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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2006Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mitch WeerthArab-Israeli explosionThe Arab-Israeli conflict has exploded again. The immediate spark came in June, with an attack by Palestinian militants from the armed wing of the fundamentalist Hamas on an Israeli checkpoint at the Gaza-Egypt border. This resulted in the deaths of two Israeli soldiers and the humiliating capture of another, who is still being held. Since then, Israel has rained bombs and missiles on Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians in what the human rights group B'Tselem calls "collective punishment," a clear violation of international law. Then in July, the Shiite fundamentalist party Hezbollah launched an attack on a border post from southern Lebanon. This time, eight Israeli soldiers were killed, and two captured. Israel, again humiliated, responded with fury, attacking the whole of Lebanon from the air, killing hundreds of civilians and damaging the infrastructure that had been painfully rebuilt since the wars of the 1980s. In a counterattack, Hezbollah rockets managed to kill Israeli civilians in Haifa, 18 miles from the border. How did this come about? In May, a Palestinian peace plan hammered out by Fatah and Hamas prisoners called for the implicit recognition of Israel—with a Palestinian state to be composed of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem—and an end to attacks inside Israel proper. The dominant wing of Hamas opposed the plan, as did the Israelis. Yet to most of the world, it seemed reasonable. More importantly, polls showed it had overwhelming support among the Palestinian people, with a referendum on it about to be scheduled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In response, the militant wing of Hamas kept preparing for the June raid, knowing that a predictably disproportionate Israeli response would kill off the new peace plan. Meanwhile, Israel tried to provoke the Palestinians with a series of raids into supposedly independent Gaza. These raids were said to target those who had launched a few missiles harmlessly across the border, but in fact resulted in the deaths of many innocents. Two weeks after a murderous June 9 attack on a whole family during a picnic at the beach was broadcast on TV around the world, Hamas attacked. The authoritarian Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah movement also took advantage of the situation. Hezbollah, which had in recent months become isolated in a Lebanon that has increasingly turned away from Syria and toward democracy, has now gained a respite, while the secular democratic movement has been severely weakened. Authoritarian, militarist, and fundamentalist groups have gained, but there is also revulsion against them and a yearning for peace. Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji summed things up: "This is fundamentalism—Muslim, Christian, and Jewish—that is setting fire to the region and we need to isolate this fire, this fundamentalism." As we go to press, Israel's land invasion of Lebanon and Hezbollah's raining of rockets on Israel continues to threaten those already-ravaged areas and their residents. |
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