NR: Com o intuito de melhor informar nossos leitores através deste blog gratuito,
segue abaixo transcrição de artigo publicado no New York Times
em 17 de julho de 2014
‘’HOW THE WEST CHOSE WAR ON GAZA
Nathan Thrall is a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group
covering Gaza, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank.
JERUSALEM — AS Hamas fires rockets at Israeli cities and Israelfollows up its extensive airstrikes with a
ground operation in the Gaza Strip, the most immediate cause of this latest war
has been ignored: Israel and much of the international community placed a
prohibitive set of obstacles in the way of the Palestinian “national consensus” government that was
formed in early June.
That government was created largely because of Hamas’s desperation and
isolation. The group’s alliance with Syria and Iran was in shambles. Its
affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptbecame a liability after a July 2013 coup replaced an ally, President
Mohamed Morsi, with a bitter adversary, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Hamas’s
coffers dried up as General Sisi closed the tunnels that had brought to Gaza
the goods and tax revenues on which it depended.
Seeing a region swept by popular protests against leaders who couldn’t provide
for their citizens’ basic needs, Hamas opted to give up official control of
Gaza rather than risk being overthrown. Despite having won the last elections,
in 2006, Hamas decided to transfer formal authority to the Palestinian
leadership in Ramallah. That decision led to a reconciliation agreement between
Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization, on terms set almost entirely
by the P.L.O. chairman and Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel immediately sought to undermine the reconciliation agreement by
preventing Hamas leaders and Gaza residents from obtaining the two most
essential benefits of the deal: the payment of salaries to 43,000 civil servants
who worked for the Hamas government and continue to administer Gaza under the
new one, and the easing of the suffocating border closures imposed by Israel
and Egypt that bar most Gazans’ passage to the outside world.
Yet, in many ways, the reconciliation government could have served
Israel’s interests. It offered Hamas’s political adversaries a foothold in
Gaza; it was formed without a single Hamas member; it retained the same
Ramallah-based prime minister, deputy prime ministers, finance minister and foreign
minister; and, most important, it
pledged to comply with the three conditions for Western aid long demanded by
America and its European allies: nonviolence, adherence to past agreements and
recognition of Israel.
Israel strongly opposed American recognition of the new government,
however, and sought to isolate it internationally, seeing any small step toward
Palestinian unity as a threat. Israel’s security establishment objects to the
strengthening of West Bank-Gaza ties, lest Hamas raise its head in the
West Bank. And Israelis who oppose a two-state solution understand that a unified
Palestinian leadership is a prerequisite for any lasting peace.
Still, despite its opposition to the reconciliation agreement, Israel
continued to transfer the tax revenues it collects on the Palestinian
Authority’s behalf, and to work closely with the new government, especially on
security cooperation.
But the key issues of paying Gaza’s civil servants and opening the
border with Egypt were left to fester. The new government’s ostensible
supporters, especially the United States and Europe, could have pushed Egypt to
ease border restrictions, thereby demonstrating to Gazans that Hamas rule had
been the cause of their isolation and impoverishment. But they did not.
Instead, after Hamas transferred authority to a government of
pro-Western technocrats, life in Gaza became worse.
Qatar had
offered to pay Gaza’s 43,000 civil servants, and America and Europe could have
helped facilitate that. But Washington warned that American law prohibited any
entity delivering payment to even one of those employees — many thousands of
whom are not members of Hamas but all of whom are considered by American law to
have received material support from a terrorist organization.
When a United Nations envoy offered to resolve this crisis by delivering
the salaries through the United Nations, so as to exclude all parties from
legal liability, the Obama administration did not assist. Instead, it stood by
as Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called for the envoy’s
expulsion on the grounds that he was “trying to funnel money” to Hamas.
Hamas is now seeking through violence what it couldn’t obtain through a
peaceful handover of responsibilities. Israel is pursuing a return to the
status quo ante, when Gaza had electricity for barely eight hours a day, water
was undrinkable, sewage was dumped in the sea, fuel shortages caused sanitation
plants to shut down and waste sometimes floated in the streets. Patients
needing medical care couldn’t reach Egyptian hospitals, and Gazans paid $3,000
bribes for a chance to exit when Egypt chose to open the border crossing.
For many Gazans, and not just Hamas supporters, it’s worth risking more
bombardment and now the ground incursion, for a chance to change that
unacceptable status quo. A cease-fire that fails to resolve the salary crisis
and open Gaza’s border with Egypt will not last. It is unsustainable for Gaza
to remain cut off from the world and administered by employees working without
pay. A more generous cease-fire, though politically difficult for Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would be more durable.
The current escalation in Gaza is a direct result of the choice by
Israel and the West to obstruct the implementation of the April 2014
Palestinian reconciliation agreement. The road out of the crisis is a reversal
of that policy.’’
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