We discuss the clashes at the Gaza Border, in which IDF soldiers killed 61 Palestinians, while the new American Embassy was being dedicated in Jerusalem, and with a good deal of angst of our own, we ask the questions we often ask in the face of this sort of horrid perplexity: What ought we think about Gaza? What ought we do?
This is a segment from The “I’m Not Your Toy (But Nix the Joy)!” Edition.
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Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90
I think the Return March is evidence of economic collapse yielding millennial hopes as last ditch effort to form coalitions for survival. The actual deaths and wounding/maiming has a lower iceberg of support. I don’t mean Hamas (which I think is mistakenly seen as a monolithic entity) but people providing all sorts of support for the March–food, release from home obligations including work, promises to recover later lost time, etc.–and later support for the wounded and families of the dead. This ramifies outward, wickedly throwing off economic collapse for a while. Nationalism produces a wide promise currency when there is a common enemy. You are seeing a nationalism of desperation produced by the siege.
Gaza cannot improve without electricity, and Israel has the ability to provide such. If on day one Israel had fed the grid to whatever level it can bear, a signal that Gaza can be an improving home would have been sent. If the same loss occurred on the 14th, Israel would then have been in a better international position.
If you want to dampen the ideology of Return–an ideology also core to Zionism–you must provide concrete reason to expect a home can be built where Gazans live. Promising resources after Hamas is somehow overthrown (at what internal cost?) does not do that.
Lastly, I think the Israeli reaction both before and after the 14th is significantly a consequence of cognitive dissonance. If Jews deserve recovery of a homeland from which they have largely been denied for a millennium, how can one condemn demand for an immediate Return only three generations old? I think the Israeli reaction is a form of angry denial. I am not saying therefore Return should be allowed; any significant Return would be disastrous. But this should mean that Home must be nurtured in what the UN says has become a hell. Sublimate anger at use of Return by others into proactive support for Home. That can’t be done if you require Hamas gone, or require it to completely change its attitude.
Consider that Sinn Fein was allowed at the Good Friday negotiations. Surely this helped the IRA get to the point of disarmament. There is no similar split for Hamas. I suggest refusing to consider the 1.9 million Gazans as puppets to Hamas and declare that there are some things Israel will not do. Turn on the grid, ask for international supervision of repair for water, electricity, and sewage. Say never again. I think you would see Hams change internally–not easily, but change. It’s a gamble, but the only way out is via a gamble. The certainty of demanded “normalization by Hamas” has lead to horror–some you see periodically, other hidden beyond Israeli sight.
Hamas whose goal is a complete destruction of Israel is fully responsible for the blockade and for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The provocation has been directed at Israel, carefully orchestrated by Hamas and paid for by Iran. Hamas admitted that 45 of those 61 are their fighters.
The High death toll is exactly what they want to create a negative image of Israel.
It is as simple as that.