The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, told the UN Security Council on October 24th that in his opinion the horrific attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7th “did not happen in a vacuum”. Israel has rejected this claim in the strongest terms by calling for his resignation and has threatened to reject all visa applications by UN officials. Regrettably, some western leaders have joined in this criticism of Guterres. But the secretary general’s remarks were based on fact.
It is well established that truth is the greatest casualty of war; this is certainly the context in which the appalling tragedy is unfolding before us in Gaza. The universal use of social media and the widespread access to fake videos and falsified information have created a minefield for reputable journalists and news agencies attempting to determine precisely what is happening.
It is also important, however, to establish the precise facts of how Israel’s occupation of Gaza took place and how Hamas seized control of the territory from the Palestinian Authority.
For centuries, Gaza was little more than a stopping point on journeys from the cities of the Nile to the Levant. It was the route that the British general Edmund Allenby took to capture the Holy Land from the Ottomans in 1917/18. It was only with the partition of British-ruled Palestine in 1948 that Gaza sprang into political significance. Israel’s victory in its war of independence resulted in the mass migration to Gaza of refugees from nearby Arab majority towns such as Beersheba, Ashkelon and Jaffa (all of which had been allocated to a new Arab state under the partition plan). This new area then fell under the administration of Egypt and became known as the Gaza Strip. It currently has a population of more than 2.2 million in an area of 388 sq km (this is less than half the size of Louth – Ireland’s smallest county). Egypt, in its wisdom, never claimed sovereignty over any part of Gaza and has clearly stated it has no desire to do so now.
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Israel’s overwhelming victory in the Six-Day Yom Kippur war of 1967 led to its occupation of Gaza (as well as the West Bank and the Golan Heights). Despite strident claims to the contrary, Israel has never really left any of these territories.
The building of Jewish settlements soon followed – expropriating some of the best agricultural land and exploiting the Strip’s meagre water resources. I visited Gaza as part of my official duties when these settlements were in full production. To call them a blot on the landscape – in the midst of the overcrowded and impoverished local population – would have been a gross understatement.
Under enormous pressure from both Washington and Brussels, Israel eventually agreed to withdraw from the Gaza settlements in 2005 as part of the implementation of the peace process established by the Oslo Accords. However, the manner in which this withdrawal took place proved to be of very little benefit to the local people – or indeed to the Palestinian Authority, which was officially responsible for taking over the settlements. Much of the buildings and agricultural infrastructure had been destroyed before the settlers left. More importantly, Israel began to impose increasingly restrictive conditions and delays on the export of fresh produce from Gaza to Israel and to international markets. This resulted in the wastage of large quantities of tomatoes, strawberries and fresh flowers (apparently Gaza is one of the most suitable places on earth for the growing of carnation flowers). Israel claimed to have withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, but in practical terms nothing could have been further from the truth: the Israelis continued to maintain complete control over the land, sea and air borders of the Strip.
The consequent damage done to the standing and reputation of the Palestinian Authority no doubt contributed to the Hamas victory in the parliamentary elections held at Washington’s insistence in January 2006. Without the necessary support from Israel or the West, the legitimate Palestinian administration was hounded out of Gaza by a bloody Hamas coup the following year.
Although the Israeli government may claim otherwise, it is widely acknowledged that right-wing elements in Israel (including Binyamin Netanyahu) welcomed the Hamas coup and rejoiced in the fact that there was no longer a united Palestinian leadership with which to negotiate. It also gave Israel a carte blanche to treat the population of Gaza with even greater disregard and brutality than before. The result has been an increasing deterioration of the Gazan economy accompanied by a steady stream of violence and casualties – mainly on the Palestinian side – for the past 15 years or more.
The statement made by Guterres was accordingly based on considerable and substantive evidence. Its rejection by the Israeli government and others can only be described as self-deception. So long as this self-deception continues, it is difficult to see how the current conflagration can be extinguished. The situation will certainly not be resolved by committing further war crimes, whether by massive bombardment of civilian areas by Israel or indiscriminate launching of rockets and hostage-taking by Hamas. The longer it takes for a ceasefire to be put in place – as demanded by 120 UN member states and the secretary general – the harder it will be to achieve the political compromise that will eventually have to be found. The only alternative is further death and destruction, which can benefit no one.
Unless the words of Guterres are taken to heart by all the main players, the prospects of any just or lasting solution in Gaza or the region generally must remain very slim.
Niall Holohan is a retired diplomat who was based in Ramallah as the Irish Government’s Representative to the Palestinian Authority from 2002 to 2006