A legitimate reaction, but one that is frightening in its violence and destined to delay even further dreams of peace in the Middle East. This is how the great Anglo-Saxon independent press described the evolution of the military action with which the Israeli government reacted to the breaking of the truce by the Palestinian movement Hamas, which after six months once again started firing rockets into southern Israel. The New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist and the Financial Times, for example, agreed in their analysis. “The problem is that Israel probably cannot end the rocket fire by military means alone” said the Washington Post on January 4th. This opinion was echoed by the New York Times on December 30th summarising the situation as follows, “Israel must defend itself. And Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire. Still we fear that Israel’s response is unlikely to weaken the militant Palestinian group substantially or move things any closer to what all Israelis and all Palestinians need: a durable peace agreement and a two-state solution.”
The current situation cannot be blamed only on Hamas’ cynicism and stubbornness – observes the NYT – but also on the attitude assumed by Israel, which “never really lived up to its commitment to ease its punishing embargo on Gaza.” And while “Mr. Olmert’s government failed to halt settlements and give the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, the support he needed,” according to the New York Times “no one, including the Bush administration, made a serious effort to get it extended.”
That day, the New York newspaper in judging the ground war, said “That, or any prolonged military action, would be disastrous for Israel and lead to wider regional instability.” The position assumed by the Financial Times was identical. On January 4th the paper describes the ground war as “a dangerous gamble” and the attack in general as “disproportionate.” The Economist admitted that “Israel was provoked, but as in Lebanon in 2006 it may find this war a hard one to end, or to justify.” Also stating that “And yet Israel should not be surprised by the torrent of indignation it has aroused from around the world. This is not just because people seldom back the side with the F-16s. In general, a war must pass three tests to be justified. A country must first have exhausted all other means of defending itself. The attack should be proportionate to the objective. And it must stand a reasonable chance of achieving its goal.” “On all three of these tests Israel is on shakier ground than it cares to admit” added The Economist, not answering the question posed “What exactly is Israel’s objective? Stopping the missiles, teaching Hamas a lesson, or destroying Hamas?”
A last stand by unilateralism and the role played by Iran
The disproportionate extent of the attack was also echoed in an editorial dated January 6th in the French newspaper Le Monde, which commented that Israeli strategy had used a word that marked the years of George W. Bush and that, with Barack Obama’s victory in the American presidential elections, one hoped had been thrown into the wastepaper basket of international relations: unilateralism. This attack was neither disproportionate nor pointless according to those commentators, who in recent years, have always openly sided with Israel. Among them French philosopher André Glucksmann, who in an article published by the French daily newspaper Le Monde criticised the “hypocrisy of disproportion” (“Every conflict, whether smouldering beneath the ashes or in full eruption, is by its very nature ‘disproportionate’. If the rivals could agree on the use of their means and their demands, they would no longer be opponents. Wishing to ensure one’s survival is not a ‘disproportionate’ idea.”). Solidarity for the Israeli government also appeared in the New York Times on January 5th, from neo-conservative William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, who like many other right-wing commentators saw this conflict mainly in terms of foreign policy. Leaving aside the Palestinian implications in this conflict (the reasons of Hamas’ popularity and the role played by Israeli policy in the radical movement’s electoral victory), Kristol concentrated primarily on the equation Hamas = Iran: “But a defeat of Hamas in Gaza would be a real setback for Iran. It might positively affect the Iranian elections in June. Israel’s willingness to fight makes it more possible that the United States may not have to. ”
The words spoken by Tariq Ramadan
European Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan expressed a totally different point of view in the Italian daily newspaper Il Riformista which on January 2nd resulted in an interesting sparring match with the paper’s editor, Antonio Polito. Ramadan criticised “the disproportion of the ‘Israeli reaction’”, mentioning “genocides in Gaza”, and harshly attacking the State of Israel’s policies. “For decades now, since well before Hamas came to power, the dignity of Palestinians has been trampled and their legitimate rights denied. The Palestinian representatives have obtained nothing for their people. Israeli governments, both left and right-wing, procrastinate. They cursorily execute opponents, give little importance to the deaths of Palestinian civilians (nothing but collateral damage as far as Israeli security is concerned) and continue to authorise new settlements, extending further and further the policies of ‘fait accompli.” Many experts, among them the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Richard Falk, say that Israeli policy does not respect the Geneva Convention and that, effectively, it is making the two-state solution impossible. The Israeli government has decided to build a wall to imprison the inhabitants of the West Bank (ignoring the decisions taken by the United Nations’ Assembly), furthermore obliging the inhabitants of Gaza to suffer a siege and an embargo which have caused hunger, a lack of drugs and medical care, widespread unemployment and miserable and hopeless living conditions.”
Polito answered, reproaching Ramadan for never mentioning Hamas in his article and reminding him that “the Gaza Strip is not now under Israeli occupation as he would wish us to believe,” describing his article as “filled with hatred.” “In his opinion the policy followed by the various governments that have been in power in Israel, is simply ‘Israel’. He believes that all Israeli governments are the same, whether they signed peace agreements or waged war as has happened in the past tormented sixty years. Rabin or Netanyahu, it is all the same to him. They are the same because they belong to the same Zionist entity. Hence what is inhuman and barbarian is Zionism itself. Ramadan’s words are anti-Zionist. And with every logical move he risks anti-Semitic racism. The only thing that could prevent him from such a lapse would be an explicit and formal acknowledgment of Israel’s right to exist and to its security. This element is not present in what Ramadan has to say.”
Michael Walzer’s doubts
Compared to Glucksmann and Ramadan, fewer certainties appeared in the words of American philosopher Michael Walzer, who, interviewed on December 30th for the Corriere della Sera, described Hamas as “a terrorist power” linked to Iran, a movement that “does not take care of the Palestinians, does not give them hope. On the contrary it creates discontent, and yet it remains in power just like Hezbollah.” On the other hand, however, he admitted that he does not understand Israel’s strategy. “What would happen if there were a thousand Palestinians killed, and Hamas continued to launch missiles? Perhaps, instead of a few days of devastation, it would have been better to use force gradually alongside constant requests for a ceasefire.” “To solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue – concluded the author of “Just and Unjust Wars” – cooperation from Syria and Iran is needed.”
Neighbours forever
And now? Everyone is looking to the American President-Elect Barack Obama, in the hope he can pull a rabbit out of the hat. This however will not be at all easy. Whatever happens, when the war is over, sooner or later Israel will have to sit down with its enemy, also because – as The Economist reminded us – “The Palestinians it is bombing today will be its neighbours forever.” Italian intellectual Adriano Sofri wrote in La Repubblica that “The children and youngsters in Gaza who will survive these bombardments will not have a reasonable and Gandhi-like future. The tanks will have to decide what to do when confronted with a crowd of children. Then, whatever happens, they will have to address the issue of how to turn back.”
Translated by Francesca Simmons