From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Sun Jan 18 2009 - 00:31:08 EST
http://www.planetarymovement.org/go/world-news/gaza-prospect-by-trevor-mostyn/
Gaza Prospect by Trevor Mostyn
trevor mostyn 1973 What might have happened to Gaza had Israel granted it
real independence after its withdrawal in 1994?
To some of us, Israel’s recent actions in Gaza have actually served as a
poignant reminder of the ways things could have been. Look at a photograph
of Gaza in the 1940s and you might be in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria,
with its palm-lined beaches and pretty, belle époque buildings. After the
first Israeli withdrawal from Gaza City in 1994, both the West Bank and
Gaza indulged in a brief honeymoon. The Oslo accords had been signed a year
earlier and Arafat had returned to Gaza. I remember sitting under parasols
on the beach drinking coffee with local journalists. Gazans had not been
allowed on the beaches for years and suddenly the atmosphere was one of
carnival. Israeli settlements were still in place but the Israeli army was
rarely seen.
Egypt's Belle Epoque by Trevor Mostyn djGazans prepared themselves for a
real independence in which the city and the beautiful shoreline would be
theirs again. The port and airport would open and they would export their
fruit, vegetables and flowers once more. The Japanese would set up car
factories, bringing jobs. Some people even believed Gaza could become a
little Hong Kong (and this, they argued, was what Israel truly feared, more
than terrorism). Wherever I went in the city or in the Shati (beach)
refugee camp, grievances against Israel seemed almost forgotten. Gazan ire
was directed at the recently arrived, arrogant Fatah men from Tunis who
moved into the big villas along the coast. Hamas was rarely mentioned, its
popularity minimal. Nobody appeared interested in suicide bombers. I
visited that grand old man Haidar Abdul Shafi, the highly-respected Gazan
physician and leader who had fought in the British-Jordanian army during
the second world war. Over coffee and cakes in his conservatory, we
discussed how Gaza would blossom again.
Sadly, it soon became clear that the new Palestine, made up of only 22 per
cent of Mandate Palestine, was a mirage. Settlements, settler-only roads
and checkpoints went up all over the West Bank and the settlements inside
Gaza were protected by the might of the Israeli military. Israeli gunboats
patrolled the shoreline and the port was closed. Hamas, nurtured by Israel
in its infancy in 1987 as a foil against Fatah, began to win popular
support as the misery intensified. Far from a viable independent
Palestinian state emerging, the situation was becoming far worse than
before. Consequently, Hamas’s popularity increased, just as it is
continuing to do today.
trevor mostynWhen Hamas won the elections in January 2006, it was a victory
for their moderates (but most of the big names have since been
assassinated). Although the newly elected Hamas government was unwilling to
recognise of Israel as a Jewish state, it did agree to the principle of a
ten-year ceasefire—the next generation, it said, would decide on
long-term strategy—and agreed to abide by resolutions reached by the
Palestinian Authority. These included UN security council resolution 242,
which recognised Israel. In practice, therefore, Hamas recognised Israel.
But the west turned its back on Hamas, which had won what were arguably the
freest and fairest election ever held in the Arab world, on the grounds
that a terrorist organisation could not form a legitimate government. Had
the outside world agreed to talk to the new government instead of launching
a crippling blockade against it, the usual responsibilities of governance
would have prevented Hamas from launching even primitive rockets into
Israel.
This is a “what might have been” story. If Israel had offered the
Palestinians genuine and viable independence in the West Bank and Gaza
after 1993, the Palestinians would arguably in time have become its
friends. Israel would have become a secure economic superpower in the
region, no longer financially dependent on the US. If Palestinians had
themselves renounced their struggle, countries like Iran would have had
trouble constructing an argument against Israel. Once the occupation had
ended, outstanding issues such as the status of Jerusalem and the
Palestinian “right of return” would have followed, with Hamas rockets
and suicide bombers things of the past. Is this is a dream? Perhaps
so—but it is a dream that is now unlikely ever to be dreamed again.
Mostyn Algeria 1968The author of three major books on the culture and
history of the Middle East, Trevor Mostyn is an intrepid journalist and an
internationally recognized expert on the Middle East. He gives lectures on
Islam and modern Arab history, focusing on the relations between Islam and
Christianity, on cruises in The Mediterranean and The Black Sea. In 2008 he
ran the Journalist Fellowship Programme at The Reuters Institute for the
Study of Journalism at Oxford University's Department of Politics and
International Relations. He also had a regular show on Press TV's The
Middle East Today. He has just finished a romantic novel set in the Middle
East. His published books are Censorship in Islamic Societies (2002), Major
Political Events in Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula 1945-1990 (1991),
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa (1988),
Egypt’s Belle Époque - Cairo 1869-1952 (1989, published in a new edition
in June 2006), Coming of Age in the Middle East (1987) and the MEED
Practical Guides to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. and Jordan
(1981-83). He is on the Board of English PEN whom he represented at the
International PEN Congress in Bogota in October 2008. He is also deputy
chair of English PEN's Writers in Prison Committee for whom he has visited
the Chernobyl region of Belarus, covered the trial of Saad El-Din Ibrahim
in Egypt and defended a Congo-Brazzaville asylum-seeker in Oxford.
The image of Trevor Mostyn was captured during his investigative mission
to Algeria in 1968.