Editorial: Horror of Qana revisits on Gaza
Israel does not have carte blanche to destroy Gaza, the prospects of Palestinian reconciliation and with it a Palestinian state, said The Guardian in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
In the weeks before Israel attacked Hamas, senior Israeli officials calculated that they had bought themselves time for a prolonged demolition job in Gaza.
Only two factors, they reasoned, could stop the clock. The first would be a shell dropping on a civilian mass shelter, a repetition of the bombing of the UN compound in Qana, Lebanon, in 1996, when more than 100 lost their lives. The second would be the international outrage which grew from it. Yesterday the horror of Qana was revisited on Gaza. Three shells exploded outside a United Nations school in Jabalya refugee camp, where more than 300 Palestinians had sought refuge. Over 40 died and 55 were injured. It was waiting to happen. The question is whether the international community will now call time on Israel’s offensive.
Condoleezza Rice, the outgoing US secretary of state, should ask herself what Israel’s immediate objective is. Is it to supplant Hamas in Gaza and impose a Fatah satrap? Such a venture would be risky in the extreme and deal a terminal blow to a Palestinian reconciliation, the prospect of which still exists, despite all Fatah and Hamas have done to each other. And with Hamas broken or driven underground, what would stop the expansion of jihadist groups like the Jaish Al-Islam run by the Doghmush clan and Fatah Al-Islam, which identifies with Al-Qaeda? But if the ground operation is designed to leave a depleted Hamas administration in place, at what point does Israel stop destroying the very infrastructure on which a relief operation and enduring peace deal will depend?
Rice has bad memories of Israel’s operation in Lebanon in 2006, when she resisted calls for a cease-fire without knowing what Israel’s endgame was. She is in the same position today.
The outlines of a cease-fire agreement are becoming clear, but they are complex, and involve a multinational force policing the Rafah border with Egypt and attempting to stop the smuggling of weapons. The International Crisis Group added a further element by calling for the dispatch of a multinational force to police all activity in Gaza. But with each day, the political price of a ceas-fire rises for each side — Israeli politicians, facing an election, and Hamas’s leaders. The latter could rationally conclude that the war is going their way. Why stop it now? The longer this goes on, the more it becomes clear that the first priority is an immediate cease-fire. And then negotiators have to work out who guards which borders.
If Israel presses on regardless, it should face an immediate suspension of all arms from the EU, as Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, proposes. Israel does not have carte blanche to destroy Gaza, the prospects of Palestinian reconciliation and with it a Palestinian state.
The Arab News,Saudi Arabia
8 January 2009
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