De Israelische Terreur 38

A Week of Israeli Restraint* Tanya Reinhart
Yediot Aharonot, June 21, 2006, Translated from Hebrew by Mark Marshall
(Footnotes added)
In Israeli discourse, Israel is always the side exercising restraint in its
conflict with the Palestinians. This was true again for the events of the
past week: As the Qassam rockets were falling on the Southern Israeli town
of Sderot, it was "leaked" that the Israeli Minister of Defense had
directed the army to show restraint.1
During the week of Israeli restraint, the army killed a Palestinian family
who went on a picnic on the Beit Lahya beach in the Gaza Strip; after that,
the army killed nine people in order to liquidate a Katyusha rocket. But in
the discourse of restraint, the first killing does not count, because the
army denied its involvement, and the second was deemed a necessary act of
self-defense. After all, Israel is caught in the midst of Qassam attacks,
and must defend its citizens. In this narrative, the fact that Israel is
content merely to bombard the Gaza Strip from air, sea and land is a model
of restraint and humanity that not many states could match.
But what is driving the Qassam attacks on Israel? For 17 months, since it
declared a cease fire, Hamas has not been involved in firing Qassams. The
other organizations have generally succeeded in launching only a few
isolated Qassams. How did this evolve into an attack of something like 70
Qassams in three days?
The Israeli army has a long tradition of "inviting" salvoes of Qassams. In
April of last year, Sharon took off to a meeting with Bush in which his
central message was that Abbas is not to be trusted, has no control of the
ground, and cannot be a partner for negotiations. The army took care to
provide an appropriate backdrop for the meeting. On the eve of Sharon's
departure, on 9 April 2005, the Israeli army killed three youths on the
Rafah border, who according to Palestinian sources were playing soccer
there. This arbitrary killing inflamed a wave of anger in the Gaza Strip,
which had been relatively quiet until then. Hamas responded to the anger on
the street, and permitted its people to participate in the firing of
Qassams. On the following two days, about 80 Qassams were fired, until
Hamas restored calm. Thus, during the Sharon-Bush meeting, the world
received a perfect illustration of the untrustworthiness of Abbas.2
At the beginning of last week (11 June), Olmert set out on a campaign of
persuasion in Europe to convince European leaders that now, with Hamas in
power, Israel definitely has no partner. The USA does not appear to need
any convincing at the moment, but in Europe there is more reservation about
unilateral measures. The Israeli army began to prepare the backdrop on the
night of the previous Thursday (8 June 2006), when it "liquidated" Jamal
Abu Samhanada, who had recently been appointed head of the security forces
of the Interior Ministry by the Hamas government. It was entirely
predictable that the action may lead to Qassam attacks on Sderot.
Nevertheless, the army proceeded the following day to shell the Gaza coast
(killing the Ghalya family and wounding tens of people), and succeeded in
igniting the required conflagration, until Hamas again ordered its people,
on 14 June, to cease firing.
This time, the show orchestrated by the army got a bit messed up. Pictures
of the child Huda Ghalya succeeded in breaching the wall of Western
indifference to Palestinian suffering. Even if Israel still has enough
power to force Kofi Annan to apologize for casting doubt on Israel's
denial, the message that Hamas is the aggressive side in the conflict did
not go unchallenged in the world this time. But the army has not given up.
It appears determined to continue to provoke attacks that would justify
bringing down the Hamas government by force, with Sderot paying the price.
Even though it is impossible to compare the sufferings of the residents of
Sderot with the sufferings of the residents of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya
in the North of the Gaza Strip, on which 5,000 shells fell in the past
month alone3, my heart also goes out to the residents of Sderot. It is
their destiny to live in fear and agony, because in the eyes of the army
their suffering is necessary so that the world may understand that Israel
is the restrained side in a war for its very existence.
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* This op-ed went to press an hour before the Israeli air force killed
three more children in a crowded street in North Gaza, on Tuesday, June 20. 1. On Monday, June 12, the headlines announced that the Defence Minister
Peretz blocked an initiative of the army to launch a massive land offensive
in Gaza (e.g. Amos Har'el and Avi Issacharoff, Ha'aretz, June 12, 2006). In
the inside pages of the weekend papers, it turned out that this was a
"media spin" produced by Peretz bureau "based on a security consultation
held the previous night" (Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, Lost innocents,
Ha'aretz, June 16-17, 2006).
2. This sequence of events is documented in detail in my book The Road Map
to Nowhere, to appear in July, 2006 (Verso).
3. Alex Fishman, Senior security analyst of Yediot Aharonot reports that at
the beginning "the artillery shelling of the Gaza strip was debated", but
then, "what started ten months ago with dozens of shells a month that were
fired at open areas today reached astronomical numbers of shells. The
battery that fired the six shells on Friday [June 9] fire an average of
more than a thousand shells a week towards the north of the Strip. This
means that the battery which has been placed there for four weeks has
already fired about 5000 (!) shells" (Yediot Aharonot Saturday Supplement,
June 16, 2006).