20 June 2011. A World to Win News Service. As a small flotilla prepares to assemble in the eastern Mediterranean on 25 June and defy the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza toward the end of the month, it is becoming clear that these ships and boats will have to sail amid powerfully conflicting currents. A rip tide of contradictions might allow this pro-Palestinian protest to have a major impact, but at the same time it represents not only a real danger to the lives and safety of this brave group but also difficult political conditions that must be carefully navigated.
The wellsprings of this protest were articulated by the African-American writer Alice Walker, best known for her novel The Colour Purple, who is taking part in the flotilla. Speaking of the Israeli efforts to wall off and imprison the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, she said, "This is such a crime against the soul of humanity. We can't stand this. Who are we as human beings if we can even bear this? We cannot bear it. And we must not." Recognizing that all of the participants in this action face the possibility of being killed, she urged people everywhere to think about how they could live their lives in a way that gave them meaning. (Interview by Ali Abunimah posted on ElectronicIntifada.net)
This protest is up against an Israeli government, military and public opinion for which everything is justified by the goal of defending the existence of a Jewish state. "We will do anything we have to do to prevent a boat from breaking the blockade," a top Israeli naval official quoted by The New York Times told journalists 16 June. "If there is the same violence against our forces on board, there is a pretty good chance there will be injuries." According to the Washington Post, he warned "there may be injuries and casualties."
What is the "same level of violence" that would allegedly justify killing and maiming protesters?
This threat refers to the anti-blockade ship the Mavi Marmara, boarded by heavily armed airborne Israel commandos on 31 May, 2010. The "level of violence" was this: the Israelis assaulted the ship in international waters and opened fire even before they reached the decks. They killed nine passengers from Turkey, at least two of them executed while lying wounded on the deck, and injured 24 others, mostly by gunfire. The survivors were beaten and tortured. There were no deaths or gunshot wounds among the Israeli attackers. (See UN Human Rights Council report A/HRC/15/21)
The head of the Israeli Navy, Vice Admiral Eliezer Macom, provided advance political justification for "doing anything we have to do" by calling the ships a "flotilla of hatred which operates under the cover of providing humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip." If these vessels got through, he said, "Hamas would equip itself with unmonitored loads of weapons and threaten the state of Israel by means of terroristic rockets and missiles." (Haaretz, 19 June)
These comments are especially hypocritical in light of the recent signed agreement between the Gaza-based Hamas and Fatah, which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to recognize Israel's 1967 borders and cease rocket attacks and other military actions against the Zionist state. (For details, see veteran journalist Robert Fisk's 7 June article in the Independent. The broad outlines of these agreements have been widely reported.)
In fact, Israel's own decades-long record shows that it considers any Palestinian protest "terroristic" and subject to violent repression, whether armed or not. Most recently, the Israeli military directed tank, artillery and rifle fire against incontestably unarmed Palestinian youth demonstrating on 15 May, Nakba Day, commemorating the violent expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel in 1948, and again on 5 June, the anniversary of the 1967 war in which Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.
The Israeli authorities justified that one-sided bloodshed by claiming that they were defending their country from an invasion. There is a big lie wrapped up in this, in that Israel's definition of its own boundaries are subject to expansion. The Golan Heights, where the majority of demonstrators trying to cross Israeli lines were shot, are not considered part of Israel even by the countries that do recognize Israel's ethnically-cleansed, pre-1967 boundaries. They belong to Syria and Lebanon.
But this argument contains an element of truth: the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is inconceivable without denying the rights of the Palestinians. If Israeli troops did not use murder and the threat of murder to stop peaceful protesters carrying symbolic door keys attempting to walk back to the homes where they or their parents or grandparents were born, that would lead to the end of the Jewish state. The logic of defending the Jewish state explains not only the lack of rights for present and past Palestinian inhabitants within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries but also the Zionists' need to ensure their domination over Palestinians outside those boundaries.
In that sense, the Israeli claims – that the flotilla threatens to "delegitimize" Israel and the existence of a Jewish state – are murderously criminal but not irrational. They reflect the reality of the contradiction between the settlers on a stolen land where one people are privileged and the land's largely expelled and always oppressed original inhabitants.
However, this contradiction is set in a broader and even more complex context through which the Gaza flotilla has to steer.
The most important determinate of this situation is not Israel but the US, without whose support the Jewish state could not prevail. One thing that makes it difficult for many people to understand the situation and act effectively within it is the illusion that Washington can become a counterweight to Israel's most blatantly violent policies.
This illusion is illustrated by the name American participants have given to their boat, "The Audacity of Hope". Undoubtedly for many participants this use of US President Barack Obama's campaign slogan does not represent full support for Obama, but rather an attempt to use his own rhetoric against him.
The novelist Walker, for instance, while explaining that "We had hoped for much better from Obama," emphasises her disappointment and explains that her support for "his political career" is "not unconditional". Comparing this "Freedom Flotilla II" with the Freedom Riders who "were met with extreme violence" in the struggle against racial segregation in the American South during the early 1960s, she notes that President John F. Kennedy, who some people mistakenly think of as supporting the civil rights movement, "did not look favourably on the Freedom Riders and said that they were being provocative and that they should refrain from what they were doing. And that just struck me as almost a parallel with what's happening now." She continues that while some of her fellow participants are trying to get support or at least protection from Congress members, "at some point in all of these ventures one realizes that you're on your own and that this is something that you feel you have to do because it's a necessary work of the world".
It is very true that the Obama government has tried to dissuade the flotilla volunteers and has not issued the slightest warning to Israel that it would be held accountable for any of the threatened "injuries and casualties". But the US is not just indifferent to the fate of these self-sacrificing men and women fighting for justice, it is actively working against them, just as the Kennedy government deliberately let mobs and police attack the Freedom Riders. The Obama government blocked the UN report on the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara and refused to issue a protest over the killing of a US citizen, a young man from Turkey whom the report says was murdered in cold blood. Now the US has, at a minimum, encouraged UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's refusal to ask for safe passage for the second flotilla despite an open letter from four women Nobel Peace prize winners, which seems to be a go-ahead signal to Israel. Ultimately it is the US that will be responsible for anything that happens to them, although on this subject there has been no difference between the US and the European Union.
US policy toward Israel has to be looked at from several angles. The first is that of the deep character of the US relationship with Israel.
Again, it is true that Obama recently reiterated the US's long-standing call for a "two-state solution", a Jewish state within the 1967 boundaries "with land swaps" and a Palestinian state on the little land left. It is also true that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave this a surly rejection during his May visit to Washington. But rather than representing an Obama shift to an even slightly less reactionary position, his proposal simply reflects the US's broader reactionary interests.
Looking at the situation objectively, there is little reason why Israel could not live with a "two-state solution" that would entail Palestinians giving up on the struggle to recover Palestine and instead settle for a tiny, geographically disconnected, economically unviable, militarily powerless and inevitably Israel-dominated state. Netanyahu himself has never totally rejected this option. If Israel stubbornly refuses to negotiate right now, despite the Palestinian Authority's documented offers to give in to most Israeli demands (see the "Palestinian Papers" archive on english.aljazeera.net), this is not because it would lead to the demise of the Jewish state (many leading Zionists argue that it would be its salvation). This reluctance seems to flow from a combination of two factors. One is a feeling that because the Palestinians are in a weaker position than ever before, this is not the time to make "compromises" but to crush them further. The other has to do with political and ideological conditions within Israeli society.
This is a society where Jewish fundamentalist are seizing more authority every day and religious fanaticism plays an increasingly central role in the armed forces. The 400,000 settlers on the West Bank have become Zionism's most reliable shock troops because they cannot help but see in their daily existence what some other Israelis would rather not admit: that their way of life depends on forcibly denying the humanity of another people. In a remarkable event for a country that prides itself on being "democratic" (for Jews), an elderly Jewish author was recently sentenced to prison for an article in which he mused that Jewish settlers – who are better armed and trained than the Israeli military and habitually carry out raids to drive out their Palestinian neighbours – should not perhaps be considered civilians. Under these circumstances, Israeli concessions on symbolic issues (such as whether or not to "Judaize" all of Jerusalem) would have powerful ideological repercussions and thus political consequences.
All this reveals the internal logic of the Zionist project, but US interests are somewhat different. In today's Middle East, the US cannot allow itself to be indivisibly identified with Israel and every single Zionist policy. While the US and Israeli have clashed in the past, sometimes violently, now especially there is a serious contradiction between Israeli interests narrowly conceived from the point of view of Israel itself and the broader necessities faced by the US in imposing and keeping together a regional configuration of regimes that in a general way (not necessarily all the time and on every level) serves its interests. The revolt sweeping the Arab counties has brought about new difficulties for the US. For example, whereas Mubarak's Egypt was all but publicly submissive to Israel, the consolidation of a new US-friendly regime requires at least a show of Egyptian independence and maybe even more real flexibility in US/Egyptian relations. That is why Egypt's new government, along with Syria, played a major role in brokering the Hamas-Fatah agreement: Many Arab regimes, and possibly the US itself, would prefer a "two-state solution" to the current, perhaps unsustainable, situation.
But at the same time, these Arab revolts have made the Jewish state even more strategically necessary to the US, because the privileges of its people make them "reliable" – from the strategic point of view of American domination of the Middle East – in a way that cannot conceivably apply to the masses of Arab peoples. Many Israeli Jews are courageously opposing the brutality of their government's policies amidst increasingly difficult political conditions. But when Israeli tanks fired on unarmed Palestinian youth in Syria and on other borders, this was generally recognized as an "existential threat" to the Jewish state and there was no broad outcry among Israelis.
The US and Israel, however, are not the only reactionary actors on this stage. At a time when people's upsurges are threatening the US-protected regional order, the ruling classes of several countries are manoeuvring to find a new place for themselves, one that may be based on a weakened US ability to impose whatever it wants but does not challenge American regional and global dominance in general.
This has directly impacted the Gaza flotilla in the form of the last-minute pull-out of what was to be its flagship, the Mavi Marmara, the 500-passenger ferry that was to represent its continuity with the flotilla of a year ago and carry as many as half of the anti-blockade protesters. The reasons for this betrayal are as complex as they are filthy.
The Turkish government frankly opposed the flotilla and can be assumed to have directed the denial of a permit to sail for insurance reasons that was the ostensible motive for cancellation of the ship's departure. Turkey's current attempts to establish regional dominance, including replacing Iran as the main foreign influence in Syria, require both a certain verbal distancing from Israel and an ever-closer working relationship with the US in deeds. The Turkish government went so far as to call the plans for the Mavi Marmara a distraction and possible danger to its efforts to "stabilise" Syria. That means the threat – or more than just a threat – of military intervention to abort the popular revolt there and ensure an outcome that in one way or another is acceptable to Turkey and the US. An increase of tensions with Israel would work against Turkish efforts, which depend on Israel's acceptance of this as, if not welcome, at least the least objectionable solution to the "problems" this revolt poses. Acting with implicit US support over the last few years, Turkey has sponsored the Israel-Syria negotiations through which Bashar al-Assad has tried to save his rule. While the Syrian regime has been an enemy of Israel on one level, it has also ruthlessly suppressed the Palestinians, and Israel fears its demise.
Now Israeli sources have also been free to reveal – since Turkey's governing party has emerged strengthened from the parliamentary elections and is less vulnerable to political damage – that the AKP has been conducting secret negotiations with Israel, with American approval. One of the main items is reportedly how to bring closure to the diplomatic scuffle over the 2010 Mavi Marmara massacre in a way that saves face for both sides, which would free Turkey's hand to act in relation to Syria with the consent of the US and Israel. (Haaretz, 21 June)
Further, the IHH, the Islamic charity that owns the Mavi Marmara, is tied to both the Turkish AKP government and more fundamentalist forces. Certainly these Islamics fully support their government's demand that Syria's Assad remove the prohibitions on the Syrian Islamic Brotherhood, and don't want Israeli anger to get in the way of that.
Treachery against the Palestinian cause extends to other Islamic forces and more broadly. The Hamas-Fatah agreement may or may not stand, but its signing represents an even further step in the abandonment of the goal of Palestinian liberation by these two organisations. This can also be seen in the pressure against and even violent repression of the 15 May and especially 5 June Palestinian demonstrations by Hamas and Fatah, along with the Jordanian security forces and the Lebanese army. Hamas and Fatah are united in threatening to ask for UN recognition of a Palestinian state in September if Israel doesn't reopen negotiations to bring this "mini-state" into being. Since the US would have to either accept this motion in the UN or suffer the embarrassment of vetoing its own proposed solution, this is an attempt to use Washington against Tel Aviv – not very different from the idea behind calling the US flotilla ship "The Audacity of Hope" to use Obama against Obama. For the sake of this bid for American approval, these two organizations need to demonstrate that they can contain and suppress Palestinian aspirations as well as the Israeli occupiers can.
Egypt, too, is playing a further dirty role by supposedly reopening the Rafah crossing with Gaza, allowing Israel to use this to argue that Gaza is no longer under blockade, while sharply restricting the number of people allowed to cross and prohibiting all imports and exports. (A 16 June posting on the Gisha Website gives details.) The European countries, Turkey and UN officials claim that the Rafah reopening means that the flotilla no longer has any justification.
In short, the Palestinians might seem "on their own" in a situation where every state is against them. In some ways this is "the darkest night" ever faced by the Palestinian people, as some radical Palestinians call it, but it has to be recognized that none of these states ever fully supported the Palestinian cause and that strategies for Palestinian liberation based on hopes for consistent aid from reactionary states and forces have always been a serious obstacle to the Palestinian movement.
This situation is very difficult for Palestinians, politically and geographically, given their division into Gaza and the West Bank, the occupier's splintering of the West Bank itself into pieces between which contact is difficult, the almost omnipresence of the occupation troops and lack of any rear area for the struggle. Strategies for liberation of the past have proved unsuccessful, and deep thinking and new looks at revolutionary goals and the paths to achieve them are required.
But there are some very favourable factors.
There is the coming onto the scene of a new generation of Palestinians with renewed determination instead of the fatigue that weighs on many of their elders. Everyone who longs for the liberation of Palestine was exhilarated by the sight of thousands of enthusiastic youth marching down the hills from refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon to confront the Israeli army.
There is the tide of revolt surging through North Africa and the Middle East. It has achieved victories and stumbled against obstacles, but forced all the reactionaries to take it into account. It has very much encouraged the Palestinian youth, just as hatred for the occupation of Palestine and the submission of Arab governments to the US and especially Israel has been one factor in the revolt itself. Never in recent decades has the line-up of US-backed and Israel-tolerant states in the region faced a greater threat. Big cracks have opened up in the reactionary "stability" within which Palestinians and other Arabs have been imprisoned.
And there is the support for the Palestinians all over the world, including Europe and the US, from people who cannot bear injustice, and those who understand that they have a common cause with the Palestinians in opposing an unjust, oppressive and exploitative world order that has visible potential cracks on more than one continent lately. The Palestinian cause both benefits from today's incipient instability in that world order and is a particularly powerful lever to crack it further apart.
These are the main currents in the seas in which the flotilla is setting sail. As the flotilla approaches Gaza at the end of June, many people everywhere will act to support it – and hold their breath
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen