Gaza-Israel Crisis in Context

Gaza currently has 1.5 million people running out of food, fuel, and water suitable for drinking. The region has been set ablaze with Israeli attacks, leaving hospitals unable treat the myriad of people in desperate need of care. As a recent editorial in The Nation pointed out, 75 percent Gaza is without electricity and their sewage systems are bordering ruin. Furthermore, the loss of a dozen Israeli deaths and just over a dozen injured, Gaza has been lost over 600, a quarter of them being civilian. To say that this is a mere crisis would be as grave an injustice as the conflict itself.

All of this has created a dividing line in the mainstream media punditocracy. Neo-conservatives, the Israel Lobby, Christian Zionists, J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Peace Now have engaged in some of the most vitriolic debate many have had the misfortune of seeing in a long while. 

The worst has been directed towards those seeking a just peace, questioning the actions of Israel and proposing actions, ranging from conventional to the extreme, in hope of bringing this age-old crisis. Neoconservative writer Andrew Sullivan has compared The Nation’s Eric Alterman to the authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He writes, “Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young has accused me of blaming Hitler’s victims for Palestinian misery.” Statements just as striking can be found (predictably) in publications such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard.

All of this couldn’t come at a worse time. America is in shambles, and our credibility in the Middle East has been squandered on account of eight years of belligerent foreign policy, unjust wars, wrongful imprisonment, torture, and the perception that the US works only in the best interest of Israel. Attempting to play a vital role as the “middle man” will be take an extraordinary amount of finesse, not to mention the need to send a strong and clear message to the world that we wish only for justice and peace in the region. 

This is easier said than done. The US has a long history of failure in the area of Middle East diplomacy, and this is particularly true in regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. More often than not, it is that the US and the international community lacks the resolve to implement and enforce agreements, while giving a wink and a pass to breaches of the agreements.

How, then, are we to overcome these obstacles? 

We must first begin with a change in perception. An example of such change would be US citizens overcoming the notion that Israel has for years been sacrificing land for peace. While it is true that land has been transferred, these plots are by no means sacrificial. The regions are settlements, having gone beyond it’s pre-1967 borders. In short, they are returning land that they confiscated and settled upon, forcing an outrageous number of Palestinians from their homes.

Doing this will force the US and the international community to hold both sides accountable for their former agreements. All sides endorsed UN Resolutions 424 and 338, the Oslo Accords of 1993, Bush’s “Road Map for Peace” in 2003, as well as those agreed upon at Annapolis. The only thing at play here is forcing both sides to be implement what was already agreed upon.

Secondly, the US must consistently apply their calls for democracy with the results of the democratic process of elections. The crusade for global democracy has resounded from Washington for some time, but leaders have been very selective when recognizing those democratically elected. If the goal is to have “the people” vote, and “the people” vote for a group that the US doesn’t particularly like (i.e. Hamas), the US must, if wishing to be consistent in their crusade for global democracy, recognize the decision of the people. To do otherwise is to be horribly inconsistent, fueling the Arab world’s impression that it isn’t so much democracy that we want, but rather to put leaders in power that have US interests and secular values at the forefront of their mind. 

It would do us well recognize the fact that without a resolve which favors a two-state solution and a complete (or almost complete) withdraw from illegal settlements, there will be further tension in other areas of the Middle East. Iran, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah have much to gain from a failed peace process. Recruitment will increase, policies will be justified, and alliances will be solidified.

The US must identify and condemn various actions committed by both sides. The difficulty in doing so rests, at least in part, with the fact that we are dealing with two radically different groups. 

Israel is a nation with a capitol, huge military and economic subsidies from the US, as well as a military force that rules the region like a colony, punishing a people collectively. As UN human rights representative of the territories has recently been quoted as saying, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is a “crime against humanity.” Women, children, and the elderly have been victims of attacks from Israeli air strikes. Palestinians are required to carry color-coded IDs and travel permits. Civilians have had their homes demolished. One must also include the barricades, checkpoints, and settler-only roads. 

On the other hand, the Palestinians left with little more than guerrilla warriors and the unconventional tactics often accompanying them. As Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said to Alya Rea of CounterPunch, “Unfortunately the insistence on violent repression by or assailants leads to innocent blood on the streets. Since 1996, 12 years ago, we have proposed to exclude civilian targets from the conflict on both sides. Israel did not respond to that. When Israel insists on killing our kids, our elders and senior citizens and women, and bombarding houses with the gunships, F-16s and Apaches, when Israel continues these attacks, what is left for the Palestinians to do? They are defending themselves with whatever they have.”

None of this is to say that targeting civilians is ethically permissible. All that is meant here is to put the situation into context. One country with a capitol, subsidized military and economy, the ownership of nuclear weaponry and a state of the art military over against a colonized people with little more than Qassam missiles, outdated artillery, and individuals willing to be human bombs in order to settle a score. 

President Obama has a tough road ahead, both on the home-front and internationally. But he must have the courage and wisdom to confront this age-old controversy in a way and with a resolve that former presidents have not. Unless he begins seeing the bigger picture, with all its complexities (i.e. religious, ethnic, economic, and militaristic), he will follow the same path as those who went before him. A path covered as much with the inhumane and unjust as much as it is with the blood and tears of the innocent.

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Darfur: Give War a Chance!

It seems today that "peace negotiations" are as much a part of war as are tanks and artillery. Indeed, it would seem that there is a proportion between the violence on the ground and the amount of useless diplomacy in the hotels. And nowhere is this diplomacy more useless than in Darfur. Sanctions won't work because the Sudanese govmint is protected by the Chinese, who lust after their oil and their development projects. And the Sudanese are happy to attend conference after conference; its a comfortable living and involves little risk.

Of course, the Left, and others, would like us to send a "peace-keeping" force, and have kept up a drumbeat of pressure to do just this. One certainly agrees with their fervor, although what "peace" there is to keep, I cannot detect, but no matter. Even if our army was not tied down in other places, this idea of a non-starter. A modern army is a technological marvel. Unfortunately, it depends on lot's of other technological marvels: roads, water filtration plants, electricity, and so forth. Darfur lacks all of these; every drop of water, every bite of food, every gallon of fuel will have to be brought in from the outside; the logistical problem far outweighs every other problem and we simply can't afford to enrich Halliburton anymore than we already have. Further, Darfur is the size of Texas, but is just a loose network of villages. This means that each village is no more important than any other, and all have to be defended, which means we would have to spread the army in small groups across a Texas-sized landscape; further increasing the logistical nightmare. No general is going to allow that to happen. The truth is, no foreign army can defend Darfur.

So can nothing be done to stop the slaughter? Well, there is, in fact, one army that can defend Darfur: an army of Darfurians. An armed and determined population can resist even a modern army, and much more a band of thugs and cowards such as the Janjiweed. This is a time-tested method. This is how we won wars in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan. The latter is the war in Iraq that we actually won; we won it by not fighting it, but rather by arming the Kurds to fight their own battles. Hence, having won their own freedom, which some support from us, they have established a stable and prosperous enclave right in the midst of chaos, a chaos that follows a foreign army wherever it goes.

To be sure, it is a method not without its own dangers. In Afghanistan, against the Soviet Army, we backed an obscure group of "freedom fighters" called the Taliban. After their stunning victory over both the Russians and their own internal rivals, their gratitude towards us did not last long. And in Kurdistan, we have created a state within a state that the Turks, the Iranians, and even the Iraqi govmint (such as it is) regards as problematic, if not downright threatening. Nevertheless, this principle is sure: the best army to defend any country is an army of that same country. Nations like the United States can change the balance of power by arming and training one side or the other. But they are unlikely to ever win such a war by fighting it themselves. There are exceptions, of course, such as the American conquest of the Philippines, but the Philippine army had no outside backers to provide them with arms against the Americans, and even at that it took us 13 years to completely subdue them.

An operation to arm the Darfurians with rifles, machine-guns, and grenade launchers would be relatively cheap and small-scale. We could also provide some heavy support by bombing Janjiweed barracks and logistical centers. And it is the only option which has any chance of success. A Janjiweed thug, intent on rape, may find his ardor cooled if his victim is herself pointing a rifle at his "gun." Indeed, the mere threat to arm the population may by itself cause the govmint to reign in the militias.

So why do we not take this option? I suspect that it is because we have made a fetish of peace, forgetting that everyone has right--or rather the duty--to defend themselves. But defense requires the tools of defense, and when only one side has them, defense is futile. The United Nations must realize that as long as the Chinese are willing to ignore any sanctions, then the UN can do nothing, and leave the questions to others who can. And we can, if we would. But we must be willing to give war a chance. Not a war of a foreign army, but a war of indigenous soldiers defending their own heritage, hearths, and homes. We can go on talking peace in the face of genocide, or we can actually do something about it. I believe we have a responsibility to act in the name of solidarity with the poor and helpless, but I do not believe that we can do the job for them, anymore than we could do it in Vietnam or in Baghdad.

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