| June
22, 2006
When Killings Don't Count
A Week of Israeli
Restraint
By TANYA
REINHART
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 a rmy 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 Samhadana,
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.
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.
Tanya Reinhart is a Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University
and the author of Israel/Palestine:
How to End the War of 1948 and The
Roadmap to Nowhere. She can be reached through her website:
http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart
NOTES
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 Sa! turday Supplement, June 16,
2006).
http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart
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