Who's the loser in Gaza massacre

SHLOMO Ben Ami, former Israeli Foreign Minister, writing in The Jakarta Post on New Years Eve said everybody loses from the assault on Gaza, with rockets falling on southern Israel and Israeli politicians competing over who would offer the harshest response.

The people of Gaza and the people of Southern Israel are both losers. The combined air and land assault is killing and injuring thousands. The vast majority of casualties are in Gaza (99 per cent) with civilian casualties rising. War in Gaza is worse than the Lebanon war because the Gaza Strip is completely surrounded, and already under long-term siege. Gaza has been a prison for 1.5 million Palestinians for years. In the time I worked there from 1983 to 1994 conditions deteriorated.

The issue of terrorism and armed resistance under occupation is not an adequate excuse to devastate the civil infrastructure and police force of an elected government. Israel deploys vastly superior force, but as Mark Lavie said recently (Associated Press) the Israeli army has a poor record tackling Arab population centres, tending to get bogged down, without gaining clear advantages. This war may prove counter-productive for Israel and the West. The European Union, with its record of economic help to Palestine, was wrong to cut off funds to the civil side of the elected Hamas government. The EU is losing credibility with Arab and Muslim opinion.

Moderates and modernisers throughout the Arab and Muslim world are also losers. The movement for Muslim modernisation cannot be militarised as in Iraq or Afghanistan and fought by the West or Israel. We all have to learn how to deal with political Islam and fundamentalism, without declaring war on half the world. The growth of political Islam is part of a reform process, not an intrinsic enemy to it. Extremism comes mainly from context not from content. Political Islam is in government in Turkey and Indonesia without conflict.

Labelling far too many people as terrorist is counter-productive. Not all Hamas voters, civil servants and traffic police are terrorists. The position of Israel and the West on this is self-defeating. Muhammad Lutfi, the Head of the Indonesian Investment Coordinating Board said recently that by August 2008 US$1.6 trillion ($2.4 trillion) of Arab and Muslim funds had been generated from oil revenue, available for trade and investment.

There will be no coherent co-operation framework for global economic recovery at the level of the G30 without the co-operation of Arab and Muslim countries. The West risks to politicise these economic relationships, just when it needs help to get out of recession. The West could lose out on this big time. South-South co-operation is just as lucrative as bailing out the US and the EU.



This war also threatens to widen the gap between the Arab and Muslim street and their governments. This threatens the stability of Arab and Muslim countries, by promoting militancy and fundamentalism. President Obama and the West are losers because there is no obvious way to save the twin state peace process that ran from Oslo to Annapolis.

President Mahmoud Abbas and his moderate West Bank appointed administration are losers, because he has little role in a truce between Hamas and Israel. He cannot speak for Gaza. His administration has lost legitimacy and centrality. He remains the President of half of Palestine, suspended between war and peace, with little influence on either. Both Hamas and Likud want to drop the twin state. Both might accept a long term truce with economic development for Gaza but without a peace agreement, so long as security is guaranteed. Paradoxically Gaza might then stabilise and the West Bank might destabilise, partly because of the impact of this war.

The Gazans are the losers today and the West Bankers could be the losers tomorrow.

The Brunei Times