The Real Reasons for Israel's Invasion of Gaza

The Real Reasons for Israel's Invasion of Gaza - One View

Gaza: An Experiment in Human Despair
Jonathan Cook - Counterpunch

One needed only to watch the interview on British television this week with Israel's ambassador to the UK to realise that the Israeli army's tightening of the siege on Gaza, its invasion of the northern parts of the Strip today, and the looming humanitarian crisis across the territory, have nothing to do with the recent capture of an Israeli soldier -- or even the feeble home-made Qassam rockets fired, usually ineffectually, into Israel by Palestinian militants.

Under questioning from presenter Jon Snow of Channel Four news on the reasons behind Israel's bombing of Gaza's only power station -- thereby cutting off electricity to more than half of the Strip's 1.3 million inhabitants for many months ahead, as well as threatening the water supply -- Zvi Ravner denied this action amounted to collective punishment of the civilian population.

Rather, he claimed, the electricity station had to be disabled to prevent the soldier's captors from having the light needed to smuggle him out of Gaza at night. It was left to a bemused Jon Snow to point out that smugglers usually prefer to do their work in the dark and that Israel's actions were more likely to assist his captors than disadvantage them.

The Alice Through the Looking Glass quality of Israeli disinformation over the combined siege and invasion of Gaza -- and its widespread and credulous repetition by the Western media -- is successfully distracting attention from Israel's real goals in this one-sided war of attrition.

The current destruction of Gaza's civilian and administrative infrastructure is reminiscent of the Israeli army's cruel rampages through the streets of West Bank cities in the repeated invasions of 2002 and 2003, and the Jewish settlers' malicious attacks on Palestinian farmers trying to collect their olive harvests.

The relative absence of these horror stories today is simply a reflection of the terrible success of the wall Israel has built across Palestinian farmland and around Palestinian population centres in the West Bank. Settlers no longer need to plunder the olive harvest when the fruit is being left to rot on the trees because farmers can no longer reach their groves.

In the case of the West Bank invasions, Israeli tanks rolled easily into Palestinian cities that had already been isolated and crippled by the stranglehold of checkpoints and roadblocks all over the territority. Israeli heavy armour knocked down electricity pylons as though they were playing a game of ten-pin bowling, snipers shot up the water tanks on people's roofs, soldiers defecated into office photocopiers and the army sought out Palestinian ministries so that their confidential records and documents could be destroyed or stolen.

Notably, only in the warren of alleys in the overcrowded refugee camps of Jenin and Nablus did the army find the going far tougher and suffer relatively high casualties.

Which may explain the military caution that has been exercised by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in regard to the ground invasion of Gaza. The tiny Strip, besieged on its land borders by the Israeli army behind an electronic fence and on the seafront by the Israeli navy, is one giant, overcrowded refugee camp. The past week has seen Gaza "softened up" with airstrikes on its infrastructure and government ministries. Today, land forces began wreaking more death and destruction -- fourteen killed at the time of writing -- in "mopping up" exercises in the pattern established earlier in the West Bank.

Three long-standing motives are discernible in Israel's current menacing of Gaza.

First, Israel is determined to continue its campaign of impairing the Palestinian Authority's ability to govern. This has nothing to do with the recent election of Hamas to run the Palestinian Authority. Israel's official policy of unilateralism -- ignoring the wishes of the Palestinian people -- began long before, when Yasser Arafat was in charge. It has continued through the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, a leader who is about as close to a quisling as Israel is likely to find.

Hamas's electoral success has merely supplied Israel with the pretext it needs for launching its invasion and the grounds for demanding international support as it chokes the life out of Gaza. Israel doubtless hopes that at the end of this process it will be left with Abbas, a figurehead president backed into a corner and ready to put his name to whatever agreement Israel imposes.

Second, the attack on Gaza -- as ever -- is partly a distraction from the real battle. It was widely recognised that Ariel Sharon's dogged pursuit of his Gaza disengagement policy last year was designed to free his hand for the annexation of large chunks of a greater prize, the West Bank, and for securing the biggest prize of all, East Jerusalem. Nothing has changed on this front.

As Israel keeps all eyes directed towards the suffering in Gaza, it is starting to make significant moves in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

It is preparing for the much-delayed evacuation of a handful of illegal West Bank hilltop settlements -- known in Israel as "outposts" -- demanded as the first stage of the implementation of the almost-forgotten US-sponsored peace process called the Road Map.

These outposts are tiny, often just a few caravans. It will be much to Israel's advantage if the world fails to examine too closely the miserly act of evacuating these places, which doubtless will later be presented both as Israel having made a huge sacrifice for peace and as having satisfied its side of the Road Map's conditions.

The loss of these outposts and a few larger settlements will pave the way for international acceptance of Olmert's convergence plan, his unilaterally imposed expansion of Israel's borders at the expense of a viable Palestinian state.

Equally significant are the overlooked manoeuvres Israel is undertaking in East Jerusalem as it beats a warpath towards Gaza. Last week Israel stripped four Hamas MPs of their right to live in East Jerusalem, effectively expelling them to the West Bank. It also showed that it could lock up them and dozens of other democratically elected Palestinian representatives with barely a peep from the international community.

In yet another dose of Alice in Wonderland, Israel's policy of making hostages of these MPs was referred to as "arrests" by the Western media. Few bothered to report that the MPs are being deprived of even their most basic rights, such as meeting with their lawyers.

As the four Jerusalem MPs' lawyers have argued, it is a nonsense that Israel allowed these Hamas politicians to stand in the recent elections and now, after their victory, it calls their membership of the party "support for terrorism". It is also a disturbing sign of how easily Israel will be able to begin ethnically cleansing East Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants using the flimsiest of excuses.

And third, and perhaps most significantly of all, Israel is using the siege and invasion of Gaza as a laboratory for testing policies it also intends to apply to the West Bank after convergence. Gazans are the guinea pigs on which Olmert can try out the "extreme action" he has been boasting of.

The destruction of Gaza's power plant and loss of electricity to some 700,000 people; the consequent scarcity of water, build-up of sewage that cannot be disposed of, and inevitable spread of disease; the shortages of fuel and threats to the running of vital services such as hospitals; the sonic booms of Israeli aircraft that terrify Gaza's children and unpredictable air strikes that terrify everyone; the inability of Palestinian officials to run bombed ministries and provide services; the constant threat of invasion by massed Israeli troops on the "border"; and the breakdown of law and order as Fatah and Hamas gunmen are encouraged to turn on each other. All these factors are designed to one end: the slow demand by Palestinians, civilians and militants alike, to clear out of the hell-hole of Gaza.

The traffic through the tunnels that once served Gaza's smugglers will change directions: where once cigarettes and arms came into Gaza, the likelihood is that soon it will be people passing through those underground passages to leave Gaza and seek a life outside.

If this experiment in human despair works in the small Gaza Strip, its lessons can be applied to much bigger effect in the West Bank ghettoes left behind after convergence. This is how ethnic cleansing looks when it is designed not by butchers in uniforms but by technocrats in suits.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

The Real Reasons for Israel's Invasion of Gaza - Another View

Profiting from the Occupation: The Corporate Interests Fueling Conflict in Palestine
Nick Dearden - Counterpunch

We hear little from the Palestinian Occupied Territories other than endless death, destruction, poverty and despair. While living standards plummet and the death toll rockets, it's difficult to imagine a less likely place to make a profit. But despite the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding, and the international attention it receives, names familiar on high streets across Europe and the US are actively supporting Israel's Occupation of Palestine through their business practices--threatening to prolong the misery of the Palestinian people for many years to come.

US multinational construction company Caterpillar has already been singled out, supplying as it does militarised bulldozers to the Israeli Army through the US's Foreign Military Sales programme. A recent War on Want fact-finding mission confirmed the opinion of an Israeli military Commander, who calls these monster machines the "key weapon" in the ever deepening colonisation of the West Bank. The litany of war crimes which these machines are used for is shocking--demolition of many thousands of Palestinian homes, sometimes on top of their residents; destruction of agricultural land, water supplies, olive and fruit trees; and the construction of the illegal Separation Wall currently encircling Palestinian towns, separating communities and turning the West Bank into a giant prison. All the more incredible then that Caterpillar's Chief Executive Jim Owens can still claim that "Caterpillar does well by doing good around the world."

The disinvestment campaign against Caterpillar has sparked debate about corporate complicity throughout many Christian Churches; not least in the Church of England where the General Synod has voted to begin a divestment process, while the Church Commissioners who hold the purse strings, have taken a different decision. In recent weeks the Methodist Church and the United Church of Toronto have voted to use the threat of divestment as a means of pressuring companies to stop aiding the Israeli Occupation.

But Caterpillar is not alone. Many people in the south-east of England will have fond memories (or otherwise) of French train operator Connex, which ran trains out of London for seven years before its franchise was terminated for poor financial management in 2003. Less well known is that one year earlier Connex, as the main partner in a consortium called CityPass, was awarded a $500 million contract to construct a light railway system connecting Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. Road works around Jerusalem's Old City mark the beginning of the project which is planned for completion in 2020. Connex will run the operation of the line for the next 30 years, while another French partner, Alstrom, will provide the trains.

The problem is that East Jerusalem is not part of Israel. Indeed the Palestinians hope one day to have their capital here. But Israel's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem threatens this dream. Israel has encouraged 200,000 settlers to move into East Jerusalem over the last 40 years, and is currently using these settlements, along with the Separation Wall, to cut off East Jerusalem, on which tens of thousands of Palestinians depend, from the rest of the West Bank. Israeli peace campaigner and Nobel peace prize nominee Jeff Halper told us that Israel's current expansion programme around East Jerusalem will render any future Palestinian state "nothing more than a set of non-viable Indian reservations."

The Israeli government has openly stated that the Connex train system is part of this same programme, to complete the annexation of East Jerusalem. During the contract signing ceremony in July 2005 then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pointed out that this project would help "strengthen Jerusalem, construct it, expand it and sustain it for eternity as the capital of the Jewish people and the united capital of the State of Israel". The implications of this project are not limited to the suffering being endured now, but effect the possibility of peace in the Middle East for many years to come.

Unless we live on a bus route in Wales, few of us are likely to run into Connex. Central to our lives, however, is the behaviour of high street supermarkets. Lack of control over what we eat is becoming an everyday concern for many. Here again, one look at the reality of Israel's Occupation is enough to suggest that supermarkets aren't telling the whole truth about their Israeli produce.

Israel's settlements across the West Bank represent the physical reality of the Occupation for most Palestinians on a daily basis. These settlements violate the Geneva Conventions and their creation is a war crime according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Yet settlements increased at breakneck speed during the Oslo 'Peace' Process, stealing Palestinian land and resources, and fuelling Palestinian resentment and the ultimate breakdown of Oslo. Today there are 450,000 settlers who use, together with Israel proper, 83% of the West Bank's water resources, travelling on racially segregated roads which link them to Israel. Across the West Bank cranes and bulldozers symbolise on-going settlement expansion today.

The Jordan Valley, along the eastern edge of the West Bank, is a particularly large-scale settlement production centre. While Palestinians are cramped into small villages surrounded by closed military zones, vast plantations of fruit and vegetables line the landscape. One million palm trees have been planted here, and the Israeli government plans another million in the next five years. The partially state-owned export company, Agrexco, is responsible for 60-70% of all produce exported from settlements, and business is booming, with a 72% increase in revenue in the last 3 years. 60% of all Israeli vegetables exported end up in the UK. We met one Palestinian farmer growing aubergines in his field, but they were dry and shrivelled compared to the well watered grapes that grow on the plantations which have been stolen from him. "The water these plants constantly get comes through my land", he tells us, "yet I have no access to it."

Despite the centrality of the settlements as an obstacle to peace, supermarkets like Tesco and Waitrose still stock products grown or manufactured in West Bank settlements, labelling them as 'Made in Israel'. Although EU law requires settlement produce to be labelled for customs purposes, so as not to apply preferential tariffs to them, this information is not passed onto the customer, so settlement produce ends up mixed in with other Israeli fruit, vegetables and herbs.

Some products are easier to spot. Wine produced by Barkan is on sale in Tesco, Selfridges and Sainsbury's, while snacks by Beigel & Beigel are sold in Tesco and Waitrose, skin care products by Ahava in Selfridges and soda stream products from Mishor Adumin in Argos. All of these products are manufactured wholly or largely in West Bank settlements. Wine from the Golan Heights, Syrian territory also occupied in 1967, is even more openly marketed in Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's.

Finally Caterpillar isn't the only construction company involved in house demolitions. Though their operations are particularly egregious--given that they supply the Israeli Army with military equipment--we saw Volvo, Daewoo and JCB bulldozers or cranes being used, on a contractual basis, in the construction of the Separation Wall.

It is not sufficient for companies to live in a world of glowing corporate social responsibility reports, while shutting their eyes and ears to the actual impact of their operations. It is inconceivable that Connex and Caterpillar are unaware of the fact that their products and services are being used to implement war crimes. If Tesco and Waitrose are unaware of the origins of the products they sell as 'Made in Israel', it is because they haven't asked the requisite questions of their suppliers. And if Volvo, Daewoo and JCB's management don't know that their bulldozers are being used in violation of international law, they cannot have spent even half a day in the Occupied Territories. In any case, they all know now.

It is up to all of us to use our power to pressure these companies to change the ways in which they operate. But ultimately the problem is not purely a corporate one. After the First World War the idea of war profiteers disgusted a generation scarred by the horror of conflict. Today wars happen a little further a field, but the consequences are no less devastating. Corporations continue to profit from this suffering in overt and subtle ways. To stop this we need to turn against the economic orthodoxy of our age--that the profit motive is the sole element on which social organisation should be based. Corporations do not need more freedom, but less.

Nick Dearden works for the London-based War on Want. He can be reached at: ndearden@waronwant.org

War on Want's Report Profiting from the Occupation: Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation of Palestine is available on-line at www.waronwant.org or from the office on ++ 44 207 549 0555. The report will be launched at a conference on Sunday 9 July in London.