- Forget the Qassams. Forget the mortar shells. They are
nothing compared with what Hamas launched at us this week.
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- The chief of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip,
Ismail Haniyeh, has approached an Israeli newspaper and proposed a cease-fire.
No more Qassams, no more mortars, no suicide bombings, no Israeli military
incursions into the Strip, no "targeted liquidations" of leaders.
A total cease-fire. And not only in the Gaza Strip, but in the West Bank,
too.
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- The Israeli military leadership exploded in anger. Who
does he think he is, that bastard? That he can stop us with such dirty
tricks?
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- This is the second time within a few days that an attempt
has been made to thwart our war plans.
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- Two weeks ago, the American intelligence community declared,
in an authoritative report, that Iran had stopped its attempt to produce
a nuclear bomb as early as four years ago.
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- Instead of heaving a sigh of relief, Israeli officials
reacted with undisguised anger. Since then, all the commentators in Israel,
as well as our huge network of hired pens around the world, have tried
to undermine this document. It is mendacious, without foundation, motivated
by a hidden, sinister agenda.
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- But miraculously, the report survived unscathed. It has
not even been scratched.
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- The report, so it seems, has swept from the table any
possibility of an American and/or Israeli military attack on Iran. Now
comes the peace initiative of Haniyeh and endangers the strategy of our
military establishment towards the Gaza Strip.
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- Again, the army choir gets going. Generals in uniform
and out of uniform, military correspondents, political correspondents,
commentators of all stripes and genders, politicians from Left and Right
all are attacking the Haniyeh offer.
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- The message is: it must not be accepted under any circumstances!
It should not even be considered! On the contrary: the offer shows that
Hamas is about to break, and therefore the war against it must be intensified,
the blockade on Gaza must be tightened, more leaders must be killed
indeed, why not kill Haniyeh himself? What are we waiting for?
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- A paradox inherent in the conflict since its beginning
is at work here: if the Palestinians are strong, it is dangerous to make
peace with them. If they are weak, there is no need to make peace with
them. Either way, they must be broken.
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- "There is nothing to talk about!" Ehud Olmert
declared at once. So everything is all right, the bloodletting can go on.
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- And it is indeed going on. In the Gaza Strip and around
it, a cruel little war is being waged. As usual, each side claims that
it is only reacting to the atrocities of the other side.
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- The Israeli side claims that it is responding to the
Qassams and mortars. What sovereign state could tolerate being bombarded
by deadly missiles from the other side of the border?
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- True, thousands of missiles have killed only a tiny number
of people. More than 100 times as many are killed and injured on the roads.
But the Qassams are sowing terror, so the inhabitants of Sderot and the
surrounding area demand revenge and reinforcement for their houses, which
would cost a fortune.
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- If the Qassams were really bothering our political and
military leaders, they would have jumped at the cease-fire offer. But the
leaders don't really care about what's happening to the Sderot population,
out on the geographical and political "periphery," far from the
center of the country. It carries no political or economic weight. In the
eyes of the leadership, its suffering is, all in all, tolerable. It also
has an important positive side: it provides an ideal pretext for the actions
of the army.
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- The Israeli strategic aim in Gaza is not to put an end
to the Qassams. It would still be the same if not a single Qassam fell
on Israel.
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- The real aim is to break the Palestinians, which means
breaking Hamas.
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- The method is simple, even primitive: to tighten the
blockade on land, on sea and in the air, until the situation in the Strip
becomes absolutely intolerable.
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- The total stoppage of supplies, except the very minimum
necessary to prevent starvation, has reduced life to an inhuman level.
There are effectively no imports or exports, economic life has ground to
a standstill, the cost of living has risen sky-high. The supply of fuel
has already been reduced by half, and is planned to sink even lower. The
water supply can be cut at will.
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- Military activity is gradually increasing. The Israeli
army conducts daily incursions, employing tanks and armored bulldozers,
in order to nibble at the margins of the inhabited areas and draw the Palestinian
fighters into a face to face confrontation. Every day, from five to 10
Palestinian fighters are being killed, together with some civilians. Every
day, inhabitants are being abducted in order to extract information from
them. The declared purpose is attrition, to harry and wear down, and perhaps
also to prepare for the re-conquest of the Strip even if the army
chiefs want to avoid this at almost any price.
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- One after another, the Palestinian leaders and commanders
are being killed from the air. Every point in the Strip is exposed to Israeli
airplanes, helicopter gunships, and drones. Up-to-date technology makes
it possible to track the "children of death," those marked for
killing, and a wide net of informers and agents, some of them under duress,
which has been built up well in advance, completes the picture.
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- The army chiefs hope that by tightening all these screws
they can push the local population to rise up against Hamas and the other
fighting organizations. All Palestinian opposition to the occupation will
collapse. The entire Palestinian people will raise their hands in surrender
and submit to the mercies of the occupation, which will be able to do as
it pleases expropriate lands, enlarge settlements, set up walls and
roadblocks, slice up the West Bank into a series of semi-autonomous enclaves.
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- In this Israeli plan, the job reserved for the Palestinian
Authority is to act as subcontractors for Israeli security, in return for
a stream of money that will safeguard its control of the enclaves.
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- At the end of this phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
the Palestinian people are supposed to be cut to pieces and helpless in
face of the Israeli expansion. The historic clash between the unstoppable
force (the Zionist enterprise) and the immovable object (the Palestinian
population) will end with the crushing of Palestinian opposition.
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- In order to succeed in this, a sophisticated diplomatic
game must be played. Under no circumstances may the support of the international
community be lost. On the contrary, the entire world, led by the U.S. and
EU, must support Israel and look upon its actions as a just struggle against
Palestinian terrorism, itself an integral part of "international terrorism."
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- The Annapolis conference, and afterward the Paris meeting,
were important steps in this direction. Almost the whole world, including
most of the Arab world, has fallen into step with the Israeli plan
perhaps innocently, perhaps cynically.
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- Events after Annapolis developed as expected: no negotiations
have started, both sides are just playing with images. The very first day
after Annapolis, the Israeli government announced huge building projects
beyond the Green Line. When Condoleezza Rice mumbled some words of opposition,
it was announced that the plans had been shelved. In fact they continue
at full speed.
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- How do Olmert and his colleagues fool the whole world?
Benjamin Disraeli once said about a certain British politician: "The
Right Honorable Gentleman surprised his opponents bathing in the sea and
took away their clothes." We, the pioneers of the Two-State Solution,
can say this about our government. It has stolen our flag and wrapped it
around itself in order to hide its intentions.
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- At long last, there now exists a worldwide consensus
that peace in our region must be based on the coexistence of the state
of Israel and the state of Palestine. Our government has slipped into it
and is exploiting this agreement with another aim altogether: the rule
of Israel in the whole country and the turning of the Palestinian population
centers into a series of Bantustans. This is, in fact, a One-State Solution
(Greater Israel) in the guise of the Two-State Solution.
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- Can this plan succeed?
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- The battle of Gaza is in full swing. In spite of the
huge military superiority of the Israeli army, it is not one-sided. Even
the Israeli commanders point out that the Hamas forces are getting stronger.
They train hard, their weapons are getting more effective, and they show
a lot of courage and determination. It seems that the falling of their
commanders and fighters in a steady bloodletting is not affecting their
morale. That is one of the reasons why the Israeli army is shrinking back
from re-conquering the Gaza Strip.
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- Inside the Strip, both the main organizations enjoy wide
public support the demonstration to commemorate Yassir Arafat organized
by Fatah and the counter-demonstration of Hamas each drew hundreds of thousands
of participants. But it seems that the great majority of the Palestinian
public wants national unity in order to fight together against the occupation.
They do not want religious compulsion, but neither will they tolerate a
leadership that cooperates with the occupation.
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- The government may be very mistaken in counting on the
obedience of Fatah. Competing with Hamas, Fatah may surprise us by becoming
a fighting organization once again. The stream of money flowing into the
Authority may not prevent this. Ze'ev Jabotinsky was wiser than Tony Blair
when he said 85 years ago that you cannot buy a whole people.
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- If the Israeli army invades Gaza in order to re-conquer
it, the population will stand behind the fighters. Nobody can know how
it will react if the economic misery gets worse. The results may be unexpected.
Experience with other liberation movements indicates that misery can break
a population, but it can also strengthen it.
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- This is, simply put, an existential test for the Palestinian
people perhaps the most severe since 1948. It is also a test for
the shrewd policy of Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, and the army
chiefs.
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- So a cease-fire is not likely to come into effect. At
first Olmert rejected one out of hand. Then this was denied. Then the denial
was denied.
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- The inhabitants of Sderot would probably have been glad
to accept a cease-fire. But then, who bothers to ask them?
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