AI
Saturday, November 17, 2012 5:09:13 AM
Obama’s Nightmare
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 13, 2012 282 Comments
The scandal engulfing two of our top military and intelligence officers could not be coming at a worse time: the Middle East has never been more unstable and closer to multiple, interconnected explosions. Virtually every American president since Dwight Eisenhower has had a Middle Eastern country that brought him grief. For Ike, it was Lebanon’s civil war and Israel’s Sinai invasion. For Lyndon Johnson, it was the 1967 Six-Day War. For Nixon, it was the 1973 war. For Carter, it was the Iranian Revolution. For Ronald Reagan, it was Lebanon. For George H.W. Bush, it was Iraq. For Bill Clinton, it was Al Qaeda and Afghanistan. For George W. Bush, it was Iraq and Afghanistan. For Barack Obama’s first term, it was Iran and Afghanistan, again. And for Obama’s second term, I fear that it could be the full nightmare — all of them at once. The whole Middle East erupts in one giant sound and light show of civil wars, states collapsing and refugee dislocations, as the keystone of the entire region — Syria — gets pulled asunder and the disorder spills across the neighborhood.
Related
Riots Erupt Across Jordan Over Gas Prices (November 14, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/world/middleeast/jordan-faces-protests-after-gas-price-proposal.html?ref=opinion
Times Topic: Syria
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html
Related in Opinion
Editorial: Syria’s Misery (November 3, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/opinion/syrias-misery.html?ref=opinion
Times Topic: Middle East
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/middle-east/index.html
Read All Comments (282) »
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/friedman-obamas-nightmare.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0#comments
And you were worried about the “fiscal cliff.”
Ever since the start of the Syrian uprising/civil war, I’ve cautioned that while Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia implode, Syria would explode if a political resolution was not found quickly. That is exactly what’s happening.
The reason Syria explodes is because its borders are particularly artificial, and all its communities — Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Kurds, Druze and Christians — are linked to brethren in nearby countries and are trying to draw them in for help. Also, Sunni-led Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war against Shiite-led Iran in Syria and in Bahrain, which is the base of the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Bahrain witnessed a host of bombings last week as the Sunni-led Bahraini regime stripped 31 Bahraini Shiite political activists of their citizenship. Meanwhile, someone in Syria decided to start lobbing mortars at Israel. And, Tuesday night, violent anti-government protests broke out across Jordan over gas price increases.
What to do? I continue to believe that the best way to understand the real options — and they are grim — is by studying Iraq, which, like Syria, is made up largely of Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Kurds. Why didn’t Iraq explode outward like Syria after Saddam was removed? The answer: America.
For better and for worse, the United States in Iraq performed the geopolitical equivalent of falling on a grenade — that we triggered ourselves. That is, we pulled the pin; we pulled out Saddam; we set off a huge explosion in the form of a Shiite-Sunni contest for power. Thousands of Iraqis were killed along with more than 4,700 American troops, but the presence of those U.S. troops in and along Iraq’s borders prevented the violence from spreading. Our invasion both triggered the civil war in Iraq and contained it at the same time. After that Sunni-Shiite civil war burned itself out, we brokered a fragile, imperfect power-sharing deal between Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Then we got out. It is not at all clear that their deal will survive our departure.
Still, the lesson is that if you’re trying to topple one of these iron-fisted, multisectarian regimes, it really helps to have an outside power that can contain the explosions and mediate a new order. There is too little trust in these societies for them to do it on their own. Syria’s civil war, though, was triggered by predominantly Sunni rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad and his minority Alawite-Shiite regime. There is no outside power willing to fall on the Syrian grenade and midwife a new order. So the fire there rages uncontrolled; refugees are now spilling out, and the Shiite-Sunni venom unleashed by the Syrian conflict is straining relations between these same communities in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait.
But Iraq teaches another lesson: Shiites and Sunnis are not fated to murder each other 24/7/365. Yes, their civil war dates to the 7th century. And, yes, when they started going after each other in Iraq, they did so with breathtaking chainsaw-nails-pounded-into-heads violence. There is nothing like a fight within the faith. Yet, once order was restored, Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis, many of whom have intermarried, were willing to work together and even run together in multisectarian parties in the 2009-10 elections.
So the situation is not hopeless. I know American officials are tantalized by the idea of flipping Syria from the Iranian to the Western camp by toppling Assad. That would make my day, too, but I’m skeptical it would end the conflict. I fear that toppling Assad, without a neutral third party inside Syria to referee a transition, could lead not only to permanent civil war in Syria but one that spreads around the region. It’s a real long shot, but we should keep trying to work with Russia — Syria’s lawyer — to see if together we can broker a power-sharing deal inside Syria and a United Nations-led multinational force to oversee it. Otherwise, this fire will rage on and spread, as the acid from the Shiite-Sunni conflict eats away at the bonds holding the Middle East together and standing between this region and chaos.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 14, 2012, on
page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama’s Nightmare.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/friedman-obamas-nightmare.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
========
Gaza vs. Israel: The legitimate and illegitimate use of violence in the Western discourse
by Catherine Charrett on November 16, 2012 14
Gaza, November 16, 2012 (Photo: Anne Paq/Activestills)
We hear news that the Israeli state has called up 75,000 reserves and is planning for a ground invasion. I continue to hear loud explosions of air raids surround our home in Saftawi, Gaza. The constant buzzing of the Israeli drone has become part of the backdrop of this weapons battle. I hear news that Hamas shot down two Israeli F-16s. I hear news that an Israeli drone was shot down late last night. I hear the rockets continue to be launched from locations around Gaza and reach the outskirts of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The shape of these two forms of violence shows how a state is able to launch a war and how a non-state movement is able to resist it. As bombs continue to rain down on Gaza and rockets continue to break the Iron Dome and make it into Israel, a review of dominant mainstream media sites in the West and Western governments reveals a very skewed understanding on the (il)-legitimate use of violence.
Two days ago, on November 14th 2012, a potential ceasefire between the state of Israel and resistant factions on in the Gaza strip was broken when Israel launched the targeted assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, the leader of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade. All Gazans immediately knew what this meant: there would be a retaliation launched by Hamas, a war of bombs and rockets would soon escalate and it would most likely continue. Gazans knew they would be bombarded with shelling from the sea, the sky and potentially land as ground forces would approach Gaza’s eastern border. This is exactly what happened; and two days later this battle of weapons between Israel and Palestinian movements including Hamas is going strong.
However, through the eyes of Western government and mainstream media some of these killing apparatus are regarded as legitimate and others are not. The F-16, the Apache helicopter, the drone, the bomb are weapons that the US, the UK, the EU can understand and relate to. They should as they are large importers of Israeli military and intelligence technology. The rocket, homemade from donkey shit and sugar or fabricated using Iranian technology is a weapon that is foreign to Western discourses on legitimate forms of killing. While both apparatus have maimed and killed civilians and military targets over the last two days, the bomb dropped is a more comfortable thought in the minds of the BBC watcher in England than the rocket being launched from a Palestinian resistance fighter into Israel. These western narratives forget that the rocket is used by the lesser military power in this asymmetrical bomb competition between Israel and Gaza. It neglects that resistant fighters in Gaza don’t use high performance jets or helicopters, not because they elect for a more brute or savage weapon; no, they use the rocket because they don’t have drones who can target identified military leaders from hundreds of meters up. They don’t have the military technology, power or resources to send fighter jets to Tel Aviv or launch a naval battle from the Mediterranean. They do not enjoy the support of the largest military power around the globe to assist it in making its attacks more “surgical”.
Benjamin Netanyahu felt comfortable enough to call Israeli attacks on Gaza as “surgical” (quoted in Al-jazeera “Rockets aim at Tel Aviv as conflict escalates”). The doctors of war proceed with great precision, although I would urge to strongly disagree with Netanyahu’s comments, as the death toll of civilians grows to twenty-nine and over two hundred injured in Gaza. However, Israel feels that it is a waging a professional war on Gaza, which is somehow more legitimate than the Palestinian retaliation attacks. And Western media and government voices support this reasoning, not only through their unbraided political and economic support for Israel, but also through their continued narration of the bomb competition between Gaza and Israel: through Western media and government there are clearly good guys and bad guys. Foreign Secretary William Hague says, “Hamas bears principal responsibility for the current crisis. I utterly condemn rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel by Hamas and other armed groups.” In addition, to this western media and government narratives support a most controversial concept that the Israeli life is worth more than the Palestinian. As Israeli deaths make the headlines, the Palestinian death is always included as a secondary. The killing of civilians in war is wrong and must be avoided at all costs, but unfortunately it continues to happen. Gaza is a 12km by 40km territory populated by 1.5 million Palestinians lives, when an Israeli bomb lands here a civilian will lose its life; this is regarded as collateral damage and is excused on this regard of legitimate mistakes of war. When Hamas or other factions send rockets into Israel and approximate urban areas, civilians are also at risk; however, the Western discursive understanding of this damage to life is regarded as terroristic and the brutal intention of an illegitimate body waging an illegitimate form of war.
All Palestinian resistant movements are referred to as militants or terrorists. Western media sources feel comfortable awarding responsibility for all attacks on Israel as being launched by that “terrorist organisation”: Hamas. Hamas, who although has strongly avoided the topic of elections in recent years, it was once upon time the democratic elected body of Palestine. Hamas was also not responsible for the rockets launched prior reaching the ceasefire on November 14th, 2012 before the assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari; Hamas’s military wing leader. The blowing up of one of its leader was bound to bring Hamas into this violence, which at least initially, it was trying to avoid. Many Gazans critique Hamas for not maintaining its resistance stance against Israel. However, Hamas has now forcefully taken up the mode of retaliation following the assassination of its leader; I stress that Hamas’s armed response comes as no surprise. However, Western media sources and governments were too quick to label Hamas attacks as uncalled-for militarist action. The argument that Hamas was compelled to respond to the assassination of one of its leaders does not enter western political or media discussions.
I would like to ask a question of these dominant Western discourses. In their mind who is allowed to legitimately resist against Israel? According to Westerns news media all resistant fighters in Palestine are militants. Israel, as a western favored state, is allowed to target and assassinate Hamas government and military officials: March 2004, Gaza: Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, killed by missile strike, April 2004, Gaza: Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, co-founder and leader of Hamas, killed in missile strike, January 2009, Gaza: Said Siyam, senior Hamas commander, killed in air strike and now, November 2012, Gaza City: Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, commander of Hamas' military wing, just to name a few. This precision killing is regarded as a legitimate form of violence. Hamas or other movements working from within Gaza are legitimate targets because they are regarded as militants or terrorists; their retaliation attacks, however, are regarded as illegitimate because they are from non-state militants or terrorists. So Palestinian military and political leaders can be legitimately targeted but they are not allowed to legitimately retaliate.
Palestinian factions represent a non-state (as we all know way to well Palestine does not have its state yet) and therefore, any form of violence Palestinian movements engage in will be, by de facto, that of a non-state actor. War or violence launched by a non-state actor, is so quickly coupled with militant or terrorist in the western discourse on legitimate uses of violence. Palestine continues to be forbidden its status and capability as a viable state; how then is Palestine meant to resist its occupation, when Israeli leaders wage their own war on Palestine and simultaneously work so energetically and aggressively to dissallow its status as a state? How are Gazan resistant movements, which do enjoy almost unanimous support from the entire Gaza population, meant to resist in a way which is legitimate to western governments? If these Western narratives were more dedicated to their own professed adherence to human rights then they would not be able to stand in defence of Israel. According to the Geneva Conventions a people under occupation have the legal right to resist their occupation; this Article 1 (4) of Protocol 1 stresses that force may be used to pursue the right of self-determination. States and actors who attempts to suppress the Palestinian right to resist violent occupation is in direct contradiction with the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which all legally aim to provide support to those fighting colonial regimes. The Western discourse on the legitimate use of violence needs to sensitise and educate its view: Palestinians have the legal right to resist and that is exactly what they are doing.
An Israeli man examines the damage caused to a house in Sderot by a Kassam rocket on Sunday (Photo: Edi Israel/Flash90)
About Catherine Charrett
Catherine Charrett is a PhD candidate at Aberystwyth University, UK in the department of International Politics and she hold a Masters degree from the London School of Economics. She has been a researcher in security studies and conflict resolution in Vancouver, Barcelona, London and she now finds herself in Gaza, where she was undergoing research into the European response of Hamas’s success in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Elections. Catherine is a feminist, an attempted nihilist and supporter of Palestinian rights.
View all posts by Catherine Charrett ?
http://mondoweiss.net/author/catherine-charrett
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/gaza-vs-israel-the-legitimate-and-illegitimate-use-of-violence-in-the-western-discourse.html
========
Rocket targets Jerusalem, Israel mobilises
By Hazel Ward
From: AAP
November 17, 2012 1:42PM
PALESTINIAN militants have fired rockets at both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, aiming for Israel's political and
commercial hearts and prompting the call-up of thousands more reservists in readiness for a potential ground war.
Gaza militants have fired rockets at the Jewish
state's political and commercial hearts. AAP
The Israeli military said on Friday it had sealed off all the main roads around the Gaza border, declaring the area a closed military zone, in the latest sign that Israel's patience with the rocket fire was at an end and it was poised to launch its first ground offensive on the territory since 2008-9.
Tanks have massed along the frontier and a steady stream of reservists are arriving throughout the day.
US President Barack Obama reiterated Washington's support for Israel's right to defend itself during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the conflict in Gaza.
New Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Friday night killed six Palestinians, raising the toll in two days of violence to 30, a Hamas health ministry spokesman said.
An Israeli military spokesman said one strike destroyed a Hamas military drone production workshop.
Israeli ministers approved the call-up of as many as 75,000 reservists as Netanyahu held late evening talks at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv with his inner circle, Channel Two television reported.
The military wing of the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza said it fired the rocket at Jerusalem, the first from the territory ever to strike the outskirts of the Holy City.
It marked a major escalation by Hamas in the face of a deadly pounding since Wednesday by Israeli aircraft that has sparked outrage across the Arab and Islamic world.
A rocket attack also killed three Israelis.
Neither rocket on Friday caused casualties or damage, police said, but they sowed panic in both of the Jewish state's main population centres, setting off warning sirens and sending people scurrying to shelters.
One hit a Jewish settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank just south of Jerusalem, which is home to many commuters.
"A rocket fired from Gaza hit an open area outside of Jerusalem, causing no injuries or damage," an army spokesman said.
Police said it hit the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements that stretches south of Jerusalem past Bethlehem from just 5km beyond the city limits.
A second rocket crashed into the sea off Tel Aviv "some 200 metres" from the beachfront US embassy, sending beachgoers fleeing, an eyewitness said.
The two rockets were the farthest Gaza militants have ever fired into Israel, exceeding even the 60km achieved by a rocket that hit the sea off Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, on Thursday.
UN and Palestinian officials said UN chief Ban Ki-moon would travel to the region in days to push for a truce.
"Ban went to the region during the last Israeli offensive against Gaza in 2009 and worked hard to end that conflict. He is looking to produce a truce and ceasefire this time as well," one senior UN diplomat said.
Even before the latest rocket fire, senior cabinet minister Moshe Yaalon warned that Israel was poised for a ground offensive.
"We are preparing all the military options, including the possibility that forces will be ready to enter Gaza in the event that the firing doesn't stop," he said.
As ground troops massed, there was no let-up in Israeli air attacks.
A child was among the dead reported by the territory's emergency services on Friday, two of whom were brought in to Gaza City's Shifa Hospital as Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil toured the wards on an unprecedented solidarity visit.
Israel denied its aircraft had killed the pair.
Qandil kissed the dead body of four-year-old Mohammed Yasser, voicing outrage at his loss.
"This tragedy cannot be tolerated, and the whole world bears the responsibility to stop the aggression," he said.
The overthrow early last year of veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak, a staunch supporter of Egypt's three-decade-old peace treaty with Israel, has cast a chill over the already lukewarm relationship between the two neighbours.
Egypt's new Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who like Hamas has his roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, has moved to establish closer relations with the Gaza authorities.
Washington appealed to Egyptian leaders as well as to allies such as Turkey to use their sway with the Palestinians in a flurry of telephone diplomacy aimed at containing the crisis.
Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke twice with her Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Amr and also with Jordan's King Abdullah II.
"In all of the conversations that she has had ... we all agree on the need to de-escalate this conflict," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
In Obama's call to Netanyahu, the president "reiterated US support for Israel's right to defend itself, and expressed regret over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives", the White House said in a summary of the conversation.
Netanyahu, who initiated the call, expressed his deep appreciation for US investment in the Iron Dome rocket and mortar defence system, "which has effectively defeated hundreds of incoming rockets from Gaza and saved countless Israeli lives", according to the readout.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/air-raid-sirens-wail-in-jerusalem/story-e6frf7k6-1226518523481
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 13, 2012 282 Comments
The scandal engulfing two of our top military and intelligence officers could not be coming at a worse time: the Middle East has never been more unstable and closer to multiple, interconnected explosions. Virtually every American president since Dwight Eisenhower has had a Middle Eastern country that brought him grief. For Ike, it was Lebanon’s civil war and Israel’s Sinai invasion. For Lyndon Johnson, it was the 1967 Six-Day War. For Nixon, it was the 1973 war. For Carter, it was the Iranian Revolution. For Ronald Reagan, it was Lebanon. For George H.W. Bush, it was Iraq. For Bill Clinton, it was Al Qaeda and Afghanistan. For George W. Bush, it was Iraq and Afghanistan. For Barack Obama’s first term, it was Iran and Afghanistan, again. And for Obama’s second term, I fear that it could be the full nightmare — all of them at once. The whole Middle East erupts in one giant sound and light show of civil wars, states collapsing and refugee dislocations, as the keystone of the entire region — Syria — gets pulled asunder and the disorder spills across the neighborhood.
Related
Riots Erupt Across Jordan Over Gas Prices (November 14, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/world/middleeast/jordan-faces-protests-after-gas-price-proposal.html?ref=opinion
Times Topic: Syria
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html
Related in Opinion
Editorial: Syria’s Misery (November 3, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/opinion/syrias-misery.html?ref=opinion
Times Topic: Middle East
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/middle-east/index.html
Read All Comments (282) »
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/friedman-obamas-nightmare.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0#comments
And you were worried about the “fiscal cliff.”
Ever since the start of the Syrian uprising/civil war, I’ve cautioned that while Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia implode, Syria would explode if a political resolution was not found quickly. That is exactly what’s happening.
The reason Syria explodes is because its borders are particularly artificial, and all its communities — Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Kurds, Druze and Christians — are linked to brethren in nearby countries and are trying to draw them in for help. Also, Sunni-led Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war against Shiite-led Iran in Syria and in Bahrain, which is the base of the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Bahrain witnessed a host of bombings last week as the Sunni-led Bahraini regime stripped 31 Bahraini Shiite political activists of their citizenship. Meanwhile, someone in Syria decided to start lobbing mortars at Israel. And, Tuesday night, violent anti-government protests broke out across Jordan over gas price increases.
What to do? I continue to believe that the best way to understand the real options — and they are grim — is by studying Iraq, which, like Syria, is made up largely of Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Kurds. Why didn’t Iraq explode outward like Syria after Saddam was removed? The answer: America.
For better and for worse, the United States in Iraq performed the geopolitical equivalent of falling on a grenade — that we triggered ourselves. That is, we pulled the pin; we pulled out Saddam; we set off a huge explosion in the form of a Shiite-Sunni contest for power. Thousands of Iraqis were killed along with more than 4,700 American troops, but the presence of those U.S. troops in and along Iraq’s borders prevented the violence from spreading. Our invasion both triggered the civil war in Iraq and contained it at the same time. After that Sunni-Shiite civil war burned itself out, we brokered a fragile, imperfect power-sharing deal between Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Then we got out. It is not at all clear that their deal will survive our departure.
Still, the lesson is that if you’re trying to topple one of these iron-fisted, multisectarian regimes, it really helps to have an outside power that can contain the explosions and mediate a new order. There is too little trust in these societies for them to do it on their own. Syria’s civil war, though, was triggered by predominantly Sunni rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad and his minority Alawite-Shiite regime. There is no outside power willing to fall on the Syrian grenade and midwife a new order. So the fire there rages uncontrolled; refugees are now spilling out, and the Shiite-Sunni venom unleashed by the Syrian conflict is straining relations between these same communities in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait.
But Iraq teaches another lesson: Shiites and Sunnis are not fated to murder each other 24/7/365. Yes, their civil war dates to the 7th century. And, yes, when they started going after each other in Iraq, they did so with breathtaking chainsaw-nails-pounded-into-heads violence. There is nothing like a fight within the faith. Yet, once order was restored, Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis, many of whom have intermarried, were willing to work together and even run together in multisectarian parties in the 2009-10 elections.
So the situation is not hopeless. I know American officials are tantalized by the idea of flipping Syria from the Iranian to the Western camp by toppling Assad. That would make my day, too, but I’m skeptical it would end the conflict. I fear that toppling Assad, without a neutral third party inside Syria to referee a transition, could lead not only to permanent civil war in Syria but one that spreads around the region. It’s a real long shot, but we should keep trying to work with Russia — Syria’s lawyer — to see if together we can broker a power-sharing deal inside Syria and a United Nations-led multinational force to oversee it. Otherwise, this fire will rage on and spread, as the acid from the Shiite-Sunni conflict eats away at the bonds holding the Middle East together and standing between this region and chaos.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 14, 2012, on
page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama’s Nightmare.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/friedman-obamas-nightmare.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
========
Gaza vs. Israel: The legitimate and illegitimate use of violence in the Western discourse
by Catherine Charrett on November 16, 2012 14
Gaza, November 16, 2012 (Photo: Anne Paq/Activestills)
We hear news that the Israeli state has called up 75,000 reserves and is planning for a ground invasion. I continue to hear loud explosions of air raids surround our home in Saftawi, Gaza. The constant buzzing of the Israeli drone has become part of the backdrop of this weapons battle. I hear news that Hamas shot down two Israeli F-16s. I hear news that an Israeli drone was shot down late last night. I hear the rockets continue to be launched from locations around Gaza and reach the outskirts of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The shape of these two forms of violence shows how a state is able to launch a war and how a non-state movement is able to resist it. As bombs continue to rain down on Gaza and rockets continue to break the Iron Dome and make it into Israel, a review of dominant mainstream media sites in the West and Western governments reveals a very skewed understanding on the (il)-legitimate use of violence.
Two days ago, on November 14th 2012, a potential ceasefire between the state of Israel and resistant factions on in the Gaza strip was broken when Israel launched the targeted assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, the leader of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade. All Gazans immediately knew what this meant: there would be a retaliation launched by Hamas, a war of bombs and rockets would soon escalate and it would most likely continue. Gazans knew they would be bombarded with shelling from the sea, the sky and potentially land as ground forces would approach Gaza’s eastern border. This is exactly what happened; and two days later this battle of weapons between Israel and Palestinian movements including Hamas is going strong.
However, through the eyes of Western government and mainstream media some of these killing apparatus are regarded as legitimate and others are not. The F-16, the Apache helicopter, the drone, the bomb are weapons that the US, the UK, the EU can understand and relate to. They should as they are large importers of Israeli military and intelligence technology. The rocket, homemade from donkey shit and sugar or fabricated using Iranian technology is a weapon that is foreign to Western discourses on legitimate forms of killing. While both apparatus have maimed and killed civilians and military targets over the last two days, the bomb dropped is a more comfortable thought in the minds of the BBC watcher in England than the rocket being launched from a Palestinian resistance fighter into Israel. These western narratives forget that the rocket is used by the lesser military power in this asymmetrical bomb competition between Israel and Gaza. It neglects that resistant fighters in Gaza don’t use high performance jets or helicopters, not because they elect for a more brute or savage weapon; no, they use the rocket because they don’t have drones who can target identified military leaders from hundreds of meters up. They don’t have the military technology, power or resources to send fighter jets to Tel Aviv or launch a naval battle from the Mediterranean. They do not enjoy the support of the largest military power around the globe to assist it in making its attacks more “surgical”.
Benjamin Netanyahu felt comfortable enough to call Israeli attacks on Gaza as “surgical” (quoted in Al-jazeera “Rockets aim at Tel Aviv as conflict escalates”). The doctors of war proceed with great precision, although I would urge to strongly disagree with Netanyahu’s comments, as the death toll of civilians grows to twenty-nine and over two hundred injured in Gaza. However, Israel feels that it is a waging a professional war on Gaza, which is somehow more legitimate than the Palestinian retaliation attacks. And Western media and government voices support this reasoning, not only through their unbraided political and economic support for Israel, but also through their continued narration of the bomb competition between Gaza and Israel: through Western media and government there are clearly good guys and bad guys. Foreign Secretary William Hague says, “Hamas bears principal responsibility for the current crisis. I utterly condemn rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel by Hamas and other armed groups.” In addition, to this western media and government narratives support a most controversial concept that the Israeli life is worth more than the Palestinian. As Israeli deaths make the headlines, the Palestinian death is always included as a secondary. The killing of civilians in war is wrong and must be avoided at all costs, but unfortunately it continues to happen. Gaza is a 12km by 40km territory populated by 1.5 million Palestinians lives, when an Israeli bomb lands here a civilian will lose its life; this is regarded as collateral damage and is excused on this regard of legitimate mistakes of war. When Hamas or other factions send rockets into Israel and approximate urban areas, civilians are also at risk; however, the Western discursive understanding of this damage to life is regarded as terroristic and the brutal intention of an illegitimate body waging an illegitimate form of war.
All Palestinian resistant movements are referred to as militants or terrorists. Western media sources feel comfortable awarding responsibility for all attacks on Israel as being launched by that “terrorist organisation”: Hamas. Hamas, who although has strongly avoided the topic of elections in recent years, it was once upon time the democratic elected body of Palestine. Hamas was also not responsible for the rockets launched prior reaching the ceasefire on November 14th, 2012 before the assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari; Hamas’s military wing leader. The blowing up of one of its leader was bound to bring Hamas into this violence, which at least initially, it was trying to avoid. Many Gazans critique Hamas for not maintaining its resistance stance against Israel. However, Hamas has now forcefully taken up the mode of retaliation following the assassination of its leader; I stress that Hamas’s armed response comes as no surprise. However, Western media sources and governments were too quick to label Hamas attacks as uncalled-for militarist action. The argument that Hamas was compelled to respond to the assassination of one of its leaders does not enter western political or media discussions.
I would like to ask a question of these dominant Western discourses. In their mind who is allowed to legitimately resist against Israel? According to Westerns news media all resistant fighters in Palestine are militants. Israel, as a western favored state, is allowed to target and assassinate Hamas government and military officials: March 2004, Gaza: Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, killed by missile strike, April 2004, Gaza: Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, co-founder and leader of Hamas, killed in missile strike, January 2009, Gaza: Said Siyam, senior Hamas commander, killed in air strike and now, November 2012, Gaza City: Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, commander of Hamas' military wing, just to name a few. This precision killing is regarded as a legitimate form of violence. Hamas or other movements working from within Gaza are legitimate targets because they are regarded as militants or terrorists; their retaliation attacks, however, are regarded as illegitimate because they are from non-state militants or terrorists. So Palestinian military and political leaders can be legitimately targeted but they are not allowed to legitimately retaliate.
Palestinian factions represent a non-state (as we all know way to well Palestine does not have its state yet) and therefore, any form of violence Palestinian movements engage in will be, by de facto, that of a non-state actor. War or violence launched by a non-state actor, is so quickly coupled with militant or terrorist in the western discourse on legitimate uses of violence. Palestine continues to be forbidden its status and capability as a viable state; how then is Palestine meant to resist its occupation, when Israeli leaders wage their own war on Palestine and simultaneously work so energetically and aggressively to dissallow its status as a state? How are Gazan resistant movements, which do enjoy almost unanimous support from the entire Gaza population, meant to resist in a way which is legitimate to western governments? If these Western narratives were more dedicated to their own professed adherence to human rights then they would not be able to stand in defence of Israel. According to the Geneva Conventions a people under occupation have the legal right to resist their occupation; this Article 1 (4) of Protocol 1 stresses that force may be used to pursue the right of self-determination. States and actors who attempts to suppress the Palestinian right to resist violent occupation is in direct contradiction with the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which all legally aim to provide support to those fighting colonial regimes. The Western discourse on the legitimate use of violence needs to sensitise and educate its view: Palestinians have the legal right to resist and that is exactly what they are doing.
An Israeli man examines the damage caused to a house in Sderot by a Kassam rocket on Sunday (Photo: Edi Israel/Flash90)
About Catherine Charrett
Catherine Charrett is a PhD candidate at Aberystwyth University, UK in the department of International Politics and she hold a Masters degree from the London School of Economics. She has been a researcher in security studies and conflict resolution in Vancouver, Barcelona, London and she now finds herself in Gaza, where she was undergoing research into the European response of Hamas’s success in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Elections. Catherine is a feminist, an attempted nihilist and supporter of Palestinian rights.
View all posts by Catherine Charrett ?
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http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/gaza-vs-israel-the-legitimate-and-illegitimate-use-of-violence-in-the-western-discourse.html
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Rocket targets Jerusalem, Israel mobilises
By Hazel Ward
From: AAP
November 17, 2012 1:42PM
PALESTINIAN militants have fired rockets at both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, aiming for Israel's political and
commercial hearts and prompting the call-up of thousands more reservists in readiness for a potential ground war.
Gaza militants have fired rockets at the Jewish
state's political and commercial hearts. AAP
The Israeli military said on Friday it had sealed off all the main roads around the Gaza border, declaring the area a closed military zone, in the latest sign that Israel's patience with the rocket fire was at an end and it was poised to launch its first ground offensive on the territory since 2008-9.
Tanks have massed along the frontier and a steady stream of reservists are arriving throughout the day.
US President Barack Obama reiterated Washington's support for Israel's right to defend itself during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the conflict in Gaza.
New Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Friday night killed six Palestinians, raising the toll in two days of violence to 30, a Hamas health ministry spokesman said.
An Israeli military spokesman said one strike destroyed a Hamas military drone production workshop.
Israeli ministers approved the call-up of as many as 75,000 reservists as Netanyahu held late evening talks at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv with his inner circle, Channel Two television reported.
The military wing of the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza said it fired the rocket at Jerusalem, the first from the territory ever to strike the outskirts of the Holy City.
It marked a major escalation by Hamas in the face of a deadly pounding since Wednesday by Israeli aircraft that has sparked outrage across the Arab and Islamic world.
A rocket attack also killed three Israelis.
Neither rocket on Friday caused casualties or damage, police said, but they sowed panic in both of the Jewish state's main population centres, setting off warning sirens and sending people scurrying to shelters.
One hit a Jewish settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank just south of Jerusalem, which is home to many commuters.
"A rocket fired from Gaza hit an open area outside of Jerusalem, causing no injuries or damage," an army spokesman said.
Police said it hit the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements that stretches south of Jerusalem past Bethlehem from just 5km beyond the city limits.
A second rocket crashed into the sea off Tel Aviv "some 200 metres" from the beachfront US embassy, sending beachgoers fleeing, an eyewitness said.
The two rockets were the farthest Gaza militants have ever fired into Israel, exceeding even the 60km achieved by a rocket that hit the sea off Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, on Thursday.
UN and Palestinian officials said UN chief Ban Ki-moon would travel to the region in days to push for a truce.
"Ban went to the region during the last Israeli offensive against Gaza in 2009 and worked hard to end that conflict. He is looking to produce a truce and ceasefire this time as well," one senior UN diplomat said.
Even before the latest rocket fire, senior cabinet minister Moshe Yaalon warned that Israel was poised for a ground offensive.
"We are preparing all the military options, including the possibility that forces will be ready to enter Gaza in the event that the firing doesn't stop," he said.
As ground troops massed, there was no let-up in Israeli air attacks.
A child was among the dead reported by the territory's emergency services on Friday, two of whom were brought in to Gaza City's Shifa Hospital as Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil toured the wards on an unprecedented solidarity visit.
Israel denied its aircraft had killed the pair.
Qandil kissed the dead body of four-year-old Mohammed Yasser, voicing outrage at his loss.
"This tragedy cannot be tolerated, and the whole world bears the responsibility to stop the aggression," he said.
The overthrow early last year of veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak, a staunch supporter of Egypt's three-decade-old peace treaty with Israel, has cast a chill over the already lukewarm relationship between the two neighbours.
Egypt's new Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who like Hamas has his roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, has moved to establish closer relations with the Gaza authorities.
Washington appealed to Egyptian leaders as well as to allies such as Turkey to use their sway with the Palestinians in a flurry of telephone diplomacy aimed at containing the crisis.
Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke twice with her Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Amr and also with Jordan's King Abdullah II.
"In all of the conversations that she has had ... we all agree on the need to de-escalate this conflict," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
In Obama's call to Netanyahu, the president "reiterated US support for Israel's right to defend itself, and expressed regret over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives", the White House said in a summary of the conversation.
Netanyahu, who initiated the call, expressed his deep appreciation for US investment in the Iron Dome rocket and mortar defence system, "which has effectively defeated hundreds of incoming rockets from Gaza and saved countless Israeli lives", according to the readout.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/air-raid-sirens-wail-in-jerusalem/story-e6frf7k6-1226518523481
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