Sekedar opini, tapi yang ada gunanya untuk direnungkan...
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UPDATED ON:
Thursday, January 15, 2009
11:23 Mecca time, 08:23 GMT
OPINION: WAR ON GAZA
Gaza: The endless cycle of trauma
By Sandy Tolan, Middle East analyst
Some
Palestinians still hold keys to their homes in villages that are
now part of Israel, which they were forced to leave during the Nakba that
marked the formation of Israel [GETTY]
The Israeli bombs and rockets streaking through the skies of Gaza
trace not only a path of death and terror for Palestinians in 2009,
they also outline the smoke trails of traumas past, from the Nakba, or
'catastrophe,' in 1948 to the 1967 war; from the Lebanon invasions,
to the 2002 assault on Jenin. All are echoes of today's calamity of
US-made missiles and mortars raining down on Gazans.
Watching history repeat itself is, of course, most horrifying for
the people through whose roofs the missiles are falling, whose children
are dying. For the outsider, peering in from a safe perch, it is merely
surreal.
We look on as Israel replays the tape-loop of its brutal and tragic
follies. Israel has shown again and again that, rather than vanquishing
its enemies, it makes new ones while strengthening old ones.
Many commentators have invoked 2006 and Israel's invasion of
Lebanon, when, in trying to destroy Hezbollah, it made it stronger. But
this is only a relatively recent example.
'My enemy's enemy'
A Hezbollah flag flies on the Israeli-Lebanese border after Israel invaded in
2006 [GETTY]
Consider early 1988, near the beginning of the First Intifada, when
Israel, trying to weaken Yasser Arafat, the late PLO leader, invoked
the ill-fated strategy known as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
In trying to marginalise the exiled Arafat and his Tunis cadre, Israel helped
seed the growth of a fledgling Hamas in Gaza.
Or recall March 1968, when Israeli infantry, tanks, paratroopers,
and armoured brigades - 15,000 soldiers in all - moved east across the
Jordan River to attack the village of Karama. Though, technically, the
Israelis won a military victory, they encountered far stiffer
resistance than expected, losing 28 soldiers.
At the centre of the heroic Palestinian battle of Karama was the man
who would emerge strongest from the fight: Yasser Arafat. The biggest
loser was the pro-Western "moderate," King Hussein of Jordan, who in
the wake of the battle was forced to declare, no doubt to the alarm of
Israel, "we are all fedayeen now."
Or, we can revisit the pre-dawn of November 13, 1966, when Israeli
planes, tanks and troops attacked the West Bank village of Samu,
blowing up dozens of houses and killing 21 Jordanian soldiers.
The attack deepened anger on the 'Arab Street' against Israel and
its Western benefactors, and badly weakened King Hussein, who imposed
martial law. "The monarchy itself is in jeopardy," American officials
in Amman cabled Washington.
Largely as a result of the attack, the Jordanian king was forced
into a pan-Arab alliance with his arch-rival, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the
Egyptian president. The 11th-hour pact helped seal the fate of the 1967
war, and the 41-year occupation whose echoes can be heard in the
exploding shells of Gaza.
US response
Yet it is worth considering the American response to Israel's Samu
raid for the lessons it contains for US policymakers today. For
although the US sided with Israel, many American officials were working
hard behind the scenes to prevent war, and US officials, unlike those
of the outgoing and incoming American administrations today, were
furious at Israel.
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The "3000-man raid with tanks and planes was all out of proportion to
the provocation," wrote Walt Rostow, the national security adviser, in
a memo to Lyndon Johnson, the then-US president.
"They've undercut Hussein… It makes even the moderate Arabs feel
fatalistically that there is nothing they can do to get along with the
Israelis no matter how hard they try."
When Levi Eshkol, the Israeli prime minister, wrote to Johnson for
American support "in this difficult hour for us," the president ignored
him, instead writing a note of sympathy to King Hussein, expressing his
"sense of sorrow and concern … words of sympathy are small comfort when
lives have been needlessly destroyed".
Then, in words scarcely imaginable for a US president today, Johnson
added: "My disapproval of this action has been made known to the
government of Israel in the strongest terms."
In the end, of course, the US, distracted by Vietnam and in a Cold
War struggle with the Soviet Union, backed Israel in the Six Day War,
giving it a tacit green light for the surprise attack on Egypt in June
1967. (When Meir Amit, the then-head of the Israeli intelligency agency
Mossad, visited Robert McNamara in the Pentagon, he told the inquiring
defence secretary that the war would take "seven days".)
Lessons for Obama
US President-elect Barack Obama's election campaign promised change [AFP]
Yet US officials, before acquiescing to Israel in the final days before
war, actually fought to prevent it, and it is there, in that lost
moment, that the lessons lie for Barack Obama, the incoming US
president.
Similar to (but far worse than) the Samu raid of 1966, Israel now
wages a war whose destruction is "all out of proportion to the
provocation."
Like the days leading up to the Six Day War, hundreds of thousands
of people are taking to the streets, with mass protests in Cairo,
Beirut, Amman, Doha, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, Sydney and other
international capitals.
These genuine expressions of fury, combined with wide-ranging
condemnations from international leaders, and increasing outrage from a
vocal minority of Israelis, do not bode well for the US or Israeli
governments.
Unlike 42 years ago, however, no US president, incoming or outgoing, is willing
to criticise Israel.
Obama's tepid comment - "the loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel is a
source of deep concern" - does not qualify.
Worse, his statement in Sderot last July - "If somebody was sending
rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going
to do everything in my power to stop that" - has been used as another
green light by Israeli military politicians whose prime ministerial
ambitions are a key factor underlying the assault on Gaza.
Hillary Clinton's declaration, during her senate confirmation
hearings on Tuesday, January 13, 2008, that "the president-elect and I
understand and are deeply sympathetic to Israel's desire to defend
itself under the current conditions," hardly points to a visionary
change in US policy.
Yet if Obama wishes to preserve the truest hopes inherent in his
election - that his presidency would stand for real change; that his
internationalist view of the world would translate into wisdom and
compassion for people other than the most powerful - he must be willing
to transform US dealings in a region where the phrase "honest broker"
has become a parlour joke.
For the US to restore its credibility, Obama must send clear signals
that Israeli impunity cannot continue. He needs to speak hard truths to
an old friend, pointing out the Jewish state's history of making its
enemies stronger.
Strengthening Hamas
Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, has said Israel has created
resistance.
And this, beyond the needless deaths, may be the ultimate result of the
current war on Gaza. Israel, despite its stated goal of stopping
Hamas' rocket attacks, has simply not done so. Despite the latest wave
of assassination by bombing, Israel's attempts to destroy Hamas seem to
be going the route of Lebanon, 2006.
"What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting?" asks
the normally staid Anthony Cordesman in a commentary for the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.
"Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without
a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? … It is
also far from clear that the tactical gains are worth the political and
strategic cost to Israel. At least to date, the reporting from within
Gaza indicates that each new Israeli air strike or advance on the
ground has increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel
in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and the Islamic world."
Or, as Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader, declared to Israel last weekend, "you
have created resistance in every household."
Thus the horrible chapter called "Gaza 2009" fits snugly into
Israel's book of outsized assaults on Palestinian civilians. It seems
it will ever be so, until a US president steps forward with the guts
and vision to change the game.
Sandy Tolan is associate professor at the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Southern California, and author of
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East.
The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.
Source: Al Jazeera
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Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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