75 Days to Go

Let’s Hear It for Greece!

By Sherwin Pomerantz

With just 75 days to go before the opening of the UN General Assembly and the still possible vote to grant statehood to the Palestinian Arabs, many other side events are in the works as well.

The most current one is the attempt by people from around the world to mount a new flotilla to Gaza with the intent of breaking Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory. Ostensibly the reason given by those participating is that this is a humanitarian mission designed to bring much needed supplies to the deprived Gazans.

Well, the whole world knows and honest people will admit that Israel now permits hundreds of trucks a day to enter Gaza with all kinds of supplies that the border with Egypt is now open and receptive to shipments of materiel as needed and that, for all practical purposes, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza at all. There is, of course, wide spread unemployment and some serious economic issues to be dealt with. But many of those could be intelligently addressed if the Hamas leadership would accept the demands of the world to recognize Israel, give Gilad Shalit back to his waiting parents, and abandon its extremist positions which have only worked to the long term detriment of the people living there.

No, the real purpose of the flotilla which has yet to float is to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza which is designed solely to prevent the arrival of weapons caches to the territory whose leadership is committed to Israel’s destruction. Such a blockade is entirely legal according to international law. Further, Israel’s willingness to off load the flotilla’s humanitarian cargo in Ashdod for transfer to Gaza (and Egypt’s approval to do the same) is proof that the only impetus for the blockade on Israel’s part is to control the entry of weapons into the territory.

Typical of the kinds of people who are populating these ships is Pulitzer-prize winning author Alice Walker. In an interview by Robert Zeliger published in Foreign Policy magazine on June 23rd, she says:

"I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves. If you go to Gaza and see some of the bombs – what’s left of the bombs that were dropped – and the general destruction, you would have to say, yeah, its terrorism. When you terrorize people, when you make them so afraid of you that they are just mentally and psychologically wounded for life – that’s terrorism. So these countries (i.e. the US and Israel) are terrorist countries."

Given all of this it is entirely logical that a country friendly to Israel would cooperate with Israel and prevent the flotilla’s ships from leaving its ports. Greece, whose relations with Israel have improved dramatically as a result of Israel’s worsening relations with Turkey after the last flotilla in May 2010, did what any responsible member of the family of nations would do and prohibited the flotilla from setting sail from its ports. I say thank you Greece! For once our diplomatic efforts seemed to have been well directed and successful.

There are still some ships that have the hope of sailing here and I retain the belief that our government will act differently from the way they did in May 2010 if these ships do approach the Israeli coast. I don’t believe that Israel will do what I suggested in an earlier blog, that is to board the ships, inspect the cargo and if it is, indeed, all humanitarian in nature, escort the ships into Gaza harbor with Israeli flags flying. It would, indeed, be a great public relations coup to do that, at least in my opinion. But if some ships do sail, and if they do approach the Israeli costs, perhaps we can do what blogger Roi Ben-Yehuda suggested and that is to have some conflict resolution professionals board those ships rather than representatives of our own military. These “soldiers of peace” would be one of the new tools designed to maximize the possibility of a non-destructive outcome. Now wouldn‘t that be a kick?