Published on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 by Inter Press Service

Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum

by Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH - "Standing United with the People of Gaza" is the theme of this week's Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off in Toronto and another 39 cities across the globe Sunday.

A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN's Anti-Racism Conference, Durban 2 next month amidst swirling controversy.

Both Canada and the U.S. are boycotting the Durban 2 conference in protest over what they perceive as a strongly anti-Israel agenda.

The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city Durban in 2001, saw the Israeli and U.S. delegates storm out of the conference, accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel.

U.S. and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel. However, international criticism of Israel's three-week bloody offensive into Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life into a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

The BDS campaign followed a 2005 appeal from over 170 Palestinian civil society groups to launch a divestment campaign "as a way of bringing non- violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law."

In the wake of the BDS campaign, critics of Israel have lashed out at what they see as parallels between South Africa's former apartheid system and Israeli racism.

They point to Israel's discriminatory treatment of ethnic Palestinians within Israel who hold Israeli passports, and the extensive human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories by Israeli security forces.

During the apartheid era, ties between Israel and South Africa were extremely strong, with the Jewish state helping to train South Africa's security forces as well as supplying the regime in Pretoria with weapons.

Meanwhile, Toronto, where the Israel Apartheid Week movement was born, will hold forums, film shows, cultural events and street protests to mark IAW week. One of the guest speakers is former South African intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils.

Kasrils is no stranger to controversy. His parents fled from Tzarist Russian pogroms carried out against Jews, and immigrated to South Africa at the beginning of the last century.

During white rule, as a member of the African National Congress (ANC), working both in exile and underground in South Africa, he was reviled by many white South Africans as a "terrorist".

He has also been labelled a self-hating Jew by many Israelis and South African Jews due to the strong stand he and the ANC have taken against Israel's policies.

Meanwhile, in New York, prominent IAW activist Nir Harel, a member of Israel's Anarchists Against the Wall, will also be courting controversy. His group regularly protests against Israel's separation barrier, which divides Israel proper from the Palestinian West Bank.

The barrier deviates significantly from the Green Line, the internationally recognised border, into Palestinian territory where it has swallowed huge amounts of land, dispossessing farmers from their agricultural crops.

Another Israeli activist, Matan Cohen, has been central in the first U.S. college implementing a divestment campaign against Israel. Hampshire College in Massachusetts called for divestment from over 200 companies that the college says is responsible for violating its socially responsible investment policies in Israel.

The companies which provide the Israeli military with equipment and services in the occupied West Bank and Gaza include Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and Terex.

A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) petition for divestment was supported by more than 800 students, professors, and alumni at the college, that has only 1,350 students.

Hampshire college may be small but it has been big in social activism. It was also the first U.S. educational institution to divest from South Africa, ten years before other universities and colleges followed suit.

U.S. campus activism is spreading. The University of Rochester in New York and members of the community are also involved in boycott activities.

Students from Macalester College, a liberal arts college located in St. Paul, Minnesota, occupied the Minnesota Trade Office in January and then picketed there Feb. 6, demanding that the state end all trade with Israel. New York University students too began a divestment campaign.

Professors and university employees in Quebec, Canada, endorsed the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees' call to boycott Israel.

SJP's actions at Hampshire College follow similar moves by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education in the UK.

In London, students held sit-ins at Goldsmith University and the London School of Economics, among other institutions. Similar protests have spread throughout the U.K., with some winning concessions from university officials.

At Manchester University, about a thousand students joined a campaign equating Israel with apartheid-era South Africa, and called on the administration and student union to boycott Israeli companies and support Gaza and the BDS movement.

In Australia the University of Western Sydney's Student Association recently joined the international BDS campaign. International trade union support for political action against Israel has been seen from Spain to South Africa.

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, under directive of the Council of South African Trade Unions, refused recently to unload an Israeli ship which docked in Durban, despite threats and pressure from both management and the Israeli lobby.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, with 600,000 members in 55 unions, is preparing to start a boycott of Israeli goods.

Meanwhile, the biggest trade union in Canada's Ontario province, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), was forced under pressure to moderate its call for a boycott of all academic institutions in Israel. Instead it called for a boycott of Israeli institutions engaged in research which aided the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

Published on Thursday, March 5, 2009 by Inter Press Service

Israel: Slowly Beating Back the Persecution Psyche

Analysis by Daan Bauwens

TEL AVIV - A new study shows that Israelis are moving towards an understanding of the Palestinian position on the conflict, even though a vast number still hold on to simplistic notions about good Israelis and bad Arabs.

Political psychologist Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal at Tel Aviv University together with researcher Rafi Nets-Zehngut examined formal and popular collective memory in Israel. Formal collective memory is representations of the past in official government documents, books and textbooks; it is the 'official' explanation of events. Popular collective memory is the repertoire of memory, representations and narratives of events people carry with them.

The study points to important positive elements that keep hope for peace alive, as biased and victimised narratives begin to make room for critical, unbiased perspectives.

The study was conducted in the summer of 2008 and collected information among a representative sample of 500 Jewish Israeli adults. In the survey 47 percent believed that refugees were expelled in 1948, which is more than the 40.8 percent who believe the old Zionist version that the refugees left on their own initiative. Apparently the Nakba, the Palestinian word to describe expulsion from what is now Israel, is beginning to be recognised by more and more Israeli Jews.

Jewish history books and even some local schoolbooks provide up to date information on the subject. 'Tekuma', a television programme about Israel's first 50 years, even featured the expulsion of the Arabs.

Also, 46 percent of those surveyed thought that responsibility for the conflict is more or less evenly divided between Jews and Arabs, while 43 percent thought Palestinians are mainly to blame, and 4.3 percent that the Jews are mainly to blame.

Rafi Nets-Zehngut stresses the progress Jewish society has made. "We are moving away from a Zionist, biased version of the facts, which according to me is the most important finding of the study," he told IPS. "It is surprising: societies mostly change their biased version of the facts only after the conflict is solved. We are already changing our perspective, Israel's Jews are moving in the direction of critical versions and therefore peace, although we are still in the middle of the conflict."

"The conflict today isn't any more what it was 30 years ago," Prof. Bar-Tal told IPS. "We did not move enough in order to have an agreement. And the majority of Israeli Jews still hold on to a simplistic version of the facts. But there is a substantial critical minority in Israel that is able to look in the mirror and see the other side of history."

Old notions, however, remain strong among many. Asked the reasons for the failure of peace negotiations in 2000 between then prime minister Ehud Barak and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 56.6 percent agreed with a view that "Barak offered Arafat a very generous peace agreement, but Arafat declined because he did not want peace." Only 25.4 percent believed both parties were responsible for the failure, and 3 percent said Barak was not forthcoming enough in meeting the needs of Palestinians. Sixteen percent said they did not know the answer.

About 45 percent of Israeli Jews believe the second Intifadah, the Palestinian uprising, broke out in 2000 because Arafat had planned a conflict in advance. Only 25 percent thought the Intifadah broke out as a consequence of popular protest, even though this was the viewpoint of the Israeli National Security Service Shin Bet.

Forty percent of the polled Jewish Israelis did not know that at the end of the 19th century Arabs were an absolute majority among the inhabitants of Israel. According to Prof. Bar-Tal, the results show a general unwillingness among large sections of the Israeli Jewish public to open up to alternative information even though such information is easily available.

But neither these findings, nor an approval rate of 81 percent for the Gaza war are surprising, Prof. Bar-Tal told IPS. "Ask the Belgians what happened in Congo, the Americans what happened to the Indians, the French about Algeria or the British what they did in Kenya. It usually takes people lots of years to face reality."

Prof. Bar-Tal says the simplistic view most Jewish Israelis hold is a consequence of living daily in the face of ongoing violent conflict. A socio- psychological infrastructure is developed for the sake of self-preservation that on the one hand is functional in coping with the conflict, but on the other hand feeds it.

Many Israelis do not want to acknowledge or recognise their own misdeeds or atrocities, says Bar-Tal. "They prefer not to admit facts that put them in a negative light. Therefore the collective memory becomes a black-and-white story, made up to glorify their own side and to blame and de-legitimise the other side."

The result is the acceptance of an 'ethos of war', low level of critical thinking, belief in traditional values, high identification with a Jewish identity, and support for aggressive steps towards Palestinians.

The Jewish sense of victimisation is an additional source of violence, says Bar-Tal. "This strong feeling runs very deeply in Jewish culture and tradition. It begins with a thousand years of diaspora. Obviously the Holocaust added a very important part to the Jewish identity, based on victimhood. And now, in this conflict we are again presented as victims, which plays a very important role in the Israeli psyche. It leads to a siege mentality, lack of trust towards the outside world, the fear of vengeance, focusing on your own suffering and neglecting the suffering of others."

Together, the ethos of war and the Jewish sense of victimisation feed a vicious circle of violence. Israelis as well as Palestinians are psychologically so deeply immersed in the culture of conflict that it might be impossible to overcome the psychological obstacles to peace without help from the outside world, the study suggests.

"The world absolutely has to engage more actively in the peace process," says Bar-Tal. "After the last war in Gaza, mistrust and hatred have grown tremendously. Ironically enough, this is one of the only achievements of the war. I personally think it is very difficult, if not impossible, for us to reach an agreement on our own. I don't see how anyone at this time can evacuate settlers, how anyone among us can convince the Israeli or Palestinian public the other side is honest and trustworthy."

Published on Friday, March 6, 2009 by Haaretz (Israel)

Pots of Urine, Feces in the Refrigerator - How IDF Troops Vandalized Gaza Homes

by Amira Hass

GAZA - We had already visited this house, belonging to the Abu Eida family. It is the only one of the family's nine large houses that remained standing at the eastern edge of the city of Jabalya following Operation Cast Lead. The demolition of the family's houses and its four cement factories spells the loss of 40 years of hard work.

One Hebrew word scrawled on a wall tells the story of the 10 days when young Israeli soldiers became the ostensible prison wardens of five people. The youngest is Suheila Masalha, 55; the eldest is her mother Fatma, who is perhaps 85 or 90 or older. The only man is her brother Mohammed, 65, who is paralyzed and dependent on the women of his family. And there were two more women from the Abu Eida family - Rasmiya, 70, who owns the house, and her sister-in-law Na'ama, 56, who is blind.

"Jail" ("mikhla'a" in Hebrew), wrote the soldiers on the wall of the room where they kept the man and the four women. They did not allow them to use the toilet, but forced them to use all kinds of plastic containers kept in the room, for nine of the days.

From other graffiti you can conclude that it was the soldiers of the Golani Brigade - who were drafted in August 2007, and in January and March of 2008 - who sketched orientation maps on the walls of nearly every room. For example, "Position: entry. Direction: southeast," and a few squares that indicated the houses in the area. "Us," or "We are here," or just an X marked on square No. 5 - Rasmiya Abu Eida's house that became an Israel Defense Forces base.

The soldiers kept kosher, judging by the words "meat" and "dairy" scrawled in red on the kitchen cabinets. Maybe someone was kidding around, or maybe someone thought this was going to be their base for several more months, because they also wrote "Kosher for Passover" on one of the cupboards. Also in red.

White flags

The Masalha family lived in a kind of tin shack and raised their sheep near the Abu Eida family (the shack and the sheep were destroyed). On the evening of Saturday, January 3, when the Israeli ground incursion began, they fled the shelling and sought refuge with the neighbors in concrete houses that seemed safer. But the shells and shooting from close range only increased and the children were scared; they cried and screamed and members of the extended family decided to head west, on foot, with white flags.

The adults carried the children - without suitcases and clothing, and even without ID cards. There was no one to carry Fatma Masalha and her son Mohammed, who remained behind. Na'ama and her sister-in-law Rasmiya decided to stay with the guests who had sought shelter. That was on Sunday, January 4, at around 3 P.M.

A spacious, well-kept, generously furnished home awaited the soldiers on the following morning, when they arrived. There are other houses like this in Gaza, especially on the agricultural lands in the outskirts, which over the years have become bourgeois areas. These are exactly the places where the signs of shelling and the fires caused by the phosphorous bombs made clear to the civilians that they should leave if they held their lives dear.

On January 18, when the forces pulled out, similar sights awaited people whose homes had become military bases in their absence. There were bullet-pocked walls, ripped-up sofas and armchairs, smashed televisions and computers, shards of glass and porcelain dishes and broken wooden thresholds. Clothing was ripped up. And there were mountains of very Israeli garbage - empty tin cans, cardboard boxes, empty bags of potato chips and chocolate, and full bags of sugar and raspberry-flavored drinking powder. Everything was kosher for Passover under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate. And there were Hebrew newspapers, including the January 9 issue of the army magazine Bamahane.

In one house they left behind lots of unopened canned goods. The local people assumed that commanding army officers had stationed themselves there, as well as in other houses where there was no racist graffiti and family belongings hadn't been vandalized. Remnants of ammunition and IDF equipment were also found in and around many houses, as well as books of Psalms, the "Wisdom of the Sages" and "Hafetz Chaim," which is about rabbinical laws concerning slander and gossip.

Like ants

In the midst of all of this were plastic bottles of urine and many closed bags - in some houses, olive-colored ones - of excrement. People assumed that the commanders stayed there. There are houses where excrement was smeared on the walls, or where dry piles of it were found in corners. In many cases, the smells indicated that soldiers had urinated on piles of clothing or inside a washing machine. In all the houses the toilets were overflowing and clogged, and there was filth all around. When the Abu Eidas returned to house No. 5 in Jabalya, they discovered pots of urine and excrement in the refrigerator.

"Like ants, so many of them," says Na'ama, an Arabic teacher, of the soldiers who came into their home on January 5. She recalls that the soldiers had to be told that Mohammed could not put his hands up, and that they ordered the residents to strip. (Na'ama refused and one soldier made do with prodding and probing; they told Suheila to strip because they thought she was wearing an explosives belt.) The soldiers were amazed that the house was so large - "For just five people" - and kept saying that "this is Hamas money." They also asked, "Where are the tunnels, where is Hamas, if everyone left why didn't you leave?"

The soldiers ordered the five people to go into one room and stay there. They let them take some food: bread, olives, oil, water. They confiscated the mobile phones when they saw Na'ama holding one: "You want to call your brother to come with Hamas, to shoot at us," said one of the soldiers. "Liar," they said a lot, as well as "shut up, you donkey," in broken Arabic. They imitated her mockingly when she said "Ya Rab" ("Oh God"). The five prisoners could not pray, as they were not allowed to clean themselves up before prayer and were forbidden to stand up. They were given two blankets, which were not enough, especially because the windows were smashed and the door was always open. A soldier always sat next to the door aiming his rifle at them. All five still have colds.

"You'll come out when we leave," was the answer given to Na'ama after she asked them to contact the Red Cross. Apparently, one soldier spoke fluent Arabic, another could speak some and others knew a phrase or two.

Was there anyone among the soldiers who was a little bit nice? "To my regret, no," Na'ama says. In a number of other houses or neighborhoods people who preferred not to flee encountered some soldiers who were somewhat courteous. In none of the other houses were people forbidden to use the toilet, but the men's hands were bound for two or three days. There are houses where the captives had no food for two or three days or no water for hours. "We don't have food either," said the soldiers in Izbet Abed Rabbo.

Soldiers broke down doors of grocery stores and helped themselves to candy and snacks. There were some who handed out candy to children; sometimes soldiers asked a child whom they forced to accompany them, as a human shield, to hand it out.

On the morning of January 14, the Red Cross came to pick up the five inhabitants of the "jail" in house No. 5. A short while beforehand, the soldiers had brought a portable gas burner in so Rasmiya could make hot tea, which they had not let her do before. "Maybe because the officer came," Na'ama says.

The IDF Spokesman's Office said in response that soldiers in Gaza were instructed in advance not to harm personal property unless there was a need to do so for operational purposes. "Not only did the soldiers not prevent the Palestinians from eating," the office said, "but they shared their army rations with them. The IDF has not received any reports about breaking into grocery stores. Concerning the claims about graffiti, the IDF sees this as a very serious matter, which contradicts the values and norms in which the soldiers are educated."

© Copyright 2009 Haaretz

Published on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 by The Independent/UK

Fighting for Life: American Peace Activist Shot by Israelis

Parents demand inquiry into how son was critically injured by tear gas canister

by Donald Macintyre

The parents of an American peace activist publicly appealed yesterday for a full investigation into how their son was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas canister by Israeli security forces.

Tristan Anderson, 38, remains in critical condition after three brain operations at Tel Hashomer hospital in Israel, as a result of the shooting which came at the end of a regular joint Arab-Jewish demonstration against the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank village of Ni'lin.

Activists say the canister round - with a range of more than 400 metres - was fired directly at Mr Anderson from about 60 metres as he was standing with three or four other activists in the centre of the village. They say he was well away from the barrier where the main protest had taken place earlier on 13 March.

Mr Anderson suffered a multiple fracture to his skull, severe injury to the frontal lobe of his brain, and a collapsed eye socket

The peace activists insist that neither Mr Anderson, nor his immediate companions, were throwing stones or posing any threat to the forces.

Mr Anderson's mother. Nancy, who flew from California with her husband Michael to be at her son's bedside, said yesterday that to fire at peace protesters was "really horrifying".

She said that tear gas canisters are designed to be fired in an arc to disperse demonstrators, but that the canister had been "shot right at his head".

"We want the Israeli government to publicly take full responsibility for the shooting of our son," she said.

"I don't carry any negative feelings towards the soldier who shot our son. All I feel is love for Tristan and fear for his recovery."

Mrs Anderson praised the "excellent" care by medics at Tel Hashomer.

Mr Anderson, who had a seasonal job in Oakland California working for a trade union setting up conventions, was in Israel for the first time.

He was with his Jewish girlfriend on a three-month trip, after which he intended to join his parents on a holiday in Europe. He had taken part in peace demonstrations in Iraq before the US invasion in 2003, and in El Salvador and Guatemala.

"He came to understand for himself what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was about," said Michael Anderson, his father. "It is ironic that the country in which he was shot is a democracy where it is supposed to be a duty for everyone to follow their conscience.

"We want to know what happened and we want justice for our son."

Jonathan Pollack, an activist with the Israeli "Anarchists against the Wall" organisation said the incident had taken place about one kilometre from the barrier after demonstrators had started to disperse. While stones had been thrown earlier during the protest, Mr Pollack, who first met Mr Anderson at a demonstration in Prague during the World Bank-IMF conference in 2000, said: "I have known Tristan for nine years and I know he was not throwing stones at that point or any other point."

The activists say the gas canister, of a kind brought into service only four months ago, was labelled in Hebrew "40mm bullet special/long range."

Four Palestinian residents of Ni'lin - including a 10-year-old boy - were killed during demonstrations last year against the barrier, which will divide villagers from 400 acres of their farmland, when it is complete.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, who has filed a formal demand for an official investigation, said that of some 120 criminal investigations brought against security force members since the beginning of the intifada, there had only been one conviction - against the Arab-Israeli soldier who shot British peace activist Tom Hurndall dead in Gaza.

Nobody was brought to trial in two other cases involving the deaths of foreign nationals. They were Rachel Corrie, who like Mr Hurndall was an International Solidarity Movement volunteer. The Israeli military has not accepted responsibility for her death. In the case of British film-maker James Miller, Israeli authorities made a substantial cash payment to his family this year, which came nearly six years after his death.

The Israeli military said that on the day Mr Anderson was shot, some 400 rioters, "some masked", had thrown "a massive number of rocks" at their forces. They said protesters had thrown firebombs, and directed burning tyres towards the forces, and that 73 personnel were injured in 2008 at or near Ni'lin. A spokesman said: "The violent acts of the protesters force Israeli police officers and soldiers to use internationally acceptable riot dispersal means."

Copyright 2008 Independent News and Media Limited

Published on Thursday, January 8, 2009 by Foreign Policy in Focus

War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation

by Steve Niva

Israel has repeatedly claimed that it had "no choice" but to wage war on Gaza on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and had "tried everything in order to avoid this military operation," as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni put it.

This claim, however, is widely at odds with the fact that Israel's military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault. This wasn't a war of "no choice," but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli actions played the major role in instigating.

Israel has a long history of deliberately using violence and other provocative measures to trigger reactions in order to create a pretext for military action, and to portray its opponents as the aggressors and Israel as the victim. According to the respected Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz in his recent book, Defending the Holy Land, Israel most notably used this policy of "strategic escalation" in 1955-1956, when it launched deadly raids on Egyptian army positions to provoke Egypt's President Nasser into violent reprisals preceding its ill-fated invasion of Egypt; in 1981-1982, when it launched violent raids on Lebanon in order to provoke Palestinian escalation preceding the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and between 2001-2004, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly ordered assassinations of high-level Palestinian militants during declared ceasefires, provoking violent attacks that enabled Israel's virtual reoccupation of the West Bank.

Israel's current assault on Gaza bears many trademark elements of Israel's long history of employing "strategic escalation" to manufacture a major crisis, if not a war.

Making War 'Inevitable'

The countdown to a war began, according to a detailed report by Barak Raviv in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak started planning the current attack on Gaza with his chiefs of staff at least six months ago - even as Israel was negotiating the Egyptian brokered ceasefire with Hamas that went into effect on June 19. During the subsequent ceasefire, the report contends, the Israeli security establishment carefully gathered intelligence to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, engaged in operational deception, and spread disinformation to mislead the public about its intentions.

This revelation doesn't confirm that Israel intended to start a war with Hamas in December, but it does shed some light on why Israel continuously took steps that undermined the terms of the fragile ceasefire with Hamas, even though Hamas respected their side of the agreement.

Indeed, there was a genuine lull in rocket and mortar fire between June 19 and November 4, due to Hamas compliance and only sporadically violated by a small number of launchings carried out by rival Fatah and Islamic Jihad militants, largely in defiance of Hamas. According to the conservative Israeli-based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center's analysis of rocket and missile attacks in 2008, there were only three rockets fired at Israel in July, September, and October combined. Israeli civilians living near Gaza experienced an almost unprecedented degree of security during this period, with no Israeli casualties.

Yet despite the major lull, Israel continually raided the West Bank, arresting and frequently killing "wanted" Palestinians from June to October, which had the inevitable effect of ratcheting up pressure on Hamas to respond. Moreover, while the central expectation of Hamas going into the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza, Israel only took the barest steps to ease the siege, which kept the people at a bare survival level. This policy was a clear affront to Hamas, and had the inescapable effect of undermining both Hamas and popular Palestinian support for the ceasefire.

But Israel's most provocative action, acknowledged by many now as the critical turning point that undermined the ceasefire, took place on November 4, when Israeli forces auspiciously violated the truce by crossing into the Gaza Strip to destroy what the army said was a tunnel dug by Hamas, killing six Hamas militants. Sara Roy, writing in the London Review of Books, contends this attack was "no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June."

The Israeli breach into Gaza was immediately followed by a further provocation by Israel on November 5, when the Israeli government hermetically sealed off all ways into and out of Gaza. As a result, the UN reports that the amount of imports entering Gaza has been "severely reduced to an average of 16 truckloads per day - down from 123 truckloads per day in October and 475 trucks per day in May 2007 - before the Hamas takeover." These limited shipments provide only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain 1.5 million starving Palestinians.

In response, Hamas predictably claimed that Israel had violated the truce and allowed Islamic Jihad to launch a round of rocket attacks on Israel. Only after lethal Israeli reprisals killed over 10 Hamas gunmen in the following days did Hamas militants finally respond with volleys of mortars and rockets of their own. In two short weeks, Israel killed over 15 Palestinian militants, while about 120 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel, and although there were no Israeli casualties the calm had been shattered.

It was at this time that Israeli officials launched what appears to have been a coordinated media blitz to cultivate public reception for an impending conflict, stressing the theme of the "inevitability" of a coming war with Hamas in Gaza. On November 12, senior IDF officials announced that war with Hamas was likely in the two months after the six-month ceasefire, baldly stating it would occur even if Hamas wasn't interested in confrontation. A few days later, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly ordered his military commanders to draw up plans for a war in Gaza, which were already well developed at the time. On November 19, according to Raviv's report in Haaretz, the Gaza war plan was brought before Barak for final approval.

While the rhetoric of an "inevitable" war with Hamas may have only been Israeli bluster to compel Hamas into line, its actions on the ground in the critical month leading up to the official expiration of the ceasefire on December 19 only heightened the cycle of violence, leaving a distinct impression Israel had cast the die for war.

Finally, Hamas then walked right into the "inevitable war" that Israel had been preparing since the ceasefire had gone into effect in June. With many Palestinians believing the ceasefire to be meaningless, Hamas announced it wouldn't renew the ceasefire after it expired on December 19. Hamas then stood back for two days while Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants fired volleys of mortars and rockets into Israel, in the context of mutually escalating attacks. Yet even then, with Israeli threats of war mounting, Hamas imposed a 24-hour ceasefire on all missile attacks on December 21, announcing it would consider renewing the lapsed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip if Israel would halt its raids in both Gaza and the West Bank, and keep Gaza border crossings open for supplies of aid and fuel. Israel immediately rejected its offer.

But when the Israel Defence Forces killed three Hamas militants laying explosives near the security fence between Israel and Gaza on the evening of December 23, the Hamas military wing lashed out by launching a barrage of over 80 missiles into Israel the following day, claiming it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was responsible for the escalation.

Little did they know that, according to Raviv, Prime Minister Olmert, and Defense Minister Barak had already met on December 18 to approve the impending war plan, but put the mission off waiting for a better pretext. By launching more than 170 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians in the days following December 23, killing one Israeli civilian, Hamas had provided reason enough for Israel to unleash its long-planned attack on Gaza on December 27.

The Rationale for War

If Israel's goal were simply to end rocket attacks on its civilians, it would have solidified and extended the ceasefire, which was working well, until November. Even after November, it could have addressed Hamas' longstanding ceasefire proposals for a complete end to rocket-fire on Israel, in exchange for Israel lifting its crippling 18-month siege on Gaza.

Instead, the actual targets of its assault on Gaza after December 27, which included police stations, mosques, universities, and Hamas government institutions, clearly reveal that Israel's primary goals go far beyond providing immediate security for its citizens. Israeli spokespersons repeatedly claim that Israel's assault isn't about seeking to effect regime change with Hamas, but rather about creating a "new security reality" in Gaza. But that "new reality" requires Israel to use massive violence to degrade the political and military capacity of Hamas, to a point where it agrees to a ceasefire with conditions more congenial to Israel. Short of a complete reoccupation of Gaza, no amount of violence will erase Hamas from the scene.

Confirming the steps needed to create the "new reality," the broader reasons why Israel chose a major confrontation with Hamas at this time appear to be the cause of several other factors unrelated to providing immediate security for its citizens.

First, many senior Israeli political and military leaders strongly opposed the June 19 ceasefire with Hamas, and looked for opportunities to reestablish Israel's fabled "deterrent capability" of instilling fear into its enemies. These leaders felt Israel's deterrent capability was badly damaged as a result of their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and especially after the widely criticized failures in the 2006 Israeli war with Hezbollah. For this powerful group a ceasefire was at best a tactical pause before the inevitable renewal of conflict, when conditions were more favorable. Immediately following Israel's aerial assault, a New York Times article noted that Israel had been eager "to remind its foes that it has teeth" and to erase the ghost of Lebanon that has haunted it over the past two years.

A second factor was pressure surrounding the impending elections set to take place in early February. The ruling coalition, led by Barak and Livni, have been repeatedly criticized by the Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, who is leading in the polls, for not being tough enough on Hamas and rocket-fire from Gaza. This gave the ruling coalition a strong incentive to demonstrate to the Israeli people their security credentials in order to bolster their chances against the more hawkish Likud.

Third, Hamas repeatedly said it wouldn't recognize Mahmud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority after his term runs out on January 9. The looming political standoff on the Palestinian side threatens to boost Hamas and undermine Abbas, who had underseen closer security coordination with Israel and was congenial to Israeli demands for concessions on future peace proposals. One possible outcome of this assault is that Abbas will remain in power for a while longer, since Hamas will be unable to mobilise its supporters in order to force him to resign.

And finally, Israel was pressed to take action now due to its sense of the American political timeline. The Bush administration rarely exerted constraint on Israel and would certainly stand by in its waning days, while Barack Obama would not likely want to begin his presidency with a major confrontation with Israel. The Washington Post quoted a Bush administration official saying that Israel struck in Gaza "because they want it to be over before the next administration comes in. They can't predict how the next administration will handle it. And this is not the way they want to start with the new administration."

An Uncertain Ending

As the conflict rages to an uncertain end, it's important to consider Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz's contention that Israel's history of manufacturing wars through "strategic escalation" and using overwhelming force to achieve "deterrence" has never been successful. In fact, it's the primary cause of Israel's insecurity because it deepens hatred and a desire for revenge rather than fear.

At the same time, there's no question Hamas continues to callously sacrifice its fellow Palestinian citizens, as well as Israeli civilians, on the altar of maintaining its pyrrhic resistance credentials and its myopic preoccupation with revenge, and fell into many self-made traps of its own. There had been growing international pressure on Israel to ease its siege and a major increase in creative and nonviolent strategies drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians such as the arrival of humanitarian relief convoys off of Gaza's coast in the past months, but now Gaza lies in ruins.

But as the vastly more powerful actor holding nearly all the cards in this conflict, the war in Gaza was ultimately Israel's choice. And for all this bloodshed and violence, Israel must be held accountable.

With the American political establishment firmly behind Israel's attack, and Obama's foreign policy team heavily weighted with pro-Israel insiders like Dennis Ross and Hillary Clinton, any efforts to hold Israel accountable in the United States will depend upon American citizens mobilizing a major grassroots effort behind a new foreign policy that will not tolerate any violations of international law, including those by Israel, and will immediately work towards ending Israel's siege of Gaza and ending Israel's occupation.

Beyond that, the most promising prospect for holding Israel accountable is through the increasing use of universal jurisdiction for prosecuting war crimes, along with the growing transnational movement calling for sanctions on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. In what would be truly be a new style of foreign policy, a transnational network that focuses on Israeli violations of international law, rather than the state itself, could become a counterweight that forces policymakers in the United States, Europe, and Israel to reconsider their political and moral complicity in the current war, in favor of taking real steps towards peace and security in the region for all peoples.

© 2009 Foreign Policy in Focus

Steve Niva, a professor of International Politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College, is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Israel's military violence and Palestinian suicide bombings.