Israel sort of have a point, don’t they?
December 30th, 2008 at 19:13
You’d think being a scholar of international relations, or at least someone who would be if I got round to writing the essays that I need to, I’d have something useful, or at least vaguely insightful to say about the situation in Gaza at the moment. Unfortunately, you’ve over-estimated me again. There’s nothing that I can say that hasn’t been said before, and all analysis basically boils down to the fact that both sides should stop acting like twats.
Obviously the conflict has a history as tedious as it is long and would be pointless to explain here. This latest tiresome incident looks like it’s part of the standard cycle of “things are okay for a bit, then someone goes and fucks it up and we’re back to square one again”. Hamas should probably have realised they were doing something wrong when even Fatah seemingly sided with Israel and said they shouldn’t have been firing rockets about. They should also have realised they were doing something wrong when they started firing rockets about.
Similarly, Israel should have realised they were doing something wrong when they tried to fight an unconventional force with a regularly old conventional force. Killing a few hundred people isn’t exactly a great strategy for winning hearts and minds. But this is all pretty obvious stuff.
What makes it irritating, when viewed from my ivory tower is how completely expectedly, the comically black and white perspectives are that the commentators are viewing the conflict from. My reaction, being a big fan of human rights and the left and peace and all that should be that Israel are the bad guys in all of this – they’ve been oppressing the Palestinians and killing civilians for ages, but then I find myself thinking “maybe the Israelis do have a valid point?”
This isn’t to say I in any way support their “war” on Hamas (and we all know that that James O’Malley’s support is second only to that of the United States), but I can sort of see where they’re coming from. It isn’t just the uncomfortable feeling that comes with seeing people set their Facebook statuses to “solidarity with the Hamas resistance”, but if you look at it from the Israeli perspective, you can at least understand why they’re doing it – Hamas have been firing rockets at their people for the last month, which is obviously going to piss them off.
(Really Hamas and the Israeli right should form a coalition or alliance – they both seem to do better when tensions are heightened, so it’s win-win for them really. Sure, it might be lose-lose for the people who die, but that’s just less bodies to support their rival parties.)
The only thing that makes the current situation different from business as usual in the region is that aside from shitting on any progress towards peace (that’s technical international relations jargon), is the scale of the response.
I can’t help but wonder if the cause of all of this is democracy. Hamas, the democratically elected leaders of the Palestinian territories* are firing rockets at Israel, and the massive military response may have more than a little to do with the Israeli elections in February, and the Israeli public seem to love sticking it to the Palestinians. I’m pretty sure last time round just as things were looking up for the peace process, the Israeli public went and scuppered it by electing the far-right Likud and Ariel Sharon – a man better known for his girly name than his diplomacy skills.
(*I’m sure someone can corrrect me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick – was Gaza involved in that election? And that war wth Fatah probably impacted it a bit.)
I imagine having rockets fired at you is quite an emotive issue for the electorate. Though a well thought out but boring diplomatic effort could work, if the Israeli public are anything like the British public, they won’t care or at least won’t have the patience – and the government need tangible results within four years or so otherwise they’ll look like failures. All the Israeli government are doing by launching this war are pandering to the Israeli equivalent of the membership of the “HANG THE PARENTS OF BABY P” Facebook group.
Is this yet another reason why democracy doesn’t work? I’m not well informed enough to really commentate (didn’t stop me trying though), but it’s certainly a bit bleak, really. Both sides can make valid points, but both sides are being dicks about it.
Both sides should stop acting like twats.
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