'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Escalation against Gaza

The situation in Gaza (and much of the West Bank) seems to be horrendous.

This UN OCHA report for June 30 provides some figures for the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli violence across the Gaza border:

Since 26 June Palestinians have fired 20 homemade rockets towards Israel and the IAF have conducted 50 air strikes. The IDF has resumed and intensified artillery shelling since 28 June firing over 500 shells in the last two days primarily on the north and eastern borders with Israel.

The report detailed the results of just two of those 50 air strikes:

An IAF air strike on 28 June destroyed all six transformers of the only domestic power supply plant in the Gaza Strip. This plant provided 43% of Gaza’s daily electricity supply (90 of the 210 megawatts). The remaining supply is provided by the Israel Electrical Corporation (IEC).

Approximately 700,000 Gazans living in the middle governorate, and in the western and southern parts of Gaza City were initially without electricity. Currently, the Gaza Electrical Distribution Company (GEDCO) is load-sharing the remaining electricity supply from Israel among Gaza’s 1.4 million population resulting in intermittent power to households across the Gaza Strip.

GEDCO estimates that it will take more than nine months to procure replacement transformers which need to be made to order. Alternative options of procurement within Egypt are being explored. The replacement cost of the six destroyed transformers is estimated by GEDCO at US$15 million.

... Most of the 132 water wells managed by the [Coastal Municipalitiesd Water Utility] were powered through the destroyed GEDCO national electrical grid. Given the reduced electricity supply, generators are being increasingly relied upon to power water wells, threatening sufficient daily water supply to Gazan households.

During an IAF air strike on a bridge between Nuseirat camp and Moghraga in the Gaza Strip on 28 June, a water pipeline serving approximately 155,000 inhabitants of Nuseirat, Bureij, Maghazi and Suweida communities was fractured. Water supply was completely cut, but according to the CMWU, the pipeline has now been repaired.

The CMWU is concerned that they will not have the materials to repair future damages to pipe networks arising from any further Israeli military actions. They have had a number of containers with equipment, spare parts and materials at Karni crossing for over three months waiting to enter the Gaza Strip...

Laila el-Haddad blogged briefly about the situation earlier this week:

I've just spoken to my grandmother in Khan Yunis, who confirmed the entire Strip has plunged into darkness, with people stocking up on food and supplies. The electricity of course has also been cut off in hospitals and clincs, though I'm not sure how long the generators can last.

Friends in Gaza City also tell us that terrorizing sonic boom attacks have resumed, stronger than before, full force, by low-flying jets breaking the sound barrier throughout the night over the civlian population- -illegal in Israel, the united States, and most all of the world.

Much or perhaps all of the massive escalation that Israel has been mounting over recent days has to do with the fact that Palestinian militants of the Popular Resistance Committees-- including, according to some reports, some members of Hamas-- were able last Sunday to undertake a rather daring operation in which they tunneled under the Gaza-Israel border, went through the tunnel in the wee hours, surprised a slumbering Israeli tank crew, killed two of them, and were able to capture a third gunner, Corporal Gil'ad Shalit. (Two of the Palestinians were killed during the operation.)

In the West Bank, meanwhile, another group of Palestinian militants kidnaped and killed a young, male Israeli settler and murdered him.

Israel's use of massive force against the Palestinian areas (and its threat of considerable further force, plus a possibly broad ground incursion into Gaza) are designed to forcefully "persuade" the PA's government to turn Shalit back over to them. However, the groups claiming to hold Shalit have said they will release him only in return for the release of 1,000 of the Palestinian prisoners now in Israeli jails and the cessation of Israel's military campaign against Gaza.

This latest round of escalation has caused immense difficulties for all the main political leaders on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides of the line. But most, perhaps, for Israeli PM Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Have Israel's violent actions during the past week succeeded either in securing the safe release of Cpl. Shalit or, more broadly, in weakening Hamas's PA government? No.

AP's Diaa Hadid wrote this yesterday:

Israel hopes displays of military might will pressure Palestinians into turning against the Hamas-linked militants who abducted an Israeli soldier.

But the tactic could backfire — many Palestinians rallied around Hamas on Friday as Israel continued to bombard the Gaza Strip with warplanes and ground artillery.

He has some revealing quotes and vignettes to back up that conclusion (and one that shows that the rallying round Hamas is not unanimous.) Here are a couple of his vignettes:

Abu Kayed, a 50-year-old unemployed restaurant worker, tried to sell his camel to pay for food and rent. His family counts on help from Hamas-backed charities.

"Hamas is more popular now than it has ever been," said Kayed, who has six children. "I don't understand why all the world is crying out for one soldier. We Palestinians are treated like dust."

Some Gazans, however, blamed Hamas for their troubles.

"I was expecting my situation to be very good" after the Israeli withdrawal, said Ismail el-Shaikh, a 22-year-old who works in a pizza parlor. "I thought the beaches would be open. I thought I would travel, and I expected more economic projects to enter Gaza."

"That didn't happen," he added. "Hamas came instead and the situation is more difficult."

As always, then, what is important in Gaza today is not the "mere" matter of military superiority, devastating though military technology can be to the lives and wellbeing of individuals. But as always, what is important in Gaza-- as in US-occupied Iraq-- is the way all this military superiority plays out at the political level.

(Clausewitz 101.)

So far, it doesn't seem to be playing out very well for Israel-- or, in Iraq, for the United States.