The Dissonance
Jeffrey Goldberg had a piece on Hamas in yesterday’s New York Times that Noam Scheiber hailed as “hands down the best thing I’ve read since the Gaza conflict started.” Jon Chait deemed it “fantastic” and recommended this conclusion especially:
The only small chance for peace today is the same chance that existed before the Gaza invasion: The moderate Arab states, Europe, the United States and, mainly, Israel, must help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah, prepare the West Bank for real freedom, and then hope that the people of Gaza, vast numbers of whom are unsympathetic to Hamas, see the West Bank as an alternative to the squalid vision of Hassan Nasrallah and Nizar Rayyan.
I wasn’t that big a fan of the piece, analytically, though it certainly is admirably witty. But be that as it may, it would certainly be desirable to see the more practical crew running Fatah having more support and control over the situation. But Israel’s attacks on Gaza are causing the reverse to happen just as the war in Lebanon 30 months ago had that effect. And, indeed, how Israel’s settlement expansions and growing network of roadblocks and special highways crossing the West Bank are weakening Fatah and the forces of Palestinian moderation. And of course recall that it was deliberate Israeli—and American—policy to weaken Fatah for years after the collapse of the Camp David talks. This “help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah” strategy is fine but it needs to be backed up by real steps. And the United States probably needs to take the lead since the Israeli political dynamic has become myopically focused on short-term issues. A president willing to demand a real freeze on settlement activity would be a great first step.
46 Responses to “The Dissonance”
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January 15th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Israel trying to strengthen or weaken some faction among the Palestinians (or the Lebanese, for that matter) is a fool’s game–it’s never worked yet.
You just have to talk to (or fight with) whoever they put across the table. The sooner everyone realizes this, the better. Conspicuously setting out to “help Fatah” is a waste of time and probably counterproductive.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Those with a long memory will recall that the Hamas was originally supported (by Israel) as a counterweight to … wait for it .. Fatah.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:48 am
There is a funny thing about war. In the beginning it causes support to rise for the leadership… a bunker mentality.
However if the conflict drags on and on and it is clear you are losing, and it is largely due to the incompetence of those in charge, support for those in power fails and there is a demand for something new.
This I think is why the worst thing that has ever happened in the I/P conflicts have been the cease fires. Let them fight it out until one side or the other surrenders out of frustration. Wars only end, when it is clear to one side that they lost… badly.
Hence why we had relative stability following WWII with Germany and Japan.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Neither Japan nor Germany was ever defeated as thoroughly as the Palestinians, nor did they fight as long.
But they don’t seem tired yet. I don’t think that’s a productive line of thought.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:54 am
This must be the “education” that Friedman was talking about (and not even Matt or any of the comments on his post about Friedman did more than express justified outrage at the morality rather than also question him on facts and reasoning). Or maybe we should call it “reeducation.”
January 15th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Ironically, the greatest threat to Israel comes not from radical Palestinians, but from moderate ones. As long as the radicals (Hamas for now) win elections, Israel can say that they can never negotiate with such leaders and outside forces will back them up. If moderates win elections, Israel will be pressured into a negotiated solution over the West Bank. In order to keep its grip on the West Bank, Israel needs to strengthen the radical forces. I’ll guarantee that if Hamas decides to recognize Israel, Israel will undercut them just like they did with Fatah. And then we will see Al Qaeda in Palestine become the dominant political force in the West Bank. And the settlement building will continue.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Amicus: What you fail to understand is that it was all part of their long-range master plan to weaken… Hamas. It’s all so clear.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:06 am
This could have been a winning strategy a few years ago when Hamas emerged as the victor in Gaza and Fatah became the de facto head of the West Bank. If Israel would have rewarded Fatah at the time by dismantling Israeli settlements, ending work on the wall, and allowing a greater number of Palestinians to seek economic opportunities in Israel on a temporary basis the contrast would have been useful. Who knows how Fatah would have responded, but at the very least Israel would have demonstrated a true commitment to a Palestinian state.
Now, Israel’s message to Fatah appears to be something along the lines of, “Keep things quiet and we won’t kill you.” That’s not a winning strategy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fatah lose control of the West Bank politically, while retaining a thin control over the security forces. Goldberg can afford to be witty; at this point his nation’s military is using thousand-pound, laser-guided munitions to kill a handful of kalashnikov-waving kids with really inaccurate surface-to-surface missiles. I used to try to recognize the inherent moral ambiguity of this situation when I discussed it in public, but I see no reason to do so in this case. A well-trained, well-equipped, centrally controlled, modern military is inflicting Grozny-style destruction on Gaza. Everyone (including supporters of Israel) should be expressing at least some small amount of outrage.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Neither Japan nor Germany was ever defeated as thoroughly as the Palestinians,
Huh? The Allies killed millions of Japanese & German soldiers and civilians, and leveled half of their countries. They seized overseas colonies, parts of their national territory, and occupied the countries for years. That’s a lot more thorough defeat than anything the Palestinians have suffered. And now we’re good friends with Japan and Germany.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Fostert beat me to it. The whole Israel strategy is not to reach a deal, and blame the other side. If Hamas were to sit with the Israelis, they will deal with them the same way as with Arafat, they will be offered something that they could not possibly accept without loosing their support base. So the cycle begins again, it’s worked for 60 years, so they figure they can keep it forever.
A few undirected rockets are the price of business, they weren’t really concerned about those (I might go to say that they were actually welcomed), it’s just that now is election season, and Kadima wants to prove that they are as good at beating Arabs as Likud. Once the election is over they will allow Hamas to get back to being nasty.
Meanwhile the expanding of settlements and outposts contiues….
January 15th, 2009 at 11:23 am
And now we’re good friends with Japan and Germany.
And both deplore the loss of human life and military occupation in Israel/Palestine, unlike the US.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Huh? The Allies killed millions of Japanese & German soldiers and civilians, and leveled half of their countries. They seized overseas colonies, parts of their national territory, and occupied the countries for years. That’s a lot more thorough defeat than anything the Palestinians have suffered. And now we’re good friends with Japan and Germany.
I think the real difference is that after WWII, the U.S. was committed to rebuilding Germany and Japan and not to occupying them and keeping them stateless indefinitely. If Israel turns around after bombing Gaza back to the stone-age and starts rebuilding the schools, hospitals, and state institutions it just razed, then maybe this whole escapade will actually have some good effects for their (and our) long-term security and even for those Palestinians fortunate enough not to be killed or maimed in the indescriminate slaughter. But somehow, I don’t think Israel has the political maturity to pull that off…
January 15th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Is that supposed to be a joke, Ragout?
Huh? The Allies killed millions of Japanese & German soldiers and civilians, and leveled half of their countries. Since 1948, you don’t think the much smaller Palestinian nation has suffered proportionately fewer casualties?
They seized overseas colonies, parts of their national territory, and occupied the countries for years. Amd Israel occupied every single square in of Palestine after overrunning them, leaving them without any country whatsoever.
And then there’s the military end – Germany and Japan still had standing armies, navies, and air arms on VE and VJ days, while the Palestinian “military” is some jagoffs with rifles and small rockets they can’t aim.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:45 am
David wrote:
I think the real difference is that after WWII, the U.S. was committed to rebuilding Germany and Japan and not to occupying them and keeping them stateless indefinitely.
The real diffence is that the US had no real territorial ambitions in either case, if the US had decided to colonize the places and expel the population the fighting will still be going, no matter how many schools and hospitals we built.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we were not the only winning side, Germany and Japan had the choice of surrendering to the USSR, who weren’t shy of grabbing territory and expelling the population(see East Prussia, Silesia, adn Sakhalin).
January 15th, 2009 at 11:47 am
the best chance for peace is for israel to stop the illegal settlements and halt the depopulation of its bantustans with cluster bombs and white phosphorus
January 15th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Er, “more casualties” and “squre inch.”
My point being not “poor, poor Palestinians,” but “Israel has indeed kicked their asses pretty thoroughly.
Most of the Germans in Germany were not forced out of their communities and resettled in camps as a result of their military defeat. Ditto most Japanese in Japan.
The Palestinians have been completely, utterly, dramatically, historically whupped-but-good, as evidenced by the fact that (unlike Germany and Japan) there is no Palestinian state, but a different state run by the people who whupped them.
This idea that they haven’t suffered a big enough defeat is baloney. It’s difficult to imagine a more thorough defeat than the one the Palestinians have experienced (or should I say, the series the Palestinians have experienced) over the past 60 years. If there was some kind of humanizing, realism-inspiring lesson to be gained from military defeat and humiliation, they’d all be Ph.Ds in it by now.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:52 am
“This “help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah” strategy is fine but it needs to be backed up…”
um, let me just stop you right there. no, its not “fine”, its the same idiotic, counter-productive crap that never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever works. ever! not once, ever, has this kind of maneuvering & manipulation of the sympathies and loyalties of an oppressed people worked. in human history. never. THIS IS WHAT GAVE US ALL HAMAS in the first place! “oh, we’ll just weaken the PLO, that is SURE to create a more moderate group to fill the void!”
all you “geniuses” of foreign policy who keep thinking that this stuff should be handled like a child’s spy/war game, can you just all stop acting like the rest of the world is a damn Risk game?
January 15th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Since 1948, you don’t think the much smaller Palestinian nation has suffered proportionately fewer casualties?
Of course the Palestinians have suffered, proportionally, way fewer casualties than did Germany and Japan in WWII. It’s not even close.
Most of the Germans in Germany were not forced out of their communities and resettled in camps as a result of their military defeat.
Probably more than 10 million Germans fled or were expelled from Eastern Germany and other East European lands that Germany lost in WWII. Half of Germany proper was leveled too, so that’s a lot more refugees.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
inflicting Grozny-style destruction on Gaza.
I’d say that this is off by about a factor of at least 10, and probably by 100. In Grozny, a city with 1/5 the population of Gaza, the Russians announced that all civilians who didn’t evacuate were legitimate targets. Then they leveled the city, killing perhaps 10-20,000 Chechens.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Another thing to keep in mind is that we were not the only winning side, Germany and Japan had the choice of surrendering to the USSR, who weren’t shy of grabbing territory and expelling the population(see East Prussia, Silesia, adn Sakhalin).
I believe the Germans preferred to fall into American, British, or French hands rather than the Rapists, I mean Russians.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Of course the Palestinians have suffered, proportionally, way fewer casualties than did Germany and Japan in WWII. It’s not even close.
I don’t believe that this is true.
Given that the Palestine/Israeli war has been going on 10X as long as World War II, it is beyond the realm of the plausible that they have suffered, during that time, “way fewer casulaties” than the Germans.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
10% of Germany’s population was killed during World War 2.
There are currently 5 million Palestinians in Palestine.
Perhaps the number of Palestinians killed in war over the past 60 years is “way below) 500,000, but I doubt it.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Friedman and Goldberg’s columns get Glenzillaed by Glenzilla in this post : http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/14/friedman/index.html
Such a Glenzilla.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
What? Are you trying to take all the fun out of foreign policy?
January 15th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Matthew Yglesias as well as much of the pundit world has decided to gloss over the problems of Fatah since Hamas won the Palestinian elections. People seem to forget that most of the suicide bombers had ties to groups related to Fatah, not Hamas. Israelis are not scared of Hamas because it was overly militant, or it’s because Hamas was the first Palestinian organization that had the potential of uniting Palestinians into a single force.
Israeli strategy has always been to keep Palestinians divided. Hamas was promoted by Israel to counter the PLO. Arafat was allowed back into Palestine to counter the growth home grown Palestinian parties and militias.
If Hamas is destroyed then Fatah will again be the problem for Israel. Israeli policy is not to have a two state solution, but to have a greater Israel. This is why settlement activity continues unabated.
This is one of the many reasons why the Israeli attack on Gaza is wrong, and criminal.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I’m starting to feel that the next step, at least as far as the US and Israel are concerned, is to try and start a Palestinian civil war in the West Bank.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Perhaps the number of Palestinians killed in war over the past 60 years is “way below) 500,000, but I doubt it.
I’m not sure if it makes sense to compare a 60-year conflict to a 6-year one, and if it is, the denominator isn’t the 5 million Palestinians alive today, but all the Palestinians alive during that 60 years (maybe 10 million).
But anyway, taking your assumptions, it’s still the case that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at least 100 times less deadly than WWII. You want to know if 500,000 Palestinians have been killed over 60 years, which would be about 8,000 per year. Wikipedia, citing a left-wing Israeli human rights group, puts the number of Palestinians killed in from 1987-2004 (1st Intifada forward) as about 5000, or less than 300 per year. This year will probably be the deadliest year for Palestinians since 1949, and it’s pretty unlikely we’ll get anywhere near 8,000 deaths. So, over a period 10 times as long as WWII, Israel has killed less than 1/10 the proportion of Palestinians than the Allies killed Germans.
Not that this is any great achievement. The main tactic of the US & UK in WWII was “strategic bombing,” which means saturation bombing of cities using bombs hardly accurate to a 5-mile radius. By the end of WWII, we were able to kill upwards of 100,000 civilians in a few bombing raids, as in Dresden, Tokyo, and Hiroshima. And the US & UK were just auxiliaries to the Russians, who did most of the fighting. To compare what Israel is doing to what the Allies did in WWII is just absurd.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
The Germans and Japanese were given one option to stop the war:
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
Eventually, both chose it. Since the Israelis never insisted on unconditional surrender by anybody, they were tacitly agreeing to let the fight go on and on.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
All this talk about these
Israeli master-plans is insipid.
Israeli politicians are as clueless
and myopic as everywhere else.
January 15th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
It wasn’t as UNCONDITIONAL as all that. The Japanese still got to keep the Emperor as the grand high poobah, and the Germans at least had the option of surrendering to the UK/US instead of the USSR. The USSR on the other hand had a three point plan that involved raping, killing, and looting as payback (with loanshark level interest) for everything that Germany did to them.
If the Palestinians surrender, and things go back to the way they were (Gaza blockade, ever expanding settlements in the West Bank), then all you’re doing is setting the stage for further conflict in five or ten years.
January 15th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
David,
I would agree there is no evil master plan and that Isrealie politicians are, as you say “as myopic as everywhere else.” Nicely put, that. However there is a clear pattern of colonial expansion and settlement in the occupied territories and more than a little evidence of a tried-and-true strategy of trying to keep the native population divided and fighting themselves. Personally I see “strengthening Fatah” as a traditional colonial tactic in no way related to seeking peace. Nothing to do with Jews vs. Muslims, and entirely about colonialist white settlers behaving as they traditionally have toward indigenous populations. Very very badly.
January 15th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Ragout,
I’m not sure if it makes sense to compare a 60-year conflict to a 6-year one, There’s some sense in this; and yet, remember my thesis here: “The Palestinians have gotten thoroughly whupped.” The fact that they’ve been getting whupped over and over again for 60 years should itself count as evidence of my thesis, no?
…and if it is, the denominator isn’t the 5 million Palestinians alive today, but all the Palestinians alive during that 60 years (maybe 10 million). Hmm, this is tough. I’m not sure how make an apples-to-apples comparison.
Wikipedia, citing a left-wing Israeli human rights group, puts the number of Palestinians killed in from 1987-2004 (1st Intifada forward) as about 5000, or less than 300 per year. 1949? 1967? 1973?
To compare what Israel is doing to what the Allies did in WWII is just absurd. Good think I didn’t do that, then. If you could get off the “Defender of Israel’s holy purity” soap box, I’m writing about a different point, one completely and utterly unrelated to the subject of how Israel is the most decent and humane military force evah.
January 15th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
That doesn’t make any sense at all, stubs. Conditional surrender, with conditions that are acceptable to the defeated party, is a LOWER barrier for the defeated to have to clear.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Eventually, both chose it. Since the Israelis never insisted on unconditional surrender by anybody, they were tacitly agreeing to let the fight go on and on.
I really think that the Israelis are being misundertood, they really don’t want to kill people or have them surrender.
All they want is for the Palestinians to GO AWAY.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Matt: “This “help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah” strategy is fine”
Depends on what you mean. Sidelining the Islamic fanatics AND the Zionist fanatics would be fine.
Trying to sideline only ONE of them is NOT going to work.
It’s that simple.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
No matter what Palestinians do, they stick to a bit of earth that Israel wants to call its own and incorporate into its Jewish state where Arabs are second-class citizens.
January 16th, 2009 at 9:31 am
The figures for German’s or Jews or whoever that died during WWII includes people who died of exposure, starvation disease etc.
How many palestinians have died as a result of malnutrition and disease caused by relocation etc. thousands were killed in the 1948 war, thousands in sabra and shatilla… thousands have died SINCE 2000, your numbers are all wrong.
were killed in the holocaust, cause the others died of natural causes.
whatever
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