Greens Engage

Reviewed in the New York Review of Books.

It’s particularly interesting to read about the struggle between the pragmatists who want what’s best for Gaza, and the ideologues who seek God’s Kingdom on earth.

“Cracks emerged when Hamas drifted from social activism and armed struggle into politics. After Hamas decided to contest the 2006 elections, one of its preachers in Rafah left the movement with scores of followers. God’s will above man’s, he said, and besides Hamas had no business participating in an authority established by agreement with Israel. During the contentious interregnum of national unity government before Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in June 2007, both Fatah and Hamas solicited Salafist support. Unruly clans seeking an Islamist cover to press their claims bolstered their ranks. Amid the chaos, the Salafists sought to enforce their authority by waging a nasty morality campaign against Internet cafés, hairdressers, the American school, and other such places of ill-repute.

Armed confrontation with the Salafists followed fast on the heels of Hamas’s takeover. In July 2007 the Qassam Brigades laid siege to the stronghold of one jihadist group, the Army of Islam, forcing the release of the BBC’s kidnapped correspondent Alan Johnston.”

Analysis of Israel’s role in Hamas’ fortunes comes towards the end:

“Indeed, Israel’s mishandling of Hamas began even before the group’s creation. The Israelis turned a blind eye to recruitment by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s and 1980s, largely because they saw the Islamists as a foil to nationalist groups. Belatedly alerted to the arming of Hamas cells during the first intifada, Israel increased its appeal by televising the trial of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound Gaza preacher who was Hamas’s spiritual head, and then by exiling hundreds of Hamas activists to Lebanon, where they had a useful chance to make contact with fellow Islamists such as Hezbollah.

Hamas’s subsequent resort to hideous “martyrdom operations,” as suicide bombings were called, owed much to Hezbollah’s inspiration and perhaps also to its technical expertise. Israel’s response of targeted assassinations hugely bolstered Palestinian sympathy for Hamas, even as it served to radicalize its followers. As Paul McGeough’s book makes abundantly clear, for instance, Khaled Meshaal, a relative hard-liner, rode to dominance within Hamas on the wave of outrage that followed Israel’s botched attempt to poison him in Amman in 1997. By contrast, when in 2003 Israel succeeded in murdering Ismail Abu Shanab, a respected Gazan intellectual with an engineering degree from Colorado State University, it eliminated a Hamas official who had argued passionately against suicide bombings and in favor of a long-term truce.

Israel’s dramatic acceleration of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories during the 1990s, and its systematic undermining of the Palestinian economy by means of roadblocks and closures, convinced many Palestinians that Hamas was perhaps correct in judging the peace process a sham. Even as Yasser Arafat’s credit waned among his own people, both Israel and the Clinton administration pushed him to crack down on Hamas. This he did, with some brutality and considerable success, in a campaign that put hundreds of Hamas activists into Palestinian prisons. Yet rather than being rewarded for risking the anger of his own people, Arafat was simply pressured to do more, and told that he would be held to account for any atrocity carried out by Hamas.

In effect if not in intention, Israel handed the Islamists veto power over the peace process. It also so weakened Arafat that when Israel floated the possibility of an offer at Camp David in 2000, the Palestinian leader shied from pursuing it, largely because he feared he could not swing his people to support it. When, in the autumn of 2000, the second intifada broke out in the wake of this failure, Arafat felt obliged to ride the violence rather than attempt to contain it, and soon lost control of his movement as local Fatah activists strove to outdo Hamas in fury.”

It’s good to read everybody’s favourite type of criticism – criticism of Israel – from people who a) haven’t got it in for Israel and b) know what they’re talking about. (The Green Party’s International Committee should try it sometime.)

Read it all and, for all the blandness of the account, be grateful you don’t live in a country Hamas runs, having your marriage licence checked by morality police, dissenting in fear of your life, and waiting for your government to give you a chance to vote them out. And be grateful you don’t have Hamas in the country next door.

Issue 16 of Democratiya (latest edition but I’ve been slow off the blocks) is partly concerned with revisiting the two-state solution in the light of Gaza.

“First, we asked a range of writers whether the two-state solution was viable after the conflict in Gaza, and if so what they saw as the obstacles to its realisation. Michael Walzer argues that two states is in bad shape, but remains the only viable solution and can be advanced by a combination of ‘internal unilateralism’ on both sides, and greater support by the US and EU. John Strawson argues the time has come for the international community to consider compelling the two parties to reach a compromise. Ghada Karmi makes the case for the one-state solution as realistic not utopian, while Donna Robinson Divine calls for both sides to go beyond those constitutive narratives around which identities have hardened and which have blocked progress. Martin Shaw calls for 1948 to be revisited as well as 1967 and for the idealism of the one-state solution to inform the two-state solution, while Alex Stein argues none of the existing ’solutions’ remain viable and what’s really needed is imagination and radical new ideas. Menchem Kellner and Fred Seigel and Sol Stern warn of the dangers of moving towards two states without a radical change of attitude towards Israel by the Palestinian leaderships, while Eric Lee surveys the trade unions reaction to the conflict in Gaza.”

In the left-wing Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, the leader of Hamas Khaled Meshal pronounces ‘No’ to two states.

Sometimes Hamas hints indirectly – when it refers to the 1967 borders – it will accept two states, more often and more unequivocally it says never, and on with the killing.

Update: I wrote up the presentation on Engage – I think you will enjoy reading it.

Via the unofficial blog of the UK Friend of The Abraham Fund:

POST GAZA & ISRAEL’S ELECTIONS – CAN THERE BE COEXISTENCE IN ISRAEL?

Speaker: Mohammad Darawshe, Co-Executive Director of The Abraham Fund Initiatives.

Date: Tuesday 2nd June, 7.45pm (doors open 7.30pm)

Entry: Free, but we suggest a donation to cover our costs: £5 / £4 concessions

Hosted by the UK Friends of The Abraham Fund Initiatives and St Ethelburga’s, at 78 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AG.

Download flyer [PDF]

Gershon Baskin is an Israeli Green and co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. He has an idea for Palestinian liberation based on a mixture international law and direct action:

“ACCORDING TO INTERNATIONAL law, the recognition of a new state is an act that only states and governments may grant or withhold. The UN does not have authority to recognize a state. It may, however; admit a new state to its membership. Paragraph 1 of Article 4 of the UN Charter states that it “is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.”

Palestine holds observer status in the UN, but it could become a full member in the following way: President Mahmoud Abbas would submit an application to the secretary-general and a formal declaration stating that it accepts the obligations under the UN Charter. The application would be considered first by the Security Council. On May 11, 2009 the Security Council already issued the following statement: “The council reiterates its call for renewed and urgent efforts by the parties and the international community to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on the vision of a region where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders.”

Any recommendation from the Security Council must receive the affirmative votes of nine of the 15 members of the council, provided that none of its five permanent members has voted against the application. If the Security Council recommends admission, the recommendation is then presented to the General Assembly. A two-thirds majority vote is necessary for admission of a new state, and membership becomes effective on the date the resolution for admission is adopted.

WHEN THE UN accepts the membership of the state of Palestine, Israel’s occupation of the territories becomes the occupation of a sovereign state which is a member in the UN by another member state. At that point, Israel would be acting in direct violation to the UN Charter and the Security Council would be morally and legally justified to enact Chapter 7 of the charter, enabling the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to Palestine.”

Gershon Baskin  is a former parliamentary candidate for the Israel Green Movement / Meimad and co-director and founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI). He recently revealed that he had been involved in back-channel negotiations with Hamas before Kadima opted for an Israeli incursion into Gaza. He persistently puts up political alternatives to military activity.

In this Open Democracy piece he makes the case for the Arab peace initiative, for which he is a strong advocate, and explains the intensely security-minded world view which is preventing ordinary Israelis from engaging with it.

“Since the initiative has been widely overlooked by Israeli politicians it is certainly worthwhile pointing out its primary advantages and reasons why Israel should accept it quickly before it is no longer relevant. The Arab Peace Initiative was accepted unanimously by all of the member states of the Arab League in March 2002.  On the day that it was presented thirty people were killed and 140 injured – 20 seriously – in a suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, in the midst of a Passover holiday seder with 250 guests. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. This attack was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back that led to the ‘Defensive Shield’ Israeli offensive leading in turn to the full re-occupation of the West Bank and the placing of Palestinian President Arafat under siege in the muqata’ in Ramallah. The Israeli mindset, at that time when suicide bombing were a daily event and under the leadership of Prime Minister Sharon was hardly in any mood to consider an Arab peace initiative.

But the initiative was once again unanimously ratified at the meeting of the League of Arab States in Khartoum in May 2006 and again in 2007 in Riyadh.”

This piece is good at articulating the circumstances but is as challenged by the task of “bridging this gap in consciousness” as the peace camp is in general. From the middle of the piece:

“This [Arab peace initiative] is almost too good to be true and had it been presented 20 years ago, it might have been received much more positively in Israel. But today, there is no peace camp in Israel anymore. Israeli society has lost its faith in peace.  Israelis no longer dream of getting into their car and having humus for lunch in Damascus. Israelis do not want to visit Cairo or Amman and do not particularly care if Jordanians or Egyptians come to visit Israel. If President Mubarak and King Abdallah II don’t want to come to Jerusalem, so be it.  Israelis no longer believe that giving up territory will bring peace.  The general Israeli interpretation of the ‘territory for peace’ scheme is that we withdrew from areas in the West Bank and created the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat which then attacked us with weapons that we provided for them. In Gaza, which Israel left entirely – withdrawing both settlements and military, we got qassam rockets in exchange.  Whether this reflects what really happened and why is not relevant. This is the way that the overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that reality.  So, in this context, the Arab Peace Initiative is not particularly attractive.”

How to go about building a sense of hope and commitment to pursuing a peaceful solution in a population which perceives existential danger? Put up a different narrative of opportunity and hope.

Read Gershon Baskin’s piece.

See Engage.

Bitter Lemons is a weekly publication of two Israeli points of view and two Palestinian points of view on a given topic of the day. This week’s topic is outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

See also previous editions.

Gisha is an Israeli human rights organisation which campaigns for freedom of movement. With Physicians for Human Rights they have produced a 184 page report (in pre-final draft form at time of writing) on the political motivations of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority for closing the Rafah crossing (between Gaza and Egypt). I haven’t read it properly yet – here it is. It’s a painstaking, clearly-sourced, careful consideration of rights and responsibilities.

The report says that the principal responsibility for (not cause of) the closure is Israel’s.

Alongside analyses of the roles of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the US and the EU (read these) I want to draw attention to the section on the interests of the Hamas regime on p168, including its responsibility for rights in Gaza as an armed group with a political structure and control over the residents of the territory, including:

“Under the present circumstances, Hamas’ objection to Israeli involvement in operating the Gaza border crossings constitutes an obstacle to them opening.

Hamas’ declarations as to its willingness to allow the PA to operate Rafah crossing are not unambiguous.

… Rafah crossing is used as a battleground in the conflict between Hamas and the PA, and the victims are the residents of the Gaza Strip, whom Hamas controls directly and for whom it is responsible.”

Ditto much else of what Hamas says with regards to these negotiations – which, rather than official statements, comes in the form of interview remarks. I think it would be a significantly positive development if Hamas were to put the people of Gaza first and allow this involvement. I also find it illustrative of Hamas’ stated aims to obliterate Israel and its Jewish residents that it has not. Hamas is a difficult enemy to negotiate with because it is theocratic. Hamas, which claims to answer to a higher authority, is not currently known for giving a toss about human rights. When adults and children die in explosions at its bomb-making works, Hamas calls them martyrs. It must be difficult to get the point about human rights across to Hamas.

I digress from the report, which you should read.

To come: post on current state of the new Israeli governing coalition.

See Coventry Green Voice for details of an interfaith event on the evening of Thursday 19th March 2009.

“This is on Thursday night (refreshments from 630pm, event from 7pm to 915pm) at the Methodist Central Hall here in Coventry. It will be a talk and discussion by the co-directors of Jerusalem Peacemakers … on the impact of the Gaza war on the region, renewed efforts for peace building, and what we can do to help.”