Stating one’s optimism for the future is not the same as recognising reality and formulating a plan to deal with the outcome of events. That is all that president-elect Obama has done. And it can only lead to more pessimism in Palestine.

Perhaps we have what can only be termed the ‘transition problem’ to blame. It seems absurd that a changeover of power should involve an almost total hiatus of the exercise of it for two months.

In the much more leisurely and less populated age of the late eighteenth century, then an orderly transfer of power of elected officials spread around a continent over a couple of months was permissible. After all, news of a war or natural disaster might take that long to arrive at the centre of power, and by the time a government might formulate a response to it the crisis could well have resolved itself.

But even then things were changing, and in Europe only a decade or two later, semaphore telegraphs were transmitting reports from the south to the north of the continent in hours, not weeks or months. In the 21st century, where a devastating war can be launched in minutes or hours to see the government of a major world power practically paralysed in both its reactions and policies borders on the ridiculous.

There can be little doubt that the Israelis chose their time with precisely that in mind. While the policies of the incoming administration on the Middle East were far from clear by the end of the presidential election, it was obvious that there would be at least some change. And with Obama’s insistence as the Wall Street crash hit on leaving it to the current President to deal with (on the grounds ‘there can be only one president at a time’, though the temptation to ‘leave them to their own mess’ must have been equally if not more influential on any decision to keep out of it) the opportunity must have been enticing.

But it should surely not be beyond the wit of even politicians to be able to come to some agreement on the diplomatic messages to be sent, or to announce that the two administrations were at least consulting. Why should it be impossible for an outgoing american administration not to offer up a warning on the lines that “if you are proposing X, the new government may not support you as we would” and for the two to signal that by saying that they were in close consultation?

I do not know, but I am sure that would happen in the British system, where e civil servants prepare for the likely policies and stances of a government of a different political persuasion before an election. And in one where ambassadors are not replaced at whim by a new administration and would be able to transmit just such advice.

It is at least partly this outdated method of changing governments that has led us to where we are now. And it is a place from which Obama, for all his claims that he has formed a team that will concentrate on the Middle East and the problems posed there, will now find himself on a diplomatic (and possibly military) journey of years and one whose starting point, and many of the way points for many miles of it, has been determined by another country.

The Middle East, and much of the world, will not be able to feel much optimism at the prospect of that journey. Even any feeling of optimism the prospect of a president of somewhat more liberal imagination and with some notion of engagement and negotiation might have engendered in November must now have dissipated, replaced by nothing more than a resigned hope that things may be prevented from becoming much worse.

In fact, in the last week of the dying administration, its atavistic members have ensured that any new policy will be treated with suspicion. We have seen the ‘leak’ that while the Bush administration headed off an earlier attack on Iran, it did so by agreeing to involve the CIA in ‘covert action’ there. A deliberate attempt, were it not that in fact Iranian diplomats are not so stupid, to make any US approach to Iran in the coming days suspect. And in the last few days, the Israelis have been planting stories mostly in the American media that an Iranian ‘suitcase-sized’ nuclear bomb is only months, if not weeks, away from perfection, and the need for Israeli pre-emptive strikes is even more urgent. That might, three weeks ago, have been dismissed as somewhat desperate propaganda, but it becomes much more frightening when it is purveyed by a state which faces the prospect of world revulsion and if not active sanctions against it, a growing distaste for co-operation among an increasing number of countries.

Obama’s thoughts, as relayed in the American media, remind me of an interview with a British civil servant seconded to the notorious American-run Iraq Transitional Authority just after the invasion. He was given a copy of the ‘plan’ for re-establishing Iraq’s finances, not then imagining it was effectively to be managed by the CIA from bales of dollar notes and suitcases. He was struck by its exemplar of pre-planning itself, as he read “The currency to be established by the occupying forces will be the US dollar, replacing” and turned the page to read, “the Deutschmark”.

If that is an example of the developmental planning that goes into American policies, obviously dusting off a plan for the re-establishment of a country in another continent that was sixty years old, can we really expect better of Obama’s team for the Middle East in the weeks—not months or years—they have to produce something viable and constructive? What yellowing inappropriate document from the years of the Palestine Mandate will they take from the secret shelves of the Sate Department?

I would like to think they will have the intellect, determination, and knowledge to do better, but another story from the same civil servant does not make me hopeful. He was also given a ‘plan’ for restoring the electricity supply to Baghdad. it listed the power stations, their presumed output before the war, and their output over the six months to come. It said nothing about how the mechanics of how that was to be achieved. “This isn’t a plan,” he told them. “It’s merely a statement of optimism.”

We cannot afford, even in the first month of Obama’s presidency, merely ‘statements of optimism’. But the development of a plan to bring some form of peace to the Middle East is going to need the exercise of intellects that the USA has previously shown little sign of nurturing.

Perhaps the Obama administration should conclude that it would be best to adopt just one of the previous president’s policies: abstinence. Not from sex, but from supplying Israel with money, weapons and ideological support. And above all abstain from interference, for it has done a great deal of harm, caused thousands upon thousands of deaths, in the last twenty years and no discernible good.

So, the invasion of the Gaza Strip enters its third stage, and it we a ‘military operation’ whose ‘military objectives’ are ‘close to attainment’. But what does the attainment of a military objective mean if there is no political one?

It seems that as far as the Israelis are concerned, there is no political objective except to disable any civil, political or social structure in Gaza for five, perhaps ten years. To cow a population and instil into it a fear of death, or worse, mutilation that will last for the same period.

To impress on the countries of the EU or the Arab world that spending further millions on building hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, libraries, government offices, will be entirely wasted since Israel will (as today’s statement by the Foreign Minister makes perfectly clear) hold it within its rights to destroy them again at any time it chooses.

Much has been written on the resentment and loathing that Israel’s actions will engender among not only the Palestinians but many Arabs. But there are other agendas, an d one is an Israeli political one which no-one seems to recognise, and again, it is one that the Israelis have learnt from practices against them by another regime.

The deployment of Israeli army reservists is significant. It is a commonplace of political speech now to talk of ‘ownership’. This is not ‘involvement’ in a process so much as organising complicity and joint responsibility. Other regimes have known well that to involve as much of the ordinary population in an armed conflict is to make all its members participate in responsibility for the actions of a few.

And this is what the Israelis are doing politically to their own population by involving the reservist in the destruction of Gaza and the injuries inflicted on women and children there. The thousands of ordinary workers, the teachers, the taxi drivers, the metal fabricators, the software designers, the students, have now, by their deployment in Gaza, been given the same ‘ownership’ of the destruction and death being wrought there previously by the ‘professionals’.

And they will go home and have to defend all the military actions, all the breaches of international law, all the breaches of the Geneva Conventions, even the War Crimes, that have occurred there, which as civilians they might otherwise have been able to deny, deplore or pretend for their own peace of mind never happened. Now, they are all involved. And, every Israeli citizen, having ‘ownership’ then owns the consequences. Every citizen (since all serve in the reserve) is a military target for the future.

Cynically, this Israeli government has actually thus brought about a situation in which it has put its entire population in even more danger for the future; and planted the seeds for a bush burning with anxiety,fear, and hate on its own side for generations.

Was that Israel’s intended political objective? Since it is clear it had none for Gaza, I am inclined to think it was. Or at least, now the Israelis have understood the breadth and depth of distaste around the world, even among those allies who have previously done their best to if not support them, not to oppose them directly, they have deliberately made it one.

You have already heard this from many interviewees on the broadcast media who purport to be independent and even objective, as well as from official Israeli spokespersons.

[“Hamas’] senior leaders completely abandoned the population and are concerned only in saving their own skiins.”

“. . . mosques, institutions and private homes were being used by Hamas as bases of operation and arms caches. The entire terror infrastructure is located in the heart of the civilian population which acts as a human shield.”

“Hamas has placed almost a million Israeli civilians within its range of fire (about 15% of its total population!) No country in the world would agree to daily fire at its civilians’ homes.

“Stopping [Operation Cast Lead] midway will not only lead to a resumption of terrorism but will also serve as encouragement to Hamas and other extremist elements in the region.”

“There is today no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip . . .(in the course of the past week 400 trucks and 10 ambulances entered the Gaza Strip from Israel.)”

“The figures we have indicate that the percentage of casualties among univolved civilians stands at about 12% (50 out of 400 killed), much lower than any similar event such as NATO’s bombing in Kosovo or Afghanistan.”

A communique sent by the Israeli foreign Ministry to “media volunteers” who are asked to flood blogs, websites and media with these points if they respond to this email:

“Dear friends,
We hold the [sic] military supremacy, yet fail the battle over the international media. We need to buy time for the IDF to succeed, and the least we can do is spare some (additional) minutes on the net. The ministry of foreign affairs is putting great efforts in balancing the media, but we all know it’s a battle of numbers. The more we post, blog, talkback, vote – the more likely we gain positive sentiment.”

As you can see from reading many media blog threads which do not even originate any discussion of the Gaza War, they are often sidetracked into it, presumably frequently by volunteers who have taken up the invitation.

My Arab friends have often, and still do, bewail the Palestinians’ apparent inabilty to produce rational and reasoned counter-argument, let alone similar counter-propaganda . . .But then, may not in the end, the views and opinions of those who honestly believe in their cause, the reports of eyewitnesses, outweigh the manufactured propaganda and partial representations?

We can hope so; propagandists seldom seem to remember that the most effective propaganda is truth and the evidence of truth.

See The Guardian