'Rockets
Of futility'?
By Hasan Abu Nimah
31 May 2007
The
Electronic Intifada
The Israeli onslaught on Gaza
should be halted. And if it is the Palestinian "futility rockets"
that have provoked, and continue to provoke, the Israeli "defensive"
retaliation, the firing of rockets at Israel should be halted too.
In this last phase of the
war, the Palestinians have suffered, as usual, enormously, with nearly
50 dead and hundreds injured, mostly civilians. Damage to property has
been devastating too. On the Israeli side, however, only one woman was
killed in Sderot as a result of more than 200 rocket attacks. This does
indeed attest to the ineffectiveness of the homemade, primitive rockets,
often ridiculed by some Palestinian factions as "fireworks"
and referred to repeatedly by the Palestinian Authority president as
"futility rockets".
Obviously, the "world's
fourth strongest army" has better laser-guided missiles, better
delivery systems with ultimate precision, and F-16 fighter planes to
attack defenceless Palestinians in their passenger cars or homes while
asleep from the safety of the skies; and that explains, partly, the
disparity in both the effectiveness of the tool and the outcome. But,
with that equation so clearly evident, why should the Palestinians opt
for any provocation that may precipitate such disasters? Why should
they continue to behave in a manner that only confirms the overwhelming
conviction that all Israel does to them is legitimate response to their
pestering?
This question is valid, and
one can count an endless number of other equally valid questions. Yet
this line of logic is flawed from the beginning to the end. There is
nothing further from the truth than this perception.
The Palestinian rockets may
indeed be futile when compared to the superior Israeli military capabilities,
but they still cause harm and panic, as stones did before. They are
also likely to become more advanced and lethal, otherwise why should
the Israeli retaliation be that intense and violent. The life of even
one victim of 200 rocket attacks, on the other hand, should be valuable
too, although continuing violence and wholesale murder in as many war
theatres in the region has got us accustomed to undermining the meaning
and the value of human life.
But this also misses the
point essentially: if the Palestinians should stop firing because their
rockets lack precision and effectiveness, would they be justified using
them if, or when, they managed to overcome the shortcomings? And is
it, therefore, the flawless efficiency of Israeli weapons that justifies
the continuation of their use against Palestinian civilians? Is that
a new standard of legality and justice?
The emphasis on the Palestinian
rockets as the only cause of violence is wrong and misleading, and it
can particularly mislead when it is so often repeated by PA President
Mahmoud Abbas. When Abbas was elected to office in January 2005, he
managed to secure the agreement of all the Palestinian factions, including
Hamas, to a total truce. Israel never recognised that Palestinian unilateral
decision to halt violence. Referring to it as an arrangement amongst
the Palestinians, Israel continued its own provocations in the various
forms of daily arrests, assassinations, house demolition and incursions,
on top of the siege and the occupation. The collapse of that truce,
which Hamas continued to strictly observe after it was elected to office,
was not because of the Palestinian rockets, it was actually the direct
result of the continued Israeli daily aggression.
When a recent truce was arranged
for Gaza, this time between both Palestinians and Israelis, Israeli
attacks continued in the West Bank, as if the West Bank were a different
planet, and as if the Palestinians there were a different species. The
few very hesitant and faint attempts to convince Israel that it was
bizarre to expect any sense from an arrangement whereby violence would
be halted against one Palestinian while it would be continued against
the other have all failed. Israel never wanted to commit itself to any
truce. It insists on its absolute right to pursue "terrorist"
enemies under all circumstances, and it decides who is terrorist and
who is not.
Only less than two weeks
ago, the Palestinians offered to cease all acts of violence against
Israel, including of course rocket attacks, if the latter agreed to
reciprocate. This was rejected instantly, too.
Current efforts towards ending
the Israeli-Palestinian violence in Gaza should indeed continue and
intensify. The situation in Gaza is disastrous and is fast moving towards
total breakdown and chaos. Egypt, and probably others, is playing an
important role towards that end. Abbas, oblivious of his position as
the leader, is using his good offices trying to mediate rather than
decide. The problem though remains conceptual and deeply entrenched
in the approach to the entire issue, an approach which is wrong and
evasive. It ignores two primary factors. One is that the violence has
been caused and perpetuated by Israeli actions and attacks, not by the
Palestinian rockets. The other is that the Palestinians have always
been ready to halt any and all violence if the Israelis agreed to do
the same, and Israel never accepted such an offer.
The lack of guts on the part
of all the peace mediators, including unfortunately the PA president
and his party, to confront the Israelis with such salient facts has
always ended up with blame for the victim, being the weaker side. While
everything else is forgotten, the only thing on which all attention
is focused is the Palestinian rockets, much the same as when everyone
believed, and still does, that it is the Palestinian terror, not the
Israeli open obstructionism, that has been blocking any progress towards
a peaceful settlement since Madrid.
One can understand that such
misconceptions, indeed deceptions, are being propagated by the Israelis
and their supporters, but it is hard to believe that the Palestinian
president is forcefully blaming his own people for the disaster that
has been befalling them. It is hard to believe that Abbas is totally
ignoring the fact that his people only respond to continued Israeli
aggression with, indeed, the primitive weapons he and some of his supporters
mock, and that the Palestinians are not initiating provocations and
attack.
Has the time not come to
determine precisely and fairly where the chain of events starts, in
order to be able to accordingly determine who retaliates for what? Should
one not start with the occupation? Are 40 years of continued, severe,
harsh, oppressive and humiliating occupation not aggression? Who gave
Israel the right to occupy the Palestinians and rule their lives for
that long, in full contravention of international law and the simplest
principles of human rights? Who gave Israel the right to leave Gaza
but lay siege to it, controlling every movement of people and goods
to and from, and to seek European help to participate in controlling
the siege? When the starved Palestinians dug tunnels to break their
isolation, they were condemned and punished worldwide. Who gave the
Israelis the right to impose total financial and political boycott as
an act of punishment for all Palestinians for practising their democratic
right and electing a government which Israel did not like, and the whole
world went along with this additional injustice, tightening the boycott
indefinitely?
Any society which would be
subjected to a fraction of what the Palestinians have since the catastrophe
befell them 60 years ago would react much more violently, and would
still be respected, supported and justified. One need not go far to
find proof. When Israel destroyed much of the poor Gaza infrastructure,
in June 2006, including power supply, water and bridges, in addition
to tightening the siege and terrifying the people, it was acting "in
self defence", and therefore not blamed by the hypocritical world
which regularly condemns Palestinian violence. Israel at the time was
retaliating for the capture of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who
has not been harmed. Few paid any attention to the Palestinian claim
that they, by capturing the soldier, were also retaliating for the detention
of close to 12,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, of whom more than
1,500 were children and women. Israel, it seems, owns the exclusive
right to retaliate.
Having said all this, the
idea is still not to encourage Palestinian violence or justify it, even
when the rule of international law is entirely on the Palestinians'
side if they were to choose to fight for liberating themselves and their
land from the illegal occupation. My point is simply to hope that facts
are seen as they are, and the world stops blaming the Palestinians for
firing useless rockets without forcing Israel to halt its ongoing attack
by its most advanced F-16s and sophisticated missiles which never in
history were used against civilian and human targets; not to mention
the occupation itself.
The Palestinians may have
behaved irrationally, and they may still do, but that is the inevitable
consequence of the injustice and the abnormal conditions of the occupation.
EI contributor Hasan Abu
Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United
Nations. This article first appeared in The Jordan Times.
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