In the preface to his magisterial account of the formation of the modern Middle East, Robert Fisk observes that when the “war to end all wars” was over in less than two years “the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies [and] they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East.” Fisk then points out that his entire career as a war correspondent was spent covering the bloody consequences of these altered states. Seen in that perspective the long history of failed diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinians may still be viewed with a glimmer of hope since peace, however imperfect, has been achieved in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia, in both cases after centuries of religious and ethnic hatred. It is nevertheless hard to remain optimistic while the recent carnage in Gaza makes nonsense of the idea that either side in the Israeli-Palestinian quarrel has moved beyond ambitions of settling their grievances with military action.
Israel has defended its bombardment of densely populated urban areas with the remarkable argument that doing so makes its own citizens safe from Hamas rocket attacks. The killings of several hundred Palestinians, many of them children, en route to this safety, does not yet appear to have diminished public confidence within Israel that the decision to use military force was correct. As is often the case, the matter has been discussed locally with far greater openness than elsewhere. A few days ago, the journalist Gideon Levy wrote in El Ha’aretz that the assault on Gaza was “a war crime and the foolishness of a country. History’s bitter irony: A government that went to a futile war two months after its establishment − today nearly everyone acknowledges as much − embarks on another doomed war two months before the end of its term.” This sort of dissent is almost completely absent in the US press. The New Republic, for example, published an article by Yossi Klein Halevi that described the same operation as “Israel at its best. In response to random attacks aimed at its civilians, Israel launched precise attacks aimed at terrorists. In place of political schism, [it] initiated cooperation between government and opposition. Instead of illusions about an imminent peace agreement with Bashar Assad or about half a negotiated peace agreement with half of the Palestinian leadership, we exhibited sobriety and a willingness to defend ourselves.”
Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent, saw this finest hour rather differently. On the website Truthdig he wrote: “Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, said Israel is engaged in a ‘war to the bitter end’ against Hamas in Gaza. A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defence, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armour, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.” Whether or not Israelis are prepared to see the matter in such black-and-white terms, it is clear that Hamas and its allies will. Their willingness to ‘defend’ themselves has never shrunk from the murder of innocent civilians and surely it is only a question of time before they answer Israel’s military might with suicide bombers. Volunteers won’t be hard to find − a recent survey at a school in Gaza found that 71 per cent of children wanted to become a “martyr.”
Even before the military assaults began, Gaza was crumbling under the pressure of Israel’s blockade. Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, called the situation an “unfolding humanitarian catastrophe” and told Hedges that “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia.
There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children… Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders… over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.” Now Gaza will also have to recover from the aftereffects of outright war.
Before long international pressure will undoubtedly bring another ceasefire to Gaza and the US will coax Israel into yet more diplomacy, but nothing substantive will have changed. Israel will have earned a military victory and re-established control over enemy territory, but it is probably safe to say that fifty years from now there will still be other war correspondents covering the catastrophic consequences of whatever peace ensues.
