Here is an account on the history and current crisis in Gaza by a Jewish Oxford
professor who served
in the Israeli army in the 60s. I hope this article would answer some of the
questions I received about
the background of the conflict in the area.

For those who are interested in more information, we are
organizing a teach-in on UW campus on this issue where local experts on history
and politics of the
Middle East, public health, mental health, human rights and policy will be
presenting and answering
questions. Will post more details as soon the date is and location are
determined.

Thank you.

Amineh


Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli
army and has never
questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him
to devastating
conclusions

Avi Shlaim
The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
Article history

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas
police
headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed
Abed/AFP/Getty
Images

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through
understanding the historical
context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental
injustice to the
Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on
behalf of the infant state. On 2
June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that
the Americans were
responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly
unscrupulous set of leaders". I
used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on
the people of Gaza, and
the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the
question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and
who has never
questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders.
What I utterly reject is the
Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and the Gaza
Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security
and everything to do with
territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through
permanent political,
economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result
has been one of the most
prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the
Gaza Strip. With a large
population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no
infrastructure or natural
resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a
case of economic
under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use
the Biblical
phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers
of water, into a
source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development
of local industry was
actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their
subordination to Israel
and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political
independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish
settlements in occupied
territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They
are at once the
instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the
Jewish settlers
numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the
settlers controlled
25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce
water resources. Cheek
by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived
in abject poverty and
unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a
day. The living conditions
in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to
resistance and a fertile
breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral
Israeli pullout from
Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they
had left behind. Hamas,
the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the
Israelis out of Gaza.
The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world,
Sharon presented the
withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution.
But in the year after,
another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for
an independent
Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible.
Israel had a choice and it
chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of
Greater Israel by
incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel.
Withdrawal from Gaza
was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a
prelude to further Zionist
expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what
was seen, mistakenly
in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection
of the Palestinian
national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to
deny the Palestinian
people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all
access to the Gaza Strip by
land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From
this point on, the
Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic
booms by flying low and
breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this
prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of
authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never
in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and
has done a great deal
to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with
reactionary Arab regimes to
suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian
people succeeded in
building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible
exception of Lebanon. In
January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the
Palestinian Authority brought to
power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the
democratically elected
government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the
Hamas government
and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A
surreal situation thus
developed with a significant part of the international community imposing
economic sanctions not
against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but
against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for
their own misfortunes.
Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the
Palestinians are terrorists, that
they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little
more than antisemitism,
that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible
with democracy. But the
simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal
aspirations. They are no
better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to,
above all, is a piece
of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme
following its rise to
power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move
towards pragmatic
accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a
national unity
government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel.
Israel, however, refused to
negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian
factions. In the late
1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the
secular nationalist
movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and
pliant Fatah leaders to
overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive
American neoconservatives
participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their
meddling was a major factor in
the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize
power in Gaza in June
2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a
series of clashes and
confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a
war between Israel and
the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The
declared aim of the
war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to
a new ceasefire on
Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza
are seen by the world
simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for
independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election
is scheduled for 10
February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are
looking for an opportunity to
prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to
deliver a crushing blow to
Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of
the war against Hezbollah
in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and
impotence of the pro-
western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of
his term in the
White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on
Hamas, vetoing proposals
at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a
free pass to mount a
ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but
the sheer asymmetry of
power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real
victim. This is indeed a
conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a
small and defenceless
Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli
Goliath. The resort to brute
military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood
and a farrago of self-pity
overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of
bokhim ve-yorim,
"crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the
fruit of its electoral
victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the
weapon of the weak -
terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket
attacks against Israeli
settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire
last June. The
damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact
is immense,
prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the
circumstances, Israel had
the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket
attacks was totally
disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the
withdrawal from Gaza,
11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the
IDF killed 1,290
Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as
much as it does to
Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality
towards the inhabitants
of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came
into force which, in the
view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the
ceasefire, Israel
prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005
accord, leading to a sharp
drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is
unemployed. At the same
time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel,
cooking-gas canisters,
spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is
difficult to see how
starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the
Israeli side of the border.
But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment
that is strictly forbidden by
international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its
spokesmen. Eight months
before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National
Information Directorate. The
core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the
ceasefire agreements; that
Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces
are taking the utmost care
not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably
successful in getting this
message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its
spokesmen. It was not
Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4
November that killed
six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but
the eventual overthrow
of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And
far from taking care
to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a
three-year-old blockade that has
brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian
catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's
insane offensive against Gaza
seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing,
with a death toll of
more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land
invasion of Gaza the
consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks
from the military wing of
Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them,
they kept up their
resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies
victimhood and
martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two
communities. The
problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most
elementary security to the
other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through
shooting but through talks
with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term
ceasefire with the
Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel
has rejected this offer for
the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on
the table: it involves
concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it
difficult to resist the conclusion
that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders".
A rogue state habitually
violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises
terrorism - the use of
violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these
three criteria; the cap fits and
it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its
Palestinian neighbours but military
domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more
disastrous ones.
Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and
mistakes of the past. But it is
not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of
Oxford and the author of The
Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life
in War and Peace.