XPost: alt.fan.countries.israel, alt.activism.peacefire, alt.politics.religion   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Noam Chomsky: After 50 days shooting fish in a barrel in Gaza, what will   
   Israel do next?   
      
   Noam Chomsky 10 September 2014. Posted in News	   
   The latest ceasefire will go the same way as other 'agreements' following   
   Israel's periodic escalations of its unremitting assault on Gaza: Hamas will   
   observe it, Israel will ignore it.   
   Gaza mass destruction   
      
   On August 26th, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) both accepted a   
   ceasefire agreement after a 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza that left 2,100   
   Palestinians dead and vast landscapes of destruction behind.   
      
   The agreement calls for an end to military action by both Israel and Hamas, as   
   well as an easing of the Israeli siege that has strangled Gaza for many years.   
      
   This is, however, just the most recent of a series of ceasefire agreements   
   reached after each of Israel's periodic escalations of its unremitting assault   
   on Gaza. Throughout this period, the terms of these agreements remain   
   essentially the same.   
      
   The regular pattern is for Israel, then, to disregard whatever agreement is in   
   place, while Hamas observes it -- as Israel has officially recognized -- until   
   a sharp increase in Israeli violence elicits a Hamas response, followed by   
   even fiercer brutality.   
      
   These escalations, which amount to shooting fish in a pond, are called "mowing   
   the lawn" in Israeli parlance. The most recent was more accurately described   
   as "removing the topsoil" by a senior US military officer, appalled by the   
   practices of the self-described "most moral army in the world."   
      
   The first of this series was the Agreement on Movement and Access Between   
   Israel and the Palestinian Authority in November 2005.  It called for "a   
   crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah for the export of goods and the   
   transit of people, continuous operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza   
   for the import/export of goods, and the transit of people, reduction of   
   obstacles to movement within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the   
   West Bank and Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, [and the] re-opening of   
   the airport in Gaza" that Israeli bombing had demolished.   
      
   That agreement was reached shortly after Israel withdrew its settlers and   
   military forces from Gaza.  The motive for the disengagement was explained by   
   Dov Weissglass, a confidant of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was in   
   charge of negotiating and implementing it.   
      
       "The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace   
   process," Weissglass informed the Israeli press. "And when you freeze that   
   process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent   
   a discussion on the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem. Effectively, this   
   whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been   
   removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and   
   permission. All with a [US] presidential blessing and the ratification of both   
   houses of Congress."   
      
   True enough.   
      
   "The disengagement is actually formaldehyde," Weissglass added. "It supplies   
   the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political   
   process with the Palestinians."  Israeli hawks also recognized that instead of   
   investing substantial resources in maintaining a few thousand settlers in   
   illegal communities in devastated Gaza, it made more sense to transfer them to   
   illegal subsidized communities in areas of the West Bank that Israel intended   
   to keep.   
      
   The disengagement was depicted as a noble effort to pursue peace, but the   
   reality was quite different.   
      
   Israel never relinquished control of Gaza and is, accordingly, recognized as   
   the occupying power by the United Nations, the US, and other states (Israel   
   apart, of course).  In their comprehensive history of Israeli settlement in   
   the occupied territories, Israeli scholars Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar   
   describe what actually happened when that country disengaged: the ruined   
   territory was not released "for even a single day from Israel's military grip   
   or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day." After   
   the disengagement, "Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services,   
   and people with neither a present nor a future.  The settlements were   
   destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact   
   continues to control the territory and kill and harass its inhabitants by   
   means of its formidable military might."   
      
   Operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense   
      
   Israel soon had a pretext for violating the November Agreement more severely.   
   In January 2006, the Palestinians committed a serious crime.  They voted "the   
   wrong way" in carefully monitored free elections, placing the parliament in   
   the hands of Hamas.  Israel and the United States immediately imposed harsh   
   sanctions, telling the world very clearly what they mean by "democracy   
   promotion." Europe, to its shame, went along as well.   
      
   The US and Israel soon began planning a military coup to overthrow the   
   unacceptable elected government, a familiar procedure. When Hamas pre-empted   
   the coup in 2007, the siege of Gaza became far more severe, along with regular   
   Israeli military attacks.  Voting the wrong way in a free election was bad   
   enough, but preempting a US-planned military coup proved to be an unpardonable   
   offense.   
      
   A new ceasefire agreement was reached in June 2008.  It again called for   
   opening the border crossings to "allow the transfer of all goods that were   
   banned and restricted to go into Gaza." Israel formally agreed to this, but   
   immediately announced that it would not abide by the agreement and open the   
   borders until Hamas released Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas.   
      
   Israel itself has a long history of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the   
   high seas and holding them for lengthy periods without credible charge,   
   sometimes as hostages.  Of course, imprisoning civilians on dubious charges,   
   or none, is a regular practice in the territories Israel controls.  But the   
   standard western distinction between people and "unpeople" (in Orwell's useful   
   phrase) renders all this insignificant.   
      
   Israel not only maintained the siege in violation of the June 2008 ceasefire   
   agreement but did so with extreme rigor, even preventing the United Nations   
   Relief and Works Agency, which cares for the huge number of official refugees   
   in Gaza, from replenishing its stocks.   
      
   On November 4th, while the media were focused on the US presidential election,   
   Israeli troops entered Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants.  That   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)