Global IssuesNow Israel Is Under Siege
The elemental reason for the outbreak of the seminal June 1967 Arab-Israel war was Israel's self-inflicted doom prophecy that 'the Arabs just want to throw us in the sea'.
In effect, that prophecy never materialised.
Since that war a state of Palestine has still to materialise. What the war actually brought about was the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, and the resistance to that occupation.
Today, in the wake of Israel's botched military operation against the Peace Flotilla headed for besieged Gaza, no one could have predicted the outcome would be a turning point in that resistance that could potentially deliver the end of the long occupation.
That long-awaited result depends, however, on the direction the resistance now chooses to take.
What is certain in the aftermath of the confrontation on the high seas is that the eastern Mediterranean is headed towards a long hot summer. The summer seas are calm, warm and propitious for peace flotilla after peace flotilla to breach the Israeli blockade and reach the shallow Gaza shores.
Beneath the surface, though, a storm is gathering, the sea is boiling.
'What started as a tragic confrontation is taking on unexpected proportions with great strategic implications for the region,' said Amos Gilad, a top Israel defence official speaking on Israel Army radio. 'Imagine states which previously were allies literally confronting one another. We're on the brink of that.'
Weekend reports from Ankara suggest that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was himself considering boarding another anti-Israeli blockade boat that would be accompanied by a Turkish navy vessel.
Israel Public television carried the report. Though later dismissed by a Turkish official, Israel is making plain any such move would be seen as a dangerous provocation.
'If he comes here with Turkish warships there can be no doubt that it would amount to a declaration of war,' warned Uzi Dayan, a major-general in the Israeli army reserve and a formed head of the National Security Council. 'We need to draw a clear line and say that whoever crosses it will not be boarded, but sunk,' Dayan added on Army Radio.
Also Monday it was reported that Iranian aid ships will soon set sail for Gaza with a consignment of food, medications, and medical equipment. 'The ships will be sent to Gaza by end of this week,' Iranian Red Crescent director Abdolrauf Adibzadeh told the IRNA news agency.
Earlier, Ali Shirazi, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break the Israeli maritime blockade.
'Iran's Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities,' Shirazi was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Nearly a week after the confrontation on the high seas, it's not only Gaza that's besieged, also Israel.
But even as the diplomatic pressure mounts, Israel refuses to calm the storm by agreeing to an international inquiry commission proposed by the United Nations.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, briefing both his cabinet and, separately, his Likud party ministers, declared, 'There are many proposals for all kinds of committees, but we don't want a problematic precedent to be set here for future events.'
In parallel, his Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Labour party ministers there should be no hurry to establish a panel to probe the clash. 'Does the U.S. set up a committee of inquiry each time something happens in Afghanistan?'
At the closed meeting, Barak reportedly said that Israel should 'wait it out for another two to three weeks. Everyone will forget and the pressure on us will dissipate,' he's said to have predicted.
An easing of that international pressure is less than likely.
Equally, however, the Palestinians and the 'Free Palestine' supporters risk getting it wrong. They are being sucked into a whirlpool, preferring to use the wave of antipathy for Israel's use of military power to do battle on the wrong front.
'Free Gaza' is being transformed into a drive aimed at the de-legitimising of Israel's very right to exist, sidelining the kernel issue of how to de-legitimise the 43-year occupation - literally of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and effectively of Gaza through the tight blockade at land and sea.
The White House does not intend to be distracted by the failure to make that distinction.
Amid all the recriminations, accusations and counter-accusations, and the intense criticism of Israel, and of the U.S. for its 'soft' criticism of Israel, there's one hopeful anchor in the sea of diplomatic instability now gripping the region: Washington's success in convincing the Arab League not to withdraw its mandate to the Palestinian Authority to continue with the U.S.- brokered 'proximity' peace talks.
Indeed, even amidst the raucous anger at Israel, special U.S. presidential envoy Senator George Mitchell continued his shuttle 'proximity' diplomacy between Ramallah and Jerusalem at the end of last week.
As the strongest proponent of the two-state solution, the U.S appears unswerving in its determination not to allow the confrontation off Gaza to sideline the real question which should be addressed at the peace talks, the real inquiry commission.
That is the question whether Israel is genuinely ready to conclude a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians to end the occupation, thus effectively freeing not only the West Bank, but also Gaza.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service