HAMAS, Gaza, and the 'New World Order'
This article charts the events that led to the creation of HAMAS and how they took power in the Gaza Strip. It outlines the savage response of Israel, that left Gaza looking like a moonscape.
In 2006, Hamas took control of Gaza after defeating Fatah in the 2006 elections. One of the key campaign elements was dropping from the 1988 Hamas manifesto, the call to eradicate Israel. That didn’t mean that resistance against Israel would stop. So who and what is HAMAS?
HAMAS in Arabic, is an acronym for ‘Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia,’ the Islamic Resistance Movement, which also symbolises courage and bravery. They are a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, formed following the first Intifada in 1987. Their remit was to resist the Israeli occupation of Palestine by force if necessary through their military wing (Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, named after the Syrian Muslim preacher who opposed Zionism during the Mandate). Following the 2006 elections, Hamas’s political views didn’t find favour with the west after their success in taking power in Gaza. This study from the Conflict Analysis Research Centre (2018, University of Kent) provides some background.
The election was the first in ten years following multiple postponements. Despite opposition from the west and Israel, the elections were ‘fair and democratic in spite of the surprising result.’ Fatah refused to engage with Hamas following the result. This was an enduring conflict of interest between the two factions that had been ongoing for years. The roots of the conflict go back to the formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the systemic corruption that followed within the PA and the PLO. Palestinians got behind Hamas as an alternative to the status quo.
Following the election, Palestinian aid was suspended by the US and the EU. Ultimatums were effectively announced by various factions. The Middle-East Quartet (US, Russia, the EU, the UN) stated that:
Hamas should renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previous PA-Israel agreements.
Most Arab countries continued to back Hamas, except Egypt under al-Sisi’s government, which imposed a land and maritime embargo on Gaza in cahoots with Israel. Russia continued to maintain a relationship with Hamas. It wasn’t long before the effects of sanctions built up tensions, leading to unrest. Hamas and Fatah attempted to defuse the violence, but failed. Ultimately Hamas took full control of Gaza. Fatah then ousted Hamas from the West Bank.
Since 2007, there has been sporadic fighting between Hamas and Israel. In 2008 Israel launched operation cast lead, followed by operation protective edge in 2014.
What HAMAS stands for is outlined in The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Manifesto):
This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.
It emphasises that:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement. It takes care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions. It does not antagonize anyone of them except if it is antagonized by it or stands in its way to hamper its moves and waste its efforts.
Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions — Islam, Christianity and Judaism — to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that.
Going back to the original question, what is outlined in the Covenant would not make comfortable reading to the powers that be in the west and in Israel. It stands as a threat to the ‘status quo’. But who is the real threat?
Hamas’s roots go back to the 1967 war as this article from Express Tribune outlines. During the war, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip. Palestinian cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founded a group called Mujama al-Islamiya, with the primary aim of providing charity and welfare work for Palestinian’s in Gaza and recognised as such by Israel. Yassin was killed in an Israeli air strike in 2004. There are remarkable parallels here to fate of Osama bin Laden. An article from Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), Israeli Roots of Hamas Are Being Exposed, takes an in-depth look at the creation of Hamas by Israel.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer, who served in his post from 2001 to 2005, made it clear that Israel’s support of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, was designed to counter the influence of the PLO:
Kurtzer explained that during the 1980s, when the Islamic movement began to flourish in the West Bank and Gaza, “Israel perceived it to be better to have people turning toward religion rather than toward a nationalistic cause [the Palestinian Liberation Organization — ed.].” It therefore did little to stop the flow of money to mosques and other religious institutions, rather than to schools.
Arafat regarded Hamas as ‘a creature of Israel’:
Hamas has always been seen as a tool by which Israel could undermine the nationalist movement led by Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat’. Arafat himself stated that ‘Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organization antagonistic to the PLO. They received financing and training from Israel.
Yossi Sarid, chairman of the Meretz party, quoted in Ha'aretz, summed it up perfectly by saying:
“the terrorists and those who give them asylum are not the real enemies. Instead, the real enemies are the moderates.... You fight terrorists—a pretty simple operation—but you must talk with moderates, and this is a very tricky, if not dangerous, business."
A key trigger that pushed Israel towards the eventual creation of Hamas was the recognition of the PLO by the Arab League and the UN in 1974 as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”. This was followed in 1979 by support by Israel for the Islamic Association, which (EIR quotes from a Tel Aviv University study):
“obtained a permit from the Israeli Civil Administration in 1979 to conduct its activities. The permit was apparently consistent with the Israeli policy of strengthening Islamic bodies as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalist groups."
This generated clashes with PLO supporters. Then in an effort to destroy the PLO, which was in exile in Lebanon, Israel invaded Lebanon, carrying out acts of genocide against Palestinian refugees there in the process. Finally in the wake of the first Intifada in 1987, Hamas was formally created out of the Islamic Association in 1988. This was also influenced by the PLOs decision (now based in Tunisia) to accept ‘the United Nations Security Council resolution of 1947 calling for two states in Palestine,’ at the 19th Conference of the Palestinian National Council in Algeria.
As a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has had links with the mujaheddin, who were fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, as well as other Islamic factions. Following the assassination of Osama bin Laden by the US in 2011, Hamas condemned the killing, describing him as an "Arab holy warrior." This was in stark contrast to a PA statement, describing the killing as "good for the cause of peace". No doubt Hamas was reminded of the assassination of its own founder and the fact that both Hamas and al-Qaeda were ultimately products of Israel and the US respectively.
With the Oslo Accords ostensibly brokering a peace deal in 1994, a suicide attack was launched, not by a Palestinian but by Israeli terrorist, Baruch Goldstein. As EIR notes, he:
entered the Mosque of Hebron and killed 50 Muslim worshippers as well as himself. Goldstein was a member of Kach, the terrorist organization founded by the late Meir Kahane, who also founded the Jewish Defense League in the 1960s in the United States. Kach, which is well connected to Sharon, is on the official U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations.
Hamas began suicide responses following the agreement between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin that established the PA. When Rabin was assassinated a year later, Oslo was dead and buried. Ironically it wasn’t just far right Israelis that wanted to bury Oslo. That was also Hamas’s aim. To facilitate that, Hamas was in favour of bringing Benjamin Netanyahu to power. According to Hamas spokesman Ibraham Ghawshah:
it was part of their strategy to influence Israeli public opinion to bring down the entire Oslo process. The election of Netanyahu indeed fulfilled all their hopes, especially after he launched his own provocations, which not only brought about the pre-calculated Hamas response, but also brought the region several times to the brink of war.
Despite the apparent isolation of Hamas since the Gaza blockade was established, they are well represented, as noted on the Mapping Palestinian Politics page of European Council on Foreign Relations:
The Hamas leadership is located both inside and outside of Palestine and is made up of a consultative Shura Council and a Politico Bureau (Politburo) responsible for decision-making. In addition, it has ‘regional’-level Shuras and Politburos representing Hamas members in the West Bank, Gaza, the diaspora, and prisoners in Israeli jails. Despite its geographical spread, the Hamas leadership appears to be well organised and effective, capable of pursuing consistent policies and enforcing compliance with internal instructions.
With the Gaza strip still isolated to date, where does Hamas stand? With their stand seemingly intractable and Israel descending towards fascism, what’s the next move? Attempts at reconciling relations with Fatah have failed after several attempts. Yet it’s the weakness of the PA that has been Hamas’s strength. That was reflected in 2020, when proposed elections were shelved.
Hamas has epitomised the Palestinian resistance. As The Conversation points out:
Hamas doesn’t need to “win” wars in the traditional sense to be victorious. By simply resisting, it affirms its legitimacy and popularity, which has tended to surge after such escalations in the past. This is especially in comparison to the Palestinian Authority, which is seen as weak at best and complicit at worst in terms of relations with Israel.
A paper by Hani Awad, published by the Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies, Understanding Hamas: Remarks on Three Different and Interrelated Theoretical Approaches, unpacks what makes Hamas tick. Awad uses three theoretical approaches; as an Islamist Movement from an ideological perspective, a social movement and as a heir of the Palestinian national movement.
Hamas was part of an Islamist movement before it became Hamas. The seeds of a new movement were sowed in the wake of the 1967 war, which left a void that needed to be filled, the 1970’s were a period of uncertainty. However the 1973 war and the post-war fate of the PLO, as noted above, was a pivotal moment. Then came the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, which reverberated around the region, generating a shift in social and political dynamics. This was also a period of economic recession, which had an impact in the occupied territories (OPT) creating mass unemployment. Many Palestinians also worked in the wider region, having initially been attracted particularly to oil related jobs in the Gulf. This fell off and restrictions were imposed on Palestinians to prevent economic migration. There was also a demographic shift, with increasing numbers of youth, whereby:
under-thirties now made up more than 70 percent of the population. As a result, a whole generation of young Palestinians found themselves under an unprecedented and intolerable level of economic pressure.
This led to the expansion of schools, universities and technical colleges, to pick up the slack of a population who’s movement was now restricted abroad. What was left then for an idle well educated Palestinian population to do? The seeds were already sown. They would begin to flourish as students and became politically active. This was the dynamic that would lead to the first intifada.
The early 1980s were marked by a period of imposed taxation by Israel along with a shift towards utilising Palestinian cheap labour through a program of "de-development" as parts of the OPT were annexed. This was followed with an expansion of the settlement programme:
the establishment of new settlements meant confiscation of land, appropriation of water supplies and other natural resources and the building of new and inconvenient road networks that reflected settlers' interests rather than the needs of Arab haulage or transport. As a result, villagers in particular felt more constricted and threatened by the Zionist settler colonial project than ever.
By the mid 80s, the Palestinians were reacting against Israel’s increased discriminatory policies or:
what Jamil Hilal called a "cultivated mass mood" distinguished by "a great willingness to pursue the struggle deeply embedded in political attitudes" throughout the area.
Israel increased the ante through its Iron Fist policy, which resulted in an increase in collective punishments, a policy that would repeat itself in later years. Meanwhile an exiled PLO, in an effort to regain some credibility, attempted to galvanise resistance against the occupation. Organisations such as Fatah's Youth Movement and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)-linked Action Front emerged, adding to the growing dynamic and resistance. The PLO’s efforts were largely effective. However as Awad notes, quoting Helga Baumgarten:
it consisted of "a collection of different organisations, each entirely independent from the next. [These organisations] operated for the most part on the basis of a set of semi-contradictory principles. The only thing that united them was that they had no backing other than the émigré [PLO] leadership."
At the same time - with the blessing of a rather naive Israeli leadership - the Muslim Brotherhood had carte blanch throughout the OPT (especially in Gaza) to expand their influence as Israel attempted to dismantle the PLO. In Gaza, two institutions became prominent, the Islamic Centre and the Islamic University. As some members of the diaspora returned to Gaza, the emergence of Hamas as an organisation picked up pace as the resistance movement began to coalesce. It wasn’t just Israel that was turning against the PLO. This led to the ‘hurried drafting of the Hamas Charter in August 1988’. This charter was eventually recognised in later years as limited in scope. It didn’t appeal to everyone within the brotherhood and was dismissive of any settlement with Israel, as well as being inherently antisemitic. Its shortcomings was a reflection of the rapid developments that were taking place at the time.
Another shortcoming was the religious elements of Hamas. They lacked political experience. This dominated the charter and the wider approach of Hamas. This would be a source of further tension between Hamas and the PLO, especially with the intifada coming to a close. The Oslo Accords of 1993, would relieve the tension - for a period.
The second approach Awad takes is to view Hamas as a Social Movement Organisation (SMO). An SMO is defined here as:
a long-term collection of organised or semi-organised collective actions led by those who have historically been marginalised within the symbolic history of society, with the intention of influencing and becoming part of its cultural orientations.
Social movement theory has become a topic of debate, here within the context of Islamic movements and whether such movements succeed or fail, something I’ve already touched on.
The PLO has been very much at the centre of this process, achieving what seemed impossible at the time - recognition for Palestine. Awad then pulls in the concept of ‘otherisation’ in defining Palestinian identity, where two ‘others’ are identified; Zionism, and the Arab community ‘who had failed to keep their promise to liberate Palestine.’ Part of this identity was the affinity to the land, much of which had been stolen by the Zionist project. There was a disconnect though between those in the diaspora and within the OPT. For many in the OPT there was a tendency towards a more religious identity. This contrasted with the overt politicisation of the PLO. As the emphasis towards an Islamic Jihad increased, a historical struggle came into sharp relief that went back to the Crusades. The role of Hamas here then becomes that of:
a movement of resistance to the Zionist settler-colonial project but also for its right to participate in putting together a historical narrative of society, allowing it to stake its claim to a share of the PLO's symbolic resources. This approach tends to view the movement's political use of Islam as a matter of "cultural framing' and of resource mobilisation. It focuses on the meaning produced by collective action and the role of social networks in challenging symbolic hegemony.
As Hamas’s influence grew, it captured the essence of what it meant to be both Palestinian and Islamic. Such influences have filtered through to the PA and other elements of Palestinian society. However politics and religion are not necessarily bed fellows and this has created its own issues within Palestinian society.
The third approach considers Hyper-nationalism: Hamas as Heir to the Palestinian National Movement. From the wider context of nationalism and religion, Hamas has sought to differentiate itself from the PLO. But the gestation of these issues are fraught with complexity. The PLO has been open to criticisms, much of them justified and for some the PLO was a misrepresentation of Arab unity, which effectively dissolved after defeat in the 1967 war. It seemed then that the Palestinians were on their own. The PLO response was to present themselves as a guiding paternal figure that would lead its children to salvation. The end of the first intifada offered an opening. But at the same time Hamas was offering an alternative. Arafat was well aware of the conundrums facing Palestinian society and the challenge from Hamas. The ultimate aim was Palestinian statehood. This led to the declaration of Palestinian independence, published in Algeria on 15 November 1988 at the 19th Palestine National Congress. Despite its efforts, the PLO failed. Oslo was seen as an opportunity but some interpret this more as an opportunity to sideline Hamas. The failure of Oslo merely vindicated Hamas’s position.
Oslo was a last gasp. The collapse of the Soviet Union left a vacuum that the US would fill. That meant that Israel would be part of a new world order, with the Palestinians loosing out. And as the PLO continued to wane, Yassin’s position was clear that:
his movement recognised the PLO as the legitimate representative of Palestinians abroad and not in the OPT. He was subsequently to add at another press conference that "we have no disagreement with the PLO. We think one way and they think another. The only true judge is the people – and whatever the people decide, we accept."
Hamas maintained their position post-Oslo, boycotting and undermining the PA, sometimes through violence. But would Hamas’s version of statehood succeed? Awad sums up:
After thirty long years of daring and bloody struggle, Hamas succeeded in obtaining its own modified version of statehood, at least in the Gaza Strip. But like its counterpart in Ramallah, it has quickly discovered that it is a "statehood" without a state.
An intriguing aspect of religious interpretation was the belief that:
scripture clearly showed Israel was soon to be destroyed by divine intervention and a new Caliphate established.
According to Yassin, the Qur'an shows that Israel will be destroyed in 2027. Apparently this is also indicated in the Torah. Theodore Herzl predicted that Israel would become a state in 50 years at the first Zionist congress. His prediction was accurate. Who would bet against Yassin given the political events current unfolding in Israel at the time of writing?
The Gaza Blockade
The UN published a 2005 report from the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, The Israeli ‘Disengagement’ Plan: Gaza Still Occupied. The report opens with:
Israel’s “Disengagement” plan from the Gaza Strip states that once fully enacted “there will be no basis to the claim that the Strip is occupied land,” even though the Plan envisages indefinite Israeli military and economic control over the Gaza Strip.
This decision to pull out of Gaza is now widely seen as a red herring, the basis of which was to allow Israel to expand illegal settlements in the West Bank in return withdrawing from Gaza. The report states that:
Israel will remain an occupying power under international law after disengagement from Gaza and is therefore bound by the obligations of an Occupying Power under international customary law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The report goes on to outline the legal parameters surrounding the policy. This was before Hamas took power in Gaza. This paper, Taking Community Seriously: Lessons from the Israeli Disengagement Plan (Shai Stern, Bar Ilan University), published in Israel Law Review, offers some background to the Plans implementation.
Jewish settlements began to form following the 1967 war. But it was after the 1973 war that widespread expansion began in earnest. This was driven largely by the Gush Emunim:
a movement of religious Zionists favoring the long-term retention of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights by Israel and their ultimate inclusion within the sovereign territory of the State.
Religious fanatics would be a reasonable description for this group. There was a prevailing tension with the Israeli government, which at times resulted in confrontation. However a major political shift in 1977, the ‘Mahapach’, resulted in a dramatic political shift in Israeli politics, that would change everything. In short, it involved the rise of the Lukid party that would eclipse the prevailing Labour party that had dominated Israeli politics since the transition from Mandatory Palestine to Israel’s establishment in 1948. In effect, that was when the current regime began its reign, along with the historical ramifications of this new political seismic shift.
As a result, the new Government led by Menachem Begin, found common ground with the Gush Emunim. By 2004, the number of settlements had expanded to 140 in the OPT, with a population of around 230,000 people. Before the withdrawal in 2005, ‘about 8,000 Jews lived in 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip’.
Interestingly the nature of the settlements were different in Gaza from the West Bank initially. There was no conflict with the Palestinians. The settlers there were just interested in setting up a new life. That all changed with the first intifada. When Ariel Sharon announced the withdrawal of settlers in 2004, it came as a surprise:
This announcement caught the parties to the negotiations, as well as the members of the communities in the area, by surprise. In addition to the political controversies raging at the time, the Israeli legislature faced a legal challenge in that 21 entire communities were to be uprooted.
Israeli legislators deliberated for over a year, and the Knesset then enacted the Implementation of the Disengagement Plan Law 2005 (the Disengagement Law), which set out the legal arrangements for regulating the evacuation of all communities from the area.
The process of evacuation began on 15 August 2005. MEM picks up the story. Such was the chaotic nature of the entire process that some settlers were literally dragged from their houses - great PR for the Middle East’s model democracy:
Images of settlers being hauled kicking and screaming from their homes were broadcast across the world. Israeli soldiers sobbed as they reluctantly followed orders. Some settler children left their homes with their hands up, wearing yellow Stars of David akin to those which marked out Jews during the Holocaust. These "rivers of wailing" were described by the Israeli press as "kitsch" and "shallow", while many Israelis vehemently criticised the settlers' invocation of the Holocaust.
One reason for implementing the Plan was financial. Israel had to provide security and provisions for the settlers. But there was another prompt, the death of Yasser Arafat on 11 November 2004. The process lasted a week. On the 21 September:
the government declared the Gaza Strip to be extrajudicial territory and designated the crossings into the enclave as international borders requiring travel documentation.
Following this declaration, a familiar pattern began as Israeli jets made a sorty over Gaza. The excuse for dropping bombs was the manufacture of rockets. The crunch that would set the scene for the Strip was the victory of Hamas in the elections that followed in January 2006. With Fatah refusing to engage with Hamas, ‘a de facto civil war ensued’ with Fatah ensuring the blessing of Israel and the US. The result was a split that led to Hamas taking full control of Gaza. Eventually towards the end of 2007, Gaza’s borders were completely sealed in response to Hamas’s consolidation of the Strip. The Gaza blockade was now in place.
Sharon’s disengagement Plan was the catalyst that would ultimately plunge the Gaza Strip back into the stone age. The end of the second intifada then the death of Arafat and the growing presence of Hamas would change everything. Over the next decade, what happened to Gaza would leave the Warsaw Ghettos looking like a playground by comparison.
Operation Cast Lead
The first large scale offensive by Israel began on December 27, 2008, lasting 22 days. Prior to the assault, as reported by Spinwatch, a ceasefire agreement was negotiated with Hamas in June 2008. Under the agreement:
in exchange for Hamas and other Palestinian groups stopping the firing of rockets and mortars out of Gaza, Israel undertook to lift its economic blockade of Gaza and cease military incursions into Gaza.
Despite the success of the agreement:
Israel broke the ceasefire on 4 November 2008, by making a military incursion into Gaza and killing 7 members of Hamas, when the world was watching the election of Barack Obama.
The brutal assault on Gaza followed, documented in a comprehensive hard hitting report from Amnesty International, Operation ‘cast lead’: 22 days of death and destruction:
Thousands of civilian homes, businesses and public buildings were destroyed. In some areas entire neighbourhoods were flattened and livestock killed. Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity. Rather, it was often the result of reckless and indiscriminate attacks, which were seemingly tolerated or even directly sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively punish local residents for the actions of armed groups.
One of the most disturbing elements in the attack was the use of white phosphorus, which:
was repeatedly fired indiscriminately over densely populated residential areas, killing and wounding civilians and destroying civilian property. It was often launched from artillery shells in air-burst mode, which aggravated the already devastating consequences of the attacks. Each shell ejected over a hundred felt wedges impregnated with highly incendiary white phosphorus, which rained down over houses and streets, igniting on exposure to oxygen and setting fire to people and property. Once their incendiary content had been discharged, the artillery shells often crashed into buildings causing further deaths and injuries. Repeated denials of the use of white phosphorus by Israeli officials during the conflict delayed or prevented appropriate treatment for people suffering agonizing burns. Some who died might otherwise have been saved.
There was enough material in this report to land Israel in a Nuremberg style trial, but didn’t of course. That shortcoming would be addressed unofficially as I’ll cover later. But it wasn’t just Amnesty that exposed Israel’s barbarism. The UN set up a Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict on 12 January 2009, which subsequently visited Gaza during the summer of 2009. Spearheading the Mission was Justice Richard Goldstone, former member of the South African Constitutional Court and former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Goldstone delivered his 452 page report to the 12th Session of the UN Human Rights Council on 29 September 2009, which became known as the Goldstone Report. Not surprisingly Israel was completely uncooperative.
Its conclusions were that the Gaza blockade set up by Israel violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, whereby it was duty-bound:
to ensure the supply of foodstuff, medical and hospital items and other goods to meet the humanitarian needs of the population of the Gaza Strip without qualification.
In addition:
On the information available to it, the Mission finds that the attacks on these buildings constituted deliberate attacks on civilian objects in violation of the rule of customary international humanitarian law whereby attacks must be strictly limited to military objectives. These facts further indicate the commission of the grave breach of extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
I could go on. The bottom line is that Israel was guilty without a shadow of a doubt of grave crimes against humanity and multiple severe violations of international law in an indiscriminate and reckless attack that led to the deaths of between 1,387 and 1,417 Palestinians, that was deliberately and premeditated to cause as much wanton death and destruction as possible. In short, it was mass murder on an industrial scale. But so what? Israel and the US poured scorn on the report. An engaging critique of the report and its reception is outlined by Richard Falk, who was the special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for the UN Human Rights Council at the time, as well as a long serving professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University. His paper, The Goldstone Report: ordinary text, extraordinary event, was published in April 2010. This is a compelling and incisive paper and it’s worth quoting here in some detail as it touches on some vital issues. In his introduction, Falk notes:
In light of this posited tension between the imperatives of international criminal law and the constraints of geopolitics, it seems unlikely that the sound and fury generated by the release of the Goldstone Report will lead to the implementation of its principal recommendations on an intergovernmental level or in the form of enforcement initiatives on the pan of the United Nations, much less the International Criminal Court. Such an outcome does raise questions as to whether international law and the UN system are capable of upholding the rights of the weak under circumstances where an offending state enjoys the protection of the strong. In line with this view, the burden of implementation shifts our focus to the potentialities of global civil society as an arena of implementation for the Goldstone recommendations, and reminds us of the relevance of "legitimacy wars" of the sort waged by the antiapartheid campaign during the 1980s that so significantly and, at the time unexpectedly, contributed to the transformation of the racist regime in South Africa.
There was a broad expectation in the light of the ferocity and savagery of the Israeli attack that the international community would act and that eventually the Gaza blockade would be lifted. But:
In fact, Israel has continued the blockade, with significant Egyptian cooperation, a policy in flagrant, ongoing, and massive violation of Article 33 of the fourth Geneva Convention that prohibits collective punishment. The cumulative impact of the blockade has been described as a form of "slow genocide," and would certainly seem to qualify as a crime against humanity.
Falk goes on to comment that:
the blockade has little if anything to do with Israeli concerns about the Qassam rockets fired from Gaza in the direction of Israeli towns. The rocket fire virtually disappeared during a cease-fire, and Hamas frequently offered to extend the cease-fire even for a period of ten years, an offer ignored by Israel.
Goldstones’ reputation and credentials were beyond dispute. What was also beyond dispute, but perhaps less well known, was that he:
was also a prominent Zionist with continuing personal and professional ties to Israel. In this respect, those who were critical of Israel's occupation policies believed that it might be possible to bring meaningful international pressure to bear by way of the UN system, especially because Israel seemed intentionally to attack UN facilities during the Gaza attacks.
Perhaps Goldstones’ links with Israel only fueled the ire. Predictably Israel followed the usual script of self defence against terrorism, a ‘terror’ group that was a:
democratically elected political grouping that has repeatedly called for a long-term cease-fire and diplomatic solution to the underlying conflict, and was a de facto governmental actor representing the people of the Gaza Strip. In addition, Hamas had repeatedly proposed a cease-fire of long-term duration provided that Israel lift the blockade and open the crossings, and peaceful coexistence up to fifty years if Israel were to implement Security Council Resolution 242 and withdraw to 1967 borders. Note that the condition of the cease-fire was limited to the demand that Israel terminate its unlawful blockade, what was legally and morally required in any event. Of course, Hamas was in effect proposing to stop firing rockets into Israel, which was an unlawful form of resistance regardless of Israel's provocation. In effect, the cease-fire would have restored a semblance of legality to the regime of occupation.
But another key observation made by Falk was the rather awkward comparison of Israel to another historical event that strikes at the very core of Israeli sensibilities:
Symbolically, there was a subtle resonance with the Nazi past where Jews were massively victimized. Substantively, there was the sense that the failure of Israel to act in accordance with the Geneva Conventions was not just wrongful, but criminal. And practically, there was anxiety that Israeli political and military leaders could be detained and charged with international crimes either by recourse to some international mechanism or through a national procedure relying on the authority of "universal jurisdiction."
Falk mentions the ‘Dahiya doctrine’. This is a reference to the Israeli attack on the Dahiya quarter in Beirut during the 2006 Lebanon war, where IDF Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israeli Northern Command chief, in October 2008, stated:
"What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. ... We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. ... This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved."
As Falk notes:
In damning language, the Goldstone Report says that the Dahiya doctrine "appears to have been precisely what was put into practice" in Operation Cast Lead.
Falk also debunks the Israeli claim that it no longer occupies Gaza:
Israel contends that it has not occupied Gaza since its "disengagement" in 2005, which involved withdrawing IDF forces and dismantling the Israeli settlements. This claim has been widely rejected due to the persistence of Israeli effective control in Gaza, including total control of entry and exit. Under these circumstances of persisting occupation, Israel has a fiduciary relationship to the Gazan civilian population that it imposes more restrictions than if it could be viewed as a foreign political entity. Dean Tom Farer has instructively argued that, at the very least, Israel cannot legally claim defensive force until it tests whether Hamas would cease its violence if Israel ended its unlawful blockade.
There’s another important point that Falk raises, concerning the ‘the geopolitical realities of world politics’, which are distinct from international law. It concerns the shortcomings of the UN system in the context of an anarchic global system, something I’ve covered before in the context of climate change.
The UN has become vulnerable to political influence. Indeed ‘United Nations’ has become something of an oxymoron. As Falk puts it:
As with achieving accountability in the face of geopolitical resistance, there exists a seeming dilemma of ignoring international law claims in deference to the geopolitical realities or accentuating these claims so as to lend further legitimacy to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination in accordance with international law. The realist approach believes that history mainly moves forward through the prudent management of power by dominant political actors while a normative approach believes that the march of history depends on resistance from below and popular forces that are guided by a sense of justice. Put differently, the opposite of war is not peace, but justice.
And he aptly sums up:
The enduring significance of the Goldstone Report concerns the weakening of the state system and the United Nations to uphold basic human rights, the rise of global civil society, and the essential connections between peace and justice.
And indeed such observations have been borne out by subsequent attacks on Gaza; in 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense, and the most destructive yet in 2014, Operation Protective Edge (OPE). I’m not going to go into these attacks in depth as everything surrounding Cast Lead is relevant here. But OPE is highly significant for wider reasons (some of which will be covered in future articles). Since 2014, Israel hasn’t waged an attack of the same magnitude. Any incursions have tended to be more cautious and focused. But after the 51 day assault ended, Israel went into panic mode.
Operation Protective Edge and the Apartheid State
OPE was Israel’s Sharpville moment. Even though Cast Lead had sent reverberations around the world, this was on a different scale, in a brave new world dominated by a vibrant social media ecosystem. Israel’s rotten racist core was exposed dramatically in front of a shocked world. The Israel Lobby blinked like some flustered rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.
Firstly, OPE consolidated a concept that had long been part of the Israeli approach, at least since the disengagement. As Noam Chomsky explains in this article, ‘Mowing the lawn’ (or grass) was part and parcel of Israel’s wider ambitions of securing the OPTs.
A distinct pattern has built up since 2005, starting with the UN Agreement on Movement and Access Between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which, following the disengagement:
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.
The real reason for the disengagement process:
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 [U.S.] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”
It would be the first of several agreements that Israel never intended to keep. Following the election of Hamas:
Israel soon began planning a military coup to overthrow the unacceptable elected government, a familiar procedure.
The second break was prior to Cast Lead, as noted above. Following a cease fire the same pattern ensued with an agreement similar to before in place, broken by Israel, leading to Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012. Once again the cycle was repeated. But the spark for OPE was different, involving a major political move resulting in a unity agreement with Hamas and the PA. And as Chomsky notes, during this period ‘Hamas made major concessions’, including control of Gaza under the PA. This resulted in the acceptance of:
the three conditions that Washington and the European Union had long demanded: non-violence, adherence to past agreements, and the recognition of Israel.
But, ‘Israel was infuriated.’ With both the US and the rest of the world behind the unity agreement, Israel found itself between a rock and a hard place. Unity was an anathema for Israel. The pretext for OPE presented itself with the murder of three Israeli boys from the West Bank settler community. Israel then set up a bogus rescue mission, with full knowledge of the murder, in order to attack Hamas. Israeli incursions continued for 18 days until Hamas responded with rocket fire:
providing Israel with the pretext to launch Operation Protective Edge on July 8th. The 50-day assault proved the most extreme exercise in mowing the lawn — so far.
Or, in the words of a senior U.S. military officer, “removing the topsoil,” who was:
appalled by the practices of the self-described “most moral army in the world.”
By the end of OPE, there were a few inconvenient truths Israel had to contend with. Despite outrageous corporate media bias, detailed here by Media Lens, it would appear that in the UK at least, support for Palestine had surged. And, as this article from Vox outlines, social media has been undermining Israel, with TikTok today becoming the predominant platform that Palestinians are using to get their message out. Facebook has been undermined as a pro-Israel scandal ridden platform. This along with the Israel lobby, which will be covered in depth in a future article. Not that Israel has left Gaza untouched in the intervening years since OPE, with the great march of return being a significant event, documented in this excellent film, Gaza Fights For Freedom, by the Empire files’ Abby Martin.
The fact is nothing has really changed. The vulnerability of the UN system to political interference and the recent fall from grace of the International Criminal Court in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a sign of the decay of the international order. Some would argue there’s never been an international order, just the familiar US dominated “rules-based international order”. This then poses an important question, is there an alternative? That’s the subject of the next section.
An Alternative Court
In March 2007, The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission was established by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Adjudicating for the Commission is the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT). It was instigated as an alternative to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which Mahathir accused of bias in its selection of cases to cover.
This article from Al-Jazeera by Richard Falk outlines Mahathir’s motives behind the creation of the Commission and reflects on the Tribunals first verdict in pronouncing George W Bush and Tony Blair guilty of war crimes following the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Mahathir’s key remit was to challenge US dominated hegemony and militarism, ‘a revitalised struggle against war and post-colonial imperialism.’ The process was conducted with high legal integrity. Although without any formal possibility of enforcement, there is some legal weight behind the Tribunals verdicts. In consolidating its verdict it issued five specific recommendations:
1) Report findings in accord with Part VI (calling for future accountability) of the Nuremberg Judgment of 1945 addressing crimes of surviving political and military leaders of Nazi Germany; 2) File reports of genocide and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in The Hague; 3) Approach the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution demanding that the United States end its occupation of Iraq; 4) Communicate the findings of the tribunal to all members of the Rome Statute (which governs the International Criminal Court) and to all states asserting Universal Jurisdiction that allows for the prosecution of international crimes in national courts; and 5) Urge the UN Security Council to take responsibility to ensure that full sovereign rights are vested in the people of Iraq and that the independence of its government be protected by a UN peacekeeping force.
Following the invasion of Iraq, Mahathir:
argued at the time that there existed a need for an alternative judicial forum to the ICC, which was unwilling to indict Western leaders.
In short, the ICC would not touch Bush and Blair, so somebody else had to hold them to account. Very significant, given the ICC’s enthusiasm for prosecuting Vladimir Putin on the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, for the same crime. Falk underlines the legal import of the tribunal:
The underlying legal theory is based on the recognition of the limited capacity of international criminal trials to impose accountability in a manner that is not entirely dictated by geopolitical priorities and reflective of a logic of impunity. In this regard, universal jurisdiction has the potential to treat equals equally, and is very threatening to the Kissingers and Rumsfelds of this world, who have curtailed their travel schedules. The United States and Israel have used their diplomatic leverage to roll back universal jurisdiction authority in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom and Belgium.
There have been other similar tribunals, such as the Russell Tribunal of 1967 that investigated the Vietnam war. Falk sums up:
the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal offers a devastating critique of the persisting failures of international criminal law mechanisms of accountability to administer justice justly, that is, without the filters of impunity provided by existing hierarchies of hard power.
Two years later, the Tribunal turned its attention towards Israel. On November 2013, the KLWCT found the State of Israel guilty of genocide.
The key focus of the Tribunal was the 1948 Genocide Convention (as Wikispooks outlines):
which prohibits and punishes the killing, causing of harm and deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group of people, targeted for their ethnicity, religion or race. In instances of genocide, these criminal acts are done with the specific intent of destroying as a part or in whole of the targeted group, as in this plight the Palestinian people.
Wikispooks makes the point that the Tribunal is legally independent of Malaysian law. This is also important from the perspective of pursuing a legal process outwith a typical western centre of gravity, even if the final decision lacks formal legal weight. The reason Israel was targeted was outlined by the chief prosecutor:
“Other settler states, for example Australia, have offered compensation and apologized for the dispossession and harm to their indigenous populations, while Israel remains unapologetic and continues its campaign of destruction against Palestinians and to make their conditions unlivable inside and outside its borders.”
To elaborate:
The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal asserted that the modern Jewish state, in contrast to other cases, had since even before its inception pursued a genocidal program as a consistent feature and indeed a foundation of state policy. Therefore, genocide in the Israeli case cannot be solely attributed as the isolated action of a leader, political party or elected government but remains the responsibility of the state itself.
Given the mass of overwhelming unequivocal evidence loaded against Israel, the Tribunal had to select a cross section of representative cases. These are outlined in the article. To sum up:
Whatever its few shortcomings, the Kuala Lumpur Tribunal demonstrated immense courage, foresight and wisdom in leveling the long-overdue charge of genocide against the State of Israel. The Tribunal correctly framed genocide in the context of international law rather than merely as a localized violation. The verdict along with the sophisticated judicial opinion provides an important initiative toward deterring the great powers from promoting and exploiting genocides among weaker nations and victimized peoples.
The Tribunal verdict raised not only a legal challenge to supporters of the Zionist cause in the United States and Europe but also appealed to universal moral principles in the tradition of high-minded rhetoric.
This issue was revisited in 2014 by Richard Falk, again — reporting in The Nation — via another independent legal entity, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, based on the original Russell Tribunal, which was held in 1967 at the height of the Vietnam War. Its focus was on OPE. Genocide was again the central charge. Key high profile witnesses and legal experts appeared:
Among the highlights of the testimony were a report on damage to hospitals and clinics given by Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor serving in a Gaza hospital during the attacks; Mohammed Omer, a widely respected Gazan journalist who daily reported from the combat zone; Max Blumenthal, a prize-winning journalist who was in Gaza throughout Protective Edge and analyzed for the jury the overall political design that appeared to explain the civilian targeting patterns; and David Sheen, who reported in agonizing detail on the racist hatred expressed by prominent Israelis during the assault, which was widely echoed by Israelis in the social media and never repudiated by the leadership in Jerusalem.
There was no doubt that OPE represented crimes against humanity and:
the imposition of collective punishment upon the entire civilian population of Gaza, in flagrant and sustained violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The familiar Israeli refrain of self defence from rocket fire was roundly rejected on the legal basis that:
the claim of self-defense cannot be used in justifying response to resistance mounted by an occupied people, and from the perspective of international law, Gaza remains occupied due to persisting Israeli control despite Israel’s purported “disengagement” in 2005 (more properly characterized as a military redeployment). The rockets fired from Gaza were at least partly a response to prior Israeli unlawful provocations, including the mass detention of several hundred people loosely associated with Hamas in the West Bank and the incitement to violence against Palestinians as revenge for the murder of three kidnapped Israeli settler children.
However it was noted that the rocket fire itself was inherently unlawful.
The Tribunal struggled to find Israel guilty of genocide per se, although it did largely agree that:
the separate crime of incitement to genocide, which is specified in Article 3(c) of the Genocide Convention. It also agreed that the additional duty of Israel and other parties to prevent genocide, especially the United States and Europe, was definitely engaged by Israeli behavior. In this regard, the Russell Tribunal is sending an incriminating message of warning to Israel and an appeal to the UN and the international community to uphold the Genocide Convention, and to prevent any further behavior by Israel that would cross the line.
Falk concludes:
As with the Nuremberg judgment, which documented Nazi criminality but excluded any consideration of the crimes committed by the victors in World War II, the Russell Tribunal process was flawed and can be criticized as one-sided. At the same time, I am confident that, on balance, this assessment of Israel’s behavior toward the people of Gaza will support the long struggle to make the rule of law applicable to the strong as well as the weak.
The underlying message from these independent quasi-legal entities is that west is also guilty by association with Israel and because international law is interpreted through the western prism of the ‘rules-based international order’, collective justice will not be served through those channels. These tribunals then are an indictment of the failure of the international system represented by the UN and other international entities. Indeed some would comment that the system itself is in a perpetual state of anarchy. In so-far as the new world order is concerned, that’s currently gestating. The current one dominated by the US is under terminal decay. That’s another story for another day.
I’ll be pausing this series on Israel/Palestine as I change topic over the next few articles. Coming next, a case study on the UK National Health Service (NHS), which celebrated its 75th birthday on the 5th of July, 2023. It’s an account of privitisation, neoliberalism and how human beings are just mere commodities.