Home > The End Game of Israel’s Offensive

The End Game of Israel’s Offensive

by Open-Publishing - Friday 7 July 2006
8 comments

Wars and conflicts International USA

By Nicola Nasser*

Three years after the U.S. invasion to change the Iraqi regime, Washington’s strategic regional ally, Israel, has launched a massive military operation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to force another regime change in the Middle East, with an end goal to incapacitate the Palestinian Authority and rule it out as a negotiating partner.

Israel’s pretexts are a capture of an Israeli soldier in a daring attack, attacking Israeli communities by Palestinian home-made rockets, the inability of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to rein in anti-occupation armed resistance, and the assumption of power by Hamas, condemned by Israel and the United States as a “terrorist” organization.

However Hamas’ landslide victory in the January 25 legislative elections had only disrupted a status quo that was anyway crumbling and unsustainable. It did not interrupt the peace process, which was already stalled and deadlocked by Israel’s insistence on its unilateral policies.

Hence Israel’s military offensive is ostensibly targeting Hamas both as a resistance movement and government, but the end target is incapacitating the Palestinian Authority (PA) and ruling it out as a credible negotiating partner.

Very well aware of Israel’s end game, President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli invasion as a “collective punishment” and a “crime against humanity,” and to reinforce national unity he has temporarily suspended the July 26 controversial referendum on the “prisoners’ document,” and angrily condemned the Israeli onslaught on “his” government.

To render the Palestinian people under occupation leaderless, Israel has trapped their presidency and premiership in the Gaza Strip and rounded up those cabinet ministers, lawmakers and influential community leaders who remained at large in the West Bank, and forced the fortunate among them to go into hiding, including the deputy premier and the parliamentary speaker.

Israel sealed off the Mediterranean coastal strip, practically besieging the Palestinian president, premier and cabinet ministers in Gaza after kidnapping eight other ministers and 21 lawmakers from the West Bank, thus paralyzing the PA’s executive and legislative branches of government.

Several mayors were also kidnapped by Israel while many others went underground in the West Bank, thus paralyzing the local government as well and forcing civilian life to a standstill.

All the detained and besieged officials were democratically-elected in transparent polls that were extensively monitored internationally and locally.

Offices of the prime and interior ministers in Gaza were bombed to rubble, which reminds one of the dynamited presidential headquarters of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

However none of the world powers has objected to Israel’s war on the PA to force a regime change.

And to bring the Palestinian people to their knees, Israel at midnight on July 27 unleashed its occupation forces against the Palestinian infrastructure, reoccupied parts of the Gaza Strip, including the Gaza airport, and bombed the only electricity-generating grid, the power distribution network and six transformers, and plunged the densely-populated and poverty-ridden strip into darkness.

Water pipelines, highways that link southern and northern Gaza, and four bridges were also bombed, disrupting traffic and restricting movement of the population.

Israeli F-16s meanwhile were terrorizing Palestinian civilians with sonic booms. Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert vowed to his Cabinet Sunday: “I want no one to sleep at night in Gaza.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on Monday condemned the sonic booms as “collective punishment.”

Israel’s military siege of Gaza is depriving more than 1,400,000 Palestinians of fuel supplies, exacerbating the power and water crises and threatening the vital health services.

Expressing concern about the humanitarian consequences of Israel’s military escalation, the International Committee of the Red Cross and human rights groups called on Israel to fully respect the rules of international law.

Israeli warplanes targeted universities, schools, soccer fields, clinics, charities and police stations were targeted in Gaza. In the West Bank the Israeli forces raided, vandalized and sealed off newspapers, local television stations, hospitals, cultural centers, industrial plants, municipalities and other social institutions.

The Israeli war on Palestinian infrastructure was decried by world powers, led by the United Nations chief Kofi Annan in a statement Monday.

James Wolfensohn, the former envoy of the Quartet (of U.S., U.N., EU and Russia) in March warned: “I do not believe you can have a million starving Palestinians and have peace.”

Israel’s military onslaught was preceded by a suffocating Israeli, U.S. and European economic and financial siege imposed on the PA since the January 25 elections, a siege that has thinned Palestinians to near starvation.

Why?

“Olmert’s aim is to complete what his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, effectively began when he ordered Israeli tanks into the West Bank in April 2002. Until then Israel had been trying to negotiate peace — or at least an end to violence — with the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords of 1993. Sharon’s aim was — to invalidate Oslo, destroy the Palestinian Authority and its security forces, and make possible a solution imposed by Israel,” Jackson Diehl wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday.

Olmert came to power in March on a platform to unilaterally demarcate Israel’s final borders inside the Palestinian land Israel occupied in 1967, annex the Palestinian Jordan Valley and the major settlement colonies to the Jewish state, in a plan that would pre-empt the creation of an independent, contiguous, and viable Palestinian state.

Dictating to Palestinians an Israeli three-option alternative: Either perpetuated occupation, his unilateral plan or civil war, Olmert is crushing all potential Palestinian partners by his roaring F-16s and rolling tanks.

**Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank. He is the editor of the English-language Web site of the Palestine Media Centre (PMC).

Forum posts

  • >>>>

    This is obvious and is part of the global New World Odor "stinky" agenda. It has been since those worshiping money and its control - the MONEY CHANGERS (we know who they are) envisioned massive regime change in the region from the times of Mosadek of Iran. These CIA,MI6,and MOssad fronted missions and those carried out under Operation Gladio throughout the region have a single underlying plan and that is to take the material "SALE-ABLE" wealth and create the global conflicts, flase flags, economic hardships, controlled dictaror mind controlling regimes that when combined with the CONTROL of "THEIR FALSE GOD MONEY" and "their GAME called "global finance and BANKING" it is quite easy to see what the REAL end game plan is. They want to establish their STUPID outdated materialistic dogmatic, false religion driven agenda on the rest of the world and support it through a never ending string of "false flag" TERRORIST operations and use the MEDIA which they purchased to spread the mind control propaganda to driue us into SUBMISSION! Well that is about a stupid a plan as I HAVE EVER OR WILL EVER HERE! It is SHEAR DUMB SHIT!

    To enslave everybody and to let only the OPIONS and IDEAS of a FEW disgusting VERY RICH and POWERFUL SECRET rulers use the guise of "TERRORISM" to mind control the earth population and to remove the impediment to total human enslavement and their goal of human degradation and massive campaigns of human suffering - PART of their CULT RELIGION of FALSE JUDAISM and their never ending cries of "ANTI-SEMITISM" which is only a cloak for the fact that they really are insane misguided and mentally depraved individuals teaching and praticing racism, malice, and human deception on a scale and with a power that the world WILL NEVER SEE AGAIN. And it will NEver see it again for it is in its LAST DAYS! Its POWER is Dying! This generation in Israel is being proped up by more money and mind control and bullshit then ever before and their ability to build a Racist state and call it great is the biggest farce of idiotic behavior that they have ever tried to achieve with the power and ability to LIE and BRIBE!

    You see their system and its POWER which is the SECRET plans are BEING exposed. And it is from this position that they are weakest. It is only a matter of time before their brainwashed minions and followers will revolt against their illegitimate power and in ability to create any type of meaningful life for humanity.

    For no one can support WAR forever and PRETEND that "THAT IS HAPPINESS" They are deluded and its being exposed by the massive corruption in the US of AIPAC etc...

    I Support a state of Israel but like I said before only if it is a state that actually follows a human and truth oriented regime looking at your neighbor as a respectble fellow person - not as a mind controlled description of a mis guided political brainwashing which is created more pain in this world than any other.

    We are all based on the same genetic codes. We all can interbreed. Thus we are all actually scientific variations of the same biological kind. Thus any teaching to the CONTRARY IS FALSE and is a FORM of DOGMA, MIND CONTROL and RACISM - all needed elements of the NWO desire to create never ending WAR!

    SAY this to yourself "we all love PEACE and we all need it NOW! Say to anyone you meet. Reject authority of incompitancy based ON FEAR and mind control of MONEY and those that say they CONTROL IT! Live FREE!

    Speak out for PEACE! Spread the word that the WORLD is becoming what we want it to BE and IGNORE the ramblings of the misguided and misdirected fools that we have pretended are actually leading US somewhere USEFUL!

    IT IS ONLY A SHORT TIME BEFORE THEY SELF DESTRUCT!

    A real JEW follows the teaching of MOSES - the first JEW - and anyone listening to the rightous teaching was blessed with PEACE, and since they have not the blessings of the PEACE they must NOT BE FOLLOWING the TEACHINGS of MOSES! - Nothing beyond that needs to be said! They are false to their own words! They are a house devided - they will fall. But the teachings of the truth will not. For they are part of REALITY of the force of creation!

    Thank G*D for that!
    – 

    • If there is a secret cabal of rich bastards who are perennially running things, this "god" business is part of the scam. Stop thanking this imaginary being for everything and try standing up on your own two feet! Some of us are sick and tired of hearing about this figment of the imagination.

    • You better educate yourself! AIPAC, Bilderberg or Rothschild! Ever heart of those terms?

  • Thanks to Bellaciao for addressing the issue of the Palestinians in it’s English section. I hope there will be more Israeli/Palestian articles in this section. I would like to know more about the 7,000 to 9,000 Palestinian men, women, and children at least 1,000 of whom are held without charge in Israeli jails, about their treatment and also about the "refuseniks" (Israeli soldiers who are refusing to take part in the bombardment of Gaza and before that the pilots who refused to drop Israeli bombs in Palestinian civilian areas.)

    I believe we need an International Day of Prayer Vigils in front of Israeli embassies to pray for the safe release of Gilad (the Isreali soldier injured and taken captive from his tank after being raided from behind) and the 1,000 Palestinian men, women, and children held in Isreali jails without charge and for the fair treatment of the thousands of remaining prisoners.

    Peace!

    • What a beautiful comment. I have the book about Refusniks, Israel’s soldiers of conscience,by Peretz Kidron and Susan sontag forward. It takes a great deal of courage to do this,a lot like refusing the Nazis,but the payback cannot be too obvious as there is a still a PR war going on.

      there is a very strong peace movement in israel,but it is easy to miss as they do not get the media coverage,musch as any prtoest owadays that disagrees witht he aims or PR spin of a war intended.

      the first post sums it up. the "left behind " are certainly high on the list,although a bit old now, but same old modus operanti.I read that one of the London bombers group was a guy called McDaid ,who was SBS (commando,same name of the who group were in afghanistan training mujahadeen in 1980s)and that he cheered at 911-really? So why is he not arrested as the bomb maker?
      Because,like Kelly,another obvious fanatical plant,can’t get rid ot the irish slant though can they from NI days. It is probably the same group that was leaking the OBL false tapes(deaddeaddead,duhhh,even the yanks have cut the fake search group funding at last) and that was probably from gilbertson who made their tapes and hacked their hardware for?????Mossd? (look out bibi here it comes...stay in the hotel).

      it is time. Take this crap no longer. the rogues in the covert agencies involved need to be publicly charged and stopped in their actions once and for all.We need no professional assasins and murderers and bombers. These are the true terrorists and they are paid for byus. Now they have joined private armies for corporations and they are truly dangerous.

      this must not be solved quietly like the Italian obmbings from the past, and the murders taht were fobbed off as suidicides this must be openly investigated by internationl justices and scrutinised and every internet question raised answered to the satisfaction of the people and especially the victims. The warmongerors Neocons need to be handed over to te iraqi people and those who signed the ICCJ need to be charged and handed over,whether in UK,Austrlaia, iatly or Israel..

      Israel will be so much better without the warcruiminals and can start to have a real peace with proper justice meted out to the real terrorists.

      All this rubbish about a Jewish state-just be multicultural and respect each other as everyone else in the western world has for their consitution,drop the racism and the rest will follow.

      peace.pay the price and hand over all the crims.make the country and the world a better place..

    • Sane and aware people of the world must unite to overthrow the fascist warmongers in control of everything everywhere.

      Support Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. officer to refuse to go do Bu$hco’s killing of the Iraqis. He is locked up now, charged with crimes against the military.....

      See his heartfelt video on the home page of the web-site:

      thankyoult.org

      Peace loving people of the planet can support Ehren and give him your encouragement by visiting that web site.

  • Jewish history after the Exodus is rich with diversity, culture and sparkling intellectual accomplishments. And having spread themselves around the world, Jews enlivened societies that were moribund and superstitious. Everywhere you look in America - from sheet music to movies, from science to literature - there is the inimitable stamp of Jewish influence. Only a rabid antiSemite could categorically deny these unprecendented achievements.

    But then Zionism rallied the cry for a nation state, as if huddling under the banner of a nation was going to be the panacea. Few stopped to ask, Where is the nation without blood on its hands? Where is the nation innocent of exploitation, manipulation, and selfishness? What kind of people are the Jews going to be after crushing the Palestinians?

    Now, unfortunately, the Jews are no longer people of the world but supporters of a nation state that has more in common with the historic oppressors of Jews than with the Jews of the past 2,000 years. Suddenly, in a few short decades, the Jews have undone thousands of years of superior contributions for the sake of amalgamating on that sad, weathered territory they’re obsessed about now. Sadly, without realizing it, they’ve not benefitted their cause by uniting regionally. Instead, they’ve made themselves a larger target than they’ve ever been in history.

    Now all of Yahweh’s blessings won’t be sufficient enough to justify their actions in the court of worldly opinion.

    • It is true that many things that are useful were created by those associating themselves with a particular religion tradition. I doubt that has anything to do with their creativity or discovery. I woudl attribute that to the hard work, support from others that they worked with and took ideas from, and from the non Jewish class or workers that realized most of the work and the dreams. Jews were not noted in the 20th century or this to be associated with works of labor or such - like picking fruit - a little more important than sheet music or rubiz cubes. You see the Mexican indegious people of America and the Blacks, and most other immagriants were responsible and faithfully carried out the REALIZATIONS of these projects rather than TAKING credit for the IDEAS or providing the monopoly money to carry our such task in a wage slave oriented societies based on religion bias and colonization work of the 18th and 19th centuries including SLAVE trading, weapons manufaction and creation (including the ATOMIC BOMB) — ALL work of the so called CHOSEN ones. Yes Y*VH chose to have his people represent HIM as a G*D that creates the ultimate LIFE destroying weapons - I am sure that was Yh*h imspired too. Oh yes the very creator of the worlds told HIS PEOPLE to create the ultimate HUMANITY FEAR device and USE it FOR PEACE. WOW thats really a great addition to works that we can contribute to the so called greate intellectuals who could see past their own mid control dogma and bias to see what and whom they were REALLY SERVING in those works.

      Oh yes today the world is so much better of with DRUGS that CAUSE cancer, anti-depressents that enable suicide, OIL comapnies that support genocide and WORLD BANKS that only look at the NUMBERS and human life as an abstraction of PROGRESS and measurement.

      And don’t forget the media and movies which in the main stream is responsible for the mis representation of more information and historical fact than any time in history before.

      Oh yes the works are many but the value of the contributions is questionable in some of the areas.

      Is the word SCIENCE and TRUTH in that vocabulary of propaganda. I think not otherwise a different course of REALITY would have been chosen. But when you choose to live by TRADITION rather than FACTS well you get into all kinds of TROUBLE!

      Also note the term anti-semtie "Rabid" is not a UNIVERSAL CATCH all that can be applied to any-type of FREE SPEECH expression especially that with historical and notable proof based in archialogical record, historical behavior, and the traditional means and methods that a CULTURE of TRADITIONALISTS seems too FIXED on a NON SCIENTIFIC unprovable text in which itself is in many places alegorical and illogical, immoral and itself antihuman. Thus in conclusion perhaps the tradition itself SHOULD be called into question as well as its legitimacy as a WAY of life and a set TRADITIONS that hold little if any REAL hope for a PEACEFUL or USEFUL FUTURE. Perhaps that is what should be called into question? Perhaps.