Licence to kill
THE Palestinians are pursuing a UNSC resolution this month mandating Palestinian freedom by November 2016. American veto powers will not let the resolution pass. Perhaps, the Palestinians may get a watered-down resolution that exerts little pressure on Israel to free Palestine and urges bilateral talks.
Israel was created through a UNSC resolution bulldozed by Western powers rather than bilateral talks. Yet, for Palestinian independence, the same countries insist on endless bilateral talks rather than a UNSC enforceable resolution.
Also read: Palestinians seek UN resolution to end Israeli occupation
Western countries seem content with endless Israeli occupation where Israel enjoys a licence to kill Palestinians, as during the recent Gaza war. The war’s fatality figures reflect vividly the balance of power in this conflict. Hamas is an avowed militant group which admits to targeting Israeli civilians. Israel prides itself on being the only democracy regionally and says its army takes stringent measures to minimise Palestinian civilian casualties. Yet, Hamas killed only six civilians while Israel killed between 1,200-1,800 civilians during the war.
Israel shirks responsibility for this high civilian toll and holds Hamas responsible, claiming it was forced to respond to Hamas rockets and tunnels into Israel. But, was Israel facing grievous losses due to Hamas tactics and did it not have other options to neutralise them? Israeli losses before the war were miniscule due to its Iron Dome system.
It could have destroyed the tunnels coming into Israel even from its own end without invading Gaza and encouraged Hamas to end rocket attacks by loosening its stranglehold over Gaza without jeopardising its security by much.
The Arab-Israeli conflict reveals poor strategy.
I have personally seen the misery suffered by Palestinians from such Israeli blockades during several visits to Palestine. Yet Israel chose an option which killed thousands of civilians to gain only marginal risk reduction related to a risk which was never high even before. To justify killing thousands of Palestinians for such marginal gains against limited threats only reflects the value Israeli hawks attach to Palestinian lives.
While this war reflects Israeli heavy-handedness, it also reveals the tactically futile and morally condemnable nature of Hamas strategies. The military mismatch between the two is so great that it is impossible to defeat Israel militarily.
Also, the use of militancy by Hamas reduces anger towards Israel in Western capitals. Hamas and Iranian arguments that Israel should have been created within Europe rather than Palestine had strong merits in 1948, for there was no provision in secular international law to honour 3,000-year-old absentee historical homeland claims based on religious beliefs.
America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will unlikely countenance much stronger claims from their pre-European native populations to carve out independent countries for them on their continuous historical homelands. Yet, arguments about Israel’s destruction today are practically futile and morally condemnable even given Israeli brutalities.
But, also futile is the strategy followed by the Palestinian government till recently of pursuing American-brokered talks. As with the military mismatch, the mismatch between the diplomatic and political clouts of Israel and Palestinians with America is skewed so heavily in Israel’s favour that America can never be a neutral broker. Obama is the most pro-Palestinian American president ever. Yet, so strong is Israeli influence within US politics that even Obama has delivered little for the Palestinians.
The next US President, Republican or Democrat, will favour Israel even more. For serious American presidential candidates, a visit to Israel is mandatory to flaunt their pro-Israeli credentials to important constituencies back home.
In hopes of garnering Israeli goodwill, Chris Christie, a 2016 Republican candidate, remarked after flying over Palestinian territories that he personally saw the security threats Israel faces from the occupied territories. Ironically, instead of Israeli goodwill, it earned him their ire for daring to call Palestinian territories as occupied, for many Israelis claim all that land as theirs based on timeless Divine allocations.
Mr Christie immediately apologised profusely for his mistake. Thankfully, he did not justify his remarks by saying that by occupied, he meant occupied by the Palestinians.
With the military and US-brokered diplomacy options ruled out, it leaves the Palestinians with few easy options. The best option for the Palestinians would be social mobilisation and peaceful protests in the occupied territories while using international law and gaining membership in international bodies to increase their ability to hold Israel accountable for its actions.
Such actions could ultimately force Israel to return to talks brokered not just by the US, but this time by the original quartet which may be more neutral, and make meaningful concessions towards eventual resolution of the Palestinian issue.
The writer is a political economist and a Senior Fellow with UC Berkeley.