Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted by Daniel Sokatch

Author:Daniel Sokatch [Sokatch, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781635573886
Google: bViqDwAAQBAJ
Published: 2021-10-19T17:28:25+00:00

After the Hamas takeover, Israel imposed a total blockade (air, sea, and land) on Gaza, declaring that it would allow only humanitarian aid into the small, poor, crowded territory. (Egypt, which controlled the only other land border with Gaza, also heavily restricted who and what traveled in or out of the territory.) Some have taken to describing the Gaza Strip as the world’s largest open-air prison. Indeed, in prison-break fashion, Hamas dug tunnels underneath the border fences into Israel and Egypt, through which it smuggled all manner of things, including arms, into Gaza.

With some regularity, Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza fired rockets at nearby communities in Israel, and the IDF responded with artillery fire and air raids until, finally, a cease-fire brought a measure of calm to the region. But in December 2008, hostilities resumed—and soon escalated. In early January, Olmert ordered an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza to stop the attacks on nearby Israeli towns. By the time a cease-fire was declared after three weeks of fighting, some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, about 900 of them unarmed civilians. Three Israeli civilians were killed by Hamas rocket fire into Israel, and 10 IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Once again, Israel found itself facing strong international criticism, accused of using disproportionate force in Gaza that resulted in unconscionable civilian casualties. It asserted that it had every right to defend its civilians from unprovoked rocket attacks from Gaza. Hamas claimed that it was responding to Israeli provocations and the ongoing siege. Human rights organizations and the United Nations accused both sides of having committed war crimes.*

A couple of weeks later, badly damaged by the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, facing a criminal indictment for corruption, and deeply unpopular, Olmert announced that he was stepping down. His successor as Kadima Party leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, was given six weeks to put together a governing coalition, but she was unable to do so, triggering early elections in February 2009. Livni and Kadima won, but once again, Livni was unable to form a government. So, under Israel’s electoral rules, the runner-up got a chance to do so. Because right-wing parties had won more seats overall than had centrist or left-wing parties, the second-place finisher succeeded in building a coalition. And with that, Likud’s Bibi Netanyahu was back in business.

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