The Guardian view on the human, economic and political costs of the Gaza war
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Version 0 of 1. A tortuous and tragic story which began in early June with the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers ended in a dusty street in Hebron earlier this week when a special counter-terrorism unit of the Israeli police closed in on a safe house in which they believed the murderers were hiding. In the ensuing gun battle, the two men in the house were killed. Just deserts, some might say, if we assume the two were the guilty parties, and that the police had no alternative but to shoot back when they came under fire. Unfortunately, there is more to it than that. What came between the kidnap in June and the shootout in September was a bloody conflict in Gaza which killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, as well as 70 Israelis, smashed up the infrastructure of that already battered territory, and led to an international controversy about Israel’s reasons for going to war. What should have been a detective story, if a sad and vicious one – three boys dead, their alleged killers tracked and apprehended – became something quite different. The full background to the crime may never be known, since the alleged perpetrators are now gone. But the evidence strongly suggests that the Israeli government’s claim that it had “unequivocal proof” that Hamas as an organisation was responsible was unjustified. Having decided that Hamas was to blame, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, seems to have seen an opportunity to destabilise the just-created Palestinian national unity government, which had brought together Hamas and Fatah, and to undermine Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. The Israelis charged through the West Bank picking up hundreds of Hamas members. Provoked, and sensing an opportunity to reverse its own faltering fortunes, Hamas in Gaza responded with rockets. Angered, the Israeli public, unaware of the full facts, clamoured for action over the rockets and newly discovered tunnels. Cornered, Mr Netanyahu sent in the troops. Frustrated, the Israeli Defence Forces found that, for all the tunnels and missile stores blown up and the commanders and officials killed, Hamas was still intact as a fighting force and was actually strengthened as a political movement when a ceasefire finally took hold. The figures are telling. Mr Netanyahu’s popularity rating has collapsed, that of Hamas has risen. As many as 400,000 Gazans may have lost their homes. Rebuilding Gaza could cost as much as $6bn. Israel, meanwhile, may have lost as much as 0.5% of its GDP. The war has still not ended. Talks on a permanent truce stumble on in Cairo, and until there is one, the work of reconstruction cannot properly begin. This was a war that did not need to be fought and which should not have been fought. What a high price has been paid for this folly. |