Senseless tragedy

The assault on Gaza offers the best hope for peace

I would very much like this very nicely argued piece by Con Coughlin to be true. It would make life for everyone, including the Palestinians, so much easier, safer, and more decent.

I just don't think it is.

Here is the essence of the strongest argument I have read for the Israeli incursion:

"The challenge facing Israel in Gaza is not dissimilar to that which faced the US-led coalition two years ago in Iraq, when al-Qaeda supporters were threatening to undermine American efforts to transform the country into a functioning, Western-style democracy.

As with Hamas in Gaza, the al-Qaeda leadership in Iraq was seen by many as an interloper that had imposed its radical Islamic agenda on the reluctant Sunni Muslim population. The military surge devised by General David Petraeus succeeded in destroying al-Qaeda's operational effectiveness in Iraq, thereby allowing the Iraqi government to start taking responsibility for governing the country.

Israel needs to adopt a similar strategy in Gaza, not least because a large proportion of the civilian Palestinian population would dearly love to see an end to Hamas's unwelcome interference in their affairs.

Hamas's defenders like to point out that the movement owes its current dominance of the Palestinian political scene to its success in the 2005 Palestinian elections, when it won a clear majority. But many of the Palestinians who voted for Hamas did so more as a protest vote against the endemic corruption of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority than their desire to have an Islamic state imposed upon them. Once Hamas had won the election, it set about dismantling the Palestinians' fledgling democratic institutions, replacing them with an Iranian-style, autocratic administration that brooked no opposition.

Hamas's widespread unpopularity is not confined to the Palestinian territories. The movement's links to other radical Islamist groups in neighbouring states such as Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon means that it attracts scant support from moderate, pro-Western states which regard it as a threat to their own survival. The Egyptian government, in particular, makes no secret of its disdain for Hamas.

In a year in which the new American President is expected to focus much of his energy on trying to resolve the outstanding conflicts in the Middle East, from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to Iran and Afghanistan, there is no place for an organisation such as Hamas, whose entire raison d'être appears to be simply to obstruct any effort to make the region a better place in which to live.

Israel has attracted much international criticism for the way it has set about trying to tackle the challenge posed by Hamas, but the world will be a better and safer place if Israel's own military surge in Gaza achieves the same level of success as the Americans did in Iraq."

Here's the problem.

Israel vis a vis Palestine is not America vis a vis Iraq. The hatred of Israel and its military is what gives political oxygen for Hamas' existence and efforts, to begin with, not just as an additional prop to their power. America was most certainly hated by Iraqis and Saddam Hussein did try to portray himself as their hero challenging American and Western hegemony in the world.

But the very plain fact is that Iraqis did not hate Americans in the same way that Palestinians have come to hate Israel and its military efforts. Israel, in the minds of most Palestinians, plays the same role as Saddam Hussein in the lives of Iraqis - an oppressor who has enforced his repression against their will and claims to self-determination - not the United States.

It would be lovely if Israel could claim to be a hero to the Palestinian people. But the Palestinian people very clearly, to anyone not trying to defend this most recent Israeli action, do not see Israel as any kind of hero. To the contrary, they view them, quite accurately, as a force that has killed and repressed many of their family and neighbors - for reasons that most decent people understand, even if they do not agree with the significant degree of tragedy and misery that have been imposed on the Palestinian people - and who control much of their lives without their voice or choosing. Palestinian terrorists are quite clearly the worse of the bad guys, in this scenario, and the Israelis are much more committed both to preserving life and to a genuine peace than most Palestinians, to be sure.

But that fact does not negate the very plain fact that most Palestinians would find the idea of a heroic Israeli military force liberating them from the clutches of the group they have often favored to fight back that same Israeli force as laughable, and ambivalent with much bitterness, at best.

I would love for a military solution to finally route out these brutal murderers that make up Hamas. There just is not such a solution, I do not believe.

And, in the meantime, not only do many innocent Palestinians die needlessly in such an operation. It sets the clock backwards, not forwards, by my lights, for a more likely and effective path to peace, since it engenders more bitterness and more determination on the part of Palestinians to destroy the Israeli enemy.

If Israelis prove me wrong on this count, I an open to being wrong. But if they do not, many more innocent civilians, including children, just died this Christmas inexplicably and counterproductively.

Senseless tragedy, especially the death of children, that accomplishes no real purpose that moves us forward, is the most tragic of all.

We have had quite enough senseless tragedy in Palestine and Israel.

It is time for it to end.