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Fallout from the Gaza Earthquake
by Patrick Seale The mass break-out of some 700,000 Palestinians from Israel’s open-air prison at Gaza has profoundly changed the political landscape of the Middle East. In magnitude, it can be compared to the impact on Europe of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nothing will be the same again. There can be no return to the past.
"We
have nothing to say to Hamas. We speak to them when we interrogate them
in our prisons." - Defense Minister, Ehud Barak
All the main actors in the drama -- Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, the European Union and the United States itself -- will have to rethink their policies in the light of new realities.
[Republished at PFP with Agence Global permission.]
The Palestinians' dramatic breakout from a sealed-off Gaza into
Egypt, in order to survive Israel's inhumane actions, has profoundly
changed the character of the Middle East crisis.
The most striking of the new realities is that the 1.5 million
inhabitants of Gaza -- who had been reduced to abject misery by Israel
cruel siege -- will never again accept being locked up. Gaza must be
allowed to breathe, to trade, to be supplied with the basic necessities
of life, and to live normally.
If Egypt, under Israeli and
American pressure, were to attempt to bottle up the Gazans once more,
this could trigger riots in Cairo, which could destabilize President
Husni Mubarak’s regime. Egypt must now walk a tightrope between Israeli
and American pressure and the new reality of its relations with the
Gazans.
The whole question of Gaza’s relations with the
outside world must now be reviewed. Israel can no longer dominate and
control every aspect of Gaza life -- its airspace and territorial
waters, its imports and exports, its taxation system, and all movements
in and out of the territory.
As Israel’s role shrinks,
Egypt’s will expand. The situation in Gaza provides Egypt with a major
opportunity. If it conquers its fears and acts boldly -- if it refuses
to be cowed by Israel and the United States -- it has a chance to
recover the leadership of the Arabs. With some vision and imagination,
Egypt could demonstrate to the world what can be made of Gaza and its
people, once they are allowed some freedom.
Egypt must
negotiate control of the Rafah crossing directly with Hamas. It can no
longer afford to be complicit in Israel’s siege of Gaza. Its own
Egyptian public opinion, as well as Arab opinion as a whole, will no
longer tolerate it. But it needs to go further than that.
Egypt
has to be Gaza’s advocate with the international community. Gaza’s
infrastructure, shattered by Israel, needs to be rebuilt. Its port and
airport need to be brought back to life, and reopened for business.
Egypt could benefit commercially, because Gaza is a considerable
market. Egypt could also benefit politically, because helping Gaza rise
from the dead could draw the poison from President Mubarak’s
conflict-ridden relations with the Muslim Brothers, who are his
regime’s major domestic opponents.
Saudi Arabia also has a
major role to play because of its moral and political authority and its
immense financial resources. Arab money will be needed to restore Gaza
to health. Egypt and Saudi Arabia must work together to mediate the
paralyzing feud between Hamas and Fatah, and unite Palestinian ranks.
They
must persuade Europe and the United States -- and a reluctant Israel --
that if Arab-Israeli peace talks are to get anywhere Hamas must be
included. Having broken out of physical isolation in Gaza, Hamas’
political isolation must now in turn be ended. There can be no forward
movement in the region towards either peace or security without
engagement with Hamas.
This is bad news for Mahmud Abbas,
President of the hapless Palestinian Authority and his Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad. They had hoped to show that their talks with Israel could
yield results. But they have failed to secure the removal of a single
West Bank checkpoint or the dismantling of a single illegal Israeli
outpost, let alone progress with the core issues of borders, Jerusalem
and refugees.
The boycott of Hamas -- imposed by Israel and
the United States and accepted by the cowardly Europeans after Hamas
won the democratic Palestinian elections of January 2006 -- was an act
of political folly. It can no longer be sustained. That EU diplomats
cannot speak directly to Hamas is an absurdity that should immediately
be corrected.
On a visit to Paris last week, Israel’s
Defence Minister Ehud Barak mouthed the old bankrupt thinking, thereby
doing his reputation no service. He told Le Figaro (January 26-27):
"We
have nothing to say to Hamas. We speak to them when we interrogate them
in our prisons."
The world knows what Israel’s ‘interrogations’ are
like. Barak is the prime architect of the policy of attempting to
starve Gaza into submission. This policy has failed.
Israel
has suffered a major political and strategic defeat. Its collective
punishment of a whole Arab population has backfired. The Palestinians
have not surrendered, but continue to resist. Israel’s image has been
badly damaged and its policies widely denounced as cruel, immoral, and
a blatant violation of international law.
In strategic
terms, Israel’s deterrent posture, on which it sets such store, has
suffered a blow vis-à-vis Hamas, much like the blow inflicted on it by
Hizbullah in the 34-day Lebanese war of 2006. These two non-state
actors -- Hamas and Hizbullah -- are challenging Israel with asymmetric
warfare on two fronts. Their message is simple: If you hit us, we will
hit you.
Israel’s pre-eminence has been dented, but its
military and security establishment, obsessed with the outdated notion
of military superiority over the whole region, refuses to accept it. It
still believes that the Palestinians will give up the struggle if
enough of them are killed.
In the two years 2006 and 2007,
Israel killed over 800 Palestinians, including 126 children, maimed and
wounded thousands of others, and smashed a whole society by its
repeated incursions, raids, and targeted assassinations. This month
alone it has killed over 60 Palestinians. The disproportion with
Palestinian action is striking: Since 2004, only eleven Israelis have
been killed by Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza.
Hamas
has repeatedly offered Israel a long-term truce of twenty years and
more, but on condition that Israel renounces violence and that the
cease-fire be extended to the West Bank as well as to Gaza. Hamas also
insists that Israel open the border crossings and release Hamas
parliamentarians from prison.
In other words, Hamas is
seeking a mutual ceasefire and a truce based on something like a
balance of power -- or a balance of terror. Israel’s leaders are far
from ready to accept such terms. They still harbour the illusion that
Palestinian nationalism can be crushed by brute force, much as they
believe that Hizbullah, too, can in due course be disarmed and
destroyed.
Several prominent Israelis have joined in the
outcry against their government’s policies. They include Jessica
Mantell, executive director of B’Tselem, the Israeli information center
for human rights in the Occupied Territories, and Jeff Halper,
coordinator of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions.
Halper
wrote last week:
"The desperate people who surged into Egypt… deserve
the respect and gratitude of every person who cherishes a better world
based on human rights and dignity. As an Israeli Jew, I have been
saddened and mortified that my own people, after all they have
experienced, cannot see what they are doing to others."
John
Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian
Territories, has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a "serious war
crime," for which its political and military officers should be
prosecuted and punished.
Only a sincere and serious effort
to make peace with all the Palestinians -- Hamas as well as the
Palestinian Authority -- on the basis of the 1967 borders and a shared
Jerusalem can ensure Israel’s long-term security. Unfortunately, there
is no sign that this obvious truth has dawned on either the Israeli
leadership or Israel’s hawkish American friends.
Patrick
Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of
The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the
Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Agence
Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, Le Monde
diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mona
Eltahawy, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong, Patrick Seale and Immanuel
Wallerstein.
-------------------
Released: 29 January 2008
Word Count: 1,273
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
-------------------
Writings 
The mass break-out of some 700,000 Palestinians from Israel’s open-air prison at Gaza has profoundly changed the political landscape of the Middle East. In magnitude, it can be compared to the impact on Europe of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nothing will be the same again. There can be no return to the past. 
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