Europe's Alliance with Israel

Aiding the Occupation

David Cronin

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781783714247
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Advocacy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In carefully crafted official statements, the European Union presents itself as an honest broker in the Middle East. In reality, however, the EU's 27 governments have been engaged in a long process of accommodating Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Journalist David Cronin interrogates the relationship and its outcomes. A recent agreement for 'more intense, more fruitful, more influential co-operation' between the EU and Israel has meant that Israel has become a member state of the Union in all but name. Cronin shows that rather than using this relationship to encourage Israeli restraint, the EU has legitimised actions such as the ill-treatment of prisoners and the Gaza invasion. Concluding his revealing and shocking account, Cronin calls for a continuation and deepening of international activism and protest to halt the EU's slide into complicity.

1

BUILDING THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE

GAZA CITY, MAY 2009

A herd of scrawny goats appears amid the piles of rubble and the tangles of girders. For a few moments, these pitiful creatures seem to be the only sign of life. I am in one of the most densely populated places on earth, yet the destruction all around me lends it a hollow and desolate feel.

Through the cracked windscreen of a dilapidated Mercedes, I stare in disbelief at the pulverised remains of buildings where whole families lived. ‘There, Merkava’, my driver points, naming the brand of tank that flattened the house. ‘There, F-16’, he says to distinguish a separate building that had been attacked from the air.

Four months have passed since Operation Cast Lead, as Israeli officialdom calls its latest act of slaughter against the civilians of Palestine. Here in the Izbet Abed Rabo area of Gaza City – a Hamas stronghold, according to Israeli propaganda, as if that excuses everything – the men, women and children left homeless are living in the white tents of UN agencies. There is no sign that work on reconstructing their houses will start any time soon; Israel is refusing to allow essential building material into Gaza.

Practically everyone I meet tells me of how terrified they were during the last days of 2008 and the first few weeks of the New Year. ‘On the first day of the war, I was in my office at 11.45,’ says Amjad Shawa, who runs a human rights organisation. ‘Suddenly everything changed; it was all bombs and ambulances. For five to six minutes, I couldn’t recognise what was happening.’

Unable to contact his wife because the mobile phone network was not functioning, Shawa drove to his children’s school. It had been damaged because of its proximity to the headquarters of the Palestinian security forces, which had been bombed in the early stages of this no-warning attack. ‘I found my children’, he says. ‘They just kept telling me the names of their classmates who were injured. They thought that because someone was bleeding, he was killed. For the first time my children – the youngest is six and a half, the eldest nine and a half – were asking: “What does it mean to die?” I am struggling to give my children a better life. And they are talking about death.’

Beside the Park of the Unknown Soldier – a sorely needed splash of floral colour in the heart of Gaza City – I am approached by Nahed Wasfy Wshah. He is a tall and friendly man bearing more than a little resemblance to the footballer Eric Cantona; his English is inflected with a slight drawl he acquired from living in Texas. Today, he lives in Al-Brij refugee camp about 10 km away but he is desperate to leave. After he asks me where I am from, he wants to know whether I can help him gain asylum in Ireland. His youngest son Mohammed was burned on his arms and chest when the camp – reputedly another Hamas stronghold – was attacked.

‘My children, my daughters are still scared by the war’, he says. ‘Sometimes they wake up at night and start screaming. They say: “Daddy, take us away from here; there will always be war here.’”

Majed Abu Salama, a technology student, tells me of the colloquial name that Gazans have given to the buzzing of Israeli warplanes overhead, which constantly afflicts their eardrums like tinnitus. Zanana, they call it, comparing it winsomely to the sounds emitted by honey-bees. But he knows first-hand the destruction wrought by these flying instruments of death. He began 2009 huddled in his home as his family provided shelter to terrified neighbours. With his father, he operated a shift system, so that at least one of them would be on constant alert. At night one would sleep for three hours, and then be woken by the other.

One afternoon a family friend sought to take advantage of a lull in the attacks, which the Israeli authorities had announced. It was a false promise, as the man discovered. ‘They killed him through a rocket, when his daughters and his wife were with us in my family’s house’, Salama says. ‘It was terrible.’

Research by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme indicates that the psychological effects of the attack are profound. Out of a sample of 374 children questioned, over 73 per cent thought they were going to die during the violence. Almost 68 per cent of the children – all aged between 6 and 16 – fear that a similar attack will occur in the future, and 41 per cent expressed a strong desire for revenge. Of parents quizzed in the initial stages of this study (unpublished at the time of writing), 82 per cent have observed that their children have been behaving aggressively since the attack and 52 per cent reported that their children had emotional problems.

‘Everybody lost something in this war’, says Husam El Nounou, a spokesman for the programme:

Some lost friends and relations, some lost parts of their bodies. Others lost property and money; others a feeling of security and protection. It was a very cruel feeling. I’ve never felt so near to death as during that period. There was no place to where we could escape.

BRUSSELS, JANUARY 2009

The timing of Operation Cast Lead could scarcely have been more cynical. Within a month, George W. Bush would be handing over the White House to Barack Obama. This transition period in US politics gave Kadima, the main party in Israel’s ruling coalition, an opportunity to exploit the country’s military muscle in a blatant bid – unsuccessful, as it transpired – to win a forthcoming general election. No real pressure would be exerted by the United States, its key ally, to suspend the attack, the Israeli elite assumed correctly. Too busy honing his inauguration speech, Obama maintained a shameful silence.

Richard Falk, the UN investigator on human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, has suggested that Operation Cast Lead might have set a new precedent for modern warfare. For the first time, an entire civilian population had been locked into a war zone, its borders sealed. ‘No children, women, sick people or disabled people were allowed to leave’, the veteran Jewish-American academic and campaigner stated in little-reported comments to the European Parliament.¹ ‘For the first time, the option of becoming a refugee has been withheld.’

MORE DEFENSIVE THAN OFFENSIVE?

As the European Union’s policymakers routinely describe human rights and democracy as their core values, surely they could be relied on to speak out against the carnage. Or could they? With the EU presidency changing hands every six months, the Czech Republic had just stepped into the metaphorical driving seat of the European Union on New Year’s Day 2009. Jiri Potuznik, the Czech press spokesman in Brussels, took it upon himself to declare the Israeli military operation as ‘defensive, not offensive.’²

His parroting of the Israeli explanation for the war – that it was simply a response to Hamas’ rocket attacks on southern Israel – did not go down too well in some European capitals. Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, which reluctantly ceded the EU presidency at the end of December, was particularly irked that the comments were at odds with the tone of a message from a meeting of the EU foreign ministers held in Paris less than a week earlier. The ministers had urged a ceasefire on that occasion.

And so Potuznik swiftly issued a statement of clarification. ‘Even the undisputable right of the state to defend itself does not allow actions which largely affect civilians’, it read.³ Superficially, this appeared more balanced and nuanced. Yet it still implied that the operation was retaliatory in nature – a claim that falls apart when subjected to a modicum of scrutiny.

By intimating that Operation Cast Lead was an act of self-defence, the EU presidency was misrepresenting – perhaps deliberately – the nature of Israeli violence. Whereas Israel uses violence as a tool of oppression, Hamas uses it on behalf of the oppressed. Hamas is a resistance movement. Its tactics can cause and have caused deaths and horrific injuries to innocents, and there are good reasons to argue that – like many acts of violence – they have been counterproductive. Still, Hamas is a symptom of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and not, as some apologists for the Israeli establishment would have us believe, its cause.

Leaving aside the legal and philosophical questions about whether people living under occupation or the control of racist and colonial regimes have the right to resist – a right recognised by nearly every government in the United Nations through a 1987 resolution of its General Assembly – there are more prosaic reasons to dispute Israel’s version of events.⁴

Far from Hamas having provoked Israel, it had observed a four-month ceasefire until 4 November 2008. On that day (probably by no coincidence, the same date as the US presidential election), Israeli troops made a raid on Gaza, in which they killed six members of Hamas. Unwisely, though not unsurprisingly, Hamas responded with a salvo of rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Known in Arabic as a tahdia (lull), the ceasefire had gone into effect in June 2008, after being brokered by Egypt. Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has written of his understanding that its terms committed Israel to dramatically easing the blockade it had imposed on Gaza since Hamas took control of the Strip in 2007. This would involve allowing 700 truckloads of supplies to be delivered to Gaza per day – roughly equivalent to deliveries before the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli settlers. (Carter qualified his remarks by saying he was unable to confirm the agreement with the Israeli authorities, as they were loath to admit that they had been in contact with Hamas.⁵)

Rather than living up to its obligations, the amount of food, medicine and fuel allowed into Gaza reached only about one-fifth of the levels considered ‘normal’. The Red Cross found that malnutrition had soared among Gazans to the extent that 70 per cent of its 1.5 million inhabitants were suffering a ‘progressive deterioration’ of access to food of sufficient quality and quantity to lead healthy lives.⁶

Despite the hefty evidence contradicting it, there are many in senior positions in the EU institutions who continue to accept Israel’s propaganda. These include those who have access to all the material they need to make an informed judgment. Marc Otte, the Union’s ‘special representative’ to the Middle East, sounded exactly like a mouthpiece for the Israeli government when I interviewed him in the summer of 2009. He apportioned all the blame for Operation Cast Lead on Hamas and its ‘sponsors’ in Iran and Syria. ‘Gaza was a crisis waiting to happen,’ Otte said. ‘Do you think the Palestinians could continue to launch rockets on Israel without Israel reacting?’

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, went even further, declaring that Hamas ‘clearly and exclusively’ bore responsibility for the attacks.⁷ Along with Italy, the Netherlands and Romania, her government refused to call for a UN investigation into war crime allegations against both Israel and Hamas.⁸ Sarkozy – his efforts to temper the extremism of the Czech position notwithstanding – shared Merkel’s analysis (if that is the correct term). Although he labelled Israel’s use of force as ‘disproportionate’ (a standard, and usually asinine, European Union response to state-approved atrocities), he insisted that the situation had been caused by ‘irresponsible provocations’ from Hamas.⁹

AFTER THE BOMBS, A BANQUET

Further indications that the most powerful leaders in the European Union were siding with the aggressor came on 18 January, a day after Israel called a ‘unilateral ceasefire’ (as the country’s main newspapers dutifully dubbed it). Every death or injury caused in a war is a tragedy and an affront to humanity, yet it is beyond dispute that most of the victims of this offensive were Palestinian. A total of 1,417 Palestinians died over the course of the 22 days, according to Gaza-based human rights monitors.¹⁰ Of these, 926 were civilians, including 116 women and 313 children. By contrast, 13 Israelis were killed, just three of whom were non-combatants.

If gestures of solidarity were required, it was surely the beleaguered residents of Gaza that were most deserving of them. In their wisdom, however, presidents and prime ministers from Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Spain and the Czech Republic chose instead to embrace the man who had ordered the onslaught. The six leaders converged on Jerusalem, where Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, hosted a gala dinner in their honour. Olmert’s then successor-in-waiting Binyamin Netanyahu was also in attendance.

The symbolism of the event was not lost on the Israeli press. This was the single largest delegation of world leaders to visit Israel at one time since the funeral of its assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the newspapers observed. ‘Six world leaders dropped everything to come here and express their support for Israel’s security,’ an anonymous Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post.¹¹ ‘That’s not something that happens every day.’

Sated by Olmert’s culinary delights, the European leaders once again accused Hamas of inciting the attacks and promised to work towards restricting the flow of weapons to the organisation. The question of halting the supply of weapons to Israel does not appear to have been discussed.

Within less than a week, Olmert would be telling journalists of how he had wept while watching images of a bombing in Jabaliya refugee camp, in which three sisters and their cousin were blown to pieces. The incident was one of the few in this war that had engendered a mild controversy within Israel, thanks to an anguished TV appearance by the girls’ father and uncle Ezzedine Abu Al-Aish, a doctor. Olmert pledged that an investigation would be held to find out if any soldier had opened fired deliberately.¹²

In the absence of credible witnesses, it is impossible to verify if Olmert really did cry. Assuming that he is telling the truth, it is difficult to think of tears that have been shed with greater hypocrisy.

SPIN TRIUMPHS OVER SUBSTANCE

Unlike some national administrations, the European Commission is not brimming with highly skilled public relations professionals. Nonetheless, the executive arm of the European Union notched up a success for the dark arts of spin during the final days of Operation Cast Lead. On 14 January, Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal, the Commission’s ambassador in Tel Aviv, briefed reporters on the implications of the offensive for European Union-Israel ties. ‘Everybody realises that it is not the appropriate time to upgrade bilateral relations,’ he said.¹³

His words gave the impression that the European Union was taking a firm stance. Representatives from Britain’s Labour Party welcomed his remarks during a debate in the European Parliament held the same day. Richard Howitt, a Labour MEP with a solid track record of speaking out on human rights issues, informed his colleagues that the European Union had put ‘on hold’ its talks on improving relations with Israel because the latter’s army had killed 139 children and injured almost 1,300 others ‘since the conflict began’.¹⁴ (This death toll would, of course, climb.)

The picture was a bit more complex than the one Howitt painted. In June 2008, foreign ministers from both the European Union and Israel agreed that relations between the two sides should be raised to a new level of ‘more intense, more fruitful, more influential cooperation’.¹⁵ This decision followed a request made by Tzipi Livni, then Israel’s foreign minister, a year earlier for her country to be integrated into the EU single market for goods and services and to be allowed take part in a wide range of the European Union’s other political and economic activities. According to many ob...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Building the unholy alliance
• 2. Bowing to the United States
• 3. Aiding the occupation
• 4. The misappliance of science
• 5. Profiting from Palestine’s pain
• 6. The Israel lobby comes to Europe
• Conclusion: confronting Europe’s cowardice
• Notes
• Useful contacts
• Index