OPINION:Israel's siege of Gaza has placed the country on a collision course with reality
THE ISRAELI interception of the MV Rachel Corrieon Saturday passed off without violence or injury. As Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said, the activists on board should indeed be commended for "demonstrating in no uncertain terms their peaceful intentions".
Within Israel, this peaceful interception, as opposed to the Mavi Marmara"incident", is further reason to try to reframe the debate over the Gaza flotilla to one narrow question: why didn't the Israeli navy, with its professional experience, properly take into account a scenario of violent resistance by individuals on board the vessels being boarded? Unfortunately, this limited formulation entirely misses the essential question.
The catastrophe on board the Marmaradid not begin with the landing of the first Israeli soldier on deck, but much, much earlier.
What follows is a brief attempt to summarise what has really brought Israel to this point. And such an attempt must begin with the Gaza blockade.
The blockade of Gaza is in fact the siege of an entire civilian population. True, the Hamas government in Gaza is a brutal, anti-democratic regime that violates human rights on a regular basis. It deprives Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was abducted by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid on June 25th, 2006, of his most essential basic rights, and does not hesitate to attack innocent Israeli civilians.
But the price for the crimes of the Hamas government is being exacted by Israel on a civilian population of one and a half million people under siege, unable to leave Gaza, their lives kept just above the bar of a humanitarian crisis.
Israel’s siege represents a blatant violation of Gazan civilians’ human rights. Around the world, it inspires rage against Israeli policy, engendering sympathy for the plight of Gazans. Most Israelis would probably prefer to forget the entire existence of Gaza, save for returning Gilad Shalit home and preventing rocket fire on Israeli communities. Apart from these two issues, Gaza does not exist in the mind of the Israeli public, and most Israelis feel no responsibility for its inhabitants.
But to the world, Gaza and its people do exist. Further, considering Israel’s considerable – if indirect – control of Gaza, it only takes basic common sense to conclude that with considerable control over Gaza comes considerable responsibility for its inhabitants’ fate.
This discrepancy – of facts, perception, and values – has put Israeli government policy on a collision course with reality. And since the entire planet has not bowed down to the authority of Israel’s foreign policy and its imagined connection with reality, it is no surprise that people have begun trying to break the siege on Gaza.
And so, to truly address the situation, we must begin with the following essential question: What on Earth were the naval fighters doing out there in the first place?
Here was the crux where Israel could have decided to act otherwise, on a carefully considered policy level rather than a reactionary level. Israel did not have to send its troops into battle against a flotilla which was perceived globally as a humanitarian mission. If not for the ongoing siege of Gaza’s population, there would be no need for an international humanitarian mission – genuine or provocative. Moreover, there would be no need for the many tunnels in which goods and weapons are regularly smuggled.
But there is an Israeli siege on Gaza, and there was an attempt to break it. In light of this, Israel should have avoided military confrontation with the flotilla, which was essentially an expression of protest through humanitarian aid. In either case, the flotilla represented no security threat, certainly not one justifying military force deployed on such a scale and in such a way. When you send in commandos to deal with civilians, you can’t argue that the writing wasn’t on the wall.
Israel chose to use military force, just as it chose to prevent aid from entering Gaza and to squelch expressions of solidarity with the Gazan people. Israel has chosen to continue the siege on Gaza. The result of all this is the dead and wounded on board the Marmara.
Those of the Israeli public focusing on the simplistic question posed above might inquire about the operational performance of the naval commandos, and consider the public relations disaster the state is now forced to deal with.
But these miss the point: Israel is becoming a pariah state because its leadership continues to make pariah decisions dictated by their pariah policies. This is not just mere near-sightedness or amateur stupidity. It is an essential problem – a crisis of values that leads decision-makers to besiege a civilian population and to send combat soldiers to sea to fight foreign civilians.
One can complain all one wants about how much the world is against Israel, about how the Gaza flotilla was a provocation, and about the hostile world media. One can also choose to believe that the author of this article is a traitor to his country, collaborating with the enemy, or a self-hating Jew, or both. Whatever. These remain no more than excuses that distract us from the essential question, excuses that will not change the facts.
Israel is a sovereign state whose government is responsible for the decisions it makes. We don’t need excuses. What we need is a conceptual change on the part of Israel’s decision-makers – one that views the Gazan population as human beings and that takes responsibility for their fate – and, at the end of the day, our own fate as well.
If Israel continues to steer her ship against the tides of universal human values, she will continue to drown herself.
Hagai El-Ad is the executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel