Re: <nettime> silence on Palestine?

[Joseph Rabie via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

For Israel (and Jews all over the world), what Hamas did last weekend deeply resonates as a proof of concept for how to conduct genocide as a “solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus, for many, the elimination of Hamas as a political and military entity imposes itself as an existential imperative.

Some Israelis, who support the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for statehood, are aghast with the dire situation suffered by Gaza’s inhabitants. But they are a minority: the traumatic experience of the terrorist attacks that killed many hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada effectively gutted the progressist Israeli left, and it has  never recovered. And in recent years, for most of a prosperous Israeli society, the Palestinians have become invisible, a non-issue, in particular at times of elections focused on other questions. Even the monster demonstrations against Netanyahu’s attempt to bend the judiciary to his will have seen scant protest against the occupation. Last weekend’s events have been a grief-filled wake-up call.

Now a traumatised population calls for revenge. How many grasp that what happened last weekend might be interpreted as the revenge of people traumatised since childhood by years of bombing, destruction and death? Which in no way condones the atrocities committed, on the contrary—but the same applies to both sides. Netanyahu’s personal call for revenge and total war echos his proto-Fascist government and its dream for ethnic cleansing, that seizes opportunistically upon every occasion to wreak havoc upon the Palestinians.

And so we witness with dismay the population of Gaza attempting to scramble to safety in the throes of humanitarian disaster. The Israeli military has warned them of impending hostilities, and is exhorting them to clear out. But at the same time, Hamas militants are allegedly ordering them to stay put, and threaten them if they leave. The Israeli military consider that they have done their humanitarian duty (whether lip-service or sincere is hard to say), and what happens to those who stay behind and get caught in the crossfire is considered unfortunate, collateral damage that is no longer their affair.

All this raises a troubling question: why are there no air raid shelters in Gaza, after so many years of bombing? Why hasn’t Hamas provided a defensive infrastructure to protect their civilian population, in the knowledge that the Israeli air force attacks those densely populated residential areas precisely because they contain military targets? It’s not as if Hamas lacks the know-how to build underground. Quite the contrary, they have spared no expense in the construction bunkers to safely house their military complex. In Israel, every inhabitant has access to shelter, either an obligatory strongroom in each apartment, or underground neighbourhood shelters. 

When Hamas attacked Israel in the way they did last weekend, they knew pertinently that Israel would retaliate with maximal force, far more extreme than in any previous engagement between the two. And this is undoubtedly part of Hamas’s plan, they have drawn up lines of battle to greet the Israeli military with maximal lethality. But instead of Hamas doing all in their power to protect the civilian population in the confined urban configuration making up Gaza City, they have exposed them in the front line. Cynically weaponising the victimhood of their own citizens, for the most macabre political gain.

Can one imagine, at the end of all this, that both peoples rid themselves of the leadership that has served them so badly, that they defy the conflictual logic that seems to govern human nature, and envisage coexistence as their only viable option?

Joe.



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