How long will the cease-fire in Gaza hold? Many question marks hang perilously over the one-way, one-sided truce announced by Israel. Israeli troops will stay in the Palestinian territory for now. Israel has not committed to a pullout deadline and warns it will respond with force if just a single rocket is fired at it. Israel has not lifted the Gaza economic blockade nor has it opened the border crossings, the key demands of Hamas that led to the refusal by Hamas to renew a six-month cease-fire that ended on Dec. 19. The latest reports say that Hamas will declare a cease-fire and give Israel a week to withdraw from Gaza. Hamas also wants Israel to open all of Gaza’s blockaded border crossings to allow in food and other needed items.
Ehud Olmert says Tel Aviv had halted the latest round of fighting that began on Dec. 27 because Israel’s goals had been achieved — “and even more.” The Israeli prime minister, no doubt, refers to the more than 1,300 Palestinians killed during the three-week monstrosity that also leveled most of Gaza’s infrastructure.
Was it the real goal? Was it to eliminate Hamas, halt rocket fire into Israel or reoccupy Gaza? Of course, there were reports of the US and Israel wanting to install Mahmoud Abbas in power in place of Hamas. Anyway, with no clear aims, Israel simply fell back on inflicting the greatest possible damage and destruction upon unarmed Palestinian civilians. So the victory that Olmert speaks of rings hollow. The outcome of this latest massacre will be no different from that of its predecessors. Actually, it will strengthen the spirit of resistance among the Palestinians. And not merely in Gaza. Gaza and the West Bank may have two administrative structures, but the people are one and the same and both are fighting for their freedom from Israeli colonialism.
Israel took it upon itself to decide when to start the onslaught on Gaza and now it has decided it should be stopped — but not before making its point. But does a country with the fourth largest army in the world, an arsenal of nuclear weapons and the unquestioning support of the US, the world’s only superpower, need to slaughter people like this to establish the principle of deterrence?
“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe,” said Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who once advised Ariel Sharon. His observation was not made out of any sympathy for the people of Gaza but as a warning of what to expect if the Palestinians refuse to accept peace on Israel’s terms. Has the “shock and awe” unleashed by Israel in the last three weeks made the Palestinians any more pliant? All indications are to the contrary.
“If we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day,” said Soffer, the Israeli demographer. No, a people don’t have to go on killing other people in order to remain alive. If history is any guide, it is such dangerous philosophies that attach no sanctity to human life that put the existence of nations and communities in the greatest moral and mortal danger.
