, Oct. 1993). In these conditions, it is very hard to believe, as suggested by Sallerson, that “the Palestinian people, by all accounts, blame Hamas for this crisis.” On the contrary, Hamas, the only Palestinian party that embodies resistance and Palestinian national pride at the same time as it provides social services (schools, hospitals, etc…), will probably gain in popularity, especially amongst the poorest layers of the Palestinian population.
This is hardly surprising. Put in a Middle Eastern context, the area that Western powers define as the “Middle East” has for several centuries now been colonised by the French and British empires. Entire regions have been subjected to mandates supposedly to teach “those” people our Western conception of democracy and government. This has not ended with French and British political disengagement from the region. The United States invaded Iraq (twice) in the name of democracy. Whether the U.S. recognises it or not, the government of Hamas is a democratically-elected government. Refusing to consider Hamas as a legitimate actor in negotiations will inevitably nurture further feelings of humiliation and anger amongst Palestinians.
This is the story that is rarely told; Schulwolf provided an eloquent example of the usual short-sighted vision of the Israeli-Palestinian “war.” A war presupposes a conflict between two armed forces. As Schulwolf recognises, “Hamas’ rockets cannot cause mass civilian deaths.” On the other hand, Israeli forces can, and did. The appalling discrepancy between the number of Palestinian victims and the number of Israeli victims (as a consequence of the Jan. 2009 attack against Gaza — but also since even before the foundation of Israel in 1948) is one possible indicator of the inequality between the Palestinians and the Israeli Army. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) is recognised as the fourth most powerful military in the world. The Palestinian Authority (the simulacrum of Palestinian state created after the 1995 Oslo Agreement) barely has a weak police force and no army. Why are we even talking of a “war”?
Schulwolf lengthily describes the range of Hamas’ rockets as “preventing its citizens from living any semblance of a normal life” and discusses the appropriateness of the Israeli response from the point of view of international law. Bringing up numbers, facts, figures, even Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention, shows clearly the incredible military-legal armada at Israel’s disposal which, along with unconditional U.S. support, is just one more sign of the imbalance of the forces. As a quick side track, one might want to recall that the U.N. Security Council issued several resolutions considering the settlements illegal and demanding a withdrawal from the settlements (Resolution 242, blatantly ignored since 1967), or that the same Fourth Geneva Convention confirms the right to return (denied to Palestinians since 1948), or finally that the Second Geneva Convention forbids the destruction of hospitals and medical supplies (how many hospitals destroyed just this past month?). Hamas is violating international law by throwing rockets into Israel? Perhaps defending this claim, as well as justifying the Israeli attack on Gaza, would be easier if Israel itself respected these international laws and conventions.
Schulwolf continues by describing the “tactics utilized by Hamas,” i.e., “wittingly plac[ing] weapons-smuggling tunnels, rocket launchers and supplies of missiles in those places,” that is to say “those sites promised to swing international opinion in the Palestinians’ favor.” Guess what? There is no such thing as a “surgical strike” or a “reasonable aim” (vocabulary commonly used by the IDF — and U.S. troops in Iraq) when a million and a half people live crammed on 139 square miles — one of the highest density areas on the planet. Even if Hamas did not use specific sites supposed to attract international favour on the Palestinian situation, and Palestinians really could do with more support from the international community, it would be impossible to avoid buildings, such as hospitals or U.N. schools. Just look at pictures of the Gaza Strip. The density is such that an Israeli military officer commented that from satellite images, Gaza looked like New York City (quoted by Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land, 2006).
These “weapon-smuggling tunnels” are also, and especially, used to smuggle food, medical supplies and petrol into Gaza, since Gaza has been under military blockade for years. The tunnels are back to work, that is to say that “food, fuel and other goods are moving through several dozen tunnels that are still operational” (BBC, 22/01/2009). Israel claims that one of the goals of the military “operation” was to close the tunnels, probably justifying more than 1,300 immediate victims. The problem is that these tunnels, due to Israel’s more-than-tight control of all the borders with the Gaza Strip, are the only way the Palestinians can get the supplies to survive. Finally, Schulwolf almost suggests that Palestinians should be thankful for the daily three-hour halt in the bombardments (which leaves 21 hours of uninterrupted bombing in a row, what a day!) or warnings to Palestinians via pamphlets that their neighbourhood would be bombed. In fact, most of the warnings were delivered hardly 10 minutes before the bombings. Hopefully, the Palestinians in the targeted areas were fast runners so they could escape before their homes were destroyed.
I am not a military expert, nor a specialist of international law, so I am not to judge whether Israel is guilty of war crimes or not (as some media outlets are suggesting). However, when reading about this massacre and the occupation of the Palestinian Territories, we may want to do more than “sympathise” with the Palestinians. The Palestinians are trapped within an encircled and fragmented territory, without enough resources to maintain their economy and society. Whenever the Palestinian economy appears to be somehow progressing, the mere traces of these progresses are annihilated. Politically, Israel, backed by the U.S., has obstinately refused to recognise Hamas as a potential partner for negotiation. This whole military attack on one of the world’s most densely-populated areas was used to teach a lesson to Hamas and to the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, carrots and sticks were not used but rather missiles and tanks.
The historical background of the Israeli attack, going back to the British mandate and the first days of the separation of the Jewish and the Arab communities, should make us more aware of the unjust and tragic situation of the Palestinians. Frantz Fanon warned European colonial powers that “no attempt should be made to encase man, for it is his destiny to be set free” (Black Skin, White Masks, 1952). If being “set free” does not occur, is there a problem when Palestinians try to set themselves free? Do we have a problem with Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty, or give me death” speech? Do we have a problem with New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” licence plates? We certainly do not. So why do we have such a big problem with Hamas? Why can’t we acknowledge the Palestinians’ existence and the validity of their claims? Why can’t we say anything about the immense injustice of which they are the victims? Meanwhile, the Palestinians of Gaza are still deprived of basic human essentials: no water, no food, no electricity, no possibility of evacuating sewage, no medical supplies, etc. Gaza is still dying.