A Draw in Gaza is a Defeat for Israel

The world is witness to heartbreaking scenes of the slaughter of men, women and children in the barbaric attack that Israel has launched on Gaza. The people everywhere are protesting on the streets, including even in Israel. Contrast this with the support or silence of the governments. The US Congress has even passed a resolution endorsing Israel's war on Gaza on the same day that Israeli ground invasion started, with not even one dissenting voice; a consensus that even the US invasions in Iraq and other countries did not achieve. The UN Security Council is yet to meet on the Lebanese resolution on Israeli attacks on Gaza. Mahmoud Abbas once again shows his impotence. This is the time to go to the International Court of Justice on a charge of war crimes against Israel on Gaza. Why else did he fight for UN recognition of Palestine, if not to use this recognition?

The number of dead and wounded have risen dramatically with the ground invasion. If it is enlarged, as Netanyahu has indicated, the casualties will rise even further. As we write, more than 300 Palestinians have died and more than 2,000 wounded in Gaza. Hospitals, schools, handicapped institutions, sewage and water treatment plants, all have been bombed indiscriminately. According to the UN, 80% of the casualties are civilian with a large number being women and children.

The chilling pictures and videos of three small children running away from the first shell that killed one of them, and then getting hit as the gun from a naval vessel followed them, literally blowing them away, could not be covered up by the western media. It made news everywhere; clearly the ones firing the artillery guns at the small children playing on the beach, were well aware of who they were shooting.

The outpouring of hate on social media only confirms what the Palestinian know very well; the Zionist regime has turned the Israeli population into people who are quite happy not only to shout “Death to Arabs” but kill them as well when they have guns in their hands. The tweets talk about “exterminating bugs”, killing Palestinian mothers so that “they cannot breed”. They tell the story of how well the Zionists have made Israel in the image of Nazi Germany.

The war in Gaza is not because 3 teenage Jewish children were killed near a West Bank Settlement. It is because Hamas and the Palestinian Authority lead by Fatah have made up and decided to form a unity government. The Hamas had even agreed to the conditions that included the recognition of Israel and non-violence. This threatens Israel, as it means the excuse of not having a partner as Palestine Authority's writ does not run in entire Palestine is no longer valid.

The Israeli regime used the killing of the three teen agers as an excuse to put under lockdown the entire West Bank and crackdown on the Hamas. More than a thousand including the Hamas leadership in the West Bank were arrested and 16 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces during this lockdown. One Palestinian youth was also burned alive in retaliation by some settlers.

All this was not enough. Israel launched what it calls “retaliatory strikes” on Gaza against rocket launches. This is the calculus of violence – for Israel and the western media – in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel always “retaliates”, Palestinians always “attack”. Even in the case of the three teen aged children, the cause-effect story does not include the cold-blooded killing of two Palestinians teens by Israeli security forces in Beitunia a few days before the kidnapping. Yet the clock in the current cycle starts, not from the killings of the two Palestinian teens, but of the Jewish ones. It is not the Israeli strikes in Gaza before the current hostilities that are the cause of the rocket fire from Gaza, it is always the rocket fire that causes “retaliatory” strikes from Israel. It is this narrative that all western agencies and media propagate. And with all third world countries repeating the western agencies feed, this creates the dominant media narrative.

One poster held up by a Palestinian protester summed up the whole story, “You have dispossessed me of my home and land, killed my mother, father, brothers, sisters and my children, cut down my olive trees, starved me and my family, bombed my refugee camp. Yet I am to blame, I fired a rocket back”.

The truth that this war is an attempt by Israel to split the unity of the Palestinian organisations. The fear of the Hamas and Fatah coming together is the cause of lockdowns, arrests and even killings in the West Bank and the massive attack on Gaza. It is to reverse the legitimacy of such an alliance and the pressure to negotiate a two-state solution, as opposed to continued occupation and expansion of Jewish Settlements in the West Bank.

Questions might be asked why did the Gaza leadership – and it includes not only Hamas, but also Islamic Jihad, Marxist formations such as PFLP and many others – reject the ceasefire? If there was to be a genuine ceasefire offer, it should have been made to Gaza authorities or through states that Gaza authorities had confidence in. Egypt, under al-Sisi, is a party to the continuing blockade of Gaza and in partnership with Israel. To have Egypt negotiate ceasefire terms with Israel without involving Gaza, was a farcical attempt at ceasefire. Worse, the Gaza authorities came to know of the aborted ceasefire only through radio and television. The ceasefire was nothing but an attempt to win brownie points in the western media while continuing the war on Gaza.

Israel has raised the stakes much higher with the ground invasion. It is clear that Gaza groups have enough rockets to continue their response for months. The rockets – though they remain quite crude and primitive – have increased their range and capacity from the earlier wars. They now have practically all Israel's main cities within their range. If the Israeli forces try to take out the entire rocket infrastructure in Gaza, they will have to occupy Gaza again. This is not only difficult for Israel to do without high casualties, but almost impossible to maintain.

Israel therefore is no better off than they were during the 2006, 2008-2009, and 2012 wars. They can invade, cause a large amount of damage but cannot reduce Gaza to a docile prison. Gaza is a vast open-air prison – the most densely packed place in the world with 1.8 million people. Starving them, denying basics of life, cutting electricity, destroying sewage and drinking water systems, all industrial infrastructure – all these have failed to subjugate Gaza.

So what is Israel's aim? Some have suggested that Israel got into this war that it did not really want, as the cycle of attack and retaliation got out of hand. The attempt at ceasefire with Egyptian help was a recognition of this. For Gaza, this is an opportunity to bring out the unfulfilled promises of the 2012 ceasefire: the lifting of sanctions and other terms none of which have been kept by Israel. They have now offered precisely these terms for halting the rocket attacks.

If Israel agrees to these terms, it will then have to acknowledge it has “lost” this war. If it does not, and continues fighting, it does not have a clear military goal. Occupation is out and continued attacks on Gaza are not yielding any dividend. If this war ends as the other ones did, with Gaza's military capability to fire rockets at Israel still there, it will not be considered a draw, but a victory for Gaza.

Israel has hard choices. It will either have to accept some modified version of what Gaza is offering -- lifting of its crippling sanctions on Gaza -- or it will have to try and occupy Gaza again. That is why Israel, with all its military power, still finds itself at a dead-end. A draw is a victory for Gaza, a draw is a defeat for Israel. This is what happened in Lebanon with Hezbullah, this is what seems to be in store in Gaza as well. The people in Gaza will of course pay a very heavy price in blood for such a victory. But faced with a brutal adversary that only recognises military force, they have very little choice.