Provoking War

Israeli attacks on Gaza and the Lebanese border in recent weeks, together with increasing repression in the West Bank, may suggest a larger offensive is in the offing

By Stephen Lendman*
19 - 25 August 2010
Issue No. 1012
Courtesy Of "Al-Ahram"

Perhaps suggesting the planning of a larger-scale offensive, violent Israeli attacks have hit Gaza, the West Bank and the Israeli-Lebanese border recently, these being the first at the latter flashpoint since the summer 2006 war.

Like Operation Cast Lead in the 2008 Gaza war, it was Israeli aggression -- violent, lawless and unrelenting, a scorched-earth blitzkrieg inflicting vast destruction, causing billions of dollars' worth of damage, killing over 1,000 Lebanese, injuring thousands more, and displacing around a million others (about one-fourth of the country's four million- strong population), including over 300,000 children fleeing north for their lives -- that characterised the 2006 war.

Yet, in the end, Hizbullah handed Israel a humiliating defeat. Perhaps revenge is now being planned.

On 4 August, the Ma'an News Agency reported that Israeli and Lebanese troops had clashed, killing four Lebanese citizens, including three soldiers. One Israeli soldier was also killed. Reports said the violence had erupted after Israeli soldiers had crossed the border, trying to uproot a tree to install a surveillance camera and equipment in a chain of events that left five dead. An Israeli Defence Force (IDF) spokesman said that Israeli soldiers had not entered Lebanon, but had been operating between the UN-administered Blue Line and Israel's border fence.

This was contradicted by Lebanese accounts, which described Israeli soldiers in the area removing trees to install surveillance equipment. Israel called this "routine maintenance". Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri condemned what he called Israeli violation of Lebanese sovereignty, and Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri called for a complaint against Israel to be filed with the UN Security Council.

Israel may yet file its own complaint in response, its Foreign Ministry saying that, "Israel sees the firing on an IDF force which acted in coordination with UNIFEL [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] in the border region as a blunt violation of Resolution 1701." For his part, Al-Hariri wants the UN to demand that Israel implement Resolution 1701, which calls for the demilitarisation of the area within the Blue Line where UNIFEL troops are stationed.

However, throughout its history Israel has spurned all UN resolutions criticising its actions and policies.

On 3 August, commentator Jack Khoury headlined an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz with the words, "Nasrallah: Hizbullah will respond if Israel attacks Lebanon's army", writing in the piece that followed that in a speech marking four years since the end of the 2006 war, the Hizbullah leader had said that, "anywhere where the Lebanese army is assaulted, and there's a place for the resistance and it is capable of doing so, the resistance will not stand silent, quiet or restrained."

"Israel's aggression against Lebanon has not stopped, and what happened today only proves that. Since the ceasefire until today, Israel has blatantly violated [the UN Security Council Resolution] more than 7,000 times, and no one has lifted a finger, not even the Security Council."

Nasrallah praised the Lebanese army and said that Hizbullah has been on a high state of alert during the incident. "I was personally in contact with [Hizbullah] commanders in the area, and I asked them not to act before receiving a direct order. We announced that we would not initiate any activity as long as we had not received authorisation from the highest command of the Lebanese army."

On 5 August, Haaretz writer Gideon Levy, in an article headlined "Only we're allowed", wrote that "after Tuesday's border clash, Israel will continue to ignore UNIFEL and the Lebanese army... Those bastards, the Lebanese, changed the rules. The scandalous fact is that they have a brigade commander who's determined to protect his country's sovereignty."

In Gaza, Levy wrote, a "fence is a fence". Getting near it is enough to get killed. In the West Bank, nearly the entire apartheid wall ignores the Green Line, and Palestinians are forbidden to cross it. In Lebanon, however, things are different. There, Israel makes its own rules, ignoring "fences" and crossing the border illegally and invading Lebanese air space, at times aggressively.

"We're allowed" to be there, Levy wrote. The Palestinians "aren't allowed" to resist. "We're allowed" to enter Lebanon. "They're forbidden" to react. If they do, "Lebanon must be taught a lesson, and we will teach it. And what about us? We don't have any lessons to learn. We'll continue to ignore UNIFEL," UN resolutions and the rule of law, as well as "the Lebanese army and its new brigade commander, who has the nerve to think that his job is to protect his country's sovereignty."

In Gaza meanwhile, six days of Israeli air strikes left several people dead and dozens wounded. In addition, IDF shellfire killed one Palestinian and wounded two or more others. The attacks are the latest in a series of provocations that have occurred without warning.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported the air strikes, one against Hamas member Eissa Al-Batran at the Al-Boreij Refugee Camp, the other against the Gaza City Airport, targeting security vehicles near the presidential compound. Neighbouring homes and buildings were damaged and local residents terrified. At the same time, tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border were attacked, though no casualties were reported.

Near the Erez crossing Israeli snipers shot three workers collecting materials from rubble stockpiles without provocation. Israel maintains a 67-km2 "no-go zone" in this agricultural area, regularly shooting Palestinians who enter, including farmers on their own land.

The PCHR called the attacks "part of a series of Israeli war crimes that reflect Israel's disregard for the lives of Palestinians."

On 2 August, a massive explosion rocked Gaza's Deir Al-Balah Refugee Camp, injuring 58, including 13 children and nine women, one suffering a miscarriage as a result of the blast. It also destroyed seven houses and damaged 30 others. The Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, issued a statement on 3 August, which confirmed "that what happened resulted from a Zionist security operation intended to assassinate field leaders" from the Brigades.

Eyewitnesses said bombs placed in a house belonging to senior Hamas official Alaa Al-Danaf had exploded, contradicting initial reports that Israeli missile strikes had caused the blast in which Al-Danaf himself was unhurt. The PCHR also launched a "serious and comprehensive investigation" in order to determine what had taken place at Deir Al-Balah, with Israeli involvement being suspected as days of air strikes had preceded the blast.

On 4 August, in part of a series of daily attacks, an Israeli air strike killed one Palestinian and wounded another east of Khan Younis, reminding residents of Operation Cast Lead as they again saw the dead and wounded all about them, together with the destruction caused by the attacks, all part of Israel's traumatisation campaign.

Before the latest attacks, Haaretz reported rockets having been fired at Israel's southern port city of Eilat. No casualties were reported. Another rocket struck Aqaba in Jordan, killing one civilian and wounding four others. Israel blamed Hamas, but Jordanian security forces claimed that the rocket had come from the Sinai in Egypt, or southern Jordan, and not Gaza. Hamas strongly denied any involvement.

Since Operation Cast Lead ended in January 2009, Hamas has maintained a unilateral ceasefire even as Israel has repeatedly violated it, with its air and ground attacks being countered by Palestinian resistance factions unaffiliated with Hamas firing one or more Grad-type rockets and hitting an area around Ashkelon in Israel. No deaths or injuries have been reported.

On 1 August, the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO, condemned the Israeli attacks, warned of the risk of a new escalation, and asked the international community to intervene "to ensure that civilians and their property are protected in the occupied Palestinian territories."

Among the regular incursions and repression carried out by Israel on the West Bank, the PCHR has reported that Israel has continued to impose restrictions on free movement throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including access to the city. Currently, 630 permanently manned and unmanned checkpoints are maintained, with 60-80 "flying" (temporary) ones being erected each week.

Moreover, the construction of the annexation wall continues, nearly all of it on confiscated Palestinian land, or around 12 per cent of the West Bank when completed. At least 65 per cent of the roads leading to 18 Palestinian communities are closed or fully controlled by Israeli forces, and around 500km of roads are restricted. One third or more of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is inaccessible to Palestinians without hard-to-get permits.

Peaceful demonstrators are regularly assaulted, arrested, and at times killed. Over the course of one week, Israeli forces conducted 25 incursions into West Bank communities and five others in Gaza.

The West Bank incursions included entry into the village of Al-Mazraa Al-Gharbiya near Ramallah, the village of Anata near Jerusalem, the village of Jayous near Qalqilya. the Al-Fawar Refugee Camp near Hebron, the villages of Allar and Baqa Al-Sharqiya near Tulkarm, the villages of Dura, Ethna, Bani Naim, Sair, Nouba and Beit Oula near Hebron, the town of Salfit, the village of Al-Shawawra near Bethlehem, the village of Al-Zawia near Salfit, the villages of Anabta and Kufor Al-Labad near Tulkarm, the city of Tulkarm, the city of Qalqilya, the suburb of Shwaika near Tulkarm, and the villages of Jalbourn and Deir Abu Daif near Jenin.

On 5 August, the Al-Frahen area near Khan Younis in central Gaza was attacked with bulldozers and tanks, which fired on farmers and other civilians. No injuries were reported.

In all of these incursions excessive force was used. Streets were patrolled, homes invaded and searched and their contents damaged or destroyed, arrests made, and civilians shot. One death was reported, together with reports of other civilians being injured. Such events happen regularly throughout the occupied territories in violation of international law, which Israel has neither recognised nor obeyed for over six decades, targeting the people it is supposed to safeguard.

For these reasons the PCHR and other human rights organisations want the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfil "their legal and moral responsibility [to] ensure Israel's respect for the Convention in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, [and to] take effective steps" to demand compliance.

This must happen with or without the High Contracting Parties' support as pressure builds, but it will happen neither easily nor quickly.

* The writer is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalisation.