The U.N.'s Richard Falk: Gaza a Victim of Geopolitics

Richard Falk, who has taught international law at Princeton for decades, is UN special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestine Territories. He was expelled by Israel two weeks ago, perhaps in anticipation of the current Israeli assault. I asked him to explain the Gaza situation for my weekly column, Global Viewpoint:

Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe

Richard Falk

For eighteen months, the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza experienced a punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a variety of traumatizing challenges to the normalcy of daily life. A flicker of hope emerged some six months ago when an Egyptian-arranged truce produced an effective ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the cross-border periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell harmlessly on nearby Israeli territory, and undoubtedly caused anxiety in the border town of Sderot. During the ceasefire, the Hamas leadership in Gaza repeatedly offered to extend the truce, even proposing a 10-year period, and claimed a receptivity to a political solution based on acceptance of Israel's 1967 borders. Israel ignored these diplomatic initiatives and failed to carry out its side of the ceasefire agreement, which involved some easing of the blockade that had been restricting the entry to Gaza of food, medicine and fuel to a trickle.

Israel also refused exit permits to students with foreign fellowship awards and to Gazan journalists and respected NGO representatives. At the same time, it made it increasingly difficult for journalists to enter, and I was myself expelled from Israel a couple of weeks ago when I tried to enter to carry out my U.N. job of monitoring respect for human rights in occupied Palestine, that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza.

Clearly, prior to the current crisis, Israel used its authority to prevent credible observers from giving accurate and truthful accounts of the dire humanitarian situation that had been already documented as producing severe declines in the physical condition and mental health of the Gazan population, especially noting malnutrition among children and the absence of treatment facilities for those suffering from a variety of diseases. Could this have been part of pre-attack planning?

As always in relation to the underlying conflict, the facts bearing on this latest crisis are murky and contested, although the American public in particular gets 99 percent of its information filtered through an exceedingly pro-Israeli media lens. Hamas is blamed for the breakdown of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is more clouded. There was no substantial rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel launched an attack on what it claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing a half dozen persons. Also, it was Hamas that on numerous public occasions called for extending the truce, with its calls never acknowledged, much less acted upon, by Israeli officialdom. Beyond this, attributing the rockets to Hamas is not entirely convincing either.

A variety of independent militia groups operate in Gaza; and some, such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, are anti-Hamas, and may even be sending rockets to provoke or justify Israeli retaliation. It is well confirmed that when moderate Fatah controlled Gaza's governing structure, it was unable to stop rocket attacks despite its efforts to do so.

What this background suggests strongly is that Israel launched its devastating attacks, starting on Dec. 27, not to stop the rockets or in retaliation, but for a series of other reasons. It was evident for several weeks prior to the Israeli attacks that the Israeli military and political leaders were preparing the public for large-scale military operations against the Hamas. The timing of the attacks seemed prompted by a series of considerations: most of all, the interest of political contenders, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in demonstrating their toughness prior to national elections scheduled for February.

Such Israeli shows of force have been a feature of past Israeli election campaigns, and on this occasion especially, the current government was being successfully challenged by Israel's notoriously militarist politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, for its failures to uphold security. Reinforcing these electoral motivations was the little-concealed pressure from the Israeli military commanders to seize the opportunity in Gaza to erase the memories of their failure to destroy Hezbollah in the devastating Lebanon War of 2006, which both tarnished Israel's reputation as a military power and led to widespread international condemnation for the heavy bombardment of undefended Lebanese villages and extensive use of cluster bombs in heavily populated areas.

Respected and conservative Israeli commentators go further.

For instance, the prominent historian Benny Morris, writing in the New York Times a few days ago, relates the campaign in Gaza to a deeper set of forebodings in Israel that he compares to the dark mood of the public that preceded the 1967 War, when Israelis felt deeply threatened by Arab mobilizations on their borders. Morris insists that despite Israeli prosperity of recent years, and relative security, several factors have led Israel to act boldly in Gaza: the refusal of the Arab world to accept the existence of Israel to any convincing degree; the inflammatory threats voiced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together with Iran's supposed push to acquire nuclear weapons, the fading memory of the Holocaust combined with growing sympathy in the West with the Palestinian plight; and the radicalization of political movements on Israel's borders in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas. In effect, Israel is trying, via the crushing of Hamas in Gaza, to send a wider message to the region that it will stop at nothing to uphold its claims of sovereignty and security.

There are two conclusions that emerge: The people of Gaza are being severely victimized for reasons remote from the rockets and border security concerns, but seemingly to improve election prospects of current leaders now facing defeat, and to warn others in the region that Israel will stop at nothing if its interests are at stake.

That such a human catastrophe can happen with minimal outside interference also shows the weakness of international law and the United Nations, as well as the geopolitical priorities of the important players. The passive support of the U.S. government for whatever Israel does is again the critical factor, as it was in 2006 when it launched its aggressive war against Lebanon. What is less evident is that the main Arab neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, with their extreme hostility toward Hamas -- which is viewed as backed by Iran, their main regional rival -- were also willing to stand aside while Gaza was being so brutally attacked.

The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst: producing what Israel itself calls a "total war" against an essentially defenseless society that lacks any defensive military capability whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means is that the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the bodies pile up. It additionally means that the U.N. is once more revealed to be impotent when its main members deprive it of the political will to protect a people subject to unlawful uses of force.

Finally, this means that the public can shriek and march all over the world, but the killing will go on as if nothing is happening. The picture being painted day by day in Gaza is one that begs for renewed commitment to international law and the authority of the U.N. Charter, starting in the United States, especially with a new leadership that promised its citizens change, including a less militarist approach to diplomatic leadership.

Comments

[40thsaintblack]

hypothetically,lets say Isreal is able to defeat the evil hamas completely,then what?,they give back all the land they took?,leave things as it is?,or take more?.

[Michale32086]

Would you advocate that the USA return all the lands to the native americans???

Michale.....

[baffy]

Why not?

[barryblogger]

Israel already completely withdrew from Gaza and is certified as doing so by the UN. It doesn't matter, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and has no interest in peace. Those are their words not mine and is written in their charter. Look it up.

[yorkville7]

amricans know the truth and the era of fitered press is over which means the wheels on the 60 years of lies are falling off the bus, only foreign ppaid spammers are still trying to justify the slaughter

[Mover]

The Israeli government must be insane. They doing the same thing while expecting a different result. They keep giving concessions to Palestinians followed by a barage of rockets and/or mortars. Every time.

I'm sorry, but the Palestinians are the bad guys here. I would say that the real "traumatizing challenges to the normalcy of daily life" would lie the prospect of a mortar or rocket dropping into your home, school or market place, without warning and without provocation.

The Israeli blockade was instituted to prevent the leaders and followers of Hamas from smuggling their hexbollah supplied terror weapons into Gaza.

So what happened when Israel relaxed the blockade? Hamas resupplied their rockets and mortars.

This time, on Dec 27th, they killed 2 young Palestinian girsl, age 5 & 12, with rockets that fell short of Israel.

[PDH5204]

Here's the counterpoint to Falk:

"During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world -- ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew some what more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the better off Arab states)...Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated. "

Certainly no "holocaust", as claimed by Falk. Read the rest here:

http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/What_Occupation$.asp

[Michale32086]

Looks like the Palestinians were a LOT better off with the Israelis than they are with Hamas....

Iddn't that interesting....

Michale......

[baffy]

You just don't get it. They are occupied by a foreign country. Had they been free to trade with other countries, to have their children educated at the world's best universities, to attract foreign investors etc, they would have been miles ahead of the statistics you quote. But Israel always wanted to control every movement.
Palestinians would trade prosperity for freedom any day and so they should.

[Michale32086]

What part of ISRAEL LEFT GAZA IN 2005 do you not understand???

Michale.....

[barryblogger]

Israel already completely withdrew from Gaza and is certified as doing so by the UN. It doesn't matter, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and has no interest in peace. Those are their words not mine and is written in their charter. Look it up.

[mattheweste]

And now lets get out news about WW2 from the Nazis.

The pathetic thing is that 100% of US media is nothing but parroting the IDF hand outs so this sort of direct propaganda to brain link is nothing new. The interview above basically proves that the Israelis are more than willing to directly lie about every detail of this massacre. Every detail.

Why when they've been proven to be such comprehensive liars would anyone beleive the fresh batch of lies?

Israel just murdered hundreds of civilians for a PHOTO-OP. They are starving to death 1.5 million people. They are committing genocide. And here you go again trying to shove more lies at us all. and these lies don't even make any sense. Even if they were true they would change nothing. Why did you even bother to post this crap?

[baffy]

Thank you, Professor Falk, for your excellent and very accurate assessment of the current situation in Gaza. Israel has always been "opportunistic" in finding the best time to unleash it's carnage on the Palestinians. Unfortunately, the rise of Iran has greatly complicated the situation as regards the positions taken by other Arab countries. Having said this, the real problem is not the Arabs or the weakness of the UN but the complicity of the US in unequivocally supporting Israeli aggression and oppression. I also noted that the New York Times first editorial on the Gaza invasion started by stating "Israel must defend itself". Is this the best the liberal left of America can offer when 300 people are slaughtered in the first two days?

[Michale32086]

Of course..

It's ALWAYS the US that is at fault.. :^/

Michale......

[mattheweste]

Do you mean you wish the US could murder a bunch of people and successfully shift the blame? If so be assured that has happened many times.

[rockyb26]

amazing and very informative!

[Michale32086]

Hamas is committing terrorism against Israel..

This negates ANY consideration, compassion or legitimacy their issue may have enjoyed.

Does ANYONE here support terrorism???

Michale......

[jamilk99]

Which side has killed more civilians? Hamas hasn't carried out a suicide bombing in Israel since 2005.

[levibatgirl]

You are pathetically brainwashed and biased.

As always.

[Michale32086]

If so, then so is President Elect Obama as he and I are of the same mind on this.

So who is pathetically brainwashed and biased again??

Michale.....

[skippypicasso]

"For eighteen months, the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza experienced a punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a variety of traumatizing challenges to the normalcy of daily life"

And yet, they were able to somehow find a way to acquire longer and longer range rockets to fire into Israel.

The rest of it is similar nonsense. Hamas at no point came out and publicly stated anything other than a desire to destroy Israel.

[mattheweste]

Yes denial and lies are all you've got now.
Good "debate".

[jamilk99]

Really? Maybe it's just that their calls to renew the ceasefire weren't reported in the American press; because they were certainly reported in the foreign press.

[mattheweste]

Interesting.

To say this article / interview is by far the most important one on the topic at this site would be to insult it. It's more important than the rest put together. In fact it makes up for in large part the negatives of bias, idiocy, and falsehood that are the rule on this topic.

And therefore it's buried on a back page somewhere. And I can't find it on Google except here. Is this an exclusive on loan from Global Viewpoint? Why is this not front paged?

it's also here:
http://www.popmartian.com/politrix/2008/12/nathan-gardels-the-uns-richard-falk-gaza-a-victim-of-geopolitics/

[Paladine]

Good questions...