Ireland

Palestine
Solidarity
Campaign

GAZA

A BACKGROUND TO THE CONFLICT

The world was shocked by the

brutality of the Israeli attack
on Gaza at the beginning of
2009.
For three weeks, one of the most densely
populated urban areas to be found anywhere on
the planet was bombarded with rockets, missiles,
artillery shells and white phosphorus. Tanks
and armed personal carriers ploughed their way
through residential areas. Schools and hospitals
were attacked.
Women and
children came
under fire while
sheltering in
UN buildings.
By the time
Israel began
withdrawing
its troops from
Gaza, over
1,300 people
were dead the vast majority of them civilians.
Israeli newspapers and human rights agencies
have collected testimony from soldiers who took
part in the operation, confirming that civilians
were deliberately targeted as a matter of course.

terrorism and recognise Israels right to exist,

and proceeded to seize power in Gaza, using
the territory as a base to launch rocket attacks
on Israeli towns. The actions taken by Israel in
response were a tragic necessity: while the Israeli
government deplored the loss of innocent lives,
Hamas makes such casualties inevitable by using
Palestinian civilians as human shields.
This narrative has often been accepted even by
those who have protested against the behaviour
of the Israeli army: when they charge Israel with
disproportionate use of force, they implicitly

GAZA

To justify the attack on Gaza, the Israeli

government put forward a simple narrative,
which goes as follows. In 2005, Israel took a bold
and courageous decision to withdraw its troops
and settlers from the Gaza Strip. It hoped that by
doing so, it would begin a process leading to the
formation of an independent Palestinian state in
Gaza and the West Bank, co-existing peacefully
with the Israeli people. If things went according
to plan, the Gaza pull-out would be followed
by more Israeli withdrawals from Palestinian
territory.
But Israels generosity was not reciprocated. The
Palestinian people voted for a fanatical terrorist
organisation, Hamas, bent on destroying Israel.
Hamas ignored the reasonable demands of
the international community that it renounce

accept that its actions are a response to

Palestinian misdeeds. In fact, the Israeli version of
events is pure fiction.
Israel never granted real autonomy to the people
of Gaza. It never had any intention of following
the much-trumpeted Gaza withdrawal with similar
moves to vacate the West Bank. The demands
made of the Hamas-led government by Israel
and its allies were outrageously one-sided and
unjust. Violence directed against Gazan civilians
from inside Israel has been vastly greater than
the violence directed against Israeli civilians from
inside Gaza.

This document will provide

an accurate version of events
since 2005 and describe the
path that led to the Gaza
massacre last year.

Contents: 1. The Withdrawal Plan

2. The Victory of Hamas
3. The Three Conditions
4. The Prisoners Document and
the Mecca Agreement
5. Washingtons Attempted Coup
6. The War on Gaza
7. Conclusion

A BACKGROUND TO THE CONFLICT

Gaza : Background to the Conflict

1) THE WITHDRAWAL PLAN

Ariel Sharon, then-Israeli prime minister,

first announced the plan for withdrawal

from Gaza in February 2004. As he later
explained, the plan was launched at a
time when Israels main backer, the United
States, was under pressure from its allies
to secure progress in the never-ending
peace process between Israel and the
Palestinians:
I didnt think it would be possible to
continue the current situation the way it is.
This would have brought heavy pressure
on Israel to come up with solutions, and
there were all kinds of suggestions for
various solutions. I dont think the US,
dealing with all its problems, would be
able to stand there all the time and prevent
the presentation of plans that could be
dangerous to Israel.1

The US problems to which Sharon

referred are well known at the beginning
of 2004, Iraq was becoming increasingly
violent and unstable, with the US-led
occupation forces struggling to maintain
control. The Bush administration was
still contemplating an invasion of Iran to
overthrow its government. In that context,
European and Arab states that Washington
needed to keep on-side were demanding
that Israel be required to make serious
concessions. Sharons announcement
that he intended to withdraw troops and
settlements from Gaza was a godsend to
the US government.
The news that Sharon once the most
hard-line supporter of Zionist settlers in the
occupied territories was now proposing
to dismantle Israeli colonies spread quickly
around the world. The former general
was acclaimed as a daring peace-maker.
No Israeli politician symbolised violent

extremism better than Sharon: he was

responsible for the invasion of Lebanon
in 1982, during which his Lebanese allies
massacred 3,000 Palestinian civilians with
the complicity of the Israeli army; he was
completely opposed to the Oslo Agreement
signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat;
and he led the provocative march on the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem that provoked
the beginning of the second Palestinian
intifada in September 2000.
Amidst the hype, few stopped to examine
the details of the withdrawal plan, or to ask
whether it was really intended to be
the first step towards the creation of an
independent Palestinian state. Sharons
chief advisor Dov Weisglass left the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz in no doubt about his
leaders true intentions:
The disengagement is actually
formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of
formaldehyde thats necessary so that
there will not be a political process with
the Palestinians that is the significance
of what we did. The significance is the
freezing of the political process. And
when you freeze that process you prevent
the establishment of a Palestinian state
and you prevent a discussion about the
refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.
Effectively, this whole package that is
called the Palestinian state, with all that it
entails, has been removed from our agenda
indefinitely. And all this with authority and
permission. All with a [US] presidential
blessing and the ratification of both houses
of Congress.2
It would be hard to make it any clearer
than that: the main purpose of the Gaza
pull-out was to make any withdrawal from
territory in the West Bank unnecessary.
This was spelled out explicitly when Israel

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published its Gaza Disengagement Plan:
In any future permanent status
arrangement [with the Palestinians], there
will be no Israeli towns and villages in the
Gaza Strip. On the other hand, it is clear
that in the West Bank, there are areas
which will be part of the state of Israel,
including major Israeli population centres,
cities, towns and villages, security areas
and other places of special interest to
Israel.3
In other words, the text of the
Disengagement Plan itself openly declared
Israels intention to confiscate territory
acquired by force in 1967, thus making a
viable Palestinian state impossible (if the
main Israeli population centres in the West
Bank were annexed to Israel proper, along
with the road networks that connect them,
the security areas that protect them, and
other places of special interest to Israel,
any notional Palestinian state would be
granted four or five isolated fragments of

territory, covering barely half the land of

the West Bank and completely dependent
on Israeli good will to survive).
So far as Gaza was concerned, the
Disengagement Plan held little promise.
Decades of Israeli occupation had
systematically de-developed Gazas
economy. Unemployment stood at
3540% in 2005, with 6575% of the
population living below the official poverty
line. Having been administered as an
Israeli colony since 1967, Gaza did not
have the basic means for independent
development. Despite this, the text of the
Israeli plan claimed that the process of
disengagement will serve to dispel claims
regarding Israels responsibility for the
Palestinians in Gaza.4
Nor was there any prospect of a genuine
Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, granting full
independence to the territory. As academic
Sara Roy explained in 2005:

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Gaza : Background to the Conflict

The Plan gives Israel exclusive authority
over Gazas airspace and territorial waters,
which translates into full control over the
movement of people and goods into and
out of the Strip. Israel will also continue,
for full price, to supply electricity, water,
gas and petrol to the Palestinians, in
accordance with current arrangements.
Israel will also continue to collect customs
duties on behalf of the Palestinian
Authority and the Israeli shekel will remain
the local currency. Further, the Israeli
government is building a new terminal at
the point where Gaza, Israel and Egypt
meet that would require Palestinian labour
and goods to go through Israeli territory.
Israels Interior Ministry retains full control
over the issuing of Palestinian identify
cards and all population data births,
deaths, marriages and all Palestinians
must continue to be registered with the
ministry.5
The phony character of Gazas
independence was confirmed by
agreements on the movement of goods
and people into the territory, negotiated
between the Israeli government and the
Palestinian Authority after the muchtrumpeted withdrawal in the summer of
2005. Under the terms of the agreement,
all vehicles carrying goods had to enter
the Strip through checkpoints controlled
by Israel. People could enter through
the Egyptian-controlled checkpoint at
Rafah, but the PA will notify the GoI
[Government of Israel] 48 hours in
advance of the crossing of a person in the
excepted categories diplomats, foreign
investors, foreign representatives of
recognised international organisations and

humanitarian cases. The GoI will respond

within 24 hours with any objections.6
In November 2005 Nigel Roberts, the
World Bank representative in the occupied
territories, described the Israeli restrictions
imposed on the movement of goods
between Gaza and the West Bank: Before
the Intifada broke out [in 2000] some
225 trucks a day passed through these
crossings, compared to only 35 a day in the
six months prior to the disengagement.
Since the disengagement, however, the
situation has deteriorated even further,
and over the last two months, only about
a dozen trucks per day have been allowed
into Israel.7
It is hard to see what the Palestinians
had to feel grateful for at the end of
2005. Israel had confirmed its intention
to annex large parts of the West Bank,
destroying any basis for real Palestinian
independence. Its withdrawal from Gaza
was a means towards achieving this goal.
The people of Gaza remained under tight
Israeli control, with Israel using its power
to choke economic life in the Strip, already
withered by a long colonial occupation.
PA president Mahmoud Abbas stated the
obvious truth soon after the pull-out: The
Strip is one large prison, and the armys
departure does not change this situation.8
Yet Ariel Sharon was hailed in the outside
world for his supposed efforts to bring
about peace, and the United States no
longer had any intention of pressuring
Israel to make further moves.

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2) THE VICTORY OF HAMAS

Having accepted this imaginary account

of the Israeli disengagement from Gaza,

and turned a blind eye to reality, the
international community was thus shocked
by the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian
legislative elections of 2006. Hamas
received 43% of the vote, compared
with 40% for Fatah, and won an absolute
majority of seats. Nobody had predicted
that Hamas would win an outright victory,
including the party itself. But it was
always to be expected that Hamas would
emerge from the elections in a much
stronger position than before, as a real
challenger to Fatah for the leadership of
the Palestinian national movement.
Two years previously, the Israeli armys
chief of staff had warned that his own
governments conduct was radicalising the
Palestinians. His briefing was reported in
October 2003 by the Washington Post:
Israels senior military commander told
columnists for three leading newspapers
this week that Israels military tactics
against the Palestinian population were
too repressive and were fomenting
explosive levels of hatred and terrorism
that might become impossible to control
[Moshe] Yaalon also said he believed
the Israeli government contributed to the
failure of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian
prime minister because it was too stingy
and was unwilling to make concessions to
bolster his authority. 9
Yaalon had a reputation as a hard-liner,
but even he could see that Ariel Sharons
policy was bound to increase support for
Hamas. The appointment of Mahmoud
Abbas as Palestinian prime minister in
2003 was meant to create an opportunity

for peace negotiations to move forward.

Yet Sharon did everything in his power to
undermine the new prime minister. When
Abbas brokered a unilateral Palestinian
ceasefire in June 2003 that was supported
by Hamas, the Israeli government
announced that it would continue to target
and kill members of Palestinian groups
(these targeted assassinations usually
kill civilians along with the main target).
Sharon also insisted that it would not be
enough for Abbas to achieve a ceasefire:
before negotiations could go ahead, he
would have to dismantle the terrorist
infrastructure, in other words declare war
on Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
The Israeli army soon managed to provoke
the end of the ceasefire by assassinating
Palestinian leaders and sparking a new
outbreak of violence 10.
Ariel Sharon can hardly have been
unaware of the fact that his policies were
strengthening Hamas and undermining the
position of Fatah. As the Lebanese writer
Gilbert Achcar argued, this was most likely
Sharons intention:
He needed to emphasise the weakness
and unreliability of the PA by fanning the
expansion of the Islamic fundamentalist
movement, knowing that the latter
was anathema to Western states. Thus
every time there was some kind of truce,
negotiated by the PA with the Islamic
organisations, Sharons government would
resort to an extra-judicial execution
in plain language, an assassination in
order to provoke these organisations into
retaliation by the means they specialised
in: suicide attacks, their F-16s as they say.
This had the double advantage of stressing
the PAs inability to control the Palestinian
population, and enhancing Sharons own

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popularity in Israel. The truth of the matter
is that the electoral victory [of Hamas] is
the outcome that Sharons strategy was
very obviously seeking. 11

What this victory for Hamas

represents is the final rupture
of the Palestinians faith in
the international community.
We no longer believe that the
Americans or the Europeans
ultimately can be counted on
to do the right thing by us. We
know that we must rely on
ourselves now.
Palestinian refugee leader

Sharons government intended to keep

much of the West Bank under direct Israeli
control. He understood perfectly well
that no Palestinian leadership, however
moderate, could accept this as the basis
for a peace settlement. Any serious
negotiations would have exposed the
Israeli position as the main obstacle to
peace. Much better, then,
to undermine Fatah and
fuel the growth of Hamas.
Sharon may not have
expected that his strategy
would be so successful
that Hamas would actually
over-take Fatah.

western powers towards Israel. The Fatah

leadership had based its strategy on the
hope that Washington would apply enough
pressure on Israel that it would have to
withdraw from the occupied territories. In
order to facilitate this, Fatah did everything
that it was asked to do in order to prove
its willingness to co-exist peacefully with
the Israeli people. But no matter how hard
Fatah tried to prove its moderation and
responsibility, the pressure on Israel was
never forthcoming. The Bush administration
carried US backing for Israel to new heights,
even referring to Sharon as a man of
peace while his troops bulldozed their way
through Palestinian homes.
The victory of Hamas showed that
Palestinians had grown tired of this
hypocrisy. As a Palestinian leader in a
Lebanese refugee camp put it:
What this victory for Hamas represents is
the final rupture of the Palestinians faith
in the international community. We no
longer believe that the Americans or the
Europeans ultimately can be counted on to
do the right thing by us. We know that we
must rely on ourselves now. 12

Along with the impetus

of Sharons extremism,
the dramatic rise in
support for Hamas had
been fuelled by the
overwhelming bias of the
United States and other

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3) THE THREE CONDITIONS

This was not a message that the

international community wanted to hear.

The Hamas victory should have been a
tremendous wake-up call for the United
States and the European Union. They
had refused to compensate for the vast
imbalance of power between the two
sides by applying real pressure on Israel to
end the occupation. As a direct result, the
moderate camp in Palestinian politics had
been overtaken by the extremists. If they
now wanted Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas
to recover their dominant position, they
would have to change course and end their
complicity with the denial of Palestinian
rights. But neither the US nor the EU had
any intention of changing course. Instead,
they threw their weight behind the three
conditions imposed by Israel before
it would recognise the new Hamas-led
Palestinian government:
1. Hamas must recognise the state of
Israel
2. Hamas must renounce violence
3. Hamas must pledge to abide by
existing peace agreements
The three conditions rank among
the most brazen example of double
standards in recent international politics.
To understand why, we need to remind
ourselves of the basic facts. When
politicians and journalists refer to the
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas
or the Palestinian prime minister Ismail
Haniyeh, it is easy to forget that the
Palestinian Authority has none of the
powers of a sovereign state. There is not
a single inch of the Gaza Strip or the West
Bank that can be considered independent:
both territories remain under Israeli
occupation, with all that goes with it. As we

have seen, Sharons disengagement plan did

not change this reality one iota.
The Israeli occupation is maintained by
violence. Without the threat of force,
no Palestinian would endure the daily
humiliations of Israeli rule: no farmer would
allow soldiers to confiscate his land and
uproot his olive trees if he did not fear
being shot at the first sign of defiance.
The Israeli army has killed thousands of
Palestinians since the beginning of the
second intifada. Lethal force has routinely
been used against unarmed demonstrators.
In the first weeks of the intifada, Israeli
soldiers fired live ammunition into crowds
of stone-throwing youths. Even foreign
solidarity activists have been killed while
engaging in non-violent civil disobedience:
Israel is one of the few states that is able to
kill citizens of the US and the UK without a

You cannot celebrate the deeds of

George Washington, Charles De Gaulle
or Michael Collins, yet tell Palestinians
that they must follow the example of
Mahatma Gandhi.
murmur of complaint from Washington or
London.
By every historical precedent, a people
living under occupation has the right to take
up
arms a right that is also upheld by
international law. The United States won
its independence through a campaign of
armed resistance to British rule. Many of
the current member-states of the EU gave
birth to violent insurrectionary movements
against German occupation during the
Second World War. Ireland, of course,

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fought a guerrilla war against the British
army between 1919 and 1921. If these
nations had the right to use force against
the occupying power, then so do the
Palestinians. You cannot celebrate the
deeds of George Washington, Charles
De Gaulle or Michael Collins, yet tell
Palestinians that they must follow the
example of Mahatma Gandhi.

The Israeli government has deliberately

conflated violence and terrorism,
using the terms as if they were
synonymous. This deceptive use of
language has generally been copied by
the US and the EU. If the word terrorism
has any objective meaning, it must refer
to violence against civilians and civilian
infrastructure. It would be perfectly
legitimate to argue that Palestinian groups
should not engage in such attacks as
long as the same demand was made of
Israel, which has been responsible for
much greater violence against civilians.
But to demand that Palestinians living
under a violent occupation must
renounce their right to armed resistance
even if that resistance is directed solely

We say: let Israel recognise the

legitimate rights of the Palestinians
first and then we will have a position
regarding this. Which Israel should we
recognise? The Israel of 1917; the Israel
of 1936; the Israel of 1948; the Israel
of 1956; or the Israel of 1967? Which
borders and which Israel? Israel has to
recognise first the Palestinian state and
its borders and then we will know what
we are talking about.
Ismail Haniyeh,
Hamas prime minister
10

against military targets is outrageous.

The demand that Hamas must
recognise the state of Israel was equally
unacceptable. Israel has been denying
the right of the Palestinian state to
exist in practice, not in theory for
decades. As long as it maintains its grip
on the occupied territories, there will
be no Palestinian state. It is grotesque
to demand that Palestinians must give
unconditional recognition to a state which
has never acknowledged their own right
to self-determination. This is compounded
by the fact that Israel has never defined
its own borders, and has stated its
intention to annex large parts of the
occupied Palestinian territories. The Israeli
political elite would certainly interpret the
recognition of Israels right to exist as
legitimising past and future confiscations
of territory. The leadership of the PLO had
already granted a one-sided recognition
to Israel when it signed the Oslo peace
accords in the 1990s. The failure of those
accords was one of the main reasons why
Fatah had been over-taken by Hamas:
now its leaders were being ordered to
make the same mistake all over again, as if
they were unaware of what had happened
before.
The new Hamas prime minister Ismail
Haniyeh had these points in mind when
he gave his view of the three conditions to
a western journalist:
We are surprised that such conditions
are imposed on us. Why dont they direct
such conditions and questions to Israel?
Has Israel respected agreements? Israel
has by-passed practically all agreements.
We say: let Israel recognise the legitimate
rights of the Palestinians first and then
we will have a position regarding this.
Which Israel should we recognise? The

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Israel of 1917; the Israel of 1936; the

Israel of 1948; the Israel of 1956; or the
Israel of 1967? Which borders and which
Israel? Israel has to recognise first the
Palestinian state and its borders and then
we will know what we are talking about.
13

Haniyehs key point was absolutely

correct: the responsibility must lie
with Israel, as the occupying power,
to make the first moves, declaring its
intention to withdraw from the whole
of the West Bank and Gaza. As long as
Israel is unwilling to do so, pressure on
the Palestinian leadership to make farreaching concessions before serious
negotiations have even begun is
senseless and irresponsible.
Israel and its supporters have repeatedly
charged Hamas with genocidal intentions
towards the Israeli Jewish people,
referring to antisemitic passages in its
1988 Charter and threats to drive Israel

into the sea. It would be considered

reasonable for the Israeli government to
insist that Hamas should express its own
willingness to co-exist peacefully with
Israeli Jews if there is a just settlement
of the conflict which respects Palestinian
rights. But the three conditions go
much further than this, and can only be
described as a demand for unconditional
surrender in advance of any peace talks.
The Hamas leadership has in fact offered
to sign a long-term truce with Israel if
there is a full withdrawal to the 1967
border. This position was first articulated
by the partys spiritual leader Sheikh
Yassin before he was killed by the Israeli
army in 2004. It has since been repeated
by the most prominent surviving member
of the Hamas leadership, Khaled Meshal
14
. Israel has not responded to this offer
and tested its sincerity, as it would mean
the end of the colonisation project in the
West Bank.

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4)

THE PRISONERS DOCUMENT AND THE

MECCA AGREEMENT
Secure in the knowledge that Washington

and Brussels supported the three conditions,

the Israeli government began to squeeze
the Palestinian people. As Sharons advisor
Dov Weisglass said, the goal was to put
the Palestinians on a diet the Palestinians
will get a lot thinner, but wont die 15. This
diet included a freeze on the transfer
of Palestinian tax and customs revenue
collected by Israel. As the Israeli journalist
Amira Hass wrote:
These tax receipts are not donations of
good-will from Israel; they are not charity.
This is not like, say, Dutch foreign aid money,
which is given freely by the Dutch people
and can be withheld if the Dutch choose to
stop giving it. These are tax revenues that
are due to the people in the territories where
the goods are headed, and the Israelis have
no right to hold them up. Since 1994, these
revenues, transferred each month from the
Israeli ministry of finance, have made up a
critical portion of the Palestinian Authority
budget. 16

Far from protesting against these punitive

measures, the US and the EU followed
Israels example by drastically reducing
financial assistance to the PA, on which it
was heavily dependent. Israel also moved
to sabotage the functioning of the new
government by kidnapping dozens of newlyelected Hamas MPs at gun-point and holding
them hostage: a direct attack on Palestinian
democracy that did not face any sanction
either.
The US government put Mahmoud Abbas
under intense pressure to dismiss the
Hamas-led government and call new
elections (which he was legally able to do

12

as PA president). Bushs secretary of state

Condoleeza Rice travelled to Ramallah in
October 2006 and ordered President Abbas
to sack Prime Minister Haniyehs cabinet
within two months. When he failed to
comply, a US official was dispatched with the
following message:
Hamas should be given a clear choice,
with a clear deadline they either
accept a new government that meets the
Quartet principles [the three conditions
for recognition], or they reject it. The
consequences of Hamas decision should also
be clear: if Hamas does not agree within the
prescribed time, you should make clear your
intention to declare a state of emergency
and form an emergency government
explicitly committed to that platform. 17
This was a new variation of Ariel Sharons
demand that Abbas must initiate a civil
war. In defiance of these outside efforts to
provoke conflict among Palestinians, steps
were being taken to bring the two parties
closer together. A group of Palestinian
prisoners held in Israeli jails, worried by the
danger of clashes between Hamas and Fatah,
drafted a National Conciliation Document
which was published in June 2006. It was
signed by senior members of Hamas, Fatah
and other left-wing and Islamist groups,
including the most senior imprisoned Fatah
leader, Marwan Barghouti.
The document called for the formation of a
national unity government. It insisted that
the Palestinian democratic experience
should be protected and any democratic
choice and its results respected. The
prisoners agreed to denounce all forms of
division that could lead to internal strife;
to condemn the use of weapons in settling

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internal disputes and to ban the use of
weapons among the people; to stress the
sanctity of Palestinian blood and to adhere
to dialogue as the sole means of resolving
disagreements, and upheld the right to
peaceful protest and to organise marches,
demonstrations and sit-ins on condition
that they be peaceful and unarmed.
The National Conciliation Document had
a strong orientation towards internal
Palestinian politics, but it affirmed the
right of the Palestinian people to engage
in armed resistance to the occupation,
and contained a significant passage on
negotiations with Israel. These would fall
under the authority of the Palestinian
Authority president, on condition that
any agreement must be submitted to the
Palestinian National Council or a popular
referendum for approval. 18
This agreement between prisoners was
followed by intensive work to form a
national unity government that would
include both Hamas and Fatah. Saudi Arabia
brokered talks in February 2007 that led
to the Mecca Agreement between the two
parties. Again, the focus was very much
on internal matters, with the Agreement
proclaiming the need to take all measures
and arrangements to prevent the shedding
of Palestinian blood and to stress the
importance of national unity. The highlyrespected International Crisis Group urged
Western and Arab governments to welcome
the Agreement:
Maintaining sanctions and shunning a
government expected to comprise some
of the most pragmatic Palestinians would
not bring the international community any
closer to its goals. It would strengthen hardliners in Hamas, discredit Fatah further and
risk provoking greater Israeli-Palestinian
violence. The main objective, of course,
is to revive the peace process and move

towards a two-state solution. Critics of the

Mecca Agreement and the national unity
government, chiefly the US and Israel, call
it an impediment to progress an odd
characterisation considering there was
no peace process before Hamas won the
elections and no peace process before Fatah
agreed to join its government. It is also
wrong. Mecca is a prerequisite for a peace
process not an obstacle to it. 19

Critics of the Mecca Agreement and the

national unity government, chiefly the US and
Israel, call it an impediment to progress an
odd characterisation considering there was no
peace process before Hamas won the elections
and no peace process before Fatah agreed to
join its government. It is also wrong. Mecca is a
prerequisite for a peace process not an obstacle
to it. International Crisis Group
Others were not so keen. Ayman alZawahiri, the ideologue of Al-Qaeda,
denounced Hamas as traitors for signing
the Mecca Agreement: Hamas went to
a picnic with the US Satan and his Saudi
agent the leadership of the Hamas
government has committed an aggression
against the rights of the Islamic nation. 20
The Israeli government also condemned the
Agreement, noting that it did not accept
the three conditions. In typically Orwellian
fashion, it denounced any proposal to
recognise the national unity government as
a grave setback for prospects of peace, and
a betrayal of the genuine moderates, on
both sides of the conflict, who truly believe
in a two-state solution to the conflict and
seek to make it a reality21. Mahmoud
Abbas now found himself excluded from
the ranks of genuine moderates by the
Israeli government, providing further proof
that the only way to win recognition as a
moderate by Israel was to accept the
occupation and help to enforce it.

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5) WASHINGTONS ATTEMPTED COUP

Crucially, the Bush administration agreed

with the Israeli view, and redoubled its
efforts to provoke violent clashes between
Fatah and Hamas. In public, US officials
asked the Saudi government to show that
the Mecca Agreement would satisfy the
three conditions. Behind the scenes, the
Bush administration tried to organise a coup
against Hamas.
Washington had formed a close relationship
with Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah leader
who was the head of the Preventive Security
Force, one of several police and intelligence
agencies under the control of the Palestinian
Authority. The Preventive Security Force
had been repeatedly accused of human
rights abuses and the torture of Palestinian
detainees. In November 2006, Bush sent
Lieutenant General Keith Dayton to meet
with the Fatah leader in Jerusalem and
Ramallah. According to leaked notes of the
meeting, he told Dahlan that we need to
reform the Palestinian security apparatus
[and] we also need to build up your forces in
order to take on Hamas 22.
Dayton promised to send $86 million in
military assistance to Dahlans forces, money

14

that (according to a US document) would

be used to dismantle the infrastructure
of terrorism and establish law and order
in the West Bank and Gaza 23 . Since the
entire Hamas party including its political
leaders and social services is considered to
be part of the infrastructure of terrorism
by Washington, this sounded very like a
blueprint for a coup that would destroy
Hamas. This was openly referred to as the
Algerian strategy, in reference to the
military coup in Algeria that prevented the
Islamist FIS party from taking power after
winning free elections. The Algerian coup
was followed by a bloody civil war that
claimed tens of thousands of lives.
There was sporadic violence between men
under Mohammed Dahlans command and
Hamas supporters in the period leading up
to the signing of the Mecca Agreement, with
many killed or injured, which added to the
urgency of reaching consensus between
Fatah and Hamas leaders. When the
agreement was signed, members of both
groups celebrated together on the streets
of Gaza. But Washington was determined
to sabotage the unity government, and
began drawing up a document known as
Plan B which called for the formation
of an alternative Palestinian government
that would accept the three conditions.
According to one draft of Plan B, the central
goal was to overturn the result of the
Palestinian legislative elections: the desired
outcome would be to give Mahmoud Abbas
the capability to take the required strategic
political decisions such as dismissing the
cabinet, establishing an emergency cabinet
24
.
It is remarkable that the US government
considered itself entitled to demand the
removal from office of a unity cabinet that
had been agreed by parties supported by

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Gaza : Background to the Conflict

83% of Palestinian voters. Certainly, there
would be outrage if the United States drew
up a similar plan to remove an elected
Israeli government from power and replace
it with an emergency cabinet. The plan
also called for increased funding and other
assistance to military forces that would be
used against Hamas. One version of Plan
B was leaked to a Jordanian newspaper
in April and published. It soured relations
between Hamas and Fatah again and there
was a new outbreak of violence. The clashes
spiralled until June 2007, when Hamas
seized control of the Gaza Strip by force
and ousted Fatah. In response, Mahmoud
Abbas dismissed Hamas from the Palestinian
government and took exclusive power in the
West Bank.

that Fatah is a large movement with many

schools inside it. Dahlans school is funded
by the Americans there was no overall
Fatah decision to confront Hamas, and thats
why our guns in al-Aqsa are the cleanest.
They are not corrupted by the blood of our
people 26.

The conflict between Fatah and Hamas has

been a tragedy for the Palestinian people.
Both parties have killed or imprisoned
members of the other group and the
separation between Gaza and the West
Bank has been intensified. Internal divisions
have compromised the unity that is needed
if the occupation of Palestinian land is to be
challenged effectively. Both Gaza and the
West Bank remain under tight Israeli control.

Palestinians not aligned to Hamas or Fatah

have reproached both groups for their
conduct since 2006. Whatever may be
said in criticism of either party, there is
little doubt that it was the intervention
of the US government that pushed them
into conflict. The National Conciliation
Document and the Mecca Agreement
were a solid foundation for unity of the
Palestinian national movement. The United
States worked tirelessly to sabotage that
unity. David Wurmser, a neo-conservative
ideologue who was Dick Cheneys chief
Middle East advisor, resigned in disgust
with his governments policy a month after
the Hamas takeover in Gaza: It looks to
me that what happened wasnt so much a
coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by
Fatah that was pre-empted before it could
happen 27. There would surely have been
no attempted coup to pre-empt had it not
been for Washingtons interference.

Hamas has insisted that it never intended

to seize power in Gaza outright. Mahmoud
Zahar, who served as foreign minister in
the Hamas-led government, blamed the US
Plan B for the outbreak of violence:
Everyone here recognises that Dahlan was
trying with American help to undermine
the results of the elections. He was the one
planning a coup. The decision was only to
get rid of the Preventive Security Service. 25

It looks to me that what happened

wasnt so much a coup by Hamas but
an attempted coup by Fatah that was
pre-empted before it could happen.
David Wurmser, advisor to Dick
Cheney

Some Fatah leaders have publicly distanced

themselves from Dahlans relationship with
Washington. Khalid Jaberi, a commander of
Fatahs al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade, has said

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Gaza : Background to the Conflict

6) THE WAR ON GAZA

Once Hamas had ousted Fatah from

Gaza, the countdown to Israels assault on

the Strip began. The Israeli government
justified the attack on Gaza by claiming that
it was necessary to protect Israeli citizens
from rocket-fire. But to accept this claim is
to show a wilful blindness to the suffering
of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the
Israeli army. As the Israeli historian Avi
Shlaim wrote while his countrys troops
were bombarding Gaza:
The figures speak for themselves. In the
three years after the withdrawal from
Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket
fire. On the other hand, in 2005-07 alone,
the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza,
including 222 children. 28
The most urgent question was not how
to prevent the firing of rockets into Israel
from Gaza it was, and remains, how to
prevent the firing of rockets and other
weapons into Gaza from Israel.

16

people complain of ear pressure. All are

stunned. Israels new method of creating
intentional sonic booms in our skies was
never used before the disengagement, so
as not to alarm or hurt the Israeli settlers
and their children. 29
This psychological pressure was combined
with a devastating economic blockade
that crippled Gazan society. As we have
seen already, Israel never allowed free
movement of goods into Gaza at any stage
after the withdrawal: even when Gaza was
under the jurisdiction of Mahmoud Abbas
and the Palestinian Authority, the supply of
food and other necessities permitted was
much lower than it had been before the
disengagement. After Hamas seized control
of Gaza, the Israeli government took the
opportunity to tighten the screws even
further.

There have been other forms of warfare

against the people of Gaza since the
disengagement. In September 2005, Israeli
air force jets began flying low over Gaza
at high speed, breaking the sound barrier
to create sonic booms. Dr Eyad El-Sarraj
described the trauma caused by the
planes:

If Israeli leaders had simply wanted to end

the firing of rockets into Israel from Gaza,
they had the opportunity to negotiate
a ceasefire with the Hamas leadership.
The Egyptian government brokered a sixmonth ceasefire in June 2008 that worked
very well if the goal was to reduce civilian
casualties on both sides of the border.
The Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism
Information Centre explained that Hamas
had stuck to its side of the agreement:

Gaza is in a state of panic, children are

restless, crying, frightened and many are
wetting their beds. Some children are
afraid to leave home and refuse to go to
school. Many are dazed, pale, insomniac
and have a poor appetite. Some pregnant
women reported colics and were admitted
to hospital with precipitated labour. Many

As of June 19th, there was a marked

reduction in the extent of attacks on the
western Negev population. The lull was
sporadically violated by rocket and mortar
shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist
organisations, in some instance in defiance
of Hamas (especially by Fatah and AlQaeda supporters). Hamas was careful

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Gaza : Background to the Conflict

White Phosphorus shells being fired into heavily populated areas in Gaza
to maintain the ceasefire between June
19th and November 4th, 20 rockets (three
of which fell inside the Gaza Strip) and 18
mortar shells (five of which fell inside the
Gaza Strip) were fired at Israel.

these days 20,000 people were unable to

receive their scheduled supply. According to
John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza,
most of the people who get food aid are
entirely dependent on it. On 18 December
UNRWA suspended all food distribution for
both emergency and regular programmes
because of the blockade. 30

This was a 98% reduction in the number of

rockets and mortars being fired from Gaza
into Israel. As a means of protecting Israeli
civilians, the ceasefire was clearly working.
In order to build on its success, the Israeli
government should have agreed to extend
the truce, and lifted the economic siege.
Instead, it launched a military raid inside
Gaza on November 4th that killed seven
members of Hamas. Immediately after the
raid, the blockade was intensified:

The majority of bakeries in Gaza were

forced to close because they had run out of
cooking gas. Water and electricity were only
available for a few hours every day. Banks
shut down because they were running out
of banknotes. Medical supplies arriving in
Gaza were completely inadequate for the
needs of the population.

The two main food providers in Gaza

are the UN Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA) and the World Food Programme
(WFP). UNRWA alone feeds approximately
750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15
trucks a day to do so. Between 5 November
and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived,
around 6% of the total needed; during the
week of 30 November it received 12 trucks,
or 11% of what was required. There were
three days in November when UNRWA ran
out of food, with the result that on each of

It was against this background that Hamas

decided not to renew its ceasefire with
Israel on December 19th and resumed
the firing of rockets. The rockets provided
the Israeli government with the pretext
it needed to launch a long-prepared
onslaught. If the goal of Israels political
leadership had been to protect its
civilians from danger, its actions would be
completely incomprehensible. If, on the
other hand, we assume that their goal was
to provoke conflict with Hamas, every step
taken appears perfectly rational.

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Gaza : Background to the Conflict

7) CONCLUSION
The atrocities committed by the Israeli

army during the attack on Gaza were clearly

documented by the Goldstone Report,
which has been endorsed by the General
Assembly of the United Nations:

1) Having reviewed a number of incidents

in which Israeli troops were alleged to
have fired on civilians, the Mission found
in every case that the Israeli armed forces
had carried out direct intentional strikes
against civilians. The report notes that
the instructions given to the Israeli armed
forces moving into Gaza provided for a low
threshold for the use of lethal fire against
the civilian population and deems the Israeli state responsible under international
law for these intentionally wrongful actions
carried out by its agents (CH.XI).

2) The Israeli army was guilty of deliberate

and wanton destruction of vital civilian
infrastructure in Gaza. This included the
destruction of Gazas only functioning flour
mill (carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population),
along with farms, residential housing,
sewage treatment plants and wells. According to the report, there was a deliberate
and systematic policy on the part of the
Israeli armed forces to target industrial sites
and water installations Israel displayed
a premeditated determination to achieve
the objective of destruction. This destruction was intensified in the final days of the
offensive when it became clear that Israeli
troops would soon be withdrawing from
Gaza (CH.XII).
3) The Israeli government claim that Hamas
used civilians as human shields, and was
thus responsible for any civilian casualties
during the offensive, cannot be accepted:
The Mission found no evidence to suggest

18

that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were
being launched or forced civilians to remain
within the vicinity of the attacks (CH.VIII).
On the other hand, it was found that Israeli troops used Palestinian men as human
shields whilst conducting house searches
(CH.XIV).

4) Given the training and command structure of the Israeli army, its possession of
highly sophisticated weaponry, its intimate
knowledge of the Gaza Strip after decades
of occupation, and its proud assertions
that errors during the operation were
minimal (according to the Israeli air force,
99% of the firing that was carried out hit
targets accurately), the Mission found the
incident and patterns of events that are
considered in this report [to] have resulted
from deliberate planning and policy decisions throughout the chain of command,
down to the standard operating procedures
and instructions given to the troops on the
ground. It notes the statement by Israeli
foreign minister Tzipi Livni in January 2009
that Israel is a country that when you
fire on its citizens it responds by going wild
and this is a good thing (CH.XVI).

5) Although the Israeli government has

maintained that the Gaza offensive was an
act of selfdefence intended to prevent the
firing of rockets at its own citizens, the
Mission considers the plan to have been
directed, at least in part, at a different
target: the people of Gaza as a whole 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 the repeated failure to
distinguish between combatants and civilians appears to the Mission to have been
the result of deliberate guidance issued to

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Gaza : Background to the Conflict

soldiers, as described by some of them, and
not the result of occasional lapses (CH.
XXX).
In the face of the overwhelming evidence
compiled by Richard Goldstones team and
many other sources, claims by the Israeli
government that its forces acted only in
self-defence and took all possible steps to
avoid civilian casualties must be dismissed
as conscious, deliberate lies intended to
deflect criticism of war crimes.
Condemnation of the Israeli state must
go further, however. Israeli actions in the
period of several years leading up to the
attack on the people of Gaza must also be
recognised as a consistent attempt to sabotage any hope for a just peace settlement
that will grant the Palestinian people their
basic democratic rights. Since Israeli troops
withdrew from Gaza in January 2009, a new
Israeli government has taken power with an
even more brazen agenda of colonisation in
the occupied territories. Benyamin Netanyahu demanded the suppression of the Goldstone Report on the grounds that it would
deliver a fatal blow to the peace process,
while dismissing mild requests from Washington to slow down the expansion of illegal
settlements 31. We could not find a clearer
statement of what peace means to the
Israeli political elite: Israel must be allowed
to do as it pleases, strengthening its grip
over the lands occupied since 1967, and the
Palestinians must end all forms of resistance
to the occupation.
It would not be possible for Israel to maintain this stance without the complicity of
western governments. The United States
backs Israel to the hilt, providing vast sums
in military and economic aid and using its
diplomatic power to block effective measures being taken at the UN to halt Israeli
defiance of international law. The European

Union signs preferential trade agreements

with Israel which commit both parties to
respect for human rights and democratic
principles 32 , yet turns a blind eye when Israeli governments are responsible for gross
violations of human rights.
This complicity must end. Pressure must
be applied on the Israeli state to end its
oppression of the Palestinian people. That
will only happen when citizens organise
themselves and pressurise their own governments to take action. Otherwise the long
cycle of violent repression and resistance in
the Middle East will continue.

Endnotes:

1. Tanya Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere (London, 2006)

p.33. 2. ibid., p.43
3, 4, 5. Sara Roy, A Dubai on the Mediterranean, London
Review of Books November 3rd 2005
6. Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere p.135
7. ibid., p.136. 8. ibid., p. 138. 9. ibid., p.73. 10. ibid. p.11-30
11. Gilbert Achcar, First Reflections on the Electoral Victory of
Hamas, International Viewpoint January 2006
12. Alastair Crooke, Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle
East, London Review of Books July 5th 2007
13. Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere p.152
14. Jeremy Bowen, Khaled Meshal interview, BBC News
February 8th 2006 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4693382.stm
15. ibid., p.155. 16. ibid., p.155
17. David Rose, The Gaza Bombshell, Vanity Fair April 2008
18. National Conciliation Document of the Palestinian
Prisoners: www.mideastweb.org/prisoners_letter.htm
19. International Crisis Group, After Mecca: Engaging Hamas,
Middle East Report February 28th 2007
20. Inal Ersan, Qaedas Zawahiri rebukes Hamas over Mecca
deal, Reuters March 11th 2007
21. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hamas-Fatah Agreement
does not meet requirements of the international community,
February 25th 2007
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27. Rose, The Gaza Bombshell
28. Avi Shlaim, How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of
humanitarian catastrophe, Guardian January 7th 2009
29. Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere p.141
30. Sara Roy, If Gaza Falls , London Review of Books January
1st 2009
31. Rory McCarthy, UN delays action on Gaza war report,
Guardian October 2nd 2009
32. Euro-Mediterranean Agreement: http://www.delisr.
ec.europa.eu/english/content/eu_and_country/asso_agree_
en.pdf

Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

19

This Report was produced by

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

January 2010

Author : Daniel Finn

Design : Garry Walsh

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign was set up in late 2001 by a group of
established Irish human rights and community activists, academics and journalists
who were deeply concerned with the current situation in the Occupied Territories. In
partnership with Palestinians now living in Ireland, the IPSC was formed to provide a voice
for Palestine in Ireland.

We are an independent, non-party political organisation, run by

volunteers all committed to a just and sustainable peace in the
Middle East.
For more information or to get involved in the campaign, please contact us at :
IPSC, Room 5, 64 Dame Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. 01-6770253. info@ipsc.ie

www.ipsc.ie