In recent weeks, the Israeli military shut down a series of West Bank charitable and educational organizations affiliated in one way or another with Hamas, even though the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is apparently incapable of providing these services. Last week, threats by P.A. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad caused Israel to reverse itself in one instance where it had closed an entire shopping mall in Nablus because two or three storeowners had ties to Hamas.
This week, the United Nations reported that after more than a month of cease-fire in and around Gaza, 95% of Gazan industry remained closed, as did many of the Gaza passages through which goods enter and leave the strip. Israeli monetary authorities did, however, graciously accept delivery of more than 16 million shekels worth of worn bills and coins from Hamas monetary authorities in Gaza and replaced them with new bills and coins.
These are just the most recent absurdities in the hapless economic war Israel has been waging with the Palestinians for the past 41 years. Amazingly, Israeli authorities — left and right, military and civilian — still don’t acknowledge that wielding economic carrots and sticks does not substantially affect Palestinian political behavior.
It all began with Defense Minister Moshe Dayan following the Six-Day War in 1967. He wielded carrots: Erase the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza, he believed, allow Palestinians to work in Israel and Israelis to tour and buy and sell in the territories, and economic integration will guarantee tranquility. By the time that concept blew up in our faces 20 years later with the outbreak of the first intifada, Israeli Jews were also settling and living in the territories, thereby sowing the seeds of a major security and demographic problem.
Since then, we have learned to use sticks as well. Take the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza three years ago. Israel initially agreed to proposals by Madrid Quartet envoy James Wolfensohn to open a broad network of passages through the strip’s borders with the object of linking it economically with Egypt and the West Bank. Israel threatened that if, following withdrawal and elimination of the occupation, militants in Gaza persisted in firing Qassam rockets at nearby Israeli towns and kibbutzim, it would strike back militarily.
Inevitably, the rockets came. But rather than attack militants in Gaza with great force to restore the military’s damaged deterrent profile, Israel closed the passages and initiated an economic siege of the strip. Economic hardship, it was argued, would break the back of Palestinian resistance, while a military response would cost lives and solve nothing.
The rockets still fell. Then, just over a year ago, when Hamas forcibly took over the strip, the siege of Gaza was tightened and the system perfected: Gazans would starve — or nearly so; supplies allowed in were calibrated to keep the population just above the starvation level set by U.N. nutrition standards — while a flood of international and Arab aid funds would, under the direction of Wolfensohn’s successor Tony Blair, fill the bellies of West Bankers and make their industries thrive and their fields bloom. Even the Fatah leadership in Ramallah supported the denial of basic goods and infrastructure to Gaza.
Now, once again, we confront the total failure of this economic warfare policy. Deprived Gazans never turned against their Hamas leadership, which maintained a steady barrage of rocket and mortar attacks until Israel agreed to a cease-fire last month. Better-off West Bankers have not rallied around the inept Fatah leadership; there can be no more persuasive proof than the Israeli military’s perceived need to shut down all those flourishing Hamas social institutions.
And what happened when the latest cease-fire was again jeopardized by Qassams and mortars fired from Gaza? Israel, rather than responding militarily (as of course it had threatened), again shut down the flow of goods and infrastructure into Gaza.
This is not an argument in favor of knee-jerk military retaliation for every perceived attack on Israelis launched from Gaza. Nevertheless, Israel has every right to defend itself, and a review of Israel’s responses over the past seven years reveals that the only time Israel created an effective deterrent that delivered half a year of peace and quiet was when, in Ariel Sharon’s day, it assassinated the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
This is certainly not an attempt to advocate denying Palestinians in the West Bank the opportunity to better their economic situation; that can hardly be a bad thing. Nor is this analysis motivated by the Israeli industrialists, merchants and farmers whose income has been depleted by close to $1 billion annually because they were denied their captive Gazan market.
Rather, it is a call for Israel and its supporters in its confrontation with Hamas to recognize that the substance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political and ideological, not economic, and that a solution needs to be crafted accordingly.
Integrating the Palestinian and Israeli economies between 1967 and 1987 did not prevent violence. Indeed, both intifadas, in 1987 and in 2000, broke out at times of relative Palestinian prosperity. Denying basic goods and services to Gaza has not subdued the population, changed the regime there or prevented violence; it has fortified Hamas and allowed it to rationalize violence.
It is also a major stain on Israel’s humanitarian record and that of its supporters, including the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership and the quartet of the United States, European Union, U.N. and Russia. Had this latest use of the economic stick worked, it could be justified in the spirit of “a la guerre comme a la guerre.” But it has failed.
It’s time to reopen those passages. Get Gazans back to work. If the violence and military buildup in Gaza continue, we can again try a military response, whether by reoccupying the strip or targeting Hamas leaders. Or we can for the first time try talking to Hamas. But starving Gazans is plainly counterproductive.
Yossi Alpher, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, is co-editor of the bitterlemons family of online publications.
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I take issue with Yossi Alpher's claim -- "It [Israel's blockade of Gaza] is also a major stain on Israel’s humanitarian record" WHAT HUMANITARIAN RECORD?! For as long as I can remember, Israeli governments have brutally oppressed the people of Palestine, Zionist propaganda notwithstanding.
You are totally missing the obvious. We will never surrender due to an economic blockade even if most of us starve to death. You have two options-kill every Palestinian man, woman, or child, or take every Jew from occupeid Palestine- a place that you have much less historic claim to than Las Vegas. We will never be bought with fancy toilet seats.
Mr. Alpher implies that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan's original plan of economic integration with the West Bank was the only Israeli policy that led to the intifada in 1987. But at the same time, this policy was somehow unrelated to the 20 years of tense but non-violent coexistence that proceeded it. The Forward deserves a more nuanced and better researched analysis.
no, war against pals isn't over; it's just begining. what the end 'sol'n' is for these enorm weaklings but brave people is nobody knows. however, many expect the worst for these people because EU/US strongly support israel. my own conjecture have been for yrs now that zionists r waiting an ok from US (possibly EU) to oust al pals at an propitious moment. some 5-6 bn people will not approbate the ouster. but these people r now also econo-military-diplomatically to weak to do anything ab it. thank u
How a war that hadn't been waged at all can wins? Israel shut down some Hamas affiliated Bank accounts. That isn't a war but enforcing the law. Astonishingly Yossi Alpher talks about 41 years of "hapless economic war" between Israel and the Palestinian, which no one of us knew but Yossi. Until the second Intifada most of the Palestinians worked in Israel or with ties to Israeli economy enterprises. Their monthly income grew the fastest and the highest among all Arab countries' workers. Is that meaning a war? As a matter of fact the first time Israel fought the Muslim terror of the Palestinians was in 2003. Israel shouldn't help any of the Gazan's enterprises until the Hamas is evaporating and the Palestinian hold down their terror and are free to talk peace, but this time real peace.
As far as things going (or stock) in the middle east I think that the only sane solution for the Palestinian problem is two states for two peoples, and not 3 or 4 states, as I hear people dream. The 2 states solution is The Palestinian Jordan dwelled from the Arabian Desert in the east to the Jordan River it the west, and the Palestinian Jewish state of Israel from the Jordan River in the east to the sea shore in the west. There is no any other way to divide the small historical Palestine for two peoples. Jews in both states will vote for the Knesset in Jerusalem and Arabs in both states will vote for the Parliament in Amman. This is the basic and only promised solution for the continuous conflict between Arabs and Jews. We all have to remember that Arab Palestinians want Israeli land but not the Jews who live on it! So both peoples have to be separated de iure, and keep living the de facto with minimum changes in population moving, but if the Arabs still launching their war against the Jews. If the Arabs still to wage their war that they all should be moved to Jordan and leave the wetern part of Palestine for the Jews.
Dealing with genocidal arabs requires no half-measures, and no "carrots". Having failed to expel the arabs from the "West Bank" in 1967, Israel is forever negotiating with the antisemites of the world and its own hapless leadership to respond adequately to the constant terrorist attacks on her citizens. (Yossi, the word is not "militants", it is "TERRORISTS".) After raising three generations of virulent Jew-haters, the arabs, particularly the so-called "palestinian" arabs cannot be expected to accept the Jewish state of Israel. There is nothing to negotiate with Hamas. Truces are not peace. The arab and "progressive" anti-Semite propagandists will accept nothing less than the destruction of Israel, and at this point Israel's extraordinary virtuous humanitarian record has been trashed by their virulent propaganda. Ignore the Israel-haters (including the posters above) and create new facts on the ground. But first, and foremost, bomb Iran's nuclear facilities!
Hm. But the shooting war against the Jews is still going on, isn't it?