War crimes

Updated There simply can be no doubt, no question. What Israel is doing in Gaza constitutes war crimes. Period.

Last Saturday night the Israeli military seized the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun.

On Sunday morning soldiers forced about 100 members of the Samouni clan to gather in a single house, leaving them there without food, water, or heat.

And on Monday morning, Israeli forces shelled the house, killing perhaps 60 or 70 of the people inside.

Let me make sure this is clear: Israeli forces knowingly and deliberately shelled a house containing unarmed civilians and they unquestionably knew about them because they were the ones who put them there. And when ambulances after the first one tried to get to the scene to take away more survivors, they were driven away by Israeli gunfire while Israeli army bulldozers knocked down nearby houses.

That last charge is backed up by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which in an unusually strong statement labeled the Israeli military as having "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded." It was not until four days later that the ICRC was able to get to the area - and when it got there, Israeli soldiers tried to force them to leave.

(A later account reduced the number killed in that event to 30. However, that did not keep Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, from saying the incident "appears to have all the elements of war crimes.")

That was hardly the only example. On Tuesday, to cite another case, Israeli forces shelled a well-known, clearly-marked, UN school, killing over 40 people and wounding 150 others. Israel defended the attack, saying that "there was hostile fire at one of our units from the UN facility," and that there were secondary explosions indicating the area was booby-trapped.

But by Thursday, the story had changed to there having been fire "from militants on or near the school grounds." (Emphasis added.) Christopher Gunness of UNRWA said he was "authorized to say" that the Israeli army had in private talks with diplomats retracted its claims of militant attacks coming from within school grounds - an admission it has yet to make publicly.

And then there's the issue of Israeli forces firing on UN and Red Cross trucks carrying relief supplies. Not to mention the entire illegal, inhumane, yes evil blockade that has generated

acute malnutrition in Gaza ... on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

What's more, evidence is building that Israel never intended to achieve peace. In fact, it wanted the ceasefire to break down and never had any intention of fulfilling its obligations under it.

Haaretz (Israel) reported on Thursday that since March 2007 the Israeli army has been under orders to prepare for an attack on Gaza. In planning meetings, it was set forth that the "optimal situation" as the result of an attack would be the destruction or at least severe weakening of Hamas, including its removal from power, and - and no matter what you think one way or the other about the legitimacy of an attack focusing on Hamas, this is heinous - that

Israel should not be viewed as being responsible for the Palestinian population, but the role should go to a central Palestinian establishment created in Gaza, led by moderate, pragmatic officials.

That is, "We want to destroy your infrastructure, starve you, wreck your government, foist on you new leaders who meet our approval (the hell with if they meet yours) and then walk away from what we call a 'swamp,' washing our hands of the whole disaster we created, the pain and misery we caused, going 'it's not my problem.'" It doesn't get much more callously brutal than that.

You want to know how bad it got?

They also examined scenarios in which Israel's legitimacy for continuing the operation could be compromised: if, for example, a comprehensive cease-fire were attained with the Palestinians....

They were worried that there might be a comprehensive ceasefire! They were worried that a ceasefire would "compromise" the "legitimacy" of their attack! If you have any doubt that's the meaning, consider that

[t]he officials said an agreement with Hamas could improve prospects for a long-term lull in the fighting, but that reaching such an agreement would be inconsistent with both Israeli and international policies against negotiating with the militant group.

Better, you see, to continue the bloodshed, better to see the continuation of the very rocket fire that you claim stopping is your goal, than to gasp! negotiate with Hamas and get "a long-term lull." Better to leave your own people open to risk, better to desire rocket attacks, than risk having your "operation" be "compromised." Okay, maybe it did just get more callously brutal.

This goes a long way toward explaining Israel's patent insincerity about the ceasefire that ended in December, insincerity that was visible from the beginning.

In addition to a halt in all military actions by both sides, the agreement called on Israel to increase the level of goods entering Gaza by 30 percent over the pre-lull period within 72 hours and to open all border crossings and "allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza" within 13 days after the beginning of the ceasefire.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials freely acknowledged in interviews with ICG [the International Crisis Group] last June that they had no intention of opening the border crossings fully, even though they anticipated that this would be the source of serious conflict with Hamas.

And, in fact, the flow of goods reached only about one-fifth of normal levels.

That insincerity persisted at the end of the six months. In mid-December, Hamas officials told Egyptian officials that Hamas would stop firing rockets toward Israel and return to the ceasefire (which Israel, amusingly, insists on calling "the lull arrangement," apparently because "ceasefire" implies some kind of negotiation) in return for a signal from Israel that it would lift the blockade of Gaza. Informed by Egypt of the offer, Israel either rejected it or just didn't respond at all.

Did Israel know of the offer, or in any event of Hamas's desire? It certainly did:

The interest of Hamas in a ceasefire agreement that would actually open the border crossings was acknowledged at a Dec. 21 Israeli cabinet meeting - five days before the beginning of the Israeli military offensive - by Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet. "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce," Diskin was quoted by Y-net News agency as saying.

Israel's rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel's primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza - its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy - even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.

I've said before that Israel has no interest in any settlement that does not involve continued Israeli domination of the Palestinians - even as, as the above makes clear, it denies any responsibility for their welfare. It is clearly prepared to commit war crimes toward that end.

What is newly clear to me is that it is also, as I said above, willing to have its own people subject to rocket fire in pursuit of that same goal. The phrase "shocks the conscience" hardly seems adequate.

And what is our - that is, our government's - response to this? On the Executive side, the US blocked a UN Security Council resolution on Gaza and then after it was re-written to reflect administration concerns, we abstained. The resolution, which called for

unimpeded provision throughout Gaza of food, fuel and medical treatment, as well as intensified international arrangements to prevent arms and ammunition smuggling,

passed 14-0.

The Legislative branch was even more shameful.

[T]he House of Representatives voted 390-5, with 22 legislators non-voting, for a resolution that explicitly blamed Hamas for both the breakdown in the ceasefire and the subsequent casualties in Gaza and called for all countries to do the same.

The Senate approved a similar resolution by voice vote Thursday.

If you want to know just how bad the House resolution was, you can read the full text at this link - but don't if you have eaten recently; it's an IDF wet dream that doesn't even make the standard perfunctory stab at a phony "balance." (The text of the Senate version, which was adopted by unanimous consent, doesn't seem to be available yet from the GPO. There is this version but as it lacks a number - and the source is AIPAC - I suspect it's a very early version which may be a little different from what was passed.)

I'd like to chalk those votes up to some combination of ignorance and political cowardice but the truth is I don't think even in combination they go far enough. I believe that outright anti-Palestinian bigotry, outright racism, is a significant contributor to that total.

Because the thing is, can anyone seriously, I mean seriously, can even the most strident pro-Israeli US politician seriously argue that everything, every death, is all the fault of Hamas? That when the Israelis bombed mosques, that was Hamas's fault? When Israel forces shelled the house in Zeitoun, when they attacked UN schools, when they shot the drivers of UN relief trucks, all that was Hamas's fault? When Israel engages in illegal collective punishment, that's Hamas's fault? When Israel ignores UN resolutions, that Hamas's fault? When Israel tries to starve a people into submission, that's Hamas's fault? Why? For refusing to be a quiet victim? Are we really supposed to look at the battered, bloody, hungry, cold, people of Gaza and tell them it's not the fault of those who battered and bloodied you, not the fault of those who denied you food and fuel, not the fault of those who have created a gulag, a concentration camp, not the fault of those who have created a wasteland with the intention of calling it peace?

Oh, but you say, oh, but if only Hamas didn't break ceasefires, all would be well. More bilge. In fact, it is not Hamas which usually breaks ceasefires, it is Israel, according to a study of all recent lulls in fighting between Hamas or other Gaza-based militants and Israel, done by Nancy Kanwisher, Johannes Haushofer, and Anat Biletzki and published in the Huffington Post.

They defined a breaking of the ceasefire as the first death. Which has its limitations but it likely the only objective, measurable way to define it - especially when, and this is my judgment, not theirs, that if you're really committed to a ceasefire you may well be able to ignore an incident which does not result in a death.

We analyzed the entire timeline of killings of Palestinians by Israelis, and killings of Israelis by Palestinians, in the Second Intifada[, they said], based on the data from the widely-respected Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem (including all the data from September 2000 to October 2008).

We defined "conflict pauses" as periods of one or more days when no one is killed on either side, and we asked which side kills first after conflict pauses of different durations. ... [T]his analysis shows that it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern ... becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days. ...

Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.

Which I suppose is only to be expected. Because, after all, ceasefires "compromise" the "legitimacy" of "operations" and plans for long-term domination. Plans which the civilized world - of which our own government seems to not be part - must reject.

Footnote: Israel indicated on Thursday that it was prepared to accept a ceasefire provided it contained two elements:

These are an arms embargo on Hamas, meaning international monitors on Gaza's Egyptian border to stop smuggling, and a complete end to the firing of rockets at Israel from Gaza.

Note that this does not involve any commitment by Israel to lift the blockade, to allow in adequate humanitarian aid (UNRWA officials say a three-hour truce is simply not long enough to make a difference), to recognize an elected government, to stop its own attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, to stop the oppression of and discrimination against Palestinians, to - well, to commit itself to doing a single freakin' thing.

So translating from PR speak, Israel grandly allowed as how it would accept Hamas's surrender. This is just another example of Israel making an offer it knows will not be accepted. The purpose is neither a ceasefire or a lasting settlement, it's to have an excuse for more war.

Another Footnote: You may want to read this.

Updated with the info about getting the texts of the resolutions.