June 2, 2010
[This
is an astounding article article coming from what one would think would
be a right wing publication. It short but covers a lot of ground
in a few words.]
Israel is lost at sea
The Financial Times
With
yesterday's brazen act of piracy, Israel dealt a blow to the
legitimacy of
its own struggle. The killing of activists aboard the
captured ships sent
Israel's way of defending its security, which it
was already imperative to
return within the bounds of international law,
hurtling into
lawlessness.
Israel claims the activists had links with extremist groups
and that
some attacked Israeli soldiers with knives and sticks (and in
some
accounts the odd light firearm). Even if true, this would not
justify
the illegal capture of civilian ships carrying humanitarian aid
in
international waters, let alone the use of deadly force.
Outrageous
as this behaviour was, the true outrage is the illegal
blockade of Gaza that
it enforced. Since the January 2009 Gaza war,
which exposed Israel's
determination to destroy Hamas's
capabilities regardless of the cost to
innocent Palestinians, Israel and
Egypt have colluded to prevent the
enclave's reconstruction.
According to the United Nations, three-quarters of
the damage has not
been repaired and 60 per cent of homes do not have enough
food.
The ostensible goal is to weaken Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood
offshoot
that rules Gaza (and whose Egyptian incarnation is Hosni
Mubarak's
only real opposition ). But the blockade aimed at crushing it,
besides
the illegal collective punishment it implies, only shores up
Hamas's
support. If Israel and Egypt wanted to turn Gaza into a
mafia-run
statelet, they could hardly do better than sever any alternatives
to
Hamas's smuggling network, leaving the population even more at
its
mercy.
Hamas engages in terrorism and fires occasional rockets
into Israel, but
it is an example of that rarest of Middle Eastern species: a
popularly
elected government. It has also signed up to the 2002
comprehensive
peace offer by the Arab League and the Organisation of the
Islamic
Conference. If this is a bluff, it is one Israel has yet to call.
That
is what this is ultimately about. Israel's government has
been
pretending it is ready to negotiate for peace, but that there is no
one
to negotiate with on the other side. The attack on the
blockade-busters
lays bare the country's slide into contempt for
international law,
intolerance of dissent and wilful sabotage of viable
representation for
Palestinians.
Israel has always known the
importance of its conduct being judged legal
by the world's leading powers.
Those powers – in the body of the
Quartet and the UN Security Council – must
now make clear it has
gone too far.
**************************************
Original link from the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cab86fe0-6cde-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html
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