Red Rag

I’ve been trying to reformulate my opinions about Israel and Palestine lately. In part, they are a response to Simon Crean’s disgracefully one-sided speech about the issue, but I’ve also been thinking about recent developments in the Middle East.

Tim Blair recently mocked the ABC (big surprise) for using the term “cycle of violence” in reference to the recent spate of suicide bombings in Israel. According to his way of thinking, there is only one side to blame for the violence—the Palestinians. The regular extrajudicial executions carried out by Israel apparently contribute nothing to the problem.

While I don’t want to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between suicide bombings and targetted assassinations (there is not), it is ridiculous to suggest that one does not lead to the other and vice versa. There is a cycle of violence. As Steve Niva puts it:

Palestinian suicide bombings are vicious and grave abuses, clearly war crimes under international law for intentionally killing civilians. They have also been a strategic disaster for Palestinian national aspirations, souring the Israeli public on peace and damaging the Palestinian cause in the court of world opinion.

Nevertheless, it is nearly impossible to avoid concluding that the current Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has either deliberately provoked a number of them or at least undertaken actions that would clearly risk them. Either way, it is complicit in the deaths of scores of Israeli citizens.

For how else can one explain the Israeli decision to assassinate senior military and political leaders from militant Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad during the past three months when it is well documented that such actions frequently result in a suicide bombing, usually within a week?

In four of the past five suicide bombings, the timing of the bombing, the fact that group whose senior militant was assassinated carried out the attack, and the explicit claim of revenge for the assassination in all of these cases leave little room for doubt about cause and effect.

Niva’s point is clear. There is an obvious connection between the actions of the Israeli military and the suicide bombers. Even if you believe that suicide bombings would continue anyway (they probably would), the assassinations appear to achieve little more than to spur the terrorists to act quickly. There would be fewer suicide bombings if the Israelis didn’t provoke them.

Why should Israel stop? Well, the only way to stop the cycle of violence is for one of the parties to take the lead and refuse to perpetuate it. As many of Israel’s strongest supporters claim, terrorist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are irrational and can’t be reasoned with. They are correct. Such groups will not be convinced of the long-term benefits of changing their tactics. On the other side, while some of Israel’s rulers are irrational extremists too, they are tempered by the moderates in the Government and the Knesset. Therefore only Israel can interrupt the cycle of violence.

This might be seen as conceding to the Palestinian extremists, but it will have the opposite effect. Extremist groups do not exist in a vacuum, but are reliant on the support (or at least the toleration) of mainstream society for their success. As long as Israel engages in assassinations, collective punishment, building an apartheid wall, and the expansion of settlement outposts, ordinary Palestinians will accept the actions of extremists as undesirable but necessary.

The balance of power between Israel and Palestine is so uneven that attacks on Israeli civilians are reluctantly justified as the only possible way of inflicting any damage on the occupation. Every time a helicopter gunship is sent in to shoot one man, the Palestinians are reminded of the disparity. Every time a person’s home is bulldozed because of somebody else’s actions, the Palestinians are reminded of it. Why does this image of a boy throwing a stone at a tank resonate so much with people? Because it effectively represents the helplessness of the Palestinians in the face of one of the biggest and most advanced military forces in the world.

Desperate people do desperate things, and the challenge for Israel is to offer ordinary Palestinians an alternative to the religious extremists. Granted, this will require significant reform of the Palestinian Authority and the removal of Yasser Arafat from power, but that can be encouraged by Israel. They made good ground by dealing with the former Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, but undermined it by continuing with policies that alienate ordinary Palestinians. In fact, they compounded the problem by demonstrating an unwillingness to deal with even a man that was seen by many as an Israeli plant.

Instead of learning from this mistake and dealing with Abbas’ replacement-designate, Ahmed Qureia (who by all accounts has far greater support amongst the Palestinians than did Abbas), they have announced a plan to forcibly expel Yasser Arafat from the region. Far from removing an obstacle, as the Israeli rhetoric puts it, they will be creating a massive obstacle. Palestinians will have no choice but to see whoever takes the reigns as an Israeli-sponsored false leader. Already they have rallied in support of Arafat, and the US has wisely come out against Sharon’s latest scheme. It rightly believes that Arafat would be a greater pain in the arse from exile than he would be if sidelined within the territories.

The problem with giving Arafat a new legitimacy is that he gives tacit support to extremist groups who support the targetting of Israeli civilians. There is a greater chance that such groups would be curbed by the Palestinian Prime Minister, but that won’t be possible if Arafat hogs the limelight (and control of the PA security forces). It is essential that fanatical groups are not fed, and the politics of victimhood are their lifeblood. The more violently Israel targets them and Arafat, the more support they gain from the mainstream Palestinian community.

If Israel was serious about giving the Prime Minister a support base that could ultimately wrest power from Arafat, it would oppose extreme religious groups on its own side of the fence (soon, literally). Instead of expanding settler outposts, it should begin to dismantle them, recognising that they are illegal and provocative, and emphasising that it is a gesture of goodwill towards the Palestinian PM. It should end plans to construct a wall, or at the very least build a wall that follows the 1967 border between the two territories.

It must be recognised that religious extremists on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides are causing problems—Jews by constructing illegal settlements on Palestinian land, and Muslims by supporting so-called “martyrdom missions” against innocent men, women and children. Only by denouncing nutters on both sides will any progress be made.

Collective punishment is the major problem on both sides. Suicide bombers are right to accuse Israel of breaching the human rights of the Palestinian people, but they are wrong to direct their retribution indiscriminately against Israeli civilians. Palestinian militants are justified if they direct their attacks against legitimate military targets—tanks, barracks, road-blocks, and even armed guards at settler outposts (as long as the risk of non-combatant casualties is minimised). It is entirely appropriate to resist an invasion by engaging in guerrilla warfare against military targets. It is totally barbaric to deliberately target innocent civilians. The argument that Israeli children will grow up to be drafted for compulsory military service is disgraceful and should be unequivocally rejected by the Palestinians.

Israel must recognise that bulldozing the houses of suicide bombers is wrong. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the families of suicide bombers often had no knowledge of their children’s plans, and would have intervened to stop them if they knew. Punishing a family or community for the actions of one of its members is a breach of fundamental human rights. The same goes for so-called “targetted assassinations” that fire several missiles in order to kill one man, often leaving innocent bystanders (including children) dead as collateral damage. Where the risk of collateral damage is high and well known, to continue in that course of action is tantamount to the murder of innocent civilians. In particular, indiscriminate shooting and the use of civilian human shields while trying to find militants is a gross offence against humanity. The same applies to curfews and road blocks that are more effective at denying innocent Palestinians access to their workplaces (and hence the right to earn a living), or that prevent emergency medical services.

Those Palestinians who engage in conventional or other attacks on legitimate military targets are doing nothing wrong. As long as they engage with the Israeli state rather than the Israeli populace, their actions should be treated as acceptable (if, to Israel, unwelcome). It is these groups that Israel should deal with in its efforts to broker a peace deal. Perhaps you should not negotiate with terrorists, but you should certainly negotiate with guerrilla fighters who are defending a legitimately and internationally recognised cause. Until Israel starts acting in good faith, it will be unable to undermine support for Palestinian extremists.