Juan Cole: Gaza: Why a 'Cease-Fire' Is Not Enough

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/25006-gaza-why-a-cease-fire-is-not-enough

Israel has no strategic war aims in Gaza because it has no large scale, long term strategy concerning the Strip. Its war is all about tactics and minutiae. How many tunnels and rockets can it destroy? How much damage can it inflict on the Hamas leadership? But tunnels and rockets can be rebuilt and the dead leaders’ cousins will take over after them.

It is frankly stupid to think the Israelis can, in Mitt Romney’s words, kick the can down the road forever on making peace with the Palestinians. It hasn’t tried because Israel wants Palestinian land and resources and won’t give them up.

The United Nations has raised the specter that because of the Israeli blockade and the consequent inability of Palestinians in Gaza to build their infrastructure, it may well not be habitable by 2020. Its only native source of water, an aquifer, is 90% polluted. If Gaza fails, where will its by-then 2 million people go? Will Israel just let them thirst to death? Renal failure typically sets in in about 3 days if people don’t have water. That is genocide. Israel gives no evidence of doing any planning to avert that outcome in a territory for which it is responsible in international law.

The one strategy Israel has is to use collective punishment and a blockade on children and other non-combatants in an attempt to weaken Hamas. But even if they could succeed (so far they haven’t), the Israelis don’t seem to realize that the hellhole that is Gaza will always throw up radical groups intent on breaking the 1.7 million Palestinians there out of their large open-air jail, in which Israel is keeping them.

That is, Israel’s only real strategy is causing war, not ending war.

[cpwm17]

1. So is it legal to start using the word genocide?

When can that word be used when brown people are being abused, starved and used for cannon fodder?

[Rhinodawg]

2. "Israel wants Palestinian land"

Sure, that's why they left gaza.

Very clever those Israelis. Leaving gaza cause they want to take it over.

Juan Cole has some serious problems with Jews.

This garbage should be kicked to the gutter.

[cpwm17]

3. You have serious problems with Palestinians

as you so enthusiastically support their extreme abuse.

[Rhinodawg]

5. That is a disgusting lie.

I have never said one bad thing about the Palestinian people.

But I have hammered Hamas because they deserved it.

Why don't you delete your post.

[Rhinodawg]

15. I don't have that many posts to go thrru.

Look, you made a mistake...just delete it and we're done.

I won't hit the alert.

[cpwm17]

18. You've been supporting Israel's actions

Do you still support Israel's actions? If you say you don't support Israel's actions against the Palestinian people, I'll delete the post.

[Rhinodawg]

19. I support Israel defending itself against missiles and tunnels from Hamas.

I actually have sympathy for the Palestinian people because they've are lead by a terrorist, Jew hating, genocide preaching monsters . Too bad they Palestinian people don't overthrow these bastards.

They lives would be sooo much better without that murderous Hamas.

Now do you delete the post ?

[Rhinodawg]

20. Well, that's that.

You won't delete it.

I will keep my promise and not hit the alert.

Thx.

[cpwm17]

21. Israel's actions are against the Palestinian people

It is Israel that is abusing the Palestinians. It is Israel that expelled them and imprisoned them and refuses to treat them with any kind of humanity. It is Israel that provoked the rockets, not the Palestinian public that Israel is being so badly brutalizing in a collective punishment campaign.

First Israel severely abuses them for its entire history, such that now the Palestinians that live in the Gaza Strip live in near prison-like conditions. Now that some of them strike back, with relatively little harm, the very same Palestinians receive a severe beating from the very same Israel.

Israel has no right to do any of this. The conflict is Israel's fault. Israel's collective punishment campaign against them is outrageous. Talking bad about Israel is justified.

[Rhinodawg]

22. Nothing more to say after that.

Thx.

[Babel_17]

7. Isn't he referring to the West Bank?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement

Amnesty International argues that Israel's settlement policy is discriminatory and a violation of Palestinian human rights.[134] B'Tselem claims that Israeli travel restrictions impact on Palestinian freedom of movement[135] and Palestinian human rights have been violated in Hebron due to the presence of the settlers within the city.[136][137][138] According to B'Tselem, over fifty percent of West Bank land expropriated from Palestinians has been used to establish settlements and create reserves of land for their future expansion. The seized lands mainly benefit the settlements and Palestinians cannot use them.[139] The roads built by Israel in the West Bank to serve the settlements are closed to Palestinian vehicles'[140][141] and act as a barrier often between villages and the lands on which they subsist.[142]

Human Rights Watch and other human rights observer volunteer regularly file reports on "settler violence," referring to stoning and shooting incidents involving Israeli settlers.[143] Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and Hebron have led to violent settler protests and disputes over land and resources. Meron Benvenisti described the settlement enterprise as a "commercial real estate project that conscripts Zionist rhetoric for profit."[144]

The construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier has been criticized as an infringement on Palestinian human and land rights. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that 10% of the West Bank would fall on the Israeli side of the barrier.[145][146] In a booklet published by Breaking the Silence, 30 Israeli soldiers who served in the West Bank have described the army's day-to-day actions with descriptions of "beatings, intimidation, humiliation, verbal abuse, night-time arrests and injury" of children, who are handcuffed and blindfolded and denied recourse to lawyers, either on suspicions of stone-throwing or arrested in order to gather information on their relatives and neighbours.[147]

In July 2012, the UN Human Rights Council decided to set up a probe into Jewish settlements. The report of the independent international fact-finding mission which investigated the "implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory" was published in February 2013.[148]

[Rhinodawg]

9. He specifically said Gaza.

Eom

[Babel_17]

12. I don't see it that way

I give him credit for having the big picture in mind. And he didn't say "because they want the land in Gaza". To me it's clear that everything is at stake.

[Nevernose]

4. Talk about one sided

We could rewrite the whole article to be tilted towards the other:

"Hamas knows that the clean water will run out by 2020. Despite this, they still focus on policies doomed to a genocidal end to their own people: endless war with Israel.

The one strategy Hamas uses is this endless war, a war in which they cannot conceivably win. Rather than give up this war, which would immediately provide them with the supplies and safety needed to develop their infrastructure, they continue firing on Israel -- which fires back -- and even their own allies in the region -- Egypt, which initiated a blockade against a section of its own country.

This conflict is two sided. Continuing to blame one side will help no one, because we have to convince both sides to stop pulling triggers.

[ColesCountyDem]

23. "...This conflict is two sided. Continuing to blame one side will help no one ...." .

[hack89]

6. How much do you think Hamas spend on those tunnels into Israel

can you imagine how much better the lives of the Palestinians would be if Hamas stopped spending hundreds of millions trying to attack Israel?

[eridani]

25. No blocckade = no tunnels

How do you think they get food and medicine?

[hack89]

26. From Israel

You really think the tunnels supply all of Gaza? Really?

And what about the tunnels into Israel? They have nothing to do with smuggling.

[eridani]

27. They have to do with survival

A prison camp by definition needs tunnels.

[hack89]

28. Tunnels to attack the guards?

so you agree the tunnels into Israel are purely military in nature and therefore legitimate military targets?

[TBF]

8. I think whichever parties set up Israel after WWII -

need to sit down at the drawing board again and admit things haven't been going so well:



Both Israel and Palestine deserve to have their own land. If they need a wall at first to separate the extremists so be it. This should be able to be worked out diplomatically with the help of other nations.

If others don't step in and try to help it is only going to continue. Israelis deserve to sit down for dinner without wondering if a stray rocket from Hamas is going to hit them ... and Palestinians also deserve to have their own land where borders don't constantly move.

[COLGATE4]

10. Not these maps again! They have been thoroughly

debunked by other posters on DU. To say they are 'spurious' is being kind.

[TBF]

13. If you have a cite for the debunking I

would like to read it.

Do you have any argument with the substance of my post? Or thoughts on it?

[COLGATE4]

17. I have not bookmarked those particular posts, which

have all appeared over the past 3-5 days on DU. From memory I can tell you that the first map is deceptive because most Jewish inhabitants of Palestine were not permitted to have title to their land. The map only shows the handful of those who, for one reason or another paid enough to actually register legal title to the land, making it look like there were practically no Jews in Palestine (while, in reality, Jerusalem in 1900 was majority Jewish). The other maps pretend that the West Bank was Palestine when in reality it belong to Jordan, just like Gaza was Egyptian. Those areas were not 'Palestinian' land. Finally, the last map is merely a rendering of what was proposed by Oslo II. It has never been agreed to by any of the parties.

The other posts on the subject were more detailed but this is at least the gist of it. These maps to not accurately represent the state of the land in question.

[Marrah_G]

14. Which of the maps is wrong?

I'd like to try and find the real maps.

[TBF]

16. Free Republic doesn't like the maps either -

and they claim there was always a 2 state solution and that the Arab state is Jordan.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2162352/posts



I'd like to find a better source than these yahoos, so hopefully somebody with some knowledge on this will reply.

[countryjake]

24. Thanks for this, eridani.

Recommending!