And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-- William Butler Yeats,
The Second Coming
There is little doubt that the Nazi Holocaust was as close
to unconditional evil as has been revealed throughout the
entire bloody history of the human species. Its massiveness,
unconcealed genocidal intent, and reliance on the mentality
and instruments of modernity give its enactment in the death
camps of Europe a special status in our moral imagination.
This special status is exhibited in the continuing
presentation of its gruesome realities through film, books,
and a variety of cultural artifacts more than six decades
after the events in question ceased. The permanent memory of
the Holocaust is also kept alive by the existence of
several notable museums devoted exclusively to the depiction
of the horrors that took place during the period of Nazi
rule in Germany.
Against this background, it is especially painful for me, as
an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing
and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel
through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as
'holocaust.' The word is derived from the Greek
holos
(meaning 'completely') and
kaustos
(meaning 'burnt'), and was used in ancient Greece to refer
to the complete burning of a sacrificial offering to a
divinity. Because such a background implies a religious
undertaking, there is some inclination in Jewish literature
to prefer the Hebrew word 'Shoah' that can be translated
roughly as 'calamity,' and was the name given to the 1985
epic nine-hour narration of the Nazi experience by the
French filmmaker, Claude Lanzmann. The Germans themselves
were more antiseptic in their designation, officially naming
their undertaking as the 'Final Solution of the Jewish
Question.' The label is, of course, inaccurate as a variety
of non-Jewish identities were also targets of this genocidal
assault, including the Roma and Sinti ('gypsies'), Jehovah
Witnesses, gays, disabled persons, political opponents.
Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the
treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record
of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments
in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so
vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its
allies to subject an entire human community to
life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The
suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a
holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal
to the governments of the world and to international public
opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal
tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy. If ever
the ethos of 'a responsibility to protect,' recently adopted
by the UN Security Council as the basis of 'humanitarian
intervention' is applicable, it would be to act now to start
protecting the people of Gaza from further pain and
suffering. But it would be unrealistic to expect the UN to
do anything in the face of this crisis, given the pattern of
US support for Israel and taking into account the extent to
which European governments have lent their weight to recent
illicit efforts to crush Hamas as a Palestinian political
force.
Even if the pressures exerted on Gaza were to be
acknowledged as having genocidal potential and even if
Israel's impunity under America's geopolitical umbrella is
put aside, there is little assurance that any sort of
protective action in Gaza would be taken. There were strong
advance signals in 1994 of a genocide to come in Rwanda, and
yet nothing was done to stop it; the UN and the world
watched while the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosnians took
place, an incident that the World Court described as
'genocide' a few months ago; similarly, there have been
repeated allegations of genocidal conduct in Darfur over the
course of the last several years, and hardly an
international finger has been raised, either to protect
those threatened or to resolve the conflict in some manner
that shares power and resources among the contending ethnic
groups.
But Gaza is morally far worse, although mass death has not
yet resulted. It is far worse because the international
community is watching the ugly spectacle unfold while some
of its most influential members actively encourage and
assist Israel in its approach to Gaza. Not only the United
States, but also the European Union, are complicit, as are
such neighbors as Egypt and Jordan apparently motivated by
their worries that Hamas is somehow connected with their own
problems associated with the rising strength of the Muslim
Brotherhood within their own borders. It is helpful to
recall that the liberal democracies of Europe paid homage to
Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games, and then turned away tens
of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. I am
not
suggesting that the comparison should be viewed as literal,
but to insist that a pattern of criminality associated with
Israeli policies in Gaza has actually been supported by the
leading democracies of the 21st century.
To ground these allegations, it is necessary to consider the
background of the current situation. For over four decades,
ever since 1967, Gaza has been occupied by Israel in a
manner that turned this crowded area into a cauldron of pain
and suffering for the entire population on a daily basis,
with more than half of Gazans living in miserable refugees
camps and even more dependent on humanitarian relief to
satisfy basic human needs. With great fanfare, under
Sharon's leadership, Israel supposedly ended its military
occupation and dismantled its settlements in 2005. The
process was largely a sham as Israel maintained full control
over borders, air space, offshore seas, as well as asserted
its military control of Gaza, engaging in violent
incursions, sending missiles to Gaza at will on
assassination missions that themselves violate international
humanitarian law, and managing to kill more than 300 Gazan
civilians since its supposed physical departure.
As unacceptable as is this earlier part of the story, a
dramatic turn for the worse occurred when Hamas prevailed in
the January 2006 national legislative elections. It is a
bitter irony that Hamas was encouraged, especially by
Washington, to participate in the elections to show its
commitment to a political process (as an alternative to
violence) and then was badly punished for having the
temerity to succeed. These elections were internationally
monitored under the leadership of the former American
president, Jimmy Carter, and pronounced as completely fair.
Carter has recently termed this Israeli/American refusal to
accept the outcome of such a democratic verdict as itself
'criminal.' It is also deeply discrediting of the campaign
of the Bush presidency to promote democracy in the region,
an effort already under a dark shadow in view of the policy
failure in Iraq.
After winning the Palestinian elections, Hamas was
castigated as a terrorist organization that had not
renounced violence against Israel and had refused to
recognize the Jewish state as a legitimate political entity.
In fact, the behavior and outlook of Hamas is quite
different. From the outset of its political Hamas was ready
to work with other Palestinian groups, especially Fatah and
Mahmoud Abbas, to establish a 'unity' government. More than
this, their leadership revealed a willingness to move toward
an acceptance of Israel's existence if Israel would in turn
agree to move back to its 1967 borders, implementing finally
unanimous Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
Even more dramatically, Hamas proposed a ten-year truce with
Israel, and went so far as to put in place a unilateral
ceasefire that lasted for eighteen months, and was broken
only to engage in rather pathetic strikes mainly taking
place in response to Israeli violent provocations in Gaza.
As Efraim Halevi, former head of Israel's Mossad was
reported to have said, 'What Israel needs from Hamas is an
end to violence, not diplomatic recognition.' And this is
precisely what Hamas offered and what Israel rejected.
The main weapon available to Hamas, and other Palestinian
extremist elements, were Qassam missiles that resulted in
producing no more than 12 Israeli deaths in six years. While
each civilian death is an unacceptable tragedy, the ratio of
death and injury for the two sides in so unequal as to call
into question the security logic of continuously inflicting
excessive force and collective punishment on the entire
beleaguered Gazan population, which is accurately regarded
as the world's largest 'prison.'
Instead of trying diplomacy and respecting democratic
results, Israel and the United States used their leverage to
reverse the outcome of the 2006 elections by organizing a
variety of international efforts designed to make Hamas fail
in its attempts to govern in Gaza. Such efforts were
reinforced by the related unwillingness of the defeated
Fatah elements to cooperate with Hamas in establishing a
government that would be representative of Palestinians as a
whole. The main anti-Hamas tactic relied upon was to support
Abbas as the sole legitimate leader of the Palestinian
people, to impose an economic boycott on the Palestinians
generally, to send in weapons for Fatah militias and to
enlist neighbors in these efforts, particularly Egypt and
Jordan. The United States Government appointed a special
envoy, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, to work with Abbas forces, and
helped channel $40 million to buildup the Presidential
Guard, which were the Fatah forces associated with Abbas.
This was a particularly disgraceful policy. Fatah militias,
especially in Gaza, had long been wildly corrupt and often
used their weapons to terrorize their adversaries and
intimidate the population in a variety of thuggish ways. It
was this pattern of abuse by Fatah that was significantly
responsible for the Hamas victory in the 2006 elections,
along with the popular feelings that Fatah, as a political
actor, had neither the will nor capacity to achieve results
helpful to the Palestinian people, while Hamas had managed
resistance and community service efforts that were widely
admired by Gazans.
The latest phase of this external/internal dynamic was to
induce civil strife in Gaza that led a complete takeover by
Hamas forces. With standard irony, a set of policies adopted
by Israel in partnership with the United States once more
produced exactly the opposite of their intended effects. The
impact of the refusal to honor the election results has
after 18 months made Hamas much stronger throughout the
Palestinian territories, and put it in control of Gaza. Such
an outcome is reminiscent of a similar effect of the 2006
Lebanon War that was undertaken by the Israel/United States
strategic partnership to destroy Hezbollah, but had the
actual consequence of making Hezbollah a much stronger, more
respected force in Lebanon and throughout the region.
The Israel and the United States seemed trapped in a faulty
logic that is incapable of learning from mistakes, and takes
every setback as a sign that instead of shifting course, the
faulty undertaking should be expanded and intensified, that
failure resulted from doing too little of the right thing,
rather than is the case, doing the wrong thing. So instead
of taking advantage of Hamas' renewed call for a unity
government, its clarification that it is not against Fatah,
but only that "[w]e have fought against a small clique
within Fatah," (Abu Ubaya, Hamas military commander), Israel
seems more determined than ever to foment civil war in
Palestine, to make the Gazans pay with their wellbeing and
lives to the extent necessary to crush their will, and to
separate once and for all the destinies of Gaza and the West
Bank.
The insidious new turn of Israeli occupation policy is as
follows: push Abbas to rely on hard-line no compromise
approach toward Hamas, highlighted by the creation of an
unelected 'emergency' government to replace the elected
leadership. The emergency designated prime minister, Salam
Fayyad, appointed to replace the Hamas leader, Ismail
Haniya, as head of the Palestinian Authority. It is
revealing to recall that when Fayyad's party was on the 2006
election list its candidates won only 2% of the vote. Israel
is also reportedly ready to ease some West Bank restrictions
on movement in such a way as to convince Palestinians that
they can have a better future if they repudiate Hamas and
place their bets on Abbas, by now a most discredited
political figure who has substantially sold out the
Palestinian cause to gain favor and support from
Israel/United States, as well as to prevail in the internal
Palestinian power struggle.
To promote these goals it is conceivable, although unlikely,
that Israel might release Marwan Barghouti, the only
credible Fatah leader, from prison provided Barghouti would
be willing to accept the Israeli approach of Sharon/Olmert
to the establishment of a Palestinian state. This latter
step is doubtful, as Barghouti is a far cry from Abbas, and
would be highly unlikely to agree to anything less than a
full withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders, including the
elimination of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements.
This latest turn in policy needs to be understood in the
wider context of the Israeli refusal to reach a reasonable
compromise with the Palestinian people since 1967. There is
widespread recognition that such an outcome would depend on
Israeli withdrawal, establishment of a Palestinian state
with full sovereignty on the West Bank and Gaza, with East
Jerusalem as capital, and sufficient external financial
assistance to give the Palestinians the prospect of economic
viability. The truth is that there is no Israeli leadership
with the vision or backing to negotiate such a solution, and
so the struggle will continue with violence on both sides.
The Israeli approach to the Palestinian challenge is based
on isolating Gaza and cantonizing the West Bank, leaving the
settlement blocs intact, and appropriating the whole of
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. For years this
sidestepping of diplomacy has dominated Israeli behavior,
including during the Oslo peace process that was initiated
on the White House lawn in 1993 by the famous handshake
between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat.
While talking about peace, the number of Israeli settlers
doubled, huge sums were invested in settlement roads linked
directly to Israel, and the process of Israeli settlement
and Palestinian displacement from East Jerusalem was moving
ahead at a steady pace. Significantly, also, the 'moderate'
Arafat was totally discredited as a Palestinian leader
capable of negotiating with Israel, being treated as
dangerous precisely because he was willing to accept a
reasonable compromise. Interestingly, until recently when he
became useful in the effort to reverse the Hamas electoral
victory, Abbas was treated by Israel as too weak, too
lacking in authority, to act on behalf of the Palestinian
people in a negotiating process, one more excuse for
persisting with its preferred unilateralist course.
These considerations also make it highly unlikely that
Barghouti will be released from prison unless there is some
dramatic change of heart on the Israeli side. Instead of
working toward some kind of political resolution, Israel has
built an elaborate and illegal security wall on Palestinian
territory, expanded the settlements, made life intolerable
for the 1.4 million people crammed into Gaza, and pretends
that such unlawful 'facts on the ground' are a path leading
toward security and peace.
On June 25, 2007 leaders from Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the
Palestinian Authority met in Sharm El Sheik on the Red Sea
to move ahead with their anti-Hamas diplomacy. Israel
proposes to release 250 Fatah prisoners (of 9,000
Palestinians currently held) and to hand over Palestinian
revenues to Abbas on an installment basis, provided none of
the funds is used in Gaza, where a humanitarian catastrophe
unfolds day by day. These leaders agreed to cooperate in
this effort to break Hamas and to impose a Fatah-led
Palestinian Authority on an unwilling Palestine population.
Remember that Hamas prevailed in the 2006 elections, not
only in Gaza, but in the West Bank as well. To deny
Palestinian their right of self-determination is almost
certain to backfire in a manner similar to similar efforts,
producing a radicalized version of what is being opposed. As
some commentators have expressed, getting rid of Hamas means
establishing al Qaeda!
Israel is currently stiffening the boycott on economic
relations that has brought the people of Gaza to the brink
of collective starvation. This set of policies, carried on
for more than four decades, has imposed a sub-human
existence on a people that have been repeatedly and
systematically made the target of a variety of severe forms
of collective punishment. The entire population of Gaza is
treated as the 'enemy' of Israel, and little pretext is made
in Tel Aviv of acknowledging the innocence of this long
victimized civilian society.
To persist with such an approach under present circumstances
is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire
Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic
whole. It is this prospect that makes appropriate the
warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should
remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of 'never
again.'
Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law and
Practice at Princeton University and Distinguished Visiting
Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.