Is the Gaza Catastrophe Really About Natural Resources?

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed , AlterNet. Posted January 8, 2009.

Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy ... But it would be unrealistic to expect the UN to do anything in the face of this crisis, given the pattern of U.S. support for Israel and taking into account the extent to which European governments have lent their weight to recent illicit efforts to crush Hamas as a Palestinian political force.

"Here’s One I Prepared Earlier … ” 

The siege was a strategy to prepare the ground for a protracted military operation, known as "Cast Lead". Although justified on the grounds of stopping Hamas rocket-fire, the operation was planned over six months before  the launch of the operation at the end of 2008.  

Canadian analyst Professor Michel Chossudovsky from the University of Ottawa has revealed that Operation Cast Lead is in fact the legacy of "a broader military-intelligence agenda first formulated by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001", aiming to produce a "planned humanitarian disaster," designed to inflict mass civilian casualties and terror -- that is, to weaken resistance, increase Israeli control, and encourage Palestinian emigration. Contrary to Israeli official rhetoric, military targets are secondary to this principal objective. 

In this respect, the operation beginning in December 08 actually implements what was known as the "Dagan Plan" in 2001 -- Operation Justified Vengeance, named after its founder, retired general and current Mossad commander, Meir Dagan. The operation planned to destroy "the infrastructure of the Palestinian leadership" and collect the arms of "various Palestinian forces and expelling or killing its military leadership." The cumulative impact of this strategy would be to eliminate the viability of Gazan political and military resistance to Israeli penetration, permitting the forcible "cantonization" of the Occupied Territories under the nominal rule of the politically-coopted Fatah faction. 

Hints that the scope of the operation, already killing and injuring thousands of Palestinian civilians, would be far broader than hitherto admitted, came when Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Israeli Army Radio that the Palestinians would "bring upon themselves a bigger Holocaust  because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." 

Post-1999: Gaza as Locus of Resource Conflict 

The question, of course, is why now? Pundits have pointed at the telling coincidence of imminent Israeli elections, requiring the Olmert cabinet to find new ways to regain some semblance of credibility after the disastrous Hizbullah defeat in southern Lebanon, not to mention the impact of domestic scandals. Yet even more significant is the role of imminent Palestinian elections. As of September 2008, Israeli political observes noted an erupting "constitutional crisis" in the Occupied Territories due to disagreement "between Hamas and Fatah over when the next Palestinian elections will be held." Hamas officials stated that they would "not acknowledge Abu Mazen’s legitimacy as President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) after January 2009, when it believes his term in office is due to finish." According to Hamas, "new elections should be held in January 09'  since according to the PA’s Basic Law (which also serves as its temporary constitution) Abu Mazen finishes his Presidential term after 4 years." In the event of failure to do so, the Presidency "temporarily passes to the Speaker of the Parliament, Abd al-‘Aziz Dweik." As he is currently imprisoned by Israeli authorities, Hamas would resort to appointing Dweik’s deputy "who is also a Hamas member." 

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