Withdrawals And Crackdowns
Posted on January 5th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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What’s more, the 2002 bloodshed didn’t seem to do lasting damage to hopes for progress or moderation on the West Bank. After all, it’s Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005, not the West Bank, that became a Hamas stronghold. ~Bill Kristol
If you knew next to nothing about the situation and couldn’t remember back a few years, this would sound plausible. However, Gaza did not “become” a Hamas stronghold just recently (Gaza is Hamas’ birthplace and has long been where it found its base of support), and the political base of relatively more moderate Palestinian groups has been in the West Bank for at least a decade. It was only in the last few years that Gaza became almost exclusively dominated by Hamas, and it is not as if Defensive Shield did not have a radicalizing effect on Palestinians both in the West Bank and in Gaza. Events in one territory obviously have political effects in both, and so we are seeing political unrest in the West Bank in response to the current conflict and Fatah is risking its credibility with its own constituents to the extent that it is seen as supporting the strikes in Gaza. What we have seen in the last few years is the division of the territories into fiefdoms of the major parties; the more moderate party has every incentive to root out Hamas operatives in their fiefdom, and they have been doing this, and Hamas has done likewise in its fiefdom. It is misleading to claim that the reason an extremist group prevailed in one area was the Israeli withdrawal, while implying that Israeli crackdown in the other territory led to the opposite result. Both groups have become relatively stronger in their respective territories. Naturally, the blockade of Gaza receives no mention in any of this “analysis.” Had Israel stayed in Gaza but had done the politically more difficult but ultimately far more necessary work of pulling out of the West Bank, Fatah would likely be even stronger where it now exists and Hamas would have still possessed considerable strength in Gaza.
The most frustrating thing about commentary on this subject is that many “pro-Israel” writers want to make the claim that withdrawing from southern Lebanon and Gaza was some sort of great gift, when there had been no good reason from an Israeli perspective to continue occupying either place. The reason Barak and Sharon could withdraw from these places at little political cost was that there was no emotional, religious or ideological attachment to them; they were accidental holdovers from past campaigns, which made continuing the occupations of them seem even more useless.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Let’s not forget something else that likely helped load the powder keg in Gaza – internal exile, Israel’s historic practice of transferring troublesome West Bank residents into Gaza. (An example.) And let’s not forget what “withdrawal” looks like.
Kristol writes, “Hamas is only one manifestation of the rise, over the past few decades, of a terror-friendly and almost death-cult-like form of Islamic extremism.” – but look at how this namby-pamby leftist group describes Hamas: “HAMAS’ political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainizes the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group”. No, let’s not pretend Hamas is all hugs and kisses, as that’s anything but the case, but let’s also stop advancing the fiction that Palestinians had a real choice here and “chose terror”. The choice was between a corrupt, inefficient, self-serving, secular organization that had been negotiating for a “land for peace” deal for a decade as Israeli settlements expanded and living conditions worsened, versus a religious, much more efficient, much less corrupt organization that was delivering food, education and medical services to the people.
Meanwhile, post-”withdrawal” Gaza was scarcely more habitable than it was when it earned its characterization as the world’s largest prison camp. It’s a testament to Palestinian rejection of the stated political goals and religious extremism of Hamas that, under the most favorable of circumstances, Hamas obtained only 57% of the seats in Parliament. Also, let’s not forget that Bush was warned both by Abbas and Israel that Hamas would likely win the election, and pressed for it anyway – then reacted in a manner typical of a man who gives lots of lip service to democracy but seems to have no respect whatsoever for elections. The election result, of course, provided a convenient excuse not to actually work for peace. But then, maybe that’s what Bush wanted.
There’s plenty of low hanging fruit to choose from today – are you going to take on Bolton?
With respect, Daniel, it’s simply not true that it cost Sharon no capital to withdraw from Gaza. I agree with you in principle that Gaza was and has continued to be a mess under Israel, and that pro-Israel writers who fault the Palestinians for this are misrepresenting the enduring blockade on Gaza. But if you think that Sharon was taking a popular stance with the withdrawal, you’re badly misinformed.
It took everything Sharon had to make the withdrawal a reality, and it ought to tell you something that he had to create a whole new political party just to get it done. (Not that new parties aren’t created all the time in Israel’s system — they are — but to create a new *major* party from whole cloth was completely unheard of before Sharon.) I’m struggling with what I see as your continued failure to understand the mindset of the Israeli electorate in so many aspects of this conflict. I’ve always thought of you, for better or worse, as a “realist” when it comes to foreign policy (insofar as you’re more willing and able to spell out hard truths that most writers I know of). But as you have continued to misunderstand how this operation fits into the Israelis’ narrative of themselves, I find that a lot of what you’re saying is reduced to empty moralizing — a crime which you share with something like 99% of other American bloggers, but which nonetheless doesn’t seem up to your standards.