How does it end in Gaza? This has been the issue with allthe self-defeating Israeli military offensives of the past 16 years “ OperationGrapes of Wrath in Lebanon, Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and now OperationPillar of Defense, all of them, not coincidentally, initiated on the eve ofnational elections in Israel.
Gilad Sharon, the son of Ariel Sharon who orchestratedIsrael’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, has an idea for an ending. He expressedit this way in The Jerusalem Post: “We need to flatten entire neighborhoods inGaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima “ theJapanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too. Thereshould be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Thenthey’d really call for a cease-fire.”
Atomic bombs, blackness, stillness, nothingness “ Sharonallows himself to indulge the old Israeli dream that the Palestinian peopleshould just disappear. But of course they do not. They regroup. They find newleaders. They endure with hatred of Israel reignited by loss. This is an oldstory. As early as 1907, Yitzhak Epstein, a Zionist, wrote an article called “AHidden Question” in which he observed: “We have forgotten one small matter:There is in our beloved land an entire nation, which has occupied it forhundreds of years and has never thought to leave it.” Zionism, Epstein warned,would have to face and solve “The Arab Question.”
The specific question for Israel in the run-up to thisoperation was what to do about rockets launched from Gaza at its citizens. Nogovernment can accept having its civilians subjected to regular rocket attacksfrom a neighboring territory. As usual, the prelude was messy “ a rocket firedfrom Gaza hitting southern Israel on Nov. 3; a Palestinian killed near theborder on Nov. 4; three Israeli soldiers wounded in a blast at the border onNov. 6; a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli machine-gun fire on Nov. 8; fourIsraelis soldiers wounded by an anti-tank missile on Nov. 10; four Palestinianteenagers killed when Israel fires back; steadily increasing rocket fire fromGaza. (That is just a rough summary, and of course each side has a differentversion.) The question for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was what to do:Escalate or pursue the cease-fire negotiations then being conducted on anunofficial basis through Egyptian good offices with Ahmed al-Jabari, the headof the military wing of Hamas and the man responsible both for the abduction ofthe Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and his release a year ago. The aim of thecease-fire talks, in the words of the independent Israeli negotiator GershonBaskin, “was to move beyond the patterns of the past.”
On Nov 14 Netanyahu made his decision: Jabari wasassassinated, with accompanying video of his exploding car. And here we are inthe patterns of the past: Palestinian children among at least 90 people alreadykilled in Gaza, three Israelis dead from rocket fire, Palestinian governmentbuildings being blown up, diplomats scrambling for a cease-fire, the USCongress isolated in its blanket approval, Israel casting around for aplausible endgame as regional fury mounts.
Is all this good for Israel? No. Unless good is defined aspolicies that radicalise the situation, erode middle ground, demonstrate theimpossibility of agreement, and so facilitate continued Israeli occupation ofthe West Bank, the expansion of settlements there and the steady eclipse of theidea of a two-state peace. This may well be Netanyahu’s criteria for a tacticalvictory from Operation Pillar of Defense.
There will be no other Israeli “victory.” As Aluf Benn,editor in chief of the Israeli daily Haaretz, commented, “The assassination ofJabari will go down in history as another showy military action initiated by anoutgoing government on the eve of an election.” Jabari, Benn argued, was ineffect Israel’s point man in a money-for-truce exchange that workedimperfectly. Now, “Israel will have to find a new subcontractor to replaceAhmed Jabari as its border guard in the south.” In other words Hamas will notgo away. It will have to be dealt with. The United States now deals with theMuslim Brotherhood (the parent of Hamas) and Salafis in the new Egypt. Dealingwith reality is a good thing. Israel, I learn from my colleague Ethan Bronner, hasa preferred metaphor for its repetitive security operations: “Cutting thegrass,” as in “a task that must be performed regularly and has no end.” But ofcourse bombing Gaza is potent fertilizer to the grasses of hatred.
What, I wonder, does Shalit think? His Hamas tormentor freedhim in the end. The Middle East has opened up. Young Arabs are thinking abouttheir own societies. Israel, stuck in the patterns of the past, has anotheroption: Testing Palestinian good will rather than punishing Palestinian badfaith. Under Netanyahu, it has not even tried. Until it does the endings willbe bad.
Roger Cohen is a British-born journalist and author. He is acolumnist for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune
