Harry Vassallo | Wednesday, 07 January 2009

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Had I been born a Palestinian, chances are that I would be firing rockets into Israel too. Had I been born Israeli the chances are equally good that I would hold with the 81% Israeli majority that the current pointless slaughter of Palestinians is justified. Since I am neither Palestinian nor Israeli, I am once more disgusted by the failure of civilization, law and basic humanity.
Children and women are being killed in the cold calculations bound up with the forthcoming Israeli elections and the installation of Barack Obama as President of the world’s only superpower. The humiliation of Israeli arms in Lebanon must be erased by yet another punitive expedition to satisfy an exasperated electorate. Before Mr O brings the parties together again to discuss the ever-elusive peace in the Middle East, the stronger party has a short while to transform the situation in its favour as far as it can.
Did Hamas bring this on by announcing an end to the tenuous ceasefire or were they cornered into a fatal and inevitable move by the lack of progress until the ceasefire expired? Does the Bush administration veto of a ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council serve best Israel or the next US administration? Will the doves have a better chance of success if the hawks let rip in spasm of slaughter ahead of the talks?
Is all this truly about the Hamas rockets fired into Israeli villages or are hundreds of Palestinian civilians being used as bait to draw other players into the open? Just as Hamas was constrained by its belligerent stance to resume hostilities once the ceasefire was allowed to expire, will Iranian President Ahmedinajad be trapped by his own rhetoric into making another fateful gambit? Will Israel justify its cost to the US by disposing of the Iranian threat which the US cannot think of addressing directly?
There is no limit to speculation on the possible scenarios, the various interests and hidden motives. The facts on the ground remain simple: in the first nine days of operation 500 Palestinians have been killed and 2,500 wounded, very many of them women and children. Goliath is trashing obstinate, luckless David again. Beyond the bloodstained spectacle, the law is mocked and civilization exposed as a fraud. Power, naked and unashamed, makes nonsense of all our spouting about rights and justice.
The Israelis do it because they can and believe that they must. The Palestinians because it is all they think they can do. Both sides have no hope of peace if left to themselves. Weak or powerful they are trapped in the ever-recurring horror. The constant oppression of the Palestinians by Israel punctuated by spikes of conflict such as the current is caused by and necessarily renews the threat posed by the existence of the oppressed who cannot afford to submit. Israel is precluded from utterly destroying the Palestinians because that would unleash a conflict with all its neighbours. The Palestinians’ wall of defence is made of human flesh, their major weapon in the global propaganda war is the sight of their own blood on our television screens.
That is the height which our civilization has achieved. In former times the powerful would have wiped out the weak. Instead the Palestinians linger in their own version of the Babylonian Captivity kept alive by our inability to stomach a complete genocide. Entertaining the illusions of law, right and justice may have some use after all. It keeps the Palestinians from the abyss but not much more.

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