Where do recent events in Gaza leave the peace process?
For The Independent. Tony Klug. 24 Jan 2008.
Apparently without irony, a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Ministry declared a few days ago “there is a government decision that there will not be a humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. So much for the prescience of the Israeli Defence Ministry.
In reality, the crisis, which has been in the making since at least June 2006 when Israeli missiles destroyed Gaza’s only power plant, is not just a humanitarian but a human-rights and political disaster too. One could almost say that several parties have connived quite deliberately in bringing it about.
Once Hamas seized full control over Gaza last June, the Israeli government, despite its obligations under international law as the occupying power, stepped up its isolation of the territory, declaring it a ‘hostile entity’ some three months later and disrupting electrical supplies, reducing fuel shipments to a bare minimum, allowing the import of only essential food and medicine and severly restricting movement in and out. The targeting of suspects involved in attacks on Israel gathered speed. Unsurprisingly, the economy cracked, unemployment soared, poverty plunged new levels and the death toll reached fresh heights. The roughly 80 per cent of Gaza’s population that has come to depend on food aid for survival is especially vulnerable to the tightened siege.
While the Israeli government stands as the principal felon, it has been aided and abetted by other culprits including Egypt which tacitly supported the Israeli blockade by keeping its border with Gaza closed until militants blew up part of the dividing wall on Wednesday morning, enabling thousands of Gazans to cross the border.
Also in the dock are the US and EU which, like Israel, rewarded the victors in the Palestinian elections with a political boycott and economic sanctions for not immediately abandoning the policies on which it stood (even if distateful) and donning the political clothes of the party it had just thrashed at the polls. That party, Fatah, was itself not averse to receiving funding, arms and training from Israel and the US as part of its bitter struggle with Hamas.
Apart from a few noises off, the Arab League too has stood by, resting on the laurels of its much trumpeted peace initiative which has failed to make much of an impression on Israeli public opinion, in good part because the Arab states have made no serious effort to persuade ordinary Israelis of the sincerity of their intentions.
Finally, there are the missiles that have been regularly raining down on Israeli population centres ever since Israel evacuated its settlers from Gaza in August 2005, despite repeated Israeli warnings of dire retaliation if they did not stop. The groups that launch them, including Hamas, whether actively or passively, have been fully aware of what the consequences would be for the long-suffering people of Gaza if the rocket attacks continued and yet they persisted relentlessly with their actions. To this extent, they stand accused along with the others of consciously and deliberately fomenting the current crisis.
The crisis may be primarily humanitarian but the solution has to be political. The immediate priority is for an internationally supervised ceasefire and the swift end of the siege of Gaza. If a government of national unity can be revived between Fatah and Hamas – the prospects of which may, perversely, improve if the current crisis persists – all to the good. An agreement with Israel in the short term or the long term will be easier to reach and sustain with one Palestinian government rather than two.
Otherwise, what is needed is a tacit agreement between Fatah and Hamas not to interfere in the territory currently ruled by the other, and for Israel and Hamas to observe a state of non-belligerency and ensure the basic needs of the Gaza population are properly provided for. This would free Israel and Abbas to negotiate the modalities of Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state there. The subsequent inclusion of the Gaza Strip would then be essentially an internal Palestinian matter, to be determined in due course.
To trigger the process, it would be most helpful if the Israeli prime minister translated his lip service in support of two states into a firm public commitment that, subject to minor equitable land swaps, his government is ready in principle to withdraw fully from the West Bank in exchange for full peace and normalization of relations. Unless the Palestinian people are convinced that at the end of the process - in the not-distant future - they will get a proper state of their own roughly on the pre-June 1967 borders, they are hardly likely to take seriously and participate in any initiative that is designed to make the putative state work. Absent this certainty, all the grandstanding speeches by Bush, Blair or others, all the fabulous donations and all the other efforts to build a state in absentia or barter over its details are pointless.
In any event, it is imperative that outside powers stop posturing and start taking their responsibilities a lot more seriously and use their considerable leverage with the parties as necessary. What is required from them is a clear political horizon and a preparedness to step in decisively to ensure a final end is brought to this wretched conflict before it deteriorates to the point of no return. The international community, in all its parts, has abdicated its responsibility for far too long and we, for our part, have let them get away with it.