Gaza Imposes a New Equation

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Gaza has produced a prominent historic event that the pages of history will immortalize as one of the most brilliant things the Palestinian people have done, and one of the most courageous, daring, and bold mass confrontations. History will write at length about Wednesday, 23 January 2008, as a landmark day in Palestinian history and in the confrontation against the Zionist invaders, and it will record for the masses of our people in Gaza medals of pride and sacrifice in defense of the right, and of the women and children whom the land had nearly grown too narrow to hold. And it will be written that it was a decisive day that opened the road toward vital and major shifts in the equation of the struggle against the Zionist invaders, and in the development of the Palestinians’ and Arabs’ thinking on confrontation.

I did not exaggerate when I wrote, before the event, that Israel would lose this round, since the objective conditions through which the forces of the struggle in the region were passing, and the internal conditions in Gaza, indicated that new avenues were beginning to open before the Palestinian cause, and that Israel’s predicaments would widen. Israel’s rout in southern Lebanon in 2000 was not without effect, and Israel’s defeat in 2006 at the hands of Hezbollah was not without weight, burden, and consequence for the region as a whole. Palestinian factions gained better combat knowledge and became more capable of handling political activity and mobilizing the masses; and the Palestinian scene, despite the wide disagreements sweeping through it, has become deeper in its understanding of the dialectic of the conflict and its requirements, and more capable of developing its means and methods.

The idea of besieging Gaza no longer holds much value after 23/1/2008, because it has collapsed. The purpose of the siege was to exploit people’s grief and pain, in the hope that people would rise up against Hamas, causing it to collapse and abandon governing Gaza. There were those who stood firmly against Hamas and held it responsible for the siege and for the starvation of the people and the shortage of medicine and foodstuffs, but their strength was not sufficient, and they collapsed before the other force that poured its wrath upon the occupation instead. They tried the siege for nearly two years and cut off funds from the Palestinian people, then besieged Gaza after having eased up somewhat on the West Bank, and in the end the certain news reached them.

The final straw has come, but people will not wait for a final straw the next time around. The first time is the hardest, and after that the threshold for explosion begins to drop. That is, the people of Gaza will explode every time they feel constrained, and will not wait for total darkness and the complete closure of the crossings. I think that Israel, and those Arabs who assist it, have learned the lesson, and must draw the conclusions. It would have been wiser from the start for everyone to know that pressure has its limits, after which it turns back against the one applying it.

Griefs sometimes end in wholesome results, and were it not for the grief, those results could never have taken shape. The meaning is that had there been no siege, the idea of a siege would have remained a stick with which Israel could threaten the people of Gaza; but now there is no longer any such stick. And since the stick of the siege has been shattered, it is expected that new Israeli and American thinking will emerge on how to deal with the Palestinian resistance factions. This new thinking will not carry the same rigidity that prevailed before, and will take current developments into account, recognizing them as strength for the adversary and weakness for itself. Shifts will occur in American and Israeli policies, and shifts will also occur on the Palestinian scene that take the strength of the people into account, not merely the strength of the factions.

The Palestinian factions did not take the strength of the people into account, and some of them treated the people as material to be bought and sold, their emotions and feelings manipulated, or even their loyalties and positions purchased. For years there have been attempts to turn the Palestinian people into mere “chanters” cheering for this faction or that, for this leader or that, and into beggars pleading in international forums. Now the strength of the people has emerged, just as it partially emerged at the outset of the intifadas, and I do not think the factions, or some of them, will close their eyes to this and revert to their old ways. The people are the true strength, even if unarmed, and they are the strong and enduring asset in confronting aggression and in supplying the parties and organizations with force, vigor, and continuity.

Everyone ought to recalculate, and to think about the wellspring of strength, and to stop fleeing from a scientific engagement with objective and subjective facts, and with the changing variables that impose new balances and equations upon the enemies.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “غزة تفرض معادلة جديدة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.