Gaza Madness II

The whole world has been looking at the situation in Gaza as either a tragedy or an inevitable consequence of repeated attacks, but I was recently enlightened with a different interpretation of events there. Basically I was shown the timing implications of these events and, to me, it all seems to make a lot more sense. 

Hamas have been firing rockets into Israel for months, since the last cease fire broke down. According to the Israeli spokesman on CNN last night the lack of reaction from Israel was a great testament to their willingness to reduce the impact of retaliation on the Gazans but then they just reached their breaking point and had to act. Maybe, maybe not. Another theory is that they timed this offensive to coincide with the departure of the outgoing American president. 

What the hell does Bush care about international conflicts right now? He's running down the clock and everyone is too busy asking him retrospective questions about his last eight years. Obama is getting in in four days and then all eyes will be on him. He will have to make a statement on the Gaza offensive and people will actually care because it's not bush. 

So my theory is that the offensive will end before the 20th. Well, it's not actually my theory, it's a friend of mine's who started calling it a week ago but he doesn't have a blog and I do so I'm stealing it for my own. The Israelis have started this massacre at a time when there is no way the US president would get involved in any sort of peace mediation and as such they have a few weeks of free reign. After the new Prez gets in and people start asking him questions about it the Israelis will stop it and claim a cease-fire has been reached. 

Why does this matter? Well, it takes away some legitimacy from Israel's claims that it had no choice to attack and kill all those people in Gaza because if fact they did have a choice and they chose to do it when the US would not get involved. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but much like I stole this theory from my friend, so to will I return its failure to him should it prove incorrect.  

Gaza Madness

Death Toll: 

Palestinians: 800

Israelis: 13

Enough said eh? 

Well, maybe not. 

I know that this situation is one of the most complex and long running conflicts around and it is usually foolish to look at any event outside of a historical context but I think this is an exception. The facts here are that there are now 800 Palestinians who are dead and many times more injured as a direct result of a decision by Israel. You simply cannot justify that. 

The phrase of the day is 'proportional use of force'. Israel says they will do whatever it takes to stop the rocket attacks by Hamas, but what does that mean? If they killed everyone in Gaza and bulldozed all the buildings down they would stop the attacks, but that would be considered disproportionate. There is clearly a point where the use of force is unjustified. Israel have clearly crossed that point. 

The most sickening aspect in my book is the use of air strikes in such a heavily populated area. The IDF PR spokespeople can talk about 'tactical strikes' all they want but everyone knows that bombs miss and terrorists don't stand out in empty carparks waiting to get bombed. So what you get is huge numbers of civilians killed. Innocent people, living in a shithole, having little hope of a better life, get blown to pieces because their neighbour in 13A is a member of Hamas. Not right in my book. It's not right when the Yanks do it in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's not right when the Israelis do it in Gaza. 

Of course what does it all matter when Israel doesn't really care what the world thinks of them. The UN Security Council can do nothing because the US has veto power and they are 100% behind Israel. So the offensive keeps on going and we get bored of it as it slips off the front pages. Gaza gets set back another 20 years as their infrastructure burns and 100,000 Gazans have a new reason to strap bombs to themselves to try and inflict at least some damage to the Military Goliath that keeps smashing them from next door. 

But Hamas are terrorists. You can speak of elected governments all you like but firing rockets blindly into an area populated by civilians is pretty much the definition of terrorism. And once you are labeled the big T it's pretty much all over in terms of Western support for your cause nowadays. The US started this in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was quickly followed by other countries around the world. America set the precedent that you can do anything you want if you are trying to protect your people from terrorism. So the Israelis have the best comeback of all to world condemnation, "What would your country do if rockets were raining down on your people?". You sure as hell know what the yanks would do, and the UK and probably Australia. But that still doesn't make it right in my book. Israel are swatting flies with a sledgehammer. 

And yes, the rocket attacks are like flies compared to the military might of Israel. They are unguided rockets so if they managed to his anything it is pure blind luck. I'm sure they do an excellent job of terrorising the population under fire, but so does shooting rockets from fighter jets and helicopter gunships only that method kills several orders of magnitude more people. Here is a quote from Israeli Defence Ministry in 2006 about the rockets:

"...but we need to remember that Qassams [the Hamas Rockets] are more a psychological than physical threat."

Basically, desperate people do desperate things. The Gazans are living in a hellhole of a refugee camp and are continually subject to Israeli blockades and military strikes. There comes a point where it becomes useless to talk about the rationality of certain actions. If you are continually near starvation, have no hope of a better life and are constantly victimised by a much more powerful enemy then you are not going to act in a rational way. There are two ways to look at it. Either Palestinians are inherently evil people who have no capacity to live in peace or they are desperate people who act or support those who act in violent ways because they see no other method of being heard. 

I have faith in all humanity so I choose the latter.