Uri Avnery
26.1.08
Worse than a Crime
IT LOOKED like the fall of the
It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and
hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant,
embracing everybody they meet - to feel so even when it is your own government
that erected the wall in the first place.
The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an
inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass
of people that has crossed the border of despair.
That is the lesson of
ONE MIGHT repeat the famous saying of the French statesman Boulay de
Months ago, the two Ehuds - Barak
and Olmert - imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip,
and boasted about it. Lately they have tightened the deadly noose even more, so
that hardly anything at all could be brought into the Strip. Last week they
made the blockade absolute - no food, no medicines. Things reached a climax
when they stopped the fuel, too. Large areas of
Again and again, Aljazeera broadcast the
pictures into millions of homes in the Arab world. TV stations all over the
world showed them, too. From
It is hard to imagine a more stupid act.
THE REASON given for the starving and freezing of one and a half million
human beings, crowded into a territory of 365 square kilometers, is the continued shooting at
the town of
That is a well-chosen reason. It unites the primitive and poor parts of
the Israeli public. It blunts the criticism of the UN and the governments
throughout the world, who might otherwise have spoken out against a collective
punishment that is, undoubtedly, a war crime under international law.
A clear picture is presented to the world: the Hamas
terror regime in
The day the
But the day after, 17 Qassams landed, and the
joy evaporated. Politicians and generals were (literally) out of their minds:
one politician proposed to "act crazier than them", another proposed
to "shell
The government scenario was a repeat of Lebanon War II (the report about
which is due to be published in a few days). Then: Hizbullah
captured two soldiers on the Israeli side of the border, now: Hamas fired on towns and villages on the Israeli side of
the border. Then: the government decide in haste to
start a war, now: the government decided in haste to impose a total blockade.
Then: the government ordered the massive bombing of the civilian population in
order to get them to pressure Hizbullah, now: the
government decided to cause massive suffering of the civilian population in
order to get them to pressure Hamas.
The results were the same in both cases: the Lebanese population did not
rise up against Hizbullah, but on the contrary,
people of all religious communities united behind the Shiite organization. Hassan
Nasrallah became the hero of the entire Arab world. And
now: the population unites behind Hamas and accuses
Mahmoud Abbas of cooperation with the enemy. A mother
who has no food for her children does not curse Ismail
Haniyeh,
she curses Olmert, Abbas
and Mubarak.
SO WHAT to do? After all, it is impossible to tolerate the suffering of
the inhabitants of Sderot, who are under constant
fire.
What is being hidden from the embittered public is that the launching of
the Qassams could be stopped tomorrow morning.
Several months ago Hamas proposed a cease-fire.
It repeated the offer this week.
A cease-fire means, in the view of Hamas: the
Palestinians will stop shooting Qassams and mortar
shells, the Israelis will stop the incursions into
Why doesn't our government jump at this proposal?
Simple: in order to make such a deal, we must speak with Hamas, directly or indirectly. And this is precisely what
the government refuses to do.
Why? Simple again: Sderot is only a pretext -
much like the two captured soldiers were a pretext for something else
altogether. The real purpose of the whole exercise is to overthrow the Hamas regime in
In simple and blunt words: the government sacrifices the fate of the Sderot population on the altar of a hopeless principle. It
is more important for the government to boycott Hamas
- because it is now the spearhead of Palestinian resistance - than to put an
end to the suffering of Sderot. All the media cooperate
with this pretence.
IT HAS been said before that it is dangerous to write satire in our
country - too often the satire becomes reality. Some readers may recall a
satirical article I wrote months ago. In it I described the situation in
This week, the satire has become official policy. Respected commentators
declared explicitly that Ehud Barak and the army
chiefs are working on the principle of "trial and error" and change
their methods daily according to results. They stop the fuel to
The man in charge of the experiment is Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a man of many ideas and few scruples, a man whose whole
turn of mind is basically inhuman. He is now, perhaps, the most dangerous
person in
The man in charge of execution is the Chief of Staff. This week we had the
chance of hearing speeches by two of his predecessors, generals Moshe Ya'alon and Shaul Mofaz, in a forum with inflated intellectual pretensions.
Both were discovered to have views that place them somewhere between the
extreme Right and the ultra-Right. Both have a frighteningly primitive mind.
There is no need to waste a word about the moral and intellectual qualities of
their immediate successor, Dan Halutz. If these are
the voices of the three last Chiefs of Staff, what about the incumbent, who
cannot speak out as openly as they? Has this apple fallen further from the
tree?
Until three days ago, the generals could entertain the opinion that the
experiment was succeeding. The misery in the Gaza Strip had reached its climax.
Hundreds of thousands were threatened by actual hunger. The chief of UNRWA warned
of an impending human catastrophe. Only the rich could still drive a car, heat
their homes and eat their fill. The world stood by and wagged its collective tongue.
The leaders of the Arab states voiced empty phrases of sympathy without raising
a finger.
Barak, who has mathematical
abilities, could calculate when the population would finally collapse.
AND THEN something happened that none of them foresaw, in spite of the
fact that it was the most foreseeable event on earth.
When one puts a million and a half people in a pressure cooker and keeps turning
up the heat, it will explode. That is what happened at the Gaza-Egypt border.
At first there was a small explosion. A crowd stormed the gate, Egyptian
policemen opened live fire, dozens were wounded. That
was a warning.
The next day came the big attack. Palestinian fighters blew up the wall in
many places. Hundreds of thousands broke out into Egyptian territory and took a
deep breath. The blockade was broken.
Even before that, Mubarak was in an impossible situation. Hundreds of
millions of Arabs, a billion Muslims, saw how the Israeli army had closed the
The Egyptian president, who claims the leadership of the entire Arab
world, was seen as a collaborator with an inhuman operation conducted by a
cruel enemy in order to gain the favor (and the money) of the Americans. His internal
enemies, the Muslim Brothers, exploited the situation to debase him in the eyes
of his own people.
It is doubtful if Mubarak could have persisted in this position. But the
Palestinian masses relieved him of the need to make a decision. They decided for
him. They broke out like a tsunami wave. Now he has to decide whether to succumb
to the Israeli demand to re-impose the blockade on his Arab brothers.
And what about Barak's
experiment? What's the next step? The options are few:
(a) To re-occupy
(b) To tighten the blockade again and exert extreme pressure on Mubarak,
including the use of Israeli influence on the US Congess
to deprive him of the billions he gets every year for his services.
(c) To turn the curse into a blessing, by handing the Strip over to
Mubarak, pretending that this was Barak's hidden aim
all along.
The brutal blockade was a war crime. And worse: it was a stupid blunder.