The Warped Mirror: The Gaza occupation

Almost exactly four years ago, the Israeli and international media were dominated by reports and commentaries about Israel's disengagement from Gaza. A CNN report described the events, stating: "On Monday [September 12, 2005], Israel withdrew its final troops from Gaza, ending 38 years of occupation."

The same report noted that "Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas toured the evacuated Jewish settlement Eli Sinai Monday, calling Israel's withdrawal a 'great moment,'"; Abbas was also quoted as saying that the Palestinians "need to look at the West Bank and end the occupation there." That sounds very much as if Abbas shared the common-sense view that the occupation of Gaza had indeed ended when the last Israeli left Gaza in the early morning hours of September 12, 2005.

Almost exactly three years after Abbas declared his desire to "end the occupation" in the West Bank, he had the chance to do so: On September 13, 2008, Ehud Olmert hosted Abbas in his home in Jerusalem "and presented him with a detailed proposal for a peace agreement."

A map that Olmert had prepared for this meeting outlined a Palestinian state covering an area equal to the pre-1967 territories controlled by Egypt and Jordan. Olmert's proposals included 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with another 5.8 percent added through land swaps that would allow Israel to keep the main settlement blocs - Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion - in exchange for lands in the southern Hebron Hills, the Judean Hills and the Beit She'an Valley. In addition, Olmert offered a "safe passage" corridor from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

The question of Jerusalem and the refugee issue were also addressed; reportedly, "Olmert proposed dividing sovereignty between the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, and leaving the Old City's 'holy basin' and its surroundings without sovereignty, under the management of an international committee with the participation of Israel, Palestine, the United States, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

With regard to the Palestinian refugees, Olmert reportedly "did not recognize the Palestinians' demand for a right of return," but nevertheless offered to allow a small number of refugees - about 3,000 people over a period of five years - to settle in Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas never bothered to let Olmert know what he thought of these proposals; eventually, he got around to rejecting them in media interviews in spring 2009.

In the meantime, of course, there had been a war in Gaza. As chance would have it, the entirely predictable UNHRC report that accused Israel of having committed "war crimes" while defending itself against the constant rocket barrage from Gaza was published almost exactly a year after Olmert had proposed to the Palestinians a state in Gaza and the West Bank without receiving any response.

Already the UNHRC resolution that provided for a "fact-finding mission" to compile this report included numerous references to "the occupying Power, Israel" and to "the occupied Gaza Strip" - as blogger Soccer Dad dryly remarked: "Apparently someone forgot to tell the UN that Israel left Gaza."

It is therefore hardly a surprise that the Goldstone report dutifully echoes the idea that Gaza is "occupied."

There is perhaps no better illustration of the self-contradictory positions that are so popular among the "Israel-is-always-in-the-wrong" crowd: There are many reasons why it is utterly disingenuous to regard Israel as occupying Gaza, but the most glaring is that anybody who wants to argue that Israel is occupying Gaza would also have to accept that the relevant international conventions require an occupying power to ensure "public order and safety" in the territory it controls. It has often been pointed out that therefore, "those who contend that Israel is in legal occupation of Gaza must also support and even demand Israeli military operations in order to disarm Palestinian terror groups and militias."

An example for such operations in recent times would be the US military campaigns in Fallujah. But of course, when Israel is not involved, it's a whole different story, and therefore there is no "Goldstone report" on Fallujah.

Many of the analyses and commentaries written in the wake of the Goldstone report on Gaza have already shown how much the report reflects the political agenda of the UNHRC, which commissioned the report and which considers Israel as the one and only human-rights violator in the world that deserves a spot on its permanent agenda.

So instead of trying to highlight yet more of the many flaws of the Goldstone report, I would like to come back to the irony that on the fourth anniversary of Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza, Goldstone tried to make the case that Gaza was still occupied. Remembering the summer of 2005 - which was a very difficult time for Israel - I also recalled all the talk about how this was a chance for the Palestinians to turn Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East. That wasn't really a new idea - it was of course what Yasser Arafat had promised when he first came to Gaza in 1994.

Interestingly, this unfulfilled promise by Arafat was also recalled in an article published in the UAE newspaper The National at the end of Israel's Gaza campaign in January 2009. Under the title "Hopeless in Gaza: it didn't have to be this way", the article pondered the opportunities that were wasted when Israel withdrew from Gaza.

It's a piece well worth reading - to be sure, the author has nothing good to say about Israel, but he spells out a few realities that are rarely acknowledged:

In 1994, Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, arrived in the Palestinian Territories for the first time in decades and declared that he would turn Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East. Fifteen years later it couldn't be more different. ...But it didn't have to be that way, if it wasn't for the fear of certain countries in the region that they would lose the Palestinian cause as a bargaining tool if the Palestinians made their peace with the devil. What would they be left with as negotiating leverage? The idea of using Palestinian youth as an outsourced army to fight the Israelis was too appealing to lose. Setting them up with firepower and turning their dials - fire at will. But it was less their will than that of certain characters who have come and gone in the Middle East. Endless blood and destruction."

One thing is for sure: The Goldstone report did nothing to discourage those who are perfectly happy to use "Palestinian youth as an outsourced army to fight the Israelis" and to see "endless blood and destruction" in the Middle East.