{"id":1868,"date":"2008-12-29T20:37:39","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T20:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=1868"},"modified":"2008-12-29T20:37:57","modified_gmt":"2008-12-29T20:37:57","slug":"gaza-and-the-geranimo-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/gaza-and-the-geranimo-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaza and the Geronimo Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

[Landis Commentary<\/strong>] Rami Khouri makes a convincing\u00a0case for why punishing the Palestinians will only<\/p>\n

\"Geronimo\"

Geronimo<\/p><\/div>\n

bring Israel greater pain in the future. The Palestinians will not be clubbed into submission; rather, they will regroup and become better at killing Israelis. So long as there is not light at the end of the tunnel for Palestinians, they have little choice but to strike back in whatever manner they can, even if the pain and suffering this brings on themselves is disproportionate.<\/p>\n

The lesson for the US, is that it cannot escape the Palestinian problem. Many analysts are telling Obama that he should stay far away from the Arab-Israeli conflict because it has\u00a0no solution. Many Israelis are happy with the status quo – or at least, they don’t see an alternative that they would be happier with and is likely to bring success. It is hard to argue against\u00a0those who insist that\u00a0Obama should not spend precious political capital butting up against the thankless realities of the Middle East. After all, several past presidents seriously tried to stop the growth of settlements in vain.\u00a0 One must ask what chance Obama realistically has now that the number of settlers has reached one half million or one out of every 12 Israeli Jews. Prime Minister Begin’s old quip that he would create enough facts on the ground to make\u00a0it impossible for any future Prime Minister to part with the\u00a0occupied West Bank\u00a0seems to have materialized.<\/p>\n

But America’s reputation and position in the region will only suffer further the longer it closes its eyes to the injustices that it has done so much\u00a0to enable and defend. Just when it seems that the US might make advances against those countries and organizations that promote resistance to America’s stated goals in the region, the Palestinian problem flairs up and public support rallies to those powers willing to stand against America. Leaders\u00a0like Obama and Bush, who\u00a0defend Israel’s violent behavior when they they offer no promise that the steady dispossession of the Palestinians will stop if\u00a0only\u00a0the people of the West Bank\u00a0act peacefully. So long as Palestinians remain losers no mater which attitude they take, Arabs will cheer on their useless defiance and “martyrdom” because it seems dignified to go down with a struggle in the face of overwhelming odds. It is the Geronimo<\/a> effect, something Americans are only too familiar with.<\/p>\n

Punishing Gaza in Vain<\/a>
\nby Rami G. Khouri<\/p>\n

BEIRUT \u2014 God punished the arrogance and hubris of the Hebrews in the Old Testament by making them wander the wilderness for 40 years before allowing a later, more humble, generation to enter Canaan. The current generation of Israeli Jews is not as proficient at learning these 40-year lessons, it seems, to judge from Israel\u2019s current ferocious attack on Gaza.<\/p>\n

It was exactly 40 years ago to the day \u2014 December 28, 1968 \u2014 that Israeli commandos raided Beirut airport and destroyed 13 Lebanese civilian aircraft, in retaliation for a Palestinian attack against an Israeli airliner in Athens. Israel aimed to inflict a revenge punishment so severe that it would shock the Arabs into preventing the Palestinians from fighting Israel.<\/p>\n

Today, 40 years and countless attacks and wars later, Israel again uses massive retaliatory and punitive force to pummel the Palestinians of Gaza into submission. Hundreds of Palestinians have died in the first 24 hours of the Israeli attack, and several thousand might die by the time the operation ends. For what purpose, one wonders?<\/p>\n

The past 40 years offer a credible guide, if anyone in Israel or Washington cares to grasp the historical record instead of merely wallowing in a cruel world of political lies and deceptions. Israel\u2019s use of its clear military superiority against Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs has consistently led to five parallel, linked, and very predictable results:<\/p>\n

1. Israeli power has momentarily shattered Palestinian and Arab military and civilian infrastructure, only to see the bludgeoned Arabs regroup and return a few years later \u2014 with much greater technical proficiency and political will to fight back. This happened when the Palestinians, who were driven out of Jordan in 1970, eventually re-established more lethal bases in Lebanon; or when Israel destroyed Fateh\u2019s police facilities in the West Bank and Gaza a few years ago, and soon found themselves fighting Hamas\u2019 capabilities instead.<\/p>\n

2. Israel\u2019s combination of military ferocity, insincerity in peace negotiations, and continued colonization has seen \u201cmoderate\u201d groups and peace-making partners like Fateh slowly self-destruct, to be challenged or even replaced by tougher foes. Fateh has given way to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and to militant spin-offs from within Fateh like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Hizbullah emerged in Lebanon after Israel invaded and occupied south Lebanon in 1982.<\/p>\n

3. Israel\u2019s insistence on militarily dominating the entire Middle East has seen it generate new enemies in lands where it once had strategic allies \u2014 like Lebanon and Iran. Israel once worked closely with some predominantly Christian groups in Lebanon, and had deep security links with the Shah of Iran. Today \u2014 the figurative 40 years later \u2014 Israel sees its most serious, even existential, threats emanating from Hizbullah in Lebanon and the radical ruling regime in Iran.<\/p>\n

4. The massive suffering Israel inflicts on ordinary Palestinians transforms a largely docile population into a recruiting pool for militants, resistance fighters, suicide bombers, terrorists, and other warriors. After decades of Israeli policies of mass imprisonment, starvation, strangulation, colonization, assassination, assault and terror tactics against Palestinians, the Palestinians eventually react to their own dehumanization by turning around and using the same kind of cruel methods to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians.<\/p>\n

5. Israeli policies over decades have been a major \u2014 but not the only \u2014 reason for the transformation of the wider political environment in the Arab world into a hotbed of Islamism confronting more stringent Arab police states. The Islamists who politically dominate the Arab region \u2014 whether Shiite Hizbullah, or Sunni Hamas or anything else in between \u2014 are the only Arabs since the birth of Israel in 1948 who have proved both willing and able to fight back against Zionism.<\/p>\n

All these trends can be seen in action during the current Israeli attack against Gaza: Palestinian and Arab radicalization, Islamist responses amidst pan-Arab lassitude, the continued discrediting of President Mahmoud Abbas\u2019 government, and regional populist agitation against Israel, its U.S. protector, and most Arab governments. None of this is new. And that is precisely why it is so significant today, as Israel\u2019s war on Gaza paves the way for a repetition of the five trends above that have plagued Israelis and Arabs alike.<\/p>\n

The biblical 40-year time span between Israel\u2019s attack on Beirut airport on December 28, 1968 and its war on Gaza on December 27, 2008 is eerily relevant. It is time enough for frightened and arrogant Israelis to learn that in all these years their weapons have promoted neither quiescence among neighboring Arabs, nor security along Israel\u2019s borders. The exact opposite has happened, and it will happen again now.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s something to ponder as the next 40-year period starts ticking down: The only thing that ever did bring Israelis and Arabs genuine peace was equitable, negotiated peace accords \u2014 with Egypt and Jordan \u2014 that treated Arabs and Israel as people who must enjoy equal rights to security and stable statehood.<\/p>\n

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Landis Commentary] Rami Khouri makes a convincing\u00a0case for why punishing the Palestinians will only bring Israel greater pain in the future. The Palestinians will not be clubbed into submission; rather, they will regroup and become better at killing Israelis. 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