Who Started It
Who Started It appears as chapter 5 of The Punishment of Gaza by Gideon Levy, who covered the Israeli occupation for years for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.
July 9, 2006
“We left Gaza and they are firing Qassams” (an inaccurate type of rocket that is prone to malfunction)— there is no more precise a formulation of the prevailing view about the current round of the conflict. “They started it” will be the routine response to anyone who tries to argue, for example, that a few hours before the first Qassam fell on the school in Ashkelon, causing no damage, Israel sowed destruction at the Islamic University in Gaza.
Israel is causing electricity blackouts; laying sieges; bombing and shelling; assassinating and imprisoning; killing and wounding civilians, including children and babies, in horrifying numbers- but “they started it.”
They are also “breaking the rules” laid down by Israel: We are allowed to bomb anything we want and they are not allowed to launch Qassams. When they fire a Qassam at Ashkelon, that’s an “escalation of the conflict,” but when we bomb a university and a school, it’s perfectly alright. Why? Because they started it. That’s why the majority [in Israel] thinks that all the justice is on our side. Like in a schoolyard fight, Israel’s assurance that they started it is the winning moral argument to justify every injustice.
So, who really did start it? And has Israel “left Gaza”?
Only partially, and in a distorted manner. The disengagement plan, which was labeled with fancy phrases like “partition” and “an end to the occupation,” did result in the dismantling of settlements and the Israeli Defense Forces’ departure from Gaza, but it did almost nothing to change the living conditions for the residents of the Gaza Strip. Gaza is still a prison, and its inhabitants are still doomed to live in poverty and oppression. Israel closes them off from the sea, the air and the land, except for a limited safety valve at the Rafah crossing. Residents cannot visit their relatives in the West Bank or look for work in Israel, upon which the Gazan economy has been dependent for some forty years. Sometimes goods can be transported, sometimes not. Gaza has no chance of escaping its poverty under these conditions. nobody will invest in it, nobody can develop it, nobody can feel free in it. Israel locked the cage, threw away the keys and left the residents to their bitter fate. Now, less than a year after the disengagement, Israel is going back, with violence and force.
What could otherwise have been expected? That Israel would unilaterally withdraw, brutally and outrageously ignoring the Palestinians and their needs, and that the Palestinians would silently bear their bitter fate and not try to fight for their liberty, livelihood and dignity? We promised a safe passage to the West Bank and didn’t keep the promise. We promised to free prisoners and didn’t keep the promise. We supported democratic elections and then boycotted the legally elected leadership, confiscated funds that belong to it and declared war on it. We could have withdrawn from Gaza through negotiations and coordination, while strengthening the existing Palestinian leadership, but we refused to do so. And now we complain about “a lack of leadership”? We did everything we could to undermine their society and leadership, making as sure as possible that the disengagement would not be a new chapter in our relationship with the neighboring nation, and now we are amazed by the violence and hatred that we sowed with our own hands.
What would have happened if the Palestinians had not fired Qassams? Would Israel have lifted the economic siege that it imposed on Gaza? Would it open the border to Palestinian laborers? Meet with the elected leadership and conduct negotiations? Encourage investment in Gaza? Nonsense. Is the Gazans were sitting quietly, as Israel expects them to do, their case would disappear from the agenda- hear and around the world. Israel would continue with the convergence, which is solely meant to serve our goals, ignoring their needs. Nobody would have given any thought to the fate of the people of Gaza if they had not behaved violently. That is a very bitter truth, but the first twenty years of the occupation passed quietly and we did not lift a finger to end it.
Instead, under cover of the quiet, we built the enormous, criminal settlement enterprise. With our own hands, we are once again pushing the Palestinians into using what petty arms they have; and in response, we employ nearly the entire enormous arsenal at our disposal, and continue to complain that “they started it!”
We started it. We started it with the occupation, and we are duty-bound to end it- a real and complete ending. We started the violence. There is no violence worse than the violence of the occupier, using force on an entire nation, so the question about who fired first is therefor an evasion meant to distort the picture. After Oslo, too, there were those who claimed that “we left the territories,” with a similar mixture of blindness and lies.
Gaza is in serious trouble, ruled by death, horror and daily difficulties, far from the eyes and hearts of Israelis. We are only shown the Qassams. We only see the Qassams. The West Bank is still under the boot of occupation, the settlements are flourishing, and every hand limply extended for an agreement, including that of Ismail Haniyeh, is immediately rejected. And after all this, if someone still has second thoughts, the winning answer is promptly delivered: “They started it. They started it and justice is on our side.” But the fact is that they did not start it, and justice is not with us.
