tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/operation-protective-edge-11717/articlesOperation Protective Edge – The Conversation2021-05-20T15:52:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1611252021-05-20T15:52:30Z2021-05-20T15:52:30ZIsrael, Gaza and the pursuit of the ‘victory image’<p>After strong pressure from US president Joe Biden, a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-57183127">ceasefire has been agreed</a> between Israel and Hamas and the 11-day bombardment of Gaza has ended. Both sides are <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/israel-hamas-ceasefire-after-11-days-time-is-right-for-both-sides-to-claim-victory-12312314">claiming victory</a>: Hamas says that has received guarantees of an end to the Israeli aggression in East Jerusalem which helped trigger the conflict.</p>
<p>Israel has denied this, but for it’s part says it has “significantly degraded” the military capabilities of Hamas. The idea of being able to demonstrate to the world it has “won” has obsessed Israel’s commentariat over the past week. Conversations about the Israeli Defense Force’s military operations in Israeli TV studios and opinion columns and blogs have centred around the idea of obtaining a “<a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/a-closer-look-at-the-victories-that-define-us/">victory image</a>”.</p>
<p>Haaretz’s military correspondent Amos Harel <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium-netanyahu-spinning-destruction-of-gaza-tunnels-into-victory-but-it-s-not-over-yet-1.9811362">wrote on May 15</a> that: “After strenuous efforts – Israel has finally found a victory image around which it is possible to construct a justification for a ceasefire to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip.” He was talking about the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/05/19/998152164/israeli-warplanes-pound-hamas-tunnels-in-gaza">bombing of the “Gaza Metro”</a> tunnels built by Hamas. But the plan, which was to liquidate Hamas’ senior commanders in the tunnels has reportedly <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/05/no-victory-picture-israel-gaza">not been as successful as was hoped</a>.</p>
<p>Traditionally, victory images are iconic representations of military achievement. Think of the American flag in Iwo Jima or the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in the second world war. Recently, this idea was revived and has become a central feature of the way in which the Israeli army operates. With time it has morphed into a set of conditions that legitimise the “<a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/genocidal-desistance-in-gaza-0/">desistance</a>” of military operations.</p>
<p>As I discovered while researching the issue, during the 2006 Lebanon conflict the victory image became a <a href="https://www.inss.org.il/publication/what-is-victory/">stated goal</a> of any Israeli military operation. The IDF attempted to stage an iconic image of a soldier waving an Israeli flag over a house in the town of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0967010619835365">Bint Jbeil</a> in Lebanese territory, four miles from Israel’s border. The town had become known as the “capital of the resistance” and house had been used by the then Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXWQ4wfm3PI">give a speech</a> after Israeli Defense Forces withdrew in March 2000 in which he said Israel was “weaker than a spider’s web”.</p>
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<img alt="Buildings destroyed by fighting in the Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil, 2006." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401640/original/file-20210519-23-dkb68a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401640/original/file-20210519-23-dkb68a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401640/original/file-20210519-23-dkb68a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401640/original/file-20210519-23-dkb68a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401640/original/file-20210519-23-dkb68a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401640/original/file-20210519-23-dkb68a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401640/original/file-20210519-23-dkb68a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Destroyed: the village of Bint Jbeil in Lebanon, 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Feyrouz via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The image of the Israeli flag waving over that balcony six years later was meant to send a message to Israelis and to Hezbollah that would serve as a “victory image” but the result was unimpressive and grainy and the picture was never used for propaganda purposes.</p>
<h2>‘Scoreboard’ update</h2>
<p>At times, the victory image takes the form of an infographic, a set of compiled statistics that are laid out in a manner akin to a computer game scoreboard, as in this image, created by the IDF in 2014 after operation “Protective Edge”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Infographic published by the IDF on Twitter in 2014 after operation protective edge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401952/original/file-20210520-21-b7o0dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Infographic published by the IDF on Twitter in 2014 after operation protective edge.</span>
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<p>The visualised data provides a strong and familiar narrative that appears to legitimise the operation in Gaza, listing achievements and painting an image of success. Here’s a similar image, in Hebrew script, that the IDF has just put out to <a href="https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1395590248118247424/photo/1">declare victory</a> in the latest conflict. But it provides an incomplete story. According to Israeli human rights NGO <a href="https://statistics.btselem.org/en/intro/fatalities">B’tselem</a>, the three major Israeli army operations in Gaza over the past 15 years have caused the deaths of 3,758 Palestinians – many of them non-combatants. Meanwhile, the toll on Israel’s side, including soldiers on the ground in Gaza and civilians in Israel killed by rockets, has amounted to 83 deaths. </p>
<p>So, while the barrages of missiles being fired at Israel by Hamas are lethal and trauma inducing, the 45-fold discrepancy between the number of Israeli and Palestinian deaths is a good measure of the power differential between the two sides.</p>
<h2>Targeting Hamas ‘celebrities’</h2>
<p>The extent and the manner of the spread of violence in Israel and Palestine is anything but predictable. But the way in which deadly violence is conducted in Gaza, sadly follows a familiar script. Currently, political commentators in Israel are suggesting possible achievements that could count as a “victory image” – for example, the assassination of high-ranking Hamas officials. </p>
<p>At the start of the current operation in Gaza popular Israeli website Walla News <a href="https://news.walla.co.il/item/3435220">published an article</a> under the headline: “The celebrities of the Hamas leadership are still alive”, arguing that “only hitting a symbol like [Mohammed] Deif or [Yahya] Sinuar (Hamas leaders) will provide Israel with a victory image”. Meanwhile Israel’s television networks are rife with speculation as to who should be targeted.</p>
<p>Writing about the proliferation of “victory albums” in Israel following the 1967 war, American scholar Daniel Bertrand Monk <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/grey/article/doi/10.1162/152638102760104699/10388/Welcome-to-Crisis-Notes-for-a-Pictorial-History-of">reflected on</a> “the horror of a world in which wars may be happening for the sake of their pictures”. The pursuit of a victory image as an integral part of Israel’s campaign of airstrikes in Gaza puts a modern face on Monk’s vision of horror.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yoav Galai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sometimes propaganda becomes a strategy in itself.Yoav Galai, Lecturer, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/336042014-10-30T20:00:05Z2014-10-30T20:00:05ZRebuilding Gaza needs freedom and normality – not just aid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63190/original/czv87pzc-1414590929.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where to start rebuilding?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the near three decades that I have been involved with Gaza and her people, I have never seen the kind of physical and psychological destruction that I see there today. </p>
<p>In all Gaza’s long and tormented history, there is no precedent for its extraordinarily dangerous position in 2014. The situation is dangerous not only for Gazans, but for Israelis as well; as the scholar Jean-Pierre Filiu recently <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/gaza-a-history-by-jeanpierre-filiu-trans-john-king-book-review-9726636.html">wrote</a>: “If there is ever to be Israeli-Palestinian peace – with all other options having been exhausted – Gaza will be the foundation, and the keystone.”</p>
<p>This is because Gaza has long been, and remains, the heart of Palestinian nationalism and resistance to Israeli occupation. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/israels-stated-aims-in-gaza-make-no-sense-and-cannot-secure-a-just-future-29631">war</a> in the summer of 2014 was not about rocket fire, Israeli security or Hamas: it was about subduing and disabling Gaza, something Israel has consistently been trying to do ever since it occupied the territory together with the West Bank nearly 50 years ago. </p>
<p>Israel’s principal strategy has long been to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state by dividing and separating Palestinians, particularly via the annexation of the West Bank. But complete control over the West Bank – the obvious goal of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/israeli-settlement-west-bank-gvaot-condemned">settlement enterprise</a> and the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3111159.stm">separation barrier</a> – cannot be achieved as long as Gaza remains a source of resistance and as long as the possibility of a unified Palestinian state exists (which came a step closer last June with the formal announcement of a Palestinian unity government, the proximate cause of the war on Gaza).</p>
<h2>Dynamic of disintegration</h2>
<p>The separation and isolation of Gaza from the West Bank was a goal of the 1993 Oslo process – and had the direct and sustained support of the US, the EU, and the Palestinian leadership. It has not only precluded the development of a unified political system but has also eliminated the geographic basis of a Palestinian economy, making the creation of a viable Palestinian state a virtual impossibility. </p>
<p>This is the status quo, institutionalised over the past 21 years of “peacemaking”, that Israel must preserve. And this is the context in which the large-scale destruction of Gaza’s civilian life last summer must be understood.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Operation Protective Edge was designed to set in motion what one of my colleagues recently called a “dynamic of disintegration”. That disintegration has taken a number of forms, some of them completely unprecedented. </p>
<p>A whole indigenous economy has been all but destroyed, with extensive damage to civilian infrastructure; Gazan society has been reduced to almost complete aid dependence. It has also been radically economically levelled, with the virtual destruction of its middle class and the emergence of a broad new class of “poor”. </p>
<p>Gaza’s social fabric has greatly weakened, and is now characterised by a new kind of fragility and disempowerment; entire neighbourhoods have been eliminated, and their community life destroyed. Emigration is rising fast, and hope for peace with Israel is being abandoned, to a degree never seen before.</p>
<h2>Getting on with it</h2>
<p>Despite the size and urgency of the task at hand, efforts to “reconstruct” or “rebuild” Gaza have long been deeply problematic. </p>
<p>Although <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International">billions of dollars have been pledged</a> by donors, reconstruction is always planned or implemented within an unchanged (and unchallenged) political framework of continued Israeli occupation, assault and blockade. Meanwhile, Gaza’s subjection to Israeli military attacks and economic sanction is at best ignored and at worst endorsed by key forces in the West, notably the US and EU. </p>
<p>But the current attempt at reconstruction is a new low. </p>
<p>Never mind that Gaza’s recent devastation, met largely with laissez-faire silence from Western states, is completely unprecedented; the agreed-upon plan for addressing the situation clearly prioritises limited short-term gain at the cost of a long-term entrenchment of Israel’s destructive blockade. </p>
<p>As one donor official put it to me: “If we can get cement and other construction materials into Gaza, it’s a win.” Another admitted: “Donors backed the plan before they had even seen it.”</p>
<p>There are now several published documents describing the reconstruction and recovery plan for Gaza – but the most damning one, the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, has not been published (at least to my knowledge), and it is unlikely that it ever will be. Another key document, the Materials Monitoring Unit Project, Project Initiation Document (UNOPS), is available, but has not been widely distributed outside the donor community. </p>
<p>I have seen both documents, the latter in its entirety. They read more like security plans, carefully laying out Israeli concerns and the ways in which the United Nations will accommodate them. They do not speak to the comprehensive recovery of the Gaza Strip. </p>
<p>The reconstruction plan they detail has so many problems that in my view, it is clearly doomed to fail.</p>
<h2>Bad priorities</h2>
<p>The plan calls for a cumbersome administrative and bureaucratic apparatus for project selection and implementation that transfers risk to Palestinian beneficiaries/suppliers and totally ignores the power asymmetries and security realities that will undeniably affect outcomes. </p>
<p>In fact, what is being created is a permanent and complex permit and planning system similar to the one Israel uses in <a href="http://www.btselem.org/publications/201306_area_c">Area C of the West Bank</a>, which is under total Israeli control. This system will be difficult if not impossible to implement, and as structured, any implementation failure will be blamed on the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Israel will have to approve all projects and their locations and will be able to veto any part of the process on security grounds.</p>
<p>There is no mention of reviving Gaza’s export trade or private sector development (other than in relation to specific private-sector companies vetted by the PA and Israel for individually approved projects). Both are essential for rehabilitating Gaza’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-blow-to-gazas-economy-israeli-strikes-have-left-industries-hard-hit/2014/08/20/1cd9c71c-823c-4d8d-b07f-3fa2d545fa6b_story.html">moribund economy</a>. Similarly, there is no reference to the free movement of people, another urgent need. </p>
<p>No mechanism for accountability or transparency will apply to Israel. Nor will there be any mechanism for resolving disputes, which can only be decided through consensus: the occupier must agree with the occupied.</p>
<p>The plan mainly serves to legitimise Israel’s preferred security narrative. According to the UNOPS document, the outcome of the reconstruction project must be “the establishment of an intermediate system of dual-use items monitoring that will facilitate the import approval of construction materials and machinery into Gaza. This will be achieved through the reduction of [Israeli] security concerns of materials being diverted for use in the enhancement of military capabilities and terrorist capacities”. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, not only will the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28757657">blockade of Gaza</a> be strengthened, but responsibility for maintaining the blockade is in effect being transferred to the UN, which is tasked with monitoring the entire process. As a colleague working as an analyst in Jerusalem so succinctly put it: “Israel retains the power, the UN assumes the responsibility and the Palestinians bear the risk.” </p>
<p>The document also makes it clear that the donors are the singular funding source for Gaza’s reconstruction; Israel assumes no financial responsibility. The UNOPS document has only this to say about the Israeli role: “The [government of Israel] plays no operational role other than approvals and as recipient of the monitoring reports. As such consultation and approval will be required in the development of the report templates.”</p>
<p>Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the plan is successfully implemented, its intended outcome is still completely unclear. It does nothing to explain what kind of economy is supposed to be enabled, or what exactly is being rebuilt. Is it what was lost in <a href="http://www.ampalestine.org/index.php/history/the-intifadas/343-the-second-intifada-introdouction">2000</a>, <a href="http://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200609_act_of_vengeance">2006</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/15/israel4">2007</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8276943/Israel-aimed-to-cleanse-Gaza-neighbourhoods-in-2008-invasion.html">2008-09</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/who-started-the-israel-gaza-conflict/265374/">2012</a> or 2014? Is it people’s lives and livelihoods? </p>
<h2>Beyond bricks</h2>
<p>After all, reconstruction is not simply about buildings and public works: it’s about securing a real future, and creating a sense of place, possibility and security. Life in Gaza cannot be rebuilt with cement and cash handouts. </p>
<p>Of course, people desperately need assistance. What is at issue is the terms on which that assistance will be provided, and what political ends it will serve. Gaza does not just need aid; it needs freedom and the right to interact normally with the world. Anything short of this is unsustainable.</p>
<p>More than 20 years after the so-called peace process began, the donor community funding the rebuilding effort still has big questions to answer. In the absence of a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is shocking that the occupation and continued dispossession of more than 4m Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank continues to be tolerated by the West. </p>
<p>Equally, the blockade, the unravelling of Gaza’s economy and the widening impoverishment of 1.75m people in the Gaza Strip (<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25993-the-reasons-why-gazas-population-is-so-young.html">a great many of them children</a>) are met not with outrage, but with support from Western governments.</p>
<p>The truth is that as long as humanitarian aid is used to address political problems, all “reconstruction” will mean for Gaza is continued ruination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Roy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the near three decades that I have been involved with Gaza and her people, I have never seen the kind of physical and psychological destruction that I see there today. In all Gaza’s long and tormented…Sara Roy, Associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/334162014-10-29T06:10:36Z2014-10-29T06:10:36ZGaza: why Operation Protective Edge was not genocide<p>When, in armed conflict, civilians are killed on a large scale, when schools are attacked and children are orphaned, charges of genocide are often not far behind. In discussions about <a href="http://www.bicom.org.uk/spotlight/operation-protective-edge/">Operation Protective Edge</a>, the Israeli military attack on Gaza earlier this year, accusations of genocide have therefore played an important role. </p>
<p>Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/09/abbas-israel-waging-war-genocide-gaza-201492616952287680.html">recently accused</a> Israel of carrying out a “war of genocide”. The National Lawyers Guild of America <a href="https://www.nlg.org/resource/letters/letter-icc-prosecutor-possible-war-crimes-gaza">raised the charge of genocide</a> in a letter to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requesting that the matter be investigated. Genocide <a href="http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/">was also investigated</a> in a special session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which resulted, a few weeks ago, in one of the most detailed <a href="http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/extraordinary-session-brussels/findings">assessments</a> of Operation Protective Edge to date. It is a crime for which the international authorities can impose a sentence of life imprisonment (as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/africa/25rwanda.html?_r=0">did on several occasions</a> following the 1994 atrocities in that country). </p>
<h2>Tribunal gathering</h2>
<p>The Russell Tribunal was originally set up by <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html">Bertrand Russell</a> in the 1960s to investigate allegations of US crimes in Vietnam. It is not a court of law, but <a href="http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/extraordinary-session-brussels/meet-the-jury">its jury contains</a> prominent legal minds (including Prof John Dugard, Prof Richard Falk and Michael Mansfield QC), as well as people who have made their mark in other fields of life (including the film director Ken Loach, the writer Paul Laverty and the author and activist Christiane Hessel). </p>
<p>I was invited to address the tribunal on the legal elements of genocide (but was not involved in the drafting of its findings). For some, it may have been a somewhat surprising presentation. Lawyers have traditionally given genocide a very restrictive interpretation – and a good part of my talk thus dealt with the reason why applying it to the situation in Gaza is not straightforward. To my mind, “genocide” is simply not the correct term for the Israeli offensive. </p>
<p>In common speech, genocide tends to describe atrocities which result in very large victim numbers. Yet that is not how the law has approached the concept. What matters to international courts is the mindset behind the action. In the words of Article II of the <a href="https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf">Genocide Convention</a>, the perpetrator must have the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. </p>
<p>That causes difficulties from the outset. In Operation Protective Edge, a main target of the Israeli forces was Hamas – clearly a political group, and thus outside the protection of the convention. The Palestinians do qualify as an “ethnic” (perhaps even as a “national”) group. But proving that they had been targeted “as such” is a tall order.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62724/original/brb47cff-1414150418.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf">UN</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Motivationally speaking</h2>
<p>Looking into the mind of a perpetrator is difficult, if not impossible. Take the attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Gaza. That they occurred is a matter of fact. But the motive is far from clear. Sometimes military considerations were invoked (Hamas had <a href="http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/09/hamas-quietly-admits-it-fired-rockets-from-civilian-areas/380149/">reportedly used</a> residential areas and even hospitals as launch sites for rockets). Sometimes the attacks may have been accidents. Sometimes no clear explanation was provided. This makes it difficult to satisfy the <a href="http://www.unictr.org/Portals/0/Case/English/Nahimana/decisions/071128_judgement.pdf">requirement under international law</a> that genocidal intent had been the “only reasonable explanation” for the perpetrators’ acts.</p>
<p>Not even the extent of the operation is helpful evidence. It is <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/14/gaza-migrants-boat.html">reported that</a> more than 2,000 Palestinians lost their lives in the conflict – a horrific number for a conflict lasting 50 days. But victim numbers do not say much about the underlying intent. When the UN General Assembly in the 1990s asked the International Court of Justice to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons, several states claimed that the use of these arms indicated genocidal intent. The court <a href="http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/95/7495.pdf">did not agree</a>: even in situations of this kind, intent had to be established on a case-by-case basis. The threshold for evidence for genocidal intent can be very high indeed.</p>
<p>An impartial tribunal also has to consider evidence which may negate genocidal intent. Where Operation Protective Edge is concerned, this includes the fact that the Israeli military at times issued warnings before attacks on civilians were launched. Even if the warnings may often have been ineffective, they may indicate that the perpetrators had motives other than the destruction of the Palestinians as a group.</p>
<p>The fact that Israeli extremists – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/06/murder-trial-three-israelis-palestinian-teenager">including those</a> who reportedly kidnapped and killed a Palestinian teenager – had to face trial in their own country, casts further doubt on the existence of genocidal intent within the Israeli leadership. </p>
<h2>Strict interpretation</h2>
<p>The concept of genocide which emerges from these considerations may appear very narrow indeed, and it is true that the strict application of rules on evidence will often favour the accused. That is the reason why I was unable to conclude that genocide had been committed. It is probably the reason why the Russell Tribunal did not enter a finding of genocide either.</p>
<p>That does not mean that those who launch attacks on civilians have committed no crimes under international law. In situations of this kind, war crimes and crimes against humanity are often applicable as well (and they, too, <a href="http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/extraordinary-session-brussels/findings">were considered</a> by the Russell Tribunal, along with the crime of incitement to genocide). Under international law these crimes are not seen as less severe than genocide.</p>
<p>The very rejection of the genocide charge will still cause controversy, but it was the right decision. Since the tribunal accepts international law as its frame of reference, that law has to govern its findings. And there is merit in that. Going back to the rules of international law, the common hymn-sheet of the international community, may yet provide the measure of reason which is so desperately needed in this debate – a debate on an issue which can hardly be of greater concern to the world as a whole.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Behrens was awarded funding by the British Academy in 2011 for a research project on genocidal intent.</span></em></p>When, in armed conflict, civilians are killed on a large scale, when schools are attacked and children are orphaned, charges of genocide are often not far behind. In discussions about Operation Protective…Paul Behrens, Lecturer in International Criminal Law, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/305752014-08-15T11:44:56Z2014-08-15T11:44:56ZProblems ahead for Israel after Pyrrhic victory in Gaza<p>With a tenuous five-day ceasefire now underway, the pause in the Gaza War allows each side to consider its position. The Israeli Embassy in London reported on August 11 that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All known tunnels, 32 in total, have now been destroyed. Following the completion of the mission, all ground troops have been withdrawn from Gaza and redeployed to defensive positions in the vicinity. The IDF has, thus far, struck over 4,700 terror targets in Gaza, including 1,678 rocket-launching facilities, 191 weapons facilities, and 977 command centres, and eliminated over 750 terrorist combatants.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Gaza, the <a href="http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_10_08_2014.pdf">UN reports that 1,890 people have died</a> and, even if the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28688179">Israeli figures are accurate</a>, this implies 1,140 non-terrorist combatants were killed. The same UN sources state at 414 children and 87 men and women over the age of sixty were killed, and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/world/middleeast/after-conflict-gaza-industry-lies-in-ashes.html?_r=0">New York Times reports</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>175 of Gaza’s most successful industrial plants have also taken devastating hits, plunging an already despairing economy into a deeper abyss.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Palestinian sources acknowledge the casualties and the economic damage and yet their support in Gaza for Hamas appears stable. They also claim their paramilitary capabilities are largely intact, that they have lost few fighters, have only used 10% of their rockets and they have even <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/WATCH-Hamas-gives-a-glimpse-into-home-grown-rocket-production-in-Gaza-371125">continued to manufacture rockets</a> during the war.</p>
<p>They also claim there are 20-30,000 fighters available and the IDF has failed to detect and destroy many of the tunnels.</p>
<p>Sorting fact from fiction in a deeply contested narrative is difficult at the best of times, even more so during a ceasefire in an exceptionally bitter conflict, yet it is certainly the case that Israel is much the stronger party to the conflict, inflicting huge damage on Hamas. </p>
<h2>Israeli casualties</h2>
<p>Even so, there are reasons to suggest that Israel is facing greater problems in determining a way forward than seems to be the case, given that it has some of the most powerful military forces in the world. The extent of these problems <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/why-israel-lost">actually became apparent well before the first ceasefire</a>. </p>
<p>When the extent of the tunnel problems was finally recognised and Israeli ground troops began to advance into Gaza, they immediately took heavy casualties and this has continued throughout the war, with 65 soldiers killed and well over 400 wounded, many of them severely maimed. </p>
<p>Even as the fighting continued, the IDF found that tunnels could still be used by Hamas paramilitaries. In one instance, right in the midst of the IDF operation, some even got across the border via a tunnel, emerging to kill five young Israeli sergeants on a leadership training course for the loss of just one of their own people.</p>
<p>What is hugely significant here is that Israel has sought to transform its urban warfare capabilities since the last major military move into Gaza, the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7940624.stm">2008/9 Cast Lead operation</a>. It has trained its troops intensively for precisely this kind of operation and now ensures that ground troops are fully connected with air, naval and intelligence forces.</p>
<p>Cast Lead did not last as long as the present war but saw more than 1,000 Palestinians die. During that war, Israel fired 7,000 rounds of all kinds in the ground operations compared with 34,000 rounds this time. Its commanders believe that its troops were very well prepared this time. They most certainly were, but in the 2008-9 war, the IDF lost just nine soldiers in combat, less than one seventh of the casualties this time, as well as four killed in a “friendly fire” incident. </p>
<h2>Hamas still in the fight</h2>
<p>A thoroughly uncomfortable conclusion is beginning to emerge for the Netanyahu government. It is that while the IDF may have become a lot more effective in the past six years, its opponents in Gaza have learnt even more. This is not something that can be easily discussed in Israel at present – that may have to wait for more information to emerge from what is currently a propaganda-rich environment.</p>
<p>If this analysis is correct, and it is one supported from <a href="http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140813/DEFREG04/308130025/Despite-Heavy-Costs-Israel-Struggles-Spin-Success-From-Gaza-War">informed US sources</a>, then there is a major implication for Israel which places the Netanyahu government in a serious dilemma. </p>
<p>In the war so far, Israel has failed to stop the rockets – indeed even IDF sources agree that <a href="http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/254158/hamas-fired-continuously-at-ben-gurion-international-airport.html">Hamas still has 3,000 available</a> – and it has almost <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/tunnels-still-intact-say-hamas-commander-al-jazeera/">certainly not uncovered many of the tunnels</a>. </p>
<p>If the current ceasefire fails, the rocket attacks resume and it faces serious internal pressure to demilitarise Gaza by force, it will have to re-occupy the whole of Gaza in order to destroy all the rockets – and the numerous and scattered workshops that make them – and find and destroy all the tunnels and underground bunkers. </p>
<p>While Israel can overrun Gaza in a few days if it decides to, it will then take many months to destroy all this paramilitary power. The cost to its own troops will be considerable and the cost to Israel’s international reputation, with many thousands of Palestinian civilians killed, will be frankly untenable.</p>
<p>Gaza has been badly damaged, its people have suffered and Hamas has lost many of its fighters, yet it is still there – and with much of its paramilitary capability intact. The war has been widely described as a deeply asymmetric conflict between a regional superpower and a poorly armed and under-resourced group of militants in an impoverished territory. In one sense, though, it may well be asymmetric in the opposite direction, with Israel facing the greater challenges and the more difficult options.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Rogers has received funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development. He lectures regularly at the Royal College of Defence Studies. He will be giving a talk at the Edinburgh Festival on Wednesday, August 27 on the theme of “A Century on the Edge, 1945-2045 – from Cold War to Hot World”.</span></em></p>With a tenuous five-day ceasefire now underway, the pause in the Gaza War allows each side to consider its position. The Israeli Embassy in London reported on August 11 that: All known tunnels, 32 in total…Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/300582014-08-04T13:30:49Z2014-08-04T13:30:49ZAs Warsi resigns over Gaza, Tories’ vexed history on Israel comes back to haunt them<p>As Israel’s Operation Protective Edge began to draw more vocal international criticism, the supposedly staunchly pro-Israel Conservative party saw the beginnings of a revolt: a number of David Cameron’s backbench MPs and former Tory ministers came out <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28586760">demanding a stronger response to Israel’s actions</a> in Gaza.</p>
<p>This has come to a head with the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/05/lady-warsi-resigns-government-gaza-stance?CMP=twt_gu">surprise resignation of Lady Sayeeda Warsi</a> from the government, which she announced in a tweet using the #Gaza hashtag:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"496568922066681856"}"></div></p>
<p>She then tweeted her <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/08/baroness-warsi-resigns/">resignation letter</a>, in which she called the government’s response to the Gaza crisis “morally indefensible”.</p>
<p>This mini-uprising has shattered the myth that the Tory party is a pro-Israel monolith. David Cameron’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/david-camerons-speech-to-the-knesset-in-israel">speech to the Knesset</a> in March 2014 and his support for Israel during the current conflict have reinforced that common perception – but when we take a longer view, it’s clear that the Conservative party’s attitudes towards Zionism and Israel are deeply complicated. </p>
<p>Indeed, it’s all too easy to forget that scepticism towards the Zionist project is a deep-rooted Tory tradition.</p>
<h2>Mouthpieces</h2>
<p><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/British_politics_in_the_Suez_crisis.html?id=6a5AAAAAIAAJ">Writing in the mid-1960s</a>, Leon Epstein concluded that “Despite Churchill’s known sympathy, and Balfour’s much earlier, the Conservative Party generally stood aloof, at the very least, from Zionism.”</p>
<p>During the interwar years, various right-wing members of the party – including <a href="http://www.ufv.ca/jhb/Volume_8/Volume_8_Clayton.pdf">William Joynson-Hicks</a>, Colonel <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/feb/11/palestine#S5CV0248P0_19310211_HOC_121">Charles Howard-Bury</a>, <a href="http://www.balfourproject.org/tag/lord-islington/">Lord Islington</a>, and <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1921/jun/08/situation-in-palestine">Lord Sydenham</a> – emerged as vocal parliamentary proponents of the Arab cause. Indeed, Sydenham in particular had been identified by the Colonial Office as a leading proponent of anti-Zionism in the House of Lords as early as 1923. </p>
<p>A regular contributor to The Patriot, a magazine that has been <a href="http://jch.sagepub.com/content/39/1/71.abstract">described</a> as a “mouthpiece for the proto-fascist right”, Sydenham pushed the notion that Zionists were agents of “German Jewish finance” operating in the service of Bolshevism – and aimed not just to enslave Palestine economically, but also to use it as a springboard for taking over the world.</p>
<h2>Evolving ideas</h2>
<p>These ideas were not confined to Westminster; they also infiltrated the mainstream conservative press. In his memoirs, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1127.html">Chaim Weizmann</a> recalled how Daily Mail owner <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-baron-and-propagandist-who-led-charge-into-world-war-i-29855">Lord Northcliffe</a> had returned from a visit to Palestine convinced that Jewish settlers there were “mostly Communists and/or Bolshevists”, while the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/sex-and-power-1312660.html">Beaverbrook newspapers</a> propagated the line that British taxpayers were “being heavily mulcted” on behalf of “a few East European Jews” in Palestine. </p>
<p>Such views could and did bring Conservative anti-Zionists into sinister company. Joynson-Hicks cooperated with an organisation called the National Political League, which, though established as part of the women’s suffrage movement, had by the 1930s evolved into an anti-Bolshevik and anti-Zionist pressure group. He chaired pro-Arab meetings in Parliament on the League’s behalf. </p>
<p>The League’s President, Margaret Milne Farquharson, had connections to <a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/13786/">Robert Gordon-Canning</a>, a leading British Fascist and supporter of Arab nationalism. A Metropolitan Police informant reported in April 1930 that Farquharson and Gordon-Canning had been present at a reception for a visiting Palestinian Arab delegation to London. This led senior Colonial Office figures to question whether “the activities of these people are not prompted at least as much by anti-Semite sentiments as by the desire for a solution of the Palestine problem.” </p>
<p>The tendency of Palestinian Arabs’ representatives to embrace the far-right was a source of great frustration to British officials in Palestine – not least because Sir John Chancellor, High Commissioner for Palestine, had specifically warned the Arab delegation “not to get into the hands of people like Gordon-Canning.” </p>
<h2>Not going soft</h2>
<p>If, as David Cesarani has argued, these more extreme forms of right wing anti-Zionism declined into “a species of pro-Arab sentimentalism” in the post-war era, many mainstream Conservatives continued to demonstrate pro-Arab sympathies, even as new forms of pro-Palestinian activism emerged in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. </p>
<p>The Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), a cross-party organisation established in 1967, included among its founder members and executive officers former and future ministers in the form of Anthony Nutting and Ian Gilmour as well as Dennis Walters, then chairman of the Conservative Research Department’s Middle East Sub-Committee. </p>
<p>Edward Heath’s government of 1970-74 was noticeably more sensitive to Arab and Palestinian viewpoints than any of Harold Wilson’s Labour administrations, a position exemplified by Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s 1970 “<a href="http://fc95d419f4478b3b6e5f-3f71d0fe2b653c4f00f32175760e96e7.r87.cf1.rackcdn.com/DB36A7BA908C4D99917934D15016C16E.pdf">Harrogate speech</a>”, which argued that no peace settlement could “ignore the political aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs”.</p>
<p>Even during the Thatcher era, a period generally viewed from the perspective of the pro-Israeli instincts of the prime minister herself, the prominence of figures such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqeUJ1sQU4k">Peter Carrington</a> and <a href="http://www.caabu.org/">CAABU</a>’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/sep/24/guardianobituaries.obituaries1">Ian Gilmour</a> often lent a distinctly pro-Arab flavour to the foreign policy of the 1979-83 administration. </p>
<p>In 1980, Dennis Walters established the <a href="http://cmec.org.uk/">Conservative Middle East Council</a> (CMEC) as a home for members of the party whose sympathies lay in pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian directions. </p>
<p>Though not as influential as the larger <a href="http://www2.cfoi.co.uk/">Conservative Friends of Israel</a> (CFI) group, CMEC remains active within the party. It is currently led by Nicholas Soames, Leo Docherty, and Baroness Morris of Bolton. </p>
<p>On August 1 this year, the group released a <a href="http://cmec.org.uk/2014/08/cmec-statement-on-the-current-situation-in-gaza/">statement</a> condemning the “collective punishment of the Gazan people” and arguing, “the time has come for Great Britain to tell Israel that the bombardment of Gaza and the subjugation of the Palestinian people must stop”.</p>
<p>The current prime minister and his chancellor of the exchequer remain firmly in the pro-Israel camp, despite the emergence of <a href="http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2014/08/is-conservative-backbench-opinion-shifting-against-israel-over-gaza.html">new political forces</a> pushing others within the party to disagree with them. But they also face opposition from an alternative Conservative tradition, one that dates back to the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp">Balfour Declaration</a> and the earliest years of the Palestine mandate.</p>
<p>With the crisis in Gaza leading so many to question the current government’s approach to the Israel-Palestine question – and pushing prominent figures like Warsi into resigning – that tradition might just find a new lease of life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Vaughan is affiliated with the Labour Party.</span></em></p>As Israel’s Operation Protective Edge began to draw more vocal international criticism, the supposedly staunchly pro-Israel Conservative party saw the beginnings of a revolt: a number of David Cameron’s…James Vaughan, Lecturer in International History, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/298672014-07-31T05:08:22Z2014-07-31T05:08:22ZWater in the firing line as Israel targets Gaza’s infrastructure<p>When <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-a-sakharov-laureate-and-a-mother-i-call-on-the-eu-to-help-save-palestinians-and-israel-29597">Operation Protective Edge</a> commenced on July 8, Israel pledged to draw on lessons learned from previous conflicts to ensure that this operation would not near the duration of the 2008-2009 Gaza War. But it’s been three weeks and one day since the conflict began, bringing it in line with <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/operation-cast-lead.htm">Operation Cast Lead</a>. </p>
<p>The infrastructural damage of the previous war has yet to be repaired – and now it has been set back further, following the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/29/israel-gaza-infrastructure-blackouts-idf-civilian">destruction of Gaza’s sole power plant</a>. Serving 1.8m people, the plant was struck during a seven-hour bombardment in which <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1309800/hamas-defiant-as-gaza-suffers-bloodiest-day">128 Palestinians died</a>, bringing the number of fatalities to more than 1,200 Palestinians and <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/day-22-five-soldiers-killed-four-of-them-in-mortar-attack-idf-bombards-gaza/">53 Israeli soldiers</a>.</p>
<p>As Israeli prime minister <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/middle-east/10324458/Warning-of-a-long-conflict-ahead">Benjamin Netanyahu, warned of “a long conflict ahead”</a>, residents of the Gaza Strip now confront severe water restrictions as the loss of the station paralyses the region’s water pumps and electricity will be unavailable for months to come.</p>
<h2>Water in Gaza</h2>
<p>Water has assumed a significant role in the conflict: on a basic level it is a source of life and livelihood; at others, it is intertwined with laws that can shape the lives of the civilians dwelling in the West Bank, Negev and Gaza. </p>
<p>When a water source is struck, it adds an additional lethal dimension to the conflict, as survival is not just threatened by weapons, but by the silent killers, disease and deprivation. </p>
<p>During the Gaza War water was a prime casualty, when military attacks caused <a href="https://www.amnesty.de/files/Access_to_water.pdf">US$6m of damage</a> through the destruction of four water reservoirs, eleven wells, sewage networks and pumping stations. </p>
<p>By 2012, 95% of the water was unfit for human consumption as <a href="http://visualizingpalestine.org/infographic/gaza-water-confined">pollutants infused the remaining 117 water wells</a> and the contamination has been exacerbated as efforts to rebuild or sustain existing sources are stymied by transport restrictions. The result is a <a href="http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/news-release/2014/14-07-israel-palestine-gaza-water.htm">deterioration of the water and sewage system</a>, also caused by over-pumping to counter dwindling water supplies.</p>
<p>The fall in water levels is a regional issue. According to a 2013 NASA study, between 2003 and 2009 the Middle East lost 144 cubic kilometres of stored freshwater, an amount <a href="http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/12/16939565-middle-east-lost-a-dead-seas-worth-of-water-study-finds?lite">on par with the loss of the Dead Sea</a>. Facing rising pollution and falling supplies, prior to the current unrest 80% of Gazans paid <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-water-is-running-out-in-gaza-humanitarian-catastrophe-looms-as-territorys-only-aquifer-fails-8679987.html">a third of their household income</a> for fresh water.</p>
<h2>Thirst for control</h2>
<p>In the West Bank and Negev, the issue of water is no less bleak: acts of sabotage, the denial of permits to own water cisterns and limitations on access to water sources have been an enduring part of the landscape. Water has become a means of control, <a href="https://theconversation.com/drafts/29867/edit?auth_token=cEstQURoNxxysycucutS">determining the future ownership</a> of a plot of land, the success or failure of a business, or the means to render a community unlivable. </p>
<p>The designation of land for agriculture or forestry affords a means to <a href="http://theconversation.com/catastrophe-looms-as-israel-debates-bedouin-resettlement-19844">prohibit the development of existing villages</a>: once designated, residents are banned from constructing further structures, including water cisterns. Should they proceed with the structure, it will be demolished, regardless of its purpose. </p>
<p>Atir, near Beer Sheva, hosts a community of 500 Bedouin, many of whom were relocated to the village in 1956 by Israeli authorities. At the time, it was deemed a suitable location; in 2013, it was decided that it would better serve as a forest and security forces <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/08/30/israel-bedouin-facing-mass-evictions-their-land">demolished the homes of 70 people</a>, followed by the tents in which the displaced were living. </p>
<p>In the wider region, wells have been drilled to divert water to the settlements in the West Bank, disrupting Palestinian water lines and in a more overt manner, confiscating water tankers. Deprived of their water source, West Bank residents pay up to <a href="http://www.icahd.org/sites/default/files/Demolishing%20Homes%20Demolishing%20Peace_1.pdf">400% more per litre</a> than those directly connected to the water network, while in 2012 water access in the West Bank stood at 25% less than Israeli access.</p>
<h2>Tactical sabotage</h2>
<p>Once water is gathered, the quest does not end; rather, the new challenge is retaining the drinkable water. According to Oxfam, between 2011 and 2012, <a href="http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp160-jordan-valley-settlements-050712-en_1.pdf">62 European-funded water structures</a> were demolished in Area C, including in the Jordan Valley.</p>
<p>The sabotage emanates from two sources: demolition by the Israeli army, or by individuals from the nearby settlements. In the latter case, contamination has been caused by putting old car parts or <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/14/west-bank-villagers-battle-water">animal carcasses</a> in the cisterns.</p>
<p>In the former, bulldozers are used to destroy structures deemed illegal; in other instances, individual acts of sabotage can be driven by ennui. According to a 2009 <a href="https://www.amnesty.de/files/Access_to_water.pdf">report</a> by Amnesty International, soldiers shot water tanks to pass the time, since “water tanks are good for target practice; they are everywhere and are the right size to aim at and calibrate your weapon, to relieve your frustration … or to break the monotony of a stint of guard duty.”</p>
<p>Such sabotage strikes the owner hard, as each cistern costs the equivalent of <a href="http://972mag.com/israeli-army-destroys-water-cisterns-and-dwellings-in-southern-west-bank/54743/">a year and a half’s wages</a>, quite apart from the deprivation the destruction of a water source inevitably entails. </p>
<p>Just as the West Bank and Negev have witnessed a slow, steady process of demolition, Gaza is accelerating towards a profound humanitarian catastrophe. To the displacement of 200,337 Palestinians can be added restrictions on water and the absence of electricity <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2014/07/israel-plunges-darkness.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter">to power what remains of the health centres</a> and the 85 shelters around the Strip.</p>
<p>On July 14, the prime minister’s spokesman, Mark Regev, stated: “If we know that innocent civilians will be hurt, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4045856.htm">we will call off the operation</a>.”</p>
<p>Cutting off the electricity means cutting off the life support to those who have a chance to survive the bombardment, whether in hospital or in the shelters. Water is needed by all and by removing that source, all have been condemned alike. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luisa Gandolfo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Operation Protective Edge commenced on July 8, Israel pledged to draw on lessons learned from previous conflicts to ensure that this operation would not near the duration of the 2008-2009 Gaza War…Luisa Gandolfo, Lecturer in Peace and Reconciliation, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/298722014-07-30T05:26:02Z2014-07-30T05:26:02ZIsraeli opponents of the Gaza campaign are swept aside by a wave of violent invective<p>Israel’s assault on Gaza has drawn international condemnation, sparked outraged protests around the world, and even roused talk of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28437626">war crimes</a> from the United Nations. But despite the onslaught of death and destruction in Gaza and the growing number of <a href="http://unitedwithisrael.org/more-idf-casualties-in-gaza-operation/">IDF casualties</a>, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.607542">Operation Protective Edge</a> is <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/support-in-israel-for-gaza-operation-remains-strong-despite-soldiers-deaths-1406051659">widely supported</a> in Israel itself. </p>
<p>This support doesn’t just show up in polls; the operation in Gaza is being accompanied by public acts of violence in Israel directed towards Israeli Arabs and leftists. </p>
<p>Violent assaults on Palestinian citizens of Israel are commonplace at the best of times. The most horrifying recent example, of course, was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/05/palestinian-boy-mohammed-abu-khdeir-burned-alive">the abduction and incineration of Muhammed Abu Khdeir</a>, while public displays of opposition risk violent attacks by <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.606937">organised extremist groups</a>.</p>
<p>The received wisdom in Israel’s public sphere seems to be that the campaign in Gaza is essential – and the violent incidents now erupting in support of it are to a large degree the result of a wave of incitement.</p>
<h2>Firing up</h2>
<p>This incitement began in earnest with public calls for vengeance after the announcement of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/30/bodies-missing-israeli-teenagers-found-west-bank">the murder of three Israeli youths</a> at the end of June.</p>
<p>First out of the gate was prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who headed a special cabinet meeting on June 30 in which he notified the public about the deaths of the three boys. Netanyahu gave a fervent statement referring to “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10937009/Israeli-teenagers-Netanyahu-warns-Hamas-will-pay.html">vengeance for the blood of a small child</a>”, a phrase he repeated at the teenagers’ funeral the next day. </p>
<p>This line was a nod to a poem, Al ha-Shehitah (On the Slaughter), written by Zionist poet <a href="http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Literature/Hebrew/Emergence_of_Modern_Hebrew_Literature/The_Pioneers/Hayim_Nahman_Bialik.shtml">Haim Nachman Bialik</a> after the Kishinev Pogrom in 1903, but linked the emotive phrase to an upcoming retaliation on Hamas, who he blamed for the kidnapping – an accusation that has since been seriously <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/hamas-didnt-kidnap-the-israeli-teens-after-all.html">questioned</a>. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the framing of a reaction to the murders as necessary and proportionate vengeance against Hamas was widely accepted.</p>
<p>Shortly thereafter, Noam Perel, the head of international religious Zionist youth organisation <a href="http://bauk.org/">Bnei-Akiva</a>, took to Facebook and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/02/bnei-akiva-israel-palestine_n_5551749.html">called</a> for the retrieval of 300 philistine foreskins. His call was inspired from the book of Samuel, when David brought to King Saul 200 foreskins to prove that he had killed as many philistines. In Perel’s view, vengeance was to take the form of ethnic violence and mutilation.</p>
<p>The next morning, Mordechai Kedar, a well-known <a href="http://besacenter.org/author/mkedar/">Israeli academic</a> from Bar Ilan University who frequently appears in the Israeli and international media, was <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.606542">interviewed</a> on Israeli public radio – and argued that the only thing that could deter a Muslim terrorist was “the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped” as a consequence of his actions.</p>
<p>At about the same time, the Jewish Home party’s Ayelet Shaked <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ayelet.benshaul.shaked/posts/596568183794945">published</a> on her Facebook page an article written during the Second Intifada by the late religious Zionist publicist <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/influential-journalist-uri-elitzur-succumbs-to-cancer-at-68/">Uri Elitzur</a>, arguing that the state of affairs with the Palestinians was a state of war, with the “enemy” supported by a wide social network – and therefore all of them should be eliminated.</p>
<p>Returning from the funeral of the three youths, Jerusalem councilman Arye King addressed a large crowd of Lubavitchers in Jerusalem and <a href="http://www.video.hageula.com/musicvideo.php?vid=352ab5cb0">called</a> on them to repeat the deed of biblical priest Phineas – who killed of his own initiative, noting that he is certain there are a lot of “small Phineases here”.</p>
<p>On that evening, anti-Arab <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Brothers-Keeper/Protesters-calling-for-death-to-terrorists-clash-with-Arabs-in-Jerusalem-361168">riots</a> began in Jerusalem, and by the morning of July 2, Muhammed Abu Khdeir was dead.</p>
<h2>Blurred boundaries</h2>
<p>When Operation Protective Edge started a week later, the harsh language only intensified. </p>
<p>An infantry commander sent a letter to his troops in anticipation of a ground operation where he admonished the enemy as <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Religious-overtones-in-letter-from-IDF-commander-to-his-soldiers-draws-criticism-support-362673">defilers of God’s name</a> and some time after the ground offensive had begun, Dov Lior, the state-employed Rabbi of the settlement of Qiriyat Arba published a psak (ruling) <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/extremist-israeli-rabbi-dov-lior-calls-destruction-gaza-1457942">permitting attacks on the civilian population</a> in Gaza.</p>
<p>After being criticised for their words, some of the people behind these statements <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/182581">took</a> <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15384#.U9JJ0VYw9D4">them</a> <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/exclusive-mk-ayelet-shaked-exposes-daily-beast-reporters-deliberate-distortions/2014/07/16/">back</a>. While their extreme interventions, publicly pondering revenge, murder, rape, castration, holy war and the killing of women and children, were not meant as plans for action, they have still done terrible damage. They are acts of vandalism against common sense and common morality, flashes of vaguely coherent hatred that have blurred the boundaries of acceptable public discourse.</p>
<p>Spurred by a mostly flag-waving <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/07/israel_s_gaza_reporting_why_so_few_questions_about_the_war_and_palestinian.html">mainstream media</a> and virulent <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.602661">social media</a>, and bolstered by the constant barrages of rockets from Gaza that send Israelis running to sheltered areas, this talk has stirred deep anger and frenzied emotions. </p>
<p>It has distracted many Israelis from considering whether the violence in Gaza is really inevitable – and turned them against anyone who opposes it.</p>
<h2>No going back</h2>
<p>The horrific images and reports from Gaza show that we are running out of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/24/israeli-strike-un-school-gaza-kills-women-children">red lines</a> to cross. But still, 86.5% of Jewish Israelis reportedly <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Poll-865-percent-of-Israelis-oppose-cease-fire-369064">oppose</a> a ceasefire, and with initiatives to stop the war being <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.607379">stifled</a>, the campaign does not seem to be nearing its end.</p>
<p>Only when this terrible fighting is over will we be able to comprehend the lasting damage this poisonous rhetoric has done. Only then will we see whether the political and ethnic extreme-right violence that has become a <a href="http://972mag.com/unprecedented-violence-stalks-anti-war-demos-across-israel/94530/">conspicuous feature</a> of the public sphere will continue – and whether, after a retreat from Gaza (if there ever is one), it will be the turn of the “enemies within” – Israeli Arabs and the “disloyal” left – to take the blame.</p>
<p>In many ways, this would be a return to the normal state of affairs. Undemocratic anti-NGO and anti-Arab legislation have been a defining feature of Netanyahu’s government, with bills such as the <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.563674">NGO law</a>, the now shelved <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/government-shelves-prawer-plan-on-bedouin-settlement/">Prawer plan</a> for the resettlement of the Negev’s indigenous Bedouin population, the <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/black-flag-over-israel-s-democracy/black-flag-facts-and-figures/loyalty-citizenship-laws-1.396117">Loyalty law</a>, and the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Yesh-Atid-MK-Balad-should-be-disqualified-from-Knesset-368538">persecution</a> of Arab members of the Knesset. </p>
<p>There is no reason to expect the air to clear when the current hostilities end. Just ask the foreign minister who called for a <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/FM-Liberman-calls-for-boycott-of-Israeli-Arab-businesses-who-strike-for-Gaza-368360">boycott of Arab businesses</a>, or even Dr Kedar – who, less than a week before apparently arguing for rape, <a href="http://mordechaikedar.com/however-guilty/%22%22">asserted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do-gooder Israeli and international organisations emasculated the IDF’s ability to function as it should and turned it into a scarecrow that no one fears. We reached the point where every soldier and officer needs a lawyer before he blows his nose, because he might disturb the unfortunate Palestinians. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Judging by recent incidents, like the interrogations of the representatives of left wing organisations B’tselem and Rabbis for Human Rights on Israeli television (in which their call for the actions of the IDF to be investigated by Israeli authorities was taken to task as dangerous and even treacherous acts) and the <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/hanin-zoabi-suspended-from-knesset-for-six-months/">suspension of Arab MK Hanin Zoabi</a> from the Knesset for six months (an unprecedented censure), the Israeli public sphere seems to be purging itself of its democratic values.</p>
<p>It should not surprise us if, after the war, blame for the IDF’s casualties will be laid at the door of the Israeli left – while the marginalisation of Palestinian Israelis will continue at ever greater speed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yoav Galai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Israel’s assault on Gaza has drawn international condemnation, sparked outraged protests around the world, and even roused talk of war crimes from the United Nations. But despite the onslaught of death…Yoav Galai, PhD candidate in the School of International Relations, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.