I can't speak authoritatively on the psychology of Israeli citizens, but I can make a fairly informed guess on how many might feel on leaving their homes that lie within Israel's recognised border, under duress. For Israelis it would mean the slow encroachment of the beginning of the end of a sixty year realization of a 'state of one's own'. Jews worldwide, meanwhile, would see this as the slow depletion of not only their spiritual homeland, but their place of refuge in the case of a second holocaust. They feel that once these frontier Sabras leave their homes, the annihilation of the state of Israel is nigh.
But whilst the Israeli government, notably the well-burgeoned Kadima party, is earning the respect of it's own citizens, it is losing that of the international community, the hawkish U.S and certain U.K mandarins being an exception. Yet, why should Israel care if France out rightly condemns her 'disproportionate use of violence' against Gaza? It is her patron, the U.S she needs to keep sweet, and not Europe.
But there is another player in this game that Israel needs to heed, and heed well. And this one isn't standing on the sidelines muttering platitudes of feeble cries of disapproval. It is armed with missiles, that may not be AGM quality, but are enough to instill fear in citizens of Southern-Israel.
Hamas, terrorists/freedom-fighters/militants/militia/army/fundamentalists/democratically elected politicians or whatever label suits your slant, are a group with little fear, and little to lose. When Western moralisers question the ethics of suicide bombings, suicidal missions or pontificate on the humanity of the murder/killing/deaths of innocents, they often blame that zeitgeist 'Islamic fanaticism'. I'd rather take the more materialist view on this, and say that fundamentalism has pretty much nothing to do with Islam, and rather alot to do with poverty and desperation.
The Palestinian of Gaza democratically elected 'a bunch of Islamic militants' into government in January 2006, not because they felt the hand of God sweeping over them, but rather because they felt the hand of Hamas giving food, financial assistance, and support. It might be fair to say that any one of us, if we had the choice between a corrupt and rotten party that had failed to bring peace, woe betide prosperity, in sixty years, and a vibrant, proud and pious movement, we'd pick the latter. If we had a large family to support, no job, prospects, and lived in squalor, the choice would be even easier. The adage 'you reap what you sow', when applied to the poverty stricken and the destitute, falls somewhat short; the smug commentators who love to quip this little retort in relation to the current crises, are not only inhuman, but exhibit very little understanding of what an ordinary Palestinian has to endure daily in the Gaza strip.
But what about the past two years since; the endless circle of tit-for-tat strikes, blockades followed by rocket fire followed by blockades, terrorising (on both sides), the arrests of hundreds of Palestinians and the Lebanese war, coinciding with the capture of Shalit, whose fate was sealed as soon as Israel rained missiles from the Gazan skies. The Israeli-Palestinian chicken and egg both turned sixty last year, and we still don't know who did what first, nor who should stop firing first.
Many observers, including Foreign Minister Abul Gheit (who won't last long if he dares to walk down an Egyptian street again) would say that Hamas killed their chicken when they retook arms against Israel once the cease-fire had ended. Others claim that Hamas attempted to reinstate the cease-fire, but were rebuked by a bellicose Israel:
Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises.
The casus belli, however, is rather more long term. It's something I've found that news-room commentators and columnists fail to address. Perhaps it takes too much research; understandable when an article has to be in in the next half hour. But it's all too easy to look at the high-profile meetings, summits and peace accords, to jot down and hammer out dates of assasinated ministers and leaders, suicide bombs and reprisals in the form of military campaigns, to say which Arab leaders should meet whom, or scoff and shake one's literary head at the lack of Arab unity and political rhetoric.
It's rather harder to research the slow burner of economic development. What initiatives have been taken, by Israelis, Palestinians and the International Community alike, to alleviate a suffering that inevitably and inexorably leads a bereft people, denied dignity, to the taking up of arms, and thus makes them malleable in the hands of foreign powers with an axe to grind against Israel.
The questions that need to be asked are not 'who didn't say what' and 'what messages are Hamas sending to Israel' and vice versa, but why are 1.4 million people living in such dire conditions? When there is so much money swilling in Swiss bank accounts, with an entire UN department devoted to this cause, why does Gaza resemble a big, grey, prison? Why is its economy in tatters, and its young men jobless? And, if initiatives, were taken, as I have been told and will endevour to research, why did they fail?
Only when the material narrative, the nitty gritties that the romantic and literati love to avoid, have been taken to task, and taken, not only to informed ivory towered academics, but to the judging public, can these questions be answered. And only then, when mouthy politicans face up to economics as the deciding factor of co-existence, can real peace, a sustainable peace based on real lives rather than fairy rhetoric, be made.
Until then, the situation can only get worse, as Israel prepares for an (imminent?) land invasion. And while it does, Israel's quasi-hope in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, grow weaker. If this campaign does not achieve its objectives; to disarm Hamas and destroy their power base, it could be Lebanon all over again for Israel, who was criticised by many of its own for not going in hard enough in the first fatal week in July 2006. Meanwhile hundreds more Palestinians, military, military-related i.e policemen, civilians, and young Israeli soldiers, will die/be maimed/face severe brain damage/loss of limbs/blindness/deafness and/or suffer countless other injuries that we rarely hear about once the death toll has been counted.
But if Lebanon was anything to go by, all Hamas has to do is survive. If it does, like Nasrallah and his disciples, it will be another 'victory' for Israel's foes. And, as the anger seeps Eastward, Israel could potentially face another Intifada. Hezbollah, as much as it is despised by opposing partisans in Lebanon, won many supporters in 2006, among them were secular-nationalist Palestinians in Syria, where I was living at the time. By the time Israel withdrew, Nasrallah was hailed as a champion by PNFLP supporter and Fatah enthusiast alike.
In the coming week, Israel may certainly strike a real physical blow to Hamas' infrastructure, it's university, police stations, the al-aqsa television station included. But as the bitterness of death sweeps through the camps, the martyrs' banners and posters will begin to line the walls, young men clutching kalashnikovs to the grave. Ideologies, unlike men, are hard to kill, and the next generation will step in with faster ideologies and assistance from abroad. In the long-term, after this campaign is well-over, will Israeli citizens feel any safer?
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