Yoav Haifawi argues that the ongoing brutality in Gaza is the final effort in a failed Israeli-U.S. attempt to preserve hegemony over the Middle East.
Introduction
The daily atrocities against the Palestinian people in Gaza are a harsh test for humanity. Unlike the war between Russia and Ukraine, what happens in Gaza is not even a war, as it is not waged between two armies. The death and suffering of civilians is not “collateral damage” but the main goal of the mighty Israeli war machine, massively armed and politically-supported by all the Western powers headed by the United States. More than two million people in Gaza are imprisoned in a small concentration camp, most of them stuck there since they were uprooted by the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of 80% of Palestine. They were already isolated from the world for decades, deprived of the basic necessities for building normal lives, and now they are systematically bombed and starved. There is no force that can limit the Israeli genocide and war crimes, other than what “the world can accept,” without actively pressing for an end to the ongoing massacres. Till now, all believers in humanity are shocked to discover how no state-actor (except for the half-state Houthis in Yemen) applies any real pressure toward ending this nightmare.
The cannons roar and the muses remain silent. In our case, they are violently silenced. Writing from Haifa, where the Zionist courts are sending people daily to long periods of detention for mild political expressions, I must ask myself what can one write when one cannot write the truth? A snippet of truth can bring down upon you a “disproportionate response,” as both the Israeli authorities and the Zionist public (united in their pursuit for an impossible victory) like to describe their revenge these days.
Since reality in Palestine is too terrible to look at directly, I will try to distance my gaze to see the global historical context.
Gunboat Diplomacy
The suffering of many is not at all comforting, but it is worth remembering that “the West”— the colonialist and imperialist powers— ruled the world through their military advantage until recently. However, what is somewhat comforting, and may inspire hope, is knowing that this system of dominance has already become obsolete. The colonizers were forced to give up direct military control and retreat from most Third World countries. The overwhelming support of the imperialist countries (U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) for Israel, its apartheid regime, and its genocidal campaign against Gaza’s residents, mainly stems from nostalgia for their days of glory as reflected in Wild West movies.
The colonial-imperialist world order was based on Europe’s technological advantage derived from the Industrial Revolution. This advantage allowed European countries, for hundreds of years, to subjugate, plunder, and oppress other peoples around the world, while using the fruits of looting and exploitation to develop themselves, thus further widening economic and technological gaps. One symbol of this military-technological advantage was the “gunboat diplomacy,” which Britain used extensively in the nineteenth century. The battleships that the U.S. sent to our region in October are a modern incarnation of the British fleet that spread death and fear to impose its hegemony worldwide.
In the twentieth century, Germany attempted to implement methods that were widely employed by Europe around the world against peoples within Europe itself, causing unprecedented moral shockwaves. The two World Wars weakened the imperialist powers and eased the way for the development of struggles for liberation among oppressed peoples. The bloody struggle between European powers also left the U.S. as the dominant imperialist power.
Rearguard Wars
Since World War II, the United States, with the support of other imperialist powers, has waged wars to deprive 90% of humanity from real independence and economic development. They aim to keep all Third World countries subject to a global “neo-colonialist” and “neo-liberal” exploitative regime, though without direct military occupation. We may have forgotten the Korean War, but everyone remembers Vietnam, in which the U.S. swore to return the country to the Stone Age in order to “save it from the red danger.” Today, Vietnam, led by the same Communist Party that won the struggle against U.S. occupation, is one of Asia’s economic miracles and is being courted by the U.S. as a counterweight against China.
A more recent example can be found in the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, launched under the promising name “Operation Enduring Freedom.” In between, there were dozens of U.S. military interventions; assassinations of leaders, elected or not, who were unwilling to bend their country’s interests to those of the U.S.; forcing murderous dictatorships upon many countries (for example: Congo 1960, Chile 1973, Argentina 1976, Greece 1967, Indonesia 1965, and many more), as well as systematic genocide such as in Guatemala between 1981 and 1983.
The U.S. is dedicating enormous resources and efforts to build its military superiority and to attempt to enforce an imperialist “world order” through forceful means. Meanwhile, it lags in the race for the most important source of power— economics. Until a few years ago, economists agreed that the best measure for a country’s production capacity was its GDP measured according to purchasing power parity (PPP). According to this measure, the Chinese economy surpassed that of the U.S. about a decade ago. Since then, mainstream economists, striving to preserve the pretense of imperialist omnipotence, simply changed their measurement methods, considering GDP almost exclusively based on nominal values (according to currencies’ exchange rates). According to this measure, the high inflation in the U.S. is presented as fast economic development, while the deflation in China, due to productive over-capacity, is presented as economic retreat.
Nurturing Conflicts to Preserve Domination
The dangers to world peace due to the conflict between a declining hegemonic power and a rising power, eager to assert its presence on the world stage, is obvious and much has been written about it. There are some factors that make the current transition between U.S. hegemony and the coming “Asian Century” even more dangerous. It is the first time in modern history that the coming superpowers are not competing imperialist powers but coming from the exploited third world, and the Western response is doused with racism and contempt. Second, as capitalism became the official religion of the Western culture, China’s Communist regime is perceived as profoundly illegitimate.
Relying on sophisticated arms and massive destructive capabilities to preserve its hegemonic position in the world, the U.S. tries to shift the competition to where it has the advantage by initiating or nurturing armed conflicts.
The most prominent example recently was the war in Ukraine. By reviving Cold War mentalities, the U.S. managed to restore and tighten its dominance over all of Europe through “the struggle against Russian aggression.” However, destructive militarization of international relations is not limited to one or two fronts; it is present almost everywhere: attempts at forming military alliances against China in East and Southeast Asia, “the war on terror” in Africa and Western Asia, “the war on drugs” in Latin America. The point everywhere is that there should be justification for exerting destructive force as the main tool of “preserving order.” People and institutions in the countries “on the receiving end,” instead of working towards economic and social development, are subjected to the dominant power and forced to serve its interests.
In the Middle East specifically, the U.S. strives to maintain and foster two major conflicts: the Israeli-Arab conflict, which allows it to constantly exert pressure on Arab countries, and the Sunni-Shia conflict within Islam. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the U.S. encouraged Iraq to attack Iran, which led to an eight-year-long war from 1980 to 1988. The result was over a million soldiers killed, along with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, as well as extensive destruction inflicted upon both countries. During this war, the U.S. provided weapons to Iraq, including mustard gas that was used against soldiers and civilians. Additionally, the U.S. and Israel ensured the supply of weapons to Iran, in order to escalate the bloodshed in both nations.
The U.S. continues to cultivate fear of “the Iranian threat” to preserve its hegemony over the Arab world. The main goal of this fearmongering is to preserve U.S. geopolitical control over the Arabian Peninsula’s kingdoms and emirates as “client states” in need of protection. In return for this “protection,” hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues are paid to U.S. arms producers or stream into the U.S. financial system. This funds the endless deficit of the U.S. government instead of being invested in social and economic development in the region.
In a rare positive development in our region, it seems that the Sunni-Shia conflict has begun to go out of fashion. In Spring 2023, through Chinese mediation, Iran and Saudi Arabia announced an end to their conflict, and renewal of diplomatic relations. The thawing of relations between the two regional powers came in tandem with the failure of the ten-year-long war, led by a coalition headed by Saudi Arabia and supported by the U.S., against the Yemeni people, a war. This severely harmed the civilian population, and caused the U.N. to define the situation in Yemen (before the war on Gaza) as the most severe contemporary humanitarian disaster.
Israel’s Role in the U.S. Regional Hegemonic System
This attempt to clarify the context and background of the current moment through a comprehensive view of regional and global reality does not arise solely from the desire to escape the noise of explosions, children’s screams, and the smell of death. “The Conflict” has never been a local matter between Zionist settlers and the native Palestinian population. Britain, followed by the United States and Germany, did not invest their best money in nurturing Zionist settlements, and later in building the State of Israel, with the sole aim of suppressing and exploiting a small Arab public, in a remote corner, that had never threatened their rule. Their goal was, and still is, to use Israel as a spearhead for enforcing imperialist hegemony in the Middle East as a whole— a resource-rich region with central geopolitical importance between Europe, Asia, and Africa. From their perspective, Palestinians have always been merely “collateral damage.” They are residents who happened to be on land designated for establishing an imperialist military base; they are an unnecessary disturbance that needs to be eliminated or suppressed to oblivion within the framework of this grand plan.
There were days when things were different. In its heyday, the imperialist-Zionist alliance achieved wonders. Israel struck Arab countries, forcing them to turn to its patron, begging that it would restrain its aggressive hit man in exchange for their submission to strategic dictates. Thus, Israel’s victory in the 1967 war served as a turning point for the geopolitical balance of the entire region. At that time the U.S., with foreign policy designed by Kissinger, knew how to reap political fruits from Israel’s military victory, even if it required imposing military pressure on Israel during the 1973 war or, subsequently, forcing territorial concessions on Israel in the Camp David Accords. In return, the U.S. succeeded in extracting Egypt from “the socialist bloc” and “the Non-aligned Movement,” and converting it into a U.S. neo-colony.
Similarly, the Left-wing of the Ba’ath Party, which controlled Syria in the 1960s, was removed from power. During the “Black September” of 1970, when Palestinians were massacred in the tens of thousands in Jordan, the Syrian army tried to intervene to defend them. Hafez al-Assad, former commander of the air force and Syria’s then Defence Minister, prevented aerial support to the army. He soon took advantage of the army’s defeat, and of his status as a “responsible leader” in face of the Israeli threats, to lead a right-wing military coup.
The regime led by the al-Assad family was more willing to cooperate with the U.S.. For example, in 1976, the invading Syrian army crushed the revolution in Lebanon (remember the Tel al-Za’atar massacre). In 1991, Syria joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq during the First Gulf War. After providing those services, Syria sought reward in the form of a peace agreement with Israel that would include returning all Syrian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. It discovered that Israel was not willing to pay this price. In repeated rounds of negotiations, it became clear that, after the threat from the Soviet Union was removed, the U.S. did not see any need to pressure Israel into concessions.
The Tail Wags The Dog
Since then, the magical mechanism that used Israeli power as leverage to enforce U.S. dictates on people in the region has begun to break down. This was evident during Israel’s first major war on Lebanon, which lasted from “Operation Peace for Galilee” in 1982, until Israel’s unconditional withdrawal in 2000, under pressure from the resistance. Although Israel initially managed to occupy large swaths of Lebanon, including its capital Beirut, it failed to impose its political will. The difference was that in Egypt and Syria, Israel fought against institutionalized state apparatuses, which were ready to turn their political skin inside out to preserve their privileged positions. In Lebanon, the state’s apparatus was weak even before Israel’s invasion. The occupation led to the emergence of a popular resistance movement. Like they say, the same fire that melts the butter, hardens the egg. After eighteen years of occupation and war, Israel had to withdraw its forces and Hezbollah, the main party that fought against the occupation, became the central force within Lebanon.
The effectiveness of Israel as a tool for hegemony has continued to deteriorate in a broader regional context. It was already noticeable in the first Gulf War in 1991, when the U.S. attacked Iraq to regain control of Kuwait’s oil fields. Not only was Israel not invited to participate in the U.S.-led coalition, but when Iraq attacked Israel with missiles in a desperate attempt to mobilize support in Arab public opinion, Israel was required not to respond, so as not to embarrass the coalition. The strategic asset was already beginning to turn into a burden.
In the second Iraq war, which began in 2003 and has not yet ended, things were reversed completely. Instead of Israel’s fighting so that the U.S. could reap the fruits of victory, the U.S. was forced to send its own troops to battle in a war justified by (false) claims that Iraqi weapons posed a threat to Israel. It is worth remembering that the U.S. was not an “innocent victim,” solely driven by its desire to protect Israel, but was also enticed by its greed for Iraqi oil. The price paid by the U.S. for this adventure was enormous, although it pales in comparison to the damage and suffering inflicted on Iraqi civilians. The trillion plus dollars that the U.S. invested in this war were sorely missed during the crises that hit its economy in 2007. The main political outcome of this war was that it pushed Iraq into Iran’s sphere of influence.
Why Can’t This War Be Stopped?
The distorted dynamics between Israel and the United States, which now make it so difficult to stop the carnage in Gaza, were already evident during Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006. Instead of playing the “responsible adult” that restrained the “wild” Israeli war machine, the U.S. became a cheerleader for widening the aggression.
The Second Israeli-Lebanese War was triggered by a cross-border raid by Hezbollah on July 12, 2006, aiming to release Lebanese POWs from Israeli prisons, in which it captured two Israeli soldiers. The Israeli PM at the time, Ehud Olmert, consulted the army about the possible response, and the macho army chief, Dan Halutz, proposed a full-scale war. Apparently, General Halutz was surprised to learn that Olmert was taking him seriously. When his irresponsibly hawkish suggestions were adopted by the government, he first hurried to instruct his banker to sell his entire Israeli stock portfolio, then went on to give the orders to the army to bomb and shell Lebanon.
This game of chicken, with everyone trying to appear more militant and nobody brave enough to stop the senseless escalation, continued. Israel’s intense bombardment caused widespread damage in Lebanon, but could not defend the Israeli civilian population from Hezbollah’s retaliatory missiles. The army delayed its expected “ground operation” for 10 days, expecting the U.S. to broker a ceasefire but Condoleezza Rice, then U.S. Secretary of State, was enthusiastic about continuing the war. As reported in Al-Jazeera at the time, she “has described the plight of Lebanon as a part of the ‘birth pangs of a new Middle East’ and said that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire.”
We saw a very similar delay of the ground invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army in October 2023. The invasion was delayed for 20 days, long after the army completed its mobilization of reserves and operational preparations. Once again, there were no “responsible adults” at hand. Instead of mediation to halt the carnage, we witnessed an unprecedented, wide-ranging pilgrimage of Western leaders coming to encourage Israel to carry on and expand its attacks.
Another major similarity between 2006 and the current assault on Gaza is that, faced with the difficulties of waging “asymmetric war” against an entrenched guerilla organization, the Israeli army adopted a strategy where the suffering of the civilian population and massive damage to civilian infrastructure are the main goals of its war machine. This is not only a “de facto” conclusion from Israel’s actions and their results. After 2006, Israel officially adopted “the Dahiya Doctrine” as a military strategy. It was named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Southern Beirut, which was carpet-bombed to rubble in 2006. Israel’s civilian and military leaders endlessly boasted that the damage they caused there in 2006 was “deterring Hezbollah” from any further confrontation. They also repeatedly threatened to use this doctrine in future wars, which might be seen as evidence that the genocide in Gaza is not an exaggerated response to Hamas’ attacks on October 7, but a pre-planned strategy. It is also clear evidence that Israel’s supporters in the West were aware of its genocidal intentions in advance.
However, there are also major differences between the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese War and the current carnage in Gaza. In South Lebanon’s mountain villages, the guerillas succeeded in causing significant losses to the advancing heavily-armored Israeli columns. The geographic conditions were hostile to the conventional army and the political stakes for Israel were not too high. After 34 days of fighting, the Israeli army decided to cut its losses and withdraw.
In Gaza, conditions are very different. It is a small, flat, strip of land, and Israel has no inhibition with regard to the destruction of entire neighborhoods to create open spaces for its tanks to maneuver freely. Gaza is surrounded from all sides, from the land, the sea, and the air. It is completely dependent on supply from the outside for its food, water, fuel, electricity, medicine, communication— just everything.
Israel cannot defeat the Palestinian resistance, as resistance is the natural response of the local population to decades of occupation, siege, and brutal repression. But for Israel, the stakes are high. Subjugating the Palestinian people is the foundation of its Apartheid regime, based on land-grab, colonization, and Jewish supremacy.
Add to this Israel’s internal politics. Jewish Israelis are deeply divided between themselves along several ethnic, religious, and cultural fault lines. Recently, all these divisions crystalized around the divisive figure of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is subject to trial over several overdue corruption indictments, and might be sent to jail when the war is over. Meanwhile, senior members of the most powerful elites in militarist Israel, the commanders of the Army and the Shabak, are likely to lose their jobs when there will be a reckoning for their failure to defend the Gaza border on October 7.
The only thing that unites all Israelis (and I do not regard Palestinians with Israeli citizenship as Israelis) is the fight against the Palestinians. It is no wonder that the main slogan in Israel now, mobilizing the whole society for the current assault on Gaza, is “Together We Will Win.” No wonder many Israeli leaders, and above all Netanyahu and his military commanders, are wishing this “graceful moment” of unity to last forever.
The Two-State Illusion as a Justification of Genocide
As the conflict erupted, Western hypocrisy entered overdrive. The gap between what the U.S. is doing and what it is talking about is wider than the ocean. On the practical side it arms Israel and encourages it to perform more massacres. It refuses any calls for ending the carnage, even after more than 30,000 Palestinians were killed, most of them children and women. It jeopardizes the U.N. security council to keep the bloodshed uninterrupted. The U.S., U.K., and other old and wannabe imperialist powers even hurried to take part in the military action— bombing Yemen, trying to prevent their symbolic maritime blockade of Israel, while Israel tightens the siege of Gaza to the level of mass hunger and prevents essential medical care.
As camouflage for all of these deadly activities, they keep rehearsing meaningless talk about “calling on Israel” to abide by the law of war, paying lip service by denouncing “excessive killing” of civilians, or pleading for more humanitarian supplies. No pressure is applied to promote any of these lofty, altruistic goals. It would be a laughing matter, were it not so outrageous, how the U.S. and Britain publicize their deep care for the Palestinian people’s wellbeing by “sanctioning” four (!) extremely violent settlers. As if the settlers could terrorize the Palestinian population without the active daily support of the occupation army, directed by the military command and the government!
While they actively support, arm, and bankroll all the crimes of the occupation, the U.S. and its allies continue their meaningless ritual of speaking about their commitment to the idea of establishing a “pet” Palestinian state alongside Israel. Now this lie has been revealed. Instead of using it to justify perpetual occupation and gradual ethnic cleansing, they now use it as the ultimate justification for the ongoing genocide against two million Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel and the Israelis did not essentially change from the days of the massive ethnic cleansing of 1948. But, back then, they could effectively deceive themselves and deceive much of the world, calling themselves democrats or even socialists. Now all the masks are off, and Israel is an openly fascist state, the proud flag-bearer of reactionary forces world-wide. The U.S. and its allies know very well that there is no partner in Israel for any political settlement other than the perpetuation of Apartheid.
As we see a new generation of activists around the world demonstrating in support for Palestinian liberation, we have new hope that future generations of political leaders will understand that supporting Apartheid and occupation is not doing any good to the people of this country and this region— Arab and Jews alike. They will also have to learn somehow that, by inciting deadly conflicts, they do not even serve their own best interests. When the “civilized” West will stop upholding Apartheid, the people of Palestine will be able to dismantle the oppressive apparatus and establish the foundation for a human-oriented system that will begin the work of repairing the damage.
