Israel and Hamas question

Great Debates
1

Recently, I believe there was a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the plan was for Israel to hand over control of a couple of settlements to teh PA.

Then… what was it, last week?.. Hamas broke the cease fire with yet another horrendous suicide bus bomber.

Israel retaliated by using helicopters to blow up some Hamas leaders.

Then large groups of Palestinians started threatening revenge bombings for the murder of the Hamas leaders.

Recap: Ignoring who started what years ago, there was an agreed-upon cease fire. For a brief amount of time, violence seemed to be on the decline and settlements were being handed over. Then Hamas members target civilians in yet another unprovoked terrorist attack… and then have the gall to threaten revenge because Israel blew up some of their leaders?

It seems to me this has happened several times in the past couple of years. They attack and feign surprise and indignation when their attacks lead to retaliatory strikes.

But… NO ONE IS CALLING THEM ON THIS! I haven’t seen a single media report point out these obvious circumstances. I haven’t seen any reporters interview Palestinians and point out this flawed logic.

What the hell is going on here?! I know the entire situation and history are controversial – hence the Great Debates location for the post – but are there really people out there who think Hamas has any legitimacy in proclaiming revenge for attacks that they clearly start?

2

Once again, an over-simplistic view of the situation. When will people learn that any viewpoint that attempts to attribute blame for the situation will not result in progress. Horrible acts have and continue to occur on both sides. Neither side demonstrates any real commitment to the peace process.

IMO, the only hope for the road map is a large force of international peacemaking troops stationed in the area for a long time to come.

3

The bus bombing was August 19th or thereabouts. The cease-fire started somewhere around July 1st.

But what you’re forgetting is that the Isrealis broke the cease-fire before that on August 15th so the bus may have been a retaliation for that.

That attack in turn may have been a retaliation for the attack on August 12th when militant palestinians broke the cease-fire.

That attack in turn may have have been a retaliation for Israel breaking the cease-fire on August 9th.

That attack in turn may have…

Yeah…

And that was in no way a complete list, just a quick google news search.

No one is “calling them on it” because it wasn’t the first attack, from either side. The only thing special about the bus bombing was the high number of casualties.

4

Nothing’s ever that simple in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the truth was since the start of the ‘Hudna’ (temporary ceasefire) both sides have been launching attacks, the bombing itself (carried out by Islamic Jihad IIRC) was launched in reponse to the assasination of a militant (note: this is not a justification of the attack)
June 29 2003
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement formally announce a three month ceasefire.
Hopes muted as road map traps Israel and Hamas in fragile standoff

June 30 2003
Israel relinquishes control of much of the Gaza Strip’s main motorway as it continued to withdraw its forces from Palestinian territories under the peace road map.
Israel withdraws from northern Gaza

July 3 2003
Israel’s army chief claims victory over the Palestinian intifada, saying the ceasefire announced by Hamas and other groups is an admission of defeat.
Israeli claim of victory denounced

July 6 2003
The Israeli cabinet reluctantly agrees to free several hundred Palestinian prisoners to bolster the US-led road map to peace.
Palestinian anger as Israel agrees to free 400

July 8 2003
An Islamic Jihad cell claims responsibility for a suicide bombing in an Israeli village that killed a 65-year-old woman.
Palestinian bombing threatens fragile ceasefire

July 25 2003
President George Bush hosts a Palestinian prime minister at the White House for the first time in his presidency, in a visit designed to quicken a sluggish peace process and shore up the authority of his guest.
Talks with Bush boost Palestinian leader

July 25 2003
An Israeli soldier shoots dead a four-year-old Palestinian boy and injures two other children, when he fires a tank-mounted machine gun at a northern West Bank roadblock.
Israeli soldier kills Palestinian boy

July 27 2003
Ariel Sharon cajoles his reluctant cabinet into agreeing to release more than 200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners in an attempt to stave off pressure for further concessions from the US.
Sharon sways cabinet into freeing prisoners

July 29 2003
Ariel Sharon shrugs off President George Bush’s request to halt construction on the security fence through the West Bank, vowing that the work will continue.
Sharon says barrier will stay despite Bush plea

August 4 2003
Palestinians condemn a list of prisoners that Israel plans to release from its jails, saying that the number is below what had originally been promised.
Palestinians condemn Israel’s prisoner release list

August 5 2003
Palestinian and Israeli leaders cancel their summit as the US-backed road map to peace runs into further trouble.
Abbas and Sharon cancel meeting

August 5 2003
Israel calls a halt to its military withdrawal from Palestinian cities following the wounding of a Jewish settler and her three children near Bethlehem.
Israel suspends pullback from occupied areas

August 6 2003
The Bush administration threatens to impose financial sanctions on Israel if it persists in pushing its security fence and wall deep into Palestinian territory.
Israel’s fence draws threat of US sanctions

August 6 2003
More than 300 Palestinian men walk free from Israeli military prisons to be snubbed by their own leaders but hailed by Ariel Sharon as evidence of Israel’s commitment to peace.
Joy and anger as Israel frees 339

August 8 2003
Two Jewish settlers are charged with possessing explosives stolen from the army, allegedly in preparation for a “terrorist attack” on Palestinian civilians.
Jewish settlers on explosives charges

August 11 2003
Israeli aircraft attack suspected Hizbullah positions in southern Lebanon, hours after guerrillas kill a teenage boy and injure five people.
Israel attacks Hizbullah after fatal shelling

August 12 2003
Four people, including the two bombers, die in back-to-back suicide attacks in Israel and the West Bank as the Middle East peace process suffers a further setback.
Four killed in suicide attacks

August 13 2003
Israeli troops kill a top Islamic Jihad fugitive in a raid on his hideout, prompting threats of revenge by the militant group and placing further strain on an already shaky ceasefire.
Islamic Jihad fugitive killed in shoot-out

August 17 2003
Efforts to keep the Middle East road map peace process on track hit a snag when an agreement to transfer control of four West Bank cities to the Palestinian Authority falls apart at the last minute.
Peace talks held up by roadblocks

August 18 2003
A deal for Israel to pull troops out of four West Bank cities is expected to be finalised in a move to bolster a six-week-old ceasefire threatened by renewed violence.
Palestinians expect checkpoint deal to clinch Israeli pullout from four West Bank cities

August 19 2003
A Palestinian suicide bomber blows apart a bus in the heart of Jerusalem, killing at least 20 people, including children, wounding more than 100 and inflicting the most serious blow yet to the six-week-old ceasefire.
Palestinian suicide bomber kills 20 and shatters peace process

August 21 2003
Palestinian militant groups call off their ceasefire after Israel launches a helicopter strike in Gaza. Three people, including Ismail Abu Shanab, a political leader of Hamas, are killed.
Palestinian militants call off ceasefire

5

There seems to be a bit of misunderstanding concerning the cease-fire. I, too, was also under the impression that there was a cease-fire between the Palestinian terrorist organizations and the Israeli government, but according to this Washington Post interview with the Washington correspondent of The Jerusalem Post, the cease-fire was actually between the terrorist organizations and the PA. The terrorist organizations tried to condition it on a pledge that the Israeli government would stop targeting their leadership for assassination but the Israeli government never agreed to this. The cease-fire seems not to have been much of a cease-fire after all.

I also agree with Avenger, it isn’t helpful to blame one side for destroying the cease-fire and the Roadmap. The fact is that everyone involved had a hand in its destruction. Here’s an article with a very balanced analysis: All Sides Failed to Follow Roadmap.

6

What happens when a minor group does an attack ? Even if Hamas doesnt break a cease fire… someone else will. Then Israel fires back no matter how small the terrorist attack. (They seem to work on some kind of wierd ratio… they must destroy 3 times what the palestinians did. )

 This eye for an eye BS has been going for years. One must never forget that BOTH sides take the first excuse/chance/oppurtunity to get things rolling again. BOTH sides.

 I think the Israeli issue is quite simple actually. BOTH sides are wrong. Anyone who doesnt agree with this is too pro-jewish or pro-palestinian. When I say both sides I mean the "leadership" that doesnt want this too end ever.  The people themselves are dead tired (not a pun).
7

Nice article…

That wasnt too much of a surprise was it ?

The roadmap was more of a way of saying “We tried and they failed” for Bush, “back to terrorism now.” Never seemed to have a real chance unfortunately. If Bush really wanted to tighten the screws on Sharon he could do it and VERY VERY effectively. Cut the money… cut the weapons sales and at the end… economic sanctions together with the European Union. Sharon would be out of his position in a few days.

Now the PA and Hamas are way harder to pressure... especially since the US was sponsoring the road map. Most arabs would hate to see a US led project working in Palestine. So the money continues to flow.
8

The idea seems to be a product of the new field of study called “Confict Resolution”. I haven’t read their books but the basic idea seems to be a series of small truces and agreements building toward a bigger final agreement that settles the basic questions.

This is essentially the same plan as the failed “Oslo peace process”. Not that giving up after the first try is automatically the right answer, of course.

I suspect that in the case of the Israeli/Arab conflict, also known as the “Mideast Conflict”, the additional problem exists that the two sides have different irreconcilable views on what the question even is. So when they get together on the final big agreement (as happened at Camp David in 2000) they find that they are much further apart than they think they are. Or further apart than the Americans or Europeans thought they were.

A Preservative
An additional “Preservative” of the state of conflict is the extensive support both sides are getting from “External” sources. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis get considerable financial and military support from external states. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, the Arab (or Palestinian) side got support from there. Lacking the Soviet support, the landscape of the conflict changed but the conflict itself continued, as the Arab states gradually bowed out of direct action. Consciously or not, the approximate balance of power was preserved.

The current fight is between the Palestinians and the Israelis. This represents a sort of split on the Arab side, as the Arabs were originally all considered combatants on the anti-Israeli side. Now only the Palestinians actually fight, and the other Arab states are external supporters.

As if there were a natural law to extend and preserve the conflict, as the Soviet Union fell the European Union has adopted ever more pro-Arab positions. Exactly the response the EU would make if the actual goal was continuation of the conflict into perpetuity.

Despite this change in landscape, the overall schema of two sides fighting one another and supported by external sources persists. The major impact of this schema is that neither side can completely lose. In any other war, the loser of the main battle loses territory in a permanent way and the victor is decided. In the mideast conflict, the two sides pull back and start over from positions rather similar to their starting positions. It’s just like a video game, put in another quarter (of a billion) and restart play.

History shows us that rarely does a confict end in compromise. Compromises tend to extend conflicts, not end them.

The Americans and the Arabs can have the two combatants keep on fighting until there is but one person standing. But we all know that’s not what is going to happen. At some point something will happen to unbalance the situation, and one side will emerge victorious. It would be nice if this happened soon. Or would it?

9

Only when both sides have more to lose than win will they cease fighting…

Since its basically the leadership’s interest that are being defended up to a point I dont see a resolution that doesnt involve a lot of blood or heavy economic sanctions followed by strong arm policies. (Which might solve this issue but create several others.)

10

Would you like to elaborate further on this contention?

What is your alternative?

Israel has already been victorious in a military sense. That was decades ago, and it doesn’t appear to have solved the problem. Unless you are advocating mass genocide of one side or another, and I don’t think you are, what form do you imagine the “victory” you describe will take and how will it solve the problem?

11

Well while this continues, I do want to thank everyone for significant effort and well thought out responses. Continuing to learn as I read.

12

I believe Time magazine said the bomber left behind a will, where he stated that his attack was a direct retaliation for the earlier strike by Israel.

13

Elaborating Further
I have no evidence of conspiracy. I find it highly ironic, and possibly suspicious, the way things work out.

14

Trying again to reply to Avenger

I have no evidence for conspiracy. The EU taking ever more pro-Palestinian positions after the USSR left the scene is too much of a coincidence to ignore. It is at least ironic. It does support my theory that external supports have prolonged the conflict. Yet removing external supports could result in an incredible blood bath, and tremendous instability, I understand it isn’t simple.

My alternative to compromise does not exist. If I had such an alternative, I would offer it. If I were the King of the Mideast I would bulldoze a barren zone of 1 kilometer width between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and mine it heavily. This might help a little. I think the conflict that has gone on for 50 years may go on for another 50 years. On the other hand, the separation wall between the Turks and the Greeks on the island of Cyprus has helped a lot, and the situation is similar, but without the massive external supports.

**

The only thing like a solution that I can envision is a simple seperation of the two peoples.

Victory of one side or the other is much more likely to involve a mass migration than a genocide. Of course, it depends on who wins. An Israeli “Victory” might result in millions people moving less than a dozen kilometers. A Palestinian “Victory” might result in millions of Jews moving thousands of miles.

I don’t actually expect either “Victory”, I expect continued low-level warfare.

**
There are several aspects to the situation that I really do not understand:**

Why do the Israelis keep on building settlements? Wouldn’t it make more sense to expand, if expansion is intended, by moving the border in a more straightforward way? Aren’t the settlements exceptionally vulnerable? I don’t understand the logic.

Why do the Palestinians insist on a novel definition of “Refugee”, where the descendents of refugees are also defined to be refugees ad infinitum? Do they really hope to get the Israelis to move out? It makes no sense. What do the Palestinians hope to accomplish by this intifada? They can’t conquer territory and they insure that the Israelis don’t trust the Palestinians, making a Palestinian state all that much less likely to exist.

What is the point of killing people if you can’t conquer territory? The bus bombings aren’t much more than a terrible news story and the Israeli attacks on Hamas leadership just rotates the management. The number of deaths on both sides are too small to support a strategy of attrition, so what gives?

Currently, the Israelis are so strong they could respond to bus-bombings in any number of ways and still win militarily. The Israelis could even do nothing and still come out ahead. One obvious strategy for the Israelis is to simply let the attacks build up until there is a large upwelling of international public support for Israel, and use that environment to drive the Palestinians into the Jordan River. I don’t know why the Israelis don’t do that or something like it. The Israelis are building a wall (aka fence). Why not build 7 or 17 walls in several different places?

The diplomatic and economic situation is trumping the military balance. If the situation were a purely military, the Israelis would simply kick the Palestinians over the Jordan River and be done with it. The Palestinians, seeing this, would offer better compromises.

The only force counterbalancing the Israeli military superiority is the US. The US supports a policy of restraint no doubt due to considerations of Arab and and especially Saudi influence. What makes the Saudis so powerful? Oil and Oil Money. So where do the Saudis get their money? From the West! The OPEC states would be absolutely powerless without voluntary Western financial support. It would be much cheaper for the West to simply take the Oil rather than pay for it. So why pay for it? It makes absolutely no sense to pay for oil that the West could take for free.

The only thing holding back Israel from a total military victory is the West’s insistance on paying billions and billions of dollars for a substance it could get virtually for free. And why don’t the Israelis point this out? Or somebody in the media? The OP is that the newspapers aren’t reporting the latest battles correctly. The truth is that they are missing the whole story!

15

Oil money doesn’t hold Israel back. Israel’s existant is built on military support from the US. If they went all out and started slaughtering Palestinians, US public opinion would turn against them, military aid would dry up, and within a few years they would be overrun. They constantly push the edge of what they think the US public will accept.

Take that 1000 lb bomb they dropped in a residential area as an example. There were loads of civilians dead, and there was a large negative reaction in the US. Immediately, every Israeli spokesman was screaming at any microphone he could find that they were just doing what the US was doing in its war on terror. That didn’t take, as most of the public did not accept the idea of intentionally killing many innocents to get one scumbag, and nobody wanted to give credence to the idea that that was a valid comparison (not that I’m saying it is). So all of a sudden, the same people who had been talking up the bombing were back, screaming that the bombing was a regrettable necessity. Then it was a failure of intelligence. The exact same people who had been saying two days before that blowing the hell out of innocent bystanders was a great patriotic act were now weeping for the loss of Palestinian life.

This is not to say the Israelis are the bad guys. But the idea that they have a moral high ground is laughable. They have military superiority because of their ties with the US, and that is the only thing keeping them from being every bit as despicable as the Palestinian terrorists. This demonstrates exactly why we should be engaging places like Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians. When it becomes a vital part of their national welfare to court US approval, then and only then can we have a deciding role in influencing their behavior.

16

I’ll have to vehemently disagree there. I’ll agree that both sides have done bad things. But there’s a saying out there that I think is fairly accurate: If the Palestinians put down their guns, there would be peace. If the Israelis put down their guns, they would be driven into the sea.

Just check out the Sep 1 issue of time (p 46-47) that quotes an interview by now dead Hamas activist Abu Shamad, where he states he’s willing to compromise a little bit now and leave it to future generations to decide if the struggle should continue until Israel ceases to exist.

This has to be DECIDED? They want to postpone a debate on weather to commit genocide?

Keep in mind that there was a long stretch of calm in the 1990’s, until this intifada began. Peace and coexistence are obviously possible – but not while one side considers the other side’s mere right of existence to be a matter of debate.

17

Really? So during this long stretch of peace in the 90’s, Hamas had a change of heart and embraced Israelis as their brothers and equals? Cause I seem to not remember that press statement. Strangely, there was still relative peace.

Peace will exist when it is in the interest of both parties, same as any other situation. The best way to accomplish that is to make both sides reliant on us, and then clobber them senseless when they act up. The current situation of the US and muslim radicals feeding their respective sides ammo ain’t gonna fix anything.

18

I don’t think an international peace keeping force will work because terrorists won’t care and Israel will retaliate in kind. IMO the 2 groups need to part Company. Total separation between them.

Palestine will need both utility as well as commercial infrastruction. That is where international intervention will work best. Creating a sustainable country will do more to eradicate terrorism than all the diplomatic ho ha that has followed the problem from day one.

19

I think it was Golda Maier who once said “there will only be peace when Palestinian mothers love their sons more than they hate Israel” One of the main problems is that the rest of the Arab world use the Palestinians to fight their war for them. They have never forgotten how the Israelies kicked their arses in 67, They complain that the Palestinians have no homeland, well im sure between them the Arab world could find some space within their countries

20

Wrong. While oil money may not hold Israel back, US aid to Israel has been a fairly recent development. Until 1962, the US had an arms embargo against Israel - meaning no US company could sell them weapons. And it wasn’t until 1973 after the Yom Kippur War when the US overtook France to become Israel’s largest backer - quadrupaling the amount of aid given.