Maybe correct the heading to "Palestine: How did things get here?"

Just to clarify: The item I mention it "might be good to headline" is the article "Gaza: Tottering on the Brink" published 24 November 2008 by A World to Win News Service and posted here on Kasame by Mike Dec. 1.

That's the most recent piece I know of on Gaza from an explicitly MLM viewpoint.

And not to keep quarreling with Mike's title (which I just suggested changing in order to correct spelling), but maybe it ought to be changed to "How Did Palestine Get to this Point?" rather than "How Did Palestine Get Here?"

After all, Palestine's been around for a long, long time. The question is how it got divided into an apartheid state of 1967-border Israel, a West Bank under pseudo-PA control dotted with Zionist settlements, and a Gaza concentration camp under Hamas now subject to a general Israeli assault.

<i>Why has Hamas apparently opted for the strategy of lobbing Qassam and Grad missiles on Israeli towns from Gaza, ineffectual though these strikes are? What is the political/military purpose?</i>

Isn't it simple desperation?

In South Africa, the whites were dependent on the blacks for their work force. In Israel, the Palestinians (especially the Palestinians in Gaza) are effectively locked out of the Israeli economy. This prevents them from using strikes.

Unlike Afganistan or Iraq, or even southern Lebanon, Gaza is also a tiny, easily blockaded stip of land. What's more, Egypt cooperates with the Israelis in the blockade. This rules out both armed resistence as well as any kind of non-violent resistence. Guerilla warfare works best when there's a large enough sea for the fish to swim in and when the guerillas have a rival great power's support. Non-violent resistence works best when the suppressed population has a distinct numerical advantage (eg India).

The propaganda around the rockets is Orwellian. War is Peace. Weakness is strength. Desperate and largely symbolic attacks from a doomed people dependent on interantional aid for survival is labeled an existential threat to the strongest military power in the Middle East. The Israelis have effectively turned Hamas into a bogeyman because Hamas is next to helpless.

To get an idea of the imbalance in power. Hamas, at best, has 20,000 militants in gaza. The NYPD has 35,000 police officers. Russia spends 40 billion dollars a year on the military. Israel spends 18 billion.

And one fat white American in a Santa suit killed more people in 5 minutes than Hamas has killed with its rockets in the last six months.

I was under the impression that Hamas was willing to do ceasefires, but that the rocket attacks (at least some of them) were by Islamic Jihad, which Hamas does not control and is not willing to confront directly as not to divide the resistance (as opposed to Fatah, which has ceased to be part of the resistance in a meaningful way).

On a different note, I wonder if the most meaningful U.S. opposition to Zionism to date has been the large-scale fraud carried out by Bernie Madoff.

This is from a pro-Zionist source, but it details the shifts and changes in the Palestinian movement as to its goals vis-a-vis the Jewish State over the past 50 years. In the array of views outlined, HAMAS holds to the one-state solution, the version of with the sole state being an Islamic one under Shar'ia law, and the ensuing liquidation of any Jewish governing entity. It is not alone in this view, and is one reason why it only wants truces, and not final peace settlements, with Israel. Anyway, perhaps this can help with some of you desire for background and analysis.

http://www.meriajournal.com/en/asp/journal/2008/september/spyer/index.asp

Or maybe the Israeli regime's intention is to take advantage of precisely these weeks of transition period Bush - Obama to press the new president to make some showup in its favor? Well, if it is so, then the pressing is until its breaking point.

Thanks Carl for (6). Some thought-provoking content there.

Future's ours,

It's interesting you brought that up. I was watching CNN or Al-Jazeera, I can't remember which one, but they drew similar conclusions. Saying that this was part of a pressure move to ensure Obama holds true on his pre-presidential promises of supporting Israel.

While the military onus must be on Israel, I think the cold reality is that there's a coalition of political interests driving this action. Throughout the conflict, there has been near lock-step political consensus among Fatah, Egypt and Israel that suggests a collusion among the interests of the three nations' ruling classes.

That three-way agreement seems to me as:
1) Israeli encirclement of Gaza from its borders and from the sea, attacking its border with Egypt as well as Gaza City, and attempt to use city as a staging ground for an incursion with the intent of forcing an armed capitulation out of Hamas.
2) Egypt will absorb some refugees, but mainly lock down its border – the desired end result being the reduction of the Palestinian population on its border, ensuring itself a buffer zone and a separate peace with Israel before any further flareup between Israel and Iran, Syria, or Lebanon.
3) Fatah for its part will attempt to recapture Gaza politically and economically, using the devastation of the area as pretext for a post-war reconstruction in which their sympathizers will both funnel outside captial and re-establish ministries with their cronies at the head.

IMHO, there are four contingencies that halt the war:
1) Israel experiences some shocking military defeat – whether through emergence of some second front, or through a Stalingrad style defeat of an incursion on Gaza.
2) The West Bank turns sharply enough on Fatah for its collusion that Abbas is driven from office.
3) Egyptian outcry against Mubarak's enabling of the invasion becomes undeniable.
4) If an international emergency of such great importance emerges that Obama is forced to intervene alongside Bush as guarantee of good faith.

<blockquote cite=""> "...what happened to the more “left” and putatively ML forces and the appeal of ML and Mao etc which was strong for a time?"

Those forces are still there and still struggling. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)were never as large as Fatah and they certainly did not have the flow of Saudi money which they refused on principal because of the Saudi alliance with American imperialism. Both of these groups broke with Arafat's desire to make a deal with American help and so the PLO was split.

I have read some accounts that the PFLP lost ground when the PA set up shop on the West bank because they didn't initially contest for parlimentary seats. There is evidentce from the relentless attacks against them by the Israelis, that they are a threat to the occupation.
Their current sec.-general is serving a life sentence and their former sec.- gen. was killed in his office in 2001 when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile into his office.

Both the communist groups were aligned with the Soviet Union although their style and slogans were heavily influenced by this era of the Vietnam war and the cultural revolution (prior to the international emphasis on opposing social imperialism).I have been impressed by my recent research into this trend and took some heat for this form Hamas backers on another list. Their political perspective and way of expressing their analysis stands in stark contrast to the crudeness and sectarian religiosity of documents like the Hamas Charter. Below is an excerpt I wrote in an ongoing polemic on another site of my contention that role of communists with the united Palestinian resistance should be acknowledged.
***
At this time of both unimaginable suffering and heroic
resistance in Gaza, unity is absolutely essential. According to press reports the force of events is working now, in the West Bank and in Beirut, to overcome division to form a united front of nationalist and Islamic forces. It is no wonder that the political sophistication of revolutionary group such as the PFLP have long called for and demonstrated the need for such a united front in all of Palestine.

At a mass rally in Gaza in August, political bureau member
Comrade Maryam Daqqa stressed that "the guns of the PFLP will always be clean and aimed only at the occupation, on the path to liberation, return, an end to the occupation, and the freedom of the prisoners." This is why the revolutionary forces in Gaza did not take part in the tragic bloodletting between Hamas and Fatah and why their example of principled unity is so important. In fact, the leadership of the PFLP worked throughout August meeting with both Fatah and Hamas trying to bring them together. In October, Comrade Sounaal-Rai was released after 12 years of harsh Israeli imprisonment and "carried a letter from the prisoners, calling upon all Palestinian parties and the resistance factions to work together." ...