Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will give a decisive response if Palestinian missiles fly again from the Gaza Strip after the expiration of the truce.
The mood of “frantic Bibi” is quite understandable. Israel has exhausted the military, political and economic limit for the holding of the next punitive action against the Palestinians history as the operation "Enduring Rock". The time has come for a demonstrative "desire for peace", which, at the same time, would leave Tel Aviv the opportunity to strike again at the Palestinians. And at the same time - the subsequent sensation around the "peaceful settlement of the Palestinian question" to cover up the oddities of both the "Enduring Rock" and the entire Israeli policy towards the occupied Arab territories.
The abduction of three Israeli settlers was called the official pretext for the punitive act, which still has many ambiguities. According to the testimony of the witnesses, they got into a car with Israeli numbers, and less than an hour later one of them called the police and said that they had been kidnapped. During the conversation recorded by the recorder at the police station, after these words shots and shouts in Arabic were heard.
The reaction of the police was more than strange: they not only did not respond, but for a few hours they seemed to forget about this call. It was only later that he was “remembered,” and immediately public hysteria began to unwind, from mass prayers to continuous television coverage of the search. Hamas was immediately blamed for what happened, even before the first results of the investigation, mass arrests of movement activists and several parliamentarians from the Palestinian Authority were carried out.
By the end of the second week, when the bodies of the abducted people were finally found, public opinion was no longer sure that Hamas was guilty. Although no convincing evidence was presented to that, it was all at the level of "Of course they are, there is no one more."
The international moment for the punitive operation was chosen more than successfully. The “civilized world” went into anti-Russian and anti-Putin hysteria, Western journalists danced on the bones of the dead passengers of the Malaysian Boeing, and these “victims of the bloody Russian dictator” in a cynical guesswork on the “political scales” would clearly outweigh the 1,500 Palestinians who died.
In the process of planning a punitive operation in the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu and his team were faced with the choice of the ultimate goal: either to limit themselves to “intimidation” or completely destroy Hamas and bring the administration controlled by Tel Aviv to power.
The second option was fraught with a number of negative consequences. First, it is extremely costly, since the Israeli army would have to stay in Gaza for several months or even years in such a development and fight guerrilla actions that would unleash Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
Secondly, Israel would have to take responsibility for the livelihood of one million, eight hundred thousand people in the sector. Thirdly, the occupation would lead to the fact that the struggle with Israel would become the priority goal of all radical Islamist groups. The “World Jihad” today is rapidly getting out of control of its curators, creators and sponsors, the Israeli occupation of Gaza could seriously spur this process, which would be extremely unprofitable for neither the United States nor the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf.
Given these factors, the bet was made precisely on the punitive operation, and its goals were deliberately formulated very vaguely - “To return security to Israeli citizens and restore calm in the country.” The dates were just as vaguely defined: “Operation“ The Unbreakable Rock ”will continue until its main goal is achieved - returning peace to Israeli citizens for a long time by destroying the infrastructure of Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.”
Our liberals, I remember, during the “Chechen campaigns” of Russia, repeatedly called for “making wide use of the Israeli experience in the fight against terrorism.” Actually - and in this great merit of the Russian mass media controlled by them - the whole Middle East conflict is served precisely as the selfless struggle of the Israeli people against terror. Coverage of the conflict is heated in a heap of secondary details and details, its essence is carefully disguised by talking about “terrorism of Hamas”, “Israel’s right to self-defense”, finding out who was the first to start and similar information trash. But there are two circumstances that disprove this myth imposed on us and represent the “Unbreakable Rock” in its true, punitive self-image.
First of all, the main cause of the conflict is that Israel first drove more than 700 thousands of Palestinians from their lands, and then, after half a century of fighting for their homeland, the Palestinian people decided to “minimize” the creation of ghettos in the Gaza Strip.
Moreover, under pressure from the Israeli lobby, the notorious “international community” in 1993 made the Fatah movement and Yasser Arafat agree that the maximum the Palestinians can count on is the return of 20 percent of the occupied territories. And after the Israeli murder of ultra Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the agreements with the Palestinians in Oslo, the conditions changed again, and under Ehud Barak, the Palestinians received only 12 percent for their autonomy. But - not from a hundred, namely from 20 percent! But that was not enough for the Israeli hawks: in the period from 2004 to 2010, the Palestinians confiscated 250 square kilometers of land on which the 223 Israeli settlement was built.
In this blatant injustice - half of the whole truth of the conflict, which the West is trying to hide by arguments about "extremists and terrorists."
And the second half of the truth is that a lengthy conflict with the Palestinians is beneficial to Israel, moreover, it is necessary for its existence. The apartheid regime created by the Israeli leadership, in which the average monthly wage of workers arriving in Israel from the occupied Arab territories is no more than 40-50 percent of the earnings of the "right" Israeli, serves as an additional source of income for local businesses. Let me remind you that in the seventies, when the foundations of the current industry of the Jewish state were laid, due to the difference in payment, local entrepreneurs received 1975 million of Israeli pounds of profit in 816 year, and 1976 billion 1 million pounds in 113 year. A good source of domestic "investment", is not it?
In addition, if there were no confrontations with the Palestinians, how can politicians in Washington be able to explain to voters what kind of joy Tel Aviv receives annually from the USA 3,7 billion dollars in gratuitous financial assistance?
At the same time, there is also no need to forget about military supplies at preferential prices. If there is no external and internal security threat to the “island of democracy in the Middle East”, why open a wallet to Israel wide?
The conflict with the Palestinians is beneficial to Israel, and therefore the policy of the Israeli leadership is to “cultivate” discontent and extremism in the occupied Arab territories and in the Gaza Strip. We are being offered to borrow just such an "Israeli experience"? So this is not from the “Fighting terrorism” section, but from a completely different one - “How to cultivate and motivate terrorists” ...
Tel Aviv likes to talk about the fact that Israel supplies the Gaza Strip with water, electricity and building materials, that thousands of residents of the sector work in industrial parks built with Israeli funds at the Erez and Karni checkpoints. As "the greatest good deed" is the fact that significant international assistance going to Gaza is delivered through Israeli territory. For some reason, the Palestinians themselves, the Israeli propaganda asserts, do not feel any gratitude for this: “With goodwill, the Arabs could turn the Gaza Strip into a testing ground for their future, using for this purpose generous international assistance and Israeli investment in building new industrial parks perimeter of the sector. Instead, they used the funds given to them to create the infrastructure of terror and maintain a dozen special services that are closely associated with terrorists. ”
Strange, isn't it? But there really is no strangeness, since the Gaza Strip is essentially the largest open-air concentration camp in the world. Its territory is surrounded around the perimeter by wire fences equipped with a signal system, and until recently, the IDF was protected by the IDF division - the IDF, which includes the Givati infantry brigade, the Druze-Bedouin Desert Rangers Battalion, tank and engineering units, as well as changing units of reservists. From the sea, the sector is blocked by boats of the Israeli Navy, which do not allow fishing.
As for deliveries of international cargo through Israel, we should remember that in 2000, it was Tel Aviv’s army that bombed the port that was being built with European investors' money, and in December 2001 destroyed the only international airport of the Palestinian Authority.
After Hamas’s victory in the elections, the blockade was intensified, construction materials, including cement, refrigerators, washing machines, spare parts for cars, fabrics, threads, needles, light bulbs, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothes, shoes, mattresses, were not allowed into the sector. , sheets, blankets, knives and scissors, dishes and glasses ... Those very underground tunnels, about which they talk a lot, were built initially for delivery to the consumer goods sector, and only then they began to be fully used by both Hamas militants and criminal groups feasts.
The struggle being waged by the Palestinians is not a war for the sake of war, but an attempt to break out of the concentration camp created by the Israelis, to achieve the implementation of international and bilateral agreements violated by Israel.
Hamas radicalism arose not from scratch, the Palestinians systematically and openly provoke a protest, which then becomes a pretext for the next “sweep”.
Already during the punitive operation of 13, Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip developed uniform proposals for a ten-year truce with the State of Israel, and the main requirements were economic:
- A complete cessation of the blockade, the opening of the checkpoint for the passage of citizens and the supply of goods, the construction of factories throughout the sector;
- Creation of an international airport and seaport in Gaza under the auspices of the UN and "non-aligned" countries;
- Expansion of the fishing zone off the coast of the sector to 10 kilometers and supply to the fishing vessel sector;
- Recognition of the “Rafah” checkpoint as an international roadblock under the control of the United Nations and Arab countries;
- The creation of industrial zones in the Gaza Strip.
In these demands there is no extremism, but only the desire for a normal life in a small, but small, state, the end of the policy of occupation, blockade and apartheid. It is noteworthy that the Palestinians fully agree to international control, so long as it is not exercised by non-Israel allies: one of the points is "signing an armistice agreement for 10 years and placing the international contingent at the borders."
The Palestinians' appeal to international arbitration is far from accidental, since another myth of the “Enduring Rock” is that they try to present the confrontation between occupied Palestine and Israel occupying it solely as a matter of a lengthy, but still bilateral, conflict.
In fact, the metastases of this nearly sixty-year war have long swept the entire Middle East, and the tragedy of the Palestinian people is being actively exploited by both regional and international players.
In the course of “The Enduring Rock”, the Israeli-Saudi alliance, unnatural at first glance, grew stronger and washed with the blood of ordinary Palestinians and Jews.
The IDF projectiles and bombs were already exploding in Gaza, when it became known that the leadership of the United Arab Emirates - and, consequently, Riyadh - was aware of the upcoming Israeli operation. And even agreed to partially finance the costs of Tel Aviv per punitive action - provided that the Hamas organization is eliminated during this operation. Or, at least, will suffer irrecoverable losses, after which it will cease to exist as a military-political factor in the Middle East.
At the end of June, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman held talks on this topic. By itself, this fact completely refutes the official version of the "act of retribution for the three dead Israelis." But further - it is even more interesting: the parties reached an agreement at the meeting and informed the US Secretary of State John Kerry. And just a day before the operation, Sheikh Abdullah, through his security adviser Mohamed Dahlan, a former member of the Palestinian Fatah, reaffirmed to the Israelis their readiness to fulfill the obligations of the Emirates under this transaction.
Behind the UAE were the Saudis, who declared Hamas their enemy. The desire of the Arabian monarchies to use the Palestinians as “pawns of exchange” is a long and customary matter. But if earlier it somehow disguised itself, now even a minimum of decency has been dropped. And it became possible because of the politicking of part of the Hamas leadership. In an effort to put the organization under control and, accordingly, destroy Hamas’s cooperation with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, Saudi intelligence has systematically worked on changing the organization’s foreign-policy orientation. She worked through Qatar, since the Palestinians have a rather wary attitude towards the Saudis. Therefore, it was precisely the Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Tani who generously promised abundant funding to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
The result of this work was that when a revolt against Bashar al-Assad broke out in Syria, which soon grew into a “jihadist” intervention supported by the Western anti-Syrian coalition, the Hamas leadership finally broke with Damascus and defiantly passed under the patronage of Qatar and the Muslim Brothers sponsored by it, come to power in Egypt.
But the emir of Qatar began to play, seriously deciding that he could compete with the Saudis in the fight for leadership. Hamad bin Khalifa has come to the point that in a narrow circle of confidants - stuffed, as it turned out later, with Saudi agents - stated that “the Saudi regime will inevitably fall from the hand of Qatar, one day Qatar will enter El Qatif and the Eastern Province, split the Saudi Arabia and its army can do nothing. "
As a result of such “indiscreet” behavior, the emir lost the throne, and the new emir who replaced him on the throne sharply reduced his participation in “Palestinian affairs”. Then, as a result of a military coup - also supported by the Saudis - the Egyptian "Muslim Brothers" were overthrown. And Hamas was not only left without patrons and sponsors, it was also recognized by the Saudis as “a threat to the royal house”.
On this common threat, Tel Aviv and Riyadh are entwined in their arms, because “friendship against someone” always remains one of the most solid foundations of alliances and alliances, even if they look unnatural.
Contrary to the imposed myths, “Enduring Rock” did not work a jot for peace and a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The blood of more than a thousand Palestinians is the price of the Hamas leadership's politicking, the price of the tactic of “maintaining instability for the sake of Israel’s existence”, the price of intrigues of the Gulf monarchies.
This punitive action had nothing to do with “self-defense”, no matter how convinced our own pro-Israel lobby is in this. In the midst of the “Enduring Rock”, a delegation of the Federation Council headed by Mikhail Margelov, who visited Sderot, visited Israel. The same city, the inhabitants of which, during the shelling by the Israeli army of the Gaza Strip, organized “social picnics” on the roofs of houses, with refreshments, snacks and binoculars, in order to better see the results of the attacks on Palestinians. At a press conference then held, M. Margelov stressed that the delegation didn’t have a question whether to go or not at that time: “We are constantly engaged in a strategic dialogue with the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense commission. Our partnerships are important for us, they are time-tested and not subject to momentary conjuncture. ”
His colleague, Senator Rafail Zinurov, went even further, saying: “The terrorists have one goal - to intimidate, kill, frighten. I think the measures of Israel are justified. Killers children have no excuse. The state copes with this. Our visit here says a lot. ”
Indeed - about a lot. For example, the fact that a number of Russian legislators clearly inadequately perceive the situation in the Middle East.
And when President Vladimir Putin advocates a balanced and objective approach, despite the difficult international situation for Moscow itself insists on the peace process in Palestine, part of the Russian elite proudly demonstrates the very opposite.
Perhaps trying to "fit" John Kerry, who recently boasted that, being a senator, he completely voted for the pro-Israel decisions.
A strange choice by Russian lawmakers of a role model is added to the oddities of “Enduring Rock” ...