In tying humanitarian relief to the ceasefire, European and American diplomats are again taking sides against the Palestinians, inevitably sustaining the conflict, writes Nicola Nasser* Stubbornly insisting on putting the cart before the horse as the approach to a "durable and sustainable" ceasefire in Gaza, US and European diplomacy is building on a misleading Israeli premise that the 22-day military operation dubbed "Operation Cast Lead" was a reaction and not a premeditated and long planned scheme that found in the change of guard in Washington DC perfect timing. It was "not simply a reaction", but "a calculation", Daniel Klaidman wrote in Newsweek on 10 January. American and European diplomats are reiterating Israel's propagandistic justification: "What would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act." US President Barack Obama was the last Western leader to uphold this Israeli claim, but he upheld it nonetheless. "But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying power," former Palestinian-Israeli member of Knesset Azmi Bishara said. Moreover what country would tolerate an eight- year siege and not consider it an act of war unworthy of a national reaction? Why should Western diplomacy judge Palestinians in Gaza as abnormal? Western diplomacy is painting the Palestinian reaction in self- defence as the igniting factor of violence and Israeli aggressive action as the resulting effect. It is a non-starter. It could win European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana, International Quartet Peace Envoy Tony Blair, and the newly US-appointed Middle East envoy George Mitchell some audience among their Arab and Palestinian peace partners who might still hope that the US and the EU may yet be able to deliver on their two-state promise, but this audience was not and is still not the key player in Gaza. Israel and Hamas's reaction to UN Security Council Resolution 1860 proved British Foreign Secretary David Miliband right when he said thereafter that "peace is made on the ground while resolutions are written in the United Nations." Hamas has survived Operation Cast Lead, which failed to remove it as a key player, to remain the only player, not merely a key player on the ground in Gaza, as well as a major and much stronger player among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Diaspora. To build their diplomacy for a "durable and sustainable" ceasefire on the agenda only of Israel while bypassing or sidelining the other protagonist is a dead end that can only encourage more Israeli aggressive actions and will surely provoke a violent Palestinian reaction. Unfortunately, this has been the focus of UN Resolution 1860, the so-called Egyptian initiative, the recent European summit meetings with Arab and Israeli leaders, the Israeli-US memorandum of understanding of 19 January, and George Mitchell's Middle East eight-day tour, one that President Obama subscribed to two days after his inauguration. It might not be too long before Western diplomats regret this approach. Hamas should be "engaged... as there could be no solution to the issue" by keeping it out in the cold, Nathan Brown, an expert of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was quoted as saying by The Hindu 25 January, a view shared by former US president Jimmy Carter. In historical perspective, while founding the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was the reaction of Palestinian refugees in exile to being forcing off their homeland by Israel in 1948, the founding of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza was the Palestinian reaction to the Israeli military expansion in 1967, which led to the occupation of the rest of historic Palestine. Thereafter, the Palestinians managed to develop locally-made primitive rockets for self-defence, and to smuggle in some "Grad" rocket systems, which Israel used in addition to the tunnels under the Gaza- Egypt border as justification for military action, imposing a media blackout to hide the horrible humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza as the result of its eight-year old blockade of the territory that left besieged Palestinians with one of two choices: either to starve to death slowly or die instantly en masse under Israeli bombs. Israel's imposed siege, itself an act of war, constitutes collective punishment against Gaza's civilians. US and European advocates of "humanitarian intervention", led by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and who call for such interventions in Darfur, Myanmar and Zimbabwe and who intervened militarily on humanitarian grounds in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, have kept silent on Gaza. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt identified the root cause of the Gaza conflict: "They will dig tunnels out of desperation and there will be no way of stopping all these tunnels if you don't open up the border." Bildt was joined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who urged ending "Gaza's economic isolation by reopening the crossings that link it to the outside world". Some European leaders seem to have finally awakened to the real relations of cause and effect in the conflict. However, they are calling for opening Gaza's border crossings as a prerequisite for a "durable and sustainable" ceasefire and not as an obligation that Israel must abide by in its capacity as an occupying power under international law; as merely a humanitarian outlet for the besieged civilian population and not as a national right of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. * The writer is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit in occupied Palestine.
