No one expects Israel to stand by and do nothing whilst its people are attacked, and indeed the missiles launched at Israel by Hamas for the past 6 months are wholly reprehensible but then so to is Israel’s reaction, which will once again only escalate violence in the region. Too often those of us who question Israel’s actions are charged with either anti-Semitism or naivety as to the character and aims of political and military Palestinian groups such as Hamas. I certainly do not question the right of Israel to exist and am under no illusions about the potentially oppressive nature of the Hamas regime, but this does not excuse Israel’s actions over the last week. I, like many others, welcomed Barak Obama’s condemnation of the Hamas sponsored attacks upon Sderot recently, however, Israel’s reaction as it always is, was to create a humanitarian disaster. The Israeli military has seemingly made little attempt to target Hamas military bases and indeed the strikes at 11.30am on Saturday 27th December 2008 were implemented, as far as I can see, only to spread fear. The killing of 290 by Monday 29th and wounding of 700 appears to be a rather heavy-handed response to hundreds of rockets sent into Israel from Hamas militants which killed one Israeli in six months. The presumption that all Palestinians are naturally Hamas loving terrorists is of course a ridiculous notion, and yet it is consistently one, which the Israeli government follows to justify the killing of innocent civilians, adults and children. The Palestinians do of course have those reactionary militants who wholly oppose the state of Israel but so too are there reactionary Israelis who oppose a Palestinian one. The Two-State Solution is the internationally accepted answer to the Israel/Palestine problem and yet the Israeli government only ever half-heartedly endorses it. From the building of a wall that does not follow the internationally agreed upon boarder between the two states in the West Bank (an area they have been occupying illegally for 41 years) to the blockades, and trade embargos on Gaza and the targeting of those buildings which would have made the Palestinians there ready for state-hood over the last 6 days, Israel has hardly demonstrated itself to be a cooperative and compromising force. By attacking Gaza in this way they are not eliminating support for Hamas. Indeed they run the risk of heightening it (most Palestinians in the Gaza strip are not affiliated to any Palestinian political group). Hamas will appear to offer the Palestinians a strong front to Israel, which now appears to be entirely hostile to the Palestinian cause. A front that will seem hard to ignore given the often corrupt and incompetent alternative in Fatah that many see now as submitting to Israel at every opportunity. Thus the Israeli air-strikes on Gaza will only result in vengeful terrorist attacks upon innocent Israeli citizens, adults and children. Israel will conveniently forget, however, how it slaughtered hundreds of innocents in Gaza and refuse to work with the Palestinians, particularly Hamas. What Israel forgets is that whether or not one likes the powers-that-be with whom one is attempting to reach a peace, one has no choice but to work with them particularly if they have been elected. Only by showing full support for the two-state solution will Israel achieve the peace it has been looking for. This is not demonstrated through iron-fist policies, which alienate the people of Palestine and only continue the vicious circle in which the Middle-East crisis has been embroiled for 40 years.
