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BEYOND the hundreds of lives lost, perhaps the worst aspect of the predictably one-sided conflict between Israel and Gaza is that once a ceasefire is effected, it will be back to square one.
When it comes, the cessation of hostilities will, of course, be highly welcome. But it will also be the beginning of just another interlude that will end with their resumption.
That pattern is unlikely to change in the absence of dramatic developments on a much broader scale — such as Israel being held to account for its actions by its allies and sponsors. Some of them are, no doubt, seeking to counsel restraint. But Israel is confident there will be no price to pay if it turns a deaf ear to their polite entreaties, which are anyhow accompanied by assurances that of course Israel has every right to defend itself against missiles fired from Gaza.
The Hamas missiles play into Israel’s narrative of coming under attack from forces bent upon its destruction, never mind that they have never been capable of doing much harm. Only a relatively small proportion is claimed to have been thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system; the rest, too, have inflicted little noticeable damage, unlike the supposedly retaliatory Israeli air strikes.
Israel is confident there will be no price to pay.
The missile launches would be stupid even if they weren’t so demonstrably futile; their ability to claim Israeli civilian casualties, which is the ostensible aim, would in fact render them even more morally reprehensible. Their impotence, though, is hardly worthy of being ignored — even though that is exactly what numerous Western news outlets routinely do by suggesting that the ongoing hostilities are in some way a contest between equals.
The BBC’s bias in this respect has lately been questioned by some commentators in Britain, although it is by no means the worst offender. One particularly insidious aspect of recent Western coverage has gone largely unremarked, though. On July 7, for instance, the BBC reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “promised to bring to justice” the murderers of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, adding: “Police believe there was a nationalist motive to the killing.…”
A few days earlier it had reported that Israeli police were investigating whether the murder was a criminal act or one motivated by nationalism. No such dichotomy was attempted in earlier reports about the murder of three Israeli teenagers.
Both murders were undoubtedly heinous atrocities. It has been said that the Israeli teens were kidnapped with the probable intent of exchanging them for Palestinian prisoners, and their captors shot them dead in a panic when one of the boys managed to get through to the police on a mobile phone. That does not reduce the viciousness of the crime.
The same goes for the retaliatory nature of the Palestinian teenager’s victimisation; he appears to have been abducted with the intent of being put to death, and to have been set on fire while he was alive.
The context of the agony he suffered is obviously not irrelevant. But then, nor is the broader context whereby Israeli security forces routinely target Palestinian youngsters, who end up brutalised, tortured, imprisoned — or dead.
Neither that, nor the fact that the young Israeli victims lived in illegal settlements, can even begin to justify their abduction and summary execution.
At the same time, there can be no justification for the Israeli government’s retaliatory measures, given the credible accusation that it knew more or less right away that the boys had been murdered, as well as the identity of the culprits — who are believed to be associated with Hamas, although there is thus far no evidence their crime was authorised by the Islamist organisation’s hierarchy.
Had these facts been revealed right away, there would have been little excuse for the collective punishment that followed across the West Bank, with the Palestinian Authority administration of Mahmoud Abbas collaborating to the best of its ability, and Gaza, with Hamas retaliating with a demonstration of its seemingly pointless firepower.
Israel took the formation of a Palestinian unity government last month as a personal affront, even though it was largely a concession by Hamas that could have led to the re-establishment of the PA’s remit over Gaza.
That was not to be. And as civilians in Gaza bear the brunt of Israeli attacks, we are told that the perpetrators are decent enough to warn their victims in advance of impending air strikes. How polite. At the same time, there is widespread analytical consensus that Israel has no desire to destroy Hamas, because it fully understands the alternative may well be radically worse.
And so the cycle of mindless violence continues. To appreciate its absurdity, line up images of the four murdered teenagers, and perhaps those who have been killed before and since on both sides. And try to guess the difference.
Published in Dawn, July 16th , 2014
