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The Experiment in Gaza

By Neve Gordon

The experiment in famine began on January 18, 2008. Israel hermetically closed all of Gaza’s borders, preventing food, medicine and fuel from entering the Strip. Power cuts, which had been frequent for many months, were extended to 12 hours per day. Because of the electricity shortage, at least 40 percent of Gazans have not had access to running water (which is channeled through electric pumps) for days and the sewage system has broken down. The raw sewage that has not spilled onto the streets is being poured into the sea at a daily rate of 30 million liters. Hospitals have been forced to rely on emergency generators, leading them to cut back, yet again, on the already limited services offered to the Palestinian population. The World Food Programme has reported critical shortages of food and declared that it is unable to provide 10,000 of the poorest Gazans with three out of the five foodstuffs they normally receive.

After five days of extreme suffering, a group of Hamas militants took the lead and blew-up parts of the steel wall along the Egyptian border. Within hours, more than 100,000 Gazans crossed the border into Egypt. They were hungry, thirsty, and sick of being locked up in a filthy cage. Once in Egypt, they bought everything they could get their hands on and waited patiently for the international community to intervene on their behalf. Yet the world leaders failed them again, and on January 28, after a five-day respite, the iron wall was re-erected and the Palestinians were pushed back into the world’s largest prison—the Gaza Strip.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s Minister of Defense, did not stammer when he justified his decision to experiment with famine; he had no qualms about introducing a policy that only the most brutal leaders have adopted historically.

His argument seems rational. Barak said that no government in the world would tolerate the ongoing bombardment of its citizens from across the border. Since other measures—harsh economic sanctions, extra-judicial executions, the ongoing barrage of northern parts of the Strip as well as the bombardment of several critical infrastructure sites, like the electric power plant and Palestinian government offices—did not do the job, Israel had no other option.

This ostensibly rational argument conveniently ignores the fact that since its victory in the January 2006 democratic elections, Hamas has proposed several cease-fire agreements, the latest emerging in recent weeks. In these proposals, Hamas agrees to stop launching missiles at Israeli citizens, in exchange for Israel ending its incursions into Gaza, the assassinations of militants and political leaders, and the economic blockade.

Hamas’ offers underscore two important facts. First, despite what Barak says, the use of force is not the only option Israel has: The government could decide to open a dialogue with Hamas based on a cease-fire agreement. Second, it emphasizes, as Israeli critic Uri Avnery cogently observes, that Israel is cynically using the assaults on its own citizens as a pretext for attempting to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza and for preventing a Hamas takeover in the West Bank.

Ultimately, though, even the courageous Avnery does not spell out Israel’s main objective. The central issue for Israel is not Hamas yes or no, but rather Palestinian sovereignty yes or no. The recent crisis reveals, once more, that Israel’s August 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was not an act of decolonization but rather the reorganization of Israeli power and the implementation of neo-colonial rule. Israel realized that in order to maintain sovereignty, all it would have to do is preserve its monopoly over the legitimate means of movement. Very different from the withdrawal of British forces from the various colonies of old, it accordingly continued to dominate Gaza’s borders, transforming the Strip into a container of sorts whose openings are totally controlled by Israel.

The experiment in Gaza is, in other words, not really about the bombardment of Israeli citizens or even about Israel’s ongoing efforts to undermine Hamas. It is simply a new draconian strategy aimed at denying the Palestinians their most basic right to self-determination. It is about showing them who is in control, about breaking their backs, so that they lower their expectations and bow down to Israeli demands. The Palestinians understood this and courageously destroyed their prison wall while crying out into the wilderness for international support. Instead of the expected outrage, the only response they received was a weak echo of their own cry for help.

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• Reader Comments

  The real problem is that the foolish Gazians have elected and apparently support a terrorist government. The fact that this travesty brings them great suffering is sad, but easily predictable. The solution is for them to declare peace, even if it means that Israel will not be driven into the sea.

  Posted by wolf on Feb 5, 2008 at 8:40 PM

  It is with disgust that I notice the cultish response from Wolf on the plight of Gazans. Hamas was legitimately elected by the Palestinian people, which process was denied/ignored by the Palestinians’ Israeli/American overlords. Hamas has continued to offer peace deals with the Israeli leadership, only to be ignored.
  The present Gaza was strategically constructed as a giant Warsaw-type ghetto, and the strategy has worked brilliantly.
  Meanwhile Abbas plays the Quisling to perfection, as was his deemed role.
  The closest parallel to this ethnic cleansing is of course the Nazi regime.
  Israel’s criminality shames the Jewish people (whose faith schools continue to propagate a ‘love of Israel’), and shames civilised people everywhere.

  Posted by evanj on Feb 9, 2008 at 12:19 AM

  Yeah the Nazi party was legitimately picked by the Germans and offered a number of peace deals as well. The biggest difference was that the Nazis actually were powerful whereas Hamas is at best impotent and unable to control its own population. Until a government is established in Gaza that can control its home grown crazies, the violence will continue.

  For laughs, imagine how kindly the US would act if Mexicans began lobbing bombs into Texas, with the “legitimate” claim that Texas really belongs to Mexico. Even without this craziness walls are being built. . .

  Posted by wolf on Feb 10, 2008 at 4:29 PM

  The protagonists of Nazi ethnic cleansing had much de facto support in the West but they did not get access to the media.
  By contrast, the amoral flunkies who fall into line to defend Israeli criminality get unfettered access.
  That Wolf can feel no shame that his tribalism has overwhelmed his intelligence and his humanity we have come to understand - this is a socialisation process of profound depth and strength.
  That the media should lower itself to give these people opportunity to display the effects of their pathology is something that all media outelts that value their own integrity should start to re-evaluate.
  The violence of course will continue for as long as the home grown crazies that run the Israeli state, underpinned by the truly loopy crazies that populate the settlements in occupited territory, learn nothing from their base inhumanity.  And of course, after sixty years, the prospect is that the violence will continue indefinitely, because no external power has the guts to confront this evil.

  Posted by evanj on Feb 12, 2008 at 8:22 AM

  If all else fails, perhaps Germany can implement a final solution to the problem.

  Posted by wolf on Feb 12, 2008 at 4:03 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 6 posts.

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