<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Amira Hass: Gaza on the edge of no&nbsp;return]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p class="headline_meta"><abbr class="published" title="2011-01-08">8 January 2011</abbr></p>
<p>By Amira Hass, The New Statesman – 6 Jan 2011<br />
<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2011/01/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinian" target="_blank">www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2011/01/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinian</a></p>
<div id="attachment_8058" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width:150px;"><img loading="lazy" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-8058" title="Amira Hass" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.israeli-occupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/hass2-150x139.jpg" alt="Amira Hass" width="150" height="139" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Amira Hass</p>
</div>
<p>“Get  away from the window, you’re crazy!” screamed Kauthar. She was   terrified to find her daughter standing on the couch by the window,   observing the street from the seventh floor. The window had bars. She   was afraid not that the girl might fall, but that she would be struck by   fire from a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). A next-door neighbour had   been killed that way only a day or two earlier: a missile hit him as he   was talking on his phone on the balcony.</p>
<p>That was on one of the  first days of the Israeli onslaught on the  Gaza Strip, which began on 27  December 2008. People very quickly  learned the hard way that their  daily activities could tempt death:  standing by a window, trying to find  a spot that still had a shred of  mobile-phone reception so you could  tell your worried father in the  Rafah refugee camp that everything was  all right, riding a motorbike,  going up to the roof to take the washing  off the line or feed the  pigeons, paying a condolence visit, baking  bread in the backyard oven,  taking water to the goats. Journalists’  notebooks and reports from  human rights organisations overflow with  testimonies from ordinary  civilians, people who lost loved ones or who  were wounded under these  non-combat circumstances.</p>
<p>Information  spread in real time, even though many houses had no  electricity and  people were unable to learn from the media how entire  families were  being wiped out. This was a hallmark of Israel’s  wintertime assault: the  sheer number of families that had to bury most  of their members,  including babies, after their homes were hit by yet  another bomb lauded  by the Israelis for its precision.</p>
<p>“Although it was not my usual  custom, I made a point of kissing my  children every night,” one young  father from Gaza City told me. “I  never knew which of us would still be  alive the next day, and I wanted  to say goodbye properly.”</p>
<p>Samouni,  Daya, Ba’alusha, Sultan, A’bsi, Abu Halima, Barbakh,  Najjar, Shurrab,  Abu A’isheh, Ryan, Azzam, Jbara, Astel, Haddad,  Qur’an, ‘Alul, Deeb.  These are all families in which grandfathers,  parents and their children  were killed; or one parent and a number of  children, or cousins, or  older siblings, or just the small children.  And that is without even  mentioning the wounded – or the emotional  wounds suffered by everyone,  which time does not heal. In the  overwhelming majority of cases, the  casualties were hit by  computer-guided missiles or shells, operated by  anonymous weapon  launchers who watched their targets on a computer  screen as if they  were playing a video game.</p>
<p>“The sky was black  with drones circling like flocks of birds,” one  man told me with a note  of self-aware Gazan hyperbole. But an Israel  Defence Forces officer on  reserve duty who took part in the assault  confirmed his impression: “It  was a total UAV war. The [UAV] unit  worked harder than any others.” I  met the IDF officer through Breaking  the Silence, an Israeli  organisation that collects testimonies about  the army’s policies in the  occupied territories from soldiers beginning  to detect moral dissonance.</p>
<p>In  Gaza slang, the drone is referred to as zanana. “There are three  kinds  of zan­ana,” a low-ranking Hamas official told me shortly after  the end  of the 2008-2009 offensive. “One watches over us and  photographs every  move, every person; the second fires missiles at us .  . .” He paused,  then added with typical Gazan drollness: “And the  third kind? Its whole  purpose is to annoy us, to drive us crazy.” And  he expertly mimicked the  humming sound made by the latest word in  postmodern warfare.</p>
<p>The  zanana isn’t always heard or seen but you know it’s there  because of the  disruptions to television broadcasts. It has been a  central component  in the process of turning Gaza into a vast  panopticon, a detention camp  under constant supervision and  increasingly invisible control. Every  move is photographed, documented  and transferred on to computer screens  in control rooms populated by  young Israeli men and women who, with a  few keyboard strokes, turn the  zanana from voyeuristic, annoying objects  into the lethal kind. The  footage is backed up by old-fashioned verbal  information gathered by  various mechanisms of the occupation, primarily  the Israeli Civil  Administration and the Shin Bet, which are responsible  for every  civilian document (identity cards, travel permits, promissory  notes for  goods) and are assisted by a network of collaborators.</p>
<p>In  the days leading up to the offensive, people noticed more  persistent  humming. They grew more anxious – and rightly so. Now every  increase in  the sound reawakens fears of another all-out attack. It’s  been two  years, and even a thunderstorm or a slammed door can stir up  the sense  of dread inside Gaza.</p>
<p>Under Operation Cast Lead, no one was safe  anywhere – at home, on  the street, in UN facilities, in the fields, at  work, at the American  school, or in public shelters opened by the UN for  people fleeing their  homes. In the past there had been isolated areas  attacked by the  Israeli military, where everyone felt that they were  targets for a few  hours or days, but during Cast Lead the entire Gaza  Strip was  simultaneously under attack from air, sea and land for three  weeks  without pause. Gazans had nowhere to flee (unlike the residents of   Lebanon, for instance, who had previously become acquainted with the   all-embracing thoroughness of Israeli assaults). This is another   component of the “heritage” Gazans have borne for these past two years: a   feeling of total exposure to mortal danger and lack of any protection.</p>
<p>If  there had been any illusions that Israel would not cross certain  red  lines, it was because, in the not-so-distant past, the Israeli  military  had been positioned amid the Palestinians, and because most of  the older  people knew Israelis and even spoke Hebrew. This intimacy  was  considered a means of preventing arbitrary killings. However,  dozens of  cases in which soldiers killed civilians at short range, and  not just in  a “video game”, proved that geographical proximity is no  safety net.</p>
<p>Mohammed  Shurrab, 65, a resident of Khan Younis in southern Gaza,  took advantage  of the brief respite that the army declared each day to  drive with two  of his sons to their plot of land. On the afternoon of  Friday 16 January  (two days before the end of the offensive), they were  driving home  through an eastern neighbourhood whose residents had all  fled two weeks  earlier. Israeli soldiers who had set up a base in an  abandoned house  some 20 or 30 yards away fired at the car.</p>
<p>There was no battle  going on at the time. The three men were  wounded, the father sustaining  only injuries to his arm. He called for  help. The nearest hospital was  just a minute or two away, but the  soldiers would not allow the  ambulance to approach. The Red Cross, the  Red Crescent, Doctors for  Human Rights (based in Tel Aviv), a third son  who lives in the US, and  later myself, all tried to reach someone who  might persuade the  commanders to relent. But it was in vain. The hours  crawled by, and the  sons bled to death in their father’s arms. Shortly  before midnight,  27-year-old Kassab died. Late on Saturday morning,  17-year-old Ibrahim  died.</p>
<p>(An IDF spokesperson wrote to me in response: “As a rule,  during the  ceasefire the IDF responded with fire only when rockets were  launched  at Israel or shots fired at the IDF. We are unable to  investigate every  incident and confirm or deny all information.  Ambulances were able to  enter only after operational conditions made it  possible. The injured  [sic] parties were evacuated by the Palestinian  ministry of health to a  hospital in Rafah.”)</p>
<p>This was not an  unusual case of short-range cruelty and bold-faced  lies to the media;  even so, the number of Palestinians (both civilians  and combatants)  killed at short range during the 2008-2009 assault is  negligible  compared to the number killed by various “video-game”  methods, far away  from those who gave the order to shoot and those who  pulled the trigger:  fewer than 100 by the former method, compared to  some 1,300 by the  latter. These figures are based on inquiries I made  with the Palestinian  human rights organisation al-Mezan. This  particular case of short-range  brutality reflects the commander’s  spirit and the spirit of the  assault.</p>
<p>An old acquaintance, Salah al-Ghoul, thought that he  would be  protected by a different kind of closeness. The son of an  impoverished  family of refugees, he became a wealthy merchant and built a  large  house on the north-western border with Israel. He is well known  by the  Israeli authorities because of his requests for travel and trade   permits. They know full well that he is a political opponent of Hamas   and Islamic Jihad. He speaks fluent Hebrew. During brief routine   military incursions into the Gaza Strip, when tanks rolled past his   house, he would keep on roasting corn out in his yard.</p>
<p>On 3  January 2009, on the eve of the ground raid, an Israeli plane  dropped a  bomb on al-Ghoul’s dream home, completely destroying it. His  son, who  was studying for his matriculation exams, and his cousin, a  lawyer who  was making coffee at the time, were both killed. An IDF  spokesperson  responded in writing to my query: “The target in question  was identified  as a Hamas observation point, directing attacks against  IDF forces . .  .”</p>
<p>This is an absolute lie, like so many other lies fed by the IDF  to  the Israeli public. Still, the lie holds a kernel of truth: for  several  years, Hamas and other armed Palestinian organisations chose to  fire  on Israeli communities along the Gaza border using home-made  rockets  (“Qassams”) or primitive missiles. Their main operational  “success” was  in managing to terrify many Israelis.</p>
<p>In 2003, I  asked two commanders of Hamas’s Qassam unit what good the  rocket firing  did when Israel retaliated with such force against the  civilian  Palestinian population. They answered candidly: “We want  mothers and  children in Israel to feel the same fear our mothers and  children feel.”</p>
<p>During  the Second Intifada, which began in September 2000, the use  of weapons –  ineffective and counterproductive as it might have been in  the fight  against the occupation – served the Palestinian  organisations in their  internal competition for hegemony and  popularity. As part of its  propaganda efforts, Israel exaggerated, and  still does, the extent of  the threat posed by the rockets. But the  Israeli overstatements also  helped Hamas’s own propaganda, allowing it  to represent itself as the  only organisation able to weaken Israel – on  the way to ultimate defeat.  This permanent promise of future victory  is also what gives Hamas the  prerogative to halt or greatly reduce the  mortar shelling, at the same  time as quelling public debate over the  logic of its strategy. In this  respect, the cruelty of Israel’s total  attack achieved its objective.</p>
<p>But  did Israel fail at another aim, namely, to topple the Hamas  reg­ime?  Opinions are divided as to whether this was an objective.  Social and  mental severance between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank  has been,  since the early 1990s, a cornerstone of Israel’s undeclared  policy.  Precisely because all Gazans – including Hamas’s opponents –  felt that  they had become targets in Israel’s range of fire, they could  not use  the offensive as a reason to disclaim the Hamas regime, even  as it  continued to refine its methods of oppression. The more ensconced  Hamas  rule becomes in the Gaza Strip, and the dimmer the chances of  healing  the political rift with the Palestine Liberation Organisation,  the more  this severance becomes a reality from which there is no  return.</p>
<p>“In  Israel they were living in a virtual reality, believing there  was an  actual war going on in Gaza,” said some of the soldiers who took  part in  the offensive, whom I met through Breaking the Silence. They  very  quickly discovered that, contrary to what they had been told by  their  commanders, Hamas was not waging an intense or determined war  against  them. A Palestinian security man told me there had been a  conscious  decision in Hamas not to sacrifice its finest combatants in  such a  lopsided war. The organisation was well aware that it could not  deliver  the goods it had promised the Palestinian public for two years –  that  is, “surprises in warfare”.</p>
<p>Still, immediately the offensive  ended, Hamas declared victory. “In  1967 Israel subdued all the Arab  armies in six days, but it could not  conquer the Gaza Strip from us even  after three weeks,” its  spokespeople said. But people in Gaza preferred  to quote an old man who  courageously proclaimed on television: “One  more victory like this and  all of Gaza will be wiped out.”</p>
<p>An  officer who broke the silence told me that he felt as though he  had  taken part in a military exercise using live fire, whose aim was to   improve and upgrade operational commu­nications between Israeli ground   forces and the Israeli air force. As more preparation for wars to  come,  perhaps?</p>
<p><em>Amira Hass is a correspondent for Haaretz.<br />
This  report, written exclusively for the New Statesman, was translated from  the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen</em></p>
<h2>Gaza Timeline</h2>
<p><strong>August  2004</strong> Ariel Sharon moves to withdraw Israeli forces and  citizens from Gaza Strip, as declared in December 2003<br />
<strong>September  2005</strong> Last Israeli soldiers leave Gaza; settlers are forcibly  removed<br />
<strong>January 2006</strong> Hamas wins a majority in  Palestinian parliamentary elections<br />
<strong>June 2006</strong> Israel  invades Gaza in attempt to rescue Gilad Shalit, a kidnapped soldier<br />
<strong>December  2006</strong> Fighting begins between the governing Hamas and Fatah  parties<br />
<strong>June 2007</strong> Hamas seizes complete control of  Gaza  following struggle with Fatah. Naval blockade of Gaza begins,  leaving  the territory cut off by land, sea and air<br />
<strong>December  2008</strong> Israel launches a three-week offensive  to stop persistent  rocket attacks. Between 1,100 and 1,400 Gazans are  killed, with 13  Israeli losses<br />
<strong>May 2010</strong> An international flotilla  tries to break the naval blockade. Israeli forces board one ship from  Turkey, killing nine people<br />
<strong>June 2010</strong> Israel  announces that it is easing the Gaza blockade</p>
<p><a href="http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2011-01-08/amira-hass-gaza-on-the-edge-of-no-return/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IsraeliOccupationArchive+%28Israeli+Occupation+Archive%29">Amira Hass: Gaza on the edge of no return — Israeli Occupation Archive</a>.</p>
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