Deadly Israeli Raid Draws Condemnation

From the New York Times:

Israel faced intense international condemnation and growing domestic questions on Monday after a raid by naval commandos that killed nine people, many of them Turks, on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.

Turkey, Israel’s most important friend in the Muslim world, recalled its ambassador and canceled planned military exercises with Israel as the countries’ already tense relations soured even further. The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session over the attack, which occurred in international waters north of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was flying home after canceling a Tuesday meeting with President Obama.

With street protests erupting around the world, Mr. Netanyahu defended the Israeli military’s actions, saying the commandos, enforcing what Israel says is a legal blockade, were set upon by passengers on the Turkish ship they boarded and fired only in self-defense. The military released a video of the early moments of the raid to support that claim.

Israel said the violence was instigated by pro-Palestinian activists who presented themselves as humanitarians but had come ready for a fight. Organizers of the flotilla accused the Israeli forces of opening fire as soon as they landed on the deck, and released videos to support their case. Israel released video taken from one of its vessels to supports its own account of events.

More here.

Have you ever felt like the Israel/Palestine saga makes absolutely no sense?

I mean, it's been going on for some twenty years longer than I've been alive, and it shows no sign of resolution. None. It looks like the conflict will continue for decades after I'm dead, longer even, maybe centuries. Why?

There are some popular answers in the West.

One is that Jews and Arabs have been in conflict for thousands of years and the modern version is just more of the same. Of course, this isn't true. Biblical descriptions of Arab/Jewish antipathy, the whole Abraham and Ishmael thing, are ancient, and most likely not even true. Really, today's conflict exists solely because of the establishment of the modern state of Israel back in the 1940s in what was once known as Palestine: whether or not it was fair or reasonable for Zionists to create an ethnically Jewish nation where there had been none for a couple of millennia is now a moot point because Israel today is a nation state, for better or worse, but, unsurprisingly, the majority Arab population that had been living there during the period of Jewish absence objected and continues to object. So it's the existence of Israel, not religion or ancient ethnic feuding, that lies at the heart of the conflict.

Another answer is that Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims generally, are crazy and evil. From this perspective, which dovetails very nicely with American post 9/11 anti-Muslim hysteria, there is no appeasement, no accommodation, no negotiation, no diplomacy that will please the bloodthirsty and psychotic Palestinians. Of course, this makes the Palestinians out to be comic book villain caricatures. The reality is that Palestinians are human beings, in most ways just like you and me. Some of them are, indeed, bloodthirsty and psychotic, just as some of us are. But most of them are simply trying to make a living, just like most of us.

Despite the shortcomings of these two explanations of the Israel/Palestine conflict, political discourse in the US, as well as corporate news media coverage, by and large, rely heavily on them. That's why the conflict appears to make no sense: the overall narrative in which individual events are contextualized is just plain wrong. Jews and Arabs have not been fighting for thousands of years. Palestinians are not crazy and evil.

So what's really going on?

In the end, this is what all international conflicts are about: land and resources. Long ago, Israel won the military aspect of the conflict, gaining control of all the land and resources they need. Later, they made peace with Egypt, taking away the only real threat to their existence as a nation. But they still had that persnickety Palestinian population with which to deal, and they've never figured out how to do it. They can't just kill them all. Never mind the moral implications; there's no fucking way the world would allow it, and Israelis wouldn't have the stomach for it either, what with the Holocaust and all. Nor can Israel simply drive the Palestinians out: there are already massive Palestinian refugee camps in surrounding Arab countries that have been there for decades. There's just no place for the Palestinians to go. Allowing them political power within the state of Israel is unacceptable to the people of Israel. Allowing them an actual state of their own is also politically unfeasible.

In short, given the political reality within Israel, there is no solution to the conflict. I mean, you know, no solution short of what is unthinkable to Israel, either sharing power, or actually allowing a Palestinian state with enough land and resources to be viable. Sadly, Israel appears to believe that there is a solution, very much like the one I mentioned above, forcing them out, but indirectly.

The great Israeli general and leader Moshe Dyan said this at some point in the early 70s, after it had become clear that Israel was triumphant:

We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.

And that, in a nutshell, describes official Israeli policy toward the Palestinians for the last forty years or so. Forced expulsion, in spite of the fact that there's literally no place to put the Palestinians, would greatly diplomatically harm Israel. But if the Palestinians leave of their own free will, no problem. I mean, they can't leave because there's no place to go, but Israeli foreign policy brains apparently haven't entirely thought it out, for whatever reasons. But, for better or worse, mostly worse, this is the plan. Make them live like dogs until they leave.

That's why life in the occupied territories is so brutal and harsh, with periodic raids by the Israeli military, periodic denial of resources and supplies, and daily humiliations manifest by strip searches, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, assassinations, and whatnot. That's why the Gaza strip is under military blockade. It's also why teenage Palestinian boys throw rocks at tanks; it's why Palestinian women sometimes strap bombs to themselves and blow up buses filled with Israelis.

Making the Palestinians live like dogs is the official policy of Israel. Unfortunately for Israel, it's doomed to fail, doomed to do nothing but make the Palestinians ever more desperate, ever more violent. And the Israelis, in turn, become ever more violent themselves. I've written about this cycle before in terms of our own "war on terror." It's a no win situation. Actually, it's a lose/lose situation. That the US supports Israel in this evil folly is shameful.

This vicious attack on human rights activists in international waters near Gaza, related in the article excerpted above, can only be understood in the "live like dogs" context.

Israel continually cracks down on Palestine, continually ups the pressure and violence, and has necessarily descended into a state of hardcore militancy concerning the Palestinians. The massacre may have been a dreadful mistake, or it may have been ordered from the highest levels of Israeli government. But given the Israeli mindset on how to deal with Palestine, it comes as absolutely no surprise. If you're a friend to Palestine, you're an enemy to Israel, so the gloves are off, whether it comes through official channels or not.

Just ask Rachel Corrie's parents. They know.

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