Operation Cast Lead was launched on 27 December 2008 on the spurious pretext of preventing Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel. It followed months of pledges by senior Israeli ministers to level parts of Gaza, and inflict a "Holocaust" on the territory. It followed Israel's most explicit violation of a ceasefire agreement on November 4th, when it launched a series of raids on Gaza. It followed the intensitification of a blockade that left 9 out of 10 Gazans living below the poverty line, with some families forced to live on grass to survive. Mary Robinson, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and fairly conventional supporter of a two-state settlement, described how the blockade was affecting Gaza: "their whole civilisation has been destroyed, I'm not exaggerating ... It's almost unbelievable that the world doesn't care while this is happening." There is a great deal more to be said about context but, suffice to say, the aggression was merely the latest phase in a war on the civilian population of Gaza, a sustained punishment beating it was enduring for resistance: specifically, for having maintained its elected government despite a successful Israeli-backed Fatah putsch in the West Bank in the summer of 2007, which one would infer had been planned since Hamas' electoral victory in early 2006. That this punishment is continuing - of which, more later - is reason in itself to revisit the last year's blitzkrieg.

The brutality of Operation Cast Lead shocked some of Israel's most devoted supporters, and divided the pro-Israel camp. Even as it was happening, some of the most shocking accounts of IDF conduct were emerging. These included sealing off a neighbourhood, bombing and shelling it, blocking medical and humanitarian entry, and knowingly leaving children to slowly die next to their already deceased relatives. They included the targeting of hospitals and ambulances, and the repeated targeting of schools. UN casualty statistics reflected a particularly onerous burden on the civilian population - 42% of those killed, they said, were women and children. Some news reports falsely suggested that this meant that 'only' 42% of those killed were civilians, which involved the racist supposition that Palestinian males over 16 no longer count as civilians with the full protection of humanitarian norms and laws. As it happens, the re-definition of the category of 'civilian' was integral to Israeli doctrine during the war, and it was essential to their military plans. The 'Dahiya Doctrine', the parameters of which informed Israeli operations in Gaza, involved precisely this shift, as General Gadi Eisenkot explained:

"What happened in the Dahiya quarter in Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired upon. We will apply disproportionate force upon it and cause great damage and destruction there," he said. "From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases."

“This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved”. [Emphasis added]

Such genocidal logic, congruent with the promises of a 'Holocaust', was consistently expressed in Israel's methods and targeting, not to mention the uplifting sentiments expressed by IDF soldiers while defacing Palestinian homes. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead, we have had numerous reports into Israel's conduct of the operation, though less attention has been paid to the supposed rationale behind the attacks. The Goldstone Report [pdf] has documented in forensic detail an astonishing level of premeditated and sadistic violence toward civilians. It documented deliberate attacks on hospitals, mosques, and perhaps most chillingly the assault on the al-Samouni area resulting in the calculated massacre of the al-Samouni family. Focusing on 36 specific incidents of such aggression, with detailed consideration of evidence in each case, it concluded that the war had either in whole or in part been against the "people of Gaza as a whole". This was quite remarkable for such a report, produced by a UN team led by a "Zionist" who "loves Israel". It also concluded that "the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas". As a consequence of such conclusions, the report demanded that Israel should pay reparations to the Palestinians affected by its actions, noting that its internal structures left few avenues open for Palestinians to sue for reparations themselves. It also encouraged the UN to refer the report to the ICC, and called on the ICC to act on legal appeals from the "Government of Palestine". Predictably, the report was subject to a barrage of ignorant rubbish, suggesting that it was the result of a mission biased against Israel (forgetting that its remit actually included studying alleged war crimes by armed Palestinian groups), and that its findings were based "largely on interviews with Hamas" (utter garbage). Numerous rebuttal websites have been set up, including a rather slick one by CAMERA, with the aim of blowing smoke over the findings. But all of this is so much acting out by an increasingly bellicose and shrill minority.

One point that the Goldstone report also emphasised was that the punishment of the Palestinian population was continuing in the form of a blockade, which it considered to be "collective punishment". On Sunday, a new report [pdf] by numerous NGOs including Amnesty, Christian Aid, CAFOD, Oxfam, Trocaire and Medical Aid for the Palestinians looks at the impact of the blockade. Its main conclusions are shared by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It finds that all attempts to regenerate Gazan society and economy since Operation Cast Lead have been frustrated by the ongoing blockade. Most of the $4bn of international donor money has not been spent, not for lack of determination, but because the conditions of the blockade make it impossible to carry out the necessary reconstruction:

"the civilian population and the United Nations and aid agencies that aim to help them are prohibited from importing materials like cement or glass for reconstruction in all but a handful of cases".

The inability to reconstruct damaged homes has left tens of thousands displaced, some living in tents.

"And this is to say nothing of the backlog of need from those homes severely damaged in previous military actions, those new houses left half-built due to lack of materials and existing properties condemned as unhygienic or unsafe to live in that cannot be replaced."

Not only are homes not being rebuilt, but power stations necessary to maintain production, keep hospitals and public services functioning, and maintain sanitary water, remain destroyed. Israel regularly refuses to allow generators into Gaza. And industries are going idle. 120,000 jobs in the private sector were lost because of the blockade. Even before Operation Cast Lead, "98% of industrial operations in Gaza were idle because of the blockade". Because of the destruction to power stations, sewage systems and water piping, 8,000 people lack any access to piped water at all, and the remainder of the population has to suffer sporadic supplies when the power cuts out as it regularly does: water shortages and power cuts are particularly liable to take place during winter. The shortage of clean water is causing a shocking rise in diarrhoea, which is behind 12% of young deaths.

The blockade has reduced the categories of goods entering Gaza from approximately 4,000 to about 35, and those items that are theoretically allowed in (some medicines, basic foods and humanitarian supplies) are subject to arbitrarily shifting restrictions. The blockade had also severely restricted agricultural production, and Operation Cast Lead destroyed 17% of cultivated land in Gaza. Israel's imposition of a depopulated 'buffer zone' "inside of the walls and fences surrounding Gaza" has resulted in between "a quarter and a third of Gaza's agricultural land" being subsumed into the 'buffer zone'. The combined effect of Cast Lead and the ongoing blockade has been to put 46% of Gazan agricultural land out of production.

While southern Israel "blossoms", Gaza is constantly regressing in its ability to reproduce itself as a society and economy. Earlier this year, a leaked UN report said that the ongoing blockade was resulting in a process of "de-development", with "increased aid dependency" among the population - already, 75% of Gazans depend on food aid to survive. The report by Amnesty et al concludes, with language that is becoming all too familiar, that the blockade amounts to "collective punishment". It is worse than collective punishment, and that tag will simply not do any more. Baruch Kimmerling has characterised Israel's war on the Palestinians as 'politicide': an attempt to wholly destroy the fabric of any potential Palestinian state. But, as Martin Shaw has written, the proliferation of -cides with respect to the crimes of war - femicide, democide, infanticide, etc - really adverts to the genocidal logic that they are all too often embedded in. The logic of Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians is dictated by its twin drives to maintain control of Gaza and the West Bank with the long term aim of incorporating both as official Israeli territories, and its determination to remain a 'Jewish state' with a substantial Jewish majority. Either the Israeli state must give up one of these goals (and no one is applying sufficient pressure to make it do so), or it must find a way of disposing of the Palestinian population. Ethnic cleansing is one such means. Imposing conditions such as are intended to make life and its reproduction almost impossible, and unbearable, is another. The war on the population of Gaza is an attempt to break Palestinian resistance by means of destroying, in part, the aforementioned population.

The belief that we live in Enlightened times, that the prevailing cosmovision is scientific and rational, is itself a component of an irrational and violent ideology. We do not live in such a time, and the intelligentsia do not produce work reflecting such commitments. Rather, the great bulk of intellectual production is a labour of fabulation. Histories are aesthetic products, stimulating narratives for those bored with the novel, morality tales for those disenchanted with religion, improving sentiments and axioms for those who don't want to spend their tube journey deflecting anxiety about work with a copy of the Metro. The efficacy of these works as aesthetic productions, dealing in irony, allusion and juxtaposition, and using tragic, romantic or comedic modes of emplotment, is part of their proof, part of their ability to persuade.

So, in the interminable era of the 'war on terror', we have been fed a slurry of literature rehearsing the apocalyptic dramaturgy of Oswald Spengler and his epigones. The key actor, the hero, is the corporative entity known as 'The West'. It is locked in a mortal combat, a fight to the death, with the villain, a relentless and tyrannical opponent, known as 'radical Islam' or 'Islamo-fascism' or 'totalitarianism', tout court. The ideas of 'totalitarianism' constitute the deux ex machina, the animating spirit that subjectivates an otherwise inert substrata of humanity, and sends it rushing, ululating, en masse, toward Jerusalem or New York.

The latest installment of this narrative is provided by the American Eustonite, Jeffrey Herf (criticised by Richard Wolin here, resulting in a debate here). Disinterring, once again, the collusion between Haj Amin al-Husseini, the British-imposed Mufti of Jerusalem, and Adolf Hitler, Herf sets out make the case that 'radical Islam' constitutes the third wave of 'totalitarianism' in the world, following communism and fascism. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Can a gripping narrative be concocted from such hackneyed materials? Not by Herf, it can't. His efforts to add panache and colour to an utterly forlorn parable revolve around the single narrative conceit of 'Hate Radio', in which pro-Nazi broadcasts in Arab countries during WWII, to some extent facilitated by al-Husseini, are 'hate radio with a vengeance'. The sparsity of evidence for the larger case he wants to make is compensated for with tenuous extrapolations and sensational quotations. The denouement involves one particularly bestial broadcast, inciting the massacre of the Jews in the Arab countries, just as the Nazis were embarking on the final solution. Such viciousness, Herf maintains, found a receptive audience. His evidence doesn't permit too much extrapolation - he can refer to 'elements' in the Egyptian officer corps and the Muslim Brothers whom Berlin thought might be willing to act on such ideas. Herf writes:

Two German historians, Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, recently uncovered evidence that German intelligence agents were reporting back to Berlin that if Rommel succeeded in reaching Cairo and Palestine, the Axis powers could count on support from some elements in the Egyptian officer corps as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. Mallmann and Cüppers also show that an SS division was preparing to fly to Egypt to extend the Final Solution to the Middle East. The British and Australian defeat of Rommel at the Battle of El 'Alamein prevented that from happening.

I assume that Herf is referring to an article by Mallmann and Cüppers in the journal Yad Vashem Studies, vol 36, in which the two historians outline a plan to send a unit under SS-Obsturmbannfuhrer Walter Rauth to conquer Egypt, and then proceed to Palestine where, the authors write, "it undoubtedly would see action directed primarily against the Jewish population there". This 'undoubtedly' is not warranted by any evidence cited, but even if it were, I am not persuaded that this amounts to evidence of a plan to "extend the Final Solution to the Middle East". Nor is it obvious that the "elements" identified by the Nazis would have proven amenable to such a programme.

For, as Herf's case proceeds, the connections become all the more tenuous. He asks: "How was Nazi propaganda received by Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East?" He cites an evaluation from the OSS referring to 'apathy' in the Middle East regarding the trial of Nazis, and 'sympathy' for those who aided the Axis due to their hostility to the imperialists. This isn't particularly compelling as evidence, nor would it be surprising if it contained some truth, given the jackbooted behaviour of the colonial powers. It explains and demonstrates precious little. An interesting question would be, how did Arab public opinion receive the vicious exterminationist broadcast inciting genocide against the Jews, the one that Herf is at pains to quote at length? Did anyone actually carry out this genocide, or attempt to? Herf demonstrates no such conspiracy. Nor does he demonstrate that antisemitic ideas had much popular traction.

Instead, what he does is show that Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brothers celebrated al-Husseini as a "hero" who "challenged an empire and fought Zionism" through his alliance with the Nazis. Now, al-Banna was both an antisemite and and anti-Zionist. His analysis, in common with many variants of Islamism, was that Western imperialism had destroyed and dislocated Islamic forms of sociability, and that this was being driven by a disintegrative Jewish minority. This has to be registered. But in Herf's polemic, anti-Zionism is uncomplicatedly conflated with antisemitism. Obviously, the two are related, but Herf wants to assert a unidirectional causality: Islamists were anti-Zionist because they were antisemitic - not the other way around, and not because Zionism was itself a colonizing movement that posed a grave menace not just to Palestinians but to other Arab countries in their struggle against colonialism.

As Herf indicates in his debate with Wolin, he considers the 'totalitarian' ideas of 'radical Islam' to be responsible for the majority of problems in the Middle East, denying that it is in any sense a response to external aggression. Here, he relies on a red herring, pointing out that Western interventions since 1945 cannot have substantially caused the rise of Islamism, whose key doctrines were in place before that point. As if 'Western interventions' did not include the construction of the Suez canal, the subsequent colonization of Egypt, the scramble for Africa, the Mandates, etc etc. Might it not be of some interest that Mawdudi and al-Banna, two key figures in the founding of modern Islamism, operated in two countries (India and Egypt) which experienced a particularly savage form of colonial domination from quite early on? Does the doctrine of Islamic restoration espoused by Mawdudi have anything to do with the seige mentality created by British rule and its impact on traditional forms of life? Does his success in attracting post-Partition migrants to the Jamaat-e-Islami have anything to do with a cynical 'divide and quit' policy pursued by the British? If one wants to discuss and anatomise the ideas of these movements, it is not possible to do so without discussing the colonial labyrinth in which they fermented, not to mention the post-colonial systems of domination in which they expanded.

But that is not the kind of history that Herf is interested in. He wants to establish a precarious genealogy of ideas, no matter how tenuous and slender the interconnecting branches are. Thus, he notes that Qutb, an intellectual source for that brand of salafism purveyed by 'Al Qaeda', was an antisemite who claimed that Hitler had been sent by Allah to punish the Jews. This stands as one, utterly frail, limb connecting the Third Reich to the 9/11 attacks. He then recites the antisemitism of the Hamas 'charter', having also previously reminded readers of Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial, noting that these are forms of antisemitism which originate in Europe. This is, of course, true, but it does not establish a direct channel from the Third Reich to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Yet this is how, through a series of metonymic substitutions, we get from Nazi broadcasts and al-Husseini to Qutb and Banna, to the Islamic revolution in Iran, to Hamas and, ultimately, to Al Qaeda - an extremely diverse range of groups, movements and individuals, who appear to share nothing more than that they have espoused antisemitism and that they want to establish some form of Islamic polity. This isn't so much a narrative as a montage of fragments, quotes, anecdotes, particles of forensic evidence, and extravagant claims.

In fact, this kind of allusion and juxtaposition is central to the case. As Wolin points out, the vectors of 'totalitarian' influence allegedly extend not just through 'radical Islamists', but also through the "Arab radicals" referred to in the original article. Thus, it is pointed out that Nasser recruited a former Nazi to work for his information ministry. This is, Wolin adds, not much of a case for anything given that the CIA recruited many, many Nazis for its global counterrevolutionary programmes. It isn't even particularly germane to the case. A secular anticolonial nationalist who tortured his Islamist opponents, Nasser can neither be considered a promulgator of Nazism or of any variant of 'political Islam'. But, as with previous incarnations of 'antitotalitarian' history, notably that vulgar treatise by Paul Berman written to justify the Iraq war, the point about 'totalitarianism' is that 'Arab radicals', 'Islamists', communists and fascists are all fungible. Or rather, in the puree of 'totalitarianism', they are indistinguishable. Thus, Berman had no scruple about describing Ba'athism as a variant of 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' 'totalitarianism'. Only through such pedestrian narrative devices is it possible to assert that there is at this time a movement against 'the West' that is comparable in its ideas, its coherency, scope and threat, to the Third Reich.

I got word this morning that yet another University building has been occupied in support of Gaza, this time in Nottingham. You can read about the growing list of occupations here, but I just want to point out that this is not happening in isolation or without being noticed. Here is a statement from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees on the issue:

The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) salutes the solidarity actions of students from universities across England in response to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Students from eleven universities have occupied buildings in their campuses in solidarity with Palestinian rights, including the right to education, and in outrage over Israel’s rolling massacres and wanton destruction in Gaza, including many educational institutions, in its latest war of aggression on Gaza and the year and a half of its criminal siege of Gaza that continues till today.

Students from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), the London School of Economics (LSE), Kings College, Oxford University, University of Warwick, University of Leeds, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Sussex, Newcastle University, University of Birmingham, and the University of Essex have all acted to pressure their respective university administrations to respond to their demands.

In part, the students’ demands have included calls for their universities to condemn the attacks on Palestinian educational institutions as well as urging official mechanisms and programs that would support the right to education for all Palestinians. In light of the atrocities committed by the Israeli army in Gaza, students have also demanded that their universities pursue practical steps towards divesting from companies and institutions implicated in Israeli occupation of Palestine and its violation of international law.

We in PFUUPE are grateful for the hard and principled work of our colleagues in the British academic community over the past years in support of the cause of justice and peace in Palestine and for Palestinian academic freedom, in particular. The University and College Union’s 2008 motion condemning the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in the perpetuation of Israel’s occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people gives an excellent example of these efforts. We acknowledge the latest forms of student activism in England and elsewhere as a welcome continuation of those efforts aimed at holding Israel accountable for its injustice and crimes.

The bombing of the Islamic University, scores of public and UNRWA schools, and the headquarters of the University Teachers’ Association-Palestine in Gaza is only the latest episode in an ongoing Israeli policy of undermining and directly targeting Palestinian educational institutions. In light of this policy of the occupation, the effective solidarity of academics and students worldwide, particularly in the form of boycott, is particularly significant and highly appreciated by Palestinian academics. By their work in protest of these barbaric acts, our comrades have shown that this destruction cannot and will not occur in silence and without protest.

Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza was described by leading international jurists as constituting a war crime, even a crime against humanity. It has caused over 1300 deaths and the injury of more than 5000 Palestinians, the great majority of whom are civilians. As the dust begins to settle in Gaza, we are only now beginning to comprehend the enormity of the indiscriminate destruction caused by the Israeli attacks.

We strongly admire and support the students in the United Kingdom who are calling for boycott and divestment, urging their universities not just to protest and condemn Israel's massacre in Gaza, but also to join and intensify the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel to end its impunity and to hold it accountable for its persistent violations of international law and Palestinian rights. We agree that, without sustained, effective pressure by people of conscience the world over, Israel will continue with its gradual, rolling acts of genocide against the Palestinians.

We urge academics around the world to intensify their boycott of Israeli academic institutions, and to isolate the Israeli academy in international forums, associations of academics, and other international venues. Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the entrenched system of oppression practiced by the Israeli state, and their silence at this critical moment is only the most vociferous indicator of this complicity.

Dr. Amjad Barham

President

PFUUPE

International Writers and Scholars Endorse Academic Boycott of Israel

We stand in support of the indigenous Palestinian people in Gaza, who are fighting for their survival against one of the most brutal uses of state power in both this century and the last.

We condemn Israel's recent (December 2008/ January 2009) breaches of international law in the Gaza Strip, which include the bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods, illegal deployment of the chemical white phosphorous, and attacks on schools, ambulances, relief agencies, hospitals, universities, and places of worship. We condemn Israel's restriction of access to media and aid workers.

We reject as false Israel's characterization of its military attacks on Gaza as retaliation. Israel's latest assault on Gaza is part of its longtime racist jurisprudence against its indigenous Palestinian population, during which the Israeli state has systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited the Palestinian people.

We reject as untrue the Israeli government's claims that the Palestinians use civilians as human shields, and that Hamas is an irredeemable terrorist organization. Without endorsing its platforms or philosophy, we recognize Hamas as a democratically elected ruling party. We do not endorse the regime of any existing Arab state, and call for the upholding of internationally mandated human rights and democratic elections in all Arab states.

We call upon our fellow writers and academics in the United States to question discourses that justify and rationalize injustice, and to address Israeli assaults on civilians in Gaza as one of the most important moral issues of our time.

We call upon institutions of higher education in the U.S. to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions, dissolve study abroad programs in Israel, and divest institutional funds from Israeli companies, using the 1980s boycott against apartheid South Africa as a model.

We call on all people of conscience to join us in boycotting Israeli products and institutions until a just, democratic state for all residents of Palestine/Israel comes into existence.

Mohammed Abed
Elmaz Abinader
Diana Abu-Jaber
Ali Abunimah
Opal Palmer Adisa
Deborah Al-Najjar
Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany
Amina Baraka
Amiri Baraka
George Bisharat
Sherwin Bitsui
Breyten Breytenbach
Van Brock
Hayan Charara
Alison Hedge Coke
Lara Deeb
Vicente Diaz
Marilyn Hacker
Mechthild Hart
Sam Hamill
Randa Jarrar
Fady Joudah
Mohja Kahf
Rima Najjar Kapitan
Persis Karim
J. Kehaulani Kaunanui
Haunani Kay-Trask
David Lloyd
Sunaina Maira
Nur Masalha
Khaled Mattawa
Daniel AbdalHayy Moore
Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Nadine Naber
Marcy Newman
Viet Nguyen
Simon J. Ortiz
Vijay Prashad
Steven Salaita
Therese Saliba
Sarita See
Deema Shehabi
Matthew Shenoda
Naomi Shihab Nye
Magid Shihade
Vandana Shiva
Noenoe Silva
Andrea Smith
Ahdaf Soueif
Ghada Talhami
Frank X. Walker
Robert Warrior

Guest post by redbedhead:

It may seem crass to talk about winning and losing in the face of the Gaza slaughter, as though it were a football game. But there is good reason when one considers that the final tally of a battle or a war shapes key future events, determining the likelihood of future victories or even whether other battles will be entered into by those involved. And it is not only those directly involved who must be considered, for a victory or defeat by the army of choice will determine future actions. It is a truism about the Middle East, for instance, that Israel's 3-day, smashing victory over three Arab armies in 1967 secured them the sponsorship of the United States, which has sustained their superior position viz. their regional competitors.

Based upon a body count it would seem that Israel is the definite winner. There are, after all, something like 1300 dead Palestinians, plus another 5400 wounded, with well over half of the total being accounted for by civilians, even with only women and children being counted as such. This compares to 3 dead Israeli civilians and another 10 dead soldiers, most of them killed by friendly fire, apparently. But we can't look at the present invasion in terms of crude - and deadly - numbers. Israel has a massive military superiority over Hamas and its allied militias, like Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and DFLP. They have F-16s, guided bombs and missiles, Merkava tanks, phosphorous shells, unmanned surveillance drones, a navy, all the latest techno gizmos, access to US satellite intelligence - not to mention, apparently, the intelligence support of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's favourite Palestinian collaborator, and leader of Fatah. All of this ensured that a Hamas military victory over Israel was utterly impossible and Hamas seems to have been smart enough to avoid direct confrontations in the open.

Israeli political leaders had set themselves a series of goals prior to and during the operation. Since Israel initiated the present conflict, planning it far in advance, prior even to the 6 months ceasefire negotiated with Hamas, and set the terms for its victory, it must be measured against those goals. In addition, other, unintended consequences must be looked at. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, along with Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have argued that the primary goal of the Gaza invasion was to stop Hamas lobbing rockets and mortars into southern Israel. If this were really the purpose of the attack, then certainly Israel has failed miserably, as demonstrated by the ceaseless firing of rockets throughout the invasion and even immediately following Israel's unilateral ceasefire. What's more, if the Israeli government wanted to end Gazan rocket fire the answer was very simple - meet the conditions of the original ceasefire negotiated with Hamas and agree to continue it. Hamas had, after all, met its terms - not only discontinuing Hamas' firing of rockets but putting a lid on rocket fire by rival militias such as Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Between June 19, when the ceasefire was agreed and November 4, when Israel launched a military raid, breaking the ceasefire, rocket and mortar fire was effectively nil (see attached pdf,p.6). It was Israel that failed to meet the terms of the ceasefire and which repeatedly provoked Hamas with attacks, arrests and killings.

The second stated goal was to prevent Hamas from re-arming. However, again, actions speak louder than words. If this were Israel's sole goal, they could have negotiated a deal with their pliant Egyptian ally or focused bombing strictly in the border region, where the smuggling tunnels exist. Nonetheless, even the head of Israel's intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, reports that the tunnel network hasn't been destroyed and that it will be up and running again in short order if Egypt doesn't clamp down. In other words, stopping smuggling was never dependent upon bombing the hell out of Gaza - it couldn't even be effective. What was required was Egyptian cooperation. But Egypt is now less likely, not more, to agree to a politically unpopular clampdown against the Palestinians, after hundreds of thousands demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza and against the Egyptian dictatorship. That was made clear after Israel and the US signed an agreement - without telling the Egyptians - to tackle the tunnels on Egyptian soil. The Egyptian Foreign Minister responded saying that Israel and the US can "do what they wish with regard to the sea or any other country in Africa, but when it comes to Egyptian land, we are not bound by anything except the safety and national security of the Egyptian people and Egypt's ability to protect its borders." President-for-life Mubarak went on television to specifically state that foreign monitors would not be allowed in Egypt. But even if Egypt agrees to more American Army Engineers to help it police the border, or an increase in police numbers IDF officials don't believe that this will stop the smuggling. So, Israel's second policy goal is clearly a failure. The real key for Israel was the need to restore its deterrent capability" - basically to instill fear in any and all Arabs who might think to challenge the occupation or any other Israeli strategic goals. New York Times billionaire columnist Thomas Friedman supportively referred to this as "educating" Hamas by "inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." This was, in other words, according to Israeli supporters and critics, a terrorist operation by the state of Israel. As Norman Finklestein pointed out in a recent interview: "The goal of the operation was to terrorize the civilian population so that Palestinians would be afraid of Israel. This is the dictionary definition of terrorism."

Has Israel restored its deterrent capability, so badly damaged by its failed war in Lebanon in 2006, and its withdrawal under duress from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000? Certainly every Israeli politician, journalist and military leader is claiming this. However, if the goal was simply to impress upon Hamas that they couldn't defeat Israel militarily, this was already known. Hamas has been trying since at least 2002 to agree a long term truce with Israel, only to face Israeli bombs and targeted assassinations. Certainly by now, any Palestinian knows that it doesn't matter what you do, Israel will try to kill you:

"it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days."

The irony is that this pattern almost ensures the continuation of violent resistance since even non-violence is met by Israeli attacks. At a certain point, Israel's deterrent capability is undermined by the fact that only utter defeat and an acceptance of genocide would prevent Palestinians from resisting Israel's aggression. Certainly Hamas was suitably unbowed to fire off nearly two dozen rockets after Israel's unilateral ceasefire and to demand a withdrawal within one week or they would restart hostilities. What's more, everyone can see, as they did in Lebanon in 2006, that while Israel could defeat three Arab armies in six days in 1967, after three weeks fighting a starved, blockaded, disarmed population in Gaza, the IDF didn't take more than a corner of Gaza City.

Ultimately, of course, it will be in the coming days that the interpretation of events will unfold, depending upon the actual state of Hamas and other resistance organizations. It is likely that while Arabs throughout the region will of course remember that Israel can, in fact, destroy unarmed populations, that it is possible to resist and survive. What's more, Hamas will likely be strengthened politically, while Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization will be fatally weakened. Israel, the US, EU and their Arab client regimes may try to hold him up but everyone knows that they are now dead as a resistance movement and thus in the eyes of the Palestinian people. This makes it more likely that Israel will, as a result of this onslaught, be forced to recognize Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, as will the international community. The 18 month campaign to destroy the results of the democratic election of Hamas, first by arming Fatah and fomenting a civil war and now with a direct intervention, have utterly failed. And outside of the Middle East, Israel has managed to discredit itself even further, spurring into being a massive movement in solidarity with the Palestinians and against Israel. They have shattered the myth that Israel is the victim and the Palestinians the aggressors. This movement, the heroic resistance of the Palestinians and the images of Israel's utter brutality, which they were unable to hide, though they barred all journalists from entering Gaza, has pushed even Israel's staunchest allies to criticize them. Turkey, Israel's only Muslim ally, strongly rebuked Israel, demanding their exclusion from the UN until they implemented the Security Council resolution. Egypt, the biggest Arab nation and paid billions by the US to play with Israel, has been made even more unstable by the slaughter, creating concern for the US' major Arab bulwark in the region. Jordan recalled their ambassador in protest. And there is even suggestion in a fascinating article by Justin Raimondo that the US ruling class is growing tired of Israel's mad dog routine, which threatens US hegemony in the region by alienating Arab allies and threatening others with domestic political upheaval because of Israel's penchant for killing Arab civilians.

It's unclear how all this will pan out over the medium term. But it is clear that the Gaza operation, which Israel was forced to end before Obama's inauguration, has not all gone the way Israel hoped. It may not even go the way that Livni and Barak hoped it would in terms of their electoral prospects, with the ultra-war mongers in Likud making most of the gains from the invasion. Hamas and the Palestinian people will live to fight another day, with a much larger international movement, one in which the call for boycott and divestment may get a major hearing. And the whole region has been destabilized thanks to Israel's compulsive need to avoid peace at any costs. The blowback is looking to be much worse than what they started out fighting, as they have internationalized the conflict.