After two weeks of intensive military activity, the Israeli offensive on Gaza has brought the Israelis no closer to their stated goal of freeing their captured soldier. But Tel Aviv is not particularly complaining. Israel is delivering mighty blows in Gaza, on the regime and people alike, and that appears to be ample compensation. What began as a campaign to secure the release of an abducted soldier has taken on additional aims and produced added results that Israel could not have dreamt of achieving otherwise. In response to the abduction, power stations are being blown up, sewage and water systems are forced to grind to a halt, bridges are destroyed, half a government and a quarter of a Parliament are kidnapped, and all this is inflicted on a hungry people who are under siege in what is effectively a huge open prison. The Haaretz admission, that a state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization, is as courageous as it is true. The Israeli government has relegated the declared goal of freeing Gilad Shalit to a secondary issue, with toppling the Hamas-led government as the real target. The purpose of the current Israeli assault on Gaza is not to rescue one Israeli soldier. He is just an excuse, applied retroactively. The incursion is not about the superior value of an Israeli life, but about Israeli superiority, full stop. The former value is simply a corollary.
Because Israel, by its own account, is practicing terrorism, Hamas is well within its rights to battle back. The capturing of the Israeli soldier is a classic act of resistance sanctioned by international law. The Israeli foreign minister herself admitted as much, saying those who attack soldiers cannot be described as terrorists. Tzipi Livni did not complete the sentence, but conversely, those who attack civilians are nothing but terrorists. The real infrastructure of terrorism is the Israeli occupation and all the brutality that is served up with such policy.
It is difficult to see how Shalit can be released except through negotiations, as has been the case in the past. Avi Dichter, Israel’s minister of public security, alluded to that history, suggesting Israel could release some Palestinian prisoners as a good will gesture once Shalit is freed and Palestinians stop rocket attacks from Gaza. The only way the mortars will be silenced is in the context of a mutually binding cease-fire in which Israel halts the killings of innocents and lifts its blockades. And the only way that situation can be brokered is through negotiations with Hamas.
But how can Israel be stopped and its leaders brought to account when it defies unequivocal retribution from the world’s governing body, when it flatly turns down the offer of a truce? Not that Israel cares about the answer, preferring that the question remains unanswered as it indulges further in its policies of repression against the backdrop of shameful international silence. Apart from Saturday’s plea by Kofi Annan for a halt to the siege, his second in as many days and which are becoming increasingly blunt, it would not be a stretch to interpret much of the world’s muteness as indifference and in other parts of the globe, a not too discreet nod of approval.
